Scratching the Head of Chairman Mao. Jonathan Tel

Thinks you’re beautiful. (If you have any flaws, he’s unaware of them.)

      • Makes bitchy girls jealous of you. (“What does he see in her?”)

      • Lets you get away with whatever you want.

      They sat in a fast-food restaurant near Qianmen and giggled about it. Should they two-time their imaginary boyfriends, sampling one of each type? But they weren’t that kind of girl. No, what made sense was for the two sisters, between them, to do what neither could alone. Linlin took a sachet of soy sauce and one of ketchup. She held them behind her back, shuffling them to and fro. She stretched out her fists for Feifei to choose from.

      Feifei tensed. She felt—which was unusual—envy, though she didn’t know what Linlin would be getting that she herself would not.

      A tap on the right fist.

      It opened.

      Ketchup.

      Linlin saw a tremble on her sister’s lips, a disappointment. “You know,” she said generously, “You can choose your own fate.” She opened her other fist now—and Feifei reached out and grasped the familiar soy sauce, and pressed it, like a doll pillow, against her cheek.

      So Linlin’s destiny was ketchup. The sisters felt they could live with the decision. From here on, they understood, their true education would begin. They bought a single order of french fries, sharing it between them, each dipping the fries into her own sauce.

      For her first foreigner, Linlin picked Andy; she might as well go for somebody who speaks the Queen’s English. He was from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and had arrived in China two weeks previously, to work at her company. He was skinny with auburn curls and the whitest of complexions; she could never decide if he was very beautiful or very ugly. For his part, he was eager to have a Chinese girlfriend to “show him the ropes.” She thought she might celebrate by giving herself an English nickname—Linda, perhaps? But Andy talked her out of it. “Nothing wrong with Lin,” he said, “It’s my dental hygienist’s name.”

      “My friends call me Linlin.”

      “Even better,” he said, ogling her breasts. “Double your pleasure, double your fun!”

      As well as improving her English she learned Western customs. (For example, Andy drank a glass of cold water with every meal.) The sex was not bad; she could be less self-conscious with him, knowing that he fancied her not as an individual but as a race. She asked him to speak English idioms in bed (“You’re a nice bit of skirt!”) but this embarrassed him, and she had to settle for his repertory of grunts.

      She confided all this in her sister, who asked, “Those folds in the eyelids, do you think they’re attractive, Big Sister?”

      “His eyes look like belly buttons!” And the sisters laughed.

      After they’d been together a fortnight, one Sunday Andy took Linlin to a pub in Wudaoku, The Three Feathers, to show her off to his mates. It was fascinating to be among Englishmen en masse. The more beer they drank, the redder their cheeks became. Some bloke with sideburns persuaded her to have a bite of his Yorkshire pudding, which was, to her surprise, delicious. She could generally follow their chatter; their indispensable word was wanker—an insult, but also a term of friendship (much as, she thought, Chinese men address each other as “turtle egg”). Male camaraderie, even in the most genial of forms, always has a whiff of eros and of danger. There was gossip about somebody’s old school friend who’d been found dead in a hotel room; they laughed at this, but then, Westerners laugh at almost anything.

      The pub filled up with more foreigners, and some Chinese too, and she discovered this was not a random gathering but an event organized by the Beijing chapter of the Hash House Harriers. “Drinkers with running problems,” Sideburns explained with a smirk. They meet every Sunday, each time in a different neighborhood. They jog together, stopping for booze along the way. To make it more fun, one person reconnoiters ahead carrying a bag containing flour, with a tennis ball in it which he bounces as he goes, to leave a trail. Then off in pursuit the Hashers run.

      “Is there a prize for coming first?” she asked. “Do some people get lost?”

      “Only one way to find out,” said Andy.

      It was an exhilarating and exotic experience. A typical Hasher was white and male, from Britain or the Commonwealth. There was a quota of Americans and of Europeans too, even Indians and a Nigerian, and she was far from unique: several men had brought their Chinese girlfriends. (She small-talked to these others in English, which was like acting in a play.) Jealously she noticed Andy staring at somebody’s cleavage stickered HELLO! I’M MEIXIN YANG! (the name in back-to-front order, the way it’s done in English, as if the individual could take precedence over the family) but, far from flirting, the woman quizzed him about the accounting procedures in his company.

      The jog began, some loping athletically, others panting and shuffling. Those near the front shouted, “On, on!” while the “slow coaches” trailed after.

      She and Andy came back the following Sunday, and almost every Sunday through that dusty, cool spring. It was a ritual; something to look forward to. In other respects Andy was not so satisfactory (he drank too much, and then he was no good in bed) but the Hash linked them. She became a familiar face; the men collectively flirted with her. “Is Lin lean?” they’d ask, and she’d respond, coping with the vowels, “Yes, Lin’s lean.” For some reason, this was considered funny.

      Singing was an important part of the Hash—reminding her of her time in the Young Pioneers. For example, if a woman had small breasts (all Chinese women were deemed to fit into this category) the men would serenade her:

       She’s all right

       She’s all right

       She’s got no tits

       But she’s all right!

      whereas if hers were large:

       She’s all right

       She’s all right

       She’s got a great big rack

       But she’s too white!

      By the time the Hash reached this drunken, uproarious stage, she’d grab Andy’s hand and prepare to go home.

      In April, quite suddenly, Andy departed. (He got a posting in Lagos.) At the farewell Hash his mates sang, to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne,”

       Fuck off! You wank! Fuck off! You wank!

       Fuck off! You wank! Fuck off!

       Fuck off! You wank! Fuck off! You wank!

       Fuck off! You wank! Fuck off!

      She described all this to her sister, who put her hand over her mouth and smiled. “They are foolish. But you’re improving your English, and you’re making connections. That will help you find a better boyfriend, Big Sister.”

      Linlin remained in the Hash and found her subsequent dates through it. Paul from Northern Ireland. Brian the New Zealander (their big quarrel came when she informed him the kiwi was originally a Chinese fruit, and he said, “You people think you invented everything!”). Jean-Phi from Belgium. Finally, in July, George, an American.

      The younger sister had a less varied love life. A month after Linlin went on her first Hash, Feifei accepted an invitation from a manager in her company, Chen Rong. (He was in Compliance, and liaised with her section on a regular basis.) They went for a stroll in Ritan Park after work. He was a short man with glasses and an odd speech defect, pronouncing sh like s, which (though he was from an old Beijing family) made him sound as if he was from somewhere like Taiwan.

      A week later, she had Yunnanese crossing-the-bridge noodles with him.

      A week later, the first