Who’s YOUR City? Blog

Leaving France and coming to NYC to live by myself in an unknown place, was one of the hardest and most exciting thing to do. I would be lying if I said that I do not miss my home city and my home country. In France, I live in Paris, in the 15th district between Montparnasse, the biggest tower in Paris, and the Eiffel Tower. I live in a neighborhood consisting of a number of elementary and high schools. Consequently, the average population I see walking down the streets is very young: mostly teenagers walking in groups or younger children attended by their parents or baby-sitters. The neighborhood is very child-friendly with a great number of parks where kids can play and have a good time after school, even in the early winter when the weather is still nice. In high school I also used to hang out with my friends on benches surrounded by a couple of trees here and there.

Older people can also be observed going to the market a few blocks away from my apartment. The market is always very lively on a Wednesday morning when sellers are screaming to inform customers of a promotion of meat, fish, vegetables or fruits. Around 4 or 5pm, café terraces will be filled with teenagers coming out of school, later replaced by young adults, workers and business people in the afternoon and at night for their afternoon meeting or to have a drink after work.

The metro in Paris is also a good place to observe people. There are always a lot of interaction around 4pm, between the entertainers playing an instrument, giving a speech, telling a story or creating a show for the public to enjoy in exchange for money, and the children chatting on their way home. If you want a calm and silent environment, the Parisian subway in the late afternoon is probably not the right place to go.

The plazas, café terraces and old ornamentally decorated architecture of the main streets give a sense of unity, almost like an art piece, to Paris. There is a real feeling of romanticism combined with a certain nostalgia and ‘love of the past’. Because of this unity, it only makes it more striking when a new modern building comes to disrupt the façade of a street. In this sense, French people can arguably be called conservative as they complain about the destruction of old buildings as they are replaced by new, modern ones; but in my opinion French people are only being loyal to their roots and to their culture as well as have a sense of esthetic pleasure. Even if Paris is old, it is still chic, classy and attractive and it is this very durability of the Parisian scene that I love about Paris. Even the bridges over the Seine are real works of art, not only because of the sculptures created on their sides but also the lights which are strategically positioned to showca se them in all their beauty at night.

Streets are never straight in Paris and even after 18 years I still get lost. However, getting lost does not mean ending up no where, but to another hidden nice bar, café or simply a small plaza illuminated by small lamp posts. Not only are they snaking around buildings, the streets of Paris are also very small. Knowing that even if you are at the beginning of a street you can get to the end only by walking there, and knowing that you just have to pay attention and make sure a car is not coming by to cross a street (without having to follow the traffic lights) give a welcoming feeling to this city. In a way, Paris is a city of pedestrians. It is a city which values human emotions and history. Even the streets all have names, every name having its own story. In the left façade of my apartment, the windows gave on the roofs of Paris and further away, the Eiffel Tower. On the right façade, the windows gave on Montparnasse and if you looked closely enough, the domes of variou s churches. I used to gaze out the window for minutes or even hours without getting bored.

Sent by Thanaïs from Paris, France

Having strolled the Barcelona streets for the past 6 years has made me aware of how much I love that city. Barcelona has done a fantastic job in holding onto and preserving their culture and traditions. It is a laid back and relaxed city occupied by interesting people, cute little café’s and historical 7 story buildings

Barcelona is a crispy clean city where storeowners or concierges sweep the pavement in front of their buildings. The sun is nearly always shining in the calles a.k.a. streets and cute little tables are dressed outside creating spectacular little café’s, next to all the green trees and parks. In the afternoon from 2 till 5 and on Sundays the shops are all closed, Spanish people enjoy big fancy lunches of 3 courses including a first course, Spanish traditional food like paella, desserts, wine and coffee, for great menu prices of 12 dollars. On Sundays I spend time with my boyfriends family, we go into the little village down the road where this old little bakery makes magical breads and we have again 3 course lunches with the grandparents and the rest of the family, eating very traditional foods like risottos, paella’s and fideua’s. We all listen to one another speak, we sit in the garden listening to classical music all dressed up elegantly for lunch and a great time is had by all.

