Page 5 of From Beijing, With Love

But a job was a job. This was his last tour of the season anyway. As soon as September hit, a horde of undergrads would descend onto the Tsinghua University campus once again, together with his teaching duties. Between that and his research, he wouldn’t have a spare second to breathe.

And he couldn’t wait.

The PhD life was what he’d signed up for and happily toiled away at, even though it barely covered his living expenses in Beijing. Sadly, catering to affluent foreign tourists who’d shell out thousands of yuan for a private English-speaking tour paid better than being an academic. That was how he’d ended up in this car after waking up at the crack of dawn to finish the latest revisions on his research paper.

“You’ll be too hot.” Yang inched the car forward in the stop-and-go traffic. This was precisely why the pickup time was eight AM and not one minute later.

“I’m what?” Daniel asked, speaking his first words since they’d gotten in the car. There was a flush to his fair skin.

“Too hot,” Yang said, turning up the overworked AC in the tour company’s Prius. “We’ll spend the day hiking on the Great Wall. You’ll overheat in what you’re wearing.”

“Oh—my clothes.” Daniel looked down at his sweater and sweatpants, his forehead already gleaming with sweat. “This is all I’ve got. My luggage isn’t here yet.”

Yang shook his head at himself for not speaking up earlier. Despite their rocky start, he wanted Daniel to be comfortable on the tour. If he was hot now, he might just combust the moment he stepped into the blazing sun. Not to mention how physically demanding the hike on the wall could be, even along restored sections like Mutianyu.

Yang reached for the glove compartment, and Daniel recoiled in his seat.

“Take a bottle of water from there.” Yang retracted his hand. Had he done something wrong?

Daniel wiped his hands on his sweatpants and looked away, not bothering with the water.

“Do you want to know the history of Mutianyu?” Yang asked, breaking the awkward silence. Other than being fluent in English and able to drive, there was a third implicit requirement for this job: being good with people. Yang was perhaps underqualified in the last department, but as with everything else in his life, he tried his best. “Mutianyu is one of the most well-preserved sections of the Great Wall of China, stretching more than five kilometers in length …”

The rest of the sentence died in Yang’s mouth as Daniel grimaced and closed his eyes, like Yang’s voice was a nuisance to be shut out.

Gripping the steering wheel more tightly, Yang fixed his gaze on the congested traffic up ahead—a sea of brake lights as far as he could see.

This was going to be a long day.

More than three hours later, Yang pulled into the parking lot at the foot of Mutianyu Village. The bumper-to-bumper traffic had grated on his nerves as his mind constantly drifted back to his research paper. He pictured Dr. Sun in his cramped office, his red pen poised. Besides Yang himself, his PhD adviser was his toughest critic. With one year left in his degree and his eyes on that coveted postdoctoral fellowship, the tired academic motto publish or perish had never been truer.

“Here we are.” Yang opened the front passenger door for Daniel, who surveyed the parking lot with an abundance of caution before stepping out of the car, bumping his head on the way out. It seemed all that caution hadn’t helped much. It took all of Yang’s professionalism to hold back his chuckle.

“Where’s the wall?” Daniel squinted at the overhead sun.

“Up there.” Yang pointed to the green mountaintops off in the distance. “Mutianyu is named after the village below it. Private cars aren’t allowed to drive through the village, so we’ll board a shuttle first, then take a chairlift up the mountain.”

This was the most the two of them had talked for hours. Daniel had spent the entire car ride either ignoring Yang with his eyes closed or ignoring Yang with his eyes open. After trying to engage him in a conversation about the Great Wall for the third time, Yang had given up. Maybe things would be different once they got on the wall.

Daniel was sweating through his gray sweater by the time they stepped off the shuttle, strands of his brown hair plastered to his forehead. Yang made a bet with himself on when Daniel would wise up and take it off. The answer was twenty steps through the terra-cotta-hued gate bearing the three characters that spelled Mutianyu.

When Daniel pulled up his sweater, his undershirt lifted with it, revealing a well-defined set of abs. Yang averted his eyes, fixing them instead on the brick-paved street ahead, lined with souvenir shops.

“If you need to use the washroom, I suggest doing so now.” Yang gestured toward the public washroom by the gate. “The facilities on top of the mountain are limited.”

Daniel eyed the one-story building with knitted brows. “Um, is it … clean?”

Yang considered asking if Daniel made a habit of going to other countries and openly questioning its cleanliness, or was it just China that wasn’t living up to his foreign standards? Because even though Daniel had a Chinese last name, he didn’t look Chinese with his hazel eyes and Western features, nor did he speak the language. But asking such a question would violate the implicit requirement of being nice to the tourists, so Yang kept his face neutral and shrugged. “It’s there for you to find out.”

Five minutes later, Daniel came out looking ashen. Clearly, the facilities hadn’t lived up to his five-star standards. Yang held back a sigh and picked up the pace toward the chairlift. The sooner they got onto the wall, the sooner this tour would end.

“Is there another way up other than that?” Daniel pointed to the chairlifts swinging on the cables in the distance. He wore the same look he’d had on before—brows knitted, jaw tense.

“Yes … There’s a paved path up the mountain, but it’s a steep incline. A thousand plus steps. The chairlift takes no more than ten minutes,” Yang said, not bothering to hide the bias in his voice. He was still sore from his twenty-kilometer run yesterday. Running was a punishing hobby, like pursuing a PhD in physics was a punishing career choice. The two were complementary—one filled his brain, one emptied it.

“Let’s take the hike,” Daniel answered a little too quickly while flashing Yang a smile. “Never skip leg day, right?”

Yang should have been annoyed, and he was, except this was the first time since they’d left the hotel that Daniel had actually smiled at him. It was a forced smile, a tad rehearsed, but a smile nonetheless.