Street scenes

Heading out to do some shopping I find I have to pick my way down the pavement and across the street even more carefully than usual. The main north-south road, linking the two centres of town, is currently a major construction zone; large slabs of concrete are being broken up and bulldozed out, roundabouts are transforming into intersections, bus stops and palm trees are being relocated, and the entire 9 kilometre length is being surfaced in bitumen. A team of women are scrubbing pavers while other labourers are carefully scavenging recyclable material, usually reinforcing bars but I have seen a neatly loaded handcart of very dirty PVC pipes. However traffic management doesn’t seem to be an integral part of the process; coming back into town one weekend we discovered the bitumen-laying machines on one side of the road had caught up with the concrete foundation preparation team on the other side, resulting in a section of the road being completely impassable. Consequently we spent an hour and a half, mostly stationary in a side street diversion, travelling a distance that usually takes 15 minutes. And, of course, this is a good time to upgrade services so the traffic lights are out too, and the water pipes are being replaced with unannounced shutdowns of supply. On 3 days we have found ourselves without water, not that pleasant in this hot climate, but, fortunately, the supply has returned each evening.

I make it safely to the nearest intersection passing groups of men waiting for casual work and a woman pushing a garbage tricycle. Hovering over the crossroad is a huge billboard poster of China’s great American based, square-jawed, sporting hero, Yáo Míng. I love the floating basketball and the curious sea and cityscape and speculate on the insurance company’s message. Beneath the billboard is a man, with a sound system on a small luggage trolley, selling music CDs and barrows selling fruit, though we usually use the fruit stall tacked outside a small supermarket, one of three within about 200 meters. Further on is a little vegetable and meat market with produce, living, dead and reasonably freshly picked, displayed on concrete slab tables. I’ve given up bargaining for fruit and vegetables, as my efforts result in next to no discount. I know I am paying too much because the stall holders keep giving me extra produce! I wave to the woman with a mobile glass cupboard selling roti-style flat bread, and move on past the poultry cart, and, horrifyingly, the dog cart. Both will sell you roast meat to take home or to eat ‘in’ at little pavement-side tables with tiny stools.

Other services cluster round the market. A hairdresser sets up on the concrete forecourt with battery-powered clippers, chair, booster seat for kids (a smaller chair placed on the adults’ chair), a mirror and an umbrella for sun and rain. When finished for the day it is all loaded on to the ubiquitous blue flatbed tricycle. Lined up beside him are three cobblers, each with a free-standing hand-operated sewing machine that looks like it came out of the industrial revolution. These three women, surrounded by leather scraps and half repaired shoes, chat as they wait for work. Back in Zhāngzhōu a similar setup re-heeled a worn pair of shoes for me. I was horrified when I was charged 5 yuán (about $1), which, at the price of a simple lunch, seemed a lot, until I realised I was actually being asked for 5 jiǎo (half a yuán)! Out by the side of the road is a bicycle repair man with a number of spare inner tubes slung on the handle bar of his bike. He is often crouched over a bowl of water testing a tube, and I have seen him with a completely disassembled bike scatted across the pavement. Should you need a new watch battery look out for a little booth, almost a sentry-box, perched at the front of a shop. For ¥10 the elderly man, as they always seem to be, will deftly open up the back, replace the battery and hand it back to you before you can negotiate a price.
















I catch the bus to one of the two main shopping centres and, paying 2 yuán for any length trip, I recover in its beautiful air-conditioned. Leaping off the bus, before it speeds away, I wander past elderly women crouching by black plastic bags of Chinese medicine; woody fungus and dried lizards and seahorses. Other kerb-side vendors sell local snacks, Western soft drinks and newer services such as supplying and applying protective film to your new mobile phone or MP3 player. Motorbike and 3-wheeled scooter taxis congregate at entrances to buildings, their drivers calling out for business, and the pavements are thick with bikes overseen by vigilant parking ‘officers’ waiting to collect the 1 yuán parking fee. Finally I reach the shopping centre discovering the forecourt swamped with red tents and umbrellas, basketball hoops and inflated beer cans. The marketing team for Pearl River Beer is in town and, as sponsor for the Chinese basketball team, is encouraging product awareness though a range of basketball related and other games. Music blares out, young men enthusiastically compete for prizes and I find myself dazed by just a simple shopping trip with its heady mix of old and new China.