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I’m waiting for my girlfriend on the steps in front of our building at the end of the alley.  The light from the looming residential towers of One Park Avenue gleams in the wet weed-cracked asphalt. In the opposite building a man leans against a doorway resting his head against his forearm. The other arm hangs along his side, barely holding on to a cigarette. He’s in his underwear and his gaze is a thousand miles away. Behind him, three bunk beds fill up a room with five other men lying on top of the covers in their boxers watching a basketball game on a 14 inch TV with bad reception. Blue light flickers over their faces. Nobody’s talking.My girlfriend finally comes down.“Is she here?” she asks.“I don’t know, I haven’t seen her.”We start up the alley and I say hello to the man with the cigarette, but he doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. We pass the bathhouse where a receptionist in white reads a newspaper under the fluorescent light and sips green tea from a jar. Outside steam rushes out through the rusty vents, while paint flakes off the wooden walls.We reach the gate to the courtyard on the left where the woman parks her cart when she’s home. But now it’s gone. “Do you think they took her?” my girlfriend says.I say I don’t know. In the courtyard a boy with a leather jacket and dark shades rolls out a scooter from a shed. It’s painted black and pink and has neon tubes along its sides. It looks like a karaoke bar on wheels. Heavy techno-pop percussion leaks from his earphones. He glides out through the gate and gives us a nod as he’s passing and then navigates up the alley between cars and potholes. The neon tubes shine in the puddles. At the end of the alley he stops, adjusts his shades, and then disappears in the flood of headlights. “Wait,” I say, “is that smoke coming up from behind that van over there?”“Where?” my girlfriend says.“Over there by the van. I think it’s her.”Hidden from the street between cars and dumpsters stands Lifen with her old wooden cart. The cart is laden with pots and pans and foodstuffs—noodles, rice, quail eggs, pastes, dumpling dough, ground meet, vegetables.We are early.Lifen is rolling the night’s first batch of dumplings. She’s in her 40s and dressed in black. We say hello and she grunts as she normally does. I point at the dumplings and my girlfriend at the noodles. I want to ask what happened last night, but my Chinese is too poor.Yesterday when we came home from a friend’s place we saw her grappling with a policeman. Noodles and vegetables scattered on the ground, Lifen screaming and trying to hit him with a pot. A small crowd surrounded them,  jeering the policeman.The world expo is about to start and the government has decided to clean the city of everything that might be an embarrassment to the great country of China. And nothing seems to embarrass them more than street vendors and old buildings. Since we have arrived, entire blocks of buildings hundreds of years old have been demolished, and street vendors all around the city have vanished from the streets. But Lifen is still here. Now people pour out of the bathhouse in pajamas and flip-flops and gather around us. Lifen starts taking orders and the dumplings sizzle in the pan. Smoke meanders up against the wall and past the lights of One Park Avenue—then disappears in the warm night.

I’m waiting for my girlfriend on the steps in front of our building at the end of the alley.  The light from the looming residential towers of One Park Avenue gleams in the wet weed-cracked asphalt. In the opposite building a man leans against a doorway resting his head against his forearm. The other arm hangs along his side, barely holding on to a cigarette. He’s in his underwear and his gaze is a thousand miles away. Behind him, three bunk beds fill up a room with five other men lying on top of the covers in their boxers watching a basketball game on a 14 inch TV with bad reception. Blue light flickers over their faces. Nobody’s talking.

My girlfriend finally comes down.

“Is she here?” she asks.

“I don’t know, I haven’t seen her.”

We start up the alley and I say hello to the man with the cigarette, but he doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. We pass the bathhouse where a receptionist in white reads a newspaper under the fluorescent light and sips green tea from a jar. Outside steam rushes out through the rusty vents, while paint flakes off the wooden walls.

We reach the gate to the courtyard on the left where the woman parks her cart when she’s home. But now it’s gone. “Do you think they took her?” my girlfriend says.

I say I don’t know.

In the courtyard a boy with a leather jacket and dark shades rolls out a scooter from a shed. It’s painted black and pink and has neon tubes along its sides. It looks like a karaoke bar on wheels. Heavy techno-pop percussion leaks from his earphones. He glides out through the gate and gives us a nod as he’s passing and then navigates up the alley between cars and potholes. The neon tubes shine in the puddles. At the end of the alley he stops, adjusts his shades, and then disappears in the flood of headlights.

“Wait,” I say, “is that smoke coming up from behind that van over there?”

“Where?” my girlfriend says.

“Over there by the van. I think it’s her.”

Hidden from the street between cars and dumpsters stands Lifen with her old wooden cart. The cart is laden with pots and pans and foodstuffs—noodles, rice, quail eggs, pastes, dumpling dough, ground meet, vegetables.

We are early.

Lifen is rolling the night’s first batch of dumplings. She’s in her 40s and dressed in black. We say hello and she grunts as she normally does. I point at the dumplings and my girlfriend at the noodles. I want to ask what happened last night, but my Chinese is too poor.

Yesterday when we came home from a friend’s place we saw her grappling with a policeman. Noodles and vegetables scattered on the ground, Lifen screaming and trying to hit him with a pot. A small crowd surrounded them,  jeering the policeman.

The world expo is about to start and the government has decided to clean the city of everything that might be an embarrassment to the great country of China. And nothing seems to embarrass them more than street vendors and old buildings. Since we have arrived, entire blocks of buildings hundreds of years old have been demolished, and street vendors all around the city have vanished from the streets. 

But Lifen is still here.

Now people pour out of the bathhouse in pajamas and flip-flops and gather around us. Lifen starts taking orders and the dumplings sizzle in the pan. Smoke meanders up against the wall and past the lights of One Park Avenue—then disappears in the warm night.