Paths
On some streets we drove down, with the coy bridges, stone-tile pavements, the locals slouching in the shade of their trishaws, and bamboos attending the leftover spaces, you couldn't doubt where you were. Out in the provinces, the beggars are as shameless as the salespeople. Sometimes I can't tell the difference.
And some streets are like tributaries streaming off the colossal multi-level highways, and cars, trucks and buses fight bicycles and people for road space. I think often back to that woman on the zebra crossing, who stared down an approaching lorry, or how Shanghai traffic signals are more approximate guidelines than anything else, or how liberal everyone is with the horn, or how crammed everything is. On streets like this, it takes all the hieroglyphs on the road signs to reposition the mind in China.
I say this because more than once I caught myself idly looking out, between the skyscrapers and crisscrossed roads, for the Sears tower.
But even in the heart of the metropolis you can find pockets of reaffirmation. As it was this morning, through the cracks in the small crowd: two white-haired ancients, hunkered down on bamboo stools over a game of Chinese chess. My camera was a distraction. The old men turned it around in their hands, laughing like children when they saw the few frozen moments just minutes before. I thought that it would have made a wonderful photograph - a close-up of those gnarled fingers fumbling at a weird metal future - but, you know, they were holding my camera.
And, one of the best things about travelling is coming home. Neither without the other; that is, until I achieve my dream of travelling for the rest of my life, living between hotel rooms. Ha.