Times Square

Near our campus based hotel is a large square near the University’s auditorium. In the center of it is a huge sundial that children like to climb on. We call it Times Square. In the evenings, people come out into the dusk, and children roller skate, and people stand around and visit, and the place is quite crowded until late. During the day, when the temperatures can reach 40 degrees Celsius (which is so hot I refuse to convert to Fahrenheit, for fear I’ll have heat stroke just thinking about it), the place is completely deserted.

Sarah says she has seen ballroom dancing there in the evenings. James has played soccer with some little kids there. It is a gathering place without any commercial activity, just a large open area where people gather.

It is very different from the crowded streets here. There the stalls are crammed with items, things spill out into the sidewalks. People chop vegetables, play Chinese chess, and wash their hair on the sidewalks. Often the sidewalk is full so you have to walk in the street, where you are in constant peril from bicycles, motor scooters and cars.

Surprisingly, there are trash bins on every corner. There are people who come around and go through the trash and take out everything that can be recycled, the paper, the plastic bottles, and the aluminum cans, and pile it up and haul it off to be sold. Nanjing is a wealthy city, and many people have cars, but working people still use bicycles. So you will see someone with their bicycle balancing a 4’ x 4’ x 4’ pile of cardboard on the back of their bike. I see workmen carrying 12’ of pipes on their bicycles. Sometimes I even see fruit vendors with a sort of scales around their neck, and balanced on each side at the end of a chain, a pile of fruit.

Streets here are much less sanitary than at home. People are out in the streets, hacking and spitting, dropping their gum, babies are peeing on the side walk in their split pants. It is an adjustment, but I have a high tolerance for dirt.

In the evenings, there are just as many people in Times Square as there are in the streets, but without the stores, and bicycles, and motor scooters, it seems very different, sort of cheerful and safe and slow paced. If I could stay up later, I’d spend more time in Times Square.