I’m hanging out in 麦缘 where it is warm. Holly and Tang Ling have a set meal thing going for the next few days as an Xmas special. It’s the traditional curry pumpkin soup, salad, pizza, apple upside-down cake and sangria Xmas meal we all know and love in every Western household this time of year.
Two nights ago a Texan yoga instructor was at the bakery. He was talking about working in a couple of Indian vegetarian cafes back in Dallas in the nineties. He wasn’t into yoga at the time but the owners brought in yoga teachers and speakers from time to time. There was also a guy who came in all the time who wanted to make movies, who loved the owner and the owner’s son. When he became a filmmaker he cast the Indian guys in his movies whenever possible. And that’s as close as I come to being an acquaintance of Wes Anderson (and Kumar Pallana).
Across the street from 麦缘 (Holly’s Bakery) is a gigantic high-rise. In its basement is a vegetable market. On the main floor there’s a nice restaurant that hosts a lot of wedding banquets. The second floor houses a vast 网吧 (internet cafe) with hundreds of computers for the medical college students to play games and watch movies on. Above that point it’s all apartments, probably fairly expensive ones for Nanchong.
But on the front of this edifice the most ghetto “Merry Christmas” is scrawled in fake snow. The words are in completely different hands. The “Christmas” trails across glass, slate and brass at an awkward climbing angle. Holly observed it looked like it was sprayed on by their enemies.
There hasn’t been news for a month and a bit as I was off in China. My amazingly talented girlfriend (Holly – yeah, stuff happened this trip) has a bakery in Nanchong and I got to hang out for almost the entire first month of it being open. I arrived on day five or something like that. And because of how doing anything in China works, it felt very different by the time we left. Not that the bakery itself felt much different (though displays were being moved around all the time and new paintings were being added, so the appearance did change somewhat) but the getting into the swing of the bakery and how it would work and look in the future morphed a lot.
Anyway, I got to be Holly’s photographer, dishwasher and white boy in the window (I figure was responsible for about half a sale per day I sat out front, enticing people to see what the waiguoren was eating) while I was there. Also learned about all the decision-making crap you do as a small business owner. I’m probably a better employee/independent contractor kind of person than I would be owner/boss material.
And now I’m off to Vancouver for library school. I move tomorrow. I have two checked bags and two carry-on, which is insane to me, and everything else I need (and a pile of crap I probably don’t) has been sent. DJS5ers, there’s some stuff at Reyn’s for you. Some miniatures and games I didn’t want to get rid of but didn’t want to cart across the country with me. A pair of slippers and a baseball bat (those’d be for Sean).
I’ll be back writing again. In a new place I feel like I’ll probably have a bit more to say.
