Shoeshine and More

Shoes looking a bit tired? Take them to one of several corners in central Ankang where you will find shoeshine craftsmen. You can't miss them. They wear red vests. They sit on their kit boxes in front of a wicker chair. They are under trees or a large umbrella they have supplied. Often there are as many as twenty lined up along the edge of the sidewalk. A few of them will display a collection of heels, soles, pieces of leather and a manual stitching machine along side their kit box. There are now, or at least on most days, three seats at my corner.
Over time I have stopped at several seats. Sometimes on my own suggestion, sometimes on the shiner's. For 1Y (12 cents) your shoes are cleaned and polished and waxed and brushed and buffed. Buffed two or three times. The shiners get a workout! My now usual shiner works up a sweat.
Most shiners impress me with their cheerfulness and big smiles. The women especially love to talk. They talk at me. I talk at them. And we all laugh. Then they talk to each other about "ta" (she/her). The first time I sat in a chair I took my dictionary with me for help in asking "how much?" (duoshao qian?) Someone in the group that had gathered to watch my shoeshine experience reached for the dictionary and soon the group was looking at it and talking loudly. They laughed and pointed and passed the book around. When I left with my shoes shining and my dictionary, they were still talking.
Last week I noticed my black sneakers were coming apart at the seams. So I stopped at the corner where I removed one shoe and then the other to have the seams sewn while I waited. While I sat with my socked foot under my fanny (why hadn't I checked to see how clean those socks looked?), two teenage boys stopped to ask me where I am from and what I am I doing in Ankang and to apologize for their English. That about exhausted their English and my Chinese is not up to conversation level so they moved on. After they left a woman older than me (yes, they do exist)stood at a bit of a distance smiling and nodding her head in approval. I put the second shoe on and had the pair polished. A mother and her young daughter waited for the bus. The daughter smiled but said nothing. As I got up to leave the shiner's wife arrived with his lunch. She smiled too. I left maybe 15 minutes after sitting down, with mended polished shoes and only 3Y out of my pocket. With prices like that and the opportunity to observe the community, I've decided not to purchase my own polish.