At the Noodle Shop

This is the small noodle shop close to our dorms. We lived on campus. The woman is one of the owners and she was from Mongolia. Cannot remember her name. 

At the noodle shop, Shenyang, China, November 2011

Filthy words played into the air;
A jangle of sex, the flush
Of belly laughter.
Tensions that encircled and slowly
fell, then rose, fell then rose;
each bump of breath, each spume of slang,
each spiked phrase and dangle of kink,
the syllables traced with veins
that turned red as the skin
of an old leaf turning, spinning, turning
in the indifferent wind.

note: memories of China. 

 

A good friend of mine decided to get a turtle for her biology class. Those are live turtles. We left it in the back of a taxi by accident. 

Gates of the school where I taught in China. If you turn right, there is a small shopping strip with a couple restaurants, a tiny grocery store, a stationary store. 

The string of shops behind our dorms. Shenyang, China.

The Ice Festival, Harbin. China.

One of the tigers at the big cat park, outside of Harbin. You could pay various fees to see live animals fed to the tigers. Somebody paid for a goat. Yes, we saw two tigers rip a goat in half.