By JIANAN QIAN
This piece is part of a special portfolio about youth and contemporary culture in China. Read more from the portfolio here.
Alex dislikes the security check in Shanghai’s subway stations, from both an ideological and personal perspective. Being American, he hates any intrusion on privacy. And today he’s carrying a black dildo in his backpack, wrapped in a wine tote bag with a Spanish brand name on the outside. Still, he worries the X-ray man might stop him for inspection.
He touches the student ID in his jeans pocket. Back in college, George—his Chinese teacher whose toupee once came loose—had told him that the Chinese respect Ph.D. students.
The man lets him pass.
“Xie xie,” Alex thanks him.
It’s not rush hour. He finds a seat and places his backpack on his lap. With his uncombable hair sprawling out in all directions, he looks like the photo of Einstein that appears in Chinese high school textbooks. Not that Alex would know about that. His destination is the west side of the city, a five-star hotel. A sex class will take place in one of the suites and he’ll be one of the models. It’s his first time participating in the sex industry, and the thought brings a smile to his face. However, the young woman sitting beside him seems uncomfortable or offended by his presence, and moves to another seat.
He arrives at the hotel lobby and texts Vivian, the teacher.
She comes down to meet him. She is wearing a T-shirt, sweatpants, and very light makeup, as casual as the last time he saw her.
“She’s here.” Vivian pats Alex on the arm. “You nervous?”
He nods and sees the reflection of himself nod in the elevator doors.
“Don’t be.” Vivian cracks a smile. “She’s more nervous than you are.”
*
Several months ago, shortly before Alex turned thirty, he had a nervous breakdown in the swimming pool at his university rec center in St. Louis, Missouri. Swimming had been his routine since he began graduate school in Comparative Studies in East Asian and Northern American Politics. That day, while gliding through the water and reciting a passage from Tao Te Ching for his Chinese philosophy seminar, a spasm seized his leg. Clinging to the pool’s edge, he thought he saw Chinese characters scatter on the water, drifting, falling, and sinking. Out of instinct, he tried to catch them. Next thing he knew, he was lying on the tiled floor; a lifeguard with a young, pimpled face kept pounding on his chest, urging him to wake up.
Now, Alex cannot shake the feeling that something fundamental has gone missing in his life. He loses his appetite mid-meal. He misses seminars because he thinks it’s Tuesday and it turns out to be Wednesday. His mentor, known for being extremely patient, said that he himself wasn’t able to function after getting divorced. But Alex didn’t even have a girlfriend. Still, he nodded when his mentor suggested a four-month exchange program in Shanghai. “Everybody gets depressed in academia,” his mentor said, “you need a change of scene.”
Alex had traveled to Beijing and Taipei. He didn’t think Shanghai would hold any surprises. But as soon as he got off the plane, he marveled Shanghai’s urban sprawl. Every few minutes the taxi passed what looked like a proper downtown, with high-rises and giant shopping malls. Authentic gelato was just two blocks away from his university apartment. As he ticked off visiting a list of restaurants nearby, he felt his strength returning, but two weeks after he arrived, he started waking up at three a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. When this went on for a string of days, he knew he was still depressed.
He downloaded Momo, the Chinese Tinder. He installed it on his cell phone and soon deleted it—he’d tried Tinder in the States, years ago, before concluding it was a waste of time. But the third time he reinstalled Momo, he kept it, convincing himself it would help with his dissertation, “The Rise of Chinese Nationalism: A Postcolonial Critique of China.”
Vivian was his third Momo match. She didn’t fit conventional beauty standards—short, skinny, with a mouth too big for her tiny face. She must have lied about her age; she looked older than thirty. Her English was good, only with a strange accent, a mix of rural Chinese and Irish. She had sharp, widely-spaced teeth. On their second night out, as her lips drew closer to his over a bowl of ramen, he had a fleeting image of a crocodile.
“You’ve been living your life too narrowly,” she whispered, “Break your shackles.”
They kissed. Alex was surprised to find she was a superb kisser. Her lips tasted like mojito.
