It’s a small world, as the syrupy song proclaims.
My lao po and I were returning from a restaurant a week or two back when we learned some surprising news. We have become incapable of cooking for ourselves. Either laziness or exhaustion, or a little of both are the explanations.
We stopped at the little convenience store/fried chicken shack for provisions. The man sitting behind the counter started speaking to my wife. To my amazement, I could follow the conversation.
Man: Are you from blah-blah village?
Lao Po: Yes.
Man: Is your father’s name ….?
Lao Po: Yes.
Man: Are your brothers ….?
Lao Po: Yes (getting excited).
It turns out the bookstore, a few tables under a large blue tent, is run by a father and son from the same area as my wife’s village. The father went to high school with my wife’s father, and the son with her two brothers. They have been here two years and we passed like proverbial ships in the night.
Of course, this called for a celebration of some sort. A lunch was arranged. The twins, one working across the city, made the trek to dine with new-found old friends. (aside: Chinese men are more physically affectionate than western men. I will never get use to walking arm-in-arm with a man. I will never get use to walking arm-in-arm with a man while sober.)
We ate, we drank. Then the six of us returned to Chateau Stevo, and crammed into the shoebox-like living room, watching a Jackie Chan movie on television while eating endless oranges and drinking countless cups of tea.
New friends from old friends. In a nation of 1.4 billion people, in a city of 12 million, in a community of 50,000, people reconnect. Wonders never cease.
Sounds like a very small world to me! How wonderful!
Hey! That’s totally sweet!
None of us felt like cooking yesterday either. We went on a trek looking for curry. It took three tries to find a place that was open. This city makes no sense to me sometimes.
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What a cool story … it’s such a small great big world, isn’t it?
Arm in arm? I would totally have to kill myself if I lived there. Or get a supply of fake arms. Or something. *shuddering*
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This reminds me of eating in local restaurants (local there) with my late mother-in-law, who would invariably inquire as to the parentage of the server. The server would tell who their parents were, and from where, at which point my mother-in-law would explain how the two of them were “related”–and therefore, of course, how the world was ordered. 🙂
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I kinda want to sing “It’s a Small World” over and over.
And the same thing happened all the time with my father. Everyone knew him and was in some way related. It was creepy and cool at the same time
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Wonders indeed. Amazing.
I’m going to try not to let that song get in my head.
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I’m tired of cooking lately myself. Tonight I went and got Chinese food.
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Cool story! Six degrees of separation, indeed.
Re eating chicken in Asia, I was very amused on Java to note all the different franchise chicken places. They had at least four states covered — California fried chicken, Texas, KFC (of course) and I think Louisiana, too.
Do you find the same thing there?
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