I tried to take advantage of being somewhat cooped up by reading, writing a little, drawing a little. I busied myself about the room and took a few pictures:
You can see that the bathroom allows little privacy. It was a small space, but nice, and one window looked out into the alley:
I ate some leftovers for lunch and was reading out of the old Chinese tales of the supernatural when I heard a faint knock at the door. I slowly opened it and looked out. No one was there. Of course.
I closed the door and opened it again.
Then I heard the sound of a soda can opening, so I went around the corner to the kitchen to find Qun. He very quickly intuited then asked why I was afraid to go out. Did I feel not safe? Not able to communicate?
We went to the police station to register (again because we couldn't do it the first time), and chatted for most of the afternoon. I asked him as many questions as I could think of and got a pretty sound life story out of him.
Then my phone started dinging with WeChats (the Chinese WhatsApp) from Josh. He was asking if I would be okay to go to Shenzhen on Tuesday. In my current position of being in some kind of new universe of symbols and sounds, hungry and tired, I: 1) can't make any kind of decision and 2) don't know what/where Shenzhen is.
I looked it up. Shenzhen is the blue dot and Beijing is the red pin:
All I knew about it at that point was the blue dot. He didn't really have a choice. Work said: Meetings, something: Go. We packed our bags, sent apologies to Qun (who was planning a dinner for us with his auntie), dropped off the suitcases at Josh's office (after another night time excursion of dragging everything through staring crowds), and at 8:00 this morning boarded a plane to Shenzhen.
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