There's a moon in my garden

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The time is different but the places and people are not. I return to my Chinese hometown of Suzhou after 5 and a half months of personal change beyond their comprehension. I can’t even begin to explain my job to the people I know here because here there is nothing like it. No job like it, no culture like it, no knowledge of that kind of school or job. Suzhou is a town of more than 6.5 million yet it resembles nothing like any city in the UK.

After a morning poking in the old city of Shanghai, Patti and I caught the 14:21 bullet train to Suzhou. There is even more security here in the stations since I left. More electronic scanning machines to put your bags through - even on the underground - everyone - every bag and apart from Shanghai being a building site around where Ted lives and more and more subway exits sprouting up because after all ‘Better city, Better life’ - a slogan everywhere - then nothing else has changed.

On crossing the road at the Bund to get to the promenade side, which at 8.30am on a Sunday was packed with families walking and all taking, what would become, timeless images of their family of 3 with the Pearl Tower in the back ground or a bank or any of the iconic buildings that we recognize in a flash, I laughed at everyone staring at Patti. It’s not often you see a very tall young Western girl stroking dogs on the boulevard at 8.30am and she became the topic of their photos. It happens to me time and time again that I see a man that looks like my Grandad but he is Chinese and somehow we share a moment - this one being that we had the whistle blown at us for trying to cross an empty road because the crossing light for us was on red. He looked at me and I at him and we laughed and still stepped out to the sound of frantic whistles on an empty road. Ironic, because when the road crossing light is in our favour the crossing is marred by endless cars pushing through people and no order at all.

The old city of Shanghai is still there (just). More and more Skyscrapers encroach on the low old shikumen housing but the places I knew still survive laughing and living in their bustling way. Patti and I are carved from the same wood. We love dogs and cats and the morning, in fact the entire day, was full of animal encounters. Patti adopted something that resembled a floor brush with a fantastic personality but that was only after she’d met the extended sausage dog and the peeping cat on the Bund. I found something that was scared to move and resembled a sad young bobbob. China is alive with pushing and shoving and crowding - oh and staring but the heart is in it. So many people spoke and laughed with us and I hardly took any photos because I realised in retrospect that I am no longer a tourist looking at everything for the first time. It’s a homecoming.

We arrived in Suzhou into glorious sunshine and hoards of people. The begging at the station is worse than before. We were swamped but they didn’t know I could speak Chinese and Patti couldn’t look but I knew what was coming. If anyone truly knows us, they know that we are the people who buy homeless people dinners - or their dogs bags of Bakers biscuits but here it is different and it sounds callous to say that it is unfortunately a destined job for some when they are young. This time, in Suzhou, there was a young girl of about 5 who had had her hand smashed and burned when she was a baby which she showed, as her mother had taught her, like a trophy. It was hard to get her off my bag or out of my pockets or out of patti’s bag. I give to the old - most of them but I can’t forgive this.

It’s strange but here there are no time restraints for me. No boundaries. No expected lunch time or bed time or wake time except now it is 4am - I am wide awake from the screaming roof cats and I’m sitting in the courtyard alone.

I’m back in the first place I lived in China with Chris in ‘08 and Cathy put Patti and I in the same room - how funny. The room is one of three in the back courtyard of a 200 year old quadrangle house. Our room looks into the small garden with the traditional stone garden, swinging red lanterns and a moon hanging over head. There are 2 other small square gardens - one holds the ancient well and the modern washing line and the other, the age old wisteria. The hostel is on an old lane in Suzhou by the canal, with the Chicken lady still outside. The only thing she asks me after 5 months of being away is where is my dog? My Samoyed that is no longer mine, used to suffer her heavy smacking in the neck area that she considered to be a friendly greeting and I thought rather rough. Still, she does slit chicken necks for a job. When I tell her my dog lives in Shanghai, she goes about her business plucking feathers without a backward glance but there is more fun to be had. Cathy welcomes us in the lane, the neighbours come out with a new puppy and the child that I gave and Disney colouring book to last year, rushes by and has grown both in height and girth. The room that we occupied in ’08 before getting our first apartment is slightly changed. The old beams with dragon heads on have been covered to make the room private and the ceiling has been lowered to make it warmer but everything else is the same.

After arriving at the hostel, we dumped our stuff to go and see my Chinese family. Lao Wang, Jie Jie and Shu Shu. When we near Lao Wang’s I start to call his dog but it doesn’t come running and I find no one is in. The lane by the entrance to the courtyard where Lao Wang lives is littered in inch deep shredded red papers from wedding fireworks and firecrackers. I know this because I’ve seen it many times and that is probably why he isn’t in. The noise would have been deafening. So we walk on over Lindun Lu, across the road to the lane I used to live in. Nothing here has changed. The bike man is still here but he has a new chair, the bird man is still here and when I call his dogs - pee po a bee bop they both come running and it’s all excitement. Both men ask me if I have returned for good. I’m heading behind the flower market to my landlord’s house. I’ve been told that he has relet my house to another woman but that’s okay. Many people in the lane recognise me and it is really warming.

I walk into my old landlord’s house to be greeted my Jie Jie and the dog and all 9 cats except mine which she tells me she’s given away to her friend because it became too fat. She then hands me the keys to my old house and tells me that they turned the new person out on the 25th knowing I was coming back but I’ve already paid for the hostel and now I have two places to stay. Shu Shu comes back and they immediately ask Patti if she wants to marry their son and they mean it. We’re force fed sour pickled fruits which I can’t even bite and Jie Jie can shove in her mouth in one, biscuits dry as paper and green tea. We’re invited to dinner but I haven’t seen Lao Wang yet and it’s getting late. So we leave with the keys to my house. On the way back to Lao Wang’s we call in at my house and the bike man joins us to look around. So many memories but the house seems an empty shell without me. I don’t know what to do, where to live. I call my roof cats and after 5 minutes, all 3 reappear but don’t come right close. They are all dirty and dreaded and uncared for but they’re alive and baby is pregnant (again). Tomorrow I will feed them again but now I have a special friend to visit.

As we round the corner to the old lane with the single well in the middle, I see what I think is Qiao Qiao - Lao Wang’s dog but it’s longer and different. It is Qiao Qiao and he comes running and jumping and crying. A dog never forgets a friend. And, as we enter the one roomed house, Lao Wang is waiting because he has heard that we have been and after all, I left a single crystal earring in the door latch to say we’d be back. Nothing is changed in his house. He is well and happy and I introduce him to my daughter.

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Photos

the shadow of the dog owner
on the bund

Bob Bob looky likey but not
Shanghai

Comments

[Erica]

Hi
What a gorgeous blog Tracey - beautiful photos. Sooooo wish I was there, as I put on the dreaded uniform ready for yet another night shift. :( Lol xxxxxx