我是谁?!

亲爱的朋友，

Today I took the bus to a nearby neighborhood, 五道口, to meet Jenn for lunch. I would like to think that this bus ride was like oh-so many I have had in Beijing. That is, it was so crowded--an overwhelming mass of bodies--that I simply had to fight my way just to get inside of the bus doors threatening to close on me. Then I had to elbow, shove and slide my way past people to get to the woman in the middle of the bus who sells tickets for those, like myself, who have not the handy-dandy public transportation card (much similar to DC's SmartTrip card). Just watch this video I took another day in a similar situation, where Kenina and I were pressed up against the front window of the bus, giving us a spectacular and dizzying view of the road, as well as a close bond with our bus driver: a Beijing commute.

But there is only so much I can say about public transportation: simply, it is always crowded and rarely sufficiently air-conditioned (I have a scarring story to tell about being pressed up against a Human Sponge). Instead, I shall discuss last Friday, when I went to 大山子, the so-called "SoHo of Beijing." Like many things advertised to me in China, this was not true. However, I still enjoyed it greatly. It was a small neighborhood of old warehouses full of modern art galleries; half of the area was rubble as buildings were being demolished. As Alathea put it, "It's cool 'cause you don't know what's trash and what's art."

(Here was my welcoming first glimpse of 大山子.)

As such, having appreciated artwork I didn't understand and read about existential dilemmas in Chinese (as represented by a giant pen spilling red ink), I am feeling very cultured. Now I have a list of things I absolutely must do before I leave in two weeks (I am absolutely dreading my 15-hour flight, but the prospect of a glass of teeth-shattering-freezing-cold skim milk keeps my hopes alive). I shall resolve to make a schedule, although most likely I shall lose it somewhere between the crowd of people on the bus and the door that I must violently push myself towards (through slippery, sweaty people) to make it out at the correct stop on time (assuming I understood the announcer and it is the correct stop), thus rendering my fruitful work useless. To guard myself against such loss, I shall simply not write it after all. Yes. Good plan.

Your slightly squished friend,

Alison