I’m a very optimistic person in spite of all my references to key words like ‘bleak’, ‘grim’, ‘awful’, ‘miserable’ and such.
My character leans toward the melancholy but not in a depressing kind of way. I actually like rain. I like solitude. I like somber. I find them very calming.
But can I tell you something about living in China? Something somewhat akin to living in Istanbul and always expecting to find a dead kitten around the next corner.
For 4 years I did. There are a lot of mashed, flattened, sick, sad, dead kittens in Istanbul. My heart broke regularly.
I still flinch when I see fur lying down.
However, in China, I doubt the cat would be dead long enough for me to discover it in its reclining state. There are plenty of street cleaners out to deal with that.
The thing with China is that eventually you come to realize that almost everything you see on the street will die soon. I don’t mean people (we all die- am aware of life cycles). I mean the stuff you see daily in the streets. Like the doomed birds. Like the chicken/pigeon/duck death cart. The styrofoam boxes full of hastily plucked feathers and gore, overlooked by the still living brethren, obviously disturbed by the nearness of their doomed companions’ bits and pieces.
I walk past this every morning. All the tethered ducks and caged chickens and doves; all the eels and frogs and turtles in plastic mesh-covered boxes; all the squirming, gasping fish— they’re all going to be dead by the time I come home in the evening.
It makes you think. A lot.
And today I walked past veggies that made me sad.
I do eat meat (after a decade and a bit as a vegetarian) so this *ahem* socialist realism is a daily reminder of the implications of the choices I have made . That chicken soup we had for dinner? Yeah, it was in a cage yesterday. I don’t even want to think about the cilantro. It makes me too sad.
And Festivus? That seemingly culturally neutral late-December celebration that all in Shanghai can partake of, if they so desire? Yeah, well, it results in a bazillion poinsettias in foil-wrapped pots that are bought in early December, never watered, then tossed out, wilted with the new year. Guaranteed. They are popping up all over town now. I know now that no one cares about them. They will be set out en mass, filling window displays and lining apartment building entryways, and none of them will be watered, ever, and they will all be unceremoniously tossed out by mid January.
Oh, Shanghai.
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