Musings 3

Everyone should experience the Chinese traffic system; not knowing what it is you're eating; knowing what you're eating and not caring; trying strange foods; riding a 3-wheel taxi; watching the laborers at work; pushing through crowds; having the electricity shut off at random and without warning in order to save money (and freeze to death ?it thins the crowd); being told about events (such as rehearsals) with no warning, and having to adjust your schedule accordingly at the last minute ?after all, foreigners don't have a life in China; :) waking up at 4:00 a.m. just to hear the sound of silence; walking down a deserted Wen Hua Lu late at night, just to see the trees bowing to each other in the streetlamps. Everyone should try living in a small, insignificant town of only 600,000 people. Everyone should experience 15 degrees C as being warm. Everyone should try eating in a restaurant wearing a coat and gloves, using chopsticks. Everyone should try picking fish off the bones with chopsticks. Everyone should try walking through an open market to get home, buying something from a street vendor, walking in the bitter cold of night with the moon pouring down over snuffed-out street lamps, covered pool tables, empty streets, houses, walls and faces, turning everything blue like the sea.