Free Article - Street Life in Nanjingby Kathleen DeBoerI live and teach in Nanjing, a city of approximately 5.5 million people in the People's Republic of China. Nanjing means "southern capital" as it was the capital of China during six dynasties and during the Nationalist rule in the 1930s. It is located about 198 miles west of Shanghai along the southern shore of the Yangtze River, the third longest river in the world and the longest river in China.
By Chinese standards Nanjing is a really nice city. It's not as big and busy as Shanghai and Beijing but it has many interesting historic attractions, lots of tree-lined streets, great restaurants, kind-hearted people, nine of China's "key" (best) universities and a fairly bustling economy. It is the provincial capital of Jiangsu Province, the wealthiest province in China. Chinese provinces are something like American states; they each have their own governments and characteristics.
Now that you have some idea of the place I'd like to give you a little flavor of life here; not the sort of facts you find in guide books but the details you notice when you live in a place that is not your home country, the things that strike you as a bit strange, perhaps. One of my favorite aspects of Nanjing is its street life.
When you wander about Nanjing you notice all kinds of behavior that you don't see in American cities. Most people live in small apartments; some still live in little one- to-two-room brick houses without toilets, while the very poorest live in shanty towns. For many of the city's residents and floating population - people who do not have residence permits but have floated in from the countryside or other cities - life is lived largely on the street. There are always people, sitting and talking, selling their wares, walking, bicycling, or buzzing along on motorcycles. You see people sitting outside on the sidewalk playing cards, brushing their teeth, cleaning vegetables, and butchering meat. Workers transport ducks in little trailers attached to their bicycles, carry baskets of vegetables with shoulder poles, and move the entire contents of an apartment via bicycle trailer. Women sit outside and knit and grandparents supervise their baby grandchildren in split pants so that they can pee on the street when they need to go (very few use diapers in this country.) And after lunch it is not uncommon to see workmen taking a nap, right out on the street, in their carts.
Today, many people have cell phones and can be seen chatting away not only while they walk but also while they ride their bicycles and motorbikes. The first time I saw a guy chatting on his cell phone while riding a bicycle I burst out laughing but not nearly as hard as I laughed the first time I saw a guy driving his little puppy on the front of his motorcycle. The pup's ears were flapping in the breeze and he seemed to be really enjoying the ride. By the way, parents ride their babies and young children around on motorcycles without helmets all the time.
In Nanjing all kinds of work that in America we would expect to find "inside" workshops and garages takes place "outside" right on the sidewalk, including motorcycle and bicycle repair, welding, carpentry, and shoe repair. In recent years there has been more attention in China to workers' and passengers' safety but most people seem to ignore the regulations and go about doing things as they have always done.
My general feeling about the Chinese is that they are not as self-conscious as Americans and Europeans; they are very relaxed about life on the street. They just do whatever they need to do, whenever they need to do it, wherever they need to do it, including their most favorite past times: cooking and eating. Out on the sidewalks you can find an extensive variety of street food such as lamb barbecue, big spicy bowls of noodles, delicious dumplings, and all kinds of little baked and fried breads. Instead of ovens they use 55 gallon steel drums filled with coal and they slap the little sesame breads right on the hot inside of the steel drum and the breads bake very quickly and fill the streets with a lovely fragrance of sesames and scallions. The street food is very good and very cheap; for less than $2.00 you can eat your fill.
I dare say the only thing the Chinese like as much as eating is shopping. Shopping in the street always includes bargaining and the Chinese take great pride in their ability to talk down the price. It is a game which both buyer and seller seem to enjoy. There are many lively night markets throughout the city. Here Christmas tree lights are not reserved for the month of December; after dark it always looks like Christmas in Nanjing. I often go into restaurants and see the little Santa Claus and Merry Christmas decorations on the wall and politely suggest to my Chinese dinner companions that they should have been replaced with Easter bunnies sometime in March. But they reply that the restaurant owners just keep the decorations up all year because they are so lovely.
China has embraced neon lights with a passion, perhaps a reaction against those dark and dreary revolutionary days when everyone dressed in blue, grey, and green and nothing showy was permitted. Now the place and the people are awash with color. There is even one street - Hunan Street - which has now been dubbed the Las Vegas of China because of all its neon lights.
Many things have changed in China since I first visited in 1993 but street life is alive and well and remains one of my favorite aspects of life in a Chinese city.
Kathleen DeBoer works in the Department of Foreign Languages at Southeast University in Nanjing, the campus where Pearl Buck spent ten years of her life. It is rated the Number Five engineering school in China. Kathleen would be happy to answer your questions on China, please contact her at kdbchinachat@groups.aol.com. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. All rights reserved. |
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