-me, so long ago, and just as afraid, just as confused
looking at photos, I'm afraid
to go back and let the memories
be real. I'm afraid
to go home and face progression,
see the path I walk.
bluebird in the falling leaves,
when do the questions stop?
when do we become the destination?
The word for kata is 型, xíng in Chinese. It is "shape," cut into the earth. A form you've practiced so many times the floor beneath you retains its imprint. How much of the Path is just digging down with our heels by habit, how much of it is breadth and how much depth?
The question of finding yourself is such a western matter. If we are all birds, the Chinese sing beautifully, but it's all the same song; the Americans fight to make their own songs, but some are never able to sing at all. What a shame that flying takes us nowhere, that the whole world reminds us only of home.
For the last week here, I'm planning a trip to Yunnan, "South of the Clouds." I can't say anymore that I'm going places to look for answers, because I know how foolish the idea of answers is. Mistakes and regrets and inevitable; but it's always better to do than to not. Just make sure your house is in order first. What do you really owe to yourself and to people at this moment?
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
11.16: 在中国我知道了…… (edited)
我们已经来到北京三个多月了，上了很多课，跟很多本地人和同学交流了，读了很多关于中国的书，中国的东南西北也去了很多地方。但只是我跟几个朋友自己去河南教小孩英文口语以后，我才看到中国人真正的生活。
今年夏天我在香港教书了，但是那些学生家里都太有钱，所以我教他们的经历跟我教美国人的差不多一样:学生一般都很麻木。不过，在河南省，舞钢人和附近的农民跟我以前认识的人非常不同。那里的学生真有心。跟他们一起聊天、玩儿，我就开始明白如果我是在这里长大的，我的生活应该怎么样。
我是华裔，是在广东出生的，但从一岁以后在美国长大。我以前以为我就是美国人，没想到我会回中国来。这几个月的日子让我知道了:
我是华人。说中文，跟家人一起参加活动，吃地道的中国饭，听中国的音乐，都让我觉得我是在我心里的那个家里，特别舒服。在美国，生活不错，但是在什么地方我都不是本地人，我都不是那里的人。我总是像美国人叫的"亚洲人"。在中国是相反的:其他人看到我没有特别的反应:我跟他们一样像中国人。
我觉得在小城市里教书的时候，我这个人真有用，那里的学生真的需要我。那几天我想了想我在中国出生的小农村和我父母以前的情况，因为他们也在小城市教过书。
以前我在美国的生活没有目的，没办法。但是在中国，我找到了我的家，找到了我自己。还有什么是比这更重要的呢?
今年夏天我在香港教书了，但是那些学生家里都太有钱，所以我教他们的经历跟我教美国人的差不多一样:学生一般都很麻木。不过，在河南省，舞钢人和附近的农民跟我以前认识的人非常不同。那里的学生真有心。跟他们一起聊天、玩儿，我就开始明白如果我是在这里长大的，我的生活应该怎么样。
我是华裔，是在广东出生的，但从一岁以后在美国长大。我以前以为我就是美国人，没想到我会回中国来。这几个月的日子让我知道了:
我是华人。说中文，跟家人一起参加活动，吃地道的中国饭，听中国的音乐，都让我觉得我是在我心里的那个家里，特别舒服。在美国，生活不错，但是在什么地方我都不是本地人，我都不是那里的人。我总是像美国人叫的"亚洲人"。在中国是相反的:其他人看到我没有特别的反应:我跟他们一样像中国人。
我觉得在小城市里教书的时候，我这个人真有用，那里的学生真的需要我。那几天我想了想我在中国出生的小农村和我父母以前的情况，因为他们也在小城市教过书。
以前我在美国的生活没有目的，没办法。但是在中国，我找到了我的家，找到了我自己。还有什么是比这更重要的呢?
Saturday, November 15, 2008
11.14
Another group of three went to Henan this weekend, on more or less the same day-to-day itinerary as we had last week. I find myself stopping throughout the day to wonder where they are at that moment and whether they're appreciating it as much as I did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdDIM7RQxAc
This is the video of the conclusion of our spoken English class, when An Laoshi had all the kids pretending they were Obama and expressing their own version of the affirmation, "Yes, we can!"
Meanwhile, I went out with the group for the first time in a while for pizza in the most westernized bar area of Beijing. I I drank some, but said from the start I wouldn't join them for the clubbing. There's such a crowd mentality to the whole thing, including the peer pressure and the meaninglessness of it all. With a month to go, some people are starting to feel the wastefulness of this whole experience, but nobody's going to do anything about it. I give up on the group, and I give up on trying to fit in. If you want to live your life right, you have to do it yourself.
It didn't help that as we walked in and out of bars there were beggars all over the place, some with children. And I also thought about my language partner, who's in the middle of her international grad school applications, worrying about her future and working toward a real purpose. That just made the frivolousness of our night seem so disgusting in comparison.
Even in a small group with just one othe rperson, there's less of a sense of immersion; there's the common ground of foreignness, and you can't help but cling to that. In the end, as in the beginning, I'm on my own on a path that's going to be worth the cost.
I'm a family man looking for lasting value in the moment. Can no one relate to that anymore?
