Moments wash over their bodies in the haze of October twilight. We imagine asking how long they’ll be sitting.

They aren’t trying to solve for empty minutes. They reply nothing in particular, they’re just passing the time. My brother likes to strike up conversation and ask what’s on their mind.

Wandering alongside Beijing’s canals, we pass groups of old men perched on benches in silence. My brother says that like many Chinese phrases, it’s an artifact with ancient roots-an imperial phrase used to describe how long it might take someone to reach the next village over on horseback. It’s often the answer I get when I ask how soon we’ll eat lunch, or when our next train will arrive. It’s not quite immediate, not quite a while. It’s a unit of time that isn’t exactly a unit of time, because it doesn’t mean anything precise. The first slang phrase he teaches me is a unit of time. He’s sinking into life gradually, learning the subway routes and the slang. I catch him slowly rereading characters as he brushes his teeth. But he doesn’t seem to get anxious about each day’s puzzles. The demanding nature of it all, the grit. Foreigners.Įverything seems to take more time-mapping the knotted web of hut-lined alleys, learning to maneuver our meals without forks-and I wonder if that’s what appeals to my brother. We haggle with the taxi drivers who offer us overpriced rides. We cross the streets quickly to avoid women whizzing by on motorbikes. Everything seems so difficult, she muses in our first days there. On the flight to China my mother tells me that she hopes to see what it is exactly about “that place,” that place being China, that’s so magnetic for my brother. He asks me what I’ve been reading lately. When I arrive in Beijing to visit him, he tells me that he’s joined a Heidegger reading group in Mandarin. He has the temperament for things that take time. My brother has always had a patience for things that are hard to understand.

Life on the line emma goldberg