Hundreds push into the CCBA to see the Shanghai opera. Upstairs, in classrooms, children laboriously copy Chinese characters. In the old Mee Heung Chow Main factory, four elders play mah-jongg, wedged between boxes of noodles. Along Canal, vendors with steel pushcarts display fish balls, intestines, chicken feet, peanut cakes, curried squid, deep-fried peppers and eggplants, and chewy fish skins stewed with turnips. Mr. Lin, the Fujianese peddler, sells firecrackers at a corner.
Children hawk blocks of frozen shrimp from Asia.
The blocks drip on the sidewalk. Shoppers trample newspapers, mud, fishtails, betel nuts. The litter blows around their ankles. On Pell Street, German tourists scramble out of a bus to videotape the vertical restaurant signs. Teenage gang members in Hong Kong suits pace outside Number 11 and watch indifferently.