Before We Could Eat
Dinner with a student became an introduction to food photographs, friendship and the pressure to marry.
Shirley was a new student at the centre who worked in textiles and needed English to communicate with customers. We were the same age, and she specifically asked to take classes with me.
She told me I was beautiful and mentioned that I was the centre’s only foreign female teacher. It was a flattering, slightly surprising introduction.
Within a few weeks, my timetable was filling up. Small classes usually meant two or three students, and sometimes only one. Those quieter lessons gave us room for conversations beyond the slides.
Shirley often booked at the last minute, hoping to get a lesson to herself. Her English was good enough for us to talk easily, with corrections along the way. I grew fond of her.
One evening, she invited me to dinner after work.
We went to Wagas, opposite the Yingtai shopping mall. It looked modern, and the salads were a welcome discovery when I was still learning what to order elsewhere.
Instead of the paper menu I expected, there was a QR code on the table. Scanning it brought up the menu on a phone. I relied on the pictures and chose what looked like a Caesar salad.
By the time the food arrived, I was hungry.
Shirley, however, wasn’t ready to eat.
First, she arranged the salads and photographed them. Then she tried another angle. Then came photographs of us, followed by photographs of us with the food.
I watched my dinner become a photo shoot.
At the time, I wondered whether this was about the image she wanted to share on WeChat Moments. But I didn’t ask her, and I couldn’t know exactly what the photographs meant to her. I only knew that I wanted to eat.
After what felt like twenty minutes, I asked whether we could start. Eventually, I began while she was still busy with her phone.
When I offered to pay my share, she refused. She said spending time with me was helping her practise English. I thanked her, and she walked home with me.
Away from the table, the conversation became more personal.
She talked about pressure from her parents to get married. She was twenty-six and already worried that time was running out. In her account, they seemed more concerned that she marry someone than that she find someone she loved.
It was after Spring Festival, and the family questions were still weighing on her.
I thought about how rarely my own parents asked about my romantic life. I had taken that freedom from questioning for granted. Hearing Shirley describe her experience made me appreciate it.
I didn’t have an answer for her. I could listen, though, and the walk felt different from the lesson we had shared earlier.
At first, socialising with students outside work had felt unfamiliar. That evening showed me that an adult student could also become someone whose company I enjoyed and whose worries I cared about.
Dinner had taken a long time to begin. A friendship had begun almost without my noticing.