When you’re slightly tipsy, how can you refuse a chat with a talkative taxi driver?
I vaguely remember the last time was in Hong Kong. I had left a Bob Dylan concert early, otherwise I wouldn’t have made it to the Mount Davis Youth Hostel before its reception closed.
The old driver asked, bewildered, why I chose to stay on the mountain. “It’s cheap there.” “It’s about the same in the city, there are hotels everywhere. Factoring in this taxi fare, it’s not worth it.” Indeed, the taxi fare that night was more expensive than a night at the youth hostel.
The taxi driver was in his sixties and had no pension. He said that to live decently, he had to keep driving to earn money. There’s no age limit for driving a taxi in Hong Kong; all you need is an annual health certificate from a doctor to prove you’re fit to drive.
Sitting on the rooftop at Mount Davis, I looked out over the glittering lights of Hong Kong. Beneath the night sky, there was a ceaseless, 24-hour clamor. Linsong felt a bit nostalgic for that lonely place. If there were a next trip, he would still choose to return to that splendid midnight.
Linsong suddenly realized he shouldn’t be drafting articles in his head while tipsy; it would disrupt his already fragile sleep. But he missed that bygone time, a time that was lost and could never be recovered.
“Children, this way please.” At the Hong Kong Book Fair, when a staff member guiding the crowd saw a child approaching the shortcut lane, they would remind the parents that children had priority entry. This was a special courtesy of the fair. Otherwise, the adults would have to snake around the convention center’s buildings like a high-level “Snake” game, a walk that took nearly half an hour.
With a Hong Kong and Macau travel permit, you could buy a discounted ticket. After breakfast, you could stay in the book fair until the sun set. Besides buying books, there were countless seminars and talks scheduled tightly from the moment the doors opened until they closed. Linsong loved listening to those intellectuals on stage, holding forth with great eloquence—on everything from global affairs to the rise and fall of families, speaking on and on.
During the book fair, the meteorological observatory would sometimes issue a Typhoon Signal No. 8 warning due to a severe tropical cyclone. Through the dark blue glass curtain wall of the convention center, looking across Victoria Harbour to the Tsim Sha Tsui Star Ferry Pier, a middle-aged owner of a newsstand sat calmly in his bamboo chair, observing the passengers coming and going. He pondered the business, started by his grandfather and passed down by his father, and knew he had to keep it going.
After this weekend, there were only two days left of this year’s Hong Kong Book Fair.
In Wuhan, a taxi driver is considered a veteran after three years on the job. A diligent driver could earn six thousand a month. Linsong, who had a twenty-year driving license, asked the driver if he, too, could become a driver earning six thousand a month. “I’ve been in this line of work for almost three years. I’ve quit drinking and smoking. It’s pretty good now. I used to cough a lot, but not anymore. It’s pretty good.” “Could you recommend me for a taxi driving job?” “You must be joking. I’m not looking down on you, but if you manage to work the full hours, you’d be lucky to make five thousand.” “Do you know of any cars that need a shift partner?” “I’ll recommend a taxi driver group chat to you. You can join it; there’s a lot of information about driving a taxi in there.”
Linsong found it harder and harder to recall the flash of inspiration he’d just had. Perhaps this was a sign of memory loss. He comforted himself, “If I can’t remember, so be it. There’s an endless stream of trivialities to come anyway.” Every instance of forgetting might be deliberate, but Linsong would never tell anyone his reasons.
If you accidentally tear the foil seal on a Yakult bottle and don’t get a clean peel, what do you worry might happen? In reality, nothing at all. All you need to do is peel it again. Even if you swallow a piece of the foil, there’s no need to worry. It won’t be digested, and nothing untoward will happen.
One thing puzzled Linsong greatly: why were there no thieves at courier delivery stations? He remembered seeing a prominent sign on a bus in Hong Kong: “Theft is a serious crime.”
“Frozen shoulder” (五十肩, literally “fifty shoulders”), perhaps it refers to shoulders that can no longer lift even fifty eggs. If you’re not careful and your shoulder is strained by a weight, a pain like a needle-prick shoots through the bone. For the past two weeks, when lifting weights, Linsong had been deliberately putting a heavier load on his triceps. He couldn’t remember which “doctor” he’d seen in a short video saying that arthritis caused by aging is incurable; the only solution is to strengthen the muscles around the joints to relieve the pressure on them. Before, his frozen shoulder would ache terribly with the slightest pull. Now, it was a dull, intermittent ache.
When a person who rarely cooks gets serious one day and spends an entire afternoon making a meal, it’s a monumental feat worthy of the history books. Everyone should stand in solemn reverence and sing their heartfelt praises.
At the start of the day, remember to get all your tasks done. And then? Then you can lie back in an armchair and zone out for the rest of the day…