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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Posts Tagged ‘ Chinese Alarm Clock ’
Dear People Who Sweep in the Wee Hours of the Night
BANG!! BOOOM!! KABLAMANO!!!!!
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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Chinese Alarm Clock: Epilogue
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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Chinese Alarm Clock, Part 3
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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Chinese Alarm Clock, Part 2
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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Chinese Alarm Clock, Part 1
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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