Quanxiu Liu is shining like a strip cut from a plate of sheet metal. The rain falls in torrents from an opaque sky. Waves of electric scooters—each rider shrouded with a rain poncho—spin around the intersection. My Luckin Coffee oat milk latte tastes amazing: kāfeī hěn hǎo hē.
The rain began long before dawn. Peals of thunder heralded its arrival. In the darkness, I could hear it hissing on the street below and tapping on the parapet outside the window.
Later, I bought a blue umbrella from a small shop and walked up to a this cafe: a place I remember from my last visit. I order and sit at a table by the window. Outside, the pavement darkens as the rain comes down in a steady, thrumming downpour. Grey concrete becomes deep charcoal, then almost black: the colour of wet stone everywhere in the world.
The drops strike and shatter upwards in tiny crowns; each one a momentary asterisk. Lighter drops falls between them, stitching the surface with fine diagonal lines, each one defined by
the laws of entrophy, physics, and surface tension.
In the hollow of a worn paving stone, a puddle forms. Its edges tremble with each new drop. A single leaf, wet and flattened, darts across its surface like a tiny boat with no destination.
The 8th century Chinese poet Du Fu loved rain. In Happy Rain on a Spring Night, he wrote: “good rain knows its timing.” And for me, this spring rain feels just like that: asking nothing, explaining nothing, just falling while I watch.
And that’s all I need on this rainy morning in Quanzhou.
TravelWriterLife 