You
run into a lot of interesting driving prowess across Asia. I’m heading over to Shang Di now in a
cab with a pleasant gentleman, who is probably my age. It’s an open road and there is no
traffic to complain about, now at 2:00PM.
But his approach to making his way along the highway is it to tap the
accelerator, gain speed, and then slow down, at odd intervals. What this means is we accelerate and
pause, accelerate and pause, which tends to have the impact of making one feel
as though they were riding a camel.
I wonder if it is his conditional attitude or not. Tough job, that, Dromedarian. I just looked up to take a gaze at the
meter on my camel driver. We
better get there soon or he’s gonna max out my wallet, said the artist formerly known as "Lao She." Over to the right is the ‘so modern it
already looks retro’ buildings of Beijing’s ‘Z Park.’ I don’t think I’ve ever gotten out here so fast. I compliment my driver but he
disregards it as though it were 驴唇马觜[1]. We’ve
made it in record time.
Three hours later, I’m at a gas station at the fourth ring
road and airport express way round about.
A friend heading into the city dropped me off here and I ducked out as
there are literally forty empty cabs. Unfortunately there are also forty idle drivers
playing cards on the veranda and they don’t look much like they want to go
anywhere. I followed what looked
like a driver with the yellow shirt into the convenience store and asked if he
wanted to go to the airport which is usually a the sort of destination that
gets drivers attention.
Fortunately he was game, right away. And now I’m in the back, of his cab, back tracking over the
road I just traveled, heading out now on the Jing Cheng highway back out to the
burbs.
My girls announced something last night that was truly
startling. “I really don't’ have
any classes I don’t like.” “Me
neither.” Is that really possible? My ice-breaker question with newly-met
kids in Chinese or English is usually, “so, what’s the class you love
the most and what’s the class you hate the most.” Never fails.
And my kids were telling me they didn’t have any classes they didn’t
like . . . Wow. Give us time. We’ll work on it. I’m sure we’ll have something to
complain about before long, but so far, two weeks in . . . I like the way this
is going down.
Riding along the Jing Cheng highway I also like the way this
Chico Freeman is going down in my ears.
I saw him years and years ago in lower Manhattan. I think he was playing with Casandra
Williams. Long, lanky, commanding,
to a point, I also seem to remember I was rather sleepy that night. This tune “Like the Kind of Peace it
Is” from the album Morning Prayer is very familiar. I know this head, this tune through another version, though
I can’t quite place where. This
appears to have been the first album by Mr. Hamilton from the year `1976. Born in Chicago he moved to New York
shortly thereafter, where he lives to this day, teaching at the New
School.
Home, sweet, chaotic, neighborhood home. Coming in the back way now, past the
rough, brick, ramshackle buildings that line the roads of all small towns in
China on any street that abuts a roadway on the town outskirts. A few restaurants have thrown up tables
outside and people are beginning to fill up the space, near and around the
mountains of waste and more waste. Standing there are seventeen parked steamrollers with their
wheels up in the air. And down in the side off from the trucks are crates and
crates of beehives that you don’t want to bump into, unawares. There, to the
right is the wall to my compound, complete with welcoming glass shards fastened
into hardened concrete in the top row.
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