When I left for Sichuan, China, the last thing I expected was to end up in an obscure hotel, splayed out on a cold marble floor outside a stranger’s room, trying to become Jesus.
It all began in September last year, when my girlfriend and I broke up because I wanted to introduce polyamory into our monogamous relationship. At that point, I thought, I’d start afresh. Find myself by relocating to Bali or something.
Think how many people I can date! I thought optimistically.
The weeks rolled on; I neither went to Indonesia nor developed any relationship sparks. One night, awake in bed, I realised that partnerships like we’d had don’t fall into one’s lap each day. Our mutual tenderness had been a rare and beautiful thing.
I started to doubt that the breakup was right. I decided to give up on the polyamory book club I’d been attending. Anxiety flaring, I floated around the swimming pool at my work, zoning out and staring at fellow Sydneysiders doing their morning breaststroke.
Maybe I made a mistake.
Each day, I packed my lunch at 7:30am. It was a long walk to the building where I studied English teacher training.
I’m getting out of this city, I decided as I passed randoms on their way to work.
I thought I knew more than anyone else. I thought they were trapped and I was free. I thought it was time to escape my miserable Sydney life, my failed relationship and total sense of isolation from everyone.
The day after the course, I went into Sydney’s Customs House, put my flat-lining laptop beside me and plugged into their free WiFi. I tapped my foot while the Air China page loaded.
I’ve just arrived in Chengdu, I write in my journal. I’m on a train to my hotel flying through dark underground tunnels. I’m a bit dehydrated so I drank some noodle soup; I thought it would be good, but was disappointed.
I glance around at the five other dudes in my carriage. Why is everyone here a man?
I’m a little scared, I sign off. The guy in front of me keeps doing nothing and it’s really bothering me.
Baulking at how modern the metro is, I alight from the train and ascend an escalator. Before me spreads an ancient grey sky; taxis slur over a giant crossroad. I blink at a monolithic building with a sign that reads ‘Sichuan Institute Of Liver Diseases’.
At my hotel, the employees alternate between working, arguing and basking in the sun watching videos on their smartphones. A whole week passes and I only eat mixian: a type of rice noodle. I don’t speak Mandarin, nobody speaks English, and the only word I know is ‘mixian’.
It’s embarrassing eating the same dish each day, especially as I frequent only one restaurant. The lady working and I develop a kind of wordless rapport; I come in and don’t even have to point for her to know what I want. Despite being in this parallel world, it doesn’t take long to adjust – or at least achieve the appearance of adjustment. After a week, we’re able to have the following conversation:
“Rice noodle – tasty, huh?” she says in Mandarin.
“Very tasty,” I nod.
‘Very tasty’ and ‘rice noodle’ are now four of the 20 words and phrases I know. But the fact I’m able to have this short conversation leaves me feeling immensely proud and much less alien.
I slide my laptop out from a bag and place a small white thermos I ‘found’ at the pool lost property on the table. The milk tea’s sweetness makes me feel less depressed.
There’s something cool about achieving little things while overseas, I write.
I smile at the lady as she carries over my mixian. Maybe I can stay in Chengdu forever if I want.
The next day, a woman from Brighton arrives at my hotel. We chat for a bit in the lobby and I ask if she wants to have dinner the next night. Somehow, I concoct an idea that the reason my ex-girlfriend and I split up is because I have too much feminine energy.
The antidote: becoming more masculine.
We’re sitting tensely in a restaurant. My ploy to be more masculine is making my date uncomfortable. She keeps shifting in place and asking when we’re leaving. I recount my childhood – my difficult parental relationships, the obsessive cleaning, the piano lessons – and she loosens.
My fruity pink cocktail arrives. “Oh my god, it’s so good,” I gush.
She jeers at me. “Oh my, are you really ordering that?”
She tongs a thick slice of beef tongue and perfunctorily tosses it in the hot pot.
“I’m vegetarian,” I say, tossing in some lotus root.
We are at odds in gender expression and in diet.
Later that night, after tossing, turning and getting up every few hours to ‘let out’ some of the hot pot, I head down to the lobby. The reception woman looks tired and is sipping espresso. She tells me her name is Rachael.
Flirting over a language barrier is complex. I’m taken in by Rachael’s tiny waist and large, adorable forehead.
“Do you want to hang out?”
“I need to move a fridge.”
I linger a moment, not quite taking her hints. I’ve since learned that in China, it’s impolite to say no, so your request for a hangout might be met with an initial yes, but then a later, “Hang on, I need to move a fridge.”
“I work out.”
“You’re covered in hot pot liquid.”
In order to deepen the façade and convince myself everything is okay, I find myself developing a weird alternate personality and being intensely insinuating with various women. This is a great early sign of the escalating erratic behaviour that will later culminate in a nervous breakdown.
A week later, after retching in bed all day sick with food poisoning, I ask one of the hotel staff how to say ‘beef with rice’ in Mandarin. His name is Junfeng, and it turns out he used to live around the corner from me in Sydney.
I start to nervously lick my lips each time we interact.
One night, Junfeng asks if I want to have dinner with him and a friend. I toss it up by pacing back and forth in the hallway, then diving into a storage room when he approaches.
“Okay, let’s.”
