From my Tingzijian

Returning to our lane yesterday afternoon only twenty minutes after I had left, I found the entrance nearly totally blocked by a large truck. Several men were hustling furniture toward it. Somebody’s moving, I thought. But then I saw them pitch the sofas into the back — no wrapping, no careful placement, and I noticed that the truck looked more like one for demolition debris than a moving van.  Up ahead, half a dozen uniformed policemen strolled about and about 30 neighbors were gathered behind them watching.

They were in front of my lane’s foot massage establishment, the one with the ratty gold towels perpetually hung out to dry, where, day and night, a few women lolled around inside waiting for customers who were never in evidence. I had always meant to dare my neighbor in the lane to join me for a foot massage there — who knows, maybe we were missing out on a good thing. But now the place was going quickly.

“What’s up?” I asked my neighbor, an elderly gentleman who wears a beret when it’s cold and smiles at me from his kitchen window. I didn’t understand his answer.

He tried again and then simply said, “Something bad.”

All the watchers were silent and now some were watching me. I lifted my phone to take a photo. As I clicked — why don’t I keep my phone on silent?! — a policeman yelled sharply at me, “Foreigner, don’t take photos!” He moved menacingly toward me and my phone. “No photos!”

I feigned incomprehension, shoved my phone in my pocket, and quickly turned the corner to my house. Oh, right. Thirty people can watch, but no photos. At least not by foreigners, who should stick to the shiny Expo buildings.

My photo didn’t quite catch the crowd, and only got half of the policeman. Obviously, I didn’t dare try for a better one.

This afternoon, it’s quiet in the lane. The foot massage place has vanished without a ripple.No towels hanging overhead. The neon foot sign has been removed. The curtains are pulled and the door is chained. I wonder where the women are.

And, for the record, here’s a photo of the also-usually-empty beauty parlor open day and night next door to the former foot massage place. I better capture it while I can.

Yup, I was away. Really far away. Think huge fir trees and chilly water and a cozy fire in the grate to take the chill out of the crisp, clean air. So quiet at night that you can hear a truck rumble along the highway miles away. Raspberries and blueberries. The call of a loon in the morning and a baby osprey taking its first short flight, fish from the nest firmly grasped in its talon, to a dead tree. Drinking wine on the dock with cousins and friends. Think Canada!

But this blog’s about China, and here I am again in Shanghai — hot, noisy, and steaming rains to greet us. I’ve just deleted 850 spam comments — gosh, I hope you didn’t have to see them –although I almost kept the one offering zhu zhu puppies. (Who are these people who write in English and German and Russian and Greek?  Don’t they have anything better to do? The Greek should at least go out into the sunshine.)

Yes, I’m back and ready to write as I — gulp — move on into my seventh year in Shanghai. So stay tuned.

Once we resolved to linger no longer over the skeletons of old buildings, it only took a few minutes to walk down to the river. (We reached it well south of the Bund, near the Cool Docks and not far from the Expo site.) There, with two weeks to go until Expo’s opening, we found a frenzy of final preparations — still some construction underway, and brick sidewalks and sod being laid by the truckful.

The “16 Pu” was blocked off, but we got a sense from the signs.that it will be a multi-level park, shopping mall, and point of departure by boat for the Expo site (assuming that “hydrophilic platform” means “dock”).

From there, we headed north along the just-reopened Bund promenade. There are acres of newly planted trees along the narrower road,

and the field of hide-’n'-seek fountains is already a hit with the younger set, even on a still-cold day. Everybody in Shanghai seemed to have the same idea — go down to the Bund and pose for a photo.

And I do mean “everybody.”

Maybe it’s because I’ve been frustrated lately in my efforts to learn Chinese. For whatever reason, when I saw this sign on a new store in our neighborhood, I went over to suggest a correction.

Hello, I called up in Chinese. One guy waved his arms windshield-wiper style in front of his face immediately. As if to say Don’t even try to talk to me in your funny language!

I am speaking Chinese, I insisted. My response to the windshield wipers is invariably to plant myself and persist. But I see English here, pointing to the sign, and it’s wrong.

He stopped waving and looked at me.

Then the tough part: how to say The left part of the sign is upside down. I tried, working on getting the correct word order, The left part’s top side is on the bottom and the bottom part is on the top. No light came into the poor fellow’s eyes. In the end, I made myself understood by resorting, as I still must do way too often,  to sign language.

After I’d acted out upside down a few times, he came downstairs to take a look and I went off down the street. When I returned in a few minutes, the English was fixed!I’m still working on my Chinese.

The first year we were married (and that will be twenty-nine years ago this spring), my husband gave me a Seiko watch. I love that watch. It’s slim and elegant and I almost always wear it. So I was sad when it started to lose time this spring and several watch repair stores told me that it couldn’t be fixed. Even the Seiko dealer shook his head dubiously and said it needed new works and they probably couldn’t be found for such an old watch. But he agreed to send it on to Tokyo to see. We didn’t hear back for a couple of months, so yesterday we stopped by to check. He handed the watch over and said it was fixed. We expected to pay several hundreds of dollars. But when my husband asked, he said there was no charge. Why? Here is where it would help if my Chinese were better, but he turned red and struggled to make us understand. The watch is very old. They found the parts in Tokyo. They were happy to fix it. There is no charge. Wow! Happy Valentine’s Day to me.

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When I got home, I noticed some orange flaky things lying all over the living room radiators. What’s this? I asked Wany ayi, our housekeeper.

Oh, those are carrots, she said.

Huh?

Carrots. For my daughter’s pet, you remember I told you about her new pet she got at the market? (Yes, I remembered. I had strenuously declined her offer to get me one of the pets, too, just as I have declined offers for turtles and frogs for the garden. We had struggled as she had tried to explain just what animal she was offering this time and had finally declared a draw.) Here. She took me into the kitchen. Yiyi  wrote down the name of her pet.

And there it was, spelled out: chincilla. Of course, it makes sense now. We are drying chinchilla food in the living room.

I fled upstairs.