It’s Saturday night and I just threw away the garbage because the shushu leaves at eight and takes the bins with him. I cross the bridge next to our compound and on the crossroads are five or six food stands. They sell fried chunks of meat, cold noodles, jianbing, corn sticks, and cold draft beer. All on the back of some cart pulled by an electric three-wheeler. I don’t want to buy any of this; I don’t trust my stomach with the streetside food, and I haven’t drunk alcohol for five years now.
And I know these aren’t massive adventures, but I do love this atmosphere. People come and go, satisfied with simple meals underneath these trees. And the next time I’m at this crossroad, something has changed, and you don’t see that with franchised shopping malls. In Chuansha, all these individual businesses bring a variety, while chains like Starbucks and KFC are focused on consistency. So at the roastery, you get whatever freshly roasted nuts are on the schedule. You can eat Xinjiang barbeque on flimsy plastic chairs. And I bought a book that’s obviously an illegal printed-out version of an e-book, but that’s the brilliance of it.
I’m not against modernisation but I am all for variety. This is what the three guys from Top Gear talk about when they speak of their love of cars like Alfa Romeos. It may break down a lot, more often than a reliable German car, but a car can have character. But only when it has flaws. I turn the corner and go to the supermarket, and there’s a pig at the entrance, and I hear some other visitors saying it has grown a lot since last time.
