上海 SHANGHAI
9 November 2015
And so it all worked out very nicely. The Astor House Hotel did not have our Monday night reservation. Mr.Lin could only come on Monday. Dear Mr. Lin, who can speak Chinese and who lives in China and who can read kanji and who functions in a Chinese society as only a Chinese person is able to do. Dear Mr. Lin helped us with our luggage and told the taxi driver where to go and checked us into the new hotel and told us where the restaurant and the bank and the Apple store were located and led us through the blare of noise and the maze of cars and motor scooters and bicycles that come at you from all directions and I want to go home.
It is lovely when the natives pick you up in cars and take you places and translate what you want into Chinese. It is less lovely to navigate this boisterous, crowded traffic-marathon, people-compounded streets all by one’s English- speaking self. I never did believe it when someone would say, “Oh, don’t worry about it. Everyone speaks English.” Not Not Not. I have ,in tact, learned a lot of Mandarin with Pimsleur, but Pimsleur is building a foundation, and my sentences are limited to “My wife wants to eat dinner with me tonight,” which is not the instant vocabulary I need when I want to order rice at the restaurant.
Nevertheless, thanks to Mr Lin, we are in a clean hotel and have access to food and a bank. I have the addresses I need for my research carefully written in kanji to show to the taxi driver. Will I know if he is actually taking me to Southgate and not Northgate?
We had the most delicious lunch. The food is wonderful, whether on the street or in the restaurant. But later we were hungry again. Tsutae went next door to get some soup at 9:30 this evening and came back with a pair of lively colored cotton socks. Only 10 RMB. She was so pleased.
In the evening, after the local stores close down, street repair begin and the night market open.s Suddenly, where there were streets devoted only to the aggressive bicycle-motor scooter-cars-delivery truck traffic, suddenly, after dark, mini-restaurants spring up on sidewalks. Folding chairs and folding tables are unfolded, canopies are set over long unfolded folding tables, every inch laden: skewers of chicken, beef, pork; piles of vegetables; condiments; invitations to make your own soup (these vendors do not tell you to get out of their shops); oranges and watermelon; along with socks and great piles of shoes; T shirts, pants – the necessities for Chinese life. The food is so good. It must be local. It is not Montsanto-grown Thankfully, the Chinese never bought into the cholesterol myth. Their food is cooked in oil and fat and has taste. The night market is for sustenance of Chinese life, not for tourists.
How do they live, these hard-working vendors? Unpacking piles and piles of vegetables, clothes. fruit. shoes, selling for so little. How much can they earn in one night? But no one looks poor or unkempt. Casual Los Angeles style, perhaps, but not poor. No one is going hungry that I could see.
Later, Tsutae spent another ten RMB, and this time, that same sum of ten RMB bought three pairs of lively colored cotton socks. She was even more pleased.
