I am Everyday People
I was talking to a friend (thanks, you know who you are) recently about this blog and how I felt bad that I am not writing more stuff more often, but that I find myself alternating between feeling like I have so much I want to tell people but don’t know how to say it, and feeling like my everyday life is really actually not all that interesting and not being able to think of much to say that I think anyone would want to read about. What she suggested was that I stop thinking about people reading it, and if I didn’t have something I was particularly burning to get out, just write down a paragraph or two about something, anything that I did that day or the day before, even if it seems like ‘nothing’ particularly happened that day, because there are things that we all become used to after living here for a little while that have become pedestrian to us, but that are still interesting for friends and family to read to get a picture of what life here is like. And, if I just start writing anything, likely it will prompt a bunch of other thoughts, and before long I’ll have written more than I had thought I would. Which is probably true because as most of you know, I pretty much never know when to shut up.
So, with that in mind, here’s some stuff I did the other day.
There is a ferry terminal over the road from where we live where we can get the boat back and forth across the river to Puxi. For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the city, Shanghai divided by the HuangPu River; one side is known as Puxi (“Pu-west”) and the other as Pudong (“Pu-east”). The ferry terminal on the Pudong side delivers passengers to the rim of the very symbol of Shanghai modernity, the concrete canyons of Lujiazui, with its bewildering array of skyscrapers jostling for attention in the financial district. On the Puxi side, passengers are disgorged at the edge of the “Old City” of Shanghai, the area that was once a walled fishing village before Shanghai became an international metropolis, and although no longer physically walled, still maintains dense warren of narrow streets inhabited by longtime residents accustomed to little privacy and even less living space.
When you get off on the Puxi side, you come out into an open area that is sort of part street, part construction site (well actually that describes most street in Shanghai actually, but this is a bit more broad than most). The route out to the main road crossing is lined with vendors proffering all manner of snacks -roasted sweet potatoes, tea-boiled eggs, rolled up egg pancake things, slabs of melon on sticks, fatty spicy lamb kebabs are some of the things generally on offer. Lately I’ve noticed a few guys selling an interesting looking confection off the back of their trikes like this bloke:
This fellow was a funny chap. He told me his name but sadly I’ve forgotten it. He said he comes from “a place near Russia”. The giant slab of stuff he is selling is, like, chopped nuts and seeds in a sweet, semi-solid mass, sort of like a marzipan kind of thng, decorated with candy fruits. I forget the name of this as well. (I know, I know I should write these things down straight away.) I bought a chunk of it and it is so dense and sweeeeeeet, I imagine it shall take me the better part of a month to get through it, as I can manage only two or three nibbles at a go. It’s really good though.
From there I headed over to the commodities market, a popular area to pick up… well, just about anything you might imagine really. In great quantities. I was actually off in search of birthday gifts for 4 year olds (M has two parties to go to this weekend) but this time of year of course Chinese New Year is coming up, so there are multitudes of stalls to go to buy all of your festive Year of the Tiger needs.
Or, if you prefer, a Spirograph.