I miss my guitar.
But I will also add that the other thing I've really been glad for here, besides becoming closer to my roots, is the broader perspective on things like this that really don't matter. It's such a big world. Not everyone is American, or proud to be or in admiration of its culture. And not everyone should have to be. Hallelujah for a chance to be myself and not subject to any labels. Hallelujah for another month in China. Hallelujah for the next day and the understand it will bring.
and wake up where the clouds are far
behind me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdDIM7RQxAc
This is the video of the conclusion of our spoken English class, when An Laoshi had all the kids pretending they were Obama and expressing their own version of the affirmation, "Yes, we can!"
Meanwhile, I went out with the group for the first time in a while for pizza in the most westernized bar area of Beijing. I I drank some, but said from the start I wouldn't join them for the clubbing. There's such a crowd mentality to the whole thing, including the peer pressure and the meaninglessness of it all. With a month to go, some people are starting to feel the wastefulness of this whole experience, but nobody's going to do anything about it. I give up on the group, and I give up on trying to fit in. If you want to live your life right, you have to do it yourself.
It didn't help that as we walked in and out of bars there were beggars all over the place, some with children. And I also thought about my language partner, who's in the middle of her international grad school applications, worrying about her future and working toward a real purpose. That just made the frivolousness of our night seem so disgusting in comparison.
Even in a small group with just one othe rperson, there's less of a sense of immersion; there's the common ground of foreignness, and you can't help but cling to that. In the end, as in the beginning, I'm on my own on a path that's going to be worth the cost.
I'm a family man looking for lasting value in the moment. Can no one relate to that anymore?
I miss my guitar.
But I will also add that the other thing I've really been glad for here, besides becoming closer to my roots, is the broader perspective on things like this that really don't matter. It's such a big world. Not everyone is American, or proud to be or in admiration of its culture. And not everyone should have to be. Hallelujah for a chance to be myself and not subject to any labels. Hallelujah for another month in China. Hallelujah for the next day and the understand it will bring.
and wake up where the clouds are far
behind me
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
11.4 - 11.11: early resolutions
11.4
我的心情根本太怕臭我外边的人。一定要多开我心, 做朋友, 看小叶子, 听世界的水。要真生活。
11.5
The maids here are kind and enthused poeple. I wonder what sorts of things they do in their free time. And I almost wish I had the power to set them free from this subservience, but I realize it is not up to me to decide what has greater meaning or hope in their lives, and that the work they do is neither meaningless nor unnecessary in the scheme of this society. To release someone from an already-established system without changing the system is but a favor granted from pity, and that's very far from noble. The same must be true of teaching.
11.8
I'm in Kevin's and Victoria's home in Wugang (舞钢), Henan Province with Sara and Julia, perhaps the two most 自由 of our abroad group, the most willing to experience and be vulnerable and not entangled in the drama. I made the decision to come four hours before the train left, because despite my still being sick there was every reason to come and none to stay. This has been just as freeing as Wudang was, but in a different way. I just learned the Mandarin version of the Cantonese word 补, as in 补好身体. This trip is certainly the beginning of that.
Kevin and Victoria export MP3 players to Africa and America on weekdays or relax by visiting the villages (and Kevin's 老家) a 15-minute bike ride from this city. We rode bikes with bells and baskets yesterday, Kevin leading the way and Victoria sitting side-saddle like every Chinese person here. We pulled radish plants (萝卜) and bakchoy (白菜) from a generous stranger's field. We made the burrito-like food Henan is famous for. We stood on the side of a road eating 6-foot sugarcanes that a woman hacked down for us. We passed by a primary school as a 9-yr-old was locking up, and she let us inside to have a look. We went to one of her classes at the 中曹学校, interrupting the entire school's lesson plans by being foreigners. We talked to children, and heard their perspectives.
They invited us here to teach for the weekend, as native speakers of English. The village schoolchildren were some of the most purehearted and proprietous people I have ever met. Their English is less than rudimentary because there are no available teachers. The city schoolchildren we taught today have higher levels, and are just as sweet, but their lives are simply too different from the very start. When I have my pick of choices, I will teach where there is the most real need, becaus ethat is where I come from, that is where I live.
11.10 - back from teaching in Henan
非常非常想那里的小朋友门。现在回到北京, 再开始跟同学说英语, 跟他们再上课。根本太普通的日子。上我们的太极拳课时候, 因为今天人少所以比较吃苦, 我觉得很像我家的道场。原来没有办法离开这种辛苦的情况。
住在舞钢有一些不太舒服的: 很小, 还有污染, 另外他们的河南话对我学普通话不太好。但是跟安老师的家人一起和跟他小孩们充实极了。真的有心。我住在北京两个月了, 在香港三个月, 上了很多课, 认识了很多家人也很多本地的中国人, 跟他们讲很多话, 看了很多书和文章关于中国, 却我真的想知道这里的情况的话, 我要小朋友给我了解。原来应该这样吧, 没想到。我不是说我问了他们小孩他们的生活怎么样, 他们不能说, 没办法比较。我就是跟他们玩儿, 讲话。我不会忘我们跟学生一起爬上那里的二郎山时候, Kate 告诉了我他长大以后想当一个fashion designer。是一个很自由的梦想。然后他采了几个新鲜的浆果送给我。他可能是八岁的。有一个更小的孩子拉着我的胳膊常常说: "老师,老师!"
