Time was the one thing she dared not waste, second only to money.
Ding Zhitong stumbled back to her dorm room in a daze. Once inside, she swallowed another ibuprofen, lowered the blinds, and collapsed onto her bed, burying herself under the covers.
When she opened her eyes again, darkness enveloped her. She couldn’t tell if it was dawn or dusk. The old mattress sagged in the middle, forming a small nest where she curled up. Her body had warmed, and the pain had subsided. Faint voices drifted from next door, indistinct but soothing. For a brief moment, she lay motionless, pushing aside thoughts of job hunting and financial worries.
Fragments of the morning’s events flickered through her mind like scenes from a silent film. Perhaps due to her near-fainting state, everything had seemed filtered. The man she’d seen appeared almost like a Chinese ink painting – straight nose, delicate eyes, pale skin, pupils dark as charcoal, lips soft dawn red. His hands stood out – long fingers, even knuckles, nails neatly trimmed into perfect ovals.
Strangely, though she’d seen him before, she’d never observed him so closely.
The phone’s ring jolted her back to reality. Fumbling in the darkness, she finally located it on the floor beside her bed. The call had ended, and the screen’s harsh light made her squint. Seeing Song Mingmei’s name, she quickly called back with their pre-arranged excuse: “Hey, where are you? … I’m not feeling well … Bad stomachache … YeAh come back soon.”
This was their agreed-upon strategy for escaping clingy dates, though Song Mingmei used it far more often. In her year-plus at Ithaca, Ding Zhitong’s love life had been non-existent, focused solely on making money.
After hanging up, she noticed an unread text from over an hour ago: “Feeling better?”
The sender was just a string of numbers, but she knew it was Gan Yang. She hadn’t saved his number yet but had already memorized it.
“I’m fine now, thanks,” she replied, adding a new contact: “A-Gan.”
Almost immediately, he texted back: “Dinner together?”
Ding Zhitong remembered her promise but hadn’t expected him to cash in so quickly. As a poor student, she dreaded owing money. Glancing at the time – 19:35 – she realized she hadn’t eaten all day. Hunger gnawing, she replied with a simple “OK.”
He responded promptly: “What should we eat?”
After a moment’s thought, she suggested: “Meet at Carl Becker House?”
A-Gan: “The cafeteria???”
Ding Zhitong rolled her eyes. What did he expect? Even the cafeteria buffet costs over ten dollars.
He didn’t complain further, instead asking: “Want me to pick you up? I’m nearby.”
Ding Zhitong: “No need.”
A-Gan: “It’s on my way.”
Ding Zhitong: “Fine.”
Tossing aside her phone, she got up to freshen up, startled by her reflection. She’d collapsed earlier without changing or removing her makeup. After hours of sleep, her shirt was wrinkled beyond salvaging, and her makeup had smeared – blush migrating to her temples, lipstick smudged onto her chin. She couldn’t remember if this had happened before or after returning to her room.
Horrified at the thought of how she must have looked to Gan Yang, she quickly washed her face and changed into casual wear – a hoodie and jeans, topped with a down jacket. At the last moment, she turned back to apply light makeup, attempting to salvage some dignity.
Ten minutes later, they met outside her dorm.
Gan Yang had also shed his interview attire, wearing only a grey university hoodie despite the cold, a backpack slung over his shoulder.
“Feeling better?” he asked, studying her face.
“Really,” Ding Zhitong nodded.
“You looked pretty bad earlier…” he persisted.
Embarrassed, she deflected with self-deprecating humor: “The moment you mentioned 911, I sprang right up.”
Gan Yang looked confused.
“Do you know how expensive an ambulance ride is?” she explained.
Gan Yang’s expression softened into a gentle smile.
“Never met someone so obsessed with money?” Ding Zhitong asked nonchalantly, hands tucked into her jacket pockets as they walked toward campus.
“That’s not it,” Gan Yang replied, falling into step beside her.
Now it was Ding Zhitong’s turn to wait for an explanation.
Instead, he asked, “Do you know the first tourist attraction I visited after coming to America?”
“The Wall Street Bull?” Ding Zhitong guessed.
Gan Yang turned to her, surprised by her accuracy.
Ding Zhitong was equally startled by her lucky guess. After a pause, she explained, “That was the first place I visited in America too.”
“Really?” Gan Yang marveled.
“Of course,” Ding Zhitong confirmed.
“I went with my mom. She insisted on touching it for good business luck and made me touch it too, for good grades,” Gan Yang shared, smiling at the memory. “What made you go there?”
“I joined a New York day tour,” Ding Zhitong answered vaguely, leaving out the details.
By coincidence, she had also gone with her mother, accompanied by a group of middle-aged tourists from Northwest China. It was a delegation on an overseas inspection tour, and a local Chinese travel agency had been hired for guide services. Her mother, Yan Aihua, was the tour guide.
