Fang Pi Old Fart

She was an odd sight in a sea of black. Shenbei Center where I live, the old section of what is referred to as a new town north of Shenyang (my building is 20 years old, the oldest among the tenement homes, and it is referred to as ancient) favors black in winter, the countryside folks hang on to their leather attires while the new urban takes to the sheen of the well insulated but lightweight black polyester!

The lady walked with a young girl who looked just over 10. I heard the child call her, nai nai (“mother mother”), the term for the father side grandma. Lao lao, (“old old”) for the mother side grandma tells how patriarchy is entrenched in the culture.

The lady was an oddball among stark blandness of the common folks, wearing light orange-pink cover with matching gloves, decked in flesh-colored stockings reaching the upper thigh, clipped to matching tan undies revealed when she crouched (too quickly) to fix the grandchild’s coat (yup, voyeur me looked!), sporting beige boots up the calf below the knees that she looked used to wearing. She did not make the li tok li tak sound of those trying to tiptoe with heels through the tulips! It was one of those rare sunny days and she must have been visiting from the south where the Kashmir overcoat fitted better along the Bund in Shanghai.

I meant to walk my neighborhood’s back alleys and narrow pathways ever since I moved in March and on this particular day, the granny and her ward headed to one alley I was slated to explore. I was behind them some 10 paces when they suddenly quit walking. The quad opening ahead did not look too inviting and I suspected they changed their minds; a turn would have been an awkward squeeze. I caught up behind them when grandma unleashed a high decibel sound of fang pi, a methane exhaust.

Sensing presence behind, she turned around with a beatific smile, and since aging decreases one’s sense of smell, I smiled back, not noticing any shift in the aroma of the enclosure! Their walk and mine proceeded without further ado.

I would have forgotten this incident had not a friend decided to share an Internet funny, “Old Fart.” The grandma in my neighborhood fits not the English pejorative that disdains aging and the act of farting for she was both aging and she just farted. I recall Korea ‘72 when someone explained to me that as a guest in a household meal, it would not displease the matron of the house if I farted loudly after dinner! The act was culturally respectable. An equally loud burp was OK, too!

The lady was China for the moment, at least until sundown or the length of an alley business transaction. China does not build with longevity in mind as eternity guides architects in Europe. It programs obsolescence well, and the lady shined like the sun for the moment, not too anxious about what was ahead.

This might be the dynamism of the construction and real estate industry in China where owning of a unit bought from accumulated savings since Deng started the opening up and reform is parleyed as investment. Immediate occupants of units in the new apartments, high-rises, and condos may look few but someone signed up for them with the requisite deposit and monthly mortgage payments, and that’s all the central government and the banks need to keep the housing bubble from bursting.

China is ancient but hardly an old fart. Ancient is a category of space, ladled with layers of accumulated confidences rather than measured in lengths of time. In this reflection, the old fart in our title is also moi, living my 70th year.

Old came vividly this year. I do not run away from it. It was, and now, is. Noticeably big time is the dexterity of fingers in the increasing incidences of inability to hold on to things. Lack of elbow coordination bumps into furnishings, and the too frequent loss of balance in my steps make mid-section girth a concern. We mentioned the decreasing sharpness of our ability to smell and 20/20 vision now requires the aid of optic artifices.

The mind now grope for words that hastily dive down the edge of the subconscious, nowhere to be found, and when finally I connect to Google (slow in China; access is indirect) to research a subject only to discover that our concern has escaped fancy but the soaring flight of the imagination enters the various interesting rooms of the interior castle, leaving us distracted but mesmerized, leaving us to our lonesome and not remembering what it was we were looking for to begin with!

On the other hand, we developed distance from what used to be instant explosion of passion, either in jubilation or despair. That, or our reflexes have gone dull. In any case, it is familiar to spend a whole day tired for having kept busy all day but unable to show accomplishment of a single deed.

I am old. The fang pi is frequent by scent of bedsheet but like the lady and China, this old fart simply graces golden years, self-consciously ancient. Here’s looking at you, fang pi!