A year after we’d left school, we met up in Beijing, in a well-refurbished café located on the ground floor of a grand, modern building on his university campus. He looked strong and fit, with a healthy tan on his face. He told me that he’d just come back from a holiday on Sanya beach in South China. He described the broad seaside promenade lined with palm trees whose leaves swayed in the breeze like giant hands. It was very different from the small, northern, industrial town we’d both come from where old factory buildings were eternally shrouded in a smoky air against a grey sky. He told me Sanya reminded him of Hawaii he had visited as a child, but Hawaii had warmer weather, nicer beaches, and better-looking people. It’s in America after all. 美国, the Chinese name for America, literally means ‘a beautiful country’.

We reminisced about our school days. During the intervals of intense study for college entrance exams, we’d go out to the sportsground to play badminton. I liked watching him play badminton, running around in the golden sunshine with endless energy and agility. The warm, fuzzy images of his angular face, his pumped torso, and his muscular legs often appeared in my dreams.

We bonded quickly because of our shared interest in sports and music. He introduced me to American popular music. Ever since then, the melancholic tune of ‘Yesterday Once More’, sung in Karen Carpenter’s magnetic voice, often reverberated in my ears.

After graduation, we went on different paths. He started a law degree at a university in China’s capital. I wasn’t happy with my grades, so I studied for another year and resat the college entrance exam. During the loneliest times, it was the melancholic tune of ‘Yesterday Once More’ and the memory of him that helped me pull through the cold, long winter nights.

Eventually I got into another university in his city. I contacted him to say hi and we met up on his university campus where big, tall sycamore trees lined up the boulevard. The style of the music played in the café reminded me of ‘Yesterday Once More’, which made me feel slightly nostalgic about our school days. He asked if I would like to drink something. 随便, or anything goes, I replied. He ordered two cups of Americano, 美式咖啡 – I didn’t know what the word meant but I liked the sound of it. I also got its American reference.

Frankly, I’d never had coffee before and didn’t even know where to start on the menu. It often carries odd names, transliterated from English or Italian based on how they sound. For example, 拿铁, the Chinese term for latte, literally means ‘picking up a piece of iron’. Although these coffee names didn’t make much sense in Chinese, seeing them in print on the menu made me smile. Coffee was a rarity in the small, northern town I came from, where tea would be a more common drink. One could only get coffee at a McDonalds or a KFC in the 1980s when China had just opened to the Western world after decades of Cold War isolation. It was forbiddingly expensive: for the price of a cup of coffee, one could buy a decent meal at a local restaurant. But I’d always wanted to try coffee. In classical Hollywood movies such as Casablanca or Roman Holiday, dubbed in strange-sounding Mandarin and shown in old, dirty small-town cinemas, I’d seen on the big screen smartly dressed men and women sipping coffee leisurely on urban boulevards or seaside promenades. There was an endless sense of romance and elegance associated with the magic drink.

He talked about his life on campus, his demanding law course, and that he was studying TOFEL in preparation for an LLM application to an American Ivy League law school. I didn’t understand what these abbreviations meant, but I gathered from his enthusiastic voice that they must be something highly desirable. I nodded and felt happy for him. He asked me about my career plan. I told him that I would like to be a schoolteacher, and perhaps going back to the local school where we’d once studied. He smiled. I liked his shining, white teeth.

The coffee arrived. It was a black liquid contained in a small, white cup, placed on a delicate, white porcelain saucer. I picked up the cup with both hands and took a sip. The cup was hot, and the coffee was bitter, tasting like Chinese herbal medical soup but with a strange, smoky sting on the tongue. I put down the cup and looked at him. He smiled again – that charming, familiar smile. He had thick eyebrows and long eyelashes on his slightly angular face. There was a light touch of stubble around his chin.

I smiled apologetically as I realized that I was staring at him. He must have noticed my look too. An embarrassed expression appeared on his face. Averting my gaze, he picked up a shiny, silver-coloured spoon from the saucer, scooped up a white sugar cube from a small glass jar on the table, and dropped it gently into the black liquid. His movement was gentle, swift and sophisticated, like a well-rehearsed scene from a classical Hollywood romance.

He encouraged me to try again. I observed the white sugar cube sink to the bottom, bubble and then dissolve slowly. I scooped a spoonful of coffee from the cup and put the spoon in my mouth. The bitterness was still there, but a sweetness slowly spread on my tongue. I helped myself to a few more scoops. The sweet taste became stronger each time. The new discovery made me feel joyful, a reminder of why I’d waited for a year to contact him – a whole year of longing. I held the spoon in my mouth and enjoyed the bittersweet sensation enveloping my tongue.

I put down the spoon, commenting how nice the coffee tasted and thanking him for the treat. I noticed a strange look in his eyes. He sat there without a word. He wasn’t even looking at me. I could see that he wasn’t happy, but I couldn’t tell why. I wondered if I’d said anything wrong.

The background music had switched to a different style which I couldn’t recognise. I brought up the names of some old classmates from our school days, but I could see he wasn’t paying attention. His facial expression was blank, and his mind was elsewhere. I was slightly terrified, as I was quickly running out of conversation topics, which were the only things that connected me to him in this new city.

I couldn’t blame him. Most of our schoolmates had either entered vocational colleges or taken up service jobs locally. A few had got married and were expecting babies. The two of us were the only lucky people to have made it to university. He got into the university because of his talent and family connections, and me, because of my hard work and a university scholarship. We came from different families, after all. I came from a working- class family and was the first one to attend college. His father was a medical doctor and his mother an English teacher. Both had studied in the United States and spoke good American English. It was their wish for him to study in the States too.

He finished his coffee quickly and said he had to leave as his girlfriend was waiting. The word 女朋友, or girlfriend, made my heart sink, but I quickly concealed my disappointment. I didn’t ask about her. Nor did I want to. He called the waiter and paid the bill. We walked out of the café. The cold air outside made me shiver. I watched him walk away, his broad shoulders fitted perfectly in a black, leather jacket, his athletic legs wrapped snugly in tight, blue jeans. The orange and red sycamore leaves shone brightly in the afternoon sun. A bitter aftertaste lingered in my mouth.

We didn’t contact each other again after that meeting, despite having lived in the same city for three years. He wasn’t the person I’d known from high school, or in my dreams during those long, winter nights. Perhaps I was confused by the strange look in his eyes. Perhaps I felt jealous of his girlfriend. Or perhaps I felt ashamed of myself. He gradually vanished from my dreams, like the taste of Americano slowly fading in my mouth until I couldn’t recall what it tasted like.