This morning it’s going to be another one of those dreaded early meeting days. My office is located so far away from Shanghai civilization that normal city taxi drivers never venture out here; in fact, the county has its own taxi service, so on one of those are days when we venture out to grab a bite at a local eatery, we almost never feel like we’re in Shanghai.
So, I’m staring at a 45 minutes cab ride starting at 6:30 am, and my disposition is about 180 degrees south of cheerful. I walk out of the lobby and am not at all shocked that it’s starting to rain. Rain is rarely pleasant in Shanghai. By the time the droplets reach your terrestrial existence, they’ve essentially traveled through 10,000 layers of soot and other unpleasant particle layers and leave a sodium-enriched film on your skin. Rain should never taste salty; it should be pure and clean and wash foulness away, like it needs to for me on this morning. And of course, my umbrella is somewhere upstairs in my apartment, leaning against the closet and surely thinking to itself that it is blessed to have an empty-minded dolt for an owner.
We travel quickly through the neighboring streets. There is never any traffic in the early hours after the sun has risen over the Pudong horizon, and the drive through the Shanghai backwaters is rendered even more solitary by the diminishing view of the city as we push away from it. The past couple of weeks have seen Shanghai bundled in a dusty and broiling blanket of humidity, relief coming in rare bursts of acidic showers and Northern California dreams. Sometimes the heat and moisture are so thick that you feel like you’re walking head-on into a wall of acrid syrup as you leave the friendly air-conditioned confinement. People don’t walk in the air here as much as they swim in it, using lungs and tolerance in place of arms and legs to paddle through the city jungle. Good moods don’t find their way out to the streets in this weather.
There is a general unpleasantness all around that forces me into a desperate search for an ephemeral reprieve from the dankness. Or maybe it was the greasy noodles I ate yesterday for lunch that is making me feel so ill-suited to do or think anything mirthful. In any case, I arrive at my desk as the ayi’s start prepping their day’s worth of thankless wiping and mopping and polishing. Grey is all around, and the voices on the conference call begin to drone and meld into single minor key of buzzing. I lean back and close my eyes and take a deep breath. It’s Tuesday in July and I am waiting for October to come, when demons go away and the world I am in cools to a steady, comfortable beat. Until then, the heat marches on.
