Wishing You Effective Broom Technique

The schools were closed today, which is heaven for the kids.  But when you work internationally people aren’t necessarily inclined to cut you slack for Ancestor Grave Sweeping Day.  I was corrected twice:  Unlike Lunar New Year or someone’s birthday it is inappropriate to say “Happy . . . ancestor grave sweeping day.”  This would otherwise roll off the tongue in Chinese but it is understandably a faux pas.  I was not given clarification as to whether it would be best to say “wishing you a solemn ancestor grave sweeping day” or “wishing you effective broom technique on your ancestor grave sweeping day holiday.”  

It wasn’t so long ago that this day had a feudal legacy stain to it here in the mainland.  It was a Hong Kong holiday, as I remembered it.  But as the moral/ethical underpinning of communism was gutted, what with billionaire businessmen welcomed into the Party and all, Confucianism has waxed resurgent to fill the void.  If I want to see people actually practicing this holiday in anything like a traditional fashion, I suppose I should visit my relatives in Shandong who would be out at the burial mounds, burning paper money and attending to things as they do during Lunar New Year.  I don’t think anyone in Beijing knows where their familial burial mounds are, after they were relocated for the third and fourth time to accommodate the sprawl we all now slowly drive through.

While the school is celebrating its spring break, and classes are not held, the gym is fortunately still accessible.  Today I’ve managed to talk both the girls into heading over.  Shortly after departing he older one’s brand new orange and black racing bike let’s her know that the tire is flat.  Fortunately we are able to overcome the impulse to give up on bikes and simply drive over.  This, because one hundred yards down the road is the neighborhood bike man. 

He has a small, white three-wheeled cart contraption that seems to be permanently parked there, besides the flower ladis at the first traffic-light-less intersection.  He’s working on someone else bike when we arrive but soon he has my daughter’s inner tube out of the tire and into the tub of water he keeps there next to his pump and his tools.  He patches one hole and finds two more.  Each time he uses a rasp to rough up the rubber material to make it more adhesive for the patch.  His right hand is lame and it take longer than it might otherwise, for him to grind the tire, bang on the patch and reinsert the tube.  While he finishes up I take some photos of what the flower ladies are selling along side.

Monday, 4/3/17