At the age of 18 all hell breaks lose in Barcelona, as this is the legal age you can start to drive and drink, which might be better to gain at different times, and you can go clubbing and have an unforgettable night, which is not difficult in the trendy clubs of the city, like Sutton and Opium. Everyone drives motorbikes in the city, and cabs are not the main transport, the metros are clean and pleasant just like the busses. Barcelona doesn’t consist of many foreigners not many Asians at all, the Spanish people are very close to one another and have a strong cultural bond. The city is not to noisy and little do you hear sirens of fire trucks or ambulances, so bad things rarely go down. The movie theatres are always translated in Spanish, but we do have all the newest films. The people are interested in knowing your answer if they asked you a question, their polite, friendly, elegant and not fake.

What I love about Barcelona is that you’re on the beach and the mountains, it is such a diverse city and there are so many places to go and see, so much culture to be explored, so many great individual shops and high class up market restaurants to eat at, and I can even go skying if I drive 2 hours, or be in beautiful summer beach place I you drive 1 hour. It’s a beautiful city, full of markets, shops, museums and churches, and great for walking around.

I love Barcelona, and even though I am Dutch I like to consider myself Spanish. The sun, the sea, the mountaintops, the culture, tradition, the food, the parks, the shops and the atmosphere is like source of my happiness. Barcelona is just as great and powerful as many leading cities but it is totally different, there is no place like Barcelona, there is no place like home.

Sent by Rochelle from Barcelona

It’s amazing what kind of interesting qualities a place like Angleton, TX can have, despite the fact that it is one of the most boring places on the face of the earth. It is the kind of place where schoolteachers remember when they taught your parents and where it is normal to be late to school because you were stuck behind a tractor going 10 MPH on the main road. We even have an extra school holiday on a Friday in October dedicated to the Brazoria County Fair because so many students would have conflicts between school and the livestock show that the district decided to give everyone a day off.

But no one will ever be able to truly understand Angleton without really experiencing it. It is just so…Texas. They say that everyone dies famous in a small town. My grandfather was no exception. My grandparents have been very active in the community ever since they came to Angleton in 1953, and my grandfather started a family business in the same year with his business partner. My grandfather’s local “claim to fame” was his fifty consecutive years of perfect attendance as a member of the Angleton Rotary Club, which he was a part of up until the day he died several years ago. He received many awards over the years from the Rotary Club, United Way, the Angleton Chamber of Commerce, and many other community organizations. My 86-year-old grandmother is still active in the Angleton Bridge Club, the Embroidery Club, serves on the hospital board, and teaches a Sunday-school class at the First Baptist Church. My grandparents were and still are model citizens of the Angleton and I am so proud and honored to be their granddaughter. And almost sixty years later, the family business is still around, now run by my father.

I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t always loved or cherished Angleton the way I do now. I have wanted to get out of that town ever since I realized there was a whole world out there just waiting to be discovered. Angletonians are very closed minded when it comes to varying lifestyles, different cultures and other places in the world different from what they’re used to. People ask my parents, “How’s yur daw-ter doin’ up theer ‘n New York with all ‘a them daym liberals?” Yikes. But despite the ultra conservative mindset and the surplus of confederate flags and pick-up trucks, Angleton’s small size has its advantages. People are much more concerned about their new rifles or mud tires than they would ever be about designer shoes or handbags. One time I wore a Marc Jacobs tee shirt to school and a girl in my Physics class noticed it and asked me, “Marc Jacobs? Is that a band?” (That pretty much sums up all of Angleton’s knowledge of the fashion industry.) It’s encounters like that over the years in Angleton, and also growing up in a modest family, that have kept me levelheaded and grounded here in New York City.

I have found that living in such contrasting places has helped me gain a true admiration of the beautiful things both of them have to offer: One night I can be enjoying an exquisite, lavish gourmet meal at Gramercy Tavern, yet my first day home in Angleton I cannot wait to get my hands on two scrumptious beef fajita tacos from Taco Loco #2- the greatest, most authentic taco stand north of the border. And even though I grew up spending every fall Friday night of my childhood at the Brazoria County Fair or at the high school football games, I can still enjoy browsing the galleries in Chelsea or simply people watching in Washington Square Park. I feel like I have a unique dual perspective on the world because I have a true gratification and appreciation for the lifestyle I grew up in and the one I am living now.

Sent by Angela from Angleton

Los Angeles, California is a city where an estimated 20 percent of the year it is cloudy; New York City is a city where an estimated 50 percent of the year it is cloudy. I grew up in sunny Los Angeles, California. Los Angeles is the place I call home, but I am currently staying in an apartment 3,000 miles away from home. The apartment is in New York City, specifically in Greenwich Village.

