Dream of the Blue Room Read Online Free PDF Page B

sidewalk. Her salon consists of a rusted metal chair, a yellow comb, a bowl of water, a pair of scissors, a hand-held mirror, and a tin can in which she collects payment. Nearby, a young boy in red shorts squats on the ground, selling ears of corn from a plastic bucket wedged between his legs. Every few yards, another group of old men crouch around a table beneath an awning, the slap of mahjong tiles echoing through the street. A toddler in split-crotch pants stops and pees on the sidewalk while his mother holds him by the underarms; the child chatters at us as we pass. A wheelbarrow loaded with watermelons stands right next to a modern ice cream freezer, which is decorated with pictures of Popsicles, drumsticks, and a smiling Chairman Mao. A young woman in a blue dress passes out freshly pressed white linens from a steaming basket. A legless man sells incense sticks from the back of a rickshaw.
    Traipsing behind Elvis Paris, handbags and heavy cameras clutched beneath our rain gear, we resemble a herd of dumb and graceless cattle. Locals stare and point. Shouts of “Hal-loooh!” come at us from every direction. A woman in an old-style Mao suit tugs at my sleeve and tries to sell me a pack of postcards. “Twenty yuan,” she says, “twenty yuan.” When I shake my head she brings the price down to fifteen, and when I refuse again she goes on to Dave, then works her way through the group.
    Roadside snack stalls and restaurants fill the air with fragrance: steamed buns, bowls of rice and beef, spicy soups, green vegetables, pork wrapped in shining banana leaves. We pay two yuan each to enter a park filled with elderly people practicing tai chi in orderly groups. The air is hot despite the rain, alive with the sound of music playing on portable cassette decks—Chinese opera and a few rousing songs of patriotism. There is other music, too, the chatter of birds. A man walks past holding a small bamboo cage; inside, a tiny nightingale pecks the bars. The limbs of the trees are draped with hundreds of similar cages. Each cage holds two tiny porcelain dishes, intricately painted, and a single captive bird, singing for its master.
    Outside the park, Elvis Paris takes us to a string of brightly decorated stalls and urges us to shop. Dave buys a linen tablecloth for his mother. I choose a hand-painted barrette for my niece. “May I borrow Dave for a minute?” Stacy asks. “He’s the same size as my brother.” Dave models for her, arms held out to the side, while she holds up one shirt after another. She looks at me. “What do you think?”
    “I like the yellow one.”
    “Me too.” She pays for the shirt, an oxford with tiny dolphins printed on the fabric.
    Half an hour later, Elvis Paris waves the green flag over his head and herds us back to the ship for lunch. My mouth is still watering from the rich smells of food in the city, but on the ship we are served a decidedly un-Chinese meal: salad with heavy dressing, creamed corn, and rubbery chicken drenched in salt.
    Stacy swishes her fork around in the corn. “Just like Luby’s Cafeteria,” she says.
    Dave laughs. “You could drink it through a straw.”
    “So, how’d you decide to be an EMT?” she asks.
    “By accident. I was a bond trader with an amateur interest in photography. One weekend I went out with an ambulance to shoot a day-in-the-life piece for a free weekly. The first call we took was a crash scene on the West Side Highway. Blood everywhere, smoke, people screaming. There was this one kid, couldn’t have been older than six or seven, and his legs had been crushed below the knee. I bent down to take his picture, and through the lens I could see that his face was totally blank. He didn’t look scared, or like he was in pain, just blank. I took a few shots, and then I heard the kid say, ‘Hey mister.’ I was so surprised I almost dropped the camera. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Can I have some water?’ I gave him some. Right then, I was hooked. Suddenly,