neighborhood

one month from today, i board a plane with a one-way ticket to america. 30 days to pack, sort, and tie up loose ends. 30 days to say good-bye to the city that has become my home.

i arrived in this city a young, idealistic, borderline-naive girl carrying large dreams and ambitious hopes of changing the world. i carried my presumptions and assumptions, tidy boxes of how i thought life, love and the world ought to be. all the challenges, joys, disappointments and victories of the past 9 years here have forced me to unpack those boxes and re-sort--really, redefine--all that i thought i knew. and i'm the wiser for it, i hope.

the past few weeks have been blasts from the past as visitors have trickled in as through a revolving door. friends who used to live in shanghai, friends who have made shanghai a frequent stop in their various travels....all folks who have come to love this city as much as i do, in all her complicated nuance.

though i'm excited about my upcoming move to another amazing city, i am going to miss shanghai dearly.

one of the top things i'll miss? my neighborhood. i love my neighborhood. i love the building guards who sit outside in lawn chairs on balmy evenings, smoking their cigarettes and chattering in sharp slices of shanghainese with the other tenants in my building. i love that they always ask, "are you going out?" as i hurry past them (usually running late for something), stating the obvious with concerned affection.

i love the fix-it man who comes to repair my lights and stove, stern except for his cheeky smirk, always giving me unsolicited fatherly advice.

i love the husband and wife duo who operate my favorite vegetable stand at the wet market on the corner. i love her gentle demeanor, his smiling but often fatigued face. i love that the wife and i trade recipes as we discuss how we prep and serve different vegetables. "do you fry this with garlic?" "no, i usually eat this raw." i love that they are always a bit aghast that i eat vegetables raw.

i love the street food vendors, working all hours of the morning and night, their gestures sure and memorized as they churn out soups and dumplings and delicious dan bing. i love chatting with them about their business that day, their hometowns and the television show they are usually watching as they work, hands swiftly moving while their eyes are fixated on the small flickering screen.

i love the people in my neighborhood. i confess that in the near-decade that i've lived here, i haven't always liked chinese people: the masses with their spitting and shoving, the masks of their apparent indifference, the nonchalant shrugs from customer service workers and the words "mei ban fa" (there's no way) rolling languidly from their lips without a thought...drives me mad.

but the peng you men (friends) in my neighborhood. oh, i will miss them dearly.


cups of coffee:  1 1/2

mood: lazy