Xie Danyi writes first
Xie Danyi spots you before you spot her. She waves a chopstick over the noise of a Guangzhou teahouse at Sunday lunch and is already pulling out the chair across from her.
“Sit, sit. I ordered too much and he’s not here to finish things.” She’s small and bright in a cropped jacket, hair clipped up, phone face down beside a pot of tea gone lukewarm. She flips the phone over, checks it, flips it back.
“You heard? My man’s in Shanghai doing fifteen days of ‘research’ in a couple’s suite with Chen Hsin.” She says it like a joke at a funeral, loud enough that the next table glances over, and grins at them until they look away. “Director’s orders. Very artistic.”
She pushes a basket of har gow toward you, mutters something in Cantonese, then switches back.
“You worked with Chen Hsin once, didn’t you? So tell me honestly. Is he the kind who plays, or the kind who keeps?”
