London Anecdotes

Jack the Ripper: I never heard about this famous serial killer. So I was surprised to find a group of earnest tourists at Aldgate station on this rainy November night. Diego brought his cameracoder to shoot some footage for his project, and raindrops, piles of fallen leaves, dark shadows from lampposts, narrow alleys and archways, all fit well to create a horror film atmosphere for the video he was working on. For the outsiders London has always been shrouded with images of intense fog, gory murders and dark mysteries, thanks to Doctor Watson and Dickenson. Jack the Ripper story has all the required ingredients to stigmatize such collective memory of London: Prostitution, disembowelment, royal scandals, and cripples. No wonder it has become quite a selling point. On the following days, I noticed more ads outside various underground stations selling these tours. The ripper certainly achieved immortality and would continue to generate cash way beyond this millennium.
AA: The Architectural Association is located at SoHo, just a block away for G-A-Y, the night club I frequented a few years ago. They take a few nondescript buildings that are connected with each other and with a whole row of others. Who would tell that this school produced some of the biggest names in the current architecture scene? On the night I stopped by, a whole group of UPenn students were partying side by side with their London peels, and fireworks broke out due to celebration for some obscure British holiday. The flames and sparkles were reflected through all these young ambitious and joyful faces around me, and I wondered how many of them would really nake it in this intensely competative field…not surprisingly I made friends with Asian students and spent most of the time talking to them. One of Chinese guys turned out to be from Taiway and is working on the opera house project back in my home city. Guess who designed it? Zala Hadid!

Stonehenge: I was ambitious enough to tour both StoneHenge and Bath in one day, and still managed to get back to London early enough for Greg’s dinner. The image of Stonehenge has been so overly used that I did not exactly know what to expect. But as the bus took a turn, I could already see that group of famous rocks from afar. They looked magnificent from the distance and under a broad sky. As sunlight shone through between the darting clouds, it projected long shadows on the gently-rolling green hills and created an awesome view. No wonder ancestors chose this site for their rituals. There is something mystical and spritual around.

Bath: I once met a fellow traveler who told me Bath was one of his favorite cities in England, but I did not get there until 4 o’clock, when the evening was already quickly falling. With just a few visitors, the ancient Roman bath ruins actually looked grander and more mysterious in that dimming light, as if each brick, each drop of hot spring water tells a story that has been forever lost. After the tour I walked aimlessly in the town, crossing the river and the circus and the Crecsent and walking through thick piles of fallen leaves. I could see lights flickering on the surrounding hills and the after-work crowd drinking in groups or by themselves in the bars. I felt a little lonely at those moments.

Night Buses: London is so expensive that I decided there was no way I would be able to afford taxi. And here we are, standing in the cold and waiting for the night bus after the night outings. Buses towards East London are notoriously crowded after bars are closed, but the atmosphere could be youthful and festive and you won’t mind rubbing with strangers. You are young and you party late and you live at the cheap ethnic neighborhoods populated by college students and foreigners. What else can be better than that? On the last night when we got back from Canary island, we had to take a night bus that took us all the way from Victoria Station to the East, passing through more upscale neighborhoods as well as SoHo and East. Sitting at the top deck and with a full front view, I saw rich ladies getting out of marbled mansions and into Bentleys, and I also saw homeless, drunkards, and street vendors just a few blocks away.

Peace Corps, and a Chinese in Africa

American literature has one unique genre of writing that has not quite been labeled. For decades young graduates from liberal arts majors have been going aboard right after school, teaching or working in oversea programs such as Peace Corp and JAP, and many of them come back with rich experiences and in-depth knowledge of these far-flung countries most of people may have never heard of. Many of them, driven by deep empathy of humanity and literature ambition, start to compose both fiction and nonfiction, portraying characters in exotic settings, providing American readers slices of life that are alien and unfamiliar, helping bridge the understanding of each other. Of course, there are often Americans in the plots: aid workers, Peace Corp members, and ex-pats who are simply lost. They are used to study how Americans look at the world and how world look at them. For reference check website: http://www.peacecorpswriters.org/

I came across a few writers who turned their Chinese experiences into books, and among them, the most famous ones are Vikram Seth (From Heaven Lake: Travels Through SinKiang and Tibet), Mark Salzman (Iron and Silk), and Peter Hessler (River Town). The first two went on and became major writers of our time and stretched their literary careers way beyond travelogues. Mr. Hessler, the youngest and the latest, become a New Yorker correspondent and still focuses his reportage on China, although the day is not far for him to move on and write about something else.

But I am still surprised when I found Tony D’Souza’s short story called Club Des Amis in the recent New Yorker. Set in Ivory Coast, it centers on a Chinese man from Shanghai who shares the same last name as mine. The story is heart-wrenching. The main character, whose name is Wu, came to Seguela in the 1990s to make a fortune and eventually brought over his wife and his teenage son. His teenage son ran away with a African girl and died of tropical disease in a local village, leaving the girl a half-Chinese half-black infant. Devastated by this tragedy, Wu’s wife left him and went back to Shanghai. Wu stayed and tried to take the custody of his grandson so that he would not grow up in war and in poverty. But the mother was determined to keep her own son, hiding and running away from the police commissioned and bribed by Wu. Using force, Wu eventually took his grandson away from the mother and brought him back to China.

I traveled extensively and often found Chinese restaurants in the most unexpected places. I wondered how hard and how lonely it must be to be the single Chinese family surrounded by a culture so different from their own. Deprived of opportunities in an overcrowded country, Chinese always looked out and traveled far to survive, and since China opened its door in late 70s, Chinese diaspora has seen waves and waves of immmigration to so many different countries. When cultures clash and integrate, interesting stories are bound to happen in unprecedented circumstances. Unfortunately I have not found any Chinese writers who would dig this goldmine of materials. Maybe they are too busy struggling in their adopted lands? Souza’s new story, however, captured such an unusual situation from the perspective of an aid worker, but it was framed in a larger context of globalization and political turmoil. Wu in the end was ultimately destroyed by Africa, but a new life, together with hopes, was also born out of the ruined lives.


Souza lived in Ivory Coast between 2000 and 2002, and without that experience, who would conjure up such a plot? You have to live first before you can write, and more aspiring young writers will probably take the same path to go to more remote places. After all, life is stranger than fiction, and I only wonder whether there is actually a good ending in the reality version of this story of Wu.