It’s trash night on my street. Garbage, if you will. It’s freezing, and I’m walking behind a man. There are the usual garbage bags resting curbside. Three rats dart out; this, too, not out of the ordinary. It’s 7pm and hey, we’re all on our way to our respective hearths and homes.
Remarkable not was the suddenness, the size, nor even the brazenness of their break for cover. No, remarkable was the man. This city man. This, this… everyman. Three huge rats and no, he did not flinch at the sudden movement. Not at the kamikaze-like crossing of his path. None of the split second revulsion one should expect to feel at three rats. Curious mostly, was that he did not even alter his march home when, with a shoe squeak (or was it a mouse squeak) he stepped down on one of these self-same rats. Squished RIGHT UNDER HIS FOOT!
No. Neither man, nor rat, missed a beat.
I started thinking about being numb I think because I was numb (it’s freezing). But, this is an object lesson in the fact that cities make us comatose. I've been somewhat trained in that as a population-20-million-plus Shanghai-fried automaton. The numbness lets us rush, ignore what we don’t want to see, step on a rat and not flip out, drown in our own lives. So, there’s this culture, a commonality of city culture.Shanghai and NYC, we have this in common… no matter what we prefer to eat for lunch… bagels, noodles… say, rats even….
Dear Amber,
ReplyDeleteI suppose that, given your glorious elocution (I had to dictionary.com that to make sure I was right in what it meant), I suppose that I shouldn't be so pleasantly surprised at your writing ability, but indeed I am. I was looking forward to this blog simply because, but now I am really looking forward to the vivid picture it will paint for me! Not that I think you need your ego blown up more this week after all the rapturous, true, and deserved missings you've gotten on chinesepod, but I can't help it. This is going to be great. By the way, this is mbreakstone from chinesepod or, evidently, Open For Comparison, which was a blog I started with a friend of mine approximately 10,000 years ago (even longer then the 5000 years of Chinese history!) and wrote for about a week. I hope that you will do better sticking with it than I did! Welcome to the East Coast!!
Cold weather and cold people together? I hope not. But then again, I am reminded of Gerard Manley Hopkins' Spring and Fall to a Young Child:
ReplyDelete"Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder"
Stay warm Amber.
Art
That said (and I do agree with you about big cities numbing people), I don't ever remember seeing a procession of rats in Shanghai. One or two, and certainly dead ones every once in a while, but not like in big American cities.
ReplyDeleteYou'd think, with all that cats that are being taken out of circulation to make 肉串儿, there'd be more rats... :)
This entry reminds me of the movie Crash. That we become so numb to each other that the only meaningful human contact we get is when we 'crash' into each other.. :)
ReplyDeleteYes, I hate to say it, but there are WAY MORE RATS in NYC. That being said, Taipei beats them both out.
ReplyDeleteMy favourite place I've seen rats is running up and down the subway tracks while you're waiting for a subway. I think there are definitely some sort of societal cliques amongst rats. Hmm, if I were a rat, I think i would still live in this neighbourhood.
I don't find people cold here though, at all, I do have to say, we're all just slightly numb. They always care about holding the door for you, man or woman.
How about some anthropological videos of life in NYC - just point the camera at some street life like Aric did in Shanghai?
ReplyDelete