Free Dragon's Eye by Andy Oakes

Republic expect people to bump into you in the street and not offer an apology. In the People’s Republic expect to bump into others in the street and for them not to expect an apology. In the People’s Republic expect to see a three wheeled pedicab run over a young child and not stop.
    Only renao is given credence and worth in China … a word, a value, that is the very flip-side of privacy, of intimacy. A word whose meaning cannot be found in the English language or in any other European language. Renao. ‘Hot and spicy’. The pleasure of living life amongst a large group of friends and relatives. Renao. Chopsticks clicking. Loud voices jarring against each other. Plates of food being thrown unceremoniously onto the table. Mah-jongg tiles snapping to attention with the sound of stern, unforgiving applause. Renao. A life spent hot and noisy in a clamorous China where privacy is impossible except by the hazard of chance … except when thrust unwillingly upon you.
    *
    At exactly 7.00 am Barbara Hayes was awakened by a room boy in a crisp white uniform placing a bright red thermos flask of hot tea onto her bedside table. Rubbing the vestiges of sour dreams from her eyes, her mouth tasting of broken sleep and long-haul aircraft food. Holding the sheet up to her chin. She said nothing; he said nothing. He left the room. Settling back into the pillows, hoping that sleep would reclaim her and her it … only to hear footsteps outside, the door opening once more. The room boy, this time carrying a thermos of cold water.
    “You could at least knock. It’s 7.00am for Christ sake. Can you leave so that I can get some sleep?”
    The room boy smiled, bemused.
    “I come. I go. It is not important. You sleep. Sleep.”
    He left the room. She closed her eyes. Five minutes later he returned, a change of fresh towels draped over his arm. Barbara pulled a sheet around herself and entered the bathroom shaking her head; avoiding the mirror but catching an unwelcome reflection of herself in the glass shower cubicle.
    At the urgent rush of the shower cascading into life the room boy smiled once more. He knew that there was no hot water.
    *
    The young man, blond, long wavy hair. Eyes, sky-blue and intense beyond his years … stared out from the photograph. Barbara couldn’t recall when it had been taken. Who had taken it. What the smile hinted at. What the eyes spoke of. But she knew what they now said …
    Find me, I am your child. Take me home.
    Showing the photograph to the elderly Chinese in Fuxing Park. At first with confidence and hope. Expecting a nod of recognition followed by a few mangled words of English. How the Chinese love to speak English …
    The American boy. Yes. Yes. He walk here many times. Very many times. He gone now. Gone to big hotel on other side of city. Other side. You find there. He there.
    It would all be so simple. Easy answers. But as the eyebrows raised, the gazes turned away, the words failing to be born … showing Bobby’s picture became a slow torture of erosion. The washing away of her confidence by the drop-drop rains of silence. She left Fuxing, her steps becoming more and more hurried, until she was running from the grasp of the foliage, the prune faces, the rotten teeth in their mouths of ginger and garlic. Back toward the hotel. Room 201. His room. At the back of her eyes, tears intensely hot; not daring to give them up, not until they blistered her with their intensity. Wanting to feel that pain, begging to physically hurt.
    Running … not one Chinese seeming to stare at her.
    Of the thirty-six ways of handling a situation … running away is best, goes the adage.
    Making it to the room door. Slamming it shut. Fumbling with the heavy brass lock. Slipping it and muttering to every room boy in China …
    “Try and get through that you bastards!”
    The mahogany of the door cold against her back, unyielding as she slipped down it. Tears, in torrents, untethered. Down her cheeks.