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Sep 05, 2010 19:37

Beijing's generally an "ugly? watch me not give a fuck." kind of place, and I mean in a general life sense, the normal not so sightly details of life, but the summertime here is like a citywide festival of all things ugly and normal. I bike through the Dongsishisantiao hutong every day on my way to a cafe, and see some combination of yellowed underwear drying on a line next to a shop entrance, shop person (for sure owner of the underwear) smoking while watching bad soap on TV in the shadows of the interior - he lives behind the counter, babies in ass-less chaps (so they may easier shit and piss on the street) scuttling around, men loitering with their shirts tied over their nipples, slapping each other's potbellies, laughing gutturally through cigarette smoke between their teeth, grannies hanging out on courtyard steps in packs, or waddling to a fro, old men sitting in saggy undershirts playing chinese chess, smoking cheap cigarettes, relatives wheeling their wheelchaired ancestors who look like they hadn't had a bath since the Long March through the street for some air, husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, and friends slurping up noodle soup (why is everybody eating mian tang right now? must be a summer thing. but its hot? wait, this is china.) outside hole in the wall type restaurants, people transporting random crap on rough-looking tricycle "trucks." Nobody's giving a fuck, everyone's chilling. My hip Chinese friend that runs a Holga camera shop on Andingmenwai complained he was sick, so I asked him what was wrong, and he said he had some problem with his asshole, then gestured with a hand between his ass cheeks to make sure he was being clear. "Fuck, my ass hurts. Lots of people right now have the ass problem," he said, as he might have said lots of people have a runny nose problem in the winter. Later today, as I was passing through, I saw a couple in their pajamas was fighting on the road ahead. The woman was screaming and trying to push the man while he was trying to get ahold of her flailing arms. She made him lose balance and he fell backwards across the narrow alley inches away from the back of my bicycle as I rode past. This kind of scene might have happened between your parents in the kitchen when you were a kid. But here they were, on the street, blind to all the traffic, but really just not giving a fuck. I almost wished that I'd passed by half a second earlier and their life collided with mine, literally, and I would arrive at the cafe and write about the romance in that, the ugly-pretty of open living, like some Dogville shit, and here I did anyway. People do literally hang their dirty laundry out for all to see. People take ownership of the streets and fill them with mundane details of everyday life that we might consider private. Privacy? They probably laugh about it as they take their morning shits next to each other in the stall-less public squatters, trading tips on dealing with the ass problem.

beijing, writing, life

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