China Iss - the Cellist

China Kiss is an occasional series of one-off tales about the lives of expatriates in China and their romantic and sexual encounters. Each tale is stand-alone which means that they can be read in any order and there are no recurring characters. They are similar in style though, so if you like one, you will hopefully like the others as well. They aim to celebrate cultural differences rather than fetishize them.

Thanks as always to my beta readers Mal_Bey and 29wordsforsnow for all their help.

I managed to get to the concert hall just before the doors closed, but barely. There had been some kind of event happening at the expo centre next door and 'five-minutes away' had turned into forty-five very quickly.

My seat was one of the cheaper seats behind the orchestra as usual. It was in the middle of the row, so I had to disturb everyone as I worked my way down to the seat. I found myself sitting between an elderly gentleman and a young girl rather primly dressed and who was probably about university age. She seemed familiar. I must have been to enough of these concerts that I was starting to recognize the crowd.

I was expecting the lights to go down more or less immediately I sat down, but instead there was a delay. The sound system continued to broadcast the usual messages about being quiet and not recording the performance, first in Mandarin and then in English.

I'd gone through the list of concerts for the whole season with Nora, my assistant, at the beginning of the year with her translating the composers phonetically one by one. I'd selected about half of them. My Outlook calendar had reminded me that there was a concert today, but Nora had since gone on maternity leave and I'd left my own list of what was when back at home. As a result, I had no idea what I was going to be watching this evening.

As I waited, I turned to look at the girl by my side again. She gave me the impression of being quiet. That might be an odd thing to say as this was a concert, and quietness was expected. Perhaps it was because she was on her own, or maybe it was her general dress and demeanour. She had long uncomplicated hair and big round glasses and the kind of face you imagined always being top of the class. For all that, she was pretty but understated. The more I looked at her the more I was sure I'd seen her here before.

"Excuse me," I said. "Do you speak English?"

She smiled back at me. "Yes. A little."

Everybody from the younger generation always responded the same way to this question, but from the speed and comfort with which she said it, I got the impression she spoke more than just a little.

"Could I see your programme?" I asked. I'd normally have picked one up on my way in, but I'd been rushing to get in before I was shut out.

She handed it over. I scanned the list quickly and handed it back to her. "Thanks. Some good pieces tonight," I said. "Anything you are particularly looking forward to?"

"Well, it's a strange choice of combinations. Brahms and Wagner played together even though the two men couldn't stand each other and their styles of music are very different. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of Wagner's operas -- yes, there's good bits but you have to sit through a lot to get to them. The

Siegfried Idyll

is a good way to enjoy him though, but I'm really here for the Brahms. He's the master of variations and the Theme of Haydn, or whatever you want to call it these days, is a work of absolutely genius. The way he takes that core melody, breaks it down and then over twenty minutes puts it back together eight completely different ways, well after that there was not a lot more anyone can do with the form."

I looked at her in surprise. That was probably the most flowingly erudite utterance I'd heard in English since arriving in the county. It would be nice to be able to have a proper conversation about music. That had been more of an information dump, though.

She suddenly broke out into a blush, maybe realizing she's said a bit too much. "And then the Tchaikovsky piece afterwards, of course. The guest violinist is supposed to be very good, I've heard."

"A fellow Brahmsian. I can see we're going to be friends," I said.

"Really? I'd like that," she said.

I'd only really intended it as a polite joke, but the excited way she said it, almost made

me

blush.

I was saved from having to respond by the lights finally coming down and the orchestra coming on stage. It had only been formed about five years ago, at the same time as the impressive four performance hall arts centre. Even so, I'd been consistently impressed by the quality of the performances. Forty minutes passed in a magical instant.

When the lights came up again for the intermission, I took a bathroom break and picked up my own copy of the programme. I idly skimmed through the notes in English. My neighbour apparently hadn't based any of her previous speech on them, which only made me doubly impressed.

I took my seat again, smiling at my young neighbour as I did so. "Hi. I'm Thomas," I said, offering her my hand.

