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Published: June 22nd 2013
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I walk down the lane skirting what little shade there is. It’s 10am and already 30 degrees. There’s no getting away from this heat or the people or the noise. I walk over Big Heart Bridge, down the next lane and round the corner, start walking up the old stone bridge by Cai Gen Lin’s house and come face to face with him after 2 and a half years. There was no way of letting him know I was coming, I can’t write hanzi, the post is unreliable especially when I stick a photo of him on the front of the envelope and make a stab at the address and hope it will arrive - I just thought I would turn up. We both stand in silence looking at one another. He’s thinner, taller, older and looking more like a Buddhist master than he’ll ever know. Shaved head, thin clothes. After a moment, he says, Ni Hao. I raise my hand. Without another word, he turns back to the house, unlocks the door, I walk behind and he immediately says, ‘Ma shang Guolai’ then he waits to see if I understand – I repeat what he said – then say ming
bai – I understand – you’ll return immediately, and with that, he leaves.
I’m left in the tiny house in the hutongs where the first room is also but not only, a barber’s shop. I’ve seen it change over 5 years from a place with its walls entirely covered in Buddhist images and mantras, through the Government hutong ‘restoration’ order, to this now humble place with plastic ceiling tongue and groove and ‘mordernized’ stairs. Cai Gen Lin has been a barber for over 50 years, he’s been a Buddhist for about 18. He cuts the hair of anyone who walks through the door, all locals, without a booking - always for pennies. A fair price. His hands are deeply cracked from washing hair through all weathers in the sink in the corner. Food is rinsed in the sink outside with the outside tap. A gas bottle heats the water. The door is always open when he is in. I am in awe of this man and my only offering is stupid but practical hand cream.
I scan the room. It is quiet and familiar - a customer walks in and stands still staring at
me. I tell him in perfect Chinese that Cai Gen Lin will return shortly. He leaves without a word. I figure out that my friend has gone to buy something, find something or tell something but I’m not sure, so I wait. Waiting seems the natural order in this place. A tiny plastic radio plays Chinese Kun Qu whilst all the time, every minute of the day, the Bhuddist chanting loop can also be heard from upstairs. This chanting loop is always playing, every day, every year, every decade. I think I can hear a television also. A few things are now on the wall but nothing like 2008 when I first walked by with my dog. I look at the oil that has leaked from the bottom of the oldest barber’s chair that belonged to his father, shoes are neatly placed in a small rack, a large sheet of paper is cellotaped to the wall behind the electric pan heater where all the daily cooking takes place on a table which already holds lunch in bowls under a large tent like net to keep the flies away. The rice cooker is next to me. All daily activities take place
in this room. I am still in awe of this man. He returns with another man with a helmet on and a head torch blaring. He also carries a large canvas bag of tools. They both go over to the door to the bedroom and a conversation ensues, the use of some article is used to force open the door that I now realise has broken and locked itself and Cai Gen Lin’s wife is released and the workman is instantly rewarded with a cigarette which he immediately lights and leans back to enjoy and appreciate his workmanship of forcing a lock. I am so glad to see that they are now occupied with the trivialities of a broken door and not death as was the case when I returned the last time. Things are back to normal. It’s been 2 years and 4 months since I was last here. It’s good to feel normality.
Later, walking back from Shan Tang Jie, along Xi Zhong Shi, I can hear the rat catcher above the mayhem. He’s walking down the bike lane, banging his wooden rattle, calling out his business, pushing the old child’s pushchair loaded
Hostel staff
invited me to share their food, made by the young girl who will take over the place. I gave them cakes baked for me by Cheng Hong - everything moves around. with poisons and traps. Anyone who has lived here will know how the roads work. Basically, it’s a free for all and think only of self attitude. They use the horn instead of the brake. It means me, me, me meeeeeeeee. The air is full of honking horns. There is a world of everything in this road – everything but quiet and consideration. There is even unrecognised cruelty that is totally acceptable. It hurts my heart. Everything is jostling for a place, hundreds of cars, buses, lorries, e bikes, regular bikes, kids, old, young, animals, rats, workers, negotiations, arguments, buying, selling, shouting, gossiping, sweating, staring and me. I’m used to it but always something surprises me. There is a huge crowd gathering by the side of the road. I push to the front to see a woman holding a chain attached to a huge 3ft. soft turtle which is flapping in the dust in the gutter. God forbid, it must be terrified. It looks rare and my heart is pounding at the sight but I can do nothing and leave in the relentless heat which overbears everything reclaiming the city with dirt and dust and mould covering a thousand million people who are all contributing to it. The sky is always white, no colours, no cloud, no grading or change. It is always the same whilst we melt underneath adding to the mess that is already here.
I’m frightened by what’s in the pan, only fresh will do, so alive is thrown into the fat pan searing under the sweating man. People dig next to market traders and all the puppies and kittens, bought and sold, given away and dressed up in clothes. The shop selling endless hundreds of things next to another and another and another all selling the same things all covered in dust and dirt and mould and in between all the honking and shouting and gobbing, a mother plays badminton with her only child by the side of the road. We smile at each other then the shuttle cock gets stuck in a tree, which they cannot reach until a young man carrying a roll of metal, lays down his load to retrieve the thing out of the tree with a big grin in my direction. It is mad, it is mental here and this is all in ten feet in 3 minutes. When I reach my old landlord’s house, the door to the shop is locked and I sink to sit on the step. Two people from surrounding shops rush to tell me to phone them but I cannot and wouldn’t anyway. They bring me a bamboo chair and phone shu shu. I swing like a pendulum wondering why the hell I’m here to absolutely glad I am. I understand that everyone is trying to make a living just like everyone in the UK, but here the rules are different – I know this but here, also, the kindness runs deeper.
I’ve been fed, watered, given my house back in the hutongs, given lifts on the back of e-bikes, given food by people that don’t know me, sent gifts in the night, had seats given up for me, helped with my bag – endless, endless small acts of kindness in this heaving, breathing city and I know exactly why I am here.
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David Fossey
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Total immersion
Tracey, your writing is wonderful. Your whole life is there, your soul and your love of the people; their joy, their grief, their friendship, their hardship. From a grey-haired -nomad