People in the Mornings

On Jiashan Lu in the morning there are streams of bicycles weaving down the road and its crowded sidewalk, pedalled by parents carrying their children to school. On our street, we have a middle school at one end and a primary school at the other.  The children are perched on the backs of the bikes, wearing their school uniforms, cartoon backpacks on their backs.

By 7am, the barber is out on the sidewalk, doing rounds of morning shaves.  Grandmothers in pyjamas are seated on folding chairs, eating bowls of breakfast noodles. At the small noodle shop, bamboo stacks of steaming buns stand side by side with plastic buckets full of dried seaweed soaking in water, slowly plumping and greening. Inside the shop, half a dozen others are working their way through their noodles.  The tailor is out with his old Singer sewing machine, hemming trousers while the trouser owner watches.  The shop that sells a dozen kinds of egg (including duck, goose and what appears to be quail) now has a vat full of freshly boiled tea eggs, bobbing brownly in the liquid.

Further down the street, in the self-declared creative-space Loft block, a dozen foreigners in professional gear (buttoned-down men; trendy women; fashion designers in designed fashions) are sipping espressos and plugging away at their laptops. The same CD plays every day.

Outside, office workers march past in their suits. The sunlight shines brightly against the walls opposite. Security guards gather for their morning duties.