Genial electronic musician chap Moby has dropped in to write a mini Things I Have Learned piece on his life in Chinatown, and give us a free MP3 remix by Kap Bambino.
First up, download Moby’s ‘One Time We Lived’ (Kap Bambino remix)
And now, Moby on Chinatown
Chinatown is more peaceful than you might think
It’s constantly loud and hectic, but peaceful in that I never really have a clue what’s going on around me, and I never really know what the signs say or what the people around me are saying. language becomes background noise, signs become design, and social mores become unknowns. all of this is somehow calming, as the specificity of this sort of quotidian information is turned down a notch, as i don’t understand any of it.
When the Chinese yell it doesn’t meant they’re angry
The people in my neighborhood yell a lot. They also spit a lot. This doesn’t mean that they’re angry and disgusting, it just means that they yell and spit. Far be it for me to judge yelling and spitting.
My neighbourhood is friendly after you’ve been there a while
I don’t know if Chinese people are shy, but it takes a while to make friends. Perhaps it’s the complete lack of cultural similarities, or perhaps they’re shy and I’m shy too. In any case I feel as if I’ve been accepted in my neighbourhood, to an extent, and that makes me happy, especially when the old grandparents smile at me and say hello when they’re walking around with their little grand kids.
Chinese people are crazy for ginkgo nuts
Take a walk through Chinatown at dawn and watch the old Chinese ladies collecting ginkgo nuts and doing tai chi. A few weeks ago I saw a very tall homeless man shaking a ginkgo tree while old Chinese ladies ran in and snatched up the ginkgo nuts. He looked at me and smiled and said, ‘everybody’s got to help out’. It’s a nice thing to be reminded of.
I know how to feel like a tourist in my own city
If you ever want to feel like a foreign tourist in nyc you should go to the Fujian mall under the Manhattan Bridge. It’s just about the best place in NYC.
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