非常难说明我跟他们的时候我有什么感觉。只说我开心根本不够了。有很重要的启发关于我自己的生活应该什么样。不会多说。先生活,再心念。
"I'm Far
AwayHome
And I've
Been Facing"
-the back of Jasmine's glittery coat
11.11
I just had lunch with 张纯 at this 米线 place hidden under a bridge near campus. It was like Vietnamese pho, but fo the Chinese. My 传统 mentality came up, and she was happy for it. Everywhere I go, the locals are overjoyed to find a traditional-minded international Chinese. I cannot say enough how at home I am in this country, how affirmed my very being now is. Individual peopel have so much history they never saw and don't nkow, but they are part of it all the same. So much of education, in any form, is learning how to become yourself.
The issue of one-night stands came up, and I used the word "self-esteem" in English. She translated it as something like "honoring your own heart." I laughed in amazement at the differences in our cultures, at the wrong creases our linguistic connotations have chiseled for us in America.
We also talked about religion. She is a member of the Communist Party (because she was absolved into it at age 12 for being th ebest student in her class), so she's not allowed to participate in any religions. But she wouldn't be able to believe anything other than this life in front of us anyway, she said. I commented the Chinese seem to be more pragmatic about life, and that Westerners are excessively concerned about what happens after death. She countered that it's just a selfish mentality that leads to the idea of a soul continuing on forever, while the focus on harmony of man and nature in Chinese culture allows death to simply be decomposition.
I came to China at the beginning of summer with a lot of questions about myself, my martial arts, my writing, relationships, family, teaching, and a lot of questions I didn't realize I had until the answers arose. I feel very ready now, for whatever is next. I've filled that void in me that never really belonged in America, not even in the dojo. I know who I am and where I come from now. I don't know where I'm headed, but I see the path before me and I see my own two feet. No language can fully express that sense of present life.
我的心情根本太怕臭我外边的人。一定要多开我心, 做朋友, 看小叶子, 听世界的水。要真生活。
11.5
The maids here are kind and enthused poeple. I wonder what sorts of things they do in their free time. And I almost wish I had the power to set them free from this subservience, but I realize it is not up to me to decide what has greater meaning or hope in their lives, and that the work they do is neither meaningless nor unnecessary in the scheme of this society. To release someone from an already-established system without changing the system is but a favor granted from pity, and that's very far from noble. The same must be true of teaching.
11.8
I'm in Kevin's and Victoria's home in Wugang (舞钢), Henan Province with Sara and Julia, perhaps the two most 自由 of our abroad group, the most willing to experience and be vulnerable and not entangled in the drama. I made the decision to come four hours before the train left, because despite my still being sick there was every reason to come and none to stay. This has been just as freeing as Wudang was, but in a different way. I just learned the Mandarin version of the Cantonese word 补, as in 补好身体. This trip is certainly the beginning of that.
Kevin and Victoria export MP3 players to Africa and America on weekdays or relax by visiting the villages (and Kevin's 老家) a 15-minute bike ride from this city. We rode bikes with bells and baskets yesterday, Kevin leading the way and Victoria sitting side-saddle like every Chinese person here. We pulled radish plants (萝卜) and bakchoy (白菜) from a generous stranger's field. We made the burrito-like food Henan is famous for. We stood on the side of a road eating 6-foot sugarcanes that a woman hacked down for us. We passed by a primary school as a 9-yr-old was locking up, and she let us inside to have a look. We went to one of her classes at the 中曹学校, interrupting the entire school's lesson plans by being foreigners. We talked to children, and heard their perspectives.
They invited us here to teach for the weekend, as native speakers of English. The village schoolchildren were some of the most purehearted and proprietous people I have ever met. Their English is less than rudimentary because there are no available teachers. The city schoolchildren we taught today have higher levels, and are just as sweet, but their lives are simply too different from the very start. When I have my pick of choices, I will teach where there is the most real need, becaus ethat is where I come from, that is where I live.
11.10 - back from teaching in Henan
非常非常想那里的小朋友门。现在回到北京, 再开始跟同学说英语, 跟他们再上课。根本太普通的日子。上我们的太极拳课时候, 因为今天人少所以比较吃苦, 我觉得很像我家的道场。原来没有办法离开这种辛苦的情况。
住在舞钢有一些不太舒服的: 很小, 还有污染, 另外他们的河南话对我学普通话不太好。但是跟安老师的家人一起和跟他小孩们充实极了。真的有心。我住在北京两个月了, 在香港三个月, 上了很多课, 认识了很多家人也很多本地的中国人, 跟他们讲很多话, 看了很多书和文章关于中国, 却我真的想知道这里的情况的话, 我要小朋友给我了解。原来应该这样吧, 没想到。我不是说我问了他们小孩他们的生活怎么样, 他们不能说, 没办法比较。我就是跟他们玩儿, 讲话。我不会忘我们跟学生一起爬上那里的二郎山时候, Kate 告诉了我他长大以后想当一个fashion designer。是一个很自由的梦想。然后他采了几个新鲜的浆果送给我。他可能是八岁的。有一个更小的孩子拉着我的胳膊常常说: "老师,老师!"