Later the same night she took him to her luxurious three-bedroom apartment on the eighteenth floor of a central Shanghai building. She didn’t draw the curtains when she undressed, and her naked body was bony and flat. Yet, with the metropolis’s shimmering skylines outlining her profile, Alex felt seduced. He smiled as she pulled at his shirt collar and dragged him to the floor-to-ceiling windows.
After she stripped him to reveal his red undies, he confessed that he’d never been good at sex. He grew up in a small town in Midwest America, where the most God-fearing people seemed to have gathered. She laughed before he overshared anything, and the laughter didn’t sound condescending.
“Take a feminine point of view.” She drew a smiling face on his belly with her fingers. “And you’ll perform good sex.”
In the bedroom, she showed him how: Instead of being an “invader,” he must be a “cohabitant.” “Ask your partner to tell you if she likes what you’re doing,” she said, sucking his nipples. “Do you like that?”
“Don’t stop,” he said, caressing her hair.
“Be a feminist and a cohabitant,” she said again after they were both fulfilled. “Your world will be different.”
Alex was amazed. He had met many intelligent Chinese students in his American university, but he never anticipated this random Chinese woman on Momo would speak the language of Judith Butler.
“Were you saying something?” Vivian asked.
“Never mind.” He poured her a glass of whiskey. “You are the true practitioner.”
Afterwards, as Alex lay in bed feeling self-conscious, Vivian fetched her MacBook and showed Alex her website. She was a therapist specializing in intimate relationships. The website showed pictures of her attending psychotherapy conferences around China.
Surprised again, Alex spilled some whiskey over the bedspread.
“Sorry.” He grabbed some napkins to wipe the stain. “There are conferences on this? But isn’t sex a taboo topic in China?”
“It is. That’s why there’s a great need.” Vivian smiled, patting off the napkins. “Interested in my class?”
“Of course.” Alex had been considering getting therapy since the breakdown on his thirtieth birthday. “Are you expensive?”
“If you model for my class,” she leaned closer and breathed the rest of the sentence into his ear, “you can take it free of charge.”
*
The hotel suite combines modern Western furniture with traditional Eastern decorations. Bamboo-framed lamps in various sizes stand on the floor beside an accent chair and on the tea table. At the back of the living room, a folding door adorned with plum blossom panels opens to what must be the bedroom. A Chinese woman reclines on the living room couch, her body covered with a checked blanket. Alex is disappointed to see she is a big woman, flesh melting like gelato.
“I’m not sure whether I should stay.” She props herself up, showing more flesh.
“No, Yuzhen.” Vivian waves her hand. “Keep doing what I told you to.”
Yuzhen lies back, clutching the blanket to her neck. “I should lose weight.” She almost cries. “I’m too disgusting. That’s why my husband doesn’t want to sleep with me.”
Vivian signals for Alex to remove his clothes. Now naked, Alex does what Vivian showed him last time in her apartment—he treats Yuzhen’s body as a feminist would. Vivian hands him gloves before he inserts his fingers in Yuzhen. Yuzhen trembles, and the couch shakes.
“You are sexy,” Alex whispers into Yuzhen’s ear, as Vivian has instructed. “You deserve more love.”
Yuzhen blossoms with confidence. She watches closely as Vivian demonstrates how to cuddle, massage, and kiss. When Yuzhen crawls over and writes “Fuck me” with her fingers on Alex’s buttocks, he turns and gazes into her eyes with intensity.
Vivian asks them to put on their clothes, stand outside the folding door, and practice taking each other into the bedroom.
“Maintain eye contact,” Vivian says. “Keep as many physical points between your bodies as possible.”
As they move, they take each other’s clothes off, hug and kiss. The door panels whisper. Alex doesn’t know why, but now, Yuzhen seems dearer. Her face looks like that of a lovely doll, and her body feels soft and warm. As Vivian turns off all the bamboo lamps, he feels as though he’s walking in the clouds.
“You are sexy,” he says to Yuzhen. “I really mean it.”
“You too.” Her voice sounds shy. “I’ve never met anyone as sexy as you.”
The lights come on. “That’s all,” Vivian announces.
