People balancing on bicycles. A man or woman pedalling and on the carrier rack a woman or a child sitting sidesaddle, not holding on, apparently totally stable.
A little woman on a light motorbike, her passenger a tall man probably twice her weight.
A woman holding her small child against her bosom, the other hand guiding a stream down into the gutter from the convenient gap in the child’s clothing.
The small man in dark overalls pulls a heavy cart twice as long as him, loaded with coal briquettes. This afternoon perhaps I will see him again, his girlfriend happy on the end of the cart.
Once again I admire the geometric art of the Shinjiang fruit and seed cakes cemented with honey and carried from the Muslim north to feed the sweet tooth of the hungry south, like giant ancestors of our health shop muesli bars.
Eagerly, I sort through the bright attractive Tibetan necklaces, hoping for good gifts, to find only pretty replicas in plastic. I think I get a nod of approval when I tell them ‘Bu mai, bu zhende’, ‘Don’t buy, not real’. Once I bought two necklaces made of Yak horn. He was a Tibetan too. I show the plastic sellers my mermaid in niukou. I say ‘Zhen de’. They smile and nod again.