Cubanizm

Today the red and gold decorated streets of Lower Manhattan’s Little China greeted me with the broken English of Third World immigrants who can perfectly enunciate monetary denominations in twelve different languages. I was bombarded by what-chu-looking-fo’s and how-much-u-pay’s of hundreds of salesmen who showcased endless samples of plastic trinkets, and imported high-end imitations built by blue collar workers in foreign sweat shops near Pacific-Indian coasts long ago swept by tsunami like waves of globalization . Peaking ducks peeked from behind dusty glass windows, unto streets covered in dim-sum laced car exhaust odors where the traffic seemed to be at an endless halt, unlike its 60 mile per hour sidewalks where schools of baby Red Ear Slider turtles frantically scratched at made-in-Hong-Kong plastic prisons. American boys with crotches that hide hidden dragons walked about sexually harassing women and perpetuating racist objectifications reinforced by not so long ago wars were R&R (“rest and relaxation”) weeks were spent in red light districts where penicillin eased the light red brandishing of drafted venereal escapes. The ohm-ma-na-pad-mi-ohm chants of the Buddhist temples were muffled under a world of motor vehicles and bargaining by glass-is-half-empty New Yorkers lost in a local foreign Diaspora, where the dollar is the opiate of the people. From behind bok choy counters old world merchants following cultural values of entrepreneurship gave rushed orders to children of a video game era that await college, a cubicle farm, and then nonexistent social security. In these streets the constructs of Orientalists are deconstructed and equally reaffirmed by the now rarely seen miniature bound feet of a great grandmother who each morning lights incense on her way to MacDonald’s or the baggy fitted jeans of a third generation Lou family member named Michael, who speaks Mander-inglish, refuses to use chop-sticks and everyday lights up a joint. They are both living paradoxes where east met west, stereotypes faced assimilation, the Great Wall met commercialization and the abacus gave way to Gateway.

Happy Chinese New Year!