Part I: Shanghai on the Hudson

I take a right outside my apartment building instead of my usual left, and in seconds I’m on the other side of the world.

In China, to be precise. At least mentally.

See, after I cross Forsyth Street and move into Rivington Park, I spot two Asian women, perhaps in their sixties, and they’re standing between a jungle gym and the benches that line the eastern fence. The women perform martial-arts moves with ever-so-gradual grace. Tai chi, I guess.

Coming to the other side of the jungle gym, I notice two men, Asian and white. The Asian fellow is bald and portly in a flowing black top. He patiently puts the white guy through similarly decelerated paces.

The breath of all four is visible. I have to smile.

Exactly two years ago, I was in China with my wife, who is from there. We traveled to Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, with various stops in between. We even spent a few nights in the tiny village in Taishan where she was born. It’s the kind of place where a water buffalo bathes in a stream while locals sell live, rubber-banded frogs on the sidewalk.

Today my memory of Shanghai is strongest and here’s why. Every morning at sunrise on The Bund—a mile-long promenade of Baroque, Neo-Classical and other architectural styles on one side of the Huangpu River and the pointy, bulbous and downright sci-fi skyline of Pudong on the other—hundreds of elderly men and women enjoy their daily exercise of tai chi or, believe it or not, ballroom dancing.

And here it is, a little sliver of The Bund in my own backyard. Right down to the white dude who doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Part II: Hudson on the Shanghai

I leave Rivington Park and hit Chrystie Street, trying to remember more specifics of the trip when—wham!—an idiotic but sorta-kinda-related memory vomits up.

The other day my wife and I were walking with our baby boy in his stroller alongside Rivington Park. The three of us came upon not a group of tai-chi enthusiasts but an African-American man, fortyish, in baggy earth-tones. A few feet in front of us on the sidewalk, he sort of zigzagged in slo-mo. It was difficult to pass him. But after a few minutes, we managed to zig when he zagged and finally get by.

Then he frowned and shook his head. His puffy face made me wonder if he was homeless. Many of the homeless guys in the neighborhood I recognize (and sometimes they me) but not this fellow.

He cleared his throat and shouted, “Ga’ damn! I ain’t NEVER seen so many white man goin’ to bed wit Chinese women!”

I gingerly put my arm around my wife and pushed the stroller with a wee bit more force. I thought I heard the man speed up, but with a glance I saw that he was still doing his same, poky zigzag.

His mouth, though, stepped on the gas: “I ain’t NEVER seen so many white men goin’ to bed wit Chinese women!”

My wife and I eyed each other and giggled nervously.

One last time for bad measure came a muffled “…white men goin’ to bed wit Chinese women!”

By then we were a block and a half away. Soon he receded into the cityscape of Rivington Park and Chrystie.

Now, as I pound the very same pavement today, I wonder if I should take up tai chi.