searching and finding

Up until Tuesday, the only place I could find in Nanjing for bike-renting was the Fuzimiao youth hostel, where there are four big fat mountain-bike tired things leaned up against the wall by the pool table. The electric bike belongs to the boss; you can't rent that, the desk girl says, and then we laugh like it is a great joke . . . she turned friendly in a real way when I switched to Chinese. It's embarrassing how excited people can get about me being able to communicate with them in Chinese. Last night two guys smoking in a black car on the road called me back when I made some smirking answer to their half-greeting from the window as I passed. I gave my phone number, laughing at their forwardness, but I don't have much time to go out in the next few weeks, sorry, it's nice to meet them though. There are the ones like them that make a big deal as a power thing, and then there are the ones like the girl at the hostel, who really was just excited. People like those who work in a tourist area. In the bike store some European-looking woman smiled real big and said hello to me and before I was knew was doing I'd "ni-haoed" her back. She laughed and repeated the greeting, "ni hao", like, ha that's a good one.

It took my roommate searching online and then me biking through 新街口 and then all the way over to the 夫子庙 area to finally find the Giant shop on 太平南路 that sells bikes. It was huge and beautiful but they don't rent like Willie Gee thought they might.

The sleazy sellers at the sleazy secondhand market will rent, they said on Friday when I went. I may have been the first person to ask; I got estimates from five to twenty yuan a day. I was surprised at how easy it would've been to sell the bike that I was pushing. (At first I'd left it outside, but even with a lock I didn't trust it there. These people are professionals, I reminded myself, and when I went back out to retrieve it there was a man squatting next to it, maybe studying it intently. Or maybe he just needed a place to smoke.

When you see the stickers on the crossbar you try not to think about the kid who put them there the week before his bike disappeared, and you try to pretend the guy selling the tallest bike on the floor is not sleazy, because I have a friend - he's this high (measure with my hand way above my own head) - who might need this bike. I smile, and talk long, with the best mix of sweetness and toughness I've got. I learned a long time ago (when I was a waitress and had regular customers) that people can sense when you don't like them, so it pays to try to convince yourself that you actually do.

Finally yesterday I found two sweet shops that were both renting bikes, and seriously professional about it. And next door an outdoor shop where the guy answered all my questions about thermal sleeping bags and I bought two 10 kuai woolen caps.

Sunday morning I left the city in a taxi with a friend and went to the most beautiful temple I've ever been in. Guanyin tipped her delicate pitcher and poured love and mercy in the center of a small lake, and CXJ told me that she only looks like a woman on the outside, inside she's a man (and still looks like one in India). In Buddhism there is no differentiation between man and female. And man, I think, that sounds nice. Really?

Two of those trees that look like money grew huge and framing the main part of the temple. Back in the back there were carvings in hill's stone, and a big one of a sitting Buddha. We stepped inside to see the Guan Yin on one side and the old women didn't care that we weren't gonna buy incense.

CXJ's friend the monk I think was the maybe the top monk at the temple. He left home to become a monk after high school, and that must have been at least twenty years ago. His face has crinkled up around the eyes and he's the most genuine-feeling monk I think I've ever met in China. He has his own room for meditation and calligraphy and one with the happy Buddha and a whole bunch of Guanyins for burning incense and praying in private. We sat in the wooden chairs on either side of the tea table and he served us before returning to his place by the altar, doing some sloshing of water that led to a tiny mouthful worth of tea, but tasty. He is patient, and answers my questions and talks with me about the things I'm interested in. There are different ways to talk to every person says the Buddha, and this guy had that kind of wisdom.

Out of rhythm, crazy world

Last week I came across a girl who referred to those in her blogging communty as "blogren", which caught my attention since in Mandarin "ren" (人) means "person". Turns out that Chinglish hasn't taken over the world yet (it will though, it will), they're "blogren" is just a combination of "blogger" and "brethren" . . .

Reading other fine blogs about life in China translates into me writing less, for whatever (could it be confidence-related?) reason. And ZX doesn't help with his complaining about bloggers (mainly girls, he says) who write about what they ate for breakfast, and expect people to care.

