Some things I learned in Nanjing on day 3, and a poem

1. Never ask for directions with a map, or perhaps even without a map. Getting the directions takes longer than getting lost and then re-finding your way there.
2. Don't try to eat lunch somewhere without a phrase book, or at least a point and order menu.
3. Steamed buns are my friend, grease laden bok choy is not.
4. Bike bells blend with scooter horns which blend with other bike bells. If you really need someone to move, yell.
5. If you repeat what someone is saying to you, they assume you understand. Be careful what you might be saying yes to.
6. I love the massage house next door to the hotel.
7. Wear sneakers even if they look stupid with your outfit.
8. Chinese bubble tea is better than American bubble tea.
9. Smiling at people who stare makes them smile back and then stop staring.


Shanghai to Nanjing

I am in China and I am awake.
Gardens next to piles of rubbish
and buildings fourty, fifty, sixty
stories high.
like love stories, all cities are the same.
My eyes, heart, mouth hurt and are open, a-gape
with love.
She is my portland and I am her
Shanghai, Tokyo, Busan, Beijing, New York
We are the same woman, the same myth,
fantasies woven around each other like
laundry lines wrapped around buildings,
clothing drying and collecting bits of city in the fog.
My eyes are wet with the monsoon of this morning and
my feet covered with the stuff of city puddles
dried between my toes.
I am alive again and it hurts,
hurts like pacific riverbed covered by city structures
only in the last twenty years
like families separated on a holiday by work, time, and government.
like the glorious powerlessness of the ocean knocking you
down and down and down on the earth,
and then you look up.