10.18: first day alone in a while

Today: fried scorpions; imperial gardens; paint; music (Chinese blues!); equipoise; solidarity.

People kept asking me for directions or about the train or subway system. That tels me I've been spending way too much time with white people here and now it's time to, for once, blend in.

At the Beishan Gongyuan north of the Forbidden City (along my journey on foot across the heart of Beijing from East to West), I hid from tourists and followed the green to less-beaten paths. I came upon a class of schoolchildren, probably 9 years old, each one sitting in front of a potted plant and sketching. The sight was at once mundane and unusual and full of quiet pride.

the imperial garden...
Chinese boy grins, beaming--
taking a piss

The 福声 music store (translated as Free Sound, but it should actually be Blessed Sound) was the perfect end to an epic day on the move. This time, the conversation in my broken Mandarin was not rushed by corporate need, or judged by cultural standard; it was just music, and sounds, and communication. The store owner helped me find some funk and blues albums. I'm sure he understood at the moment when I just broke into a smile at the esound of a "Hideaway" cover. This has been such a long search, and something inside of me has been validated by the fact that blues and singing guitar solos do exist in this language too.

The young 服务员 with the pouty lips who takes orders at the noodle place on campus was frowning at lunchtime and again at the same window six hours later when I came back. On the one hand, there is no racial segregation of labor jobs on the mainland like in Hong Kong (Filipinos) and America (Mexicans), so there might actually be some sense of kinship if not respect for workers here. On the other hand, the jobs are just as much dead ends and "careers" for a lifetime of repetition and function. I want to talk to her, to understand her and that forebearance around the shape of her mouth. But somehow I don't think 你好 is enough to start from. I'd like to genuinely begin with "My name is..." and really mean it, though it seems to me I don't even understand all that about myself just yet.