The neon washes over my journal: pink, then blue, then a green that stains the page like a promise. Families walk by slowly, unhurried, because this is the Monday of the five-day Labour Day holiday and no one has anywhere urgent to be. The children run ahead. The grandparents follow. The parents walk in the middle, holding nothing, saying little.
Scooters glide past on silent battery power: no roar, no vibration, just a soft hiss of tires on the concrete and the occasional bell. The riders wear helmets in bright colours: pink, yellow, a blue that matches my umbrella. They carry boxes, bags, children, nothing at all.
Boys talk to girls. Girls compose selfies. The same scene everywhere in China, every day, but tonight it feels softer. The holiday, perhaps. The spring evening. The light.
The trees along the street are bright with spring-green foliage; that particular green that only lasts a few weeks, the green of new leaves, of everything beginning. It glows against the grey of the buildings, the neon of the signs, the black of the wet road.
The aroma of cigarettes, food, and coffee beans mingles in the air. A woman walks past, and the sweetness of her perfume cuts through the smoke and the cologne and the dark roast.
Beside me, through a thin wall, the clack of billiard balls. A soft thud. A laugh. Men’s voices, low and content. The game continues without me.
Above it all, the apartment blocks tower overhead, their windows lit like bedroom lamps. Each one is a small, self-contained world: a family eating dinner, a student studying, a couple arguing, a child falling asleep. The bedroom-lit city. A million private lives stacked against the neon.
I drink my coffee. I write in my journal. I am alone, but not lonely. Tomorrow, I will revisit the story of the Temple in the hills, the chain-smoking attendant, the girl in green velvet, the scooter ride in the rain.
But tonight. Tonight, I just sit here. Watching. Listening. Breathing the strange perfume of Anxi on a holiday Monday.
The billiard balls clack. A scooter glides past. A girl adjusts her hair, takes another selfie, deletes it, tries again.
The neon washes over everything. Even me.
TravelWriterLife 