So I remember when I leave:
Dear Mr Man in the van,
I thought I’d mention that you fixed something the other day. Your stare as you sat stationary at the lights in that battered yellow and grey vehicle with blacked out windows; while one elbow rest upon the open window frame and the other casually on the wheel, provided me with a moment of clarity. Well actually, Mr Man in the Van, it was more your nod. You looked at me standing in the drizzle emotionless and I stared back. We sized each other up, me in my wellies and gym kit, you waiting for the light change. Then when I nodded briefly at you; you, grim, straight but real, afforded me a short, tight nod. No falsely sincere gazes over a tightly cupped mug of tea would I receive from you. No fingers meandering through ideas, flicking away relevance and grasping weakness would one experience over a meeting table with you. Your self-serving interest would be honest, there, raw. You would not require the tactical meandering manipulation of the modern world because quite simply, what is the need?
I think, Man in the Van, that I felt I earned something when you nodded. You had bestowed something. For a fleeting moment, I think it was respect. And, you know what, Mr Man in the Van, even though you were playing Roxette ‘It must have been Love’, even though your mustard jumper with brown fleck was a tad on the aged side, I was strangely but definitely proud of myself when you nodded.
And respect to you too, Mrs weighted by a literal world on your shoulders lady who wobbled slowly past me at my table top station the other day. Hunchback in a huge grey cardigan, you, determined yet hindered, stumbled straight into Fuxing Lu. Eyes not leaving the floor to which they were unavoidably fixed, you demanded something which many in Shanghai could not have achieved – not without a fluorescent jacket and a whistle anyway: you stopped cars. The dignified authority with which you stopped the traffic should not be underestimated and as I watched you hobble slowly across the road raising your hand slightly behind you towards the cars as if to say, ‘don’t you dare’, I admired you. At your age, Mrs weighted by a literal world on your shoulders lady, you’d have seen some hard times in Shanghai so what’s a little traffic jam? You take your sweet, sweet time.
The moments I want to remember, Mr Wooden Paradise, are today written mostly from my vantage point outside your tiny, very wooden, very well stocked bar. I sit, as well you know, at the high table that I like, on the stool that I like, facing the direction I favour. You are playing loud bands from the 60s and have just delivered me an Asahi which I ordered with a thumbs up after you enthusiastically pointed to the pump. Your welcome makes me happy, your apparent pleasure at seeing me or my friends makes me feel valued and your free shot at the end of the night, fresh cold beer on a Friday afternoon, chilli peanuts and prime people watching location in the midst of a tree lined, busy French Concession street make this one of my favourite places in Shanghai. I do wish you’d get a bigger tank for the fish though, Mr Wooden Paradise, they’re hardly even able to get a good length in – they’ll never grow like that, Mr Wooden Paradise, surely know that?
To those in jumpers on a hot and sunny day, your friends in baskets on the front of bikes riding past me, ears flapping in the wind, shoulders back, tongues lapping up the bustle; to those in booties, those sitting at tables with places set; to the one with the protruding lower jaw that looks miserably yet authoritatively at passers-by while you sit atop the cigarette counter down Yongjia, I don’t know why your owners do it to you. But perhaps by making you their babies, you are in a better place than some dogs in China.
To the mobike riders who wobble, shriek and block the road: you are annoying. It has to be said. And in my superior dissension, I have cursed you time and time again. I must, however, resist doing that – the assumption that anyone can ride a bike is arrogant considering that not everyone has the chance to do so when young. So I must try to be kind although for the love of god and the safety of other road users, try doing it in shoes that are not bedecked in chains atop a three inch wedge and let your eyes see the direction in which you intend by removing the visor with a circumference the size of a mobike wheel – I am sure you look tremendously hip and cool but you’ve crashed twice into the pavement, twice into your friend and once into the phone box. You know, crazy idea but it might also help if you put your phone away.
And while I’m there, Mr Tourist sees a westerner, I knew you weren’t taking a picture of the phone box, it’s difficult to be subtle with a lens that size. If only you had asked, I’d have struck a pose. Although perhaps me rummaging through the bowl of greasy nuts with a pint in front of me was actually what you wanted – natural habitat and all that.
I giggled inappropriately, Mr Silver Fox with a big belly, when you told your tiny girlfriend about the property prices in London. I am sure she was really very interested but the way that she pursed and relaxed her lips in a little game only she was playing; the way she stared into distant space and twisted her hair made me suspect not. However, I doubt that it was the age gap, size deficit or language barrier that was the cause of her tedium – to be fair, I was bored by the brief snippet I was privy to as you walked by and I was not the one clinging to your arm.
Don’t worry man sitting in the old lady chairs below my table, I have not been ‘stood up’, I chose to come here alone – I like it. But thanks all the same – it was pleasant of you to say ‘cheers’ when the refill appeared.
I’m glad you’re not really collecting bodies, Mr ‘Bring out your dead’, as that would indeed be rather a grim task. I do wonder, however, at the business you’re in. I rarely see people appear when you ring the bell at the front of your trailer. What is it that you collect? I hear your call, see now the bell that you ring – flat, bronze, the shiniest thing on your battered and rusty bike – but I do
not see any goods collected. I wonder at where you live and what you do with the wares that you may or may not collect. I wonder at what you eat for dinner and glance briefly at my half full still cold beer. You pay me no attention and I don’t blame you but I wish you good luck and want to remember your call. The lights have changed now, Mr ‘Bring out your dead’, you’ll be needing to unfold the legs you raised and rested on the ‘crossbar’, release the brake, ring your bell, call and leave.
I guess that you Lady in slippers and flannelette coat atop pyjamas wandering down the road, I am of no relevance to you either although we briefly connect as my eyes raised from my glass. I was distracted, however, when I noticed the green fly flailing around in my beer – doomed little bastard. When I looked again, you’d disappeared shuffling off down a lane probably to sit with neighbours on rickety wooden stools or a random armchair lifted from someone’s rejects. The afternoons spent watching, talking, shuffling are very different to those of 30 years ago, I’d imagine. And I wonder if your grandchildren will ever do that: simply sit. I regret not having the language capabilities to communicate with you and others of the lanes – I really do. I am disappointed in myself for not persevering but consider that perhaps sometimes just a glance is enough.
So it was to you, Mr Man in the van that I wanted to write. Not from the pavement side of the massive Huaihai where I saw you early that morning but from the little world outside Wooden Paradise when on one Sunny Saturday afternoon I parked my scooter and placed myself in the corner of a little world in Shanghai. Thank you for reminding me about respect, even though you possibly didn’t mean it, probably thought I was ridiculous, if you gave it a second thought at all, and potentially was just passing the time at the lights by looking at a stranger; it meant something to me.
She went to Shanghai 