The Public Fight

In an SPR Coffee house in the university district of Beijing, at around 2pm on a tuesday, there is a young girl on the ground floor who has just loudly burst into tears.

She is a petite Chinese girl, sitting at a table with a Chinese boy who appears to be dumping her. Her vociferous sobs and quivering voice carry across the entirety of the busy café, but besides my American friend and me, who are thoroughly engrossed and spying from behind a curtain, no one seems to bat an eye.

The strangest thing is this boy and girl, in the midst of their intimate public display of lack of affection, are speaking almost entirely in English, only slipping in a Chinese sentence or two here and there when English fails them.

“Why-hy-hy are you do-ho-ho-ing this,” sobs the girl in English, loud enough for the entire café to hear, “after aaaaalll this time!”

“Listen,” says the boy sternly, in a slightly softer but still clearly audible voice, “I just know that you are not the right girl for me. I want to be very clear with you right now.” He pauses, then continues in a businesslike tone. “But if you think I have made the wrong decision, it is up to you to convince me of this.”

The girl bursts out in a fresh chorus of wails, while the café patrons around them continue to calmly sip coffee, impervious to the distinctive cries of the young female human in distress.

The boy’s cell phone rings, and he picks it up, speaking in rapid Chinese to the caller. He looks over at the girl, and says something in Chinese about scheduling interviews for the company. The girl, in roughly 2.8 seconds, pulls herself together and plucks the phone from the boy’s hand.

She takes a breath and answers the phone in a clear, steady voice that offers no suggestion of her current distress, schedules the necessary interviews for later that afternoon, then hangs up and resumes distress mode.

“Is this guerilla theater?” My friend, an American girl who has just arrived in Beijing, whispers to me.

I shrug, not sure what to say. I’ve never seen a display quite as bizarre or in your face as this one, but I have noticed that quarreling in public is quite common among young couples in China.

Walking down any Chinese street, you may pass by young lovebirds engaged in any one of the three stages of the Public Fight: they may be Loudly Bickering, possibly with the incorporation of an insincere fist or the shot put of a handbag, Hysterically Crying, with tears and sobs and running away from one another and chasing involved, or Making Up, sitting quietly on a step somewhere, faces red from crying, holding each other.

Although I still find this behavior somewhat bewildering, I’ve come to accept it is by no means unusual.

Perhaps it is a form of bonding in which the couple emerges stronger and more in love, as would be suggested by the plot lines of many a Chinese tv show which incorporate, or perhaps fabricated, the Hysterical Young Female or the Star Crossed Lovers driven mad by love that appears doomed by a simple misunderstanding but usually works out in the end.

In any case, by the time I have finished my cup of coffee and head for the door, today’s feature fight has brought the volume down several decibels and appears to be in the Making Up stage, or in any case, the couple are sitting quietly, more morose than a month of Wednesdays, staring into their cold cups of coffee- not speaking, but not separating either.

A Crowd Gathers

Go ahead, stop and stare- everyone else is.

2 am is a prime time for car accidents. At least it was for me, last Friday night. Sitting in the back with my friend, coming home from a concert, our taxi was sideswiped by a car running a red light as we turned left.

The car’s bumper is lying four lanes away, the hood is still smoking and the right front wheel has been torn off the axle. The other car is also facing the wrong direction in the wrong side of the road, its airbag also deployed.

I jump out of the smoky car as soon as it comes to a halt, shaking, and look around. My friend is making her way to the side of the road to sit down, and disoriented, it suddenly registers that the cab driver hasn’t gotten out. He is slumped in the front seat, with his head near the floor of the car.

Opening his door, I see he is conscious, and I think maybe he is trapped by his seatbelt, too scared to register that there isn’t a single cabbie in the whole city of Beijing who wears a seatbelt.

“Are you hurt?” I ask, fumbling for his seatbelt. He’s shaking too but yells out, hands on the floor of the cab, “ I’m looking for my cell phone!” The man has priorities.