Both Yuzhen and Alex blush. Realizing they’ve turned each other on, they dart out of the folding door, grabbing their clothes. As Vivian follows them into the living room, they hide behind the green couch, trying to cover themselves with whatever comes handy, like Adam and Eve.
“Most people don’t understand love,” Vivian tells Alex over a hotpot dinner later that night. Yuzhen has gone home to her husband and son. “Nakedness doesn’t differentiate between age, complexion, or size. ‘This can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.’”
That’s James Baldwin! Alex’s heart jolts. The meatball he just picked up bounces back into the pot.
“What are you thinking?” Vivian scoops up the meatball.
He pours spicy sauce onto his dish. “Who are you? Where are you from?”
“Truth is boring.” She blinks. “Why not leave some things to mystery?”
As a Ph.D. candidate, Alex is finished with all the coursework. But he audits a seminar. He’s curious how post-colonial theories are taught in the so-called Third World. Soon he’s disappointed. They read the same stuff: Edward Said, Homi K. Bhabha, Frantz Fanon. The only difference is that when they talk about “The Other,” they point fingers at themselves. As the only white person in the classroom, Alex feels like he’s being seen as the enemy.
Vivian’s phone call comes in the middle of one of these seminars, a few days after his meeting with Yuzhen.
“‘The ideology of Empire was hardly ever a brute jingoism,’” the professor is saying while Alex sneaks out of the back door. “‘Rather, it made subtle use of reason, and recruited science and history to serve its ends.’”
Vivian cuts to the chase. “You’d be up for S&M?”
Alex pauses. Of course he’s heard about S&M, which the people in his hometown called the work of demons, as they did with all the pleasure-seeking activities. Deep down, he had always agreed. He sucks in more air and feels the warmth of the sun slanting through the window. “As long as it doesn’t hurt anyone,” he says.
*
The next day in the subway station, the strap-on and lube in Alex’s backpack pass the X-ray machine smoothly. He has tied his hair into a ponytail and now looks more like a gang member than Einstein. The train stops twice between stations. A woman’s voice over the loudspeaker apologizes. Alex, restless, checks his cell phone like everyone else on the train.
In the hotel lobby, a beautiful young woman is pacing in front of the elevators. Alex can’t take his eyes off her choker and slim arms. He forgets to text Vivian.
“Oh hi.” Vivian, in a white hoodie and sweatpants, appears. “Wenxiu and Alex. Good, you are both here.”
Wenxiu nods at him. He returns the gesture and holds the elevator door for both of them.
“You are sure about this, right?” Vivian asks Wenxiu in a low voice.
Wenxiu nods again, more firmly.
Vivian leads them to the same suite. She has all the curtains down and so it is very dark. One after one, she lights a dozen candles and places them around the room.
Vivian asks Alex to wait outside the folding door while she prepares the bedroom. When she summons him back in, he sees Wenxiu lying on her stomach on the bed, her bare spine like a railway leading down a snowy mountain.
“Drip the wax on her back.” Vivian hands him a candle. “A tiny drop at a time. Slowly. Try to write a word with it.”
Alex hesitates. Since middle school, he’s strived to be a good person. Sadism, especially towards an Asian woman, doesn’t feel right.
“I can’t.” He stares at the small candle and is surprised by its tiny, bright flame. “This is violence.”
“My boyfriend likes this,” Wenxiu says without turning around. “Please. He’s fine otherwise. I can’t afford to lose him.”
Vivian takes the candle and makes the first drip. Wenxiu’s skin reddens. She groans, loudly.
“We shouldn’t …” Alex murmurs.
“I can’t help it.” Wenxiu breaths heavily. “That’s why he stopped last time. But eventually he might find another woman to do it with him.”
Vivian places the candle on Alex’s palm and walks to the headboard. “You can control the pain.” She holds Wenxiu’s wrists. “Don’t focus on the burn. Let your whole body diffuse the pain. Now, imagine you are transferring the pain to your buttocks.”
Vivian signals for Alex to drip the wax onto Wenxiu’s body. He mimes back that he cannot do it.
“And you need to encourage him,” Vivian says to Wenxiu. “Say, ‘Babe, keep going.’”
