The neighborhood newsstand has now been re-relocated, from the pit on the northwest corner of the alley mouth to the sidewalk on southeast corner, in front of the defunct bank. It has also acquired a new canopy advertising China Mobile.
While I was buying a calling card (China Telecom, not China Mobile) and a dust-covered copy of Bazaar, a group of about a dozen people, many of them men in short-sleeved uniform shirts, crowded up behind me and began demanding to see the newsstand's business license. The newsstand man pulled out a pair of framed certificates, and a discussion ensued, seemingly about the newsstand's correct business address.
The delegation moved up the street, pausing to lecture another shopkeeper about something or other, then marched through the gate of the big construction site. No two of the uniforms were the same: they looked like a shirtsleeved Chinese version of the Joint Chiefs of Staff--one man in army light green, one in light blue, one in dark blue, and one for some reason in nautical whites, complete with a nautical cap. After quite a while in the construction site, the group marched back out, got in a black SUV and a utilitarian Mercedes minibus, and drove away. Before they pulled out, through the tinted minibus window I saw that one of them had a shoulder patch reading "Health Inspection."
