Somewhere quieter

My anger is quick to surface here. At the people: for being too many, too pushy, too rude, for never waiting in line, for cutting in front of me on crowded streets and then walking so slowly. At the barber shops with speakers set outside their doors that blare pop songs so loud the music just sounds like tearing, like it's ripping the speakers apart. At the heat and the humidity and the toxic air and the street vendors trying to sell me pirated copies of get-rich-quick books; at the swarms of little pale brown flies or whatever they are that come zipping out of my shower drain.

I feel this seething rage just below the surface and I don't know what to do with it.

And then we go for a stroll in the park.

The park runs east to west along Beitucheng Lu. There are sweeping willows on either side of a little canal, arching bridges over the water, remnants of an old wall that was once the northern border of the ancient city. Some pieces of the wall have been punctured by cannon fire.

It's quiet in the park. It's like a secret world in the middle of the city. Old men and women do tai chi in striped pajamas. Young couples lie with their legs intertwined on park benches. Men gather in groups to watch each other playing cards. They smoke, they flap paper fans in the air for a breeze, they lean in over each other with their elbows propped on their knees and their chins propped on their fists. People bike and dance and sleep in the grass. There is an old woman sitting by herself under a little pagoda, staring out across the canal. A little girl playing with a rabbit in the tall grass. The Olympic buildings are visible in the hazy distance outside the park. But here there are no tourists. No cars. Nobody trying to sell anything. Nobody in a hurry.

And so I feel my anger dissolving and something slowing down in me that always wants to rush. Walking through the park makes me feel generous and expansive, and I think, people are lovely. The end of summer is the perfect time for a walk like this, in early evening when the day is cooling off and the sun, if it breaks through the haze, is rust-colored going down. It's still hot enough to make ambling the best mode of locomotion, and that's what I want to do: amble through the park, watch all these quiet people doing something or nothing.