My little one and I rode over to dinner last
night on our bikes. She arrived a few
minutes after me and sat down quietly.
Then she shared that she’d had an accident, where she bumped into a pedestrian
and fell, scraping herself. She
wechatted me a photo of her leg she snapped under the table and it was a bloody
scrape. It must have hurt but I could
tell she was more shook up then in pain.
I had to entertain my son’s in-laws and didn’t disrupt things but tried
to make sure she was alright.
She said the
person, who was a foreigner, and not a Chinese, didn’t say anything, didn’t
appear to be hurt and rather, didn’t offer to help her and just walked away. I felt angry, of course, and also knew that I
had imperfect information. I felt obliged
to explain to her that sometimes, the law is opaque in China and people,
Chinese and foreign, had just as soon, not have anything to do with even a whiff
of trouble. And as a result they adopt a
counter-intuitive sense of avoidance. “The
guy should have helped you and asked if you were alright.”
We didn’t have any
mega band aids at home, so I told her to wash it with soap and let it breath
during the evening. She did that again
this morning and when I dropped her at school she promised to go see the nurse
to have a quick look. I suppose I still feel
bad that I biked ahead that night and didn’t watch her go first. She is fifteen and I cannot, of course, watch
over all her bike rides any longer.
No international
internet this morning. I was tired and
grumpy as it was and this didn’t help. Usually
if you switch Astrill from landing in one server to another or another somewhere
in the U.S. it works well enough. If
that fails try Germany, or Russia or Albania.
Nothing worked this morning. Nor
did my cellular Wi-Fi. I could still
read the Washington Post, just not the Times.
I could still translate a Chinese article and read it. Just had to use mdbg.net and not Google
Translate. I could still see my emails
on my phone. Nothing pressing had yet to
show.
Monday, 5/06/19
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