“Babe, keep going,” Wenxiu says, weakly but sweetly.
Alex stands still, holding the candle.
“Babe, keep going,” she says again, this time louder.
He slowly tilts the candle. A tiny drip of wax falls, like a teardrop, but greyer, more solid. Wenxiu’s back shrinks and stretches, her hands clutching and then unclutching.
“Transfer the pain,” Vivian says.
Wenxiu groans lightly.
“‘Don’t stop. It’s a pleasure, babe,’” Vivian coaches her.
Alex tips the candle again. Gradually, he learns to ignore Wenxiu’s groans. He grows serious in his task, tilting the candle at the same angle and height every time he raises his hand.
After he’s finished, he leans against the nearby chest of drawers, pleased. “Guess what I wrote?”
“LOVE,” Vivian takes a picture with her phone and shows it to Wenxiu. “Isn’t that art?”
“Beautiful.” Wenxiu props herself up, reaching for the cooling gel on the nightstand.
“Lie back down,” Vivian commands. “Give him time to linger. Praise the details of the drawing. Make some jokes.”
After Wenxiu leaves, her back daubed with vitamin E oil, Vivian and Alex order delivery from a pho place. While waiting on the living room couch for it to arrive, Vivian asks him how he feels.
“I’m not sure.” Over the tea table, he fumbles with his hands. “If she can’t bear the pain, shouldn’t he stop doing it? If he really loves her?”
“Isn’t it great that she loves him so much she’s willing to endure the pain?” She puts her hand on his, and gazes into his eyes. “How did you feel when you were dripping the wax?”
“I…I was afraid,” he confesses, meeting her gaze briefly before lowering his eyes. “For a time, I forgot I was pouring wax on a human body. I only cared about what I was writing.”
“That’s sin.” She pokes his chest with her chopsticks. “‘The most tragic hypocrisy in life is that human beings are dark by nature. We pretend to be kind. But if we have the chance to destroy the lives of others, we would do it like we would turn off a light.’”
Kurt Vonnegut, The Last Interview. Alex knows he shouldn’t be surprised by how well-read Vivian is by now, but his eyes couldn’t help but widen.
“We may never get rid of our sin. So we need to reorient it to something less harmful, where we can control the outcome.”
*
That night, Alex finds himself delivering a sermon to the books on his apartment bookshelf: No, sin cannot be suppressed; it can only be redirected. No, his townsfolk had it all wrong. He pulls out a book by Benedict Anderson and flips to a random page: “Nationalism does not represent a mere transcending of religious difference, but rather its reorientation and reinscription along national lines.” But we can reorient nationalistic sentiments too, Alex shouts to the book, just as we manage to handle the pain from hot wax. He jots this down on his notepad—an insight into one of the most pressing contemporary issues! Too excited to stay seated, he turns to the kitchen and prepares a cup of tea. As he blows on the steaming surface, he recalls George Orwell’s essay on the Olympics Games. Orwell argued that, instead of fostering international unity and fair play, the Games functioned as a practical outlet for nationalistic sentiments—a substitute for world wars. The words Alex just wrote seem to evaporate, one by one, dissolving into thin air. What he thought was groundbreaking now seems like nothing new.
“Vivian,” he texts from the couch, “Teach me more.”
Vivian sends back an invitation to a party on Saturday. “Hope you can make it, my feminist friend,” she adds.
*
The party is held in a villa on the west side of Shanghai, near the hotel where Vivian reserves rooms for her classes. Alex didn’t know there was such a fancy neighborhood in Shanghai. The house—more of a mansion—resembles those found in Stratford-upon-Avon. A suited butler guides him through the front hall—past an indoor swimming pool—to the back hall, where the crowd has gathered. The guests are a blend of locals and white people. Vivian wears a kimono, and her hair is combed into a chignon, like Madame Butterfly. She introduces him to other guests as a Ph.D. candidate from a prestigious American university, which is not inaccurate. People laugh and raise their wine glasses. “Academia is boring,” Alex says in return. “You spend years learning to swim but you never really get your hands wet.” Though he’s not sure why he’s talking down his work, this seems to entertain people. Soon he learns most of the guests are affluent businessmen. The women are more diverse: single, married, divorced, employed, unemployed. Two of the other Americans—both women—are graduate students.
