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Tobacco Pipe Lane, Something of A Rarity
The route twists and opens round a corner to a pavement filled with light. The
flung-open windows and brush-swept doorways lead into the nighttime venues of
Beijing's hippest crowd. There is Vanilla, Lotus Root, and Green House Coffee,
where this morning, dance music wafts like some forgotten party and twisted,
coloured muslin billows in an archway.
But China life has not been hidden. An old woman sits chewing on the step of
her home, appearing uninterested in what flows around her. Further on, a bicycle
repair shop spills out on to the pavement and a barbershop TV blares over
well-scrubbed floor tiles where. a young man gets a head massage.
Appointment With Heaven is a ramshackle old place with a smoky, slightly
battered exterior near Di'anmen Avenue. Like a Tibetan tent, it is filled with a
more interesting variety of the prayer beads and curiosities than you find in
the market stalls of Beijing. Back on the Xie Jie, its name lingers with the
thought of returning.
A cricket chirps from a tiny bamboo cage in the window of an antique shop.
Next door, there are paint cans and blocks of wood and tree stumps sprouting
buds. And, as if blissfully unaware of the street's high status of cool, there
are tattered-looking market shops selling vegetables, meat and bread. Turning to
look back at the Xie Jie, the lines of that old hippy song seem to run between
the pavement cracks and dusty walls and implore: "You don't know what you've got
till it's gone".
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