We stayed under the radar for two days in Shenyang before officially meeting up with Feng’s relatives. Not bad by Chinese standards—I was half expecting the entire family would be waiting for us with food at the train station.

We started getting phone calls on Thursday. On Friday, we were summoned to Sūjiātún (苏家屯), on the outskirts of Shenyang. Except it’s not really “on the outskirts” now since it’s on the new 34-kilometre-long subway line 4. Goodbye, long bus trip!

We got off at Shěnyáng nánzhàn, an eerie empty subway and railway station.

Then we started walking to get to the apartment building, about 30 minutes away. We could have called, I’m sure we would have been offered a ride. In fact, I’m pretty sure we were going to be told that walking in the heat is pure craziness (they did say that, and yes, it is). But we wanted to see what Sūjiātún looks like now.

If I were a trending Instagrammer, I’d say Sūjiātún is the “authentic China.” We couldn’t find the dog meat restaurant where I took pictures the last time—the Chinese have moved on to beef and octopus skewers—but it’s still one of these places where few foreigners come. Half of Sūjiātún is now standard suburban China with newly built condos. The rest is still another world with one-storey buildings, blue coveralls drying outside, and mahjong games on the sidewalk to kill time.

This is where Feng went to school, sneaked into the movie theatre, and lived for a little while as a kid.

“Hey! HEY!”

“I wonder how your aunt was able to spot us in the street,” I joked.

Feng’s aunts haven’t changed in ten years. I want Chinese good genes, although I can’t complain about mine… my mum looks really young and Mamie did too until the end.

The whole “Take it!”, “No, really, thank you” routine hasn’t changed either. We were offered lunch, ice cream, money, bananas, an apartment, candies, a ride, fruits, and a ride—yes, in this specific order.

Feng and I went for a walk, leaving Mark to one of the aunts. When we came back, one of Feng’s cousins was here with her five-year-old boy.

“Mark can stay!”

I was listening to the conversation on the couch while having a completely different conversation at the table.

“Do we let Mark stay?”

“Wait, what? Does he want to stay overnight? Mark? Are you aware of the fact that you don’t speak Chinese and they are going to feed you constantly?”

“Yeah. But I want to stay. Just for one night, right?”

Mark wanted to play with the five-year-old. I suspect he also really liked the brand-new TV and kind of wanted to have a sleepover experience—Mark has never been invited to a sleepover, the only place he has stayed without us so far is my in-laws’.

And maybe he was just really tired of hanging out with us, who knows.

“Okay… but you don’t have anything with you. No tablet, no clean clothes for tomorrow…”

I shrugged. Whatever.

And this is how we abandoned Mark to relatives I barely know.

Don’t worry, we picked him up today.