Chinatown

I don't know what I was expecting in Chinatown.

A lot of red, maybe. And many many places to eat.

What I experienced was a small area that is thick with people, sights, sounds and color.

The people: Many different cultures come together in this small Oriental island in the city.

I heard many different dialects of Asian language, none that my ears could discern, but I knew approximately where they were from.

I was surprised to hear so much French. Frenchman whose children carried the same D300 camera as me, sans the strap.

German, which I recognize from living there for a few years, languages spoken by Norse looking men with their strapping wives, picking through the $1.88 t-shirts.

Italian. Lots of Italian. I asked a tall, well dressed Caucasian lady who was standing next to the cable car stop sign how much the cable car cost, and she became shy, shook her head and hurried back to her husband. So much for assuming who to talk to. What you think someone should be speaking is startling when they use a completely different language.

It's a little disconcerting.

I noticed that few people who live in the area made any sort of eye contact. No one looked at me, or spoke until I went into an apothecary and rummaged through the shelves of endless boxes printed in Chinese with few English words. The lady behind the counter seemed surprised that I knew I was buying Curing Pills, a downward-bearing Qi patent that works for upset stomachs of all kinds.

In Denver, a box of Curing PIlls will set you back $10. In Chinatown; $1.75. I bought 8 boxes, all they had.

Iconic figures such as Buddha and Shiva can be purchased for a couple dollars, yours in jade or brass. The one thing I noticed is that the shops all sell the same thing. The farther into Chinatown you go, the cheaper the price.

Depending on what street you're on will dictate what products you'll find.

Some streets deal mainly in merchandise and trinkets, another street fruits and fresh vegetables, a couple streets away harbor fish markets and windows filled with chicken feet or geese hung from a chain the form a bouquet of dead birds.

The streets are separated by the ever present hills of San Francisco and the loud incessant noise of the trolley gears under the street.

What I heard in Chinatown was endless hawkers and the little old man with the diatribe on poster board that wished everyone who walked by a "Happy Day!!" His signs catalog problems with China/US relations as well as his experiences with the San Francisco police who he believes treated him poorly. The term in Oriental Medicine for his dichotomy of philosophy and actions is "shen disturbed."

San Franciscans use their horns a lot while driving, few fingers were seen, but in Chinatown, the have no compunction about yelling at the consumers who come through their village and get in their way.

That little old lady couldn't have been more than 4 feet tall and Scott bumped her accidently and pushed her into me, and I got a thorough tongue lashing which I couldn't interpret. Personal and familial inventories cross the linguistic understandings of all cultures. According to her, I was clearly born under the sign of an ass. A large one at that.

Kyle Bisio shared with me that he didn't like Chinatown. He thought it all looked the same, stores offered the same stuff, people were rude and there were a lot of them, and the place smelled of dead fish, urine and incense. Very observant, that Kyle Bisio.

I did find myself being drawn back to Chinatown a couple times. The movement, architecture, prices and candied ginger brought me back to just watch the show.

I wondered why the panhandlers up on Van Ness didn't come down here to this teaming section of town, crammed with color, laundry hanging from fire escapes as in an old 50's movie, and ask for alms where the pickin's were good. They'd been accompanied by the songs in 5-note octave being played by old men wearing silly hats and serious expressions, who could teach them a thing or two about street performance.

The silly-hat men's simple wooden collection boxes had ample proof of their effectiveness.

Chinatown will remain a special place for me. I liked it better than I liked San Francisco overall. I suppose I'll have to go back some time and see if I can rectify my tempestuous relationship with SF, but I'm not the only one who feels that way.

Friends who were on the trip and are now home post their thoughts on Facebook, the posts express the joy of going somewhere new, but as Dawn says, she's glad to be back in "simple Denver."

Amen.