Oh so deadly sick. After returning from the hospital, I was rummaging around in one of the cabinets at home and stumbled upon some mold. ‘Hmm, this is probably not helping my present condition, this’ I thought. Wandered outside and purchased some bleach, returned, contacted the landlady and informed her of my anthropocentric scheme. She came over and surveyed the mycoid pestilence, and declared “Oh yeah. We have lots of this stuff in our place downstairs. Black and green and white. Everywhere. The renovators said it wasn’t a problem,” to which I replied “…”

After convincing her to authorize removal of the afflicted panels, which seems to be a fairly serious issue, she turns and asks, “Say, Tongli, do you have a girlfriend?” “Why yes” (I lied, in order to avoid the awkward track these now daily conversations usually take) “there’s one Shanghainese lady I rather fancy; she is of sound reputation, good breeding, and has impeccable command of numerous dialects of the mother tongue.” Landlady nods and says, “do you have any older American boyfriends?” Pondering for a moment, I can only come up with another equally articulate “…” Momentarily it becomes clear that she means ‘older male friends’ (the distinction being even less clear in Mandarin). “Oh! Well of course I do” she smiles and continues, “see, I’ve discovered I really like you Americans. You’re nice and responsible and you pay your rent on time” – I’m barely standing up at this point due to diseased frailty - “and you see, my listless husbandless daughter is 26 and doesn’t really even have a boyfriend! She needs to find one. Can you help? Need one that speaks Chinese.” I promise to keep my eyes open, explaining that it may not be so easy to find someone that fits the aforementioned criteria while being geographically proximate.

Avoiding harmful fungus // mate selection for daughter. Divergent priorities.

Lots of people seem to obsess over relationships, infidelities, inter-personal dramas… Especially here. Has not the world many serious problems worthy of solving? Is such a focus towards the seemingly banal a signal that, for a good chunk of our species, material needs have been mostly met and major concerns consist of an entirely different set of Maslovian frivolity. Potentially I’m mistaking my notion of ‘idyllic Western relationship’ for very functional practices for actual mate selection, something that is actually very important, and with which this older generation is very familiar. Directness that borders on crass also has an appropriate context: proper selection of an offspring conduit would seem to be a fairly primal desire, especially when more importance is perhaps attached when one only gets one-two shots at it as a result of planned birth policies. Perhaps matchmaking landlady and hosts of other nosy old people are on to something.