非常难说明我跟他们的时候我有什么感觉。只说我开心根本不够了。有很重要的启发关于我自己的生活应该什么样。不会多说。先生活,再心念。
"I'm Far
AwayHome
And I've
Been Facing"
-the back of Jasmine's glittery coat
11.11
I just had lunch with 张纯 at this 米线 place hidden under a bridge near campus. It was like Vietnamese pho, but fo the Chinese. My 传统 mentality came up, and she was happy for it. Everywhere I go, the locals are overjoyed to find a traditional-minded international Chinese. I cannot say enough how at home I am in this country, how affirmed my very being now is. Individual peopel have so much history they never saw and don't nkow, but they are part of it all the same. So much of education, in any form, is learning how to become yourself.
The issue of one-night stands came up, and I used the word "self-esteem" in English. She translated it as something like "honoring your own heart." I laughed in amazement at the differences in our cultures, at the wrong creases our linguistic connotations have chiseled for us in America.
We also talked about religion. She is a member of the Communist Party (because she was absolved into it at age 12 for being th ebest student in her class), so she's not allowed to participate in any religions. But she wouldn't be able to believe anything other than this life in front of us anyway, she said. I commented the Chinese seem to be more pragmatic about life, and that Westerners are excessively concerned about what happens after death. She countered that it's just a selfish mentality that leads to the idea of a soul continuing on forever, while the focus on harmony of man and nature in Chinese culture allows death to simply be decomposition.
I came to China at the beginning of summer with a lot of questions about myself, my martial arts, my writing, relationships, family, teaching, and a lot of questions I didn't realize I had until the answers arose. I feel very ready now, for whatever is next. I've filled that void in me that never really belonged in America, not even in the dojo. I know who I am and where I come from now. I don't know where I'm headed, but I see the path before me and I see my own two feet. No language can fully express that sense of present life.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
11.3
我今天去了在永安里地铁站附近的飞机公司写字楼。在很大商场旁边。我不会忘那个情况:早上没有人,很安静。带着我的书包,我一个人走过那个大厅,一步一步。我还记得老师以前说:享受你现在的情况吧,因为你是学生。近来真知道当学生是最好的因为我们根本自由极了。还有多长时间能这样过日子呢?
The three-week cooking classes at local family homes began tonight. It's not so much a class as us watching them cook and chatting over food, beer, and tea. 虽然很小班，却非常热闹。Like a real 家, but with oceanic differences and curiosities. This whole country could never be anything else to me but family.
The three-week cooking classes at local family homes began tonight. It's not so much a class as us watching them cook and chatting over food, beer, and tea. 虽然很小班，却非常热闹。Like a real 家, but with oceanic differences and curiosities. This whole country could never be anything else to me but family.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
10.28 寂寞 to 11.2 武当山
10.28
I found a village right across the street from 北大, where the ponds and streams have been dry for so long that walkways have been paved along the bottom. I traveled in a straight line alongside a tiger of a cat, who weaved his way through bike rakes and leapt atop obstacles in the path. I took pictures of the clothes hanging over spiky lawns. Nothing is sold within these gates, for once; life is only kept or given.
After that, I found the Chinatown of Beijing not too far away, where everything--mostly fruit--is sold. But modestly, and quietly, because only the locals, 本地人, come here. I was able to blend in for a while longer if I covered the flash of my watch. The smell of sweet potatoes was the closest thing to suffocation in this market. It could be a fragrant death among these people.
I see now that it's not the not being understood that makes studying abroad so lonely--because that feeling will pervade everywhere in the world at any time. Excluding the fact of family, I believe Hong Kong was not a lonely experience merely because I had real work to do, with real ramifications. here, it's just time, and schedules, and travel. If I can't justify that, I have no reason for being.
"He worked simply because there was work to do. It seems this kind is best." -The Ronin
-----
10.29: On Bargaining
You pay only exactly what you pay. THe full cost, in the end, is how much you are willing. Relative comparisons can never hold up because there is always cheaper, cheaper. You pay for the experience, you pay for the product, and you pay for the reflection. Buyer's remorse only comes from having excess to begin with.
SPIGOT - 北大 to a 华裔美国人 (for the English magazine here)
My experience of China has largely been a matter of family or a matter of crowds. Beida at night is both and neither at the same time. The campus here has a solidarity that appears most after dark, when people come out walking in slippers with shower baskets, when the stores begin to close and the canteens become quiet reflections.
The streetlamps cast tight shadows, and in places like the chuanr booth, one can stand with an idle sense of purpose, breathing mist, listening to the oil simmer. I watch the people carrying big jugs of hot water back to their rooms, and I can’t help but be enchanted by the simplicity of routine here: the earnestness of taking a walk for hot water from an old spigot, the homeliness of a television’s glow behind the fruit stand late at night. Even the fashion sense seems intended for warmth rather than trendiness.
