As it Happens
Wanshi Park
Chapter Tags: OC
On Tuesday, a classmate sent Ting a photo of two lovers kissing in the sun at
The week was tough. Most of my lessons I have off pat but I kept making mistakes, getting picked up. I know my way around women but I am struggling with Ting.
Deep down, this is wrong, if our relationship remains platonic, she may carry scars into a later love or even marriage. The time we spend together is precious for study and will affect her result in the gaokao university entrance exam. As a tutor, I
If it becomes physical, the whole thing gets worse, quick. As an educator I am responsible for students. The media love us when we go off-piste. Easy to imagine, isn’t it? ‘Foreign teacher, 42, demands sex from
In any normal country, our relationship would be problematic; in China, it’s explosive. If discovered, they would invite me to fall off a tall building (that’s a real thing here, believe what you want about the death of Wang Jian, chairman of HNA Group), leaving Ting a soiled woman. No matter that the age of consent here is fourteen; society’s expectations carry far more weight than arbitrary laws.
Okay, enough wallowing. Friday evening, I saw Ting for an hour, alone. We slipped into a local park where couples go to have private time and the police had been reticent to replace their precious ‘security’ cameras after several disappeared.
Ting wore denim shorts and a tight top under a loose one to get out of her parent’s apartment to borrow books (which I bought along). She looked incredible, revelling in how she affected me, teasing along the edge of womanhood. As dusk fell, we moved behind a tree and I held her close for the first time—she was way too nervous to kiss, her eyes flitting back and forth like a bird. So I didn’t try to, and she sighed, aware I desisted.
“I’m sorry, I can’t. Not tonight.”
“Hey, it’s OK Ting, it changes nothing.” She looked up at me with her smile.
“Can you meet me early tomorrow?” she asked.
“Sure, where?”
“The Nanqiang bookstore, near the botanical gardens. The student dormitories are all around, we’ll blend in.”
“Great idea, Ting, maybe we can walk, too?”
“Hope so, I need to be home early afternoon, sorry.”
Ting’s plan worked, no one noticed us in the busy student streets, except the surveillance cameras.
We bought books, ate noodle soup with wonton, and spent an hour wandering an almost deserted
“No cameras, no mobiles, no people,” she whispered, burying her face into my chest. This time, she threw
As we walked back, both of us scanned, alert as rabbits at dusk.
“I made you hard,” she giggled.
“You make me crazy for you.”
We dropped the subject, both knowing how dangerous this might get.
Ting caught the bus, though I offered her the taxi fare—it would ‘raise suspicions.’ I didn’t wave her off, WeChat covered our post-date feelings. Ting slid down this slope, too.
While I sat on top of the world, eating forbidden fruit, I now juggled with flaming sticks, aware what an enormous risk Ting took.
See, in China, relationships are rare before the gaokao exam. Not just that the parents control them (they do), or the schools frown upon them (and
Ten million students a year sit this (the word means high test), some of them study with IV drips in their arms to concentrate, they give girls contraceptive pills to avoid periods and parents block roads around the exam rooms to reduce the noise.
Cram schools are a US$120 billion market for people like me—you get the picture.
And here, my girl letting her emotions run free, worse than irresponsible—I might
With a sad heart I made my way home. Although I left Ting alone Sunday, I couldn’t resist chatting for twenty minutes that evening. Unable to stop my teacher-self, I told her to study hard and sleep well.
An hour later she sent me a selfie, topless, but from behind her laptop, showing nothing but suggesting everything. My dick is only now recovering from the pounding and I’m back to square one.
To