Have A Sample In There?

I saw this gentleman sitting across from me at their airport.  He was speaking Castilian Spanish into a phone.  I was typing away on emails and answering buzzings from my phone. He began to walk over to the gate.  I noticed he eyed me once and twice and then he walked up and began talking.  He offered unfortunate news.  Apparently Shanghai was having a tornado.  "Is that right?"  "Yes."  "We’re not likely to be leaving any time soon, then." This was not what I wanted to hear.  I acknowledged this as pleasantly as I could. 

He continued to talk and I felt bad because he was standing and I was sitting.  All the seats around me were taken.  Eventually I stood up to continue the chat.  He was a wine merchant from Madrid.  This had an effect on me.  Suddenly I wanted very badly to sample some of his wares.  I looked around and considered the various restaurants in the Beijing Capital Airport.  No.  None of them would have anything like good wine.  I looked down at his carry on.  Might he have a sample in there?

I struggled.  The fingers of work were pulling at me to return.  There were always another few emails I could get out.  I had stopped midway through writing a blog post.  But quickly it became clear that he was a thoughtful, cultured gentleman, about whom I could learn not only why it was that wine grown in Shandong would never likely mature the way wine in Australia or California had, but also that Seneca was from Cordoba and the architecture of Lima was much more interesting in his opinion, than that of Santiago.  More than once his eyes unexpectedly reminded me of a great friend of mine whom I rarely see any more and this, more than anything made me consistently abandon the impulse to say “well, I guess we’ll be stuck for a while.  I’ve work to do.  If you’ll excuse me.”

And as often happens, he revealed an almost talismanic admiration for China.  China was ascendant.  China would be running things soon.  The U.S. was being eclipsed.  They are building out and taking over Africa, that’s for sure.  I understand and subscribe to a variant of this thinking.  But it is striking rarely people factor in China’s fragility.  I think older Chinese all know.  Older Chinese know that things can turn, quickly, horribly.  And that while we all hope this is the ascendant period of a glorious four-hundred-year dynasty there is nothing certain about this.  People imagine China ruling other places, when they are still trying to figure out their domestic stability as well as the improvement of their grape cultivation.

Wednesday 01/14/17