My next stop was Wuzhen, which literally means "murky town". The faded walls and dark tiles give it a rather "murky" countenance.

Wuzhen is a 1000 year old town in Suzhou that rests on water. Similar in construct to Lijiang, without the vibrant glamour, but richer in cultural complexity. Lijiang is the glitzy diva in the nightclub, Wuzhen is the sophisticated girl next door. One is hot and spicy, the other cool and refreshing. Madonna vs. Drew Berrymore. Lijiang Old Town was the palace for the local ruler, whereas Wuzhen is a town for the common people.

For over a thousand years, Wuzhen has never changed its name, address, water system or lifestyle. The traditional buildings are still well preserved after centuries upon centuries of wear and tear. Some families have lived here for generations, and live here peacefully to this day. For city dwellers like me, Wuzhen is a far and distant dream. But once you come here, you quickly realize how very real and present it is.

The town is built on a dense network of rivers and wharves, with houses along the water, markets close to bridges, and white-gray courtyard residences with their colours mellowed by time. I've always found the way of life from a different time in the East extremely intriguing. In Wuzhen, they show you how it was done, everything from thousand year old pharmacies, wineries, herbal dyeing workshops, tobacco workshops, pawn shops, silk stores, foundry workshops, to what their kitchens looked like, how wedding ceremonies were conducted, what kinds of beds different members of the families slept in, how soy pastes were made, or foot binding was done.  

As I was walking along the narrow flagstone streets eating a freshly steamed "Ding Sheng Gao" – Must Win Cake (a hot fluffy, airy rice bun with a cake-like texture filled with sweet red bean paste; it's supposed to bring you good luck when you take entrance exams to work for the emperor), I got a text message out of the blue.

It was from Hong Wang!

"Hi, where are you touring right now?"

'Hong Wang is messaging ME?!' I fumbled with my Ding Sheng Gao, umbrella, purse and cellphone, suddenly wishing for eight tentacles like an octopus as I eagerly wrote him a response right away:

"Wuzhen water town. Small bridge, flowing river, cute house," I wrote. Face throbbing.

"Wow, you still remember this Chinese poem, bridge river home?...a girl I used to like just got married, got her wedding candy today. I feel a bit odd."

And then he proceeded to tell me their love story over text message. I was amazed and thrilled that he contacted me. I very much thought I'd never hear from him again after that dinner in Beijing. Why was he messaging to tell me about his crush? Did he really have no one to talk to?

"Is this the girl from junior high you were telling me at dinner? Why didn't you pursue her?"

"No she's a translator from my company. We dated for a while."

"And then?"

"And we didn't end up together. She had a boyfriend who wasn't in Beijing at the time. He's now her husband. I was breaking up with my girlfriend at the time...sigh...it's messy."

"So basically you wanted to steal the girl while her boyfriend was out of town, but failed?"

"I wasn't trying to steal her, if I'd wanted to do that, of course I'd have succeeded. We just had feelings for each other but felt there'd be no result. And then my girlfriend came back and wanted to get back together. Sigh..."

I wasn't sure why he was telling me all this. But whatever he was saying, he was talking to me. That's a good sign, right? And it was confirming my suspicion that he might like me. So there might be hope after all?  I needed to come up with an excuse to see him again...

As all these thoughts were racing through my mind, I walked into a thousand-year-old brewery called San Bai Brewery. San Bai means "three whites" denoting the three main ingredients of the liquor: white rice, white flour and white water. San Bai wine was made famous because it was offered as a tribute to the Emperors of the Ming Dynasty. I walked in from the shop front all the way to the workshop at the back, where the wine was handmade everyday using the traditional brewing method. There were jugs and jugs of wine labeled with a square of red paper, on which "wine" was written in black Chinese calligraphy. They sat neatly in square formation in the courtyard. I could smell the fragrance all the way from the street. The shop owner offered me a small cup to taste. The clear liquid was still warm from the tank. It was very smooth, with a sweet and lingering after taste. I was surprised how soft it was, considering most 55% alcohol liquors are usually very spicy.

The clay bottle came wrapped in a drawstring pouch, foliage dyed in a shade of deep blue with patterns of white flowers peeking through. I bought a bottle of San Bai wine. 

This would be my excuse to see Hong Wang.

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The last city on my Jiangnan trip was Shanghai, the great big metropolitan city of China. If the word for Beijing is POWER then the word for Shanghai is MONEY. Grand and gorgeous, busy and bustling. With forests of skyscrapers, winding highway bridges that look like the wings of butterflies or infinity signs. In small towns like Wuzhen and Lijiang one checks out the history, in big cities like Shanghai what does one do? That's a no brainer, one goes clubbing. Duh!