In the stovepipe mini-market across from the Xuewu Canteen, where photocopiers are constantly at work, there is a woman who has set her bed down in what would be the front office near the entrance. This is not a luxurious position, and I’m sure the perspective is different from the inside rather than from my outsider’s view, but in such bare functionality this woman is probably living her life with more purpose and direction than a lot of the intellectuals I’ve known back home.
Maybe it’s just the charm of being in a different country and having that outsider’s perspective; maybe I’m just taken in by a society where, for once, I’m part of the majority ethnicity rather than the minority; or maybe I just haven’t spent enough time here yet to be disillusioned back into Western standards of living. Regardless of the reason, I know that when I take a short walk to tap hot water into my small flask, I notice the streaks of rust on the spigot, and it makes me feel more in touch with what it means to be alive in this world, and to be working for it. There is no idleness without meaning here.
There is much presence in this place; it is full of quietude and benediction. When the lights go out at night, whether we are dreaming or working or both or neither, we still drink from the same cup, and the stillness touches us all.
-----
10.30
On the 20-hr train to Wudang Mountain, the one spiritual destination I absolutely had to make while here. Already the experience is more real than the spoiled travels we have been going on. I'm on the top of three bunks with no door and a fly that's made a home of the air conditioner. Someone is smoking in this car. I'm anxious and a little excited about the non-Western toilet in the morning; I haven't been forced to squat in this country until now.
The train's stopped for a moment. At least here, at the platform, there is light outside the window, and people gathering within the scope of its shade. I'm hunched against the wall in a foldout seat in the hallway with some sort of military officer who's reading the newspaper. I hope someone notices my English writing and starts talking to me. I've never been good with showing my interest in people, familiar or stranger, in any language.
But by writing--and doing so in necessity, for once--I feel less lonely already. This train has set me free.
night window:
looking for landscape...
only reflections
I got a crappy, expensive, cold dinner at the dining car ten soppyw ashing rooms away. The waitress saw me reading Hemingway and exclaimed, "老人与海?!" She snatched it right from my hand when she gave me my food and sat in a spare seat, mumbling that she was too curious. She almost seemed disappointed it was in Chinese, though. Less exotic, I guess.
Back in my car, I found a handful of unoccupied seats near the middle. It's because of this one dude with a snore to drown out my cousin in Hawaii (who snored so loud one night that the sound of hiimself would wake him up at regular intervals). Also, the window's open to balance out the sound a bit; the compromise is the smell of shit that's been deposited all along these tracks.
-----
10.31
Morning. Still on the train. All farmland. I sit facing the back, watching as small people on large fields trail behind us. Almost always in pairs, either husband or wife tossing up handfuls of seeds from a basket like a blessing of grain.
There's a little girl in the hallway with a mass f pigtails. I still stand by the idea that Chinese is a much more expressive language than English, even for little kids. Their Beijing accents make them sound like a bubblegum brigade; it's not until they're older that the accent makes them sound like pirates.
When the SIM card text-messages me to say I'm in Hubei Province, I wake up and find the hall empty and silent. It's lonely again. The fields transform into lush gardens and backyard hills, in all manner of green, as we pass Gucheng. Now it begins to look like a martial arts novel. One village has its fields surrounding a big perfect square of a pond. Just off from the center of that is a small tree sticking out of the water.
Evening, at the Xuanwu Hotel, watching a Beijing Opera singing contest on CCTV. I'm so tired, and such an outsider, and so alone. This is the least familiar and also least touristy place I've been to in China. It's just a town at the bottom of the mountain, with story and history, but just a town. I walked along the main drag when the kids got out of school at 5. I saw teens hopping over the fence to practice their martial arts at the ruins of a big temple complex (but refrained myself, this time).
But i lost a day from my schedule because the Sunday train ticketsto Beijing were all sold out. I'm waking at 6 in the morning to make a mad dash up the mountain (no time to climb it myself as I had planned, or to spend a night at the time), and then rush back down again and head back to Beijing. I might never come back to this place, and I wouldn't mind returning later, except I already skipped a class to take the train out here to begin with, and our teachers have been taken advantage of more than enough by now. Sometimes gratitude and propriety are a greater cause than exploration; out here, I understand now what Sarah Witman meant six years ago when she told me that her greatest fear was being alone.
What is the cost of solidarity? What is the cost of companionship?
I almost feel like giving up and just hiding in this room with its extra bed and television. But I came this far; I ought to get a glimpse from the top of the mountain before I decide where to go next. I guess that's a metaphor for my black belt too.
-----
11.1
At the Wudang Train Station waiting to go home. Downstairs in the enormously empty room (no idea what it's used for, if the trains all stop upstairs) a dozen women in their early 30s filed in, synchronized, their arms raised in the air. Then the leader stepped out of the line and called out a moderate rhythm as they started a sort of Malaysian-looking dance. Bizarre, yes, but not with the same religious presence of the gray-haired old ladies we passed by in Suzhou at a parking lot after sunset: they danced very slowly, with tight joints and blank faces, to Muslim music playing on a boombox. Those are the moments I love about China and probably will never understand.