"Pleased to meet you. I'm Caiwei, but you can call me Jacqueline. Or Jackie for short."

"English major?" I asked. "No, music major would make more sense."

She nodded. "Right."

"Instrument or is your Italian as good as your English? Let me guess...Cello?"

"How did you know?"

"Well, all the most beautiful women play the cello," I said teasingly. That was probably a bit too corny too soon. She looked as if she was about to die of embarrassment. "And your English name was a bit of a clue as well."

She relaxed at that. "You come here often," she said. It wasn't a question. "I've seen you around a lot."

Normally I'd have been flattered that she'd noticed me, but in this country I tended to stick out. Not just because I was six feet tall, but also my thick beard tended to draw a lot of attention as did the way that I dressed. It wasn't that I made a special effort to wear something special for the performance, I was usually rushing from work and, as a result, had to keep my business suit on.

"I have a question," she continued. "Cheap seats, expensive suit? Something doesn't add up."

"It's a habit I formed in my student days when, yes, I did need to save money. I prefer sitting facing the conductor so I can see his face and motions better. Plus if you sit right behind the double basses, you get a much deeper sound. Usually. It can backfire if you have a drum heavy piece. Plus the more expensive the ticket, the worse the company you keep, in my experience."

"I see. You didn't come to the Bruckner last week," she said. Again, not a question - almost an accusation.

"God, no." I said. "I can't stand him. Far too overblown and bombastic."

"I agree," she said. "And the drums -- way too loud. I usually get tickets for the balcony, but I decided to try here for a change."

So, last week, she'd gone to a concert she didn't like and this week she was still in the section she hadn't enjoyed. Call me vain or call me paranoid, but I was starting to develop a theory about Jackie. But maybe it was just my ego.

"Are you married?" she asked suddenly. "I mean, it seems your wife never comes."

Bingo. Not just ego then.

"Divorced," I said simply. I wasn't going to elaborate further at the moment and didn't need to since the light went down again at that moment.

About five minutes in the first movement, I felt her hand brush up against mine and then a moment later, rest on top. I let it stay there and after a moment, splayed my fingers slightly so she could link hands with me.

We sat watching the performance -- me occasionally looking down at her and her occasionally looking up at me. She seemed to naturally smiling whenever our eyes met. I smiled back a few times, but felt self-conscious. Although I was happy, smiling felt fake. I settled into giving her hand a soft squeeze every now and then.

The concerto was wonderful, but inevitably, the wind-down seemed to last forever. The conductor and soloist returned to the stage several times and eventually the guest violinist performed not one but two encores. Normally this would be very welcome, but my mind was on other things.

When the whole orchestra departed for good and the audience was also starting to rise from its seats, we got the chance to speak again.

"It was nice having someone to watch the concert with," I said. I scratched my beard trying to remember. "What's the next one?"

"Berlioz. In two weeks," she said instantly.

"I was going to give that a miss, but perhaps I was a little hasty. If you wanted, we could get seats together..."

"I'd like that," she said, seemingly both happy and disappointed. Two weeks was a way away.

"And, if you're not too busy, perhaps you'd like to have dinner with me tomorrow?" I said.

"Sure. That would be great." She was happier, but not still fully satisfied it seemed. I waited as she gathered up her belongings, put her coat on, carefully putting the programme back into her handbag and fastidiously tied up her scarf. By the time she was ready, we were the only people in this section not already half-out-the-door.

"I have a crazy idea," she said with a giggle. "Why don't you come and hear me play?"

"You have a performance coming up?" I asked. Nora had mentioned that sometimes the various universities had lunchtime performances for their students. I'd have been interesting in going but work never permitted it.

"No, I mean, why don't you come and hear me play tonight. Now," she said. "I mean if you're not doing anything. I'd value your opinion."

"No, I'm not doing anything," I said.

I was coming to realise that I really liked Jackie. There is something very exciting about a young, beautiful, talented woman who, frankly speaking, clearly wants to fuck your brains out and yet has the modesty and grace to make it happen in a civilized fashion. I was all in on a courtship dance.

