August 31st, 2008
I’m reading a novel right now that quotes Henry James as having said, “If you have to write out what has moved you about a thing, an experience, then you probably haven’t been moved”. I don’t agree with the venerable James, but I do see that when you’ve had as many impressions as I’ve had in such a short time, instead of making time to write everything down, I tend to keep quietly to myself in the evenings and savor the day, savor the fact that my mind can’t quite comprehend it all, much less try and capture it in words.
I’ve yet to sit down and mull over the fact that I find myself in China again. China. This crazy, tumultuous, foreign country that became home for twelve months, just twelve months ago, in fact. And here I am, all over again. There are a lot of people around me as I experience China this time, many of them have never been to China, have never left the US before. It is endearingly difficult at times to be among them, but for the most part, I adore seeing things through their eyes, for of course I was once there, in that place, that frame of mind. Still, it would be nice to get away once and a while, to relish the fact that I’ve been here before and have had meaningful moments with complete strangers. I’ve made time for myself so that almost every day I’ve had these kinds of solitary, quiet interactions, for otherwise, this little UW group is like a bull in a China shop (WOW, pun not originally intended : )
I’ve also got a partner in crime on this trip, Hao Zhe Hua (Josh). Being 27, he gets my cultural references, my moments of light sarcasm, and we always seem to make eye contact when an especially naïve moment occurs among our peers. Josh was in all three of my Chinese classes last year. He just finished grad school (with three degrees and four years under his belt) and was often very supportive during my more frantic moments of being a first year grad student. Both of us have very independent natures and have done a good deal of traveling so we’re equally straining under the tight control of this program. At the same time, we appreciate the number of activities provided, realizing how difficult this trip would be for an individual with no contacts to pull off. Josh is also in a long-distance relationship, and we’ve been able to commiserate about the bittersweet joy of being so in love, even if apart from your lover. In any case, we’ve been keeping each other good company.
Again the last entry ended abruptly because some duty came up in the middle of my writing session. Today I had grand notions of returning after the morning excursion and writing all afternoon. Instead, I went to the Internet café with Hao Zhe Hua (Josh) and Ming Cai (Ray) and then we went in search of a coffee shop. Having been to China before, I knew how difficult it would be to find what the guys were looking for, but I figured, instead of acting as if I know everything, I’ll just go along and see what we can find. We met Si Da Ming (Tim) on our way back to the main street in front of the University and he decided to come along. We only had to walk a little ways and we found a coffee shop. It was a swank restaurant with a menu of twenty pages or so, all dedicated to coffee, tea, sweet treats, juices, milkshakes, etc. We took a table by the window and the boys all ordered. Ray’s mocha turned out to be a cup of black coffee. Almost identical to Josh’s “black coffee” and Tim ordered a cappuccino, which was pretty authentic. Josh also ordered a fruit salad. When it arrived, he was given a large plate of carefully chopped fruit with mayonnaise drizzled liberally across it. He asked for a fruit salad sans the mayonnaise, which confounded the waitress, though she humored him and though you’d think the other dish went uneaten, it was picked at until it was mostly gone. We stayed for several hours, attempting homework but talking instead. Next thing we knew, it was almost seven o’clock and time for dinner back on campus.
We returned to school and had dinner. Several people have dropped from “duzi” problems – stomach problems – and so our dinner party was somewhat subdued. After dinner a handful of us waited for the fruit that completes each meal while others went to the Internet café and to get bubble tea and ice cream. Yu Laoshi sat with us in the dining room and while we waited for the fruit plates we talked about the Mao era and Chinese politics. She gave her impressions of the twentieth century and Mao’s leadership and its effect on China and students asked questions ranging across a broad array of topics. The students around the table had various backgrounds and the questions were very interesting, especially Yu Laoshi’s responses to them. It was a very special moment of the trip for me because with Yu Laoshi, a lot of the Chinese veneer slips away and you can converse with her about difficult topics in an honest and gentle way. It is easy to see that students are very comfortable around her and that she is an incredibly persuasive and effective teacher. Although she is very professional, there is a kindness that makes one feel safe and respected. She can also be very playful and is certainly very young at heart.
Yesterday was a sunny and oppressively hot day. As we were returning from Yangshuo by bus last night, the thunder rolled and the lightning lit up the sky. It started to rain just as we arrived back at the University and continued throughout the night. This morning, when I stepped outside, it was cooler outside than in my room and the wind blew rain into my face. The rain never became heavier than a steady mist, but the temperature had dropped considerably and it was very comfortable outside, though quite slippery.
