Don't Need to See the Menu

It’s Election Day and I’m here in Guangzhhou.  I drove through the city on the way from the airport.  I got to feel a few minutes worth of Guangzhou elevated highways.  These remind me of the Guangzhou I first experienced back in 1993.  But my meeting today is over at Tianhe.  I headed straight to a mall to meet a friend.  I had visions of Dim Sum in my mind, but he’d already eaten.  Up on the top floor I spied an Element Fresh.  I’ve flown 1000 miles to find myself in the same Taikoo mall at the same restaurant we have in Beijing.  I don’t need to see the menu.  I ordered the same Greek salad with grilled lamb I’d get in Beijing.  My computer roamed on the same Wifi I’d used to roam on in the Beijing establishment.  There was therefore, nothing much about Guangzhou that felt particularly “Guangzhou.”  I suppose if I’d gone to Peking Road in the old section of town it would certainly have been more evocative.  But as it were, it may as well have been a mall in any other part of the country. 

Now we’re spending down from Guangzhou to Shenzhen.  We’re on a “regular “train that is traveling 159 Km/h.  How many miles per hour is that?  (98 mph) That must be at least one hundred miles an hour.  Which suggest that even the “normal” trains in China could blow past Amtrak or Metro North.  Over to the side is a story or two that haven’t been told.  This is the manufacturing heartland of planet earth.  Still is.  Has been for a while.  Will be a little longer yet.  There’s cheap four story housing for miles off  in the distance until a hill rises, suggesting the larger peaks of Hong Kong Island.  But most of the landscape is a low, flat flood plane.  There is still intense cultivation of any land that isn’t built upon or paved over or train-track traversed by.   This is the richest province in China by far and yet the median standard is still a compromise that speaks to the enormity of the national project of industrialization that is only still in the first act. 

I always imagined that there was a Maupassant or a Zola or a Dickens kicking around in these ramshackle dwellings organizing a tail that would explain this moment in human development the way the late nineteenth century authors made sense of the industrial revolution.  Twenty years from now when anyone wants to understand what happened here, they will read, Wang Doe’s book.  But for now it remains written but obscured, unknown. 

A friend wants to meet right away.  I’m just off the phone.  He’ll meet me at my hotel.  I could use an hour to catch up on a day of missed emails.  A tomorrow of must dos that haven’t been coordinated yet.  I’ve got a can of Pearl River beer and I’ve got the seat next to me free.  The beer is undistinguished but it’s cold.  There was an older lady who seemed concerned when I sat down here next to her and she calculated that I was too much of an odd hassle and she moved it on over to the adjacent seat opposite me.  Be glad your not viewing on ‘smell-a-vision.”  This car smells like seven six people simultaneously took off their shoes and socks after a hard days trod.  We’re pulling into Dong Guan Station now.  This still looks more like Thailand or Saigon than the second largest economy on earth.  There are young lovers sitting in the modestly manicured park.  Go home and write about what you see young lovers.  You never know. 

Listening to “The Sahara All Stars” Alkali Adajo, who keeps yelling “boh” which sounds notably cool.  It reminds me of listening to this same song riding along Main St. in New Paltz.    

Battery power waning . . .