new Starbucks Coffee has opened just round the corner, in the corporate street called Hangda Lu, with its polished granite walkways and glass and steel buildings. Coffee at Starbucks costs Y15 a cup, compared to the ridiculously high prices of the padded coffee-drinking dens of the rich where it’s Y50 or more per cup (Y200 for a cup of Blue Mountain is the highest price I’ve seen).
What does this outrageous price for coffee mean, when so much in China is so cheap? I don’t know. All I know is that I have set far too many assignments, and now I have to mark them. In between, I distract myself. I look at the blandly tasteful decor — was it designed in China, or in the United States? It helps me to do this alienated work in an alienated environment, so I go to Starbucks every spare hour I have. They play American jazz and croony love song CDs. I plough through mountains of homework with my red pen. My hours of marking are brightened by the expressiveness of Chinese English:
‘She eventually used up all her adamancy and burst out crying.”
‘Out and down again, he couldn’t feed himself, how could he live life with Lucy, his sweet sweet heart, she is so cute and elegant.”
‘He worked so hard and cautiously that he was soon promoted to the workshop, where he met a kind and amiable lady.”
‘She was a completely rich-born lady. The romantic poet couldn’t attract her: the rich and obvious families couldn’t neither.
‘She chose him, just a poor student with a kind heart. They were humble soft and simple asking for no more than a peace and quiet life.
They couldn’t understand the complicated political arguments and couldn’t identify them. They hid themselves in a world made of butterflies.”
‘I stared the mail for more than an hour without moving my eyeballs.”
”This is a city that shines gently,’ she said, ‘unlike the city I live in, which is either too dark or too bright.’”
I watch people shining gently in the street. I look at the guy in the uniform, whose whole job is just to salute the limousines that pull up, and open their doors. A week ago I saw a painful drama being enacted. A man and a woman were walking, arguing, then he grabbed her by the arm, she started weeping, he got angrier, then she just sat down on the kerb, weeping more, he got even angrier, she called a taxi, the taxi stopped, she got in, he tried to get in but the taxi driver didn’t let him, and sped off.
Today there is an oldish man walking backwards along the street and slapping his arms. This is one of the exercises people do, or rather old people do, they sometimes walk along making primal noises or slap themselves or, in this case, walk backwards.
The man walks backwards into the covered courtyard next to Starbucks and keeps on walking backwards in a circle, slapping himself lightly. Nobody pays any attention.
People come in here to do business deals, plugging in their laptops to show the sales graphs. The other day there was a ‘westerner” talking to a Chinese businessman in English. I realised to my horror he had a South African accent, I say to my horror because he was bragging and talking down to this Chinese man in that clearly recognisable tone that white South Africans use when they are being racist: ‘So you see, we put up the factory, and you supply the labour.” The Chinese guy was not saying anything.