SCARY ELEVATOR RIDE

Was that rain? Actual rain? More like early fog made kind of prickly, although I noticed minute droplets on my pipestem and sought an overhang to smoke. Which was very good. Mostly red Virginia. Sublime after hot tea and a meal. Remarkably there were no other non-Chinese in the place, just about a dozen customers in total, some of whom (one old whispy bearded gentleman) were watching what looked like a modern age soap opera on the teevee, set in a city with tall buildings and a metro station. Office work, if you are clear-skinned mid-twenties, is deeply involving. You get home late. There is an elevator, and you have no idea which of two likable fellows you are destined to have a long twenty episode love affair with, culminating in domestic bliss. It's probably the shy university student.


Might be more than fifty episodes. Gotta max out the profits from those attractive people and their relatives. Dang that city looks clean. Must be somewhere on the mainland.
And they're speaking Mandarin. So clearly China's first world.

If it were in Cantonese there would have been four or five screaming arguments while I was having my meal. The Cantonese are more operatic than Northerners. Any weeping must, naturally, be accompanied by anger and histrionics.

The Cantonese firmly believe in drama.
Northerners prefer quiet misery.
Silent sadness.

One can assume that when folks in the north saw those videos of 'bus uncle' and 'auntie airport tantrum' from several years ago they were totally baffled. Where was the dignity?
Why were they acting like crazy foreigners?

Boys, boys, boys, that isn't anything like crazy foreigners. I live in San Francisco, and know crazy foreigners like the back of my hand. I am surrounded by the creatures.


By contrast, the Cantonese act with considerable restraint.
At all times, whatever the circumstance.
They're phlegmatic.



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