Durkin Spruth in China

Fall Walk - Recognized in the neighborhood Oct 20

Eva, the Spaniard, is a whiz at bus routes. She has the only map I’ve ever seen of the routes, and has been willing to try them out. She convinced us today to forgo our usual taxi ride home (16 kuai – or 2 dollars) to take the “76� bus home.

Price was 1 kuai, maybe 12 cents. Fall had arrived and so we didn’t need to pay double to get an air conditioned bus. During rush hour the buses are like sardine cans but at mid day, it was quite comfortable. Chinese busses have set, occasional stops so you can’t get off when you want. The closest stop was not too far from our house, but was in a direction we hadn’t yet explored. Walking in a new neighborhood is always a treat. Now that it was cooler we got a look at what changes fall was bringing. In the fancy gardens in front of official buildings they were pulling up the summer flowers and replacing them with pansies, a sure sign that the winter wasn’t going to be THAT cold. On the corners guys were selling sweet potatoes, cooked in big converted metal drums, plump and sweet smelling. Other vendors now had big woks with roasted chestnuts and peanuts. The smells of fall were much nicer than the smells of summer.

I noticed a shop selling incense and Buddha statuettes. When I saw a second one, my antennae went up – this usually happened only around temples, and I thought we were familiar with all the temples in our neighborhood. Passing an alleyway, I noticed something that made me stop – small plants growing in old containers lined both sides of the alley – this was not a usual event. We hesitated – walking up small alleys as a Westerner is still not fully comfortable – not for safety issues, but just for not wanting to intrude. An old man turned the corner, this made us back off even further. Then he suddenly smiled and motioned that we could come it – the vibe warmed considerably. We smiled back and followed the twists and turns back into the little lanes that make up much of neighborhood living here. An equally old and venerable looking woman saw us and started chatting away, pointing further down the lane. We finally arrived at what looked to be a neighborhood temple, informally set up inside an old warehouse, the kind of informal project which individuals were setting up and which would not be likely to make any tourist maps anytime soon.

As we neared areas we recognized, I saw the pearl store which I had been inside of a month of so earlier. I dragged Steve and Eva in – partly because I knew this place gave a cool demonstration of how pearls are made, opening an oyster right in front of you. After the demo – one of the salesgirls recognized me from earlier, and treated me with that warm recognition we had been lacking so much as newcomers here. We practiced our month’s worth of Chinese with them and they were duly impressed, even if I’m sure they really would have liked us to buy something. I was feeling heady with that sense that “hey, I live here� (even if it was only a pearl vendor) when we rounded the corner by the little stationary shop I had gone into several times in the first week of our setting up house. The sweet old fellow who had engaged willingly in sign language with me then to find tape and scissors walked out of the shop and greeted me with a big smile. Like a line out of our current dialogue, I was able to introduce him to my husband and my friend. Then I asked him how his health was, which appeared to surprise him a touch, but it was the next sentence in the dialogue, I knew I could pronounce it, and you have to work with what you’ve got. He asked me a question which was not in the dialogue, and there we got stuck – both feeling a little silly and uncomfortable. Hey, we’re making progress.