I’m Bill Tsutsui with another Postcard from Asia from the Center for East Asian Studies.
Here in China, you are never alone. Young couples holding hands and strolling. Citizens practicing tai chi in the park. Elderly women ballroom dancing with one another on the river front balustrade. Men with their donkey carts collecting night soil or sorting through trash. Women sweeping the sidewalks with brooms made of twigs. Business types walking swiftly to an unknown destination, chatting on their cell phones. Restaurateurs squatting outside their restaurants cleaning their bamboo steamers while live carp swim round and round in basins waiting to be steamed. Children in split pants dancing around their mothers as they brush their teeth and spit on the street. And this is at 4:55 in the morning. Makes rush hour hard to imagine, doesn’t it?
With thanks to Randi Hacker for this text, from the Center for East Asian Studies I’m Bill Tsutsui. Wish you were here.
