ChinaBlog Day 09

I think I just broke someone. I’ve gotten used to the double takes when people see me on the street, but, obviously, they haven’t gotten used to me. What I still can’t believe is that the sight of a white person is so rare here that it warrants extra attention, and even wonder. ‘What is that thing?’ they seem to be astonishing aloud in Chinese to my face. ‘Look at the way it moves! It’s like a circus animal! Sung, come here and see this! Maybe if we poke it we can make it do tricks.’ And so they do. Usually, the scenario goes like this: I’m walking with my groceries or laptop or whatever. I happen to look up from my feet at the same moment someone coming the other direction does too, and we make eye contact. Out of politeness, we both then look away, as if it had never happened. I continue to look away, and out of the periphery of my vision, I see their head snap back toward mine like I was covered in bees. There is usually a mixture of shock, amusement, and horror etched on their mug. If you can’t picture their face, just imagine that you have walked out your front door and found, instead of me, 10 clowns stuffed into a tiny car, having just run head-on into another small car filled with another 10 clowns, and they are all strewn across the street in various states of carnage, with googly eyeglasses springing around on dazed faces, size 56 shoes run through windshields, and red squeaky noses bleeping timidly under scurrying paramedics’ footfalls. Shock, horror, amusement.
--So, back to the lecture at hand, I think I just broke someone. I was returning from, where else, the grocery store, and was near my building. I had already encountered immeasurable disbelief by this point, having lumbered my way to the store, and, more implausibly, through the tiny aisles of tiny overly-packaged tiny foodstuffs (almost like a normal person, but much much bigger and freakishly pale), and I was pretty much over the double-takes. So, once again, I happened to look up (to see how close I was to the entrance of my place) and caught eyes with a girl of perhaps 14 arriving home from school. We both promptly looked away, as you do, and I was expecting the requisite ‘HOLYCRAPAMONSTERRUN!’ head snap. Sure enough, it came right on cue, but exactly at that moment there just happened to be, and I couldn’t make this up, a transparent-green plastic disposable correction-tape (white out) dispenser laying on the ground just under her foot. Out of the corner of my ear I heard a loud cracking crunch, and out of the corner of my eye I saw this tiny little being hit the pavement eyebrow first like a 50 lb. slab of meat. Her bags went everywhere. Her glasses skittered across the damp asphalt. I briefly saw the soles of her shoes and the top of her head simultaneously. It was one of the most hysterically horrendous faceplants I’ve ever seen. Even worse than the time Alex Ou made one turn on his first ever black diamond run and fell 150 feet down the slope, losing every article of clothing on his person not considered to be some type of underwear. It was that bad. I instantly flew to the rescue, helped her up, gathered her things, asked her if she was ok, all that. If I had disappeared at that moment, she would have burst into tears. Instead, she just turned the most impossible shade of red and stared resolutely at her feet as she took her things from me, and then ran off without a word. Imagine the mortification of a monster seeing you fall down in public. And then to have the horrible thing help you with your stuff, it’s almost too much to bear. She’s probably never going to leave her room again. I felt so tremendously awful for her that I had to come straight home and post the entire story on the internet for everyone to read about. Poor thing.
-c