China Summer - Remembered

I lie top of a round tree trunk lengthwise, the clouds are white on blue, the entire bay lit up, so warm, no breath of fresh air, no wind, just heat.

I was reminded of Wuhan, Hu Bei, in the dead summer, circa 1978, people slept on rickety bamboo twin beds, on the streets, one head after another, all lined up neatly so that they could all fit on the same pedestrian walkway. Doors were wide open in every little houses, people were so poor that there were nothing to steal.

110 Fahrenheit degrees in the middle of the night. I was just off boarded a train from Changsha, Hu Nan, and I walked by these dead-asleep mosquitoes-ridden people, some snoring, some not, to catch the boat that departed at 6:30 AM from the terminal on the other end of the town from the train station. The boat made the journey up the Yangzi River, sailing through the Three Gorges, when it was still in existence and in its unaltered state. It would eventually take me to Hefei, An Hui, south of Shanghai, in just short of three days of journey. I look forwarded to those long boat rides, on the muddy Yangzi river, every summer. Sometimes we made a detour in Najing, Jiang Su. I liked the pickled salty vegetables there, and the air dried salted duck gizzards. They were then washed down with a bowl of rice porridge.  If mother was feeling generous, she'd also order a salted duck egg, I liked the egg york the most. She took the egg white.

I memorized the name of provinces of China rather easily, I traveled lots as a little kid. By the time I left China, I'd covered all but 5 provinces across China.

One summer, in 1991, I returned to China. I was briefly passing through Wuhan, on a soft sleeper train returning from an obligatory family visit to my father side of Beijing relatives. The train made stops at Wuhan, then Changsha, then to Guangzhou, where I'd then catch a bus to Zhuhai, a city bordered Macau, where my folks then lived.

A childhood friend stood by that train station, came to see me, in the middle of the night, we embraced like we never did and then I had to depart hurriedly as the train was pulling off the station. He went up to me the last minute and kissed me. I never talked to him again, I never saw him again. I was 6 when I met him. He moved to Wuhan after I moved to Zhuhai, when we were both only 12. We kept in touch until 1991, when I finally stopped writing in Chinese, when I knew the return to China, to grow up to be a writer, a journalist, to live a nomadic life, to be free of responsibilities, free of possibilities and options, were nothing but a lovely dream, I would start, all over again, in a country I had since adopted as my own, in a place I had to make do. And make do I did.

That was my childhood. A past, remembered, just now, while star gazing.

My irises are now wide open, after a while I can see lights and objects, far or close, as if I were a vampire or just consumed mushroom. I can hear crickets, car alarm going off afar, Spanish and Indian radios playing on the opposite end. I can smell the sweet scent of weeds. This is the Republic of Berkeley.

I am of 39 years of age.  The last year before I shall hit the 4-0.

The check-in on FB offers the option of "top of the world". I select that option, naturally.