Dinner at an old dumpling restaurant on a street whose name means Admiring the Spring. Ten Sichuan dishes for a little over two dollars. First my lips went numb, as after a dentist’s injection, then my whole mouth. I stubbornly kept going, and after ten minutes the shock passed and I began to tell one kind of heat from another. The best fire extinguisher is the local rice beer, sold in 586 ml bottles and named, without much thought, 586.
In the evening men in suits appeared on the streets, handing out cards with girls’ phone numbers and always the same phrase: “She is beautiful.”
A rickshaw took us home. He never once sat down on his saddle, and I felt like a fat capitalist with a cigar, oppressing the working class.
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