Asia trip 2002: Sunday afternoon tour of the Forbidden City

[Continued from: Asia trip 2002: early Sunday afternoon in Beijing]

I meet T in the hotel lobby as planned. In person he’s slightly stocky, a bit shy, but overall he looks like a really lovely guy. He must be in his early 20’s. I discover that when I speak to him, it takes him a while to work out his reply in English. This hadn’t been obvious in the gay.com chat rooms where conversations occur slowly anyway, so if nothing else being with me will give him good practise at speaking English. I can tell he doesn’t do this very often and its clear that he finds the situation a bit uncomfortable.

When we get out of the hotel he relaxes a bit. It’s a 10 minute walk from the hotel to the entrance to the Forbidden City, so while we’re walking along he tells me a bit about his life. He’s studying economics at one of the universities in Beijing. He’s looking forward to seeing his family when he goes back to his home town for the summer holidays in a couple of days. And his home town is about two hours outside Beijing by train.

He’s a reasonable tour guide. We spend around an hour or more in the Forbidden City, which goes on, and on, and on, with similar looking courtyards and buildings. Halfway though I buy us a couple of tins of Coca-Cola, which we sit and drink together. I ask him to teach me a couple of words of the local Beijing Chinese dialect. I learn that 'Thank-you' is 'shay-shay' (although he writes it xie-xie), and 'hello' is 'knee-har'. Eventually we reach the exit and I’m relieved to see that there are taxis available. So we take a cab back to the hotel.

When we get up to my room, he gets a bit nervous again. “I’m not sure about this”, he says.

To relax him and occupy his mind, I ask him to point out any landmarks that are visible from the bedroom window, because my room is on quite a high floor. While he’s looking out the window, I walk up to him and put my hand on his shoulder. At first he’s a bit surprised that I’ve touched him but I smile at him and he smiles back. Soon we’re sitting down next to each other on the side of the bed.

“Are you sure you’ve got time for this?” he says.

“Yes of course” I reply, “I’ve been looking forward to this all afternoon”. I have a strong impression that T hasn’t ever had sex with a guy before, so I want to make sure he has a good experience with me.

It’s clear I’m going to have to take the lead so I take things very slowly, with a lot of smiling, eye contact, gentle touching. Eventually we’re both naked on the bed and I take the opportunity to cuddle him, which he enjoys. We end up wanking each other off.

After we’ve cleaned up in the bathroom, I beckon him back to the bed for more cuddling. While he’s lying in my arms I ask him about the Chinese film which I had seen recently “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”. He tells me that it wasn’t very popular with the people he knows because the action sequences were not realistic. We spend what seems like ages just lying naked in each other’s arms. At one point I quietly ask him how he feels and it takes him a little while to find the English - “Great”, he replies. It starts to get dark in the room because there are no lights on and the daylight outside is starting to fade.

I never pay for sex, but I want to give this lovely Chinese guy something for the tour of the Forbidden City, so I put about £20 worth of Chinese money on the table. “Thanks for the tour” I say, “so why don’t you take that money and buy your mother a present”. Although he takes the money, he says “you didn’t have to give me anything”.

It’s been a great afternoon. After T has left, it’s around 10am back in London so I phone boyfriend number 1 to tell him I’ve arrived safely in Beijing.

[To be continued: Asia trip 2002: Monday evening in Shanghai with H]