chengdu morning

At a certain point in Chengdu's early hours, the street sweepers and sidewalk cleaners put on their slippers and come out to clean. They use brooms fashioned from rigid sticks or dried straw, and in the pre-dawn darkness their rhythmic swish-scratch corrals the leaves and trash into piles, and drags midnight puddles to faraway drains.

The sweeping, like so much city static, fails to raise the night watchmen from their slumbers. They slump at building entrances in rumpled uniforms, often in two’s, their heads cushioned in crooked elbows, or chins resting on chests. Each of them sleeps the sound sleep of those who cannot be fired.

And under long stretches of overpass, men and women crouch before short towers of newspapers, using the yellow haze of street lamps to guide their folding and prepping. Soon they will stand up, stretch their legs, and pile the newspapers at the foot of their electric scooters, quietly sliding away to wherever it is that awaits their delivery.

In this spartan traffic, early commuters will hold conversations across moving scooters, keeping an even pace and staying close enough that their voices can be heard across the space. Street vendors will set up their weighty dumplings and their warm soymilk and the woks of fry oil they’ve suspended on bicycle frames, waiting for the school kids and the taxi drivers to roll past for breakfast.

And as the city wakes I will be running through, wondering if the dark humid skies will again open up with rain.