February 27, 2008—I put my hood up as I was coming up the subway escalator because I could feel a cold wind sweeping down into the tunnel. I was thinking about a lot of things, I was focused inward, but since I was just coming home from the gym, I was also parched. I thought I’ll treat myself to a Diet Pepsi.

As I was crossing the strange triangular shape of pavement between Yongjia Lu and Gao’an Lu I began noticing that there were an AWFUL lot of outdoor food vendors, not just the yangrou chuan, but all the various veggie skewers, and I thought back to a few moments before and considered that there had also been a larger than average group of people crowded around a chao cai guy at the exit of the subway. And look there--to the side there was even a woman selling smoked duck and meats from a little cart—never saw her before.

I rounded the corner and pulled up my head right in front of Lawson’s. The first thing I saw which jolted me was a green plastic hoop-shaped bicycle lock on the door--the first time I have ever seen such a thing on the door of a Lawson’s. My Lawson’s. My Lawson’s that I go to nearly every day, that I have gone to nearly every day since I have lived here, for maybe five years, maybe more. The Lawson’s I go every time I walk to the subway, the one I go to in the summer for my Diet Pepsi, the one I go to in the winter for my hot boiled tofu and shrimp balls. I have memorized the old ayis behind the counters, the plump no-nonsense one, the older slim kind one, the Shanghainese they speak, the way they get things done quickly and efficiently and familiarly.

I have eaten the meat buns from that glass warming cabinet. I have eaten all the salty snacks, all the chocolate snacks, all the breads. It is the Lawson’s where I first bought those sushi rolls when they used to be six kuai and they used to be really delicious and filled with good stuff and nicely rolled, and it is the place where I discovered they no longer made good sushi rolls, but instead lowered the price by a few mao and now they were filled with not so good stuff, and not neatly rolled and not yummy anymore.

When I was on Atkins (yes, your trusty food columnist once went on Atkins for nearly 2 years, purely out of outrageous curiosity) I bought my various spicy meats there. They once carried these fantastic black pepper spicy beef slices and a month later they no longer carried it. I mourned that, just as I had mourned the passing of the sushi rolls into mediocrity.

I have counted on that Lawson’s. It has been an anchor in my neighborhood and in my life, a stable rock in my rushing water life of constant change and constant self-questioning. Lawson’s was my homing landmark in my neighborhood. It's where I saw the club kids coming in for snacks at 2am, and the elementary students coming in packs when school let out. It's where I brushed up against the ebb and character of the people in my neighborhood, and for a few moments interlaced my steps and movements with theirs in a common space.

After I noticed the green lock, I looked inside and saw the place was taken apart, the shelves were all empty, there was trash on the floors. I turned on my heel, I thought hmm, I wonder if they are renovating. The thought that they were permanently closed had not hit my brain, so I felt just a twinge of regret for my missed Diet Pepsi but nothing else.

Then I decided to check again, I turned around, I looked at the door for some sign, and there it was, a sign in Chinese: “… Thank you for your years of patronage, Please visit the closest Lawson’s on Hunan Lu…” Oh I examined that sign, I read it through twice, not carefully, but just confirming that they meant they were CLOSING. The date at the bottom was yesterday. My birthday. February 26 2008 it said.

How can I describe in all seriousness that I felt like crying? People would laugh if they heard me say such a thing. How can you cry over a 24-hour store? How can you be attached to a chain store with florescent lights and cheap junk food? But I am. That Lawson’s was important to me, to my neighborhood and my life here. There’s not much I count on not changing in Shanghai, not much stable to grab on to. And I thought, my birthday must be a time of change. A time to re-examine what the heck I’m doing with my thinking, and with my development.

March 3, 2008—Epilogue: Yesterday I was again passing by the sad empty store and I saw my friend Kurt B, a perennial fixture on the corner, sitting on his chair by the fruit stand—as dependable and welcome a sight as that Lawson’s had once been. He told me the landlords in our Hengshan Lu neighborhood are getting ever more rapaciously greedy—Lawson’s had been forced out because the landlord raised the price to untenable heights—he heard the new rent was 150,000 rmb. I said, but this was the busiest Lawson's in the whole city! The place was jam-packed at all hours! If they couldn’t pay this rent, who possibly good? He agreed, but told me that there was more to come, landlords are raising prices all throughout our neighborhood. I pondered, if even foreign chain stores like Lawson’s can’t survive, our neighborhood local businesses are going to be hit even harder. In confirmation of this point—walking home that evening I saw a big blue open-bed truck parked outside a small fashion boutique which has been on my block for years now, and always had gorgeous hand-tailored silk dresses in the window. That window was stripped bare now. And the truck was filled with boxes. Standing among them was a group of naked white mannequins, tied together by ropes, and moving on, on to cheaper pastures, far from Hengshan Lu.

April, 29, 2008--Epilogue II: I've just returned from a month in Boston. It's been TWO MONTHS since Lawson's shut down and guess what--the shop is still empty! No new tenant in 2 months means a a pile of lost cash for the owner. I imagine that landlord is regretting that he kicked out my darling Lawson's.