Interlude - "Mahjong by Candlelight"

They've been asking us
for days
to play mahjong,
a traditional Chinese game
often accompanied
by beer, spirits,
smoking, and money passed
from fist to fist.
Our student York,
named by his English teacher from York, England,
escorts us to the dormitory
six flights up
and we rattle out our umbrellas
into the hallway.

The whole floor of men
has arrived,
gathered to watch these two foreign women
stumble their novice way
through the
intricacies of stacked bricks.
They tell us to create
The Great Wall of China
with the tile-bricks.
The game
we discover
is a disguise
for the true purpose -
to chat, to talk,
to ferret out secrets.

They seek our advice
on how to "love" a woman,
wanting our western experience
to re-light their path.
York tells us someone, only one,
is in his heart,
and the twenty class sessions
here at Bijie University
are simply not enough time
to show his affection.

We are coached
by these teacher-men,
some of whom wash their feet
in the bucket on the balcony
before taking their place
around the tiles.
They huddle around us
whispering experience into our ears,
advising which brick to keep,
which brick to throw away.
And in Chinese,
they debate in the spaces between us,
nudging the proper move,
the most advantageous action,
for this particular set of circumstances.

Our faces are closer,
our eyes nearly touch,
in this crowded mahjong place.
We have journeyed
miles and kilometers from the classroom.
We reverse roles,
exchange our familiar places,
and they become our mentors.

My student William (Jiang Xue),
who speaks words between smiles,
gave me Bijie teas today,
his favorites,
grown in the fields
in this faraway place on the Guizhou map.
This place is mutely absent
from the Lonely Planet guidebook,
and we realize we are far removed
from where most foreigners
are willing to walk and work.

The thunder and lightning
zigzag across the sky
and we are crackled into darkness
by the collision of heat and light.

These men light the bricks
with cell phone illumination,
and Anthony runs to purchase candles.

"A romantic game with the candles, yes?"
William asks.

Yes, yes...
and we build
together
yet another
Great Wall of China.

- Marianne Forman