Run50 #3 | New York: Checking in at the 50th NYC Marathon

I really like a lyric written by Chow Yiu Fai: "The setting sun shines on New York, crossing Fourth Street, dirty air vents, a pair of lovers meeting on Fifth Street, walking past Eighth Street where expensive shops drift cheap perfume. In another corner of the earth, wandering through a chaotic city, beautiful and lonely..."

New York is a city with immense charm. It holds filth, tempts desire, stirs up sin, and pushes both cutting-edge technology and bottom-level life to their extremes.

Everything that has happened, is happening, and is about to happen in this city feels, to me, so cyberpunk.

People say New York is a place you have to visit at least once in your life. No other city in the world seems to gather such extreme love-and-hate opinions at the same time.

New York City's charm lies in its inclusiveness. New York is New York. It is not America, because it is completely different from the rest of America.

With a lot of anticipation and curiosity, we took a morning flight and reached New York in two hours.

New York's public transit is convenient. Watching the street scenes along the way, it really felt like a major city: dense high-rises, moving crowds, and a kind of prosperity that is hard to put into words.

Bus plus subway, and in half an hour we smoothly reached the CR7 hotel near Times Square. I heard this was Cristiano Ronaldo's first chain hotel in the U.S. The room was not large, hidden inside the steel jungle, with no distant view. I guessed that downstairs was probably a busy street district.

We picked a Korean buffet and followed navigation into the Times Square subway station.

My first impression of the New York subway was a gap between expectation and reality: rusty, with a smell of urine and worse hanging in the air. There were no platform doors between trains and pedestrians, and watching trains rush by always made me tense up.

In that moment, the glamorous street life aboveground and the underground transit world felt split apart. New York's magical realism was easy to see.

After we got on the subway, the train soon surged out from underground. Professional panhandlers passed by now and then, while reflections of tall buildings outside flashed across their faces, bright and dim by turns.

Following the directions, we got off at a subway station whose name I forgot. After exiting, it felt as if we had returned to China. Chinese characters and Asian faces were everywhere. The busy, crowded blocks mixed with vendors calling out from all directions. Steaming buns had just come out, white vapor drifting around, and for a moment it felt like a third- or fourth-tier city in China.

Only after checking the map did I realize we had wandered into Flushing. Flushing is one of the most famous Chinatowns in New York, even in all of America. But it did not look fancy at all. It looked like China in the 1980s and 1990s.

Later, when I chatted with a friend, he told me, "Calling Flushing a third- or fourth-tier Chinese city is already generous. Maybe it only counts as seventh or eighth tier."

We took a bus from Flushing to Koreatown. Traffic there was chaotic, and along the way we saw a taxi driver stick his head out and loudly complain about it. It was funny and helpless at the same time.

New York's COVID rules were strict. Restaurants required vaccine cards, and you had to wear a mask when getting food. The Korean BBQ buffet was genuinely excellent, probably the best meal I had eaten since coming to America. Because there was a time limit, I grabbed a lot at the end and ate very hard.

Because we had eaten a bit too much, we decided to walk from Koreatown back to Flushing, then take the subway to the CR7 hotel. New York in November had just the right sunlight. Walking along the street and occasionally brushing past pedestrians felt both familiar and strange, as if I had returned to my hometown.

That evening we went downstairs to explore Times Square, probably the New York landmark closest to us.

Some people say that if you have not been to New York, you have not really been to America, and if you have not been to Times Square, you have not really been to New York. Originally called Longacre Square, it was renamed Times Square after The New York Times built its headquarters there.

What Times Square gave me, beyond the dazzling lights, was its crowd of characters and its strong everyday human energy.

Times Square is the crossroads of the world. People of every skin color gather here, speaking different languages while admiring the same view. It is like a mirror reflecting the faces of an era, and also like a melting pot holding different beliefs.

There are many food trucks here, and they are quite affordable. Every so often, the smell of hot food rises and drifts around, extremely tempting.

There were also many pedicabs on the road, weaving among yellow taxis to look for business. The scene felt lively and surreal.

There were also many street performers: saxophone players, painters, people dressed as superheroes... Together, they sketched out an incredibly rich Times Square night.

Noisy and intoxicating, chaotic and moving.

The next morning, after eating a big Tianjin-style bun and picking up my race gear, I planned to visit Central Park in the afternoon.

We all know New York's skyscrapers and blocks are laid out neatly, with very square urban planning. That is the city's kind of grandeur.

Central Park is like a billiard table laid flat in the middle of Manhattan, creating a style completely different from the city around it.

To emphasize that contrast, the roads, streams, lakes, and lawns inside Central Park were designed to curve and vary in shape.

Central Park is huge and beautiful, and the surrounding buildings are distinctive too. Especially those thin, tall towers, standing straight in the distance as if they had grown out of the ground. It was striking.

After leaving Central Park, the city was gradually entering night, which was a perfect time to see Manhattan's night view.

We set off from a pier on the Hudson River. The wind was strong that night. I had planned to watch the view from the open deck on top, but because it was cold, I occasionally hid back inside the cabin to listen to the commentary.

As the boat left the pier, the city in the distance was lit up. I thought maybe this was Night City from Cyberpunk 2077.

I did not know whether An Autumn's Tale had happened on the pier across the water, and I did not know what answer followed the line "table for two."

I also did not know whether those busy Manhattan office buildings were the heaven or the hell from A Beijinger in New York.

One generation's American fever has faded, and a new generation of young people keeps arriving here. This is a cyberpunk place that gives people endless room to imagine, and also a brutal jungle where surviving takes enormous effort.

Standing in New York's cold wind, my eyes blurred. I imagined that none of this had anything to do with me. In that moment, I just wanted to be a passerby, drunk on the New York night.

The cruise-night view was beautiful. We also passed under several bridges, though I was not sure whether one of them was the Brooklyn Bridge.

At last we were getting close to the Statue of Liberty. Everyone came out to take photos, and the captain thoughtfully circled around her and slowed the boat down.

This was my first time seeing the real Statue of Liberty. I thought, all right, this trip now feels complete.

The day after the race, we went to a Mexican neighborhood and ate at a Chinese buffet. In the U.S., these Chinese buffets are basically run by Fujianese owners and taste fairly similar, though the New York storefront was much smaller.

On the streets and buses, most people were Spanish-speaking amigos. Occasionally they would argue over who got off first.

After packing our luggage, we took one last look at Rockefeller Center and passed the famous St. Patrick's Cathedral. Compared with Times Square and Flushing, this place felt much more American.

In my eyes, this is New York: contradictory, yet harmonious.

Everyone here has their own story. At least in my memory, New York in November was like this:

When we were already used to going out wrapped in thick clothes, you could still see plenty of people on New York streets running in T-shirts or carrying yoga mats to go work out;

Walking on the street, your pace speeds up without realizing it, afraid that if you are not careful you will crash into someone coming the other way, or rear-end someone after a sudden stop;

The city's night views are dazzling and charming, the skyscrapers reach into the clouds, and the subway is flooded with smells, filth, disorder, and grime;

Coffee shops here are as common as barbecue stalls in Northeast China. Almost everyone carries a cup of coffee, and the city is filled with its aroma;

At that point you realize the words "New York" represent a way of life. Whether you like it or hate it, New York is simply that unique.

I cannot say I love New York that much, but I still hope we meet again before too long.