A Clump of Community
At the top of a post the Chinese flag hangs limp, motionless in the heavy, humid air. The square around it on the other hand, is replete with movement. Over a hundred women have organically formed themselves into a neat array of synchronized dancers following three women in blue dresses at the front (the Chinese are big on doing synchronized things in large groups). They follow the leaders to background of music blasted over the loudspeakers. It is a weekly community gathering. Or maybe a quotidian one. There is nothing rushed about this line dance - arm sweeps are performed languidly, spins as if there were all the time in the world. Likely a product of the climate, where simply standing outside causes creeks of sweat to run down the side of your face.
Immediately adjacent to the large square is a smaller one, where they are also blasting music for social dance. Only women are dancing together, a sort of swing-waltz. On the small path between the two squares a trio of Chinese flautist, erhu (a single stringed instrument played with a bow) player, and singer quarrel about who is playing too loudly. Their music is amped as well, adding to the layers of loudspeaker intersecting with each other in a shared open space.
All around are tall apartment buildings built into a complex that creates little alleyways all leading to the main road, and to this central square. On the other side of the square a row of billiard tables host younger members of the community under blazing spotlights. There is a space for everyone, even the solitary old man with no one to talk to but the beer can in his hand. Even he comes out to stand and watch.
The sense of community, of togetherness is overwhelming. No one is left to fend for themselves.
I ride beyond the square deeper into the complex. There are no street lights, so all navigation is done by the light of neighboring buildings, neon street signs, and occasionally passing cars. Two older women sit-squat on tiny benches, gossiping in the darkness in front of their buildings. All buildings look the same, so you have to memorize your apartment’s location in the complex. As I ride through past building after building, a rare sense of nostalgia passes through me. We used to live in a complex just like this one. I remember the fear and confusion of nighttime as a child when I couldn’t find my way home. The dim fluorescent lighting of kitchens was visible from the street. And so many memories flood back. Of struggling to open our front door because everything was so dark. Of only being permitted to have two fluorescent lights on in the apartment at one time to conserve energy. Of always running into people outside, because you were literally surrounded up and down, left and right by neighbors.
It felt like a relic of time to be back in that place. To think that had we not left for Canada, we could very well still be living in a complex like this. Life takes us places that we don’t have control over, and it is in moments like this that we can see how differently everything could have been. It was a stroke of luck that we had the opportunity to immigrate. It could very well be me on the other side of this, one of those women dancing in the square, wondering who these foreigners are in my community.
***
Sometimes, I trick myself into having a terrible sense of direction. This gets worse at night. Most times in the back of my head I know the right way, but I think myself out of it, and believe that the first thing that occurs to me couldn’t possibly be right.
But having a bad sense of direction is what leads me to treasures like this - places and people I would otherwise have bypassed because I ‘knew where I was going’. How much do we really know where we are going? And what are we missing by the wayside?