Los Angeles is the city I love and found everything I ever wanted growing up. I had the opportunity to explore everything. The snow and great mountain resorts were only a five hour drive away and if I drove twenty minutes towards the coast I could spend my day at the beach. In Los Angeles, most of the time, I could wake up to sunshine invading my room. My dog would wake up and greet me with a big wet kiss on the cheek. I then would walk to the window of my home in Los Angeles and look out into my backyard and see the water in my pool gleaming from the sun that is rising. I would walk down the stairs to hear the sizzling of the eggs that are cooking. On Sundays my family and I would usually wake up to a large bag of Western Bagels and we would indulge in the warm bread with cream cheese, but on the weekdays we resort to eggs or bagel leftovers.

The thing about growing up in a place like Los Angeles is that you never feel alone. You always feel like you have someone around the corner whether they are a walk away or even at the grocery store. People are friendly and greet you with a big smile so you feel welcome. Some people might argue that driving is aggravating, but to me driving is time for myself that I enjoy. It is enough time for me to be alone and not to feel alone. It is time for me to gather my thoughts and regroup. In Los Angeles you almost never have to worry about wearing thick jackets or rearranging plans because of the weather. Ultimately I guess what I love most about Los Angeles are the smiles you most often see on everyones faces. You see everyones happy in some way or another and if they are not than one individual can easily change that with just a quick conversation. Los Angeles is my home and where all my friends and family are.

Sent by Sabrina from Los Angeles

Before moving to New York, I lived in a place where is surrounded by other many high-story apartments or buildings, a mess amount of cars that bothered me every night with the noisy horn and roaring engine sound, huge grocery markets and department stores, and beautiful arch bridge crossing over a road. Yes, I lived in the middle of city of Seoul in Korea.

In the middle of noisiness, the neighborhood where I belonged was quite peaceful not just because I lived in 19th floor and could barely hear sound such as disgruntled noisy kids on a street and bus noisy stop sound with pulling up, engines idling, air released, and driving away from outside that I frequently hear in here, New York, but also because people who lived around my house are friendly and usually more have an intimacy in relationship. I might feel that way, perhaps, because there were some similarities between the people and me in terms of cultural background, religion maybe, race, and ethnicity.

There are other elements beyond the feeling about my original place. The physical appearance of the place and neighborhood where I had lived before I came here, and the environment around the neighborhood also affect to form a sense of feeling as one of the factors that make differences between living in the place in New York and the place in Korea.

As my past neighborhood in my country represents, a way of the arrangement of buildings is not clearly organized along with street and avenue that is pretty different from the houses which are lined up in a row in the current neighborhood where I’m living. If someone looks down New York City from the airplane or from the top of skyscraper such as Empire State Building, they might notice that thousands of buildings are organized by and the lined up that looks like chess board which consists of exact same squares in order, and because of the arranged building, people can even point out their house from a height. The neighborhood where I used live in Korea, whereas, it usually hard to find a certain place because it is usually hidden by other tall buildings. The messy arrangement of building, however, is not a matter to live in the neighborhood, although I’m one of the people who care about urban planning, because I prefer to do laundry in my building rather than going outside with holding up 2 pounds of laundry and walking down the street toward laundry room. In other words, I would like to live in convenient life which means living with many stores or other facilities around my place that allow me to get some enjoyment and convenience from the environment.

It seems like the place in my country is the best place to live in, but the neighborhood has something missed element when I compare the place to the place in New York. There is a lack of personality including youthful and artistic factors in my past neighborhood. Every day I passed by colorful, artistic, sometimes messed up moral art that represent someone’s personality or ability to draw. That kind of artistic element in everywhere forms a personality in my neighborhood in New York.

Sent by Anne from Seoul

The landscape flashes by through the window; at first it is buildings, then the gray starts to thin out and is replaced with blurred brown and green resembling trees. The train ride from New York City to where I live in Orange, Connecticut is one that shows great contrast. Looking through the window one could see how the two locations are visually and social different.

I come from the small town of Orange in the state of Connecticut. It is similar to the stereotypical suburban town. There are houses that are just a little too close together, that look similar to each other. Unlike the suburbia of 1950s television shows, in my town there are no sidewalks or identical cars with cookie cutter families in each home. There are areas in my town that are farmland with animals and crops. Driving down the street one can see different landscape and architectural design used to create individuality in the neighborhood.

