But, Invariably

What the hell is that?  The sun’s up but it’s only 5:30AM and there isn’t much traffic on the road.  We’ve just gotten trough the wretched Beijing Auto Show with its sclerotic impact on movement through our little patch of Beijing.  Across the street from the convention center a new construction has arisen.  We’ve watched it go up for most of the last year.  The underlying skeletal structure seems to suggest a parking garage that extends for two blocks.

We’ll find out soon, just what that is.  It will likely be a mall with parking, for sure.  But driving along this morning I’ve noticed they’ve unveiled a tremendous black screen that extends for two hundred yards or more, forming a rectangle some forty meters high.  Are we really going to have a screen that big, now flashing ads in our face on this strip of road, from hence forth?  Will people really pay crazy amounts of money every once and a while to post their commercials up there, so that the folks at the convention center can’t miss it?  Another notch downward along the deterioration of our villa ghetto.   One day it will all just look like the towers of the nearest overbuilt ex burb downtown, Wang Jing.

I’ve settled in to a Starbucks at the D terminal of my favorite airport. Usually one passes by on the way to the international terminals.  Today I’m flying to a city I’ve only ever really passed through before:  Changsha.  I have been on the road so much this last month, I really don’t want to go anywhere. But I’m here.  After today, I should be able to settle in for a while.

There are many things I would like to explore in Changsha.  Some food I would enjoy having a chance to try.  If time were no object I could visit the place where Mao was born and climb the Daoist peak of Heng Shan.  But invariably, I will drive from the airport in a cab for forty minutes to some tower in a newly built part of town and then, eventually make my way back to the airport.  I don’t anticipate being steeped with much of anything Hunanese.