Paltry Periods of Time

I need to get in the habit of leaving ass-crack of dawn for any meeting that involves crossing the city from the north east to the north west.  An hour doesn’t cut it.  Ninety minutes doesn’t cut it.  Even if you afford yourself two hours, you run into an accident and road work, like we did today.  I imagine that I’ll work while we’re driving over but all I do is fret.  

Someone sends me the contact details of the person we’re to meet.  I look and then look again.  He truly appears to be sixteen years old in his Wechat image.  Earlier in the month tutored some high school students who were thirteen.  Later next month I’ll be teaching undergraduates who are twenty years old.  This person can’t be much older, but he holds a significant position in a major company.  Fourteen years separate the thirteen-year-old from this person I’ll graciously assign as twenty-seven.   They all seem like such paltry periods of time, staring back from the fifth decade.  Just wait, I know, just wait. 

It’s never easy to arrange a visitor’s schedule in town.  Today what has been arranged involves Zhongguancun, Shangdi, Shunyi and Guomao.  We are late for every meeting.  No one is particularly surprised.  What would be a capital offence in Tokyo is acknowledged as par-for-course here in Beijing.  In the third meeting my eyelids are leaden and I would sell my soul for a nap.  Twenty minutes later in a cab ride downtown I can’t fall asleep, even though I try and try.  Looking back my guest has shut his eyes and I dial back my diatribe.  Lucky him.  I try.  I give up.  I return to the interminable process of charging my out-of-date phone and replying to emails.

My colleague has been in this town for decades, just like me.  We’re out on the third ring road in front of Guo Mao.  “I used to work in here.  When there was a building on this spot.  I was up on the tenth floor.  It’s gone now.  So are all the restaurants I used to head to after work.”  I consider this.  I used to work not far from here as well.  Over there in 1998.  The building is still there but the name on the roof has changed.  And I used to get a cab every day, right over there.  I suspect this terminal nostalgia is only of so much interest for our guest.

Wednesday 4/11/18