They Eye Me Once

Beloved Beijing, how are ya?  Overcast.  Is that natural wu or unnatural wuran?  A bit of both I’m sure.  I’ve had a wad of RMB in my pocket for weeks now that is no longer useless and my first stop, automatically is the Starbucks there in the arrival hall between Gate A and B.  My phone no longer seems to have the DiDi app.  Odd.  I download it again and while I’m fiddling near the Wu Qu bus area a guy comes to ask if I need a ride.  I dismiss him a bit too aggressively and soon I have my car coming.  And though I chose my location carefully he expects me to go to the parking lot.  “Nah.  I’ve got luggage.  You come to me.”  And when his little car icon doesn’t move, I cancel, quickly and hope he doesn’t accept when I put out the request for the second time. 

The next fella knows where I am and comes to meet me, quickly.  The driver’s a young guy who confirms it will be about twenty-five minutes to our destination, that the fall’s the best time in this town and that, yes, today, the day before a holiday the traffic is worse than usual.  We get to the inevitable where-you-come-from discussion and he confirms that he’s from Shandong.  Kinda silly but it always warms my heart to hear that someone is from my wife’s home province.  We continue and it turns out he’s from her home town, which is just short of astounding.  In the U.S. who cares, but here it remains forever important and we both become animated.  His wife hails from the same ancestral village as my wife, there on the northern coast of the province.  I have to take a call and beg forgiveness but the afterglow continues on till long after he’s taken out the luggage and sped off to the next ride. 

Up on the thirty-first floor I’ve a view northward, the left third of which is unencumbered by the building across the way.  Down there is a park that I don’t recognize which the Jing Cheng Express way cuts through further on is a large expanse of green which my stepson confirms is a golf course, though it certainly doesn’t look like one.  The city bound traffic has slowed to a halt and I consider the hundreds of times I must have been part of that very same scrum. 

Later, across the street we’ve piled up into the second floor of their go-to Shanxi comfort food joint.  It’s been, what feels like a while and soon we’ve got piles of dumplings and stacks of rou jia mou and a complementary pot of flavorless tea.  The fellas at one table and another all seem to have been drinking for a while.  Their faces are red, their shirts are up over their bellies.  Two guys have working men’s outfits and I wonder if they are both bus drivers from the look of it. They eye me once and then again involuntarily and I notice I’ve raised my voice just a little higher and sharpened my voice ever so slightly, like an animal in the Serengeti.  They don’t really care about me.  Just a new station on their evening’s television. 

Thursday 09/12/19