Xuezhuang and Olivia were sharing a pot of lemon tea on the balcony of a bar not far from the Lama Temple. I was sitting right next to them, but I hadn’t noticed because my head was buried in a page of words that annoyed the life out of me.

It was a Sunday and I took the subway to the temple at Panjiayuan after spending hours wandering among the antique market stalls looking for a gift. I was actually basking in the late October sun and trying to muster words I could recognize in the conversations going on around the jade stone piles and Zhou Enlai portraits.

Sunday in Beijing is something special. At Panjiayuan or in Yongheng Hutong or around Yuyuantan Lake, you can watch countless couples, friends and families enjoying each other’s company. Often the shops that surround them act as props. Some people take their photos of a shop window, others point to an animal in a window, but it doesn’t really look like they’re shopping. Consumption is not the purpose of these Sunday gatherings that linger in the dark.

Last Sunday at Panjiayuan, for example, I watched an auctioneer praise one painting after another, making his case to rows of retirees sitting around him on folding chairs. No one in the audience was scrolling through their phones, they kept their eyes on the paintings and their champion, but the whole time they were carrying on conversations in each other’s ears – nodding, frowning, giggling. They were never about to bid on anything, they were just content to spend the day there in good company with some art history as the background sound. And despite the lack of business, the auctioneer seemed content to be there too, asking for another painting to be rolled out by his assistant when he had exhausted yet another chapter of his matinee show.

I had forgotten all that too quickly as I sat staring at the words from home on the balcony of that bar by the Lama Temple until Olivia caught my eye.

“Are you unhappy?” she asked without any introduction, without polite preliminaries, without fumbling. “We noticed the look on your face and thought you might not be happy.”

I laughed and then realized I hadn’t been scratching my head over a puzzle, I’d been trying to pull my hair out as I tumbled over the page. Maybe she was being polite, maybe she was using “miserable” instead of “lost.”

I don’t recall any stranger ever asking this question before. People we know intimately, even for a lifetime, rarely ask us a question like this.

She had forced me to think. I was having a beer as dusk fell and finally found a gift for my friend at the market and managed to haggle the price with bits of china.

“I’m fine,” I replied, putting the cap on my pen. Then we introduced ourselves and talked about accents and their homes and mine and the Milky Way and work.

Olivia is from Qinhuangdao in Hebei Province and works in online retail, selling the packaging that sweets are packed in. One day, he wants to set up his own store.

“Where are you going to open it?” I asked. “I’ll call and buy something.”

“It’s still on its way from Mars,” she laughed.

Xuezhuang is originally from Huludao in Liaoning and moved to Beijing to work in software testing. She puts her English skills to good use, ensuring that overseas programs run smoothly when launched in China.

While pouring more tea, Xuezhuang told me the original story behind the recently released film, Fall In the Mortal World; of the forbidden love between Zhinyu, one of the seven daughters of the Queen of Heaven, and Niulang, a cowherd. We talked about the similarities between Chinese and Greek mythology and the universal jealousy of the gods.

Olivia was silent for a while, looking at the rooftops beyond, then humming a song quietly to herself, and then, without warning, asked me, “Are people nice where you come from?”

There was both playfulness and concern in her sporadic line of questioning, but also a relentlessness that almost took my breath away, “Cut the bullshit,” she said, “What about the world and what about your people?”

Before I answered, I looked back at the page I’d been working on and the words “we must foster a fierce kindness in each other” written across the top.

“The kindest thing in the world,” I said, “but I would say this.”