non-fiction

On the lamb, chased by wolves – by Hudson Lockett

A friend and I hopped into the back of an electric pedicab (sanlunche or “three wheel vehicle”) and were being whisked north past Beijing Worker's Stadium along a nigh-deserted road when what looked like a police car swerved across the centre line, cutting off our middle-aged driver. She eased up on the throttle, but stopped short of the brakes when two toughs piled out of the car and began running toward us.

A party in the guardhouse – by Cobus Block

Yafeng was standing at his post beside the guardhouse, rocking back on his heels and looking into the sky when I walked through the gate. A gray, padded overcoat bloomed out over his slender frame like a worn traffic cone. Topped off with a battered officer’s hat, he looked more comical than intimidating. As the most sociable guard in our apartment complex, he had a habit of talking with residents whenever he saw an opportunity. It was not long before we became friends.

The woes of Chinese street food vendors – by Michael Taylor

THIS POST ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN RAMBLIN' MIK

It’s 4am. In the damp dark coolness of morning in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, nothing seems to stir – huge expanses of roads are left empty, basking in the unused yellow glow of street lamps. You could be forgiven for thinking that the whole city is sleeping, but if you look behind the huge, developed face of Ningbo, into some of the darker corners and alleyways away from the main roads, you will find someone like Mrs X – who does not wish to be named – busily preparing for the day ahead. She, and thousands like her across China, is an unlicensed street food vendor.

Close encounters in the rain – by Jessica Levine

As an expat afloat in Shanghai, one of the things I miss most about America is time spent in elevators. I miss the strange, fleeting intimacy among elevator passengers at home, the brief bond that forms within an eclectic group of strangers as you take off from the ground floor — the smile you share in the five seconds between the seventh and eighth floors, or the glare you receive when you sneeze loudly around floor 11-and-a-half.

One August afternoon here, I found that rainstorms can create the same effect.

A hutong community meeting goes awry

The neighbourhood meeting was scheduled for Saturday morning and promised to tackle the Five Great Problems plaguing our housing community, No. 19 Ju’er hutong, Beijing. Separate flyers for the event — one English, one Chinese — appeared a few days prior, lodged in the cracks of our front doors. The Chinese version was printed on pink paper and offered a bit of helpful context. It summarised the Five Great Problems agreed upon in the March 20th meeting — broad categories like “environment problems” and “problems with new arrivals”. The English flyer was more perfunctory, a short welcome letter to an unexplained gathering, really. There were only a few sentences and one of them promised lunch and a tea break.