Day tripper

My guilt about Cano in the last post looks dramatic. He thought I had a crush on him? Really, Jaimie? That’s going to start a credibility war between you? No, no. It’s because I chickened out. You didn’t hear everything.

It ventures into gossip territory; but then again, none of you know him. This isn’t the stuff I told my grandmother. She was upset at the insinuation that I found him annoying and I might have said he was sleazy, sans details. But it’s true. Cano is sleazy.

He’s the kind of guy that insists that his girlfriend is not his girlfriend although he’s taking the full advantages of being her boyfriend. I’m not saying that happened, although it might have, I’m just saying he’s that kind of guy. If he did have this theoretical not-girlfriend, I could tell you that she’s working at Disney World now and I’m really happy she’s in a better place, theoretically, if I were making up this story, as an example.

Here we go

In that first day I was with Cano, and I was with him probably 12 hours that day, I heard several mentions of urination. In reference to himself, in reference to others. It just kept coming up. I found that odd, and attributed it to either (1) more rudeness akin to him largely ignoring me or (2) him never realizing I was there, that he wasn’t in the sole company of close companions. There was one story he told about how he was urinating off a bridge and the wind caught it and blew it back up to his girl (pause) friend and it got on her and she kept crying out, “Stop! Stop!” and he laughed so hard at that story and repeated the punchline a few times. Jesse was laughing at it too, and Jane, and I was polite-laughing. Hell, maybe we were all polite-laughing. But later I said to Jesse and Jane that I learned way more than I wanted to know about Cano from that story, and they were like, “Yeah, haha,” and I was like, “No, I don’t mean the story,” and they were like, “What?”

I’m going to redact this part later. I’m telling it to tell it, not to keep a record. Because the level of obliviousness, you guys. As a writer it kills me to just say “he was very oblivious” when there’s a golden (shower) way to show you how oblivious he was.

… and how crass, really. He didn’t talk about women with much respect either. It was the kind of stuff that would be fine around Jesse, but dude, there are women present; stop objectifying my gender to my face.

Very early in the 2-hour bus ride I was like, Fuck, I have to spend the whole day with this guy. This is the one day I wanted to get away; after 2–3 weeks being here, I plan one fun day where I can spend some time exploring China with Jesse and Jane, and this is what I get.

I found Cano’s company to be fascinating, yes, but mostly exhausting.

I was so glad when that day was over.

…Until I woke up and discovered he was going to be in the apartment all afternoon playing video games. I asked Jesse how long Cano would be staying, and Jesse didn’t answer me. I asked again; nothing. I said, “For what it’s worth, I really wish you could go to his place or something. I spent a whole day with him yesterday and I’m tired of him. Can I have a one day break here?”

I got told, “I’m better at having friends than you, so he’s coming over.”

I said, biiiiiiiiiiiiitch.

We did not talk for a day or two after that.

Still, I could sort of understand why Jesse might be frustrated. I had done a 180°, a fact acknowledged by both of us before he gave me the line about being awesome at friendships. Jesse wasn’t expecting tension there. Neither was I.

Backstory

Pre-China I had been very interested in meeting Cano. He sounded energetic, entertaining, pleasant. I was expecting a Tamaki Suoh.

In 1 afternoon, Tamaki could absolutely convince the Host Club to take off for China. Kyoya would work out the details.

Cano was so nice to them, and I had heard such wonderful things from others, I didn’t expect him to be such an ass.

Stuck on that bus with him

I was surprised he had friends at all. I formed a hypothesis — that he would be friends with people who could give him something, that this was why he showed a good face for his US church and claimed to be a “missionary” — and tested it by referencing my grandmother, the awesome Christmas we were going to have, that there was going to be an in-house chef cooking us dinner one night, etc, etc,…

Yeah, I made it very clear that, you know, money. Was I being vain? Yes. Guilty. But I was past the point of wanting his friendship and was just trying to figure him out. (Guilty again; not great behavior.) While I said all of this to Jesse, Cano was quiet. And the first thing he said to me, a few minutes later, when the topic had changed to how I had treated Jesse’s sister in a certain sticky situation, the details of which I will spare you, was: “That was nice of you.” Sarcasm. About a family matter that did not involve him. I quietly seethed. Jane came to my defense by explaining the context more. Everyone was silent. The subject changed.

And I thought, Okay, I don’t think he’s an opportunist. And also, Maybe I’m overestimating how opportune I am.

Now, knowing a little more, I think he’s friends with them because he’s friends with them. They met each other in college, possibly earlier. Jesse is the grandson of one of the patron saints of Cano’s US church. (I’m the granddaughter, which was another aspect I was playing up when I was playing myself up, but maybe tales of my waywardness had reached him; for instance I was never in church, despite living with my grandmother.) And, most importantly, Jesse is downright obsequious in the right situation. I think Cano needs that.

Cano was short with me (“That was nice of you”) because he had decided I was a prickish rich kid, which was 100% the narrative I had fed him, and might also be true. I guess he was still okay with me having a crush on him, though.

Although… all I heard from Jesse was that Cano had said, “I think Jaimie has a crush on me.” It might have been, “I think Jaimie has a crush on me. Gross.” Or, “But she’s like an Amazon woman,” or, “But she’s kind of stuck up.”