Relieved, I run from the smoking car and realize, within 5 minutes, at 2 in the morning, a crowd of at least 20 has materialized from the dark night. Most of them are standing by the side of the road, but a few are growing bolder, venturing to where I am standing in the median of the empty road.

The other car involved sits empty. “The driver must have run,” offers a cheerful crowd member who sees me looking. “Drunk driver.”

The cab driver has found his cell phone and is limping towards me, blood running down his ankle. He borrows my cell phone as well, and begins frantically talking to the police and his cab company at the same time, one in each ear.

The crowd has about 60 members now, all men, mostly in pajamas, chatting about the crash and the involved players as if we have just thrown a makeshift party. Although few if none of them actually saw the crash, they are acting as a collective witness, judge and jury, and have unanimously declared our cab driver innocent, although he failed to notice the only other car on a deserted road barreling towards us with no intention of stopping.

After a half hour, the police arrive, and the crowd parts to let them through, helpfully offering a running commentary among themselves as the police talk to the cab driver, my friend and me.

I’ve noticed its not considered rude to stop in the street and stare in China, be it at the arrest of a drunk, a fight between shop keepers, or a traffic accident. In some situations, like mine today, it seems to be a perfectly acceptable way to express concern that the situation is handled correctly.

The bystanders made sure first that all of us were ok, than helped me even more than the police did in forcing the cab driver to give me a receipt as documentation and his contact information, essential if I were to persue the matter further.

Another time, in a recent neighborhood confrontation around the corner from my house, a shopkeeper was arguing with two police officers over the construction taking place in his building. Voices began to escalate, with the shopkeeper’s nose inches from the police officers. At one point the shopkeeper took a menacing step even closer to the police officer, at which point the crowd of 15 odd onlookers started to murmur- the shopkeeper looked around, stepped back, lowered his voice and kept talking.

I think it would be great if passersby in the US, where I’m from, took a more active interest in affairs that are left entirely in the hands of the police. Both police and citizens act differently when they know they are being watched, and thats usually a good thing.

Although this Chinese form of the neighborhood watch can be nosy and irritating, it leaves at least one aspect of police dealings out in the open.

The Air Up There

China’s air quality, already dangerously bad, is expected to get even worse.

The sun is nowhere to be seen this morning. The smog rolls lazily around my window, wrapping my building in a soft grey blanket urging me to remain in my warm bed today. By the looks of the pea soup sky, and the visibility of the next door building but not the building two doors down, I’m guessing today is a 3B on the SEPA pollution index. That means older people should stay inside, no one should exercise, and, although this is not bullet pointed on SEPA’s website, there is no one in the city who actually wants to get up and greet the day.

Biking to work in the trail of bus engines, I remind myself to buy an air mask again. Even a cheap, simple dense cotton face mask sold at any supermarket would help filter out some of the PM 10, that’s particulate matter larger than ten microns, the dominant air pollutant in Beijing. Most bikers in Beijing don’t wear masks, or helmets for that matter. Bike safety measures seem to be restricted to biking slow and keeping your seat low enough to be able to stop yourself with your feet, or leap from your bike to the curb as the situation may call for.

Arriving at work, I check http://english.sepa.gov.cn/, the government air quality website, to discover that today Beijing is a 141 on the API, making it a 3A on the pollution scale. Even Lhasa is a 2 today. China’s rampant coal burning is starting to travel by more than word of mouth these days. Clouds of pollution have been found not only in neighboring Korea, but even as far as the West Coast of California, with locations as far inland as Lake Tahoe have found evidence of Chinese pollution in the air.

The government is well aware of the gravity of the situation, but there is no easy solution. More nuclear power plants are being built, but this brings up the issue of disposing of the toxic waste. As for hydropower, The Three Gorges Dam, once touted as the governments poster child for alternative energy, has become an environmental disaster; trapping silt, chemicals and sewage, causing erosion, and threatening to burst at any moment. There is no easy answer, and as China continues to develop at a breakneck speed, its power plat emissions are expected to rise by 60% by 2008. For now, my contribution to improving air quality is going to be restricted to my lungs only: I’m buying a mask on the way home from work today.

