A Visit to McDonald's

a short fic and a short review

X supposed there were worse breakups than this, but it still felt pretty bad.

“I’m going to Shenzhen,” M had told him on the phone. “The primary school there needs more teachers. They’re sending me there. I’m going tomorrow.”

It was October 6th, 1990. Only 36 days after he had left Beijing to study in Chicago.

It seemed very factual on the surface, but X couldn’t register her words, only the undercurrent of what she was saying. I’m not following you to the US, she seemed to say. I don’t want to be with you anymore.

He ran the coin in his fingers up and down the ridges of the payphone buttons. Outside the dirty glass cubicle, someone was shifting his feet from side to side, waiting to use the phone.

X took a deep breath in and out, trying to stop his voice from trembling as he spoke. “What about coming over here to the US? I’ll come back next year like we planned, after I’ve saved up enough for a flight ticket back,” he said. “Let’s get married then. My visa can get you over here.”

Even X thought his words sounded hollow and desperate as he spoke. He strained to hear anything that might give a clue as to what she was thinking beneath the scratchy phone static.

After a length of silence, M finally spoke. “I’m not sure if I want to go,” she said.

There was nothing more to say, so they hung up.

He slept on and off for the next two days, skipping class, waking up at all the wrong times— 3pm, 3am, only to fall back asleep again. He turned the radio on whenever he was awake. He’d much rather listen to news of the former President of Guatemala passing away than his own thoughts. The American accent of the radio comforted him somehow, bright, round and chirpy.

On the third day, he finally got out of bed. Feeling dirty and greasy, X took a shower and walked out of the dorms. He blinked in the sun. It was a brilliant morning in Chicago. It was one of those days where the sun was kind to everything it shone on, and left a warmth on the back of your hand. The Chicago river was a deep Mediterranean blue and alive. The trees and buildings appeared to have more depth, and stood alert and breathing.

Does this mean they had broken up?

The dissonance of the beauty of his surroundings with how he felt inside was nauseating.

He found himself at the door of a McDonald’s. He pushed the fingerprinted metal door handle and made his way to a lacquered candy-coloured seat of a chair.

He hadn’t eaten properly in days, so he ordered a Quarter Pounder, a milkshake and some fries and downed it all in a few minutes.

No one paid any attention to him. There was no one else except a mother with a huge head of hair in a United Colors of Benetton pullover feeding her toddler on a high-stool. The child had ice-cream around his mouth and was happily banging his spoon on the sticky table.

A large man who had the build of the bodyguard came in and walked towards the counter.

“Hey, have you seen Gus ‘round here lately? You know, the old man that comes in and reads the paper every morning?” the large man asked the lady at the counter.

“Nope. Not seen him since last week.”

“That’s weird. Gus comes here every morning.”

“I know, but I don’t know where he’s at,” the lady sounded defensive and gave a shrug. She pulled down her glasses slightly and looked at the man above her glasses. “He’ll be back though, mark my words.”

“I’m sure,” he said, sounding distracted, like his thought process had moved on, and walked out of the store.

X was overcome by a wave of sleepiness. Hadn’t he just slept for the past two days straight? Why was he still so sleepy now? He leaned forwards on the table and buried his head in his forearms amongst chicken nugget crumbs and a long, soggy fry.

“Go on, sleep,” X heard the lady at the counter say. He wondered if she was being reproachful or actually letting him sleep there.

X wanted to sit up and clarify, but he was asleep before he could.

Crash! Was it the sound of cymbals and a drum beat? It sounded like Chinese New Year celebrations. And it was getting louder and louder. That’s strange, he thought. Maybe there was construction going on outside. Pins and needles stabbed his fingers from sleeping hunched up the table. He had better wake up.

As soon as he opened his eyes, someone shoved him aside.

“Handsome brother, get out of the way, would you? You’re not eating anything, why are you hoarding the table?” a woman in a brown jacket and face of manual labour yelled at him lustily over the din. She sat on the edge of his seat with her tray and, not unkindly but with a firm motion of her hips, essentially scooted him out of the seat. She was joined instantly at the table of four by three other workers her age, two men and another woman. One of them grinned apologetically at him, his tanned, red face wrinkling like a raisin as he did.

