Big feet

This entry will be very short, but the topic is very big: my feet. So big are my feet that I would have to go barefoot if I hadn't brought several pairs of shoes and boots with me to China. The entry is very short because, well, I had another problem with translation, leaving me with little spare time tonight.

(The translation problem: I clearly understood the message from university officials saying that there would  be a make up day tomorrow, Saturday, for one of the days that would otherwise be missed because of our upcoming holidays. I didn’t realize, however, that the make up class applied to the Friday morning class I had just I taught, a three-hour seminar. But I now realize that I'm expected to teach another three-hour seminar to the very same students tomorrow. Ouch! I will be up late tonight! After class tomorrow, students will disperse to far flung corners of China for several days of holidays: National Day celebrating the 63^rd anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, immediately followed by Mid-Autumn Festival, one of the most important Chinese holidays. This is the holiday for eating moon cakes.)

But my big feet: Although nobody makes shoes my size, my favorite cobbler is happy to fix my well-worn Ecco shoes for the equivalent of 50 cents. These are shoes that should have been retired years ago and are totally unlike any of the spike heels that most college women seem to wear anywhere and everywhere—to class, to the grocery store, to JinYun Mountain.

 You can’t tell in the picture below that I’m standing in the doorway of one of the many shops lining a big city street or that the shops make an elbow, leaving just enough room for a tree from which the cobbler hangs his umbrella like a porch roof, a little stool about six inches high, a little post with a metal platform on which to place an upside down shoe, a little iron contraption, and assorted pouches with needles, thread, hammer, nails, pliers, superglue and the like. The cobbler is never out of work for long, and as you can see in this photo, half a dozen women have recently dropped off plastic bags full of things for him to repair. You’ll occasionally see some Deedle Deedle Dumpling perched on the step, one shoe on, one shoe off, conversing with the cobbler while the cobbler mends the shoes.