chinatroll

Athena snapped a shot of her beloved but now empty swimming pool.

Athena and I watched the draining of the swimming pool in our apartment complex, more poetically referred to as a “Garden” by the Chinese, at the end of September. This ended our nightly swims, much to Athena’s chagrin and my ill-concealed relief. When we walk to our Metro station, Xiangmihu, we cut through the courtyard in our Garden, and Athena always trots up the steps to the gate of the pool to check on the water level, or lack thereof. There is something a little disconcerting about seeing this gaping, unnaturally blue chasm sitting there. Swimming pools full of water are creepy enough: the eery reflections of lamplight, the uncomfortable feeling of wearing a swimsuit in public, and that unshakeable childhood fear of there being a resident shark. Yesterday afternoon we saw some boys skateboarding in it.

Two weeks ago I was told that Athena was supposed to start wearing her kindergarten’s winter uniform, despite the temperature’s disinclination to dip much below 80 degrees. I dutifully stuff her into her long-sleeved blue shirt, and black pants with blue accents on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and her long-sleeved pink shirt on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I was expecting some protest from her, but Athena has acclimated to the tropics and the the odd phenomenon of humans imposing the seasons of a temperate climate where there are none. I am inclined to think that this comes of Shenzhen being a newer city. Millions of people have not been living here since the dawn of time. In fact, the city has only really taken off in the past few decades, and all of the people who have moved here have brought their seasonal wardrobe changes with them. It is now very much autumn in the estimation of Shenzhen’s population and Athena, making it difficult to prevent her from wearing tights and sweaters when we go out. I am afraid she’ll overheat. My arguments against sweaters and tights are weakened by no longer being able to use, “Look outside, nobody else is wearing sweaters and tights.”

The temperature has almost caught up to the people’s wardrobe now. Almost. Really, we are in jeans-and-t-shirt-with-the-occasional-hoody temperature bracket, which makes the babies dressed for winter in Siberia and women wearing fur stoles still a tad ridiculous. The Culture Club occupies one of the storefronts in our building. It is a place for people to come and practice their English, and listen to music that was at the height of its popularity while I was in 6^th grade. There is an Englishman at The Culture Club with a Tsingtao beer permanently attached to his hand. He gave me a rundown of what to expect weatherwise while swaying slightly in his chair and wafting the scent of all of the other Tsingtao beers that have resided in his fist over the past however long he’s been living in Shenzhen. It’ll be in the mid 60s and low 70s until January, when it’ll dip down to something that actually passes for cold for a couple of weeks. “If you’re from Seattle, you’ll have no trouble,” he hiccuped. Then the Drunken Englishman fixed his gaze to a point just above my left shoulder and turned the conversation to the issue of health insurance. “If you don’t have some, you really ought to get some,” he took another swig, “this guy didn’t have any and he got meningitis and two days later, well, he’s dead.” I nod seriously and say that I have to go pick my daughter up from kindergarten, and begin walking towards the pedestrian overpass, thinking to myself that it was the meningitis that killed the man, not the lack of health insurance. As I walk over the flow of traffic on Hongli Road, I find that I am touching my chin to my chest to prove to myself that I am not, in fact, showing symptoms of meningitis, and wonder about the Drunken Englishman’s credibility when it comes to predicting the weather.

A fleeting glimpse of my wingless purple fairy.

Athena dressed up as a wingless purple fairy for my school’s Halloween party two weeks ago Thursday. We had gone to Wal-Mart and bought pink fairy wings and what turned out to be very thick and oily face paint Wednesday night. Evidently it was in vain, however, as Athena refused to wear the wings and after looking at my handiwork with the face paint on her face, asked me to wash it off. She spent most of the party running manic loops around the parade ground. The thick oily face paint has now been painted across the set of drawers we keep Athena’s clothes in and all over the wardrobe I keep my clothes in. Athena has been going on these incredible mess-making rampages on Saturdays while the Amazing Ayi is staying with her. This means that I don’t see the full extent of the messes, as they’ve mostly been cleaned up by the time I get home, but instead get a rundown of the havoc that has been wreaked in my absence. “She,” the Amazing Ayi sputters while pointing at markers, or face paint, or boxes of cereal, and making frantic scribbling, painting and dumping motions, “she, she.” After the Amazing Ayi departs, Athena and I go on a walkthrough of the apartment. Athena points out all of the damage she has done, and I ask her why she felt so compelled. She is contrite as she tells me that she “just likes making messes.” At least she’s honest.

I much prefer this mess-making to the cereal box emptying variety.