Bridge 3

陌生人在湿混凝土上

(The Stranger on the Wet Concrete)

A neighborhood with thumbprints of generations. Street vendors on every corner. The colors, fonts, drawings, language and signs are infinite. The colors red and yellow are recurring in the culture. Cheers to the graffiti boys who make my day with their art and dedication. The once bright and glowing neon signs, the friendly shop-keepers and all of the street vendors, the lonely migrants; all vanished, with no such trace of anything. A city silence like no other, a day in Chinatown.

The store is lit in a faint fluorescent purple light, even more noticeable with the grey outside that threatens to bring down God’s wrath upon this town at any moment. Freshly killed ducks lay in the store front. All of the shelves have Chinese snacks labeled ‘Product of China’, except the American ‘Club’ and ‘Honey Maid’ crackers. One of the snack boxes is strawberry flavored cookies. I think to myself, ‘Am I hungry? I sure am’.

$4.99 a pound! That’s an expensive fruit. It’s a dark, hot pink color with light green, almost yellow stems coming out of it from all sides. It looks like a Pokémon. I think it’s a dragon fruit. The insides of the store, the black and white interior, are contrasted by its loud exterior. I walk past a sign. What are ‘roll eggs’? Are they like egg rolls? If it’s sold ‘inside China mainland only’, what is it doing in Chinatown? You find the craziest stuff in Chinatown.

The odor of the dead fish, mixes in the scent of decay that envelops Chinatown and I find myself questioning what brought me here in the first place? Fish who never were able to die of natural deaths, instead spend their last material moments in this world as a frozen husk of themselves, carved out of the ‘tasty’ bits and their extinguished souls.

The beauty in Chinatown isn’t the buildings or the people, the acreage of the land, the lively neighborhood and environment; but with such a rainfall, you truly see the stranger ugly surface this area is able to hide with glitz and makeup, just like a ridiculously cheap prostitute. We spend our lives being ripped apart by outside forces and brawls until we spend our final days as just a shell of who we used to be. I rock my Yankee fitted cap, a red coat, and Timberlands. I rezone and think to myself; I know where I’m from.

Bridge 3 Reflection

For the Bridge 3 assignment, I was assigned to reflect off of Chinatown along with my group. Originally, Chelsey, Christian, Gabriella, and I were in a group, but towards the end of the assignment, Chelsey was placed into a different group. As a group, each one of us participated in the first and second part of the project. The first and second parts involved writing about our Inwood images and the other group’s Chinatown images. For the final steps of the assignment, my group and I collaborated to form a short story using the lines of the original Chinatown group’s writing.

The inspirational images my group and I received were mixed up. There was a misunderstanding which resulted in the confusion of our inspiration images. The final photos we received were three shots from Chinatown. They were captivating and unique. The first image was of a crate of dragon fruit. Above the crate, there was a sign that read ‘$4.99/lb.’ along with wording written in Chinese. The second image was of several shelves placed above each other inside a grocery store. These shelves had an array of varying cookies and biscuits, both Chinese and American. The only brands I recognized were ‘Club’ and ‘Honey Maid’. The final photograph was of a man walking in the rain on the sidewalk wearing a red raincoat.

The writing process of this assignment was interesting as well. My group and I wrote differently for each image. Christian and Gabriella focused more on writing a short story or a detailed caption for each image. I chose to write descriptive titles for some of the photos as well as short stories. For the writing, I focused primarily on the vivid descriptions of each image. For example, I wrote about the colors, the words/phrases, and the language in each image. For me, the challenging part was the writing about each image during the first and second phases of the assignment. I tend to write in a more academic style rather than a creative style. I was always taught academic writing, so writing creatively is definitely a challenge for me.

The final stages of the assignment, specifically the collaborative process, was the first time I had done a writing piece in that manner, but I enjoyed it. Working as a team, the collaborative process was amusing. My group and I were lucky because all of our lines, words, and phrases matched up easily. The focus of our piece was mainly the foods in Chinatown as a majority of the photos came from a grocery store located in Chinatown. The most difficult part of the writing process was creating a title. My group and I tried to incorporate a puzzled yet engrossing title to make the reader eager to read the piece. We also decided to write the title in Chinese to give it a distinctive twist.

During the final stages, my group and I really did not make any major revisions. We kept everything the same from the first draft, except we changed the title and fixed a few grammatical errors. I’m not sure about the other members in my group, but I am pleased with the writing and how it came together. At first, I thought the random phrases and words would make no sense and the writing would be all over the place. Once I finished the writing, I was happy with the outcome. I just wish we had more lines, words, and phrases to incorporate into the final writing piece. Overall, Bridge 3 was a creative and interesting process and I enjoyed the idea and style of writing we were assigned.