A Room in Shanghai

In Chinese cities a local foreigner is surrounded by millions of curious people in crowded living situations, a relic in a poorly maintained zoo. 

Animals are abused and neglected, but that’s beside the point of the doors on family compounds in big Chinese cities made of thick heavy metal. They close at night with a clang on old worn hinges. An adult voice is heard admonishing a child.  

“Get in, the night is here. It is late. You have to fold the clothes. You have your work for school. You have to clean up after dinner. You must study harder. Harder! If you fail your exams we will lose face. You will be an unemployed migrant child wandering lost cities looking for your future.”

The demanding accusatory tone of voice is always an admonishing attitude of voice in the way things exist. Shanghai commands are simple and direct. 

Outside the window heels strike cold hard pavement in darkness. The sharpness belongs to a girl escaping from family going out for the night. Muted voices of an old couple walking through narrow concrete canyons echo as her heels fade.

The elevator door opened on the 11th floor of a five—star business hotel in Shanghai. 

A beautiful young Chinese girl, maybe 20, in a white dress clutching a small black purse stared at a scuffed marble floor. Small puddles of rain water gathered around her shoes.

The American stopped talking to the Indian accountant and looked past him. 

She raised her face from the ground. 

Deep dark brown rings circled old, tired, fearful eyes hiding her heart's knowledge, revealing her soul. There was no place to hide, no magical cosmetic to conceal the truth of everything she knew. The woman and man instinctivily understood each other. She was passing toward another temporary hope, another ethereal reality.

She was on the wrong floor and pressed another number. Doors closed. She was going up. Up to the room of a foreign businessman who would take her through night into morning.

Everyone in town was making money. 

Billboards shouted, “Making Money in China is Glorious!”

She carefully folded hard earned hard currency into her black purse after a long hot shower and took the elevator back down. Gliding through a revolving glass and brass door, she passed a deserted dark empty Japanese restaurant and negotiated gray stained industrial steps to Nanjing Xi Lu.  

Serious adults in blue industrial clothing practiced Tai Chi with controlled balanced concentration. Every methodical movement had meaning. Dawn's collective breath formed a mist crashing around her well worn heels as she skipped over cracked city stones through their shadows. 

A neighbor cried out to a neighbor asking for something at high decibels.  

A motorcycle roared past followed by a bike bell ringing a sharp corner warning. Two old women wearing thick clothing talked about the price of vegetables, cool days and the fate of their children. Their words adjusted to musical volumes and surreptitious encounters in careful dark corners where sexual repressed couples groped for meaning. 

This is a small corner of the world. This is a small corner of the sky. This is all there is and it is enough for now.

Days, weeks and months later the foreigner finally exploded in anger and frustration. His bitterness understands locals don't know it's OK to lock the door. There are bars on his windows and he feels like a prisoner. 

Boredom, his enemy, has carved out a niche, a river in the soul.  

He declined offers to eat with the family. He needs distance. He is a dream they had, an intrusion on their language acquisition and their personal desire for growth caught up in unknown varieties of kindness. 

How many words will it take to explain this to them as anger grows from giving in? Listening to the wild wife talk on and on as her husband tries to wheel and deal. Nothing but endless questions. 

Interrogations during the Cultural Revolution.

His imagination engine kicks in. It's a ghost. A predator eating living beings, flesh. Tearing them apart as they sit and rest and doze off after playing cards. 

They shout at the deaf man in a small room with bars on the window.  Help us! they scream. 

His last week is the longest. The finest. 

Metta.