{"id":18,"date":"2007-09-17T08:34:05","date_gmt":"2007-09-17T14:34:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/?p=18"},"modified":"2007-09-17T08:34:05","modified_gmt":"2007-09-17T14:34:05","slug":"drew-sept-5-beijing-am","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/?p=18","title":{"rendered":"Drew: Sept 5 “Beijing a.m.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

SILENCE<\/font><\/span>The apartment is quiet at 5:30; peaceful with gentle early morning twilight.\u00a0 <\/span>I walk soundlessly to Nakia\u2019s room and pause for a few moments to hear if she\u2019s sleeping.\u00a0 <\/span>Silence.\u00a0 <\/span>Well, either sleeping or listening quietly to someone who\u2019s up at this improbable hour.\u00a0 <\/span>I softly bring her door to a close, without pulling it shut all the way.\u00a0 <\/span>The click of the mechanism would terrify me.<\/font><\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>It seems to be a fetish or condition I have with which I am not willing to part \u2013 I don\u2019t want to wake others up in the morning.\u00a0 <\/span>Not only that; I\u2019m paranoid and terrified that someone will wake up\u2014like trying to land a bubble in your palm, not wanting it to burst\u2026\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s all about treading slowly and delicately, but quickly too, before the natural course of morning necessities stirs the bowels in the sleepers.<\/font><\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>I take out my bike like I\u2019m diffusing a sensitive bomb.\u00a0 <\/span>No sudden movements.\u00a0 <\/span>Gently, slowly\u2026that\u2019s it.\u00a0 <\/span>I cringe at the knocking of the pedal against the door frame.\u00a0 <\/span>Stop.\u00a0 <\/span>Proceed with caution.\u00a0 <\/span>A fetish.\u00a0 <\/span>Cherished.<\/font><\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>My Chinese name is An Chen.\u00a0 <\/span>I am told it is taken from a Chinese clich\u00e9 having to do with the intimate morning hours.\u00a0 <\/span>Perhaps my naming even hints at this my condition\u2014the fear to break the silence.<\/font><\/span>\u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span>AIR<\/font><\/span>The air feels cool.\u00a0 <\/span>Almost too cool for my shorts and t-shirt.\u00a0 <\/span>I wrap my arms around my chest and go no-hands for awhile.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s hazy, I notice\u2014a combination of moisture, construction dust, and pollution no doubt.\u00a0 <\/span>But the morning haze is calm.\u00a0 <\/span>I ride down wide roads normally full of traffic, now quiet, ready.<\/font><\/span>\u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span>ROAD<\/font><\/span>So many roads are inviting before six o\u2019clock.\u00a0 <\/span>They are shrouded in morning and seem tso empty, a bike could hum along beautifully\u2026 but I am interested in Hou Hai.\u00a0 <\/span>The lakes are in the center of \nBeijing<\/place><\/city> and I have never seen a morning here.\u00a0 <\/span>Normally it\u2019s the night scene that has attracted us to the busy streets around the lakes; the restaurants, bars, live music, stereo-pumping club music, neon lights and red lanterns.\u00a0 <\/span>Many times walking a bike is the best option through the milling stream of people, foreigners, street vendors, bicycle rickshaws, motorcycles, and cars.\u00a0 <\/span>The cars seem impossibly big to be navigating these small, crowded paths and their honking entirely unjustified.<\/font><\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>There is a battle going on in the streets of \nBeijing<\/place><\/city> between bicycles and cars.\u00a0 <\/span>Pedestrians are considered more or less allies to us bikes, but are a different category.\u00a0 <\/span>They can also have a particularly troublesome habit of stepping into the wide bike lanes on busy streets without looking \u2013 or drifting a predictable direction\u2014a vector\u2014and suddenly stopping or switching.\u00a0 <\/span>No, this battle as a biker is between us and them, the cars.<\/font><\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s easy to feel somewhat justified as a biker with the noise and exhaust of combustion traffic as complaints on top of the traffic jams.\u00a0 <\/span>Inefficient for themselves; inconvenient for the rest of us to breathe and listen.\u00a0 <\/span>I get a sick satisfaction from moving aside for a driver impatiently blowing his horn at me, only to whiz past him half a block later, darting past the jam that he helped create.\u00a0 <\/span>But I am finding this too vehement\u2026\u00a0 <\/span>I also own a drivers license.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s just that some places would be more pleasant without the noise, lights, and horns, and Hou Hai lakes area in the center of \nBeijing<\/place><\/city> is around number one or two in this category.<\/font><\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>This morning there are no cars, just birds and mostly elderly people.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s peaceful and I am too.<\/font><\/span>\u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span>\u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span>AGE<\/font><\/span>It\u2019s the quiet that strikes me.\u00a0 <\/span>There is a slowness to the people walking backwards and forwards, the swimmers in their goggles and caps, the fishermen, the small groups practicing Tai Qi.\u00a0 <\/span>Maybe it comes with age.\u00a0 <\/span>The morning regulars all seem to be well-advanced in years.\u00a0 <\/span>At nights it\u2019s mostly young people that crowd with an air of expectation, seeking excitement and stimulation\u2014the contrast between bright colored lights and darkness, between tight spaces pumping loud music and voices and traffic spreading across the water. <\/font><\/span>Now it\u2019s the birds I hear, and the people are old but seem to me content in their routines.\u00a0 <\/span>They have an air of knowing.\u00a0 <\/span>Even the rhythm of the street sweepers seems steady, sweeping away last night\u2019s debris, preparing for the day.\u00a0 <\/span>For me it\u2019s a new year, and I am older, and I\u00a0like it here.<\/font><\/span>The sun is a glowing column across the water\u2014a floating pillar of fire.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s getting higher in the sky now and a jeep swishes past me after honking.\u00a0 <\/span>They look young, and as if they didn\u2019t sleep last night.\u00a0 <\/span>They are out of place in the early daylight; but traffic will pick up, I know.\u00a0 <\/span>The early morning is getting old, as even early mornings do, and the people on the street steadily getting younger and faster, thoughts elsewhere.<\/font><\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>I turn out onto the now bustling four-lane avenue that cuts through\nTiananmen Square<\/place> and pick up speed.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SILENCEThe apartment is quiet at 5:30; peaceful with gentle early morning twilight.\u00a0 I walk soundlessly to Nakia\u2019s room and pause for a few moments to hear if she\u2019s sleeping.\u00a0 Silence.\u00a0 Well, either sleeping or listening quietly to someone who\u2019s up at this improbable hour.\u00a0 I softly bring her door to a close, without pulling it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drews-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}