2 Questions Every Girl is Asking Herself

Chapter 63

I stepped onto the runway of FCWR feeling that whole year had led me to this moment. I listened to the sound of Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend", and felt the entire studio throbbing to the beat of her music. Even the air was charged with effervescence. My senses were so heightened, I could feel the breeze brush against every inch of my skin. Everything shone in startling clarity. I saw LeJia. I saw Huang Han. And I saw Meng Fei standing at the end of the runway, looking slightly tired and bored. The whole audience watched us with what I took to be awed curiosity. I could see their eyes wide with wonder and even the wrinkles on their skin. I was so captivated by all that was happening that I forgot about being nervous, that all I wanted to do was to stretch out my arms and take a giant inhale, and take everything in.

Among the crowds cheering, many had to push and shove for a seat on the live show. As contestants, we were each given two tickets for friends and family. I have no friends or family in Nanjing, or anywhere near Nanjing. And in a way, I was relieved everyone was so far away. I found the whole ordeal kind of embarrassing and wasn't entirely sad that they be left out of it. But one friend came down to watch the show.

As I walked along behind Girl Number 7, I focused my attention on searching for my friend. I looked on the left side of the runway first, and then I looked on the right. Just before I made the turn for my podium, a familiar face in a white shirt caught my eye. From the moment I found him, my smile deepened with recognition. I saw his broad face and the sharpness of his cheekbones... and most of all, his eyes bent into tiny crescents in the corners so smooth and cheery. And suddenly everything around me seemed to grow quiet, as if he was the wind and I was the leaf carried with it through memory lane.

He was familiar, certainly, more familiar than most men I've gone out to dinner with. Sitting there by my podium, was Hong Wang.

He raised his hand to give me a little wave. I felt comforted by his presence but also embarrassed and vulnerable at the same time. For him to see me like this; so utterly transformed from my usual self. And for him to bear witness to this performance which will be completely improvised and the outcome unpredictable. In that simple exchange of a glance, I felt as though he could see into me, as the same shy and awkward girl he knew since kindergarten. Yet that "me" clashed with this "me". The most childlike "me" shouldn't be exposed in a setting like this. Because this "me" with her big hair and fake lashes, must be loud and confident, and ready to take on two pits of strangers.

I had only seen Hong Wang during that dinner in Beijing over a year ago; but I had spent a great many moments since then thinking about him. After that dinner where I wished so hard he would ask me out and he didn't, and after I made that desperate attempt of asking him out the day I returned from Bali and he rejected me, I gave up. He was in a serious relationship of five years, with a girl he intended to marry. He was unshakably committed to her. And in a way, I was glad that he was. I would think less of him if he wasn't.

Yet in a comic twist of plot, a year later, he's sitting front row at my dating show. I couldn't help but smile. Everything had a sense of happenstance to it. Coming full circle. The shao mai lady's hot tip had come to materialize in reality, Hong Wang reappeared, and Ketut's prophecy, well, it has yet to work its magic. Still, now I am here.

After we settled behind our podiums, Meng Fei asked all the Canadian girls to introduce themselves. Beginning from Girl Number 1, everyone started giving long-winded self-introductions that by the time he got to me, number 6 in the line, he'd already repeated twice that we make it short and snappy. (And I was thinking: But Zheng Ge told us to prepare 30-second introductions, and I timed mine just right! You can't change the rules on us like this! I can't improvise!)

Panicked, I shortened my speech. I can't remember what I cut and what I kept, or if the heavily abridged version still made sense. But when I said the word "quarter-life crisis", nobody laughed. The audience just stared at me like I was blowing spit bubbles. Everyone sat so quietly that you could hear the drop of a pin. (No you can't) But there was that long, awkward silence. Which was about as comfortable as the sound of scraping nails on a blackboard.

I glanced down to find a guy in the pit looking straight at me, wearing a blank expression.

What is this girl talking about?

What's quarter-life crisis? What this silly word means? Why can't she be happy with her good consulting job and why must she have a crisis about it?

"Quarter life crisis?" Meng Fei repeated, placing special emphasis on the word quarter, as though I was too young and too ridiculous to be having an existential panic usually reserved for people turning fifty.

Moving on to Girl Number 7. Confidently taking up her full 30 seconds, she let everyone know that she works as a Financial Advisor at a good bank in Canada, and by the tender age of 31, has already published two Chinese novels about Egyptian pharaohs. The audience oohed and ahhhed. And I felt like my chest has been hit with a stick. In comparison to her existence, to her good job and her published books – I was looking pretty unstable. I got the distinct feeling that the producer put us right next to each other for exactly that purpose – to compare us.

I spent the rest of the show feeling out of sorts and mad at myself for messing up the speech that I forgot to turn off the light for the first male contestant. He had to come up to me and turn off the light for me. (I hung my head in shame knowing Matt is going to come after me for this.)

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