Absurdity, Allegory and China

Yesterday was a busy one in our neighborhood: Training Day for the security detail at the Tianjin Olympic Center. Busloads of the young and camouflaged, “armed police” vans, and platoons of locals in short-sleeved summer blues, along with a few big dogs and a fleet of water cannons started arriving around 7AM to the background music of Kenny G’s version of Summertime. Personally I feel that if you are prepping for a chaos and have sense enough to choose this particular song, Mr. G is not the go-to guy for setting the proper mood, even if it is, literally, summertime. A cover by Ella Fitzgerald, Janis Joplin or The Who would create a more accurate historical tone for a day of hot weather head-thumping. Kenny G should be held in reserve for the death of a small child’s first goldfish on a sultry summer day, not the business of lethal gas, nail bombs and mayhem, even if it is only practice.

But the local disruption began long before they arrived, as a worker with a jackhammer on Shiying Lu decided that 5:10 AM was long enough for anyone in the vicinity to sleep on a Wednesday morning, despite the supposed local ordinance against such things. Today he waited until 6:30.

With the heavy and ever-present police presence so close to home these days, I’ve begun carrying either my passport or a copy of it large enough to be easily read by the visually impaired. Since we live inside the area that is cordoned off during any event at the new stadium – to my knowledge, the only western foreigners in this secured area – I expect I’ll be used for practice by some eager policeman anxious to try his newly-acquired, though narrow ranged, English skills at asking for papers, and I’d rather not have to spend a few hours explaining that I’ve been living here for a full decade during which time no one has ever stopped me for anything but a handout. But these are brave new times, and carrying an ID seems a good plan. I’d hate to be hauled away for questioning listening to Kenny G. That would be pure torture.