Red leaves valley

Back to China, huh?

This part was giving me writer’s block last week. Our excursion to Red Leaves Valley was a full day affair, and memorable, but boring to recount detail by detail. Even the park was boring. Quirky, but boring.

That feels very China to me. Sometimes in China I would see something weird, like a mother holding her baby’s hands so he could squat-poop into a bush through the hole in the back of his onesie. You see that and you think, OMG, people will die when they hear about this! But you tell them, and they’re too confused to laugh. It doesn’t work. The weirdness doesn’t play well back in the States, but while in China, it’s kind of amazing.

Red Leaves Valley was a mish-mash of things. Even getting there was odd.

I found the park on Trip Advisor. Upon my instigation, we all decided we would go. After catching a bus out of Jinan and riding for about 2 hours, you got dumped out in the middle of nowhere. It was just shanty houses lining the road. We did find 1 sign pointing towards the park, but you had to pay someone to drive you to the park entrance, after finding them first, wherever they were, and whoever. We were fortunate that (1) Jesse used his GPS to make sure we were dumped off in the right area and most importantly (2) Cano spoke pretty decent Chinese and could deal with the locals.

Cano was always annoyed that people assumed he couldn’t speak good Chinese, or when he did speak good Chinese, they sometimes pretended they didn’t understand him. Maybe they didn’t understand him. If you never expect to hear Chinese from a white person, could you even process it when it’s happening? Almost every time he spoke to someone, he would come back and tell us why the person he spoke to was dumb, or interesting, or sometimes impressed with Cano’s Chinese.

I ate that shit up. When Cano spoke Chinese to someone, I did not wander off. I prepared myself for the blessed airing of grievances, which were communicated to us with an easy confidence, a raised chin, a level volume, eyes scanning the locale, though never contacting mine. The church of Cano’s experience. The membership requirement: English. At last I was partaking in what Korean people enjoyed when they did my nails, and it was wonderful.

Two clarifications

1. We didn’t need Cano in order to be judgmental in English and not be understood. We could do that ourselves, and we did, often. But, since he could understand Chinese, he gave us more fuel. “Those people are talking about us and this is what they are saying” stuff.
2. It’s not like he never looked me in the eyes. Maybe four times?

A picture tour

I have a lot of pictures of this, but I’ll spare you. I’ve selected only the essentials. Towards the end of this 2 mile hike into the park, there was a tower (I’ll point it out) that I took about 100 pictures of, but no. Those aren’t here. No one cares about your time at the tower, Jaimie.

The entrance to the park.

Buying snacks at the bottom of those steps. Miles out of the city, still smog.

Owning a car in Jinan means you’re rich, or so I was told. Some of those cars are taxis to take you to the main road. Incidentally, the taxi that took us there and back overcharged us by 3–4x, but we didn’t care, because it was still very cheap.

We didn’t hit the right season for all the leaves in Red Leaves Valley to be red.

Walking down the hill, this was on the side of the path. No explanation given.

And then you came to the Greek part of the park.

I don’t understand the purpose of this space. There wasn’t seating anywhere, so that’s not it.

There was a bride in a purple dress taking pictures in front of this.

A swing-set on the path. I think they were waiting around for me to stop taking pictures of the Greek stuff, and also Jesse, who was taking longer with the Greek stuff, who had just picked up photography and kept declaring how bad he was and having us look for ourselves.

Another story about Cano: Jesse kept talking to me about photography, which I know a little about, and I was using words like aperture, shutter speed, bokeh, the rule of thirds — you know, the words you have to use when you’re talking about photography — and Cano started saying loudly, as though talking to Jane, “Oh yeah, the aperture has to be 3 clicks, and the compartment needs to be set right”… I can’t even do it. You know the kind it was. He was mimicking us with his technobabble, making a joke about how we were incomprehensible to him, which is a way of expressing that you find it annoying. It’s a great way of handling it, but he handled it very early. We had only been talking 5 minutes or so, as we were walking on the trail, not even right beside them.

Ass.

And Jesse laughed at Cano and stopped talking about it.

In the distance is the 100-picture tower. There were some ducks and swans in the lake below the group. On the other side of this lake (to the right) there was a temple where they overcharged you to write three wishes on a red ribbon and tie it to the temple, or to one of the trees. The guy kept asking for more money and I was so confused! Just tell me the price upfront, loser monk.

Does anyone ever eat here?

So color-corrected.

An example of the ribbons on the trees.

We ate dumplings outside of the park, where all of the cars were parked. (If you scroll up you’ll notice the same corrugated door material.) They were cheap and not good. I think we pushed through because it was “authentic.” Halfway through Cano decided to get Ramen, which Jesse had started with. Or was it the other way around?

This is the bus stop on the main road. Old couches. Trash everywhere. Someone was selling dried fruit there, arranged on some cloth on the ground, and Jane was very excited to buy some. I was like, I am not eating that, I don’t want to die. Poor person was possibly just trying to survive…

Next time I’ll tell you about the celebrity phenomenon. In China, you don’t just get stared at. Sometimes you get asked for pictures. Or, they’ll just take a picture of you on the sly.