THE SADDEST GIRL SINCE THE SONG DYNASTY

THE SADDEST GIRL SINCE THE SONG DYNASTY - PART I

Shade – as in to throw shade, to be drenched in shade, to invite shade. At some point in 2014, like so many cultural phenomena of modern America, the use of shade in the context of being disrespected or shown attitude towards had migrated from communities of LGBT ethnic minorities on the country's East Coast to the likes of Ander, a Californian, a millennial, a sexually orthodox male.

Having slept on Lady Zhao's coach for a week, having barely ventured out of her small apartment off Shaanxi Road in Old Shanghai, now, in a taxi, Ander tried to explain why he thought her acquaintance in the bar was throwing shade all over him.

"He asked if I was in insurance. Specifically life insurance. Can a person give off a life insurance vibe? It's not a compliment..." Ander assembled the case against his verbal assailant forgetting that his one-time classmate Lady Zhao probably didn't understand some of the pivotal words he was using. And she was too busy to seek clarification as she was dealing, via text, with what she vaguely described to Ander in their rushed departure as "the most tragedy."

Aside from the possible insult he had encountered, if Ander were honest, he would admit that the interruption of their night of cocktail consumption was a relief. He was on a budget, a tight one – in contrast to being an actuary of death, Ander was unemployed, and unemployment had the regrettable property of following him all over the world, no matter how far he tried to run from it. But Lady Zhao, dismissing the possibility that a graduate born, raised and cultivated in the USA could be poorer than her had, in an effort to show Ander the sites, taken him to an establishment near the Bund frequented by expats and residents of Pudong. They just happened to be the two demographics that spread most virulently the plague of distended prices everywhere they went. Ander simply couldn't afford hundred-kuai Long Islands if he hoped to travel for two more months. His pride and Lady Zhao's stubbornness had led them there; fate drew them away, if only in slow traffic.