I missed sunrise on the mountain and missed sunset on the mountain, and skipped the free (送,用英文怎么说?) hotel breakfast to make it to the front gate early (and also didn't get to see the cute hotel receptionist who blushed when I didn't understand her yesterday). But those are the only things I've missed. I almost added not talking to the WGR [外国人] at the train station I had also seen on the mountains, but I just helped her out with some ticket stuff and it turns out she speaks German (whiel gesturing, and English to me) and is a pretty grumpy person.
On the train. This has been a real pilgrimage. I took the bus 3/4 of the way up, then took the cable cars to the Gold Peak (金顶), the walled temple which actually crowns the vertex. All along the railings up, people had bought little locks here with their names and dates engraved on them. I got the cheapest set, which say 情玄武当山,永结同心 on one side. The other side has my name on one, and 吴立芳 on the other (which is bizarre; I have no idea what it means; maybe it's the name of the woman who engraved it, but that would be awkward considering these locks were in the shape of hearts). These are locks without keys, which hold memories atop this mountain and rust slowly with the flow of wind. I found the windiest spot and locked my set.
On the way back, I took a different route out of curiosity and ended up on a three-and-a-half-hour hike winding around the mountain, encountering temple after temple, instant-noodle stand after instant noodle stand. Oh, and souvenir shops galore, but not in an absurd "Look, white man, come here" sort of way. This is touristy, but in a local, Chinese way.
Along these verdant, empty paths, there was one 9-yr-old boy in a blue windbreaker standing with hands in pockets and half a dozen cucumbers (or some sort of green tubular vegetable) on a tarp before him, 3kuai each. Deep mountain territory, and entirely worth the trek. The world below doesn't even come to mind from up here, where the only view is the precipice of other mountains; home and the rest of civilization only exist in the mind.
But at one point, when I was the only person in sight or sound for as far as I could tell, and the "Danger for falling rocks" signs started coming, I realized how dangerous it actually was for me to come here alone. I imagined myself falling or getting trapped somewhere. No one would know how to find me and tell my family what happened. Moreover, my house--metaphorically speaking--was not in order. There are apologies I have not made yet, and wishes, and decisions I need to go through with before my path ends. The people who told me life gets better after teenagedom were very right; I have so much more 充实 and purpose now than when I was dark and melodramatic.
I don't like being alone when I don't know where I'm going, though. I guess nobody does, and that's why the whole world has been built upon language and community.
There was one kid standing behind a little wooden table, selling drinks and flipping through his primary-school textbooks, hands on his hips in a power-study stance. A little girl with four pigtails toddling down the One Hundred Step Ladder with two brown hard-boiled eggs, each bigger than her hands. Men with those little emperor sedans, carrying mostly the elderly from temple to temple for exorbitant prices. The four businessmen I followed for the first leg of the trip, who stopped every person we passed to ask how much longer the trip was and sighed at every inconsistent answer. The woman at the 飞-something-something table where my endless downhill descent became a baffling uphill climb, who sold me a bottle of water for 4kuai, and when I tried to get it for 3, she said something like, "Hey, man. I'm tired too; I'm the one who had to carry these things all the way up the mountain today!"
But most of all the wind. The moment this whole trip became worthwhile was when I sat int eh cable car for 20 minutes of nothing, and then the wind hit, and I saw fall leaves blowing down the mountainside like little crisps of sun. And immediately after that, a dragon-slip of fire flew in from around the bend, and curved its way right beside me. There was one spot where the wind kept poking through, and in that empty space I swear it formed a heart, and then a monk preaching.
That's my modest cloud tale for the day. It's 8:30. I'm going to sleep, and when I wake I'll talk to the girl in the bunk opposite mine.
-----
11.2
red sunrise
ball of teacup steam
smell of feet
I know some of the trouble happening with family back in the states, and there's nothing I can do about it, not even offer help or condolence without sounding trite. It's 8 in the morning and still 5 more hours on the train. Even then, the journey won't be over.
But I have no wishes. No place I'd rather be than laying on this tight, mildly clean bed, watching anonymous city boxes and farm patches through the window, the sunlight a dusty shade of day. Despite the discomforts and worries and unfulfilled thoughts, I'm at peace. I'm asleep and in motion, the best of both worlds for a while longer before the trip comes to an end.
I found a village right across the street from 北大, where the ponds and streams have been dry for so long that walkways have been paved along the bottom. I traveled in a straight line alongside a tiger of a cat, who weaved his way through bike rakes and leapt atop obstacles in the path. I took pictures of the clothes hanging over spiky lawns. Nothing is sold within these gates, for once; life is only kept or given.
After that, I found the Chinatown of Beijing not too far away, where everything--mostly fruit--is sold. But modestly, and quietly, because only the locals, 本地人, come here. I was able to blend in for a while longer if I covered the flash of my watch. The smell of sweet potatoes was the closest thing to suffocation in this market. It could be a fragrant death among these people.
I see now that it's not the not being understood that makes studying abroad so lonely--because that feeling will pervade everywhere in the world at any time. Excluding the fact of family, I believe Hong Kong was not a lonely experience merely because I had real work to do, with real ramifications. here, it's just time, and schedules, and travel. If I can't justify that, I have no reason for being.
