A cab drops us at the university, at the West Gate. When we meet Shona, she’s wearing shorts again, royal blue, patterned with small white angelfish, along with a sleeveless denim top. And the same clashing collection of bracelets and necklaces. I ask her why it’s called Sichuan Normal University.
‘A normal university is for teacher training,’ she says. She tells us it’s coming close to the end of the academic year but most courses are still running. There are a lot of courses, like hers, for international students. In her master’s class there are people from Italy, Korea, Tibet, France, America, Mexico and Thailand. Classes are taught in Chinese so they all need at least a working knowledge of Mandarin.
‘Were you always good at languages?’ I ask.
‘Sort of. My mum was from Finland so I grew up bilingual.’
At the entrance there’s an open-air arcade, three storeys high, with shops selling groceries, DVDs, accessories, then kebab and noodle stalls, a dumpling shop and restaurants. We visit all of these and distribute copies of the fliers.
Further inside the campus, trees line the avenues and provide shade in the courtyards between the buildings – but even here it is stifling. A patina of gritty dust is silted over everything.
We take a broad avenue downhill, lined with busts of famous people: philosophers, musicians, artists, scientists and writers. Their names are in Chinese. One or two I recognize: Charles Darwin, Marie Curie.
Passing a building with rows of large sinks inside, I see ranks of vacuum flasks piled up outside.
‘The halls don’t have hot water,’ Shona says. ‘Students fetch it from here for washing.’
The blister on my heel, tight with fluid, stings with each step. My mosquito bites from the first visit to the bar are big red lumps with crusty yellow centres. The need to scratch is intense. I’m able to resist it most of the time but at night I think I do it in my sleep.
We leave leaflets in the library, the gym, the admin offices and the student canteen. Shona takes a bundle to give to her faculty. A couple of times we stop when we run into someone she knows, but neither of them has news of Lori.
Some students are splashing about in the open-air swimming-pool at the bottom of the hill. It’s so inviting. I think of Finn, of his prowess in the water. Like a seal, sleek and smooth and fast.
I miss my boys.
