Life in China is much as it is everywhere else in the world, but with a few subtle differences. Just as a proud culture of dog walkers exists in the West, China has its bird walkers. Old men out for a stroll carry with them their caged birds and congregate in the parks to listen to them sing. They covetously admire the superior song of another’s pet bird, speak boastfully of their own, and enjoy the companionship and camaraderie of other bird walkers. Taxi drivers, office workers, ticket collectors, and elevator ladies with their knitting all go to work in the morning, bringing with them not a cup of coffee but a thermos or fruit jar, and it is unfailingly filled with tea. Barbers and hairdressers pull up to the shop with their shop – a basket filled with the instruments of their trade and a stool on the back of their bicycle, setting up shop on the sidewalk. And while each of these scenes capture the inherent Chinese-ness of ordinary and mundane activities, nothing captures the state of transition that China finds itself in so much as its seemingly endless construction projects, and the unusual scenes that make them unique to China.
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