X blinked. Though he was at a McDonald's, this was not the same McDonald's he had fallen asleep in. The woman had just spoken to him in heavily accented Mandarin, and the area was packed to the brim with people. All the tables were full, children were sitting on the laps of mothers, and at the long bench skirting the window on one entire side of the restaurant, people were squished and seated on the bench even between the tables as well, stuffing themselves with burgers, trays wobbling on their laps.

“Lai lai lai, gan bei!” One table did a cheers of celebration with cola in paper cups, while at another table, a woman almost spat out her fizzy drink. “What on earth is this?” she cried, her high-pitched voice cutting through the noise. “It’s not spicy, nor numbing either.”

“It’s called a fizzy drink,” the man beside her said in Cantonese, pushing up his heavy glasses. “They put carbon dioxide into it as part of the manufacturing process.”

“Americans do the weirdest things, don’t they!” the woman said, then tentatively, like a rabbit with darting eyes, took another sip from her straw.

A group of young workers in boxy suits, napkins tucked into their shirts, were trying to stack up several Big Macs in a tower, with onlookers turning around as they gingerly put the last one on top. There was a round of cheers and applause as the tower held for a few seconds before a passing sling bag knocked them back onto the table to loud laughter.

For someone who’d been in a sleepy American university town for the past month, the sensory overload was overwhelming. X pushed his way through the throng. He was on the second floor, and slowly edged down the stairs past men and women, Mao suits, fur-lined coats, white windbreakers, stringy wife beater tops, western office-wear, body odour, hair spray and perfume.

He came outside to even more chaos. A long queue snaked from the stairs to the pavement outside. Several McDonald’s staff in red striped uniforms and red paper caps, young and clear-skinned, attempted in vain to organise the queue and prevent people from cutting in line. Lion dances were snaking about amongst the waiting customers in the square outside the restaurant (so that was what woke him up!). There were a couple of reporters carrying cameras, and as X squeezed past the throng a reporter yelled into the microphone “-first McDonald’s in China! This is a historic moment in Shenzhen’s opening up and reform, reporting live-”

So he was in Shenzhen.

He saw someone familiar standing in the queue, craning her neck to see in front of her. It was M. Of course it was M. Though as a biology PhD student he knew it wasn’t possible, X felt all the cells in his body align and converge onto her form. He pulled her out of the crowd.

“Stop it!” she cried, tugging her arm back with some strength, before noticing who he was.

“X,” she said, looking confused and thoroughly spooked. “What are you doing here? I was just talking to you on the phone a few days ago..,”

He didn’t know how to answer her as he didn’t know either. Maybe it was a dream. Or maybe he had amnesia so he actually somehow had arranged to come to Shenzhen, but lost all recollection of coming here. He was probably hallucinating. Did he smoke one of the joints the long-haired white kids lounging around campus were always seen with?

Whatever it was, he would take it in stride.

He turned back to look at the McDonald's. It was situated in a traditional Chinese-looking building, tiled ceramic roofs and all. A banner hung over the entrance that read “GRAND OPENING ON OCTOBER 8TH”. A huge balloon statue of Ronald McDonald sat, cross-legged, lightly on the rooftop. White people don’t sit cross-legged, he thought. What a funny dream.

Image source: Sohu

He ran with M, past bicycles and honking vehicles that had stopped to look at the opening festivities.

They ended up sitting in a small Cantonese restaurant in Dong Men, their table next to towers of steaming wooden baskets of dim sum.

“Are we in Shenzhen?” he asked her.

“Yes…?”

“How long have you been here?”

“I just got here last night. I’m staying at the staff quarters the school has arranged for me.”

A waiter in a dirty white uniform came over, wiped his hands on his apron and asked them what they wanted in Cantonese. X shrugged, not completely understanding. He simply pointed at a few dim sum baskets and the waiter brought them over to the table.

Their last conversation was fresh on their minds. M looked embarrassed, as if she had never expected to be held accountable face to face after her last words to him.

“Have you been seeing another guy?” he asked her, rolling a chopstick back and forth between his fingers.

“No,” she said. She gave him a watery smile. “Your hair is so long now”, she said. She reached over, wanting to pat his bangs which had grown almost to his eyes, and he swatted her hand away.

