Rain and mud

💦 Rain, Mud, Yogurt, and the Great Fall: A Tale of Two Slips.

Zhengzhou has been doing its best impression of a rainforest lately—rain pouring down for days, turning sidewalks into rivers and unpaved paths into slippery mudslides. Today, I witnessed a scene straight out of a slapstick comedy (minus the laugh track): a student, brave and determined, took a detour to avoid the flooded main road… only to meet his fate in the mud.

One moment he was walking, the next—splat!—he was down, swallowed by the earth like a soggy burrito. It was one of those moments where everyone gasps, then pretends not to stare, while secretly hoping he’s okay and also kind of grateful it wasn’t them. For him, it was a tragedy. For the rest of us, a reminder: nature has a wicked sense of humor.

And oh, how it brought back memories.

Flashback to January 2020. Zhuzhou. I was teaching, the skies were clear, but the ground still held the soggy secrets of previous rains. I was coming back from the canteen for lunch, as I always do (some habits are sacred),carrying a humble cup of yogurt—my post-lunch treat, my dairy delight.

Then it happened.

One misstep. One traitorous patch of wet earth. And down I went, like a majestic tree felled in slow motion. My clothes? A canvas of mud. My dignity? Left behind in a puddle. And the yogurt? Oh, the yogurt. It exploded on impact, splashing across my black jacket in a dramatic burst of white. I looked like a modern art installation titled “Despair in Dairy.”

I had to trudge back home, dripping and defeated, to change clothes. Fortunately I had have my Lunch already. Pride was bruised. And while I can laugh about it now, trust me—on that day, it was anything but funny.

So when I saw that student fall today, I didn’t laugh. I winced. I remembered. I empathized. Because once you’ve been baptized by mud and yogurt, you never forget.

Rain may wash away many things, but it never washes away a good story.

Article by Marcelo Gameiro

Published 19 Sep 2025