Halloween Strange-ness

We had an interesting day yesterday.  Maybe it’s because it was Halloween, or maybe it’s because we live in China.

We started out with cornmeal pancakes – an auspicious way to begin any day, especially a holiday.  We invited my mom over for breakfast, which consisted of:  the aforementioned pancakes with homemade cinnamon syrup, mulled apple cider which Ryan pressed from fresh apples, and the spiced apples my mom brought along with her.  It was a very appropriate late-October repast.  After breakfast, Ryan and I had plans to go hiking in the crisp Fall weather.  Being the seriously disorganized couple that we are,  however, we had neglected to ask anyone where to hike or how to get there.  Since our only bus map happens to be in Chinese, we were sort of at a loss.  So we decided to hop onto the K25 bus (an amazing route that takes us practically everywhere we need to go except, apparently, hiking) and visit a book store in search of a Lonely Planet guide to China.  In another example of classic Ryan/Emily disorganization and failure to plan ahead, we neglected to bring a guidebook with us to China.  Oops.

Before the bookstore, though, we really needed some lunch.  Lest you take us for complete gluttons, it may be worth mentioning that a good deal of time had elapsed between breakfast and our arrival downtown.  Unfortunately, finding a restaurant in Hangzhou is pretty hit-or-miss.  There are restaurants everywhere, restaurants of all kinds.  Fancy expensive ones, tiny hole-in-the-wall ones with two tables, restaurants without any tables at all, middle-of-the-road restaurants, etc.  There are two problems for an English speaker who doesn’t know her way around, though.  The first is that most of the restaurants appear in clusters.  You’ll pass three blocks full of restaurants, but then you’ll enter a shopping area where you could walk for 10 or 15 minutes before you see a real place to eat.  The second problem is that, if you can’t find a restaurant with an English or a picture menu, you’re pretty much out of luck.  Yesterday, we found ourselves faced with both problems.  In the immediate vicinity of the book store there was one restaurant other than McDonalds, which we had immediately discounted.  I ventured inside to check it out, and wished so much that my Chinese skills were better.  Everything looked delicious.  But it was totally packed, packed to the point of utter chaos, and there was nary an English or pinyin word in sight.  The long lines left me sure that no one would take particularly kindly to my pointing at each character on the menu and asking the server at the window, “Zhè gè shì shénme?” (what is this?).  So, defeated, I went back outside and reported to Ryan that we’d have to settle for some street-side baozi.

After lunch, we tried Boku book store.  It’s a pretty huge place, but unfortunately contained only one Lonely Planet guide pertaining to China, and that was a small one dedicated solely to Shanghai.  Unwilling to pay the exorbitant price that had been slapped on the back of this book, we decided to try the foreign bookstore located just a few blocks away.  And here’s where my story goes from the normal to the bizarre and, well, rather grotesque.  If you’re squeamish, or if you’re eating while reading, you might want to skip this next part.

To get to the foreign book store, we had to cross over a large pedestrian overpass.  Normally, I love pedestrian overpasses because they allow me to get from one side of the street to another without risking my life or limbs (crossing the street in China is not something to be taken lightly).  So we started walking.  Halfway across, we encountered a man sprawled face-down on the concrete.  One crutch lay next to him, and I would have thought he’d fallen except for the fact that a blanket covered part of his body and he had a begging tin laid out next to him.  All of a sudden, with horror, I realized that his pants were partially pulled down to reveal an enormous, gaping, red and pink wound in his backside.  It literally looked like the flesh had been eaten out of him – the sore was a good two inches deep and another two inches wide.  Personally, I thought it looked raw and oozy, but Ryan thought it looked old and partially healed.  We’ll never know who was correct, because we both looked away as soon as we realized what we were seeing.

Unfortunately, the foreign book store had no China guidebook.  They had a Lonely Planet for practically every other place in the world, from Greece to South America to Florida to Southern Africa, but none for China.  Upon leaving, we realized that we were going to have to cross the overpass again.  I was against this, but Ryan reasoned that we’d have to go very far out of our way in order to avoid it, and he promised to walk on the side nearest the semi-naked man.  As we approached, however, we heard a strange, garbled sort of music filtering down through the crowd.  Nearing the man again, I was totally shocked to see that he was singing. Into a microphone.  He’d hooked a microphone up to a set of cheap speakers and was lying there on his stomach, head facing the crowd, singing in an off-key, strained sort of way.  The singing took the whole thing to a new level, to one approaching the absurd.  The experience, at this point, felt almost surreal in its strangeness and perhaps very fitting for Halloween if it hadn’t been real life.

I have very mixed feelings about this whole episode.  On the one hand, if I’m being completely honest and revealing my true impressions and feelings, it was revolting and grotesque.  It was also pathetic, depressing, sad, and a little frightening.  Honestly, I don’t really know what to think.  Obviously, this man was attempting to garner pity, to exchange derision and a public display of his pain for a few coins.  For whatever reason, his wound had consumed not only a portion of his rear end but also his worldly possessions, pride, and (presumably) his home.  I realized rather guiltily, though, that I didn’t really feel pity.  At least not at first.  The display was so horrific to me that my initial instinct was to get as far away as possible.  Now, with hindsight (um…that sounded dangerously like a completely inappropriate pun), I do feel a strange sort of pity.  I almost didn’t include this incident in the post because I felt bad – like I am using some poor man’s plight, his pitiful life and pain, for my silly blog.  But, at the same time, the very fact that he displayed himself to the thousands of people who walked by yesterday indicates that he probably wouldn’t particularly mind.  At least if I had dropped a few coins in his tin.  Which, by the way, I did not.

Anyway.  Hopefully you don’t now all think I’m a horrible person.  After this, we decided we really needed some coffee.  Like, really needed some.  So we took a mind-clearing walk to L’Amour Cafe, a little place on a tree-lined street filled with interesting art work, comfy couches, and good cappuccinos.  We stopped on the way and picked up a fresh donut from a street vendor (mmmm) all covered in fluffy powdered sugar.  One thing you have to love about China is the abundance of street vendors.  By the way, our entire lunch – 2 veggie baozi, 2 pork baozi, and donut, cost 5 kuai.  That’s less than a dollar.  This is compared to our cappuccinos, which sell at a whopping 38 kuai a pop, or about $6.  Ouch.  So, $5 lunch followed by $12 coffee.  That’s China for you.

After our eventful day out, we returned home for a Halloween feast – ginger, carrot, and squash soup, purple cabbage cole slaw (so Halloween-y), and homemade pasta in a sage-walnut-butter sauce.

I was going to leave you with a few pictures but, as usual, I’ve run out of time.  Hope everyone has a wonderful week!