"Your cello?" I said.

Back at my house,

she'd say. She'd play for me and then it would be so late that if I were tired I could sleep on her sofa. And then she'd say

the sofa must be so uncomfortable for you...

"It's in my dorm room. But there's six of us sharing so we'll have to take it to a practice room for me to play."

Damn. I'd forgotten about how crowded the student accommodation was here. This dance might have a couple more steps involved than I thought. She might actually just want to play for me tonight -- a chance to show off some peacock feathers. I actually wouldn't mind that too much.

I'd long been of the opinion that the quickest way to take a lady who might ordinarily be considered of average attractiveness and make her instantly into a stunning fantasy was to give her some nice clothes, some understated jewellery, a decent haircut and then put her in front of the London Symphony Orchestra and have her perform Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto flawlessly.

In other words, talent was sexy.

And Jackie was already way more than ordinary in my eyes.

"So what do you want to do?" I asked.

"Come to the university," she said. "I'll find a practice room for us."

"It's kind of late. Will you get into trouble?" I asked.

"It's fine," she said. "Students practice late all the time."

Just as I was convincing myself that I was imagining things, she touched her hand to my arm just long enough to reassure me that she wanted to make love not just music.

We made our way of the symphony hall, down the massive steps of the arts centre and waited as she joined the digital queue for a car. It was the middle of November and chilly. I made a show of rubbing my hands together and then put my arm around her. She moved it just a little lower down and put her hand in my pocket.

It was about a half-an-hour's drive to her campus. I found that when we talked about life she was stilted and nervous, but when we talked about music, words came flowing out of her. I stuck to music. By the time we arrived, we had covered most of the Romantic period, which we mostly agreed on, and a good portion of the Modern, which was more controversial. When we clashed she stuck her ground and justified her opinions, but sought to find out more about why I thought as I did. Neither of us were radical in our tastes, but nor were we overly conservative. She valued Bartok more than I did, perhaps naturally as a player of strings, but cared less for the Soviet composers, with the exception of Prokofiev. I tried to catch her out with names she would not know and succeeded with Allan Petersson and Witold Lutoslowski and made recommendations for each. Alas, as we reached the second half of the twentieth century, we also reached our destination.

We'd started the journey close together. Her hand had been on mine again and on my knee. She didn't seem concerned by the taxi driver and my arm had been around her waist at several times. We stopped short of kissing though. With company, I didn't know what her reaction would be and I didn't want to flub the first one. As we drew closer to the university, she separated herself from me, sliding back over to her door and sitting upright.

The car started to pull up to the gate of the university, but she gave some swift instructions in Mandarin to the driver and he continued on, turned left, and stopped about two hundred meters down a side road. Either side there were a number of night sellers, cooking all kinds of snacks. Even from within the taxi, I could already smell the stinky tofu that was so popular here.

"Give me your phone," she said as we arrived and pulled her own out of her handbag. With a mobile in either hand, she brought up the map apps and shared both of our locations.

"Here," she said. "There's a gap in the fence over there. Once you're through, keep walking down the hill. Turn right at the Confucius statue. There's a guest hotel that accepts foreigners about five minutes walk away. Anyone who sees you will assume you're heading there, and once you walk past it they'll assume you're heading to the convenience stores which are further up. You'll see a number of practice sheds on your left. Stop there and wait for me. I'll go back to my room and get my cello."

"Are you sure this is okay, me sneaking in like this?" I asked.

"It's fine," she said. "People come and go all the time."

I got out and the taxi drove off with her in it. She was right. While the metal fence around the campus looked imposing, there was a constant stream of people coming through the gap to get evening food from the stalls and as I carefully picked my way through, I didn't get more than the ordinary number of glances that I normally got in everyday Chinese life.

