Spain/China 2023, continuing (37)

[aadler]

Twenty-third day in China – August 03 Thursday

Up 8:30AM, Susan was already awake. As soon as I showered and shaved and dressed, we went across the street for breakfast at Baker & Spice.

Some reading and relaxing afterward, watched a laptop-stored movie till the afternoon.

(I also learned, with some amusement, that Susan has heard enough of my Buffyfic stories by now that she thought several things — developed entirely out of my own vanity — were actual parts of the show’s canon. We’re talking things that would have been major revelations in the show itself … but no, it was just me happily playing with reality. Or, in this case, somebody else’s reality.)

About 4:30PM, Susan and I started over to the Yins’ apartment, taking another bag of presents for Amber: American Girls books about her doll Samantha, and doll clothes.

Today’s meal was simpler than those in the past: a huge plate of Chinese dumplings, plus congee, technically a rice porridge but in this case heavily leavened with shrimp and clams. (And Amber had helped in the building of the ‘plate decoration’, a peacock made of tomato slices — body — with a spreading tail of cucumber slices, and tiny cross-sections of sliced peppers for the ‘eyes’ in the tail. Nobody ate any part of that, it was just there to look nice.)

Kevin arrived later than usual, but was still able to join us before the meal was over. Mei‑li took Amber for today’s piano lesson. We left almost immediately afterward, because he had a free gym class he was going to try out and he wanted to get us home first.

(He was pushing Susan’s wheelchair, and talking about things he’d got accustomed to that our presence — and annoyed complaints — had reminded him that, yes, he really didn’t like them and they really were annoying. He was framing it in context of things accepted in a particular culture that are objectionable outside that culture, and expanding that a lot of it is simply a matter of living in a big city, i.e., we’d encounter some of the same things in New York or Chicago as in Shenzhen. And then, while still speaking, he started across the crosswalk in a wide street when the counter said there were only eight seconds left, and our experience had told us we’d need at least twenty. I was a few steps behind him, and I stopped in astonishment at what he was doing: he finished crossing, and then boosting his mother’s wheelchair up onto the sidewalk, after the light had changed and traffic was waiting for him to get out of the way. That was, to me, a breathtaking example of things I just wouldn’t do … and I didn’t, I waited till the light changed back, over a minute later, then crossed over and caught up with them. Different perspectives. Different perspectives.)

He hung around for a few minutes talking with us, then went on his way. While I was catching up on internet stuff, Susan found that the next Brother Cadfael book — we started in on the series about a week ago — had dropped in price to $1.99 on Kindle, and I promptly snapped it up.

This and that, and on to bed in due time.