We went to Fubo hill, one of the many formations within the city that has been turned into a small park. This hill is along the edge of the Li river, which we cruised down yesterday. The water, over the centuries has risen and rubbed through some of the rock to create a great network of caves at the base of the mountain. When we first entered the park, we went through this underground network. With some help from Chinese engineers looking to “improve” the cave network in order to optimize potential tourist enjoyment, the network was like a four-way stop underground. At the center of the cave, four tunnels met. We felt the cross-current wind surging up from the wind that came off of the river and ran through the cave. When we entered the tunnels, Josh and I immediately were drawn to the tunnel that was perfumed with incense. Our handler, Qin Laoshi (I called him Cai Laoshi in a previous post), tried calling us back but we feigned ignorance and kept walking. We came to a small Buddhist temple situated in the nooks of the cave at the end of the tunnel. Buddha sculptures were carved into the cave walls and candles and incense warmed the cave with a womb-like suffusion. Female monks assisted visitors wishing to write incantations to ancestors. We reveled in the holiness of the site, hidden and protected from China’s nationalistic suspicion of Buddhism, and then returned to the group, fearing that our absence might draw twenty students with twenty cameras to the quiet space.
Another tunnel led to the part of the mountain swept by the river. More Buddha statues were carved into the walls and low-hanging ceilings. A make-shift clothesline held “traditional” ethnic dress clothes and a few vendors stood bored and glassy-eyed, too tired to look for willing customers among our group. In almost every other spot that we’ve been to now, these vendors try to put the clothes on you and snap a photo and process it all before you’ve walked away. By the time it’s been processed, the hope is that you’ll feel too guilty not to pay for it, realizing that if you don’t take it, it might end up on the wall of “examples”, a wall that bears uncomfortable looking foreigners in ill-fitting, brightly colored clothes, grimacing for a picture they can’t say no to.
Also by the water, and under a very low-hanging bit of cave, was another of the bamboo rafts we’ve seen all over the city. Tied with practically invisible fishing line to the raft were two disheveled cormorants. As they dipped and dived in the shallow water, they became more and more entangled in the fishing line, their handler paying no mind to this. An older European couple made their way toward the raft and the woman pointed to the birds and then to her husband, who was wielding an expensive camera with zoom lens. The handler immediately started pulling the birds in to shore, yanking on the fishing line. The birds got stuck on each other’s line and squawked and squeeked, eventually being untangled and placed on a bamboo stick. The stick was hoisted and placed on the white woman’s shoulders. She never smiled once, but looked at her husband, nodded and he snapped a few photos. Listlessly, she returned the bamboo pole to the handler, flung a five-kuai bill into a pot near the raft and walked toward the exit. Her husband followed.
One of my peers looked at me, with a frown, and said, “We should have learned the animal rights chapter this summer, after all, Tai Ruo Shui (my Chinese name). I would like to tell that handler a few things in her own language”. Although I was clearly feeling the same sadness for the birds, I don’t know what to think about street vendors in China. It seems a very, very complicated mess, the whole approach to tourism. It’s something I’m still trying to understand in my mind and so I can’t really make judgment calls, especially since I don’t know where these vendors come from or what their economic situation is or has been. What other opportunities are there for these people? In any case, it’s obvious that animals are thought of as being very, very, VERY low in the hierarchy, especially when many humans find that they have very few rights themselves.
There was a larger Buddha sculpture in a scooped out bit of cave. It was separated from another bit of scooped out cave by a thin partition of the cave wall. In this thin partition, a perfectly round hole had been worn through so that sitting down, a person could pass their arm through the hole and touch and rub the foot of the Buddha sculpture. Yu Laoshi told us that this was a Buddha of procrastination, or last-minute hope. When someone had waited to the last minute to fix a situation, they would often pray to this deity in the hopes that some sort of divine intervention would save them. Apparently the deity is specifically worshipped by poor students. I sat down and gave the Buddha’s foot a good rub…just in case…
We emerged from the cave tunnels and climbed Fubo hill, which is another of these vertical mounds of sand-dropped earth that sits immovable among Guilin’s modern buildings. I don’t know how high these small mountains are, but there’s no way to climb them except to climb stairs straight up and around the mountain. I’ve climbed the ten flights of stairs here at the door almost daily and the hills are no different. Today, with the rain, the marble steps were dangerously slick. I walked slowly and evenly, placing one foot before the next and felt the vertigo of scenery moving past in my periphery. At the top of the hill, we could see the University campus across the Li river as well as the old campus where we saw the painting examples at the art gallery, and the hill on the old campus that we climbed a few days ago. So far, I’ve climbed four of these bizarre mountains here in the city, and one or two others outside of the city at the Reed Flute Cave (all of which I have yet to write about…though I’ve got notes that will hopefully help me remember very important bits from here and there).