Living in such a small town means that there is a lot of community. Orange has many town activities that being the neighbors together such as the Volunteer Fireman’s Carnival and the Fall Arts Fair. Having such a close-knit community had its drawbacks. This environment allowed for everyone to be in each other’s business. There is often gossip going around town and it is garneted that my mother will be informed when I am at the local grocery store one morning before school. Having a constant surveillance results in safety, but it also was an invasion of privacy. Now where I live in New York City the neighbors do not even know your name, never mind caring where you go or when.

My favorite part about living in Connecticut was the ability to be barefoot. I had the freedom to walk to my backyard barefooted and not feel any shame or disgust. When I was little I would love to walk outside and feel the earth beneath my toes. As soon as I smelt the fresh scent of flowers and mowed lawn, I would automatically be transported to my imaginary world of fairies and mystery. It is this connection to nature that I miss when I live in the city.

Growing up in a town like Orange Connecticut was nice. There was something special about the community and nature that made an impact on my life. But New York City was calling for me, and as I grew older I found myself spending less time in my small town and more time on the train to the fast paced life of New York City.

Sent by Taryn from Orange, Connecticut

I grew up in Chestnut Hill, which is an uppity suburb of Philadelphia even though it is technically still within the city limits. There, I got to enjoy the small town feel (which I have grown to love) while being within a few miles from a thriving city. The ability to have both so close offered a nice escape whenever one became too much.

The community is close knit yet welcoming. There is always a familiar face in town. A major landmark that Chestnut Hill is known for is the beautiful country club that sits just a stone throw away from Main Street. It is there that I spent most of my summers as a child, playing tennis and meeting new friends. It is also where I found myself as a person. Tennis matured me in ways I never expected, and being part of such a community only added to my desires.

Cooking slowly became another love of mine. Chestnut Hill offers many fresh farm products that I was able to explore and pick to my choosing. This helped me explore my talents as a chef and ultimately brought me closer to my family as I started to cook dinner every night. However, nothing is more present in Chestnut Hill then design (probably because most people have the money to spend) and it is here that I found my future. Most homes are unique in architecture, landscape and décor. I was lucky enough to live in such a community where I could admire and study the intricate structure of most homes. Through connections made at the local country club, I was able to obtain an internship with an interior designer. Moreover, through my internship I was able to explore design through others eyes both in Chestnut Hill and downtown Philadelphia. Slowly, I became more confident until I was offering my own suggestions that people took to heart. In other words I had found my niche.

Chestnut Hill offers a connection found in few other places. One can simply walk to the corner to a deli or bakery and trust that everything being sold is fresh and tasty. The town itself is small but it is beautiful, clean and secure. Police and firemen are always close at hand as they are in every town, however they are not as obvious as compared to New York City.

Furthermore, Chestnut Hill is a town for families. Because it offers so much and is so safe, husbands and wives can go off to work or even away on business trips knowing their families will be ok. Thus, there is never a need to worry. The buildings are small, nothing too big and the roads are still made out of cobblestone and brick. This keeping an old town feel that I adore. The schools are within walking distance and offer a few to choose from, all from grades k -12. Hence, Chestnut Hill is a place to raise a family but more importantly it is a place to be with your family. It is a part of who I am. It has led me to go after my future, while still knowing my roots and it will always be my home town.

New York City is unlike anywhere else in the world. People are nonstop, no matter what time of day, location or even holiday. At times it can be so loud due to overpopulation that it is a welcome escape just to hide inside ones apartment. Expenses are ten fold, even subways in which are more traveled then taxi’s due to the cheapness in price add up as the day/week go by. However nothing compares to the beauty of seeing New York City at night. I will never forget my first night at college when I looked outside my 9th floor apartment window. The way in which light reflected off the thousands of lit buildings was like a perfectly contrasted picture… I was breathless. For me New York City was different from back home just from the size of it. Not to mention the millions of people that surrounded me everyday or the thousands among thousands of stores and restaurants within walking distance. Living here opened my eyes to so many more things. Downtown Philadelphia could be fit numerous times just within Central Park. That idea alone boggled my mind.