Arrested in China

Its not even 9 am Sunday morning and already my brother is on the phone yelling at me. From my end, lying under the covers in my room in Beijing, its sounds like a bunch of thumps and crackles and my brother's voice, yelling loudly, but I can't make out a damn thing he's saying.

My brother, I will later find out, has locked himself in a bathroom in a hotel room in Dongzhou, where he is being interrogated by nine police officers. He is bracing himself against the bathroom door, whose steel frame is slowly bending under the insistent pounding of the nine men, trying to keep the officers out long enough to place a call. The gap between my brother and the police is growing smaller, and he is looking them in the eye through the bathroom mirror as he talks to me.

I make out, "call the embassy," and "get my hard drive" before the line goes dead.

I lie in bed for another minute, watching sunlight hit the row of little green plants on my windowsill while at the same time, my brother is being beaten by nine police officers on the bathroom floor.

The protest in Dongzhou which my brother was covering involved a group of local officials kidnapped by villagers in a desperate attempt to protest the corruption that is sending farmer's land and money to a handful of corrupt local officials. Last year, in the same village, a similar protest broke out in which 3 civilians were shot dead and many more injured. There is a good chance the people involved this time around will be jailed, beaten, and/or sent to labor camps. It is not an unusual story; rather just one chapter in the bigger picture of the battle against corruption that has been unfolding in China's small villages for years.

Last night, while trying to pick out an outfit for a party, my brother calls me to let me know the police are looking for him and he is in hiding. He tells me that he's safe for the night but doesn't know if he can get out of the city in the morning, as all entrances are blocked by police and they're all looking for him. I hang up the phone, looking at the options laid out on my bed: a red tee-shirt and a paisley print blouse. Hmmm.

I call the embassy and the consulate in Guangzhou just to give them a heads up before heading out to meet my new "coworkers" at the season opening snowboard party at Suzie Wong's. The party is insane: free vodka, hot djs, snowboarding on big screen tvs, all the best riders in China and a gang of Kiwis I may soon be living with. Woohoo.

The pictures of the police brutality my brother has captured this time around will not get out. I know this, my brother knows this, and the cops in the process of assaulting him know this. The plants on my sill look happy bathed in light so I yank up the shade to give them more sun before calling the US embassy again, alerting them that my brother has in fact been arrested. They tell me there's nothing they can do until the Chinese authorities have alerted them of the arrest, "And who knows when that'll be." I ask them what they can do in the meantime and the man says, "Nothing. Welcome to China."

The consulate in Guangzhou is manned by a Singaporean lady who tells me she'll "start making some noise so they know people are looking for him."

Meanwhile my brother is watching the group of police officers ravage his camera and computer equipment "like a bunch of monkeys with new toys." They've brought in a hacker to systematically erase and seize his hard drive and all his memory cards.

I get dressed, a little pissed at the US embassy for throwing attitude at me. I swear to god the next American to say "Welcome to China" to me in that sarcastic, superior tone is getting bitchslapped.

I catch a cab to my brother's apartment and as I open the door his kitten, Rusty, runs up to greet me. I grab my brother's hard drives and all the random papers lying around his desk and stuff them into a bag. I almost grab Rusty too, feeling a little guilty at leaving her all alone to face the possible intruders to my brother's pad. After all, I have no idea what the Chinese government's policy is towards kittens.

The air outside the apartment feels menacing on my way home. Same streets, same fruit sellers, same traffic- but it looks different now, as if Big Brother's eyes are looking out from every red light and bus window. I look down at the bag of my brother's crap and almost go back for poor little Rusty. Welcome to China.

I call my brother's phone around noon. No answer.

I call the embassy and they haven't done shit. The woman asks me, "has so and so called you yet?" No. "Ok, yeah, let me call you back in ten minutes, ok?" She never does.

The Singaporean from the Guangzhou consulate keeps calling me all day, with updates like, "we still have not located him. It could be a while- the last journalist who got arrested was detained for almost a month before we even got word of where they were keeping him."

Or, an hour later, "we've called everywhere, they won't tell us where he is but they do know we're looking for him. Hopefully that will help protect his civil rights, but then again, this is China."

