Yesterday was the day all the Beijing taxi drivers started wearing uniforms. Yellow, collared shirts, blue cargo pants with silver zippers, yellow and blue-striped ties. My driver, Mr. Gao, was very proud of his new uniform, but confessed he couldn’t keep his tie on the whole day, what with the 90-degree heat. He designated his left-hand pocket for the big bills (100s, 50s), right-hand pocket for the small change.
The Olympics only days away, Mr. Gao seemed especially happy to be chatting up a “foreign friend”–a chance to brush up on some of his English phrases (“Hello ladee, please sit. You want go weir?”) and hone some of the finer points of international diplomacy and cross-cultural understanding. He asked me whether it was better to make the “OK” sign with his left hand or his right hand, and whether there might be some cultures where the “OK” sign might offend. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the OK sign was just a tad retro, but I did advise him it might not be the best idea to call his clients “beautiful ladies” and “handsome men.” (Gallantry doesn’t always translate well.)
On July 11, after two-and-a half months of roaming around
Africa for the third time, I flew (via Lilongwe, Addis Ababa and Khartoum) from Lusaka to
Cairo. 48 hours later I was on my way to JFK (via Rome and Milan). I spent 18 hours in the Tri-state Area. Then I was off to
Seattle to meet my favorite boy for the first time. At 6am on July 21st, I flew to San Francisco for
24 hours and caught a showing of Batman: The Dark Knight,
my third film in a real movie theatre in two years. Last night (twelve
days after taking off from Lusaka, plus or minus whatever
happens when you cross the international date line), I arrived in
Beijing.
Arrived in Beijing last night, jetlagged. Woke up at about 3:30am. Took this photo at 6:30, about an hour and a half after dawn. (Read Ernest Hemingway while flying over Siberia, and strange things begin to happen to the number of clauses you’ll allow in a sentence.)
Beijing, morning, July 24, 2008
As the sun rises, the gray just gets brighter. It may be out later, as
it was when I arrived around sunset yesterday, a round and a sort of
desaturated yellow-orange, but with no power to change the permanent gray of the sky.
