Intertwined in China

By Gary Dixon

Novel/Novella.
Daisy from Idaho is nervous as she lands in Qingdao, China. Will she survive her first day?
Quentin from Australia has an important appointment today. Can he convince his drug supplier to give him more credit?
Kenneth Dong is a local Qingdaonese who respects his teacher John from England. Will they avoid getting caught up in other random events today?
Luke Flora found it hard picking up girls back home in Vancouver. But now in China he is receiving much more attention. Can he get laid tonight?
‘Intertwined in China’ follows the lives of five characters for 24 hours in Qingdao, China. They eventually become intertwined as their movements and relations affect each other’s destinies as the day progresses all under the backdrop of one of China’s most vibrant and beautiful cities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gary Dixon
• Release date: Nov 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310308796

Gary Dixon

Gary Dixon was born in Melbourne, Australia and lived in Qingdao, China for 6 years and 2 years in Guangzhou where he was teaching Business Studies and Economics. Currently he is living with his wife Mary and his son Rory in Wollongong. He is working in Sydney teaching immigrants and disadvantaged Australians English job-seeking skills. He is also working on his sequel to ‘Intertwined in China’ about the day after with further development of the characters but not only in one day. He still also enjoys a beer of course!

Book preview

Intertwined in China

By Gary Dixon

Copyright 2014 Gary Dixon

Smashwords Edition

Some of the best stories are real ones, lived by real people.

This book is definitely not a memoir. It cannot even be called autobiographical fiction. However, there are elements of truth that have been written in these pages. I am not loyal to the facts or my memory. It is a different kind of truth, which is in the spirit of my reality living in Qingdao all those years ago.

Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Special thanks to the ladies in my life: to my Mum, Carolyn Dixon, for her amazing illustration on the title page and my wife, Mary Calleja, for editing and picking up all the errors.

For Mary, Rory and my 20’s.

Table of Contents:

Glossary

Prologue

Chapter One - Morning, Friday 28th May, 2010, Qingdao

Chapter Two -The Protagonists

Chapter Three - Approaching Lunchtime

Chapter Four - A Lunchtime to Remember

Chapter Five - First Meetings

Chapter Six - The Markers’ for the Evening

Chapter Seven - Recollections and Foolishness

Chapter Eight - The start of Mr.Flora’s evening

Chapter Nine - Hotpot Dinner

Chapter Ten - Kimchi and Danger

Chapter Eleven - Small Worlds

Chapter Twelve - The Legend of Oleg Stovsky

Chapter Thirteen - The Bars

Chapter Fourteen - Attractions

Chapter Fifteen - Intertwined

About the Author

Glossary:

(Because it’s a short glossary and the nature of navigation around e-books, the author unconventionally decided to put it before the novel).

Baijiu and San Bian are alcoholic beverages from China. Literally translated as ‘white spirits,’ they are strong distilled spirits which are approximately 40% strength.

Guanxi literally means ‘special relationship’ in Mandarin Chinese or being connected with the right people. If one has ‘guanxi’ with another, one will be quick to help the other out through connections in high places.

Ganbei is often said around friends and business partners, meaning to finish, ‘bottoms up’ or scull your alcoholic drink. It could also mean ‘cheers’ depending on your company.

Kuai is the slang term used by both Chinese nationals and expats for the currency of the People’s Republic of China – Renminbi or RMB. It is also known as ‘Yuan.’ In 2010, 8RMB = 1USD, 6RMB = 1AUD and 10RMB = 1GBP.

Waigy is expat slang for the term ‘waiguoren,’ which in Mandarin Chinese is the standard term for foreigner.

Prologue:

Daisy:

Daisy Tomasson is full of nerves as she arrives in Japan after a gruelling 14 hour flight from Boise, Idaho. She turns her iPhone on to check the time after leaving it off for the flight’s duration. Daisy is paranoid and very particular about following these instructions. She does not want to disturb the plane signals and single-handedly cause the crash of her plane.

Daisy looks at the World Clock app on her iPhone. The time in Tokyo, Japan is 7:30am, 16 hours in front of the time in her home city. Her connecting flight to Qingdao, China is at 8:30am – one hour away. This flight will take exactly 3 hours and 35 minutes – not as bad as what she has just gone through.

