through the looking glass

real coffee!
went to a local bar, where antony and I were instantly swarmed by a large group of swaggering students. oh my chinese boys just lose their inhibitions after they’ve tossed back a few. heh. after they left antony and I got into our usual arguments, him vs the american journal of medicine, the man has some brilliantly wacky ideas about what’s bad for you and why, truly astounding to listen to : )
a group of ‘moderns’ (this is how I’ve begun to think of some of my richer peers in the area. western dress, more formal. wouldn’t be particularly out of place in most manhattan bars sort of thing. less inhibited about affectionate (pda) than the average chinese couple) they ordered irish coffees, and I watched as the proprietor brought out an elaborate japanese brewing system and what turned out to be xi’an coffee beans. real, honest to god grind em yourself coffee beans. mmmmmm. I showed so much interest he generously gave us a cup on the house, and even though I’d been drinking local beer all evening it was the sweetest taste I could have imagined. weaker than the american brew and a little milky (though I don’t know how or why, as I didn’t see him add any milk), almost a vanilla almondy note. not flavored, mind you, but that subtle undertone that you get with a nice wine. beauty.
not cheap at 7 kuai a cup, but damned if it wasn’t worth every penny.

musical migrations
I’m toying around with the idea of learning to play the erhu (two string). lovely instrument, long neck with two tuning pegs at the top and a drum of sorts at the bottom. it’s played with a bow, holding it vertically on your knee while sitting, almost like the world’s tiniest cello. which is perhaps why I’m drawn to it, my fascination with the cello reborn after playing ??michael’s beauty but not quite enough to deal with the logistics of hauling a mansized object around china.
prolly doesn’t hurt that I heard a man playing a subtle melody while wandering the other day. I went to enter his shop and he immediately stopped playing, so I walked out and hid a bit around the corner. a few moments later he returned to playing; I sat mesmorized by the haunting tune.
then again, I’ve always dug the pan flute…..

mongolian bbq
sensory exploration. lit by a single bulb the size of a christmas light, twinkling in the dark street, enticing you down the road to them. little carts on the back of a bicycle, stacks of veggies, meat and tofu on sticks. pleasant middle aged men (and sometimes their wives or sisters) pop your order into the wok of boiling oil over a small smokestack fire. remove, pass to the drenching station, where chili oils and spices coat your treat. my favorite vendor looks like a chinese lurch, complete with a goofy smile. every now and again he comes out with a single word in flawless english.

crossing the street
every chinese person I’ve walked with thus far seems to think I’m mostly blind and partially deaf. even after I’ve moved out of the way at the sound of a rowdy bus hurtling down the street or errant sidewalk motorcyclist they still take my elbow and say ‘watch out’. it’s sweet, really, but sometimes I wonder.

accosted by miscelaneous chinese people
in the best possible way. buying fabric for the resource room (trying to turn a room filled with desks and bookshelves into a eurpoean coffeehouse atmosphere, oh my), chatting with the ladies, a woman standing at the door started motioning to me with her head. so I went over and she started walking with me up the road, asking the usual questions. she’s got the wonderfully affectionate thing going, putting her arm around me when we laugh. she tells me she wants me to come up the street to pick up her daughter. okay, sure, why not. her daughter works at china mobile selling phones, she’d apparently also gone to my university. we all wandered a bit, playing quite a bit of charades and excercising my psychic abilities attempting conversation after my chinese ran out. getting hijacked by random chinese people is turning into my favorite way to spend an afternoon ;-)