Dumpling Double Date

Last night I went on a dumpling double date.

The four of us-- a girl I met randomly on campus, her gigantic Korean boyfriend, her roommate, and myself-- went to a local dumpling restaurant, ordered enough dumplings for a dozen hungry fat men, and spent an enjoyable evening flirting across (sometimes formidable) language barriers.

The giant Korean speaks almost no Chinese. The girls-- who are both freshman majoring in Korean-- had just finished their first day of classes and were struggling to memorize the Korean alphabet. All three of them spoke some bastardized form of English.

So I found myself in the unlikely position of Chinese-Korean compliment broker, calling upon the Korean "flattery" vocabulary I learned last year when I was dating the girl from Seoul. It was a slow process, but eventually everyone could say "baby, you lookin' fine" in three languages.

After dinner, the goliath and his girl went back to the dorms, and I took my date for a walk down to the big square near campus. A very pretty, very friendly girl from Inner Mongolia (I've met a lot of cute girls from IM, in fact. I think the whole province is nothing but grasslands, yurts, horses, and pretty girls). She obviously liked me a lot and-- more importantly-- her Mandarin is shockingly clear. We chatted for several hours on any number of subjects and I understood absolutely everything she said to me.

She is, however, a bit young for me... freshman co-eds are my kid brother's domain at this point. I have no problem dating women four years older than me, but four years younger seems a little sleazy.

So the search will go on, though I'll still try and accept her invitation to visit Inner Mongolia over the October break. And as a memento of our date, there are seven boxes of leftover dumplings sitting in the fridge.