“Then why the rejection?” he asked, looking up at her.

She looked down and peeled the skin on the char siu bao she was holding. She had almost peeled the whole bun, small pieces of bun skin on the plate, before she replied.

“Real life took over,” she said in the end, simply.

The canyon of silence before her reply was full of withheld information. Maybe she wasn’t prepared to share everything with him (the thought hurt him more than anything) or that she was afraid he would be hurt if she did.

“Okay,” he said slowly, “okay.”

Then he looked at her and leaned on the table.

“Look, I don’t even know how I got here today,” he said, his gaze intent. “If you believe me, I went inside a McDonald’s in Chicago, fell asleep, woke up, and here I am.”

She blinked rapidly, trying to compute the logistics.

“Don’t even think about the logistics of it,” he said, grinning as he looked at her, reading her mind. “I know it doesn’t make sense, but maybe the fast food gods gave me another chance with you or something.”

“I know I have no right to say this, but I’ve missed you,” she said with a sigh.

X quickly slapped a 20 RMB bill on the table (thank god he hadn’t cleaned out his wallet yet) and stood up and walked over to her side.

“Spend the rest of the day with me?” he asked her.

***

There was a melancholy, bittersweet air about their last date together. They went to Xiangmihu theme park and rode the rollercoaster, in which she grabbed onto his skinny arm. X bought two ice creams to bring onto the ferris wheel, which they had licked down to the cone by the time it was their turn to get on.

It was suddenly quiet as their capsule rose and swayed gently in the wind.

M clambered to X’s side of the seat to take a look at the view, the capsule creaking and swaying as she did so.

The proximity between their faces was hair-raising. He kissed her cheek as she glanced out of the window, and she yelped.

“What else are we supposed to do up here?” he asked her, smiling, to which she slapped him in response.

They had noodles for lunch, good ol’ strong chewy wheat noodles like back in Beijing, because X complained about how weird Chinese food was in the States (“half of the dishes there I’d never seen in my life before”). Mid-afternoon, they went to Xiao Meisha beach to watch toddlers plop themselves backwards into the sand and mothers yell at their older children to not go too far into the water. M’s eyes followed the children and the mother.

X told her about the States. How there they called professors by their first names, and professors called you by yours. How he initially kept count of how many times people would call him racist names like chink, chonk on the street but he gradually learnt to filter out harmless words from an actual threat. How protests amongst Chinese overseas students were erupting across campuses since June 4th last year and how he was reluctant to participate in them because he still needed to come back to see M and his family.

M absentmindedly drew the infinity sign over and over in the sand. “I went to see a fortune teller for the first time in my life,” she said.

“I didn’t really want to,” she continued. “My mother made me and my sister go. Because we were both still unmarried above the age of 25. It was this fortune teller sitting outside on a table outside a temple.”

“And what did the fortune teller say?”

“He said… you’re too far away from me now.”

“Well, distance-wise he may be right. But you know my feelings for you haven’t changed.”

“I just… I know,” M said. She sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. I mean, you don’t have to apologise. So…do you believe the fortune teller then?”

“Well,” she was digging fistfuls of sand now and letting the sand drain between fingers like the sand from an hourglass. Emptying and grabbing, like the arm of a digging truck. “More than that, it was the entire environment around me that led me to believe that I was a fool to wait for you to come back for me. And I did. I felt like a lovelorn fool.”

“Your mother?” X said, referring to the big-armed woman who was always yelling at them whenever he dropped by to pick her up or drop her off after dates.

“My mother, my aunt, my girlfriends. Everyone. Even my students asked me if X ge ge was going to find someone else in the USA,” she laughed bitterly.

***

At night, sand in their toes, they walked back along the lighted storefronts of Luohu hand in hand. Black cars pulled in and out and businessmen, varying in shape and size and density of hair, came in and out, greeting each other, laughing and clapping each other on the back, pressing gifts, declining gifts, while girls in glittering skirts looked on. None of them paid any attention to M and X.

“Are you sure you want to stay in Shenzhen?” X asked her in English.

M had requested they speak in English because she had to teach her students basic English so she wanted to practice.