Then at around 4, she calls me again, sounding almost cheerful. "We've got the FAO working with us, she says. If anyone has any pull in this situation, it's the Foreign Affairs Office. The head of the Office is making calls right now."

I get the feeling the men who have my brother are going to do whatever they want with him, FAO or no FAO, but in any case, before she's even off the phone with me, my brother calls, telling me he's been released and is on a bus to Guangzhou. Fuck dude. I'm going back to bed.

Long Term Plans

Backed into a corner by two strange men, I have learned two things. One: I definitely do not know who Alex Timpingagen or whoever these guys keep telling me I must know is. Two: blue polo shirts make me afraid. The stem of the wine glass in my hand grows clammy, matching the rest of my body nicely.

Skating to the party was not a good idea. “It’s not far,” Cecily had said, lying through her teeth. I made her pull me on her bike part of the way, but still showed up with my white tee-shirt drenched in sweat, my face shiny and my hair wet. Immediately inside the door is a table covered in brie and French wine in front of a huge window offering a dazzling view of the Beijing skyline.

Leaning my skateboard against the wall, I kick off my sneakers into a cluster of fancy dress shoes and realize I forgot my velvet evening bag.

I summon decorum as I attempt to navigate my way into this increasingly familiar terrain of Stanford graduates and assorted other high achievers. I don’t really know why, but Stanford graduates totally dig Beijing.

Eyeing the cheese and crackers, I realize not having eaten dinner was a terrible oversight. On my way over to the food, I am intercepted by my first blue polo shirt of the evening. Damn.

We talked for as long as it took for the cracker pile to diminish to four before I politely excused myself. Or maybe just walked away muttering “crackers…” I’m not entirely sure.

I pour a glass of Merlot into a white wine glass and wander around, feeling lost. Many members of this party have opening embraced the introduction template, and categorized it numerically. “Question number one: what’s your name?” Is followed immediately by, “Question number two: how long have you been in Beijing?” After, “Question number five: what is your long term plan?” Conversation either shifts or terminates.

I think I like these people but I’m not sure. Is it possible to like someone you are afraid of?

On the balcony a blonde boy in a white polo shirt is talking to me. I am staring at the roof next to us and wishing I was Spiderman, wanting very badly to jump. My landing would be silent, knees bouncing slightly, one hand lightly pressed against the ground only by the fingertips, the other arm stretched behind me for balance and dramatic flair. I look up slowly, intuitively in the right direction, just in time to see a shadowy character who is cackling maniacally run into the stairwell, clutching an ancient artifact of incalculable worth. “Go ahead. Run. You will not escape.”

“What was that?” Asks the blonde boy.

“Oh. Nothing.”

“Sorry, I thought you said something.” The boy pauses and takes a sip out of his glass. “So, question number five. What’s your long term plan?”

Tragedy at Sea

People tend to look at you wierd when they catch you talking to yourself.

That happened to me today, and I wasn't even talking to myself. Unfortunatly the fish I was talking to was too small for anyone on the beach to see, so I guess I may have appeared to be talking to myself.

Fragile people, be warned. This story in tragic.

I first met Mango swimming in the clear bluegreen water of Bintan Cove, around noon today. I was scanning underwater for jellyfish on my way to an outcrop of rocks when my eyes happened upon a small yellow fish with black stripes. He was about half the size of my thumb, with bright black eyes that held a stare.

At first I thought Mango was just another cute little fish, like all the others I had seen that day. I paid him no heed, until a few minutes later I realized this fish was still swimming with me, occasionally sampling me legs, but mostly just swimming as close to me as he could get. "What do you want from me!" I yelled, splashing at Mango. "I don't have any money!"

I kept swimming and he kept up with me, swimming right under my chin until I stopped, at which point he would swim behind me. I would circle around, Mango would circle, disappearing,and never responding to my shouts of "Where are you sucker! Quit following me!"

Then I realized something. Even if this fish was trying to fight me, I was bigger. And stronger. And a better fighter.

