This is a story of how I was "taken" (if you will) in a foreign land.
I won't tell many stories here, because the stories I tell are all true, and I know they are true because they are stories from my first-hand experience. I suppose I don't tell them to excite anybody so much as I tell them because it is cathartic for me to tell a story I've kept bottled up so long. I'm a man in his 50s who has been married since age 20, and who has loved my wife and the children she bore to me. But life had thrown me a few curve balls when I was expecting fastballs, and has made me look pretty silly when I took my swing. As I look back on them, though, they were not stories you would expect in a story book, but they have been part of my life, and give me mixed feelings ... but have become more nostalgic.
I have had a skill that has been in demand all over the world, and worked for a global company for a number of years. That led me to travel the world, mostly on business (but never get so busy that you can't enjoy the travel). On short trips (like 1 or two weeks long), I may have only had a few days to prepare, but there were times when I took assignments that required actual moves (1 - 3 years long). My wife, and the younger two of my kids have gotten to travel a lot of the world with me on these trips. This story happened to me in China ... and I stress that it happened to me. You'll understand that if you read it.
I had several months to prepare for a 1 year assignment to Shanghai, so on advice of my Chinese colleagues, I forgot all "local dialects" and studied Mandarin diligently for several months before I departed. Part of the deal for me to take the assignment was that I got 6 months of private mandarin instruction after arrival, too. I really liked my teacher, too. She had so much world experience, and was very down-to-earth, including warning me about places I could get in trouble in China ... but she didn't warn me about a couple of them.
While we were there, my wife's sister had back surgery, and was laid up. My wife travelled back to her sister's homeland to help her with recuperation, and this left me alone in Shanghai for multiple weeks. My first shock during this time was my first trip down what the locals called "Waitan" but foreigners know as "The Bund." I had made this trip many times with my wife, and loved the circus-like experience, but the first time I made the trip alone, all of the guys that may have tried to sell my wife and I fake-brand watches and such, quickly turned to offering me sex with pretty women. I was so inundated with them, and so unprepared for that, that I lashed out in frustration just trying to get away from them. I knew that kind of thing was "disease alley," and even if it wasn't, I have always been truly a family man, truly in love with my wife, and always wanting to act in a way that my daughters would be proud of me. I almost got into a fistfight just trying to get away from the guys wanting to take me to the back-alleys to meet "pretty woman" for money.
So the next weekend, I came up with a different plan. I had heard that there was a beach in Shanghai, but some people told me it was bad, and told me to not go there. When I read about it, though, I read about imported white sand, and it sounded very appealing. I looked up the trip, and planned the transit to drop me off a few blocks from this beach, and I planned to strike out on my own to try to see what this beach was like. The problem was, when I exited the bus, I got disoriented, and wasn't sure which was it was to the beach. I decided to stop passersby and ask for directions. The first person I tried to ask was a young man who totally ignored me as he passed by. After him, I tried to ask a woman who I thought was about my age. (I was in my mid to late 40s at the time). Honestly, she was a fit, and very attractive woman, but I just wanted directions. At first she started to pass me by like the young man, but she suddenly stopped and started intently into my blue eyes, and I could see her mind change. This should have been my first indication that something besides directions was up, but I didn't heed the warning. She told me in Chinese that she was not busy that day, and would take me there if I would buy her lunch. That sounded like a good exchange to me, so I missed the danger sign, and agreed to this arrangement.
She changed directions, and began to lead me down roads (all of which were unfamiliar to me, as you might guess in an unfamiliar part of a city of 24 million people). It really wasn't very far. And we reached the beach. Unfortunately, it really was as bad as people warned me. I could see the sand was imported to try to make a tourist destination, but the sand baked my feet on the way to the water. I was glad to get into the water. This new friend, to my surprise, quickly shed her outer shirt and pants, revealing undergarments that could be mistaken for a swim suit, and entered the water. I tried to do the same, but honestly, the water was bathwater warm, and not pleasant to me at all. We spent only a few minutes in the water before braving the scalding sand to get to a boardwalk of sorts that overlooked this "beach." I bought her a coke and we drank a soft drink together before deciding to head back toward a different part of the district where she said there was great Chinese food that represented the food of this district.
I'm always up for local fare, so I agreed to go with her. She quickly led me to a part of the area where I knew I could never find my way back to the bus stop without her. I trusted her, though. The place she led me for lunch was a place I could never have found as a tourist, and the food was both unique and good ... and I am a lover of getting local food and drink. During the lunch, she began to show signs toward me that, thinking back, I should have recognized as flirting, but I have been out of the dating game for a long time, and just don't normally expect that attractive ladies are going to flirt with me. So I suppose I missed another danger sign.
After lunch and a few beers (all of which I covered), we began to walk and talk, using the limited Mandarin I had. During this time, I always talked about my wife and kids. She was interested because my wife is Asian, and she had always heard the mixed White-Asian kids were beautiful, and when I showed her pictures, she seemed to have that thought reinforced in her mind. I always talked positive about my family (which I am always accustomed to being a signal to a woman that I am not interested in anything more than friendship), but she talked to me about how her husband had died, and only her son and her remained. Her son was a college student and lived with her. She expressed a lot of loneliness, and I sensed that the loneliness she expressed was real.
As we walked from dinner, she suggested we get a hotel room and rest for a bit before we continued with more places she thought I would find interesting. For the first time, I recognized a danger signal, but I calmly expressed to her that I was not tired, and did not need a hotel room. She didn't object, but rather, suggested that if I was not tired, she knew a traditional tea house that I needed to experience before heading back to the Xiuxuahue district where I lived. That sounded good to me, so I agreed. She then hailed a tricycle taxi to take us there. All of this was new experience for me, and I loved it, and knew I could only get this with someone like her acting as my guide, so I was gracious in not only paying for such things, but getting her something nice along the way to express my appreciation.