“You sure know how to get the most out of today, don’t you?” he had said, teasingly, with warmth.

“Of course. I also think staying here is the best option for me right now,” she said, stiffly and somewhat unnaturally.

“You will do great whatever you do. Just don’t date one of these louts,” he said, gesturing at the businessmen standing next to the fish tanks outside a restaurant, who were shooing some girls in by smacking them on the behind.

“I’ll date someone better than you,” she said, with a hmph.

His eyes flashed, then became serious. “Please do,” he said.

X shook himself out of the sadness thinking of their separate futures. “Hey, let’s check this out,” he pointed at a construction site around five stories high. They ducked under the cordon and picked their way up a set of narrow steel stairs, up to the highest level.

Even though they weren’t at the highest point in the city by far, the view was still impressive. The surrounding buildings were in various states of completion. A steady stream of traffic drove around them, winding into gold and red tributaries as far as the eyes could see. Unlike looking out of a skyscraper’s glass window, removed of all the senses save sight of the city below, they were in the thick of it here— the humid smells of the traffic, of dirt, of desire, of ambition. A block away, construction workers crowded around a TV showing what looked like a Hong Kong channel.

He took out a pack of cigarettes and handed one to M. She took one gingerly and balanced it between her lips, wondering briefly if she put the correct end in.

“It will be my first time smoking a cigarette,” she said, looking at him.

“And it will be my last,” he said, lighting her cigarette first followed by his own.

“Liar,” she teased, switching back to Mandarin. “I wouldn’t be there to keep you accountable once you leave.” M took a drag, started coughing and X patted her back.

“You can still come with me,” he said. “The offer’s still open.”

They sat in silence for a while.

X didn’t reply, and M said after a while, “I’m twenty-seven this year. If I had stayed in Beijing, I would probably end up marrying someone my parents introduced me to. If you come back next year as we had discussed, that is if you actually stuck to your promise until next year, I would go with you to the US. So… do I just sit and wait until my life has been decided for me? It’s so frustrating, just sitting in my room after dinner, doing nothing, going nowhere. I’ve never really thought about what I want. I know it’s a luxury to chase one’s dreams, let alone make an income and have food and shelter. But it’s just that the States has never really appealed to me or caught the fire of my imagination like it has for you. I want to… go somewhere on my own and see if I can make it, make my own decisions and carry them through. Without my mom and my aunts or you telling me what I should do. I’m sorry. It really doesn’t have anything to do with you, actually.”

M leaned her head onto his shoulder, and X put an arm around her.

“Your shoulders are still as bony as before, aren’t you getting enough to eat there?”

They watched the traffic and listened to the honking for a while. They heard the beep of his pager. After a long while, X reluctantly moved slightly to take it out of his trouser pocket.

The message on his pager read: “NI HAO. PLS RETURN TO SAME MCD BEFORE CLOSING TIME”

They got up and slowly walked back to the busy intersection where the store stood.

It seemed like the fast food chain was about to close up. Someone was sweeping the entranceway, and a staff member was turning away stragglers who walked up to the store– “Everything sold out! We are closing now!”

The staff member’s expression changed when she saw the two of them. “X! We’ve been waiting for you,” she said. “You have to go back now. Your time is up.”

“So I really am in Shenzhen? This isn’t a dream or anything?”

“This is real. You are one of our lucky McTeleportation customers.” Even the staff member stumbled over the Mandarin phonetic pronunciation of product item, something like mai-te-le-pu-er-ta-shen.

“McWhat?”

“McTeleportation. Usually whenever a new store opens in another country, for some reason, one or two people with a strong connection to that country might slip through into that country through one of our US stores. Sometimes they’re migrant workers or students reuniting with their family, sometimes they’re lovers or close friends. McTeleportation only works if you fall asleep inside our physical branch though and if you only stay for one day. If you don’t return by the end of the day…,” she trailed off.

“What happens?” they both asked her impatiently.

“You become a new item on our menu,” she said.

“What?!” they both exclaimed.

“The physical body disappears and turns into a concept, in the form of an idea in our branch manager’s head, for a new menu item to be implemented in our local stores.”

