Word: parking
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...know," said an 88-year-old man in a Beijing park. It was early morning, and along with a score of others, the old man was exercising his birds -- by illusion. The men walked about and swung their birdcages. The movement is said to convince the birds inside that they are free. "We trick them, you know," he said. "How long can they stay fooled? Who knows? Maybe they hope. Like us. We hope. I hope. But you know, in China it is dangerous to hope. Your heart is always being broken." I said I knew...
...hotel in Sichuan province that alternates between a Rod Stewart oldie (Sailing) and a socialist goody (Without the Communist Party There Would Be No New China). Like the young man break-dancing to a blaring Madonna album amid a few hundred elderly tai chi practitioners at a Shanghai park. Like the reserve and civility evident in personal relations that rarely translate to civic responsibility. Like the more intractable tensions of incorporating the best of capitalism while preserving socialism -- tensions that have arisen because of, rather than in spite of, Deng's economic reforms. Like everything about the ghost marriage...
...change my name to Shanghai Lily." Shanghai is no longer trendy, modern or even cosmopolitan, but its streets are still tops for infant watching. Sadly, though, the toddlers I see seldom cry or laugh or even suck their thumbs. Most seem sullen. And in the beautiful Jing an Park, which used to be a cemetery before the bodies were exhumed for cremation (the old story about the land's being too valuable for the dead), the kids ride around in bumper cars in careful circles and don't wave and don't smile and stare straight ahead and never once...
...quite pretty, has skipped across the main street of my New Hampshire town to say this. "Thanks," I tell her modestly, wondering if it would be all right to twirl my mustache. I borrowed this Mazda MX-5 Miata three days ago. People edge away when I park my usual vehicle, a large black four-wheel-drive Ford plow truck with red pinstriping and air horns. But the Miata gets passersby smiling and talking: teenagers, old couples, a fellow dressed in muscles and a camouflage shirt at a tire store, bicyclists in bicycle suits. Other conspicuous cars are costly...
...redemption. The Chicago Cubs are blessed with a beautiful ball park (Wrigley Field) and saddled with a tragic curse: no pennant since 1945. Their old-school manager Don Zimmer carries his own albatross: the memory of squandering an 11 1/2-game lead as skipper of the Boston Red Sox in 1978. But with the Cubs in the lead in the National League East, Zimmer can relax enough to tell his ball club, "If you're not enjoying this, you should get a real job." The mood is infectious, whether it is .300-hitting first baseman Mark Grace describing the pennant race...