Moreover, it is always fascinating to me that so many people can live so close to one another and yet be total strangers. This is so different to back home where the whole town knows everyone and is brought together through shared locations. In New York City, people that go to the same restaurant, or the same stores, people that even live in the same building have no desire to introduce themselves. This always reverts me back to my question about life: “how can people be lonely in an overpopulated world?” Yet, New York City offers so many different ethnicities and backgrounds that the design is so different everywhere you look. For me, a Parsons student, it only adds to everything I am learning, as it gives me a visual. In other words, it brings the textbooks to life. Although I miss home I am intrigued by what New York City has to offer, and am thrilled to have the opportunity to grow culturally through living in this wonderful city. Furthermore, I believe it is important for people to move outside of their comfort zones, because it is there that they really start to grow, as individuals in both their profession and life. It is here that I strive for my future. Philadelphia and New York City have many things in common, however the biggest difference is living in Philadelphia I can always leave the city. New York City has no outlet within Manhattan, even its parks and rivers are clustered with people. Hence, it is here that I am most uncomfortable and because of that, I know I am exactly where I need to be.

Sent by Bridget from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Seoul is my hometown. I was born and raised in Seoul. I have lived there more than 20 years and haven’t lived in other cities in Korea. There is everything in Seoul. You can buy everything in the middle of the night and it is safe to go out in the night. There are tons of restaurants, theaters and big malls everywhere in the city. Seoul is the most crowd city among OECD countries. So there is heavy traffic all over the city. You can hear noise honking sound all day. It is not a good place to enjoy drive your car, such as in California. There are numerous high rise buildings. Just like New York City, Seoul has plenty of skyscrapers, especially in office district. Those are densely located.

What I don’t like about my hometown, Seoul, is the building covered with ugly signs. They don’t match with a building or other signs in the building. In Seoul, most of the citizens live in apartment buildings, which are more than 10 stories higher. And they are in complex structures with free parking space provide to residences for free. Seoul is the capital city of Korea. Although it is not the biggest city in Korea, its scale is the biggest in Korea. Every public offices and government buildings are located in or near Seoul. Koreans are kind and nice people. Seoulian, people who live in Seoul, just like New Yorker, are nice people but people in suburb are friendlier than people live in the city. I guess this is because they are busy of their own activity and surroundings.

Seoul has great transportation system. It doesn’t run 24 hours, but you can take taxis after midnight. You can go wherever you want with public transportation system. It is cheap, convenient, and safe. You can transfer bus to subway or to different line without any charge. Moreover, if you get on bus or subway in 30 minutes, you can ride it without any charge. So you don’t need car to live in Seoul.

Seoul is also eco-friendly city. Like Central Park in New York, there are huge park in Yeoui-island. There are big river called Han River cut across the city. People should do recycling and it is a law. And you should use legalized bag for trashes. Every bus is run by natural gas engine. There is a stream called Cheongye and redeveloped five years ago. It had been covered by cements over forty years and uncovered by last mayor of Seoul, who is now the president of Korea.

The roads in Seoul are not organized so it is hard to find only with address, especially for foreigners. It is not organized in straight or square shaped. There are small branch roads and crooked roads, too. So you need to know the transportations to get there.

Now, there are 250 thousands foreigners in Seoul. It is very diverse city with many races. Comparing to New York City, two cities have many similar things. They both got what big cities should have and shares many things, such as heavy traffic, tall buildings, and great transportation system. And now, both cities are working on sustainability and green movement. I have many things to say when I talk about Seoul because it is my home. Still, there are few things that I don’t like about it by comparing to other cities, like New York, such as ugly signs and lack of consideration to foreigners. Those things are my new findings after I live in New York.

Sent by In from Seoul

“Medway, Massachusetts? Never heard of it.” This is the most typical response after informing a new acquaintance about where I grew up. Medway, also referred to as “Cow-town,” has a small population of merely 13,000 inhabitants. Up until recently, the area consisted of mostly farmland and a few local shops. We have two intersections in town and the number of stoplights in the area could be counted on one hand.

Growing up in such a diminutive neighborhood, everybody in the community knows everyone’s business. One small school system, one police station, one library, and one fire department are established in the district. Entertainment is lacking and the majority of fun activities require at least a 15 minute car drive to the next town over. Cars are necessity to living in this suburban town since there is no form of public transportation besides school buses, of course. The most historical structure in town stands across from old fire department. Medway Village Church is an old white stone building with a steeple. Stone churches were common in small New England areas because stone was widely available from when Indians built stonewalls. Large mills line the central street that connects Medway to other towns. The Charles River flows behind these mills and used to serve as a source of energy and provide work for the locals.

