Till, we Read
Round and Round My Neighborhood We Go

As the clouds gave way to sun this afternoon, I invited Right Heart for a stroll around our neighborhood. He responded to my SMS and I found him in the guqin shop.

Spring is happening. Birds' songs are more abundant and I opened the window to let them fill my apartment. I sensed a slackened pace on the busy streets of XuHui District, though I'm willing to admit that it was just our own simple moseying that slowed the scenes.

My goal for the afternoon was simple: find a street I'd never walked down before Right Heart had to attend lessons with his guqin master.

We ventured past the German brewhouse and I got my first whiff of cut grass. We entered and felt the various forms of foliage. I commented that I missed lawns.

Then we walked by the statue of Pushkin by the Thai restaurant and the nightclubs and neither of us could quite understand why the citizens of our district would erect such a monument, except that there were once a bunch of Russians here and they may have been Pushkin fans and--who knows?--perhaps Pushkin visited the area between the storms of hush and hubbub.

Then we walked by the Senior Citizens' University, an institution for aging bureaucrats and cadres--the more-than-equal equals of a bygone socialist age.

We turned on a road I'd never been down before and it was just like any other. The clouds of exhaust aggravated Right Heart's convalescing throat. The sky looked just as yellow on the clouds above Pushkin's head. We discussed going to the library tomorrow to look at architectural books.

Right Heart shares my dream. He wants to acquire land and build a house of stone and earth. Should dream take the formality of actually becoming, his dwelling will be in the Confucian style with a foundational meter of stone supporting earthen walls and a thatched roof, but with one exception--"a secret room--a bathroom with running water and a toilet," Right Heart said laughing. I told him I'd always envisioned mine made of straw and other reclaimed materials and that it would be heated by the sun, like the passive solar house my father designed and built.

We passed by a teashop. Its signboard was littered with the original complex forms of characters. My companion asked me if I could read them and I could only read the ones that were originally simple (that is, simple before the great simplification was implemented in the 1950s). He said they illustrated an old Chinese dream: "geng du." "Plow read."

He explained the cryptic saying. "It's the dream of ancient Chinese. Cultivate food during the day. After the sun goes down, drink tea and read."

We commented on the general decline of just about everything. He told me another saying, "ren wei(2nd tone) wei(3rd) wei(4th)," or "Man-made is luxuriant and false" (though I may be getting my weis confused).

Then something renwei caught our attention.

I had been barred from the Protestant church on Hengshan Road one wintery day and decided to try my luck again. I politely asked the man at the gatehouse if we could have a looka looka.

"What do you want to see?"

"The gardens are very pretty."

"There's nothing beautiful in here. The park at XuJiaHui is much better."

We stood there for a moment. A Chinese girl who'd slipped in behind us asked if we'd had any luck. The man glared at us and then went to the front door to secure the lock.

We headed in the direction of the bust of Pushkin.

The monument has three sides. One is in Cyrillic. The other two in Chinese. Assuming the Cyrillic is the same as the Chinese, two sides say that the disentorsoed effigy is indeed "Puxigen". The other gives three dates: Roughly (because I didn't write them down), they are: 1937, 1947, and 1987.

One date honors the park's mysterious founding, the second commemorates its reconstruction after the Japanese invasion and occupation destroyed it, and the third marks the year it achieved its current incarnation after being torn apart by red guards sometime between 1966 and '76.

Right Heart and I then parted ways and I returned home to type and share this record of my pleasant afternoon.

I looked up the characters of the old dream on the teashop signboard. According to my dictionary, it means "to work part time and study/teach part time. (of peasants)."

It was then that I realized I'm living this dream. Well, it's time to do my homework.