"He worked simply because there was work to do. It seems this kind is best." -The Ronin
-----
10.29: On Bargaining
You pay only exactly what you pay. THe full cost, in the end, is how much you are willing. Relative comparisons can never hold up because there is always cheaper, cheaper. You pay for the experience, you pay for the product, and you pay for the reflection. Buyer's remorse only comes from having excess to begin with.
SPIGOT - 北大 to a 华裔美国人 (for the English magazine here)
My experience of China has largely been a matter of family or a matter of crowds. Beida at night is both and neither at the same time. The campus here has a solidarity that appears most after dark, when people come out walking in slippers with shower baskets, when the stores begin to close and the canteens become quiet reflections.
The streetlamps cast tight shadows, and in places like the chuanr booth, one can stand with an idle sense of purpose, breathing mist, listening to the oil simmer. I watch the people carrying big jugs of hot water back to their rooms, and I can’t help but be enchanted by the simplicity of routine here: the earnestness of taking a walk for hot water from an old spigot, the homeliness of a television’s glow behind the fruit stand late at night. Even the fashion sense seems intended for warmth rather than trendiness.
In the stovepipe mini-market across from the Xuewu Canteen, where photocopiers are constantly at work, there is a woman who has set her bed down in what would be the front office near the entrance. This is not a luxurious position, and I’m sure the perspective is different from the inside rather than from my outsider’s view, but in such bare functionality this woman is probably living her life with more purpose and direction than a lot of the intellectuals I’ve known back home.
Maybe it’s just the charm of being in a different country and having that outsider’s perspective; maybe I’m just taken in by a society where, for once, I’m part of the majority ethnicity rather than the minority; or maybe I just haven’t spent enough time here yet to be disillusioned back into Western standards of living. Regardless of the reason, I know that when I take a short walk to tap hot water into my small flask, I notice the streaks of rust on the spigot, and it makes me feel more in touch with what it means to be alive in this world, and to be working for it. There is no idleness without meaning here.
There is much presence in this place; it is full of quietude and benediction. When the lights go out at night, whether we are dreaming or working or both or neither, we still drink from the same cup, and the stillness touches us all.
-----
10.30
On the 20-hr train to Wudang Mountain, the one spiritual destination I absolutely had to make while here. Already the experience is more real than the spoiled travels we have been going on. I'm on the top of three bunks with no door and a fly that's made a home of the air conditioner. Someone is smoking in this car. I'm anxious and a little excited about the non-Western toilet in the morning; I haven't been forced to squat in this country until now.
The train's stopped for a moment. At least here, at the platform, there is light outside the window, and people gathering within the scope of its shade. I'm hunched against the wall in a foldout seat in the hallway with some sort of military officer who's reading the newspaper. I hope someone notices my English writing and starts talking to me. I've never been good with showing my interest in people, familiar or stranger, in any language.
But by writing--and doing so in necessity, for once--I feel less lonely already. This train has set me free.
night window:
looking for landscape...
only reflections
I got a crappy, expensive, cold dinner at the dining car ten soppyw ashing rooms away. The waitress saw me reading Hemingway and exclaimed, "老人与海?!" She snatched it right from my hand when she gave me my food and sat in a spare seat, mumbling that she was too curious. She almost seemed disappointed it was in Chinese, though. Less exotic, I guess.
Back in my car, I found a handful of unoccupied seats near the middle. It's because of this one dude with a snore to drown out my cousin in Hawaii (who snored so loud one night that the sound of hiimself would wake him up at regular intervals). Also, the window's open to balance out the sound a bit; the compromise is the smell of shit that's been deposited all along these tracks.
-----
10.31
Morning. Still on the train. All farmland. I sit facing the back, watching as small people on large fields trail behind us. Almost always in pairs, either husband or wife tossing up handfuls of seeds from a basket like a blessing of grain.
There's a little girl in the hallway with a mass f pigtails. I still stand by the idea that Chinese is a much more expressive language than English, even for little kids. Their Beijing accents make them sound like a bubblegum brigade; it's not until they're older that the accent makes them sound like pirates.
When the SIM card text-messages me to say I'm in Hubei Province, I wake up and find the hall empty and silent. It's lonely again. The fields transform into lush gardens and backyard hills, in all manner of green, as we pass Gucheng. Now it begins to look like a martial arts novel. One village has its fields surrounding a big perfect square of a pond. Just off from the center of that is a small tree sticking out of the water.
Evening, at the Xuanwu Hotel, watching a Beijing Opera singing contest on CCTV. I'm so tired, and such an outsider, and so alone. This is the least familiar and also least touristy place I've been to in China. It's just a town at the bottom of the mountain, with story and history, but just a town. I walked along the main drag when the kids got out of school at 5. I saw teens hopping over the fence to practice their martial arts at the ruins of a big temple complex (but refrained myself, this time).
But i lost a day from my schedule because the Sunday train ticketsto Beijing were all sold out. I'm waking at 6 in the morning to make a mad dash up the mountain (no time to climb it myself as I had planned, or to spend a night at the time), and then rush back down again and head back to Beijing. I might never come back to this place, and I wouldn't mind returning later, except I already skipped a class to take the train out here to begin with, and our teachers have been taken advantage of more than enough by now. Sometimes gratitude and propriety are a greater cause than exploration; out here, I understand now what Sarah Witman meant six years ago when she told me that her greatest fear was being alone.