So I gave him the benifit of the doubt and soon Mango and I were the best of friends. I raced him to the rocks and challanged him to who could turn in more circles. He won both times, little devil.

Eventually I had to go in for lunch, so I swam back to shore. Mango came with me the whole way. He even tried to follow me onto land. I had to yell, "No Mango, you'll get stuck! Go back, go back!" Before Mango turned around and fought the current back out to sea.

Sadly from shore, I watched as a terrible thing happened. A gang of sand colored fish rose up from their camoflaged hiding spot on the sea floor and attacked Mango. I ran to Mango's rescue, kicking the water around him, screaming, "Noooooo! Stay away from him! You hear me! Stay away from him!"

The gangster fish left poor Mango hiding behind my ankle. He wasn't swimming so well, and I could tell he was pretty beat up. I told him to swim back to sea but he wouldn't listen.

"Mango, I can't stay. I belong out there. And they're all watching us," I wispered to Mango, pointing to the handful of people on shore. "But you can make it. I know you can. Be brave. Be safe."

I ran to shore without looking back. I couldn't bear the thought of what I might see behind me, and my heart filled with shame as I realized I had left a friend to die.

The Great Wall

Saturday morning I am jolted out of my slumber by my phone’s rude announcement of the arrival of a text message. “Are you coming?” It says. Suddenly I remember my first meeting with the Great Wall is today, a meeting that coincides with a friend’s birthday party being held at a remote section of the wall.

Getting out of bed I’m a little nervous about meeting the wall face to face for the first time. Will she look as good as she does in pictures, I wonder? Is her age obvious? Will her vast experience enthrall or intimidate me?

The clock beside my bed reads 10:57. The party bus is leaving in three minutes from Dong Zhi Men.

I step into the living room, glad I am already dressed. On top the living room table is an unopened bottle of whiskey, a pack of cheap cigars, a bunch of grapes and a note from a friend announcing he is on his way back to the United States.

Glad that he has taken the time to pack for me, I throw his gifts into my backpack and stumble for my shoes, yelling upstairs to wake my housemate, Gabe.

Gabe falls down the stairs, stuffing a frisbee and a fake chicken into a bag and we are out the door.

"Should we take a cab?"

"That would be like taking a cab from here to here," Gabe tells me. "We should just run." Before I get a chance to reply, Gabe grabs my backpack and takes off running, zigzagging through traffic across the busy street.

"Peaches, we need peaches!" Gabe yells, jumping onto the sidewalk towards a fruit stand. "No, theres no time for peaches!" He yells without stopping, cutting back towards our destination.

Fifteen minutes later we arrive at the bus stop panting and drenched in sweat, but its worth it. Three hours later I find myself at the Huang Huar section of The Great Wall.

The entrance to the wall is guarded by a fierce woman collecting a 2Y cover to cross what she says is her land to get to the wall. A boy with us refuses to pay, asking the woman to show proof of authority. He tries to muscle past her, but she blocks him with a swift hip check. As the boy tries to march past again the woman uproots a shrub and begings beating him with it. The boy admits defeat and leaves in a huff.

Although its not a battle I would pick to fight, I kind of understand why he was upset, as no one likes to be taken for a sucker, especially based on skin color and especially by a small woman wielding an uprooted sapling.

But I was sad to see him leave, not only because he would not make it to the wall, but because I was about to ask him if I could borrow 2Y.

My friend Annie and I, both stupidly without cash, plead with the woman to kindly let us pay later, but she refuses.

Just then a young Chinese couple walk by on their way down from the wall, stopping when they hear us begging in broken Chinese.

“Just let them go meet up with her friends,” the couple told the lady.

She refuses again and the couple, without hesitating, pulled out a 5Y note and paid our way. They walked on before the lady even gave them their change, smiling and telling us to enjoy ourselves.

When it comes to money, or anything else, I’ve found often people are more just good hearted than they are suckers. We thank the couple, and then, grinning, ran up the trail.

Meeting the Great Wall was nothing like I had expected. Instead, it was so much more than I could have ever hoped for, both beautiful and interesting in ways I couldn’t have imagined.