On the first day, Ding Zhitong flew from Shanghai to New York, barely sleeping during the long flight. Her hair clung to her face from static, and she looked pale and tired. Yan Aihua picked her up along with the tour group but didn’t take her to their Long Island home. Instead, she was sent with the group to a hotel, sharing a room with an odd-numbered tourist.
The next day, Ding Zhitong tagged along with the group’s sightseeing and shopping, helping with errands and translations.
Passing Broadway, they stopped at the Charging Bull. Tourists posed for photos, flashing V-signs and waving scarves. Yan Aihua, like all guides, shared trivia about the attraction. She mentioned that the bull wasn’t actually on Wall Street and that many major banks had moved their headquarters to Midtown after 9/11. She also repeated the superstition Gan Yang’s mother believed – touching the bull brought good business luck, especially its testicles.
After her standard spiel, Yan Aihua chatted with the tourists, mentioning that her daughter would soon attend Cornell.
Some expressed admiration and congratulations, but others were less supportive. “There are so many overseas returnees now,” one commented. “It’ll take years to earn back that tuition.”
Ding Zhitong glanced at her mother, but Yan Aihua remained unfazed. Still smiling, she gestured toward the bull and said, “A few years of Ivy League tuition? On this street, that’s just a year’s bonus.”
The tour group members, unaffected by the comment, simply laughed it off. Only Ding Zhitong lingered on the thought: Could it be that easy? She’d heard similar statements elsewhere but had no idea how to make them a reality.
After leaving the attraction, the bus dropped her and her two 50-pound suitcases off at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. From there, she boarded a long-distance bus to Ithaca. It would be a long time before she saw Yan Aihua again.
She didn’t know what had happened on the day Gan Yang visited the bull. From his brief mention, it seemed like a pleasant memory. But since she was reluctant to share her own story, she couldn’t ask about his.
At the West Campus dining hall, Ding Zhitong generously used two meal tickets to treat Gan Yang to a set meal.
Sitting across from each other, their unfamiliarity led to standard small talk: Which school did you attend before? How did you end up here? What are your plans?
Ding Zhitong’s background was straightforward: She’d completed her undergraduate degree in finance in Shanghai. During her senior year, she applied for graduate programs abroad and received two offers: Cornell and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She chose Cornell in Ithaca.
This was the abridged version, omitting certain details.
For instance, these private university professional programs didn’t offer scholarships. Her father, Ding Yanming, was just a regular technician and cultural enthusiast at a state-owned gearbox factory in the suburbs. He certainly couldn’t afford the $50,000-plus per semester tuition, not to mention living expenses.
Gan Yang’s path differed completely. He’d left China after middle school through an overseas study agency. His first high school in Philadelphia was so obscure it didn’t even appear in official rankings. The student body comprised four Black students, four Korean students, and two Chinese international students like himself who’d been enticed by agencies. As a minor, he initially did a homestay, then transferred schools several times. After considerable financial maneuvering, he finally entered a top-ranked private boarding school in New Jersey. By high school graduation, he’d somehow managed to secure a spot in an Ivy League university.
This reminded Ding Zhitong of Song Mingmei, who had applied to Columbia, Carnegie Mellon, and NYU Stern. Rejected by all, she’d ended up at Cornell, constantly complaining that locating a finance program in such a rural area was illogical and severely hindered internship and networking opportunities.
Surely Gan Yang, with his American high school diploma, had more options. Puzzled, Ding Zhitong asked, “What made you choose Ithaca?”
Gan Yang gave a surprisingly whimsical reason: “The scenery is beautiful.”
This vague answer caught Ding Zhitong off guard. Her own decision between two schools had been swayed by a promotional video showcasing Cornell’s campus.
But she quickly realized she might be overthinking it. Their school had been trailing the Ivy League for years, with the main campus truly in the middle of nowhere. Getting to class meant passing vast fields of horses, cows, and sheep. Drivers sometimes had to stop and wait patiently for a moose to strut across the road. The surrounding town was small, containing all necessary amenities but little else. Most Chinese students, coming from big cities, referred to it as “Cun” (village) – emphasizing its rural nature.
For such a school, scenic beauty was naturally a major selling point in recruitment videos. Every year, a significant number of students choose Ithaca for this reason.
Gan Yang added another motivation: “Plus, there are over 300 physical education courses to choose from.”
This was completely foreign to Ding Zhitong. After completing her final required PE class in her senior year of undergrad, she and her roommate celebrated with hotpot, relieved to never run 800 meters again.
“Which ones have you taken?” Ding Zhitong asked out of politeness.
“Skiing, of course,” Gan Yang began listing, “Also horseback riding, archery, Muay Thai, rowing…”
Ding Zhitong’s jaw dropped. Ithaca boasted five equestrian centers, and she’d once considered taking riding lessons since they were included in tuition but ultimately decided against it due to time constraints. As for rowing, the school team was full of alpha male types. On warm days, she’d often pause during her lunch break to watch them train by the river.