This morning I did not have the best baozi in the world, as I'd planned - the place was closed for Dragon Boat Festival (and quite rightly, who would eat anything but zongzi anyway?) Instead, Starbucks mocha in a mug is my reward for working straight through this three-day holiday. Pleasurable work though, for the most part, a lot of it coming down to organizing - the files on the laptop, good teaching materials I've collected, the pile of papers on which half-finished poems are scratched sideways between a row of my practiced Chinese characters. Which stack do those go into?

It feels strange to be all collected and put together. It is not me, yet it is. I am pleased with myself, though I realize the trade-off is being out of rhythm with the life outside. Early on the morning of the third day, when I walk with my laptop towards wireless at Starbucks, the streets are nearly deserted. The exception is the piles of nearly round watermelons - on four different corners - and their squatting sellers, and buyers. If you're not still lounging in bed you're supposed to be preparing for gathering with friends or family. The watermelon is insanely cheap - under one kuai for a jin - but I will ignore them. Later I have a twelve-kuai cranberry-orange scone heated in an stainless-steel industrial size oven that bings when the allotted heating time has passed.

Outside the Starbucks an old man in a purple dress shirt stands on the sidewalk pointing and yelling at the bikes that come toward him in the fenced-off bike lane. I ask one of the workers if he often comes here, and if she knows what he's saying. She thinks I'm pointing to the American guy in khakis who's reading his little travel Bible under one of the green umbrella-d tables outside. "Do you know what he says?" I repeat, and she says, "Yeah, he speaks Mandarin, so we can understand him. He comes often, always drinks coffee and reads his book."

I point again, "No, the guy out there!" She hadn't noticed him, and doesn't know what he's ranting about. "I can't figure out if he is saying something specific or if he ..." I trail off, and she finishes for me, "has a sickness of the mind." Silently, we watch him yell for another half-minute, then he gets on the bike he is standing beside, and pedals away.

The moth that was fluttering pitifully around inside escapes with the couple that leaves, pushing the creaky glass door wide in their awkward slow exit, she hanging on his arm held limp. As they shift around the door, the jazz music playing on the sound system and the weaving of her hips in the silky dress make me think of that sexy Hong Kong movie all in smoke and mist and silence. (Damn, what's the name?) The moth flies just in front of them until they reach the street, and the beauty of it makes my throat tight.

Closer to lunch the place fills up. The couple beside me lay their sleeping four-year-old daughter face down on the soft chairs by the big windows while they comment on a magazine in a mix of Mandarin and English. But when she wakes up they add German? Is there a fourth language as well? No way. That'd be crazy.

The next couple is also caucasian guy-asian girl. When she goes to pick up his sandwich from the counter he jokes with the friend (who talks about how busy she is dealing with customers from Egypt and Russia and Norway) about the other English word for wife: "slave." Then the two girls do the standard "Can you understand when we speak in Chinese?" He can't.

He seems like a nice enough guy, but I am secretly pleased when the businesswoman answers his "You don't have an easy life!" attempt at conversation with an impassive "No" and then turns back to his wife and back to Chinese, to complain about the crazy training schedule at her work. The wife is sympathetic. "Wow, that really is too much," she coos before they briefly switch back over to English to joke about husband being like a character out of Prison Break.

(Though I will not renounce my pride about last night's delicious homemade tortilla chips and salsa), I am aware that I am, um, judgmental and arrogant. And I knew that even before I overhear that the blundering can speak Swedish and German. Knowing language impresses me . . . and businesswoman, who says, "Oh my God, it's a huge potential market!" (One of her associates evidently wants to set up some kind of deal focused specifically on Scandinavia!)

But he begs to differ and because the biggest city in Sweden is only 1 million people.

Businesswoman talks about how empty the streets are in Europe. Especially after five or six in the evening, you almost can't see a single person out and about. Yeah, everything closes pretty early, they all agree.

"How can the people go buy things?" businesswoman wonders.

"Saturday," he says.

"But what if they forgot to buy something? Say I forgot to buy, I forgot to buy an ... onion?"

"Oh, the food markets are open," he says.

"No," his wife disagrees. "Even the grocery stores close at five or six. Only 7-11 is open. If you're hungry, you have to go to 7-11 and get a sandwich or something."

Even the bars are closed by one or two o'clock, they say. What a crazy world.