I went clubbing with Tim on a Thursday night.

Tim is one of my favourite professors from university. Open, direct, to the point. A PhD and a former race car driver. He's the perfect fusion of the cool and nerdy. A serious party-animal and a sensitive, perceptive friend. Passionate about teaching and compassionate towards those who are trying to learn. Keen in his observations. Solid and grounded in his arguments. Tim always instills a sense of confidence in me whenever I try to make sense of piles of airy fairy consumer research that all seem to point in different directions. In class, he speaks with the rhythmic pulsations of a rap singer, making sure there's a heavy drum beat to accompany with each major point he wants us to remember.

I took his brand management class in 4th year, and just loved it. He's so articulate and specific and great at explaining even the nooks and crannies of the consumer mind that often go unnoticed or unarticulated. In marketing we call it consumer insight. This kind of astute observation extends all the way to the way he sees our learning habits. For example, when Tim was a student, he discovered the reason he was so bad at math (I remember this because I was also bad at math), was because he had this habit of dropping the units at the end of equations, and hence would get confused and messed up in the subsequent calculations. Once he's corrected that one little habit, his grades improved dramatically. Similarly in marketing, the right insights could generate millions in additional revenue. That insight, that kernel of truth, is often hard to find. Sometimes it's hidden in plain sight, sometimes it's buried deep inside the consumer's subconscious. He taught with the precision and certainty of a surgeon's scalpel that cuts into this mysterious, mushy, vague and confusingly exciting grey matter known as the consumer psyche. That's what made his classes so fascinating.

After we graduated, Tim welcomed his students into his personal life. All his former students, we'd go for drinks once in a while, and he'd invite us to his Halloween house parties. While I'm honored and excited to be invited into his life, I have to admit, I still feel awkward sometimes, unsure how to regard him as a friend and no longer as a teacher. Because in Chinese culture, a teacher is a highly regarded figure, deserving the kind of respect equal to that of parents or elders from the previous generation, and this kind of regard and respect continues for a lifetime, even if he is no longer your teacher - "One day a teacher, always a father." While I'm still trying to make this mental adjustment, I met up with Tim in Shanghai, who was teaching an International MBA course at one of the best universities in China.

Tim, yes the foreigner who doesn't speak Chinese beyond "hello" and "thank you", showed me around the nightlife of Shanghai.

He took me to a couple of trendy pubs and clubs frequented by expats. Very posh and very nice. We smoked shisha out of a hookah, drank Sambuca, saw the bund, watched the Chinese flag brandish in the wind, which was an odd place for a Chinese flag to be, in the middle of an outdoor patio of a night club by the bund. I guess it is China after all, where patriots love to flaunt their national pride every chance they get, or just to remind the club full of drunken foreigners, where everyone is speaking English, in case they forgot where they were, that hey, this is China.

Tim told me when he came to Shanghai last year to teach the same course for a week, he met Claire for the first time, his now girlfriend from Paris, at the pub Barbarossa where we smoked shisha. Their love story continued even after he'd left Shanghai. They kept in touch through emails, calls and visits in France and Canada for an entire year. Very recently Claire had moved to Vancouver to join him permanently. Yet another fairy-tale-esque encounter that happily took up residence in reality.

Barbarossa was very nice, with rooftop patios, candlelit bars, low cushioned seating. I was so in awe with everything, I couldn't stop taking pictures. "You're such a typical Asian girl," Tim joked, "that's just a candle and a tree!" seeing that I was snapping away at nothings. I'm convinced that at some point, Tim was embarrassed to be seen with me.

After a few drinks, I got all tipsy and start telling him about my latest crush, Hong Wang. "It's so weird the things women are moved by," Tim remarked, "but he sounds like a really kind person. Like the male version of you. You should tell him how you feel. And let him decide what he wants to do about it. Because he's shy, he's not going to make a move. But you grew up in North America, you're more forward and direct, so you have to take the initiative here." As if it was my cultural imperative to confess to a man who was already someone else's boyfriend! Yes I grew up in Canada, but I also half grew up in China. And more importantly, I'm a GIRL. Aren't you supposed to wait for the GUY to say I love you first? "I mean, that's what I would do." Tim continued.

Tim then went on to analyze, or translate the metaphors Hong Wang had been using when telling me about his crush on the married woman. "He's implying that he doesn't want the same thing to happen to you. You guys are both so shy. He needs a female version of me as a friend to translate what you've been doing to him, and then maybe you guys can finally be together."