Ambulando

Beijing at 4.30 in the morning. A misty light reveals the city profile and it could be easily New York now.
Food stalls at the corners of the streets sell breakfast of dumplings and kebabb and tea.
Chinese girls search for taxis or any ride home.
Chinese girls wear mini skirts and short very short shorts, and long legs, skinny and pale in the sunrise. Chinese girls have no ass and generally no curves worth mentioning. Chinese girls wear dark eyes and puzzled smiles.
Taxi man takes me to bed from the foreigner ghetto where I got my last drink of ths last night in Beijing. Coke and enough rhum to wake me up. Whiskey and coke for my companion. I wish I could still drink whiskey like in better time.
Taxi leaves me at the corner of the street and fly away with some of my last yuans.
In the hutong near my hostel restaurants are busy already, cooks preparing damplings for the day, kneading and flatting dough and playing with the filling, steamers piled high near the doors.
Pass near closed shops. Only light in the window from the massage parlour with promise of 24h service and maybe an happy ending suggested by the smile of the masseuses in white shirt and with stockings. But it is an hint I do not follow.
Beijing midday.
A summer rain storm clean the street of dust and passers-by. Large drops of water explode with loud flops. Two little girls with no shoes play tag in the water, lifting their skirt already wet.
Seated in a greasy spoon restaurant I am having my lunch of roasted duck and look outside the window, thinking it is time to call for a taxi to the airport.