A Shanghai thought – or two
I have had a bad cold for the past few days. I was walking back home just now after a leisurely dinner with a book. The route home was more interesting than usual.
My dinnertime book was an excellent volume on Xinjiang history. I had got to the last few pages before the restaurant closed and I had to leave. So I was wandering home, unfinished book in hand, my head a dull haze of illness and sympathy for the unfortunate Uighurs.
As I passed the Big Bamboo I noticed a cluster of Chinese laborers working on some carpentry on the pavement. They had taken a break from their work and were pressed up against the glass of the pub watching the goings on inside. On account of the book I was not feeling very sympathetic towards Chinese in general, but still I could not help feeling sorry for this group. These guys who sawed up wood on the pavement in the dead of night, I doubted they had ever paid 40 Renminbi for 500ml of beer. But there they were, pressed up against the invisible glass, gazing into another world, and so far unnoticed by those within. In a moment one of the bar staff would probably appear and tell them to move away. The laborers would then make a self conscious retreat. Maybe later they would celebrate the end of their shift with a convenience store beer drunk on the sidewalk. It was a scene that would have moved Dickens from writers block to his more typical verbal diarrhea.
I wandered on my way, suddenly feeling strangely philosophical, though not so philosophical as not to be distracted by the shapely rear of a girl walking her own way home in the distance. I never did get to try and overtake her to check out her face though, because a moment later I was to be experience yet another thought-provoking Shanghai moment.
A short distance past the Big Bamboo there is a collection point for food waste. Guys come on bicycles and drop off plastic drums of greasy smelly food scraps, which are then picked up by blue trucks and taken elsewhere. Who knows what these greasy food scraps end up as? Pig feed? Cooking oil? Some questions, like the existence of God and the contents of convenience store BBQ pork buns, are probably best left unanswered; but I digress. As I approached this smelly and slippery section of the street, a blond western guy (yes, a real foreigner) coming from the opposite direction, slipped head-over-heels in the mess. His out of control leg shot a glorious arc of noxious smelling droplets up into the air, only to have them rain back down on the scene of the accident a second later. I thought he might have broken something but he seemed fine except for some very nasty stains on his clothes. He sprang up off the pavement almost as quickly as he had hit it, cursed a little and went on his way.
So why was this unfortunate guy’s pratfall so thought-provoking? First, lost as I was in philosophical thoughts about the wealth divide in China, his fall reminded me how close foreigners in Shanghai live to the muck of poverty. Relative wealth buys only the most imperfect protection. Putting the idea less philosophically: watch where you are walking – OK? At this point, I made sure to detour round the slick of food scraps. Second, I thought about how the laborers across the road, glued as they were to their cheerfully lit window-frame world of beer and pool, had totally missed the pratfall of the century. The entire entertaining spectacle had occurred behind them. These unfortunate guys, starved of any free entertainment, had completely missed the once in a lifetime sight of a ‘laowai’ (an entertaining species even at their most mundane) giving a regular Buster Keaton display. The pratfall had been the highlight of my day and I consider myself something of a sophisticate. If they had realized what they had missed I’m sure it would have killed them. I felt really sorry for them as I walked because I know they don’t get much fun. By this time I had completely circled the hazardous slick of food scraps and was struck by the third thought-provoking part of the whole incident. I suddenly realized that the girl with the attractive rear had totally vanished, making all further thoughts about her merits of her rear, and the exciting possibility that her comeliness could extend to her face, even more academic than numerous similar thoughts about other strange girls encountered in the street.
I began to feel the weight of my cold. I slogged the rest of the way home, reached my apartment, and took off my shoes. In a gesture the Uighurs may not have approved of I poured myself a whiskey as I settled down to finish my book. Before diving back into the book I paused to give a perfunctory toast to Uighurs, laborers who spy on bar patrons, and foreigners who slip in the street.