Choate Park is a small recreational area including a pond, a few tennis courts, and grassland. During the winter , there is a small Christmas parade featuring local organizations and fireworks. Within the last few years the two biggest cow fields in town have been transformed into strip malls filled with chain stores such as Starbucks, Shaw’s Supermarket, McDonalds, and a CVS. This was possibly the most exciting thing that ever happened to the little town of Medway. Not for me. I spent most of my time taking jogs around town, working at a local coffee shop, and taking weekend trips into Boston. I was tired of the being around the same people and places. I essentially discovered everything there was to do in the area, and frankly I was ready for a change.

If there was one thing I did love about Medway, it was my house and my job. I lived in a comfortable, peaceful, and clean neighborhood. The coffee shop I worked at was the one out of two coffee shop in town. The customers were friendly for the most part, and I loved my co-workers. The same people would come daily in and order the usua l. This small coffee shop meant more to them then just getting their daily cup of coffee. It was the important social and restful experience that became part of their everyday custom. I enjoyed taking long runs around the area that were not interrupted by walk signs or speeding cars. The street signs were recently updated and painted blue and white, for the town colors, and the sidewalks newly paved. There was a sense of closeness in the community that was both good and bad. It was nice to see a familiar face every once and a while, but that can get uninteresting fast.

The close-minded outlook some people have is unfortunate, the town is mainly white-Catholic and family generations have been living there all their lives. As I began to consider where I wanted to move away to for college, I soon realized I wanted the complete opposite experience from what I had been living. Boston is only a 40-minute drive away and offers a wide variety of colleges to attend. But Boston is a small city, and I had already thoroughly explored it through my years in high school. New York City seemed like the perfect solution.

Sent by Chelsea from Medway, Massachusetts

Not a lot of people in New York know about Shanghai, yes, it is close to Beijing, but Shanghai is unique itself. When I mention the 2010 World Expo, people sort of get an idea of the hosting city, but when they are teleported back in 10 years, everything in Shanghai is incredibly unfamiliar. Born in Shanghai, a city east coast of China, also known as the “Oriental Paris,” I became familiar with the fast change in Shanghai. In Shanghai, one of the biggest metropolitan areas in the world, is subject to change within a short time. Within years of time, Shanghai has embraced itself into a multi diverse city in which like the growing of its economic activities, more people from all over the world come and stay here. Like New York, I do not feel isolated here because of elements within the city that bring me the feeling of home, even though Shanghai is 7376 miles away.

Living in Shanghai, I feel very personally attached to places, especially the old Chinese streets where the government is preserved very well. Since Shanghai before was occupied by British, French, and Russia in 1842, 1930, 1840s respectively, many of the building located downtown “Pu xi” of Shanghai shows the intricate designs of the foreign movements. What is special about the British and French building on the bund, is that in combination with old preserved Shanghainese buildings, city dwellers would feel a sense of comfort and peace in a fast pace city. Whenever I go to Shanghai for vacation, I would always go the ShaoXing and TaiKang Road located in the West downtown area of Shanghai. Walking on the roads of ShaoXing and TaiKang Road, I see people under café umbrellas, chattering, flapping their arms, gesturing the waiter, as I walk by. Things are very much slowed down here, also take the street of MaoMing Road, north of HuaiHai Road, the cobblestone lanes, ShiKuMen, doors which are framed with large stones in which olden days tenants live. The culturally rich aspects of the streets bring vitality to the people living in the city.

Living in New York, I feel much differently than the engaging feeling I feel in Shanghai. When I first came to New York, people seem much isolated, or cold in other words. People are harder to talk to, thus harder to find friends even within the dorms I’m living in. That’s only the negative experience I’ve felt coming to New York. In Shanghai, spaces are much wider; therefore people’s hearts are not as crammed. On the streets of Maoming road, old ladies sit on the sidewalk selling orchid blossoms that the faint smell would fill up the whole sidewalk. Sometimes within the week, the old lady would walk home, basket empty, humming the familiar tune of nursery rhymes, in to the ever passionate streets of Shanghai.

Sent by Lina from New York