Excusing himself to find the men’s room, Alex passes the swimming pool again. “Do you know how much money Vivian makes every year?” Two waitresses are talking—cupping their mouths—in the pantry.
“More than a million yuan.”
“I heard she’s got a Ph.D. from the UK.”
“I heard so too. Philosophy.”
Alex makes a turn and sees the men’s room. He quickly hides inside, heart pounding. A million, that’s much more than what he’d ever hope to earn as a tenure-track professor in social science. He rinses his hands until another man knocks on the door.
Back in the hall, Vivian is making an announcement. “My friends.” Now she looks more alluring in her kimono. “I invite you to try out my upcoming workshop, Epiphany.”
The guests set down their drinks and begin to form a circle. Vivian directs everyone to stand between two people of the opposite gender. Alex finds a spot between two young Chinese women. He smiles at them, awkwardly. As Vivian instructs, they sit down on the tiled floor, each facing the back of the person in front. With tantra music playing in the background, Vivian asks them to embrace the person ahead, starting with the waist, then the belly, and finally the chest. As Alex’s hands reach the nipples of the woman in front, both he and she tremble. Vivian urges everyone to tilt back and forth, to imagine they are waves.
Vivian shouts out the rhythm. They wave, back, forth, forth, back.
“Relax the coercive hold of norms on life,” Vivian says. Even her voice sounds different, ethereal, enlightened. “We were born happy. It’s the performatives of social roles that oppress our happiness. Liberate yourselves.”
The hall gets hotter. Candles replaces the usual lamps, casting elongated shadows on the wall. Some guests remove their tops. The older woman behind Alex begins unbuttoning his shirt. Her soft hands feels cool on his bare skin. He sweats, and gropes inside the blouse of the woman ahead of him.
“Feel the freedom of the waves.” Vivian lowers the music. Strangely, Alex thinks he can hear the sound of the sea. Not sure if its’s real, he listens to its rolling, boiling and howling. Rapid drumbeats follow, propelling them to tilt their bodies faster. The shadows dance wildly, like ancient tribesmen in a sacrificial ceremony. Surrounded by heavy breathing and the sweat of the others, he feels fulfilled.
“That’s all for today.” Vivian stops the music and switches on the lights. The guests fumble on their clothes. They return to their drinks and resume conversations about weather, work, and politics, as if nothing momentous has happened.
*
“I’d like to work for you.” Alex, still burning from Epiphany, approaches Vivian beside the pool after most guests have left. “But I must get paid.”
“Sure,” Vivian says. “Jump into the water first.” She arches an eyebrow, her smile leaving Alex uncertain if she’s joking.
“Alright.” He kicks off his shoes and trousers, and—keeping his shirt on—dives into the pool.
This is the first time he’s been swimming since his nervous breakdown. He has missed it—the buoyancy of the water, the feeling of merging with it.
“Join me.” He splashes water at Vivian.
She removes her shoes, lifts the kimono, and dips her feet into the pool.
He grabs her feet, but she gently kicks him away. “That’s the craziness I need from someone working with me,” she says. “How does 8% sound?”
It’s more generous than he expected. He climbs up, smiling. One of the gossipy waitresses hands him a towel. Wrapping it around himself, he shakes hands with Vivian.
“Tomorrow I’ll send a photographer,” she says. “You’ll be our lead coach. We’ll feature your resume on the website.”
He stops wiping his hair and looks at her, frowning.
“Doesn’t need to be your real name.” She twirls her fingers around his blond hair. “But a Western face adds credibility.”
The following day, in a British tea house near his apartment, Alex poses for a headshot with a fake beard, his curly hair cascading around his shoulders. In the photo, he looks somewhat like Jesus. On the website, his name becomes Joshua Simmons, a Ph.D. holder in theology from Yale. Just as he’s about to protest the embellishments during their next meeting at a sushi place, Vivian hands him a paper bag stuffed with cash—50,000 yuan, his first payment, a quarter of his annual stipend.
