There are times, especially at night, when I feel as if I am living in a computer chip. The odd black skyline shapes, the blinking, bending streams of smooth neon light, the roaring electric density, the unexpected quiet of the squat residential apartment blocks with their dark, narrow, maze-like private streets, protected by guarded gates, the square Lanzhou street grids broken up by random angular byways, all fold into a William Gibson dream of a computer city plexus of pulsating, artificially lit intensity. This is not necessarily a bad feeling, in fact it’s often energizing, occasionally alienating, always interesting. Whenever I feel the need to bring it back down to a more personal level, day or night, I hit the streets and wander about like a demented monk. The streets always reconnect me, revive me, engage me. So, I thought I would take you along with me on a walk through my neighborhood. I leave my 3rd floor apartment, walk down the clean swept but dingy concrete stairs and out into a courtyard surrounded by the buildings that make up my apartment complex, with parking spaces for the cars my neighbors own and a small playground where residents practice a tai chi-sword dance most mornings, where groups of school children play in the evenings, and over which, sometimes, the moon playfully hangs. I turn left, right, left, walk along a brown wall covered with climbing vines turned reddish autumn, unlock the gate by the guard shack with a small, blue plastic disk, hold the door for whomever is waiting, pass the shop with the boiling metal cauldron out front where you select delicacies from the refrigerated case, pre-skewered on long wooden sticks, the offerings include meat, mushrooms, seaweed, veggies and tofu in various shapes, then hand it to the cooker who drops in into the steaming pot, select your noodles, then wait a few minutes, after which it is whisked into a bowl and wham-bam the cooker scoops spices into the mixture, with broth, cilantro, and things I can’t name and serves it with a flourish, charging approximately 13 RMB (US $2.05). I used to go to this particular shop all the time, but my stomach began to rebel at what the cook was swooping into my bowl. Sudden, drop everything, trips to the bathroom became more frequent and every time I went back (at least in my imagination), the cook would look surprised as if I were Rasputin and had survived the latest round of poisoning. Luckily, there are three other shops in the neighborhood where I can get the same thing and at least, so far, they haven’t tried to poison me.
Moving on, there is a row of stores: a large restaurant, sausage store where the women peers out as if she is in a lighted aquarium, a China Mobile outlet where you can also buy train tickets, a popular Muslim noodle house, the stairway leading up to the school I teach at, another noodle shop, a hairdresser, assorted shops selling things I never buy, a China Tobacco merchant, a Samsung store, a clothing shop featuring stars and stripes colored velour pajamas in the window that I almost bought as a joke (and still might), a bread shop, another restaurant, fruit/grocery store, then an alleyway leading into another apartment labyrinth. Whew. Continuing on, there’s a small place open only sporadically where people line up to buy roasted pork shoulder and other pig parts, a window store selling chicken feet, where you hand the money in through a sliding Plexiglas partition, a larger grocery store, another fruit place, trinket shop, a larger hairdressers, a roasted pig snout, chicken, peanut emporium where they always seem happy to see me, and a bank/ATM that takes up the whole corner. Across the street are two more banks, and in the parking lot at night people gather around music piped through portable speakers, and move about in clockwise circles, doing a flowing, graceful, aerobic, Chinese exercise dance. Sometime when my mood is right, I am going to join them. But right now, imagine that you are walking with me. You would see most people still stare at me as if I were a giant platypus walking upright. Usually, China is pokerfaced but foreigners (laowai) in this part of the country are still a rarity. Can you see the children excitedly tug on their parent’s coat to point me out? Can you see the double and triple takes? Look at the ones taken by surprise, gaping involuntarily. And here--it’s coming, the ones who summon their courage and belt out the only word they know: halooo! Watch their surprise when I answer back, watch them automatically giggle in amazement. Most seem happy to see me or are at least indifferent. Then there are those in the minority who react to my presence in a variety of scornful ways. From the ones who are vaguely resentful, to those who treat me with elaborate condescension, to the openly mocking jokesters, to the poison-eyed hateful. I’ve seen them all in varying degrees and try to smile or nod at them in a friendly way rather than blurt out what so easily springs to mind. They hate what they think I represent. To them I am a rolling stereotype, a light skinned devil, a pig, a barbarian. But what I see when I walk down the street are just people, people like all of us, wishing, wondering, wanting, afraid of being alone, eager for acceptance, hungry for love, so uncertain, longing for surety, finding none but still pressing on through the sticky parts of life, full of unacknowledged talent, desire, inner beauty, and unwritten poems and songs that call out to the child in them in the middle of the night. I meant to take you on a tour of my neighborhood, but only got two blocks. I accept full responsibility. As the all around fun guy and professor of think-ology, B. Hutton, is fond of saying, “I blame myself.” I had a dream the other night where I was underwater and a fat, smiling, Buddha fish beckoned to me and said, “Laugh with precision; err on the side of openness,” then disappeared. I followed the bubbles back up to the surface and woke up sucking air in my bedroom in China. And I wondered which was stranger: that I was offered wisdom by a talking Buddha fish, or that I actually had a bedroom in China.
3 Comments
moonmadman
11/7/2012 09:23:23 pm
..."wishing, wondering, wanting...." and indeed,
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Emil Churchin
1/22/2013 06:22:42 am
Having been notified somewhat over a year ago of your move & blog, I'm reading it for the first time. It's amazing insight & gifted writing. Thank you for your scope. You deserve an expansive audience. Reading this passage, I imagined you handing accurate translations of it to scowlers. Maybe there's a gentle safety in silent anonymity.
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Mary
1/31/2013 06:59:40 am
Another treasure to read. I love taking the walks with you thru your adventures now I can picture where you live sounds like lots to do real close. I know you wander best so have fun and thanks for the 2 bock journey and keep up the gifted writing. Love ya, M
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