Friday 9 July 2010

Getting more...exposed...to China

I know I haven't updated in forever, and a bunch of little reasons add up to no real excuses.  I am still in China, though, and my Chinese is improving, and I've managed to get out of here to go back to Europe for a definitely needed summer holiday (which doesn't stop me from wanting another one!).

My office has moved out to the far reaches of Pudong, which kills me as I live in Puxi and our old office was walking distance from my apartment.  We only moved in this week, so there are still rooms being finished, and we apparently had to drag our internet out from Puxi, which apparently makes it even slower than normal.  I have been assured that we are getting fibre installed soon, and it can't come quickly enough.  In the meantime, the internet is down, and I'm using the lull to tell the world about a fairly traumatic experience I had a couple of nights ago.

I had gotten out of the office pretty late, so by the time I got back to Puxi it was well after dark.  I decided to take a shortcut home down an alleyway behind my apartment block.  It's only a few minutes' walk away from People's Square, so quite central, but poorly lit.  I've never had a problem walking down there before, so I didn't anticipate any trouble that night.  So I'm walking along, and I see a little white light shining ahead, maybe from a pen light.  As I get closer, I can see that there's a middle-aged Chinese guy sitting on a scooter.  He redirects the light so I have no doubt that what he has in his hand is...his penis.  I had no idea what to do at this point, and fervently hoped that what was coming out of it was just urine (I can't believe I actually /wanted/ to see someone pissing in the street right in front of me.  This all happened in the space of a few seconds and a few steps, so that by the time he evacuated his family jewels all over the concrete, I was pretty much standing right in front of him.  I actually had to stop walking in order to not get anything on me.  I had a serious WTF expression on my face for a couple of seconds, studiously not looking down or making eye contact, until he calmly motioned for me to keep walking.  
I felt like I should have screamed something at him, but as well as being completely shell-shocked, I figured he probably wanted such attention in the first place.  

This is the first time anything like this has ever happened to me, and I wish it hadn't been right around the corner from where I live.  I didn't feel unsafe, but I did feel fairly unclean afterwards, so I don't think I'll be taking that shortcut after hours again.

Why are people such freaks?

Posted via email from Banana Undercover

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