Page 25 of From Beijing, With Love

“Have you taken me here to murder me?” Daniel asked with a shaky chuckle as he scanned the winding hutong that stretched ahead of them.

“Yes. I wanted to murder you, and I chose to do it after a five-hour-long tour through two of the most heavily surveilled parts of Beijing,” Yang deadpanned. “During the hottest part of summer, all because I’m committed to giving you one last experience before I do the deed.”

A mischievous smile crept onto Daniel’s handsome features. “I’ve listened to enough true crime podcasts to know murderers aren’t always smart.”

“At the risk of sounding conceited, I’m fairly certain I’m smart enough to pull off a murder if I so chose”—Yang paused—“and get away with it.”

He flashed Daniel a smile before walking into the brick-lined hutong, telling himself not to look back. His smile deepened as the sound of Daniel’s hurried footsteps echoed behind him.

These narrow hutongs were quintessential to Old Beijing, even though few remained after the rapid development of the city. When they emerged onto Hua Jie and that familiar floral air hit him, Yang turned so he could see Daniel’s open-book face light up at the sight. It shouldn’t have felt like an accomplishment—like all the perfect test scores he’d earned growing up, like always being told he’d go places in life—but it did.

“Welcome to Hua Jie,” Yang said as he stepped onto the street, the bricks under their feet giving way to flagstone. “It translates to Flower Street. It’s a local secret.” He raised a finger to his lips. “You can’t find it on a map. It’s just a glorified hutong that grew into something of its own.”

“Hutong?”

“These narrow alleys we have been walking through are hutongs. All along them are siheyuan—courtyard houses. The true iconic architecture of Old Beijing,” Yang said. The labyrinth of hutongs only a local could navigate with confidence was more Beijing to him than the Great Wall and the Forbidden City combined. He pointed to the myriad porcelain planters lining the street. “Have you figured out where Hua Jie got its name yet?”

Daniel reached for the pearl-white flowers climbing on the trellis. “These are …”

“Jasmine blossoms.” Yang smiled, taking a deep inhale. “They bloom from May to September. And in the winter months, the locals string lights in their place.”

“So Flower Street is always blooming,” Daniel said with a grin, his brows relaxing. “How did you find this place?”

“I know it from …” Yang stopped himself. The real answer to Daniel’s simple question was complicated, because he’d have to talk about his mom. He went with a half-truth instead. “I’m a local.”

“Not originally. At the bar, you said you grew up in …” Daniel grimaced, like he was turning his mental pocket inside out. “Sorry. I’m terrible with Chinese names.”

“It’s okay. It’s hard to remember names when you are five drinks in,” Yang said, then watched Daniel wince at his words. He hadn’t meant for the words to come out like that—sarcastic and judgmental. He didn’t want to admit he was touched that Daniel remembered the passing detail about his hometown. He offered him a smile. “I’m starving. How about you?”

Daniel’s eyes darted to the street vendors and their makeshift stations. “Maybe?”

Hua Jie was a street food heaven. Woks of chestnuts roasted over open flames, pots of aromatic tea eggs simmered away on portable stoves, skewers of meat crackled above the fiery grill, and ruby jujubes stuffed with sticky rice sat pretty on wooden platters. All of it made Yang ravenous. He couldn’t remember the last thing he ate. Was it the bag of instant ramen he’d eaten while proofreading his paper last night?

Daniel stuck his hands in his pockets. “I … uh, I’m not sure if I’m a street-food person.”

“I wasn’t aware that street food was a category of people.” Yang had meant it as a joke, but when it didn’t land, something clicked.

He remembered Daniel dousing his hands with sanitizer gel and his question about the cleanliness of the public washroom. Yang had assumed his behavior was just some first-world elitism, but perhaps there was more to it.

He considered his next words carefully. “My plan was to take you to a restaurant. It’s not a street stall, I promise. It’s … modest, but definitely clean. Do you want to have a look? If you don’t like it, we’ll go somewhere else.”

After a moment, Daniel nodded and Yang let out a breath. As they walked down the flagstone street, Daniel’s shoulder brushed against his. The contact was too light. Too brief. Yang’s thoughts drifted to Tiananmen Square and how it had felt to have Daniel’s hand in his. Shaking his head, he shut the thoughts down.

No, he wasn’t going there. In fact, he’d spent the last decade not going anywhere near there.

They were going to eat, and that was all.

Yang second-guessed himself as he held the worn wooden door open. This wasn’t one of those tourist-friendly restaurants with English menus that touted a sanitized version of authenticity. There were only five tables, each bearing the grooves of age, and at least half of them teetered annoyingly on a short leg. Huajiemian—Flower Street Noodles—didn’t try to be anything that it wasn’t. It was born partly out of a desire to serve the neighborhood, partly out of Mr. Wang’s boredom in retirement. This was the place that had gotten Yang through his first homesick year in Beijing, the place his mom had once loved.

“What do you think?” Yang asked, glancing at the sage-green curtain at the back of the restaurant. At any moment now, Mrs. Wang would burst through it, and then it’d be too late to make a graceful exit.

Daniel stood at the doorway, one foot across the threshold, his face inscrutable. When he smiled a moment later and stepped inside, something warm flooded Yang’s chest.

Yang led Daniel to his usual table in the window nook overlooking the street. The two-seater table felt small, as he was accustomed to having it all to himself. When was the last time he’d taken someone here? It might have been Meiwen, after she gave him the framed photo of his mom two years back. The place wasn’t her style, though. Too homely. Too ordinary.

“What kind of food—” Daniel’s question was cut short as Mrs. Wang dashed out of the kitchen.

“I thought you forgot about us,” she said to Yang in jovial, Beijing-accented Mandarin, patting him on the shoulder. Her permed gray hair was pushed back by a yellow headband embroidered with red flowers. If she was surprised to see Daniel with Yang—or anyone with Yang, for that matter—she didn’t show it. She and her husband had fed Yang countless meals in the past four years, like they’d fed his mom decades ago when she resided in one of the siheyuans in the neighborhood.