I had my Isaac Newton apple on the head moment the day before last. Unlike the famous physicist’s however, mine brought me considerable pain and no immediate insight. I was in the kitchen pouring a cup of hot water for Jia. When I turned around to step away from the water dispenser I bashed my head into the extractor fan above the stove. I made a few involuntary grunts and held my head in my hand to try to contain the shock and pain for a moment before regaining composure somewhat and emerging from the kitchen shaken but with hot water. We joked about it and continued the language exchange. Yesterday I had a large swelling on the side of my head, lost underneath my hair and somewhere above my temple. Today I feel it still. It is on this second day that this blow brought me to an idea. Better late than never I guess.
This collision belongs in the ‘size problems’ category of events and observations. The fan is quite simply too low for me or, I am too damn tall for it. The ‘size problem’ category has been languishing lately it consisting of a series of pictures of me in modest discomfort and of one or two anecdotes. It can however be usefully expanded and serve as a counter point to the ‘images of Westerners’ category I came upon recently. I have had some reservations about the images of Westerners category as is tends to present highly commercial cliches that I am already over familiar with. These have their place and maybe how they are read here will modify them, but they are somewhat impersonal and often obvious stereotypes so I feel a need to create something to contrast them with. So here is this new category that can be defined as things that Chinese people do which I don’t (or at least don’t do well), and in so doing make me more aware of my culture. Placing extractor fans at so low a level is one such thing, crossing busy roads in several stages another and forming sentences that describe things starting from general details to arrive at the specific point only at the end, another still.
OK it is not quite up there with Newton’s general theory of gravity but it is the best I can salvage from this bruising encounter with an extractor fan. What’s more I suspect that Newton’s apple is more than a little apocryphal. I suspect this game of reconstructions is not merely a contemporary one but rather is an old one that has more to do with finding hooks onto which abstract ideas may be placed.