Narita Airport is busy. People are packed in like ants. She follows the signs to Burger King, finds the food court and carefully inspects her options. At home in the United States, she never really ate food from Asia. She usually just ate burgers, French fries and Tex-Mex. Daisy decides not to be adventurous, finds a Burger King and orders a medium Whopper Meal.

She sits down to read about Qingdao on the Redstar website online. Daisy had been recommended the site by a raven haired woman who recruited her to China.

She wonders to herself:

You would think I would be used to all this travel – it is my second time overseas. But this is my first time to Asia, and there are so many Asians around! I shouldn’t really be surprised, Asia is the world’s largest and most populous continent.

This site says that Qingdao has a population of over 8 million people. My goodness, that’s crazy – it is more than five times the population of Idaho. I could easily get lost there, I hope this is a legit job offer and I will not get shipped off to a factory somewhere.

I’ve never even heard of Qingdao and yet I have accepted a job teaching English there. I’ve heard of Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong. Never Qingdao. And it’s pronounced strangely. The ‘q’ sounds like ‘ch.’ Chiiinngg Daooo. I had no idea how to say it when I first saw it.

Looking at the pictures, I can see beaches with beautiful pagodas and temples in the background. In this picture, I can see the city landscape behind the beaches. Looks nice and interesting, not quite like the beaches in Hawaii though.

I really have to ask myself, why am I here? Sometimes, it is easy to forget. Well, I found it hard finding a job in my field of linguistics. I don’t know why we go to university when there aren’t any jobs guaranteed. As such, I decided to take a short six month contract to teach English in China. It is a decent deal which includes free return flights, fully furnished accommodation and a salary of 4500RMB a month. I can also try to learn Mandarin Chinese and expand more on my linguistic skills. Be better if I could speak another language at home I think.

I miss my mom already. For so long, it was just me and her living together at home. She said goodbye to me at the airport. I hope she will survive without me again this time around. She managed when I was in the UK a few years ago.

OK, now to finish my ‘large’ Coke. I’m a bit confused, a large coke here is definitely not the same size as it is back at home. Maybe that’s why everyone is smaller here?

John:

John Harold wakes up at 8am, walks to his balcony and sees old men practising Tai-Chi. He turns on BBC World Service on his laptop. He swears out loud when he hears the news of attacks on Ahmadi Mosques in Lahore, Pakistan. No sound comes out though, as he seems to have lost his voice after singing his lungs out at the karaoke KTV nightclub last night with his expat friends. God bless the Happy Face Sing KTV. His voice is ruined because of his renditions of ‘Highway Star’ by Deep Purple, ‘Whole Lotta Love’ by Led Zeppelin and the all-time classic ‘Piano Man’ by Billy Joel. The excessive chain-smoking and drinking uncountable bottles of beer doesn’t help either.

He gets in the shower and thinks:

Bollocks. I can’t believe I’ve lost my voice, I’m a teacher! If a teacher has one required tool, it must be their voice. How else can I get concepts across? Use my body language?

I’ll have a nice cuppa green tea after my shower which should help. I can’t believe I’m drinking green tea. It used to always be a nice cup of English breakfast black, but I’ve gone the Chinese way after living here for a few years. It’s funny because the Chinese call black tea, red tea. I actually think they are on to something because the colour is actually red. Anyway, no harm done really.

Fridays are half a day at the college and I am teaching marketing in the morning so it should be a breeze. I will meet my German mate Ralph for lunch, so I’ll be hitting the beers again by 12pm. Who would have thought an Englishman and a German would be best mates

Kenneth:

Kenneth Dong, a Qingdao local is already awake after practising Kung Fu at Rong’s Kung Fu School at 6am this morning. He is helping his mother prepare a breakfast of Shandong bread, soy eggs, left-over pork dumplings and some fruit. His father is still asleep after stumbling home -very late last night because of a business meeting. Typically, these business meetings involve much drinking whilst negotiating. His father is one of the best in Qingdao for these kinds of meetings. Because of this, Kenneth’s family is quite wealthy and was able to afford to send him to Ireland to study in high school.

