It's the little things....
.....
Just when some of you may have thought I would be facing a bit of a dry spell, I'll have you know that I got a little action today- on the subway. In other words, I was given a bit of a show. Ironically, I had just finished translating an article about "sexual perversions" which actually listed a number of common fetishes, including that of "exposing oneself to persons of the opposite sex," and there I am just staring in a daze out the window of the subway car at the Dongsishitiao stop, and my eyes land on something that makes me think vaguely, "is that real?" before I snapped to and realized what I was looking at. I turned to see if anyone else was looking, and realized that the absence of any other people in view and the strategic placement of the man's briefcase could only mean that this was a show for my eyes only. Not to mention that he was staring me right in the eyes. There was an uncomfortably long delay before the train took off again, and certain amount of waving around and wagging about of things on the part of the party in question made it difficult for me to maintain my angry and concerned stare at the opposite wall without laughing. Which on second thought is probably what I should have done in order to make him feel like the idiot that he seemed to be.
But that happened today, and what I want to write this entry about is yesterday, a day during which my goings-about the city were benign and much more inspiring. It was a sunny fall day, and in honor of the season change, which like a Chinese ren I could sense despite the warm temperature, I was wearing my extra-special denim vest with the faux sheep's wool collar, just like the one you had when you were a kid. No, I haven't yet donned my sexy flesh-colored long underwear, which when I last wrote had only recently been thrown into the off-season drawer, so the how-many-pairs-of-pants-are-YOU-wearing jokes will have to wait a few months yet. My walk to work is the perfect length, and when I walked into the courtyard in front of the entryway, I spotted a tiny old lady, no bigger and no less wrinkly than a raisin, pouring over a gigantic newspaper not with reading glasses but with a hand-held microscope which, when she turned to look at the white girl walking by, magnified her eyeball to charmingly alien proportions. Hah!
The next thing that pleased me a lot was that I made a special trip over to the great noodle shop that probably doesn't make the zajiang mian any better than the place that's around the corner. Wearing my headphones, half-deaf, I walked in the door, careful to avoid the fist-sized kitten sitting on the mat. They were saying something to me, and through the din of my Swedish death metal I thought they were telling me to have a rest: "xiuxi ba, xiuxi ba." In fact, what they were saying, as I realized after I had smiled sweetly at their concern for my health and had put my stuff down and sat, was "women xiuxi le, xiuxi le." Meaning that they aren't open, because it's 2:30, because they are taking a rest. How silly of me! Score one more for the lao wai.
On my way home, cutting through a cramped parking lot, I turned around the end of the bus and bumped into a man, whose colorful kite was flying high above Jiaodaokou. He was grinning like I love to see middle-aged men grin, like he didn't have a care in the world...next in line was an old old man, as much as raisin as alien-eye lady, in his Mao shirt and cadre hat, hands clasped behind his back as seems to be the way of the elderly Chinese, padding sneakily in his buxie, or cloth shoes, around the big sheets of metal propped up to keep people out of a construction site, peeking with one eye and then turning his head to peep with the other through the slits between the metal sheets. He went from one crack to the next, looking first around him to see if anyone was watching, then straining to catch a glimpse of whatever was on the other side of that metal fence, then shuffling on.
It was a quirky day that couldn't have been had anywhere but China's illustriously quirky capital. It can't be said too many times...never eventful, always interesting.
Just when some of you may have thought I would be facing a bit of a dry spell, I'll have you know that I got a little action today- on the subway. In other words, I was given a bit of a show. Ironically, I had just finished translating an article about "sexual perversions" which actually listed a number of common fetishes, including that of "exposing oneself to persons of the opposite sex," and there I am just staring in a daze out the window of the subway car at the Dongsishitiao stop, and my eyes land on something that makes me think vaguely, "is that real?" before I snapped to and realized what I was looking at. I turned to see if anyone else was looking, and realized that the absence of any other people in view and the strategic placement of the man's briefcase could only mean that this was a show for my eyes only. Not to mention that he was staring me right in the eyes. There was an uncomfortably long delay before the train took off again, and certain amount of waving around and wagging about of things on the part of the party in question made it difficult for me to maintain my angry and concerned stare at the opposite wall without laughing. Which on second thought is probably what I should have done in order to make him feel like the idiot that he seemed to be.
But that happened today, and what I want to write this entry about is yesterday, a day during which my goings-about the city were benign and much more inspiring. It was a sunny fall day, and in honor of the season change, which like a Chinese ren I could sense despite the warm temperature, I was wearing my extra-special denim vest with the faux sheep's wool collar, just like the one you had when you were a kid. No, I haven't yet donned my sexy flesh-colored long underwear, which when I last wrote had only recently been thrown into the off-season drawer, so the how-many-pairs-of-pants-are-YOU-wearing jokes will have to wait a few months yet. My walk to work is the perfect length, and when I walked into the courtyard in front of the entryway, I spotted a tiny old lady, no bigger and no less wrinkly than a raisin, pouring over a gigantic newspaper not with reading glasses but with a hand-held microscope which, when she turned to look at the white girl walking by, magnified her eyeball to charmingly alien proportions. Hah!
The next thing that pleased me a lot was that I made a special trip over to the great noodle shop that probably doesn't make the zajiang mian any better than the place that's around the corner. Wearing my headphones, half-deaf, I walked in the door, careful to avoid the fist-sized kitten sitting on the mat. They were saying something to me, and through the din of my Swedish death metal I thought they were telling me to have a rest: "xiuxi ba, xiuxi ba." In fact, what they were saying, as I realized after I had smiled sweetly at their concern for my health and had put my stuff down and sat, was "women xiuxi le, xiuxi le." Meaning that they aren't open, because it's 2:30, because they are taking a rest. How silly of me! Score one more for the lao wai.
On my way home, cutting through a cramped parking lot, I turned around the end of the bus and bumped into a man, whose colorful kite was flying high above Jiaodaokou. He was grinning like I love to see middle-aged men grin, like he didn't have a care in the world...next in line was an old old man, as much as raisin as alien-eye lady, in his Mao shirt and cadre hat, hands clasped behind his back as seems to be the way of the elderly Chinese, padding sneakily in his buxie, or cloth shoes, around the big sheets of metal propped up to keep people out of a construction site, peeking with one eye and then turning his head to peep with the other through the slits between the metal sheets. He went from one crack to the next, looking first around him to see if anyone was watching, then straining to catch a glimpse of whatever was on the other side of that metal fence, then shuffling on.
It was a quirky day that couldn't have been had anywhere but China's illustriously quirky capital. It can't be said too many times...never eventful, always interesting.
posted by Mandie at 4:40 PM
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