“You learned rowing too?” Ding Zhitong suddenly worried he might have seen her leaning against the railing, ogling the rowers’ muscles while munching on Subway.
“You can’t truly experience the Ivy League without rowing!” Gan Yang laughed, then added, “Oh, and last summer I even got my pilot’s license.”
“That’s an elective too?” Ding Zhitong felt cheated.
“No, no. There’s a flight school nearby, about a five-minute drive. It’s been rated one of the world’s best. When the weather’s good, you just call and book a lesson. Where else would you find such convenient conditions after graduation? Flying for an hour elsewhere might take half a day of travel.”
“How much does that cost?” Ding Zhitong asked casually.
Gan Yang calculated, “I flew a lot, so probably around 10K. If you want to minimize costs, you could probably do it for 8K.”
“Oh…” Ding Zhitong responded noncommittally, then teased, “Is there anything you haven’t tried?”
Gan Yang thought for a moment, “Golf. I’m not interested in that.”
Ding Zhitong chuckled, thinking it ironic that he’d skipped the most potentially useful activity.
Gan Yang, oblivious to her thoughts, added seriously, “But mostly, I focus on running.”
After all the activities he’d mentioned, which already seemed like a severe case of not focusing on academics, Ding Zhitong was surprised he had a “main” pursuit.
Early in her studies, Hu Shi’s “Mahjong Diary” had gone viral online. She’d visited the school’s Asian library to borrow it out of curiosity. The 1937 first edition was as thick as a dictionary, with vertical text in a mix of classical and vernacular Chinese. It opened with the line “Thick ice buries the great road, heavy snow weighs down the lonely city,” which made her laugh, feeling a kindred spirit. As she read on, she realized Hu’s experiences went far beyond mahjong. He attended various parties, dinners, and sporting events, went boating on Cayuga Lake, visited all the sights around Ithaca, and then traveled to Philadelphia, New York, and Boston… His study abroad experience a century ago was far richer than hers.
Her days and nights in Ithaca were spent entirely on studying and job hunting. It felt like she and Gan Yang were attending completely different schools.
“At least that matches the advertising,” she joked. “Unlike me – it took over a year to realize the promotional videos were all fake.”
“How so?” Gan Yang disagreed. “The roads around campus are perfect for running.”
“You keep mentioning running. Do you run year-round?” Ding Zhitong asked.
“Year-round,” Gan Yang nodded.
“Even in winter?” she pressed.
“Even in winter,” he confirmed.
Ding Zhitong made a gesture of respect, then recounted her experience: “The first semester starts in September. Fall is beautiful, but it doesn’t last long before it snows. The second semester I spent at the Manhattan campus, plus summer internships, so I essentially spent spring and summer in the city. The final semester back in Ithaca, it starts snowing again just days after October ends.”
Ithaca’s winters were unbearably long and cold for her. As a Shanghai native, she’d never seen heavy snow before. While initially captivated by the snowy landscape, the reality of finishing assignments at 1 AM, then trudging through the snow to reach the central campus for an 8:40 AM class the next morning made her feel like a novice monk entering a mountain temple, cold enough to cry.
Gan Yang, however, seemed proud: “I didn’t do a summer internship. It’s too beautiful here in summer.”
“You stayed in Ithaca the summer between junior and senior year? What did you do for two months?” Though she could guess, Ding Zhitong still asked.
As expected, he answered, “Running.”
“Are you good at it?” she continued.
“Decent for an amateur, but can’t compare to the track team,” Gan Yang said modestly. “Those guys are incredible, and that’s just the college team. Professionals are on another level entirely.”
“Then why invest so much time and energy into it?” Ding Zhitong wondered.
She could understand if it was just to add flair to a resume, as many did. Even pure physical exercise made sense. But to forgo a summer internship for running, or to miss a BB interview opportunity for a marathon, seemed incomprehensible.
As soon as she asked, she felt it might be too forward. If his family was wealthy, who would want a job working 100 hours a week? She didn’t know Gan Yang’s plans, or if he even intended to stay in the U.S., let alone pursue a career in finance. She vaguely recalled Song Mingmei mentioning that Gan Yang’s family owned a factory. Perhaps he was destined to take over the family business after graduation.
Gan Yang, however, thought seriously before asking in return, “Does one need a reason to enjoy doing something?”
Ding Zhitong was speechless, thinking this typified rich kid logic.
Yet, as Gan Yang spoke, his eyes held a unique sparkle, reminiscent of his distinctive smile. It left a strong impression on her, though she couldn’t quite describe it to others.
For a moment, she tried to imagine herself running along Ithaca’s country roads. It felt like a solitary way to spend time, with no particular destination or expected outcome.
But reality didn’t allow for such indulgences. She studied over ten hours daily, constantly rushing between classes, exams, papers, internships, and job hunting. Apart from money, time was the one thing she dared not waste.