Coloring the panda red

Haixia wanted to celebrate International Women's Day by walking down to the Jialing River. I didn't realize she planned to take a swim, but then Haixia has never been one to shy away from jumping in and making ripples. She's unafraid of chilly water.

One path was closed to us, so we walked along sewer pipes, past the riverside gardens nestled along a tiny tributary to get there.

Once there, we saw the rocks sprinkled with Beibei residents, most still wearing down coats, some doing laundry at the water's edge, bamboo baskets behind them. Haixia changed clothes under her cape, discreet but in full view. Her daughter tells me the capes are common--everyone has one, men and women.

Tough as she is, Haixia wasn't about to jump in without warming up. Who cares if the other revelers think it's strange? Her daughter "Ariel" looked on, while reminiscing aloud about a picture of a panda she ("Ariel") had colored in school. That picture had brought her to tears when her primary school teacher had reprimanded her for coloring the panda red. "Ariel" had had no black crayon, so her mother had encouraged her to pick another color--why not red? After all, there are red pandas. The teacher  had scolded "Ariel" for insulting China's national symbol and  also for failing to follow directions.

Haixia thought differently, fitting enough for a woman who could be the poster person for International Women's Day--which by the way is an official holiday in many communist countries. Doing her push ups on the rocks, she didn't look to me like the sixty-something newly retired professor that she is.

She stepped gingerly into the water and then suddenly swooped off and away, creating soft ripples.

Heading back the other way, we passed by the riverboats, reminding me a bit of home. I often think of the similarities: Just as the Missouri River flows into the Mississippi at St. Louis, the Jialing flows into the Chang Jiang (Yangtze) at Chongqing. My old college town Columbia is upriver on (almost)  the Missouri, just as my new college town Beibei is upriver on the Jialing.