I found each piece of the wall unique. There is continuity in the structure, uniformity in the stones that compose it. Each step is built to suit the soil beneath, making the angle of the wall’s incline as nuanced as the topography it sits upon.

Fog descended thick as the day wore on, leaving everything invisible except for the wall. All I coud see was a long snake winding off into bleak white nothingness, testifying to more history that I could ever learn and to more distance than I could ever walk. I put my hand on a stone and wonder who else has touched it in the exact same spot.

On my way back, I see the woman who had been attacking one of the party members with the shrub. She smiles broadly at me, and I’m not sure if it’s a gesture of peace or an indication of her delight in watching me stumble barefoot across rocky ground in pouring rain. I decide to take it as the former and smile back, soggy and happy, promising myself I will return soon.

Beijing Bike Hustle

I have just realized that I left my bike at the subway station after not heading straight home after school today, and its too late to do anything about it.

Another way of saying this is, I have just donated my bike to crime. That’s ok though, crime has done a lot for me in the past, and I really like it when I get the chance to give back.

Good thing my ex-mountain bike only cost 150Y, or about $18. Tomorrow when I visit the bike store I will downgrade to a much cheaper one.

Let me describe my first trip to the bike store for you:

Three days ago my friend Annie and I head out to a street known to have a lot of bike shops and begin looking for gangsters. We immediately see a group of tough looking women who tell us, yeah, they maybe got some bikes.

We stand around awkwardly for a minute, looking around and not seeing any bikes. A second later two men pull up in a beat up grey car and tell us to get in the back.

'No way in hell,' we say, and then we get in the car.

The two men and the lady who introduced us drive us through a maze of back alleys, called hu tongs, while inquiring as to what exactly we are in the market for.

Do we want new bikes? Used bikes? Pretty bikes? Cheap bikes?

“Cheap bikes,” we say, stepping out of the car onto a dirt hu tong filled with puppies and watermelon rinds. A line of pool tables flank the street, each held down by a group of young men much like our current bike agents.

The man who drove us here, a friendly young fellow wearing his shirt tucked into his back pocket rather than on his back, leads us down a side side alley, and we wait, chitchatting about the weather and the joys of bicycling after a fresh rain. Soon the other man brings us a bike. It's a total piece and they're asking way too much. After realizing these two giggling American girls aren’t going to give them the contents of their wallets, our three bike agents get back in their car and leave without a word.

Annie and I decide to shop around and approach a pool table, asking them to direct us to a nearby bike shop.

After another hour or so of playing with puppies and browsing through bikes, I strike gold.

The proprietor of this shop is an older man posted by the side of the road with his feet on a table and his white tee shirt pulled up to show off an ample gut. He says he is closed and accepts serious offers only. He also mentions he only has new, expensive bikes, and he is not willing to open his store unless we are very serious.

I tell him I'm serious, and finally convince him to open his store. He leads me and Annie into an old brick building and down a very dark corridor with about 2 inches of standing water. A line of bricks rise above water level, upon which Annie and I hop along like trepadacious rabbits. We pass mountains of trash, a man asleep inside of a cracked doorway, and finally reach the door to the shop. The shopkeeper mumbles something about having lost the key and grabs a butcher's knife from off a table by the door.

For a second, finding Annie and myself alone with a large man wielding a butcher's knife in the dark corridor of a mostly vacant building, I think to myself, 'I might not get a receipt. I wonder if there's a return policy?'

But my doubts are unfounded. After several sharp blows with the butcher’s knife, the lock pops open to reveal the bicyclist's Ali Baba's cave. Bathed in the light of a single fluorescent bulb, an array of shiny mountain bikes and gleaming cruisers invite me to take my pick.

I test ride a few bikes before deciding on Bluey, a shiny blue mountain bike with front and rear shocks, decent brakes and smooth gears.

I ride home happy, through puddles and over curbs, Bluey as happy as I am to have been freed from the bike store.

That was three days ago. Who would have known our time together would be so short?

