The Longest First Night in China: Part 4. A Taste of China

As the KFC was now a flight of stairs above us, my female companion mercifully led me to the airport’s McDonald’s on the ground floor, sparing me another trip up the stairs with my suitcase. She ordered a chicken sandwich, a hash brown, and a frosty, and then turned to me expectantly.

Had I really just traversed an ocean and eleven time zones only to have my first meal in China in an airport McDonald’s? This wasn’t exactly the glorious culinary cultural immersion that I had imagined. Over the summer, I had ordered Chinese takeout and practiced with chopsticks at every opportunity, all to prepare my stomach and my hands for the ultimate test: eating in China without dropping a hot dumpling on my lap and causing my entire civilization to lose face before my hosts. Too many sore fingers and plates of kung pao chicken later, I was holding a Big Mac with both of my hands.

I asked my new companion if she liked this kind of food.

“Yes,” she said through a full mouth. “But I’ve never had it before.” I thought at first she meant she had never ordered the frosty before.

“You also like KFC, right?” I asked.

“Yes, but I’ve never eaten there either,” she replied.

What planet was this girl from, anyway? She seemed well dressed and very friendly, but she didn’t seem to know her way around very well. She had already asked if KFC accepted foreign currency and if I could change money at an ATM. Now it turned out she had never eaten at McDonald’s or KFC. I feared she was about as clueless in this city as I was.

Over our meal of Big Macs and chicken sandwiches, I asked her about herself. I needed to know more, to reconcile some of the contradictions in this interesting character, and mostly to learn how a seemingly well-off young girl had been reduced to begging for food in this prosperous city.

She told me that she was 19 and still in high school. She lived with her parents in a district neighboring Beijing, the name of which I couldn’t quite pronounce correctly. She had left home only about four days ago and had traveled to Shenzhen to find a job.

“What kind of work are you looking for?” I asked. She gave me an answer, but I didn’t understand her Chinese and stared at her blankly. She tried again, tugging on the sleeve of my shirt and making hand motions of sewing, saying “Make clothes.”

Like so many things about her, this news struck me as odd. I had assumed that as a young girl leaving home to seek her fortune under the bright lights of Shenzhen, she would be looking for higher paying work in the services sector.

I didn’t know what to make of her situation, or of mine. Was this girl who wanted to make cloths just spinning me a yarn to get money out of me? It was possible, but she struck me as far too naïve and genuine to be a professional con artist.

“Where do you live?” I asked. She answered by pouting and shrugging her shoulders, casting her head down and avoiding my eyes.

“Do you have a place to stay?” I pushed.

“No, I don’t,” she replied.

“Where are you staying tonight?”

Again, she shrugged her shoulders and looked away. How could she be homeless? Does she really have no family or friends in this city? Where has she been sleeping these past few nights? I thought it better to leave some of these questions unasked.

“Did you tell your parents you were leaving?” I asked, trying to put the pieces together.

“No,” she said. “They didn’t know. They must miss me by now, and I miss them. I miss my mommy.”

Why did she leave home without telling her parents if she didn’t have enough money? Why couldn’t she have looked for a job near her home? “They don’t have money to give me,” she explained. “And there are no good jobs where I live.”