Shanghai Vignette

August, 2007

The downpour came suddenly, with a violence that reminded me I was living in a world with words like Monsoon and Typhoon. I wasn't close enough to home to make a dash for it, so I succumbed, letting the fat moonstone drops cover me, hitting me in the face. Within seconds I was soaked. My sturdy new sandals were useless and slippery as I tried to navigate the sudden puddles, the curbside rivers. In a moment of childhood glee I was tempted to take them off and run splashing on, but mindful of Shanghai street flotsam, I trudged on. At the corner of Xingye Lu a straw field workers hat flew by me as I saw a creeping taxi come to a grudging halt; an intrepid cyclist had literally blown onto the hood of his car. Through the headlights I watched as he tried to disentangle himself in the dark. It was three in the afternoon.
Soaked to a state of abandon, I pushed forward against the gale, at times stopped in my tracks by the force of it. At one point the wind suddenly changed tack and slammed into me from behind, almost knocking me over. Not so much scared as awestruck, I moved on, slowly making my way up Madang Lu towards home. The small boutiques along the road were carrying on business as if there weren't lost umbrellas hurtling by their windows, or birds momentarily flying backwards, but a few of the shopkeepers were pressed up against the glass watching the street spectacle. Then the lightning came in seismic synapses, white hot as it cracked down into the skyline's silhouette. Like Frankenstein's monster, the city was re-energized.
At the first sign of electricity in the air I ducked into a small crafts shop. The young, bespectacled girl behind the counter gave me a sympathetic smile as I shook myself down at the door. I left a large puddle on the floor but she just smiled, and motioned me with her hands to get inside and shut the door. As I perused the handmade trinkets, she explained that the shop was in fact the co-operative effort of a group of art students, and then said in her Shanghai way, 'Why don't you buy my jewelry?' I looked at it, and some of the pieces were very nice, but I was only waiting out a storm and we both knew it. After a few minutes of small talk the explosions after the flashes grew further and further apart, thudding in the lonely distance. And then just as suddenly as it started, the rain stopped. The storm had passed.