9/4/16: Assimilation

1.     9/4/16

a.     Wake up. Go back to sleep. Wake up at 7:30 China time despite my best efforts to sleep. Hour of eating gorp and reading Meaningness.

b.     Shower, pack everything up. Get some water, difficult communication. (Did I mention, I was just about to drink a glass of water from the tap, thinking “Shanghai is a big city, this should be safe”. Then I stop myself (one does not simply walk into China, after all) and check with Baidu. Turns out everyone boils tap water in China. Good save, non-Leroy Spencer!)

c.     Still more than an hour until my shuttle bus is to arrive. So I hit the street. I figure, if I walk straight, I’m not going to get lost. So I walk for about 40 minutes, one direction, down the road my hotel fronts on.

d.     Feeling a bit down owing to jetlag and my inability to communicate in a dignified manner (which is stupid, I know). But as soon as I walk out onto the street, my eyes fill with such marvels that I forget both exhaustion and self-debasement.

                                               i.     Two lanes for mopeds and bikes, on either side of the street! Couples, moms holding kids, and dudes with big bundles of sticks strapped to their back whiz by in all manner of colorful conveyances.

                                              ii.     Piles of raw materials everywhere! In the yards of adjoining apartment buildings, on mopeds, out front of shops…

                                             iii.     Gardens with corn and melon line the street in front of the apartments/houses.

                                            iv.     Fruit stands under canopies at each street corner, with melons, grapes, vegetables, and so forth.

e.     As I get farther along:

                                               i.     Loads of moped repair shops.

                                              ii.     Little miniature machine shops and factories. Dudes are cutting metal and wood with saws, right out in the open air and the sidewalk.

                                             iii.     A cat, just given birth, lots of little kittens. (An old fellow walking along the street smiles and points this out to me—I grin and manage to say “Mao”—the onomatopoeic appellation of “Cat”.

                                            iv.     Over a highway, under an underpass, across a five-lane road. Warehouses, residential buildings adjoin in a mad chaos of activity.

f.      Even farther:

                                               i.     More consumer oriented stores! A small supermarket.

                                              ii.     More moped repair shops.

                                             iii.     A game of chess! Or the equivalent. Round, checker-like pieces with characters on them, moving on the intersections. Two scruffy men square off on little stools across the board, and there must have been seven or eight kibitzers, debating! My grin gets wider; I manage to say hi to one of the kibitzers and stand and observe the game for a bit.

g.     Before I know it, I’ve been down the road for at least 40 minutes J I have 40 minutes left to reach the hotel. I start walking, then jogging, then seriously hustling—reach the hotel and see the shuttle bus, 10min early but already mostly occupied. I sprint up to my room, grab my bags, drop my card off at the front desk, hop on the shuttle, and it pulls out, just like that. Hoooly frick! I mean, I budgeted enough time I could have gotten the next shuttle, but still, the adrenaline!

h.     Tricky business getting checked in with Spring Airlines.

i.       Look around the airport stores, buy some nuts, which are weird.

j.       Board with no incidents.

k.     Arrive in Chongqing! No deplaning tunnel--Shuttle from landing spot to airport.

l.       Meet Xin, very joyful reunion. Get in back of car, Xin’s dad drives. Car has cool wicker seat covers that hide the female seatbelt thingies—apparently nobody uses seatbelts. But the driving is crazy, everyone cutting each other off on hair trigger.

m.    Try out a few words of Chinese, learn lots of corrections. Xin’s dad knows some very little English from university—he can understand basic, slowly spoken sentences, and say understandable words.

n.     Family dinner. Everyone thinks I’m good at chopsticks, brings back distinct memory of me consciously trying to figure out chopsticks rather than using a fork when I’m little. I learn the proper way to say “Very good” J Which the food really is! Lots of little dishes, everyone serves themselves with chopsticks into their own little bowls.

o.     Give the family my gifts J

p.     Go out with Xin, his dad, and his brother (apparently names not so important; most people call each other by relational terms. I’m to call Xin’s dad Shu Shu (Uncle) and his little brother Di Di (little brother J) Later I learn Puo Puo (Grandma) and Wei Puo (Aunt).

q.     We go to the peninsula where the Yangtze and Jiang? Rivers meet. Gaping up at the wild maze of residential buildings on the ride there. Very beautiful restaurants on the mountainous Jiang river bank. Someone is shining a high-wattage laser above the crowds, seems very unsafe, unless it is not a true laser.

r.      Go to bed relatively early, room shared with Xin.