Kafka on the Shore
Last Wednesday, the Meteorological Bureau of Shenzhen issued a red warning for a rainstorm. Red is the highest level of alert, which meant thunderstorm, floods, and mandatory closures. It also meant a four-day long weekend for all of us. In the past, the majority of the warnings for typhoons and rainstorms were just that, warnings, nothing drastic ever happened, and we got to chill at home.
When I woke up on Thursday morning, there wasn’t a single drop of rain, not surprised, I thought. “Let’s go hiking,” I sent a text to one of my friends. “You’re crazy,” she wrote back, “it’s supposed to be the worst rainstorm we’ve ever seen.” Blah, blah, blah, I thought. “Aren’t you the adventurous type?” I wrote. “Not when there’s a warning,” she wrote, “I rather stay in, and read a book.”
No one wanted to tag along, so I put on my swimming trunks, wore my flip flops, grabbed my instant film camera with the water-proof casing, and went out for a walk. The streets were quiet, the only people on the road were food delivery guys on their electric bikes. Every time they passed me, they looked at me twice. What a dumbass, they must have thought. I love photographing people, but that day no one was around, so I decided to photograph the cityscape by climbing the Wutong mountain; the highest mountain in Shenzhen that offers a spectacular view of Hong Kong.
I scanned the QR code to unlock a yellow Mobike, hopped on it, and cycled my way to the base of the mountain. When I reached the entrance, the security guard looked at me with eyes wide open, shouted something in Chinese, and pointed at the sign. I took my phone out and scanned the sign with Baidu translation app:
CLOSED DUE TO RAINSTORM, the sign read.
C’mon, all I see in sunshine, I thought. And that is when I felt the first drop of rain on my face. I looked up and there were more, and they came down hard.
I ran back towards the Mobike, took out my phone to scan and unlock the bicycle, but it didn’t work. I wasn’t sure if it was the rain fogging up my camera lens or the network. I noticed there was another bicycle, it was blue, which meant it belonged to another Chinese company, but I didn’t have their app. Fuck me, I thought. I was already soaked, so I ran down the hill. Every time I felt I would slip, I grabbed the trunk of the closest tree then continued running, until there were no more trees and I was out of breath, so I stopped and stood under a small shelter of a closed street shop. Within a few minutes, the street got flooded, I lost one of my flip flops, and I let go of the other. I better run, I thought.
When I reached the bottom of the hill, the small street leading up to the main road got blocked, and I was waist deep in the big muddy. I should take a photo, I thought, but when I pulled my camera shoulder strap, the water-proof case was empty. WTF, I couldn’t understand how I lost the camera. At least, I have my phone, I pressed my thumb on the glass, to unlock the screen so I could take a photo of the storm, but it was too wet, and before I could enter the passcode, a gush of water shoved me towards an old rusted truck, and I felt a painful jolt on my waist. I immediately touched the wounded area, and realized that was the least of my problems, because when I reached the main road, all I had on was my t-shirt, the camera strap, and nothing else. The metal on the truck had tore my swimming trunks, and I stood buck naked in the middle of Gangwan Avenue.
I took off my t-shirt, and tried to wrap it around my waist, but it was too small. So I wore it as a Scottish kilt. In my imagination, the red and green t-shirt made me look like a Gaelic God, but to everyone else I must have looked like a lost lunatic. It took me a few hours to walk home. Luckily, the security guard at my building wasn’t at the gate, so I quickly sneaked in, and took the elevator, and then I noticed the security camera. Can’t hide in China, I shook my head.
“I should’ve listened to you,” I texted my friend.
“Hehe, got soaked?,” she wrote back.
“Lost my camera, my flip flops, and my dignity!”
“Oh no! What happened?”
I sent her a long audio message.
“LOL perfect story for your blog haha,” she wrote back, “BTW I’m reading Kafka on the Shore.”
“Love that book,” I wrote, “Haruki Murakami is one of my favorite writers.”
“Check this out, how ironic…” She sent me a photo of herself reading the book in her balcony, surrounded by plants refreshed by the rain. The opened page in the novel read:
“When I came out of the storm, I wasn’t the same person who walked in. That was what that storm was all about.”
“You have no idea!!!” I wrote back.
