Walking Around on Their Lunch Break

This light at Da Shanzi is always a walnut.  There must be a way around coming down from the north as I do, but I haven’t cracked it.  Riding to the gym this morning I talked to my daughters and said, “Somewhere someone in the compound is looking out their window and saying: “today is my day.  Today is my birthday.”  “Are you hinting something dad?”  “No.  I’m just saying.”  It looked like such a fine day I couldn’t help but imagine someone out there considering it as over and above all others.

I will resist the urge to write about the traffic that I am stuck in right now.  It’s lower Bei San Huan nonsense traffic that crawls along slower than a bike in the middle of the day, just like it did back in 1999.  I’m off to see my French friend who cuts my hair.  With the aperture is narrow on Laurent’s English and narrower still on my French.  But we talk politics among other things and I’ll want to congratulate him on the election.  I couldn’t say if he’s a Macron fan, but I’m quite certain he’ll take her any day over Le Pen.

I met a friend for lunch just now in the Wang Jing SoHo.  I’d never properly visited before but the cabbie headed out as soon as I said as much.  I had a rough idea of where we’d be heading to.  Sure enough, as we approached one of the main crossroads there, I looked up and placed the name to the SoHo sign atop the large, warped egg-shaped building that I’d always seen but never named.  I was dropped at a corner, before building’s complex.  Hundreds and hundreds of people were out, walking around on their lunch break.  Everyone looked so fresh and vibrant in the sun.

My friend had sent me a pin, which I put in Apple maps because the interface was easier to use.  I shouldn’t have. The app sent me on a ridiculous nine-minute circle around the vast complex back to precisely where I was dropped off, at which point my friend met me and escorted me to the restaurant. Beneath the frantic, turning consultation of the map, I was glad for a chance to walk among all these people, in the sun. This SoHo company designs remarkably futuristic buildings but the storefronts look just like every other SoHo complex, with starter shops and ill-conceived restaurants so that all feels familiar and mis-orchestrated.

Friday, 5/12/17