I followed her instructions to the letter. It was late now, nearly eleven and the campus was mostly dark. Some students asked if I needed help when I stopped to check I was heading in the right direction, but their English wasn't as good as Jackie's and our conversation amounted to "Hotel?" and "That way."

I hadn't been entirely sure what she'd meant by practice sheds, but there was no mistaking them once I arrived. They were perhaps two or three times bigger than the traditional old man shed at the bottom of a garden, but constructed similarly. There were four rows of ten taking up a whole field and put me in mind of nothing so much as the beach huts at Brighton except they were all painted regulation white. Most were dark, but a few had lights shining out from around door frames. I was relived to see there were no windows. The sound of about five or six different simultaneous tunes and a couple of practice scales were all being played on a range of different instruments.

I checked my phone and saw Jackie was still some distance away so I idled into the the convenience store. Unfortunately it didn't sell alcohol otherwise I might have added a bottle of wine to our date night. Nor did it carry condoms -- clearly a certain standard of behaviour was expected of students. That was a worry. It was not the sort of thing I had thought to bring out with me this evening. In the end, I purchased nothing more than a couple of bottles of water. The store shut once my purchase was done.

Jackie was now closer and I went out again to wait. I didn't bother waving when I saw her approach with both her cello case and her backpack slung over her back. I was impossible to miss. She didn't acknowledge me, but headed straight between two of the sheds. I waited for thirty seconds then followed her.

She was waiting at the end of path. She'd taken down her cello and was rubbing her shoulder as if it were sore, but as soon as I headed in the right direction she moved off again, making sure I saw she was going left. When I reached that turning, I saw the door to the furthest shed was open and the light was on. No sooner was I in than she shut and bolted the door.

She immediately threw her arms around my neck. The difference in our heights meant this was a stretch for her. "I'm so glad you agreed to come," she giggled.

I reached in to kiss her. Our mouths met for just a second and then she pulled back. She put her finger to my lips to stop me. "First, I will play for you," she said.

It took a moment to arrange things. The first thing she did was to get out a small storage heater that took up most of her backpack and plug it in. She took off her coat and set it on a hook on the door. Then she adjusted the stool to an appropriate height and put her sheet music on the stand. Next to the piano, there was a old PC connected to some speakers. She pulled a thumb drive from her case and found the files for some music which she cued up. She got out the cello and started to tune it, dinging the key on a battered upright piano in the corner for a reference note. As she made arrangements, I found myself a seat on a wooden chair. By the time she was ready, the hut had started to heat up a little.

Just as I thought she was about to play, she stood up, set her cello aside, leant down and pulled her dress up and over her head.

"Our music teacher says that playing naked helps us to feel more passion and get closer to the music," she said as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

There is bullshit you call people out on and bullshit that you don't. I nodded. Sounded good to me.

She then unhooked her bra and placed it on the piano keys. Her form was delightful. Slim but with round full breasts with large areolae. Her nipples stood erect, though whether from excitement or the lingering chill, I couldn't say. Her tights remained on over her underwear. I felt a little disappointed that she was not still wearing high heels, but since she had lugged a cello all the way down the hill, I could hardly complain. Instead, as she sat, she kicked her flats off her feet, and I could see the red of her nail polish through the fabric.

Her nudity, so quickly revealed was just as suddenly hidden by the body of the cello. Still, naked she was and that meant even looking at her neck or shoulders or arms carried with it a forbidden thrill. The hour-glass of her figure was mimicked by the frame of the instrument. Her legs were forced apart to accommodate the instrument.

I found myself getting hard, and her eyes lingered for a second on my trousers. Neither of us acknowledged it and she lent over and hit the space bar on the PC.

The click track counted in eight beats and then she started to play over the piano track. I recognized the piece within a few notes - the first Brahms Cello Sonata, a piece that started slow and sensual, not technically difficult to begin with but ideal to show emotion and interpretation. It was a good choice. Had she chosen the obvious Bach, I would have been disappointed, however proficiently she'd played. A few bars in an, on a technical level, my inner connoisseur was satisfied. She was, in fact, going to be very very good.