“Even if what you’re saying is true, you can’t prove that the new menu item is a trade-in for someone and not simply just the result of a brainstorm by the marketing team.”

“True, but the menu items that really take off and last more than a season— we are unable to disclose which items due to company policy— are usually because of our transformed local experts.”

M and X exchanged a look.

M leaned in to whisper into X’s ear. “If they brought you here, you don’t know what else they are capable of,” she muttered. “Best follow their instructions.”

“Can I take M with me?” X asked the staff member, though he knew what the answer would be.

The staff member shook her head sadly. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way. We don’t control the rules either. It just happens to be this way.”

M suddenly remembered. “I just realised I never got to try the Big Mac and the milkshake I wanted to get!” she said and pouted, looking at X.

"Is there any chance there’s still some food left?” X asked the staff.

“We’ve saved two Big Mac sets for you to take before you leave,” she said with a polite smile.

Being the only remaining customers, they wolfed down their burgers and fries somewhat self-consciously. Someone swept the floor around them and the remaining staff members stood politely at a distance, watching them.

“I want to take M back to her dorm room first,” X said to the waiting staff, after they finished eating.

“As long as you return before 10pm, you can go,” a staff member said. It was 9:32pm from the clock on the wall.

He took her back to her dorm rooms and they quickly said their farewells.

“Give me something of yours to take with me,” X said. “Just to make sure this was real.”

M removed the velvet ribbon hairpiece she had worn almost daily for the past few years and gave it to him. He smelled it, wanting to see if it smelled like her hair, before putting it in his pocket. He shrugged off his jacket and draped it around her shoulders.

“This is so you don’t forget about me too quickly,” he said, smiling.

M looked like she was about to cry. “Let me know if you get back safe,” M said, sniffing.

“And if I don’t, at least maybe you’ll have something interesting to eat in the next couple of months.”

“Don’t say that!”

“I love you,” X said.

M was stunned silent. Maybe because no one said such things in China, at least in their circles. He kissed her and left before she could say anything in reply.

She slipped her arms into his jacket sleeves as she watched him cross the courtyard and out the gate of the school compound. She found the remaining cigarette packet, coins and some American receipts in the pockets. She hugged the jacket around herself.

Jogging back towards Dong Men, X fingered the velvet ribbon with the fraying silver thread at the edges. These objects were the only tangible things that connected them together now, drawing a cat’s cradle of lingering feelings between them.

He returned to the restaurant before 10pm as instructed.

“It’s time for McTeleportation,” the staff member said, bringing out a makeshift pillow made from some folded uniforms and an apron as a blanket. He accepted it with thanks and settled on one of the benches to lie down. “We have contacted the branch in question at,” here she paused for a moment to look down at a note she’d jotted on a napkin, “180 W Adams Street, and they are ready to receive you.”

She stood at scratched the back of her ear. “We hope you had a pleasant time,” she said, rather awkwardly. “Good night.”

“Good night,” X said. The staff member walked away, turned off the lights and headed back downstairs. X closed his eyes. He could hear her and the other staff closing up shop below. They were excited and jubilant, talking and laughing about their record-smashing opening day. He heard them pull down the metal rolling gate of the storefront and lock up, their banter drifting out into the night.

---

A big thank you to Zuoyue Wang, Crystal,

Lavinia Iosub

& Lazlo Montgomery for their valuable insights in making this piece!

In researching for this piece, I had the pleasure of talking to Professor Zuoyue Wang, professor of history at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Prof Wang has recently been featured in a PBS documentary charting the history of US-China relations, ‘Your Serve or Mine?’, with a special focus on ‘ping-pong diplomacy’ during the 1970s. Several of the table tennis players (from both sides) recount their experiences, sharing stories about taking a train in Hong Kong to the China border to walk over to China because there was no other way of entering the country in 1971. Do check it out below:

The second half of the documentary mainly comprises of interviews of American and Chinese exchange students who talk about how important cultural exchange and conversation is in fostering diplomatic relations. The final message of the show— to talk to each other, not at each other, and both sides needing to be in same room to have a conversation— rings a tad idealistic in this day and age, where economic interests, understandably, take precedence over diplomatic goodwill, but the history aspects of the show make it an interesting watch all the same.