What is the cost of solidarity? What is the cost of companionship?
I almost feel like giving up and just hiding in this room with its extra bed and television. But I came this far; I ought to get a glimpse from the top of the mountain before I decide where to go next. I guess that's a metaphor for my black belt too.
-----
11.1
At the Wudang Train Station waiting to go home. Downstairs in the enormously empty room (no idea what it's used for, if the trains all stop upstairs) a dozen women in their early 30s filed in, synchronized, their arms raised in the air. Then the leader stepped out of the line and called out a moderate rhythm as they started a sort of Malaysian-looking dance. Bizarre, yes, but not with the same religious presence of the gray-haired old ladies we passed by in Suzhou at a parking lot after sunset: they danced very slowly, with tight joints and blank faces, to Muslim music playing on a boombox. Those are the moments I love about China and probably will never understand.
I missed sunrise on the mountain and missed sunset on the mountain, and skipped the free (送,用英文怎么说?) hotel breakfast to make it to the front gate early (and also didn't get to see the cute hotel receptionist who blushed when I didn't understand her yesterday). But those are the only things I've missed. I almost added not talking to the WGR [外国人] at the train station I had also seen on the mountains, but I just helped her out with some ticket stuff and it turns out she speaks German (whiel gesturing, and English to me) and is a pretty grumpy person.
On the train. This has been a real pilgrimage. I took the bus 3/4 of the way up, then took the cable cars to the Gold Peak (金顶), the walled temple which actually crowns the vertex. All along the railings up, people had bought little locks here with their names and dates engraved on them. I got the cheapest set, which say 情玄武当山,永结同心 on one side. The other side has my name on one, and 吴立芳 on the other (which is bizarre; I have no idea what it means; maybe it's the name of the woman who engraved it, but that would be awkward considering these locks were in the shape of hearts). These are locks without keys, which hold memories atop this mountain and rust slowly with the flow of wind. I found the windiest spot and locked my set.
On the way back, I took a different route out of curiosity and ended up on a three-and-a-half-hour hike winding around the mountain, encountering temple after temple, instant-noodle stand after instant noodle stand. Oh, and souvenir shops galore, but not in an absurd "Look, white man, come here" sort of way. This is touristy, but in a local, Chinese way.
Along these verdant, empty paths, there was one 9-yr-old boy in a blue windbreaker standing with hands in pockets and half a dozen cucumbers (or some sort of green tubular vegetable) on a tarp before him, 3kuai each. Deep mountain territory, and entirely worth the trek. The world below doesn't even come to mind from up here, where the only view is the precipice of other mountains; home and the rest of civilization only exist in the mind.
But at one point, when I was the only person in sight or sound for as far as I could tell, and the "Danger for falling rocks" signs started coming, I realized how dangerous it actually was for me to come here alone. I imagined myself falling or getting trapped somewhere. No one would know how to find me and tell my family what happened. Moreover, my house--metaphorically speaking--was not in order. There are apologies I have not made yet, and wishes, and decisions I need to go through with before my path ends. The people who told me life gets better after teenagedom were very right; I have so much more 充实 and purpose now than when I was dark and melodramatic.
I don't like being alone when I don't know where I'm going, though. I guess nobody does, and that's why the whole world has been built upon language and community.
There was one kid standing behind a little wooden table, selling drinks and flipping through his primary-school textbooks, hands on his hips in a power-study stance. A little girl with four pigtails toddling down the One Hundred Step Ladder with two brown hard-boiled eggs, each bigger than her hands. Men with those little emperor sedans, carrying mostly the elderly from temple to temple for exorbitant prices. The four businessmen I followed for the first leg of the trip, who stopped every person we passed to ask how much longer the trip was and sighed at every inconsistent answer. The woman at the 飞-something-something table where my endless downhill descent became a baffling uphill climb, who sold me a bottle of water for 4kuai, and when I tried to get it for 3, she said something like, "Hey, man. I'm tired too; I'm the one who had to carry these things all the way up the mountain today!"
But most of all the wind. The moment this whole trip became worthwhile was when I sat int eh cable car for 20 minutes of nothing, and then the wind hit, and I saw fall leaves blowing down the mountainside like little crisps of sun. And immediately after that, a dragon-slip of fire flew in from around the bend, and curved its way right beside me. There was one spot where the wind kept poking through, and in that empty space I swear it formed a heart, and then a monk preaching.
That's my modest cloud tale for the day. It's 8:30. I'm going to sleep, and when I wake I'll talk to the girl in the bunk opposite mine.
-----
11.2
red sunrise
ball of teacup steam
smell of feet
I know some of the trouble happening with family back in the states, and there's nothing I can do about it, not even offer help or condolence without sounding trite. It's 8 in the morning and still 5 more hours on the train. Even then, the journey won't be over.
But I have no wishes. No place I'd rather be than laying on this tight, mildly clean bed, watching anonymous city boxes and farm patches through the window, the sunlight a dusty shade of day. Despite the discomforts and worries and unfulfilled thoughts, I'm at peace. I'm asleep and in motion, the best of both worlds for a while longer before the trip comes to an end.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)