Beijing. Year 2012.
Population: approx. 19.612million human beings (and not many living dogs)
And which are the odds of taking the same train to go at 07:30h and to come back at 11:30h as any other randon couple with a baby in a carrycot?
1 in 19.612million? (Statistics is not my cup of tea) Anyway, lucky me!
When I saw them on way there I thought of smiling at them but then an odd feeling took over me and I didn't:
I got all paranoid about the baby being dead, or a stolen baby or maybe just a massive block of heroine covered and made up to look as a baby.
That's how I remembered an ordinary couple of chinese people with an ordinarily dressed up baby. Because I studied them as If I'd be asked to IDEntify them later on. Odd. I told you.
Anyways . Ordinary Chinese. Exotic to us westerners. They look at us like we look at them probably. And even though they are pretty much everywhere (have you been somewhere without Chinese people or Chinatown? I don't think I have) we -or I- still react to them as if ... As if what? Don't know. But I react to them.
Most the time I think I am normal towards them, but when I see a father running behind his kid learning to walk with a camera and find myself thinking "ah they are like us, they take a million graceless pictures of a baby learning to walk" , that's when I realize I am not normal towards them or I don't think they are the same same . Same same but different.
Dear Beijing, I prefer to call you pekin. And I hope both you don't mind and you apologize me .
I have missed you more than I thought. Coming back, breathing the chilled polluted air you feed us, being as harassed by the bicycles in the street as by the looks of strangers... Your aromas, your sounds, your Asian idiosyncrasies , yet so superior -though maybe in a more decadent way- than so many other so called Asian capitals.
Pekin, you've seen me growing into a champion when it comes to sucking the spaghetti out of the lettuce and peanuts soup with the chop sticks , noise & splash included , just like any fellow Chinese .
Pekin pekin , I sight upon the thought of you . I hold my breath upon your public toilets . I am always hungry of your teachings. My heart is always open to you.
