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VII.
Tianjin
is a huge city, its size in square inches, square miles, dwarfing that of
Beijing and Guangzhou. Much of it is empty space, economic development zones,
acres of factories and warehouses. The people are gray ghosts that occasionally
pass your eyesight.
It is a
city of water and smoke and spaces and dryness, a desert of the soul and of the
mind. It is my desert this week, a reflection of the emptiness that greets me
in between meetings and dinners, the cold that I embrace inside and out and
fill my lungs with every morning.
And yet
Jayce
takes the most amazing pictures of Tianjin. His eye captures the perfect
intersection of sunlight and open spaces, of the natural beauty that explodes
onto a cloudless sky, in the night lights of the tower, in the simple smiles of
people caught by the camera. His pictures spin a glorious lie of the beauties
of the city, the hope, the promise. They leave out the dust and the dullness,
the long waits for nothing to happen that populate every life - yours, mine.
They entrance you and fill you with the expectation, the desire, for new snow.
Illusions,
when seen, die quickly.
-end-