The wind is blowing hard today, daring me not to go outside.  As I make my way to the metro station I wonder if I should return home and snuggle up in my tiny hole of a room.  No, I don’t want to let those guys down, I think to myself.  They’re probably all there expecting me:  The Entertainer, Marlborough Man, the Smooth Scholar, etc.  The diabolo circus waits for no one, especially not in the dead of Winter.  I look up at the sky.  The blue is slightly tinted with yellow, evidence of some residue from the sands of Mongolia being blown into Beijing.  Every year the desert and sand get closer and closer to Beijing.  Despite the government’s attempts to barricade Beijing with a wall of trees in Inner Mongolia^W, each year the city is pelted with sand and dust from the Northwest.  If I spend too much time outdoors on days like this one, I can expect sore throats the next morning.  It’s been nearly 100 days since the city has seen any precipitation;  not one drop.

I take the metro to the park, exit the station, and head towards the diabolo grounds, my ears expecting to hear the buzzing and humming sound that the diabolo makes as it spins round and round.  The only sound I hear on this frigid, gusty day is the sound of the wind and dust swirling.  Winter has had another joke on me today.  In order to make the most out of my trip here, I decide to take a walk in the park.  At least I can get a little exercise while I’m here.  I walk the path for about ten minutes heading East, and then I turn back around heading back to the metro station.  I arrived a little bit early today, so perhaps some of my diabolo friends are there now. 

As I near the diabolo grounds, my heart lifts at the sight of The Entertainer.  His back is turned to me, and so he doesn’t see me yet.  He is just turning to leave the grounds, as he is the only one there.  He is outside of earshot, but I yell at him as loud as I can, hoping that his 74 year old ears can hear my voice.

“Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!” I yell at him at the top of my lungs.  He mounts his bicycle and rides it slowly in the other direction, not turning around once to look in my direction.  He must be wearing earmuffs, I think to myself.  Or maybe it’s his age.  I don’t know.  He pedals his bicycle away from me ever so slowly, but still at a swifter speed than I am walking.  I think to myself, if I don’t at least talk with him, then I’ve wasted an entire trip out here.  I”ve got to get him.

I’m not wearing exercise shoes on this day, and my toes are freezing.  The previous night I discovered that my shoes I wear everyday had two large holes in their soles.  I was standing in my bathroom after taking a shower, and there was a shallow pool of water on the floor.  I noticed that the water was seeping into my shoes from the bottom up.  Jesus…I just bought these things 3 months ago.  Cursing the inferior Chinese quality of my exercise shoes, I grab my briefcase in both hands, and begin to chase The Entertainer as he pedals away.

The Entertainer has gained some distance on me, and I find running in this wind more difficult than I thought it would be.  He rounds the bend that leads to an exit from the park.  As the exit of the park is on a slight downhill, he gains even more speed and distance.  He’s going to lose me.  I’m going to go home with nothing for this outing.  I huff and puff my way up the small hill and then down the slope, exiting the park.  He’s in my sights again, as he slows down a bit to make a right turn.  His speed slows down as he nears a traffic light.  Within earshot once more, I decide to yell out after him again.

“Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!  Over here!”  No luck.  Those earmuffs must be cutting off all sound.

I pour on the speed, inching closer and closer towards him.  When he’s within an arm’s reach, he finally turns his head.  Sure enough he’s wearing army colored earmuffs.  His eyes light up, and his mouth spreads into the smile that I know so well.

“Hey!  What the heck are you doing here?  It’s so cold!  Let’s talk for a couple of minutes.”  He gets off his bicycle and immediately gives me a big bear hug, laughing as he does so.

We talk for a couple of minutes, and he asks me to give a phone call to another member of the diabolo gang, one of the few women who usually comes to the park to join in with the men.  Like a giddy schoolboy, he gives me her phone number and dances around from foot to foot to keep warm as the phone rings.

“Don’t tell her I gave you her number,” he says, “if she asks, just tell her she gave it to you before, but forgot….hee hee hee!”

After a few rings, she answers the phone.

“Hello, auntie?” I say. (It’s polite to call an older woman “auntie” in China).

“Jeffrey?  What are you doing outside on this day?  Your mother would be angry with you.  It’s too cold!  You’ll get carried away from the wind.  We all decided yesterday that we wouldn’t come today because of the weather.  Get back home!  Put some clothes on!  Drink some soup!”  The Entertainer is dancing around with a big smile on his face like a little old leprechaun doing a jig.  He indicates silently to me that I’m not to disclose the fact that he’s here.

After talking with the auntie for a few minutes, The Entertainer and I have a little chat.  In the middle of the chat, he hugs me again, picking me up off the ground as some young Chinese pass by.  Sometimes I cannot believe that he’s 74 years old.

“You know we have a new president now, Obama?” I tell him.  I’m not sure if he watches the news or not.  I myself watched the inauguration in a bar that was televising the event.  The bar was filled with foreigners and Chinese.  I talked with a Canadian girl of my age during that evening.  She expressed to me that she wanted to hug me just for “being American.”  I thought to myself, I haven’t changed…I’m still the same Jeffrey that I was when we had that other guy in office.  Still, if people want to hug now, all the better.

The Entertainer nods and says he knows about Obama.  He tells me he saw that Obama signed the order for the closure of Guantanamo and other overseas prisons.  He tells me that we all “want peace.”  This wish is something that I hear from him often.  We talk about Obama and our hopes for him.  I reflect on the fact that it was only a little more than 200 years before that we had slaves in America, and how it’s a big breakthrough to have our first black president.

“You know, there used to be slaves in Tibet before Mao Ze Dong freed them.  People used to have to bow down to the Llama.  But Mao set them free.  The thing about Mao is that he didn’t believe in any God, or any devil.  At that time we just believed in Marxism,” he says.  The Entertainer has a real respect for Mao.  He continues and tells me that there didn’t used to be so much corruption in China during Mao’s time.  “We were all poor then, ” he says, “it was all equal.”  According to him, things started to go awry after Deng Xiao Ping opened up China’s economy in the 1980s.  “That’s when the big noses started coming into China,” he says with a wink (he ofen jokingly refers to me as a “big nose”).  I just nod my head, laugh, and listen to his view of history and the world.  We don’t usually talk about politics, but today is a different sort of day.  Our topics change with the wind.  He tells me a bit about his family.  His son used to live in Romania (something I never knew), but now only makes 1000 RMB per month (less than 200 dollars), with a wife and child to take care of.   He asks me about my family and says he wants to meet my parents when they come to China. 

When our feet get too cold to stand there anymore, we begin to say our farewells.  He hugs me once more (good things always come in threes).  It occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve really had such an indepth conversation with The Entertainer.  Usually we just joke around and play with diabolos and whips.  These things take time and concentration.  Good conversations usually just take time.  I feel inspired by his curiousity and innocence.  Never shy to ask questions, I’m always happy to answer whatever he wants to know:

“Do ‘thumbs up’ mean the same thing in America?  What about laughing…do you also say ‘hee hee hee,’ or does it sound different?  Why do people in the Middle East fight so much?” 

As we wind down our conversation, he sits on his bicycle and I head to the station.  I run towards the metro in order to heat up my toes.  My feet sting as they pound the pavement.  I know I made the right decision in coming here today.  Before I plunge into the metro,  I take  one more look back at my friend as he pedals effortlessly in the other direction.   The wind pushes me down the staircase towards the metro.  Sometimes all that it takes to make life worth living is a good conversation.