sofasurfers

So at the designated time, I trot alo g to KFC, the meeting point for
the Xi’an couchsurfing group monthly get-together (some serendipity
that it lands on the day I land, sans host). This is where a) I hope
to connect with my replacement hosts, and where b) I hope to parachute
into a readymade social gathering with instant friends. It’s only when
I arrive at KFC-on-a-China-scale (ie a vast, 600-cover eaterie) that I
start feeling a bit tragic/shy/lost. I see one whitey with two young
Chinese people, but I can’t bring myself to assume that the one
mixed-race group are the couchsurfers. I hide behind some fauxliage in
an attempt to bore myself into action. Soon after, I hear the words in
my ear, “Are you here for the couchsurfing meeting?” (’Meeting’ – why
so businesslike?). Hello Romeo (real name, apparently) – Romeo is a
Californian airline pilot who had actually called me earlier in the
day to respond to my last-minute couch request (though by that time it
was all sorted). “Do you know if this is the right KFC?” he adds.
Pointing out that there is in fact another (though smaller) KFC
directly opposite, I find myself potentially in yet another ‘casual’
directions drama (when due to meet my Beijing hosts at Peking
University’s West Gate, I learnt that there were in fact two West
Gates… and then there was of course the “which Ulan Bator public
library” fiasco). This, I realise, is a Chinese hazard – so big,
everything is in duplicates: London is just so village by comparison.
Actually, no such drama ensued – the other group I’d spied were in
fact couchsurfers, and we gravitated together in one seemingly normal
and thoroughly unstrange collection of strangers: not one person had
met before, yet there was so much to share. Eventuallythe female half
of my hosts arrived –Beth, a 26-year-old Canadian English teacher –
and we set off to our meal (not in KFC).