A Walk in the Clouds - a fragment

I walk to work every morning these days. When my husband is in town, he walks me the ten to fifteen minutes it takes from our apartment to my office building, and we talk about our morning to come or various random observations. Otherwise, I walk alone. On the days that I walk alone, lack of conversation turns my energy outwards and my surroundings come into full view. Just today as I was walking in the clouds of exhaust and emission I could not help but admire just how intricate the human species is. Everywhere I looked there was a myriad of details involving the human beings coursing in waves around me.

Before I proceed, let me reinforce the fact that I now live in Shanghai – a metropolis teeming with humans that overflow from the gaping portals of subway stations and tumble from buses sighing and jerking along wide and narrow streets. There is this one large avenue that I cross every morning that particularly amuses me. The thoroughfare has three to four (cannot remember exactly, though I cross it everyday!) lanes going each way, and I cross at a T-intersection that leads into another fairly large three lane street. With each switch of the stoplight, the number of bicycles that pile up, biting at the reins to continue along the arm of the T or turn left into the leg of the T, never ceases to amaze me. When the light switches green, a whole army of bicycles are set in motion, along with the humans who then make their way across the zebra path in a massive horde. Bicycles and humans weaving in and out and around each other and somehow managing (most of the time) to avoid collision.

Amongst this throng I am in closest contact with my immediate neighbors, local Shanghainese people with a spattering of expats. It is an interesting feeling, to be so close to one another that you notice the fraying seam upon a blouse or the blossoming of sweat beads along a neckline. I find myself wondering what the lady with the ruffly yellow lace blouse matching a paisley green skirt is thinking on this Thursday morning as she carries on in pink kitten-heeled shoes to whatever workplace she is headed towards. Or the concerns of a delivery man sporting an offwhite towel and grayish-white vest, displaying an incredible strength of the thighs as he manages to ride with five mattresses in tow, stacked atop one another on the rickety cart tied to the back of his bicycle. I wonder if individual cows contemplate the thoughts of other cows as they are herded by angry looking traffic patrol "officers", in this case played by barking women wearing reflective vests over everyday clothing. These crazy ladies have a fondness for loud whistling and yelling at pedestrians to keep their feet off the streets and onto the sidewalks.

Today I saw a man, shirt tucked in the back but flapping defiantly in the front, who deliberately crossed the street in diagonal fashion without any noticeable concern for the cars and bikes about to run him over. When accosted by one crazy traffic whistler, he proceeded to yell at her unintelligibly (well, to me, since I do not understand Shanghainese. Judging from the traffic lady's expression I think she understood him loud and clear) and gesturing towards his diagonal destination as if to say, "I am going here, you idiot! Why would I cross one street, and then another, if I can cross diagonally?!" From an efficiency standpoint he is totally right, the hypotenuse is the way to go (details) but it was his attitude that struck me. Although he was obviously in the wrong, he yelled at the traffic cop as if she was mistreating him. I have noticed this general attitude often here, like when a taxi driver abandons his passengers in the middle of nowhere, yelling at them for not knowing the way, since of course, that is not his job. "Does it look like I have a map of Shanghai stored in this brain?!?" Um, no. He is right, what were they thinking? Silly passengers.

Other random Shanghai moments flock to the forefront. A crowd surrounding an accident scene, just looking, but not helping. Marketing folks sweating in subway stations that try to force business cards on you, and when denied, surreptitiously stuff them into your bags. Throngs of child beggars outside nightclubs, pulling at you to buy a single rose for 10RMB at three in the morning, led by women who are obviously not their mothers that you end up wanting to shake violently by the shoulders. "What the heck are you doing? Take these kids home! Put them in bed, you evil mother impersonator!" Strange land, I tell you.

I feel like a foreigner here, because I am. Do not let the Chinese face fool you. I am distinctly not Mainland Chinese. Distinctly not Shanghainese. Communicating is tiring here. Invariably taxi drivers have no idea what I am saying until I have said the same thing pronounced the same way six or seven times in crescendo. With waiters and waitresses, even if I know how to say the dishes in Mandarin, I find that it is easier and more efficient to just point at the right item on the menu. I learned that one from my husband, who has been here a few years and knows the Shanghai way. In fact, relying on elementary Japanese in Tokyo is much less stressful than speaking "intermediate" Mandarin in Shanghai.

It is funny, I started writing today thinking about the wonders of being in close proximity with humans that you may never have any contact with again. How humans manage to flow in hordes without running each other over, for the most part. How each of these humans around me represent an individual separate entity with a separate brain full of separate synapses firing at varying speeds, every single one teeming with his or her own throngs of thoughts and emotions and senses, coursing through the avenues of his or her body, feeding and nourishing the soul. And yet, I am only truly privy to my own set of entity/brain/synapse/thoughts/emotions/senses/soul. The closest I will ever get to most of these other sets is a brush of yellow lace.

But then one random thought of some rude guy and a traffic officer launched a whole trainful of negative Shanghai observations steaming fullspeed ahead into Shanghai-bashing land. Funny how the mind works. Well, this particular one at least.