Now, Kenneth is studying Business Studies at Qingdao International Business College. On Fridays, he has half a day at the college. His teacher is John Harold, an Englishman who has reportedly been in Qingdao for a few years now.

He is considering his immediate future:

What are we doing today at school? Marketing I think. Something about services. I like Teacher John. His examples are quite funny. Especially when he uses Chinese ones that are incorrect. I feel very good after my kung fu session. I might spoil myself for lunch and go to McDonalds at Jusco. Later in the afternoon, I will relax at Shi Lao Ren beach and then call some friends to organise a dinner for tomorrow night. Right, now for breakfast and get ready for school.

After breakfast, Kenneth gets into his reliable Honda Accord and drives to the college.

Quentin:

Quentin Hoskins is awake surprisingly early. The older he gets, the earlier he wakes up for some reason. For a 52-year old, he is surprisingly agile with his large frame. Last time he looked at the scales he weighed 110 kilos. This is mostly due to a large consumption of calories and no exercise apart from walking to and from Qingdao University where he teaches English.

Quentin is a little nervous about an important meeting that he has at 5pm today. He must pay back the money he has made selling hash and marijuana to his supplier, Swift. Unfortunately, he has undercut Swift by quite a large amount of money. He doesn’t know the exact amount because he has next to no organisational skills, let alone mathematical skills.

Before his meeting, Quentin only has an afternoon class. He will go to McDonalds, which he calls ‘Maccas’ using his Aussie twang, for lunch. Big Mac with fries, he thinks. He pulls his BB gun from his back pocket and aims it at an unsuspecting passer-by on the road beneath his balcony.

He is immediately engaged in something he is doing:

Take that you prick. Hahaha, I love it when they look around after being hit and not knowing what hit them. That is why I aim for the neck or the head. They start swatting their arms all over the place thinking it is a bug or mosquito that hit them.

Speaking of mozzies, I bloody hate them. I was kept up last night by the cheeky bastards that make an annoying ‘zzzzzz’ noise when they swooped over my head and made it impossible to sleep. I wish I could use my BB gun and shoot them out of the air. I guess given the chance, I wouldn’t only shoot mozzies…

Luke:

Luke Flora falls out of bed with a cracking headache. He slowly stands up and grabs an aspirin from the dresser in his apartment. He pops the aspirin and looks at a blown-up photo of himself topless and flexing next to his mirror. He starts flexing to compare his muscles with his picture that was taken two years ago. He agrees that his muscles are a little bit bigger than when he was younger.

Luke picks up his intermediate Chinese Mandarin textbook and tries to read it in bed. He finds that the hanzi for 氷 (bīng, English meaning is ‘ice’) and 水 (shuǐ, English meaning is ‘water’) are similar. After five minutes, he puts the book down and decides he is not going to university today.

He opens up his laptop to check QQ messenger and ponders:

Did I get any messages from a nice Chinese girl today? Surely there is a pretty young thing in this province who wants to meet this stunning waigy. I know the 1979 one child policy has now left China with a shrinking pool of potential female partners, but I am not one of the unlucky ones. I mean, I have muscles! God damn it, I got nothing.

My head is really zonked out. I haven’t felt this hung-over since my time at The Lion’s Pub back home in Vancouver. I’m a little behind in my study, but I should be alright to pass my Mandarin classes and go back to Canada. The thing is, I have caught a little bit of the ‘yellow fever.’ I’m in love with all Chinese girls here! They are all so attentive, sweet and super friendly. It was hard for me to find a girlfriend like that back home, I don’t know why. Anyway, I’ll go to Pink Cadillac to get endless cups of coffee there and try to shake this headache.

Chapter One: Morning, Friday 28th May, 2010, Qingdao, China

Kenneth:

What is John saying? He has to slow down – he’s talking way too fast. What? Market segmentation? I know what a market is. It is where you buy fruit, vegetables and computer games. Ahh, I would love to be playing Counter Strike now against other players online and beat them. Oh my goodness, my teacher’s handwriting is awful. His ‘z’s always have a squiggly line at the bottom of them. It looks so stupid. Great