Dear People Who Sweep in the Wee Hours of the Night,
No, that is not a result of careless typing; nor is it a cheap jab at the Asian people’s often-mocked struggle to pronounce the notorious letter ‘L.’
We have heard you out there. Sometimes, as we wake during the night and stumble to the...
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Thousands of years since the Chinese first launched explosive projectiles at the unsuspecting Mongol hordes, they have refined their pyrotechnic technology and given it a new purpose – the simulation of a massive artillery invasion from the banks of the Yangtze. Or, at least, that is how it...
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Here in our little part of the world, it is common – expected, even – to find oneself wrenched harshly from a deep and dreamy slumber by a number of wildly random sounds. On a typical night there are, of course, those stray horn blasts sprayed compulsively by cabbies on empty streets, perhaps...
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8:30 am: a pounding on the door again announces that we have an unexpected visitor. I jump – leap – out of bed and stuff my legs into the nearest pair of pants, and answer it. This time it is no old woman but a Chinese man wielding a coiled extension cord and a...
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Two hours pass. Then, a rapping on the window. This time there is a different old tiny Chinese lady (redundant, I suppose) wating in the stairwell. She is holding a small red bag. Again I find myself the recipient of a blast of squealing Chinese; again, I find myself shrugging and grinning like a...
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One week in China… CLANGCLANGLANGACLANG!! Knocking on the metal door like a cop with a warrant. My heart starts skipping and I start wondering what we could have done (some offhand comment taken as dissent?) to provoke this incessant rapping on our door at 10:00 in the morning. CLANGACLANCLANGACLANG!!! growing louder each...
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