Magician / charlatan
Welcome to the fair.
It was a gray, late-winter day, when we stuck a finger on a map, boarded a tobacco smoke-blurred local train, and ended up in a village in Yunan whose name we could not read. We came on the Art Troupe of Baofeng County, a traveling circus that had set up in an open space near a small town. It was not long after Mao's death, and a few people had shed the obligatory blue and olive clothing to sport a bit of color. A few days before, on an unseasonably hot day, we had passed a giant construction site where the workmen had taken off their drab jackets to reveal the improbable primary colors of their undershirts—bright blooms of secret rebellion against party-enforced uniformity. Another sign of change was us, a stranger attraction, perhaps, than the itinerant magicians. Yunan, China,1982
This glimpse into the life of people in 1980's China is vastly different from views we have seen 40 years later with COVID. The bustling modern cities seem impossibly advanced for just 40 years to have elapsed.
I'm loving these! Many thanks for the inspired pairings and the stories of life, too often unseen by my eyes.