A Gust

The seasons have officially changed here in Shanghai, and I wondered today if the spate of biting, stormy days the past couple of weeks indeed has a discernible effect on the disposition of the city’s human population. The thought crossed my mind during lunch in the canteen today as I contemplated whether to tear out the nostrils of the guy serving me noodles behind the counter.

The canteen in my building is split into different sections. There’s the line you have to get into if you just want a bowl of rice and small plates of food in varying stages of rot. Then there’s the lunch box line (套餐), where you can get combinations all chosen out for you. The hot pot section used to be a lot bigger, and I was a big fan of this because they had a nice MAH-LAH (麻辣) pot with chunk of duck blood in it (my favorite, as you all know). The consistent spot was always the noodle line, where I could get oily dry noodles, soup noodles, and even won tons, which is what the American guests usually got because I think it made them feel safe.

On this day, I waited quietly in line for warm soup noodles, since it was cold outside and I didn’t get a chance to eat my usual breakfast of oily, deep fried pieces of toast with pork jam (the most delicious artery-clogger available in Shanghai today). When it finally got to my turn, the noodle chef inexplicably waved me off and told his helper to give the last remaining bowl of noodles from the current batch to the woman behind me.

Confused, I asked him: “Why?” He turned and said that the woman behind me had gotten in line earlier than I had, which I guess would make sense if we are all supposed to stand in line facing backwards. Perhaps implying that I had cut in line, when in reality all I had done is reserve my place to get a tray, I told him matter-of-factly that I indeed had gotten in line earlier than the woman behind me. He turned back around to tend to the noodles, a gesture that indicated he was dismissing my claim as fallacious, at which point I became infuriated and yelled out: “You’re crazy, it’s your own stupid fault for not seeing me stand here, when I was here first.” I felt like such a whiner, but the one thing that makes me squeal like a baby instead of coming back with an ascerbic comment is when I am falsely accused of something, particularly when I’m stuck with the choice of having to deny a woman a bowl of noodles or stand there like an acknowledged miscreant, steam rising out of my ears.

I ended up just taking the noodles that rightfully belonged to me, but I as I sat down with my co-workers I couldn’t help but look back to my beloved noodle station, wondering if I should go back and start a row. Petty, perhaps, and definitely childish, but I was overcome with an overwhelming desire to jump over the counter, stick my two fingers deep into the infested nostrils of the noodle chef, and then fling him head backward into the oily vat of pork lard.

Suddenly, a thought crossed my mind. What if the VP of my division, an older fellow who works right under the CEO of one of the largest and famous companies in the world, had been victim to the same treatment? If the noodle chef had known that someone who had enough private wealth to buy the entire office building we were in outright was standing in line, waiting for an 8 kuai bowl of noodles, would he have reacted the same way.

The key is, that he would never know that. He knows nothing about who he serves, but in his own mind he is responsible for dishing out the justice on his own little square area of noodle turf. In this most enigmatic of countries, the noodle line remains a superannuated beacon of what a people’s republic should really be: everyone is the same. Regardless of whether you’re a street sweeper or Siddhartha himself, this is still China, biatches! What the noodle chef says, goes, and he only sees what he believes. I guess even after three years of living here, the red and green remnants of the Cultural Revolution still thrive sometimes to the hoi polloi. It’s just a fact that all of us used to a society built on individual rights and respect have to swallow and digest.

That being said, I’d still like to do the nostril thing, just to get it out of my system. I guess the sudden bout of rage is a symptom of the impending arrival of more gloomy and freezing weather. Or maybe I’m a sociopath with very thin skin. Either way, I’m meeting him outside after work and will deal with him old-school Shanghainese-man style…that is, I’ll slap him really hard and run the other way. That’s right, that’s how shit gets taken care of up in hee-ya!