Tomorrow I will look for Bluey at the subway stop, but in my heart I know he is already back in a bike store, somewhere far away from me. It's my fault. I left Bluey alone in the dark, with nothing to protect him except a giant lock.

Easy come, easy go. As a friend of mine said to me, "you don't ever actually own a bike in Beijing. You just rent them."

Well Bluey, it was fun. Take care, my friend. May your wheels always spin straight and your gears always shift smooth, whoever your future riders may be. I will miss you.

Brush With Death

Today I left the house under my first Beijing blue sky, and returned under an equally blue sky, in sweltering heat, feeling sad and happy at the same time.
Happy because I found a skateboard for about US$25. Even happier that no one looks twice at me when I'm riding it, even in the subway terminals, which are long, often slightly downhill, smooth as silk and have lots of fun human obstacles.
Sad because of so many of the people I saw today. There are lots of beggars in San Francisco. Most of them are drunk. There are lots of beggars in Beijing. Most of them are missing essential body parts. A lot of them are younger than me.
I got off the subway at Tiananmen Square today, excited to find out what it would feel like to set foot inside history itself. I never did. The square was crawling with so many tourists, all with matching red hats and orange popsicles, that I couldn’t bring myself to go in. If I want sweat and involuntary human contact, I'll just get on the subway.

Which I did, eventually. On my way back I passed a crowd of people gathered around a young girl lying on the ground with her head in her father's lap. Her mother sat at her feet, shoulders hunched, face hidden, with a sign I couldn’t read and a donation pot in front of her.
The girl's hair had almost all fallen out, her feet were swollen, her skin was greenish, her eyes were rolled back in her head and she was covered in sweat. I couldn't even guess what she had, probably because it’s something we don't get in the United States.
I bent down by the mother and she glanced up at me, just for a half second, crying profusely and silently. My stomach lurched at the familiarity of the look in her eyes. I realized I had seen the exact same desperate look on my own mother's face when she wasn't sure if her own daughter was ever going to be ok again.
It caught me by surprise, so much so I could hardly move. Like when you smell something from childhood and a wave of memory surges through you.
All of a sudden I was lying in a hospital bed again, with stitches running all across my face and tubes sticking into my heart, my lungs, my veins, and my family huddled around me, praying- with my mother looking at me with those exact same eyes.
Except this time, I was standing strong, looking down on myself, hanging on by a thread exactly the same- except this time, I was lying in a street instead of in a world class ICU ward, and this time my parents were staring at grey bricks instead of green monitors. The only thing the same was my mother's eyes.
They were exactly the same.
Mortals. Capable of nothing more than praying our own delicate fleshy shells will withstand the harsh world around us. Remember not one of us is special. It could happen to you.
On the crowded subway home a young man gave a tired old man his seat. The old man half heartedly refused but of course the young man was already helping him sit down. The smiles these strangers exchanged were beautiful.

Things I Saw Today

I saw a McDonalds next to a Chinese fast food chain that sold noodles instead of burgers and had Bruce Lee instead of Ronald McDonald for a spokesman. Seriously. Bruce Lee.

I also saw my first Chinese KFC equivalent, which has a Col. Sanders, except he looks like Chairman Mao with a bow tie on.

I saw a distinct grimace on my French classmate's face when our Thai classmate, this beautiful funny girl, told him, "I can't pronouce your name. I'll just call you X1."

I saw a masked grimace on our teacher's face when Frenchy shrugged apathetically after pronoucing "lai" "li" for the upteenth time in a row.

I saw a Ferrari pocketwatch for 50Y. I bought it.

I saw a guy with absolutely no arms whatsoever. Maybe a three inch stump on one side. The other side was completely stumpless. There were scars all across the stumpless side. I could not help but wonder...was it sharp? Dull? Fast? Slow?

I saw a man over 60 riding a skateboard, the only person I've seen on a skate since I got here. He was pushing slowly, then cruising all slow and graceful with his arms way out. He wasn't going anywhere, just tooling around a parking lot. He is my hero, needless to say.

I saw the worst infestation of spider mites I have ever seen on my brother's kumquat bush. Does anybody know how the get rid of these things?