Things that have made me misty-eyed this year:

1) Leaving for the airport and seeing my old lady gray sulking on the couch, her paws under her head. 

2) Watching Splendor in the Grass - the scene where the father tells Natalie Wood where Warren Beatty is living when she returns from the mental asylum. 

I miss my cats.

After finally nearing my destination for art supplies, I encountered a middle-aged man packing up his purchases in his bicycle basket.

"Excuse me," I asked. "Do you know if I'm anywhere close to Fuzhou Lu?"

He spoke a little too quickly for me, but said there were other supply stores a couple blocks away and asked me what type of art supplies I was looking for, motioning to his bag of newly purchased goods. It seemed like he knew the area well and what shops to go to so I told him and asked him if that's what he just bought.

It turned out to be Chinese calligraphy and character writing books for children and a few comic books.

"It's for my eight-year-old daughter!" he said excitedly.

I joked and said that books like that are not just for children, but struggling adults learning Mandarin.

This immediately inspired him to play tour guide. I was very amused by his enthusiasm so I followed him to the bookstore.

"You'll love this place! It's so cheap. You see this sign? It's 10 kuai a kilo! Let me show you!"

It turns out that selling books by weight is the norm here, like dried beans or fruit. The written word is as valuable as its physical mass.

I wasn't exactly looking for calligraphy books on this trip, but I bought four of them and a book of watercolor postcards by an artist named Pan Tianshou.

I also ended up buying a calligraphy brush and ink along with my usual supplies and spent the evening writing postcards home.

I was trying to locate the station to find the street of art supply stores the other day and ended up asking a rather androgynous bystander for directions. This svelte creature was donned in a form-fitting fashion tee with a metallic print, a bad dye job, and oddly-fitted cargo pants.

"Where are you from? Are you a student?" he asked me, in a halting Mandarin that mirrored mine.

I took a better look at his face. He had lost eyes, a beakish nose, a lot of pale foundation, and the kind of puffy lips that could have been enhanced with some clinical assistance. 

I later learned he was from Japan, living in China for the past eight years, and studying Chinese at Fudan.

He looked at the address on my phone for a while. I realized he was slowly reading the Chinese characters aloud to himself. I wasn't so sure if he was in a completely normal state as he walked in a coltish manner towards one of the subway attendants. I was nonetheless grateful for his determination. 

After thanking him for going out of his way to help me, he bid me farewell, but boarded same train as me. Curiosity killed me. 

"Do you like it here?"

He grimaced slightly. "Not very much."