There's an alleyway by our dormitory where street vendors conjure up bowls of noodles, rice, mushrooms, onions, tofu, pork. Quick hands pinch and toss an alchemy of ground peppers and MSG. There are fruit carts too: pyramids of green-blushed tangerines, pomelos hacked open to prove ripeness. And don't forget the skewered hotdogs, textured with slices down their length so as to appear more like exotic, rubbery flowers, or at least anything more exciting than simply, well, a hotdog.
Past the sorcerers and hotdog birds-of-paradise, the alley extends past an empty and rubble-filled lot. I've been told that they're going to turn the place into a park, but until that happens, sometimes you can see old men holding kite strings to their stomachs like umbilical chords, watching paper dragons swerve around in the sky.
But there is more beyond the park-in-waiting, more beyond the brick wall tattooed with a graffiti ROCK AND ROLL, there is the railway. Compared to the clogged and churning streets of Kunming, this railroad feels tame, nondescript, burdened more with the foot-traffic of students going to and from their dorms and the warm-colored noodle joints that crop up around here. For me, it's the most direct path to reach the big market, but that's another story. This moment is for the railway, tucked away into the folds of dirty buildings, a length of space good for walking, balancing one step over the other on a long strip of steel until it almost feels like predestination. But then it never really is. You always end up turning onto this alley or that street, free to amble or bike or drive on to wherever you need to be. Unless you're the train, that is.
-S
p.s. I'm behind on posts. Too many things that I need to get around to writing about here. Hope to saddle many more words and pictures to this thing very soon.
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