The Night Goes On

The subway was another ground of observation. As clean, frequent and speedy as Hong Kon’s (though much cheaper), with the same types of trains, stations and system, I am a fan and appreciate the “passenger parking” signs painted in yellow on the floor, though nobody heeded the obvious: let offloading passangers off before boarding the train. But somehow the intercourse between passangers was very polite and efficient, in spite of the lack of discipline. They all filed ordinately through the double sets of doors, now commonplace in airports, but scarce elsewhere in the West. People were generally well behaved, almost subdued everywhere, I never felt threatened (anywhere in China, really) and I’d have to say that of my limited Chinese experience, Guangzhou and Hong Kong are my favorite places.

Tianhe, the area around the stadium, is big blocks of enormous and luxurious shopping malls, I walked through and photographed them, then arrived to a more human scaled outdoors “village”, built perhaps in the 80’s to look antique. It was less congested than the shopping malls and there were food vendors on the sidewalk. After careful consideration (seeing a procession of seemingly well kept girls coming with foam containers) I settled on an elderly couple who made me a mix of vegetables, soup and what turned out to be enthralls, of a degree and quality I had never had before, nor did I try repeatedly to ingest. Even the greens were tasty but threatening: the same consistency of algae, but over a foot long, I choked at first try and I was very careful negotiating them down my esophagus.

On my (sub)way to Tianhe, I was surrounded by silent communicators in every direction...