We arrive at a cave-like restaurant with its menu chiseled onto the wall. Junfeng’s friend sits and notices his wobbly chair. Across the room, a customer tumbles onto the floor as their chair completely comes apart.
The restaurant is a shambles. Soon, I will be also.
I attempt to flaunt my Mandarin. The host emerges and places down my ‘beef with rice’. I lift a clump of it to my mouth, but it slips and thuds.
“It looks like a swamp,” says Junfeng, digging into a very decent-looking chicken soup.
Junfeng’s ‘friend’ makes cruel jabs at him throughout the meal. I feel like it’s somehow my duty – my masculine duty, as a man – to protect Junfeng.
“Your friend’s a douche,” I whisper to him as we’re walking along the river.
The friend points at some old people singing and dancing to ‘Down Under’ by Men at Work.
“Aren’t you Australian? Join them,” he urges. His laugh is ogre-like.
My face drops. My heart pounds. We hurl insults at each other across the street.
I am inching towards madness.
Back at the hotel, there’s literal stabbing around my heart. I raise that I’m having chest pains.
“Emotional pain hasn’t previously manifested as actual physical pain. Is that possible?’ I ask Junfeng.
My psyche’s intensifying misalignment is manifesting physically.
What if this pain is trapped in me forever? I write. Are emotions like poo? Do you need to get them out? If I just leave it, will it be fine – or like poo, will I die?
To calm down and give myself a focus, I travel to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding.
From the bus, I observe bamboo fields and count my breaths, but something is brewing. I thank the driver and, hand trembling, show the attendant my ticket.
I can’t quite access my feelings or memories of who I am. I attempt to recall my life, my friends – how I feel about something, anything – but nothing comes.
I reach two queues: one for people with identity, one for people without. I join the second and glance over the railing, at the pandas on one side, at the 20-metre drop on the other.
I’m either going to become Jesus or kill myself, I think.
On the bus back, I lie down on my seat and start looping my speech, attempting to convert to the messiah. “Everything is connected, everything is connected,” I say.
My right breast spasms; the movements course through my body, rigidifying it. My consciousness flickers out; my tongue slackens into my throat; my triceps contract until they hurt. I start chanting to match the voices – “This is it, this is it,” over and over.
Right before I pass out, I stop and exhale deeply.
Goddam it, I can’t do it. Why can’t I convert? I just need this feeling to infect me completely, take me over.
Doom washes over and I struggle to breathe.
Somehow, I make it to my hotel room, but leave the door ajar. Whatever’s about to happen might end me, and at least this way someone will be able to get in and tell my parents what happened – that their little boy went to China, slept three hours a night for a week, and went insane.
I slip into bed and close my eyes, but still the doom hounds me. Eventually it becomes too much. I slam my door and rush to the reception.
“Junfeng, Junfeng!”
“What?!”
It’s 3am, but without complaint, Junfeng drags himself from bed to help, and escorts me into the fresh air.
I pace the footpath, occasionally staring off into the river, at a damaged gushing pipe, thinking, I’m the pipe; I’m so cracked; count your breaths; just calm.
Junfeng leaves and returns with a warm soy drink. I try to focus on its taste.
We head back inside. The hotel’s owner is sitting out the back in the twilight. He presses down on a projector remote, and suddenly the room bursts into life. Bright images of soldiers, spaceships and aliens making love paint the walls.
“What film?” I ask.
“Halo.”
I’m having a full-on mental breakdown and these hotel staff I barely know are ready to help me in any way they can.
At 7am, I’m standing back at reception. Rachael is on her shift.
I HAD A PANIC ATTACK, I type into Google translate.
DO YOU NEED HELP? she types back.
I’M FINE. DID YOU MOVE YOUR FRIDGE…??
I am afraid my insanity will continue. I just want to return to the old me, how I was before all this.
“You’re not having a seizure and you’re not going to die,” says Junfeng.
I explain to him the whole story: my breakup, my breakdown.
“You’re not becoming Jesus,” he assures.
Junfeng calms me, says I need to be with family, I need to go home.
That night, I sleep properly for the first time in weeks. When my alarm sounds at 7am, I wrangle my backpack down to reception. Rachael helps me lug it to the taxi. She must have moved a lot of fridges, because her arm muscles bulge up as she throws my bag onto the back seat.
If it wasn’t for the people around me giving me directions and helping me when I was in abject crisis, I don’t know I would have got to the airport.
I have another panic attack on the plane. A flight attendant brings me tea, tries calming me.
I relax somewhat, then it occurs to me that I’ve tried to escape my problems instead of dealing with them. I’d run from my breakup, and in Chengdu, it had found me.
A friend picks me up from the airport in Sydney. I stay at his house for a week. During this time, he cooks me some walnut-stuffed dates.
No more eating ‘beef with rice’ and thinking I’m Jesus, I decide.
In recovering, I realise that people are willing to help in the darkest of times. Even when they’re strangers. Even through difficult linguistic and cultural barriers. No matter where you are in the world, chances are that if you fall over and skin your knee – or have a mental breakdown – people will stick out their hand.
I return to the polyamory book club. Maybe Sydney isn’t so evil. Maybe the world isn’t so bad.
Maybe I’m not so isolated after all.
