At a small DVD shop a CD caught my eye: a two-disc set of Chinese actor Leslie Cheung's greatest hits. This actor is famous for such emotionally intense and epic movies such as "Temptress Moon" and "Farewell My Concubine." Openly bisexual in the later years of his career, though surprisingly still reknowned by Chinese people, he committed suicide by jumping off of a tall building in Hong Kong in 2003. Everyone was shocked. So I bought the CD set and it's pretty corny Cantonese pop. The cover has a tagline that says: "Each song all is the Peru system glistens in each all to have the shining sunlight the shade." But I like him as an actor quite a bit.
Here is a vignette of my time in Beijing:
On our last day in Beijing, Shawna and I wandered around some smoggy, rainy streets in a strange stupor. Our third of four inevitable goodbyes was yet another heart-wrenching trial run for the big 3-month goodbye at September’s close. Hopefully we will be well prepared for that when the time comes since we have had so much practice. That last day in Beijing we really didn’t know what we wanted to do, and the weather was amply oppressive. For the first time we slept in that morning and had a late start, which took it out of us as well. (Late as in 9 am instead of 8 am). But as down-and-out as the both of us felt, I was still very happy walking by her side, hand in hand. I wanted to kiss her every moment and hold her close like a warm fire on a cold night.
As we lazily meandered like two parallel creeks through rows upon rows of fake goods at the market, a pair of bootleg BAPE shoes stood out to me. They were green and white and very plastic in appearance. On the sides of the shoes was a little cartoon Santa Claus holding a court-order. I should have stuck around and bargained them down to a reasonable price, but I just didn’t have it in me that day. And I am a foreigner after all, a foreigner in Beijing during the 2008 Olympic games. That means a lot to a Chinese shopkeeper, let me tell you.
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