Typhoon, continued (first part here).

Upstairs again with sesame noodles in hand, I resumed sitting on the bed frame, watching Mr. Song clean out the desk drawers. I told him I didn't think I would have a chance to go get a mattress that evening.

No problem! he said, and went to the next room, coming back with a big red blanket. He draped the blanket over the bed frame.

You can sleep on this tonight, he said. Though I'm afraid it might be too hard for you.

Not at all, I said. It's perfect. Then the power went out.

I spent the night turning over on the red blanket-draped bed frame, listening to the loose window above me clatter with every gust of wind, blearily wondering if the next gust would be strong enough to dislodge it from the frame and drop it on my head.

In the middle of the night I woke up to silence. I went out to the balcony, and the debris-filled streets were dark and quiet. The trees still looked a bit bent, like they were unsure whether it was safe to stand up straight again. I went back to the room, propping my hip bone under my travel neck pillow and going into another dreamless half-sleep.

Around 8am the clattering window woke me up again. Outside the rain had stopped but the wind was howling. I opened the door to find Mr. Song pacing the hall, carrying things from one room to another. He'd spent the night in the next room with all the stuff he'd cleared out from mine the day before, and now he was moving it to the foyer.

A guest was coming to look at the other room that afternoon, so he would be staying here today to wait for them, he said. I spent the next hour unpacking my things and scrubbing the walls.

By 9 o'clock the wind had almost disappeared again. Mr. Song knocked on my door, asking if I wanted to go find breakfast. Thinking of my leftover sesame noodles in the fridge, I told him I was interested.

Downstairs at the bottom of the stairwell under the concrete stairs were three bikes. We propped the door open and I helped him move the first one outside.

This one is a lady bike, he said. It doesn't work, but we keep it here.

We took the two remaining bikes outside, and put the lady bike back in its place.

As we rode down the back streets behind the building, Mr. Song introduced me to the neighborhood.

This was a great place to raise kids, he said. Our son went to that elementary school. This breakfast place has been here for 30 years. Western style, Chinese style, they can make everything, he said, pointing to another closed garage door.

We went down a ramp toward the river, and found our tires submerged in mud and silt. At this point breaking would have meant falling over, or at least getting mud all over our shoes, so we kept pedaling precariously forward.

This path goes all along the river for miles, Mr. Song said, sweeping his arm over what looked like a dried up creek bed. I always ride here in the evening. We turned and rode along this creek bed, passing overturned signs, uprooted shrubs, and displaced concrete barriers. Every now and then the actual paved path showed itself from under the sand.

A few other people were walking down the path, mostly going in the opposite direction. We passed a teenager standing forlornly on a motionless skateboard, wheels sunk halfway into the mud. Some older people were wading in a ditch with nets, scooping up large fish. I asked Mr. Song what they were doing.

They're catching those fish as pets, he replied. You can't buy this kind of fish at the pet store.

The path was also littered with the carcasses of many more of these same fish, which looked a little like carp. Under the bridge, some elder ladies had gathered a lot of them into a pile.

We rode along with the river on one side, and a huge concrete wall on the other, with regular staircases leading up and over it to the city. Each staircase was blocked halfway up by a snarl of tree branches and shrubbery.

There's a gate up ahead that goes back to the road, Mr. Song said.

When we got to the gate, the sturdy metal door was shut.

It's OK, there's another one farther up, he said.

The next gate was closed too. I started to wonder why we hadn't seen any other bicyclists on the path yet. We rode for a while in silence, passing more and more dead fish lying pristinely on the pavement. Had the flies all been blown away by the storm?

I wasn't planning on biking this far, Mr. Song said finally.

We kept moving forward, and then we came to a bend in the river where the path sloped upward and eventually led over the wall and back to the street.

To be continued...

The path by the river during evening (a week after the typhoon)

The wall on the river side

 Mobile theater and temple on the opposite side of the wall from the river

Squid stew (猶豫羹) 

Vegetable dumplings with sides of seaweed and dried tofu with tiny crispy fish