“‘We’ll exercise the performative power to lay claim to freedom.’” Vivian shows him on her phone how many people have already signed up. “‘And this performativity is not only speech, but the demands of bodily action, gesture, movement, congregation, persistence, and exposure to possible violence.’”
Judith Butler again. Alex is melted by her eloquence.
*
They give their first round of the Epiphany workshops in Guangzhou, which, Alex finds, is a more liberal city in southern China. They book the indoor badminton court to accommodate the crowd, with the net removed, of course. Vivian allows Alex to swap out Butler’s quotes for his favorite discourses. From the coach’s chair in the back, she watches as he leads the session. By the end of the first day, several clients leave with joyful tears in their eyes.
On the third day Alex notices a man in his fifties with flushed cheeks. He must be very excited, Alex thinks. Alex repeats some Michel Foucault quotes while the group sways like waves. Suddenly someone screams. That red-faced man collapses onto the woman in front of him, drooling. Two muscular men dressed in white, whom Alex assumed to be security guards, carry the unconscious man into the break room.
“Don’t worry.” Vivian reassures the crowd. “Our medical staff will take care of him.” She nudges Alex, signaling for him to continue.
After the session, Alex finds the break room empty, the couch bed unwrinkled. He calls Vivian.
“Everything’s fine,” she whispers. “I want you to come to the hospital. We must talk to his family.”
“What’s wrong? Is he okay?” Before he can get a response, he hears footsteps closing in. The two men in white approach. Alex is surprised to see that they look very similar, about the same height, shape, and hairdo. The man on the left points to outside the window, where a black sedan is waiting.
The other man takes Alex’s phone, speaking to Vivian in a dialect Alex doesn’t understand, before returning the phone. Alex asks what is happening but they only say, “No big deal.” The driver wearing the same white clothes starts the car, without any directions. Sandwiched between the two mysterious men, Alex’s mind races: He is the instructor, so he—not Vivian—would be held responsible if something happened to the man. But wait, no one confirmed the red-faced man’s death. Then why kidnap him if there’s no death? His fake name and face are plastered on publicity materials. They could charge him for fabricating documents! He imagines making international headlines like, “Emerging American Scholar Leads a Wild Double Life in China.”
As the car exits the highway, Alex spots the neon sign atop of the hospital building. They pull over. Alex says he has to use the restroom first. The two men accompanying him are very polite. One heads straight to the nurse’s station for directions while the other escorts Alex to the second floor.
“I’ll wait here,” the man says in the hallway.
Inside the restroom, Alex ponders his options. Climbing out of the window is a no-go. His Caucasian features are impossible to camouflage.
“You okay, Dr. Simmons?” the man asks from outside.
Alex grimaces, clutching his stomach. He persuades a young man who’s washing his hands inside the bathroom to fetch the man standing outside. “Tell him I need some antidiarrheal pills,” Alex says.
From outside: “Hang in there, Dr. Simmons. We’ll be right back with the meds and water.”
Slipping away proves easier than expected. Alex hails a taxi to the airport. He gets on the next flight to Shanghai and purchases a ticket from Shanghai to St. Louis on the following day. He dreads the men in white or Chinese police coming after him while he packs his suitcase, while he exchanges his Chinese income into US dollars at the bank, and while he waits to board at the airport. His sense of calm returns only at 30,000 feet.
In Guangzhou, Vivian leads the Epiphany workshop alone, wondering where Alex went. The red-faced man is fine; he needed Alex as an alibi: he told his wife and daughter that he was taking a business English class. For a moment, Vivian worries about Alex’s safety. She quickly pushes the thought aside. Americans know how to take care of themselves.
“‘We are always in power relations,’” she echoes Alex’s Foucault quotes. “‘We cannot jump outside this situation, but we can always change it. We are always trapped, but we are always free.’”
Jianan Qian is a bilingual writer from Shanghai, China. Her works have appeared in Granta, Gulf Coast, Guernica, and elsewhere. Currently, she is a Ph.D. candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California.
