sushipanda

Hyun and I were heading down the elevator at Clint’s complex in Culver City on our way to drop off the car when a middle-aged woman walked in with an empty stroller. She saw the two suitcases and asked with a smile: “Going on vacation?”

I smiled back. “Nope, actually THIS is my vacation.”

It had been raining that morning. “Too bad the weather isn’t better,” she said.

“I’ve been here for a week and except for today, the weather has been great,” I replied.

The elevator touched down to the garage. She wheeled out the stroller and said, “Well, have a safe trip back.”

I called back to her, “Thanks!”

I’ve been in Los Angeles for about a week, engaging in meetings but mostly just relaxing and catching up with old friends. I’ve had about a dozen exchanges like the one illustrated above with random strangers the past few days, at gas stations and on the street and even at the post office. When I landed at LAX last Saturday, even the dude at the immigration desk seemed willing to chat, and stamped my passport with a jolly “Welcome back!” In Shanghai, such wholesale friendliness is as rare as consecutive days of unpolluted air. I was reminded of Betty, that purebred New Yorker, and her remark that people from California generally just sounded happy.

Welcome back indeed. It’s funny how the city in which I lived the first 17 years of my life has been such a foreign place to me for so long. Even now, after spending a week here, I still have no sense of where Clint’s and Hyun’s apartments are in relation to everything else. And yet, I did have the occasional but potent bout of nostalgia, especially driving through the Chinese enclaves of San Gabriel and Arcadia to see my grandparents, and having lunch with Jim in the City of Industry, where I had spent so many high school weekends shopping with my parents. Strange, but not once did I feel compelled to drive out to my hometown of Claremont; I think a big part of me didn’t want to confront the host of inevitable changes that the place has experienced. I’d rather it remain the same, dull, comfortable little town that it has always been.

Now I’m sitting in LAX, waiting to catch my flight up to Oakland to spend some time in more familiar territory. Part of me was curious about how I would react to southern California after all these years. Perhaps the city that I never truly knew but intentionally shunned would welcome me back with the same merry spirit as the immigration officer, and I would see it with a different and more jaded set of eyes. Could I ever root myself here again? After a week, I think (and I emphasize think) that the answer is still no. Too much driving, too many strip malls, too much of a sense of being sprawled out and far apart from everyone else. I have a feeling that in a couple of days, as I’m zipping through the Bay Area in my Hertz rental car, that I’ll feel more at home there. My visions of settling down there will be more lucid and tempting.

Still, it was good to be welcomed back.

Some pictures and thoughts about my week in LA:

- A couple of shots of my first ever game at Dodger Stadium. All my previous Dodger games have been at Candlestick or at Pac Bell (not sure what it’s called now) up in San Francisco. Let me just say that being a Dodger fan at a Giants game totally sucks. Finally, I was able to stand up and cheer along with the home crowd and high five adult men that I’d never touch in any other setting. Beautiful weather, my first ever Dodger Dog, and lots of Miller Lite made my experience fantastic. And in exchange for my personal fulfillment? The Dodgers’ chances of making the playoffs, since they were 3.5 games back when I entered the stadium and now area about 8 back, yet to win a game. Yes, you have me to thank.

View from our seats before the start of the game

Clint and Hyun, my caretakers for the week

The all-you-can eat section. Those bleachers must be very sturdy.

- My first burrito of the trip. Hyun had taken me straight here from the airport. Later he told me he was intending to greet me at LAX with a burrito, but thought that might be a little too romantic. If you ask me, a guy offering me his burrito is always very difficult to pass up.

Hallelujah

My second burrito, this one a shrimp edition near Venice Beach. It had zucchini in it which reminded me of the weird cucumbers that Taco Popo puts in theirs. This one still tasted a hundred times better, though.

L.A.’s famous Tito’s Tacos. We stood in a long line for this stuff. Reminded me of the sheng jian bao in Shanghai…cheap and frickin’ delicious

Close-up of a Tito’s taco.

