国产热热热精品,亚洲视频久久】日韩,三级婷婷在线久久,99人妻精品视频,精品九热人人肉肉在线,AV东京热一区二区,91po在线视频观看,久久激情宗合,青青草黄色手机视频

您現(xiàn)在的位置: Language Tips> Columnist> Orr Shtuhl  
 





 
My Dairy: Lost
[ 2007-08-08 21:52 ]
Saturday, 5/19/07 |

At 10 pm, 25 hours since I'd left my home in the United States, the highway from the airport to my northerly Beijing neighborhood was unglitzy. Yellow fluorescence floated around dotted lines of streetlamps, punctuated by occasional red characters lining office buildings, the electric light diffused by heavy, humid air. Once we found our off-ramp, eateries and bars were buzzing, brightly lit and full of aggressively fashionable younger crowds and the ambivalent-looking elderly. Every restaurant looked like a textbook transplant from the West: adorned with token vases, lanterns, dragon sculptures, scenic wall hangings and faux-bamboo decor. Apparently American Chinese restaurants are less parodic than we think.

I was driven to my place, a few minutes from the office where I'd be working. It wasn't far, but as the van took three right turns - street'side street'alley'unlit alley - my confusion dial crept from Adventurous to Lost. My roommate would not arrive for two more weeks, meaning 14 days of living alone in this very dark, very foreign alley.

Turning the last corner, our headlights illuminated a hundred-yard stretch ending at the butt of another apartment building and lined with parked cars and outcroppings of construction material, abandoned mid-task. Stacks of bricks and sacks of tiles mingled with ladders and faded orange markers of varying shapes, the whole scene coated in the heavy, gray snowfall of broken concrete, as though the buildings and shrubs had sprouted up from under a demolition site. Through one of the building's metal doors, the stairwell hummed with echoes that betrayed its smallness. My hosts helped my luggage up six flights of unfinished concrete stairs slick with dust. Only darkness filled the broken windows, but in the first three flights, where the timed light switches worked, I noted that the apartment doors were a glossy chestnut, fake but elegant and oddly clean. I'd heard stories of interns living in chalky semisqualor, three bunks to a room with a kitchen the size of a bathroom and a bathroom the size of a toilet, but hope glimmered the in the doors' mahogany sheen.

The apartment delivered. The faux-wood door opened first to a new-looking TV, nicer than anything I'd own at home. The TV anchored a sparse but halfway-to-lively living room with pale yellow or maybe green walls, a blue couch with too many pillows (one had a labeled visage of Pluto the dog), modestly funky lighting courtesy of a lantern-like orb, and a modestly funky mirror trisected by two wavy lines. Wooden floor switched to tile for the small but operable kitchen with a few plastic Ikea-esque chairs of different colors coupled with a definitely funky breakfast table that had a glittery shelf below the transparent tabletop, possibly meant for condiments but would likely be relegated to bills and envelopes if owned by more permanent residents. The kitchen, furnished with one pot, a cleaver, a rice cooker, a microwave, and several chopsticks, seemed to already know which instruments to highlight for its new Westerners -the microwave alone was blessed with English labels.

A quick bathroom stop revealed a booth as small as any college shower, checker-tiled with a sink, toilet, and a shower hose and drain in one corner. To the bedroom to unpack, with its green walls and bright blue (new=clean!) queen bed that was low and felt like the floor. Desk, check; dresser, check; jet lag weighed heavy on my brain as a flip through the TV reminded me that just one channel is in English. On a scrap of paper I scrawled a shopping list: toilet paper, water. Fatigued and awake, I lay down hoping I didn't get up before sunrise.

Author: Orr Shtuhl

About the author:
 

Orr Shtuhl is a summer intern at Chinadaily.com.cn and a 2007 graduate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is enjoying his first visit to China, a trip he has prepared for by learning how to count to five in Mandarin.

 
 
相關(guān)文章 Related Stories
 
         
 
 
 
 
 
         

 

 

 
 

48小時(shí)內(nèi)最熱門

     
  女孩的心思誰能猜:Suspended from class
  各種各樣的“錢”
  “搶鏡頭”怎么說
  姚明婚后打算:備戰(zhàn)奧運(yùn)第一

本頻道最新推薦

     
  Apple Pie
  Efficient police a sign of the times
  Better late than never
  Foreign origins: Kowtow, omerta
  Killing the goose that lays the golden egg

論壇熱貼

     
  形容人有“親和力”都有哪些形容詞?
  “低生育,素質(zhì)好,男女都是寶”,怎么譯為好?請(qǐng)教高手!
  請(qǐng)問“老鄉(xiāng)”這個(gè)詞怎么翻譯?
  C-E: how to say "路盲"?
  各位,“相親”英語(yǔ)怎么說?
  指紋上的ridges and loops是什么意思?






东莞市| 宁南县| 神木县| 喀喇沁旗| 鸡东县| 喀喇沁旗| 宜君县| 高要市| 芦溪县| 文安县| 定西市| 新兴县| 抚顺市| 墨竹工卡县| 崇文区| 恩平市| 岢岚县| 博白县| 徐汇区| 安远县| 阳曲县| 孟津县| 永康市| 得荣县| 辽宁省| 东方市| 西乌| 讷河市| 浦县| 且末县| 金寨县| 翁源县| 师宗县| 务川| 满洲里市| 宣恩县| 马关县| 景东| 翁牛特旗| 昆山市| 汤阴县|