Had another one of my fantastically surreal ‘China experiences‘ …
In an attempt to escape the mundane duties of an academic, i.e. mountains of exam script marking, I agreed to go into Ningbo for dinner with a few friends. The day had started off with two sets of exam invigilations and got progressively worse when I was finally faced with the prospect of having to mark them all within a week. So went to laowai tan (foreigners town) and had a mixture of Thai, Indian and Chinese food, which, as Ningbo has excellent fish being so close to the sea, was delicious. After dinner I decided to go via Wal-Mart in an attempt to save myself a trip the next day, and be able to just get on with work. Flagged down a cab and gave the taxi driver my destination – in Mandarin no less – and without hesitation he agreed to take me. Quel success! – seen as I am still a real novice in mastering the language.
So I ended up going shopping for groceries at 9.45 pm, after which I stood outside the shopping centre waiting for a taxi to come passed to take me back to campus. Nothing much surreal about that, until: several minutes later, I had to do a double take as a shabby old mini van drove passed, with a full-sized grand piano strapped to the back! The whole thing was so heavy that the front wheels of the van were barely touching the ground and the two men at the back were clinging on for dear life, as the driver whizzed passed at high speed. Only in China!! To make the experience even more surreal: several minutes later the same van (or was it?), with the same full-sized grand piano strapped to the back, drove passed again – this time without anyone on the back holding on for dear life. I felt like I was in the wrong movie, or alternatively part of a ‘Laurel and Hardy’ sketch, i.e. the men had fallen off the back of the van and the piano about to follow resulting in one big musical mess…
China really is an endless string of surreal experiences – highly amusing and extremely entertaining!
One Response to “An anecdote on the surreal”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Hallo Frauke, bin zurück aus Japan und habe gerade amüsiert Deine Website gelesen.
In Japan sind mir auch die Oleander aufgefallen, war überrascht, weil ich sie dort nicht vermutet habe.
Wir sehen uns ja bald im Siesmayer!
Herzliche Grüße
Deine Ilse