No trip to California is complete with a In ‘N Out. Hyun suggested this place after extolling the virtues of protein shakes and yoga. What a bastard.

- My week-long stay ended with a stroll down Manhattan beach with ice cream in hand. We passed by a realty office and took a look at some of the listings. An apartment half the size of mine in Shanghai was going for $1.9 million USD. West LA can make a person feel really inadequate, what with all the toned and tanned limbs and expensive cars and houses. Not me, though, I’m completely adequate…for ruining the Dodgers and eating Mexican food! Infinite thanks to Clint and Hyun, who went out of their way to hang out and make my stay comfortable and satisfying. It definitely felt good to be welcomed back by the likes of good friends like these.

Manhattan Beach Pier

Just got back from a two day trip to Wuhan. Before my trip, I probably would have disparaged the city by saying that a two day trip is already two days too many. After driving around the downtown and riverfront area, however, I’m definitely impressed with how it’s shaped up since the last time I was here, which was…let’s see…about eleven years ago.

Eleven years ago, I was working on my senior year in high school and went with my dad on one of his business trips to the mainland. We started off in Beijing, then took the train down to Changsha and Wuhan, before ending up in Shanghai. I have four very vivid recollections from that trip:

1) The snow drifting down in Beijing was peppered with black soot. One of my dad’s acquaintances had the fantastic job of babysitting me while he was in one of his meetings, and the ash like snow was falling onto my lip as he escorted me to a large, crowded restaurant house for Lanzhou noodles. I remember that the bowl of piping hot noodles in soup was the best I had ever had, and remembered being told that our two gigantic bowls combined amounted to about 25 cents USD. Oh, the halcyon days of a developing dragon.

2) At Changsha i stuffed myself on the breakfast buffet at the hotel (as I so often do at buffets of any kind), specifically the whitish sausages. A few hours later, I had a case of intestinal chaos the likes of which my delicate, California-bred stomach had never seen before. I remember leaning against the window on the train, trying to conjure up a huge cork in case I had to crawl back towards the very unpleasant train bathroom. Sitting across from me and my dad was a very concerned middle-aged woman, who first taught me the idiom “水土不服.” She was from the countryside and was on her way to the big city to see if she could round up some investors for a new technology that somehow had fallen into her lap. She excitedly dug into her bag and produced said innovation: two AA batteries. She was hoping that she and her husband could move into the battery production business. I was too sick to even smile as my dad tried to gently tell her that this wasn’t breakthrough stuff. I forget how she reacted.

3) At that same Changsha hotel I saw a beaming white woman in classes cradling a Chinese newborn at breakfast. I don’t remember if there was another man there, I was only focused on her and the baby. Her overjoyed face remains to this day as one of the warmest memories I still have in my beer ravaged brain.

4) We had dinner with one of my dad’s old schoolmates in Wuhan. He had opened his own restaurant and business wasn’t doing too well; at least, that was what I gathered given the pained expression on his face and his very empty establishment. We sat in the VIP room with at least three wait staff patiently standing by the door. Every few minutes a kid who looked to be my age would walk in and pour us tea from a teapot with a very elongated snout. Even then I could tell right away he was from the countryside; he had the flushed, windblown cheeks and dark, leathery skin. He was stoic and unflinching, even as I rudely stared at him. Here we were, two kids the same age, living our lives thousands of miles apart. It might as well have been trillions. His thick, unkempt hair gripped his forehead and I remember thinking that if had grown up with me in southern California, he would have been quite a hit with all the suburban ABC girls. Instead, he was pouring tea and probably not even making enough to treat himself to a bowl of Lanzhou noodles.

That is what I remember about Wuhan. That kid is near 30 years old now. I hope he’s happy and married, maybe with a son of his own. Maybe he made a killing in the stock market and drives a nice Japanese made car. Whatever he’s doing, I hope the only tea that he’s pouring is for himself when he’s thirsty.