Walking in Quanzhou

China is, without a doubt, the weirdest place I have ever been. It is also the best place to stroll. Tonight, after I finished a meal of steamed fish (I think?) dumplings and a bowl of sweet tofu soup with red beans, I started to walk along the large street that runs past my hotel. I am staying in the newer part of Quanzhou, where the streets aren't too pretty. I put my hands in my pockets and walk forward with my chin up, trying to blend in via casual gait--to my continual delight, I learn through sidelong glances that I am received as a local--I have fooled them all! The large street is filled with what you might expect of a heavily trafficked area: loud neon signs over nice looking restaurants, street vendors selling grilled snacks, furniture stores, etc. I take a quick right tonight and I'm in the middle of a hutong. Suddenly, there is no room to walk--there is a wall at my right, and on the left there are lines and lines of people selling things on tables. Tall stacks of yellow paper with red designs, I imagine they are mantras that one can burn for good luck (courtesy of my art history background), lanterns, colored stone charms--I feel like Harry Potter. I see a bamboo steamer the size of a manhole cover and an enormous bowl filled with red dyed eggs. People are talking loudly with their doors wide open and I can see them watching TV in their one room houses. And then I am in a seafood market, populated entirely by women, caretakers of enormous bins of clams and squid. The few men present are skinny and toothless, one has a suspicious looking gash across his neck. I walk quickly towards the main road, but I decide to buy some fruit for tomorrow's breakfast and stop at a vendor. There are two nearly identical shelves of fruit, one next to the other. I point to the one on the right and tell the young woman shop owner that I want to buy two oranges. I then point to the peaches on the left, and an older woman quickly grabs another two for me. I turn around, perplexed that there are so many people attending to me, and see immediately from the younger woman's crestfallen expression that I have betrayed her. "Isn't this the same store?" I ask her. She shakes her head in an angry no. I have broken some unspoken rule. I pay for my cuckolded fruit and exit the scene quickly, passing by a woman who sits in the same spot every night, a small electric rain running in a continual circle at her feet. She is the only one who really stares at me. I can't help but feel like life here is not unlike the sensation of traveling--of constantly being in between two worlds without having to commit to one or the other. Or maybe that's just me.