Chinatown

I walked to Chinatown this morning, thinking I might get some cheap Chinese breakfast of whatever it is they eat for breakfast in Chinatown. Apparently they don't do breakfast. They aren't big morning people in general, by the looks of it. At 8:30 a.m., there was barely anything open. So I just walked up the street and looked in the windows.

Then I turned down toward the water, where there was a lovely view of the Bay Bridge. It wasn't cold, but it wasn't warm, either, and the mist lay on the water like translucent cotton, making silhouettes of the hills and the huge ships in the bay.

So I turned back around to Chinatown and the hostel, thinking maybe now something there would be open. I was getting hungry.

And I passed several Chinese women in a grassy area doing what looked to be Tai Chi. And I thought, how great that they just go out and do that. They are not embarrassed. They are totally focused on what they are doing and they don't care what anyone thinks. I wanted to keep watching them. Actually, I wanted to do Tai Chi.

So I walked up to the older woman and I asked what she was doing. She said, haltingly, that she didn't speak English. But I managed to communicate that I wanted her to show me what she was doing. So she did, and she let me follow her movements. And I knew with each thing we did there was some kind of reason for it. And I guess if I knew Chinese she could have explained to me exactly what we were doing. But at the same time, I figured that just by doing it, it was going to effect me because facial expressions and gestures do effect how you feel.

So I felt like I was clearing the space around me. I felt like I was becoming more centered, like I was gathering something out of the ground and maybe that would make me feel more solid. Some movements didn't need explanation. There was one that was like the American Sign Language sign for "power," holding two fists at your chest, which actually makes you feel powerful when you do it. It's the same way some words make you feel a particular way. And it occurred to me that that is a fundamental part of language, the way a movement or a word makes you feel.

I liked the non-verbal communication this old Chinese lady and I had. I have no idea what she thought of me. She might have thought I was strange, but she didn't show it. And if I hadn't asked her to teach me, I would have always wondered what it was like to do Tai Chi in the morning in San Francisco, and she never would have had the chance to show me.