Speaking of the formations…I asked Yu Laoshi as well as Qin Laoshi if there was a special name for them in Chinese. Both said that they are simply referred to as “mountain” in Chinese. Perhaps they are referred to as “Guilin mountains” outside of the city, in other provinces, but there is no special name for the kind of formation particular to this area. If you’ve looked at pictures I’ve taken, you can see that there is certainly something different, unique about these so-called mountains. In a moment of frivolity, Yu Laoshi suggested that I come up with a name for them. After more research and thought into the matter, perhaps I will. As for now, it is too daunting of a task, so special and curious are they. I am drawn to them and have enjoyed pushing myself hard to walk up them quickly in order to feel the euphoric surge of heat and space and air that meets you at the top each time.
We left Fubo hill and arrived at Diecai Mountain. I’m not sure what the story behind this mountain is, as I wandered off during Qin Laoshi’s description after we got off the bus. At first, I thought I was going to have to escape. We entered the gates with a gaggle of forty Chinese tourists hot on our heels. To enter the park (and this is the case at almost every site we’ve been to so far) you must first pass through an intricate maze of vendors’ stalls and get poked and pulled by vendors hawking their same wares at each site. We entered the Diecai vendor maze and I was just about to tell Josh something when three loudspeakers went off, and vendors attacked from all sides. I pressed through quickly and walked to the entrance to the path up the mountain. I sat down and watched the melee from across a pond that had fake water lily blossoms poking out of metal rods to make it look as though the lilies were blooming 365 days a year. These lilies were purple, red, pink, green, blue and bright yellow, very authentic looking. Very natural. As I marveled that a veritable rain forest rested quietly behind me while total tacky pandemonium exploded before my eyes, members of our group started to emerge from the pummeling line, eyes wide as frightened deer. We divided into groups to enjoy the mountain for an hour and started to climb. It was misting again and it felt wonderful on my bare shoulders.
As we walked up, up, up, the Chinese student picked to chaperone us suggested that we visit the bird sanctuary. We entered a stuffy little room and Josh purchased a small cup of bird feed. It was in a small plastic baggie and the woman selling it dumped it into a plastic cup. We entered the enclosure and immediately encountered several peacocks. We had seen at least two-dozen peacocks since arriving in Guilin and not one of them still had a tail. Not only were their beautiful long feathers gone, but the quills had been plucked out as well. Every peacock we had seen, including these birds, looked as if its bottom half had been ripped out. A very frightening thing to see up close. Several other birds swooped above our heads, songbirds with beautiful calls. Someone worried aloud about avian flu, someone else asked if peacocks carried SARS. Josh and I pressed forward, hoping to get to a quiet place where the birds might relax and eat some of the seed. I saw a female peacock resting up on a low wall and scooped a small handful from Josh’s cup. It smelled like parmesan cheese and had a bit of corn thrown in. I tried to get close to the female bird, but as I came towards her, she jumped up quickly and a small chick emerged from under her. They ran away, frightened. I dropped the feed. At this point, a white and blue peacock, a little more frazzled than the rest had found Josh and his cup and was very aggressively eyeing the cup. Once, when Josh’s hand fell below his waist, the bird pecked at the cup and almost caught Josh’s finger in its beak. Not daunted by the circle of giggling humans that had cornered this bird, it kept its eye on the cup and whenever it had the chance, it attacked it. We were surprised that even when Josh dropped some of the feed on the ground, the bird paid no attention and kept focused on the cup. We thought it completely deranged until Josh said, “Why is this birdseed moving?” And then several maggots popped out from under the feed and he dropped the cup almost on the crazy white bird’s head. It pounced on the maggots and ate all of them within seconds. I couldn’t leave the sanctuary fast enough, looking for a bathroom to wash my hands in. Josh was hot on my heels, the two of us shaking from our close maggot encounter.
Hands washed, we found Yu Laoshi resting at the foot of the steep rise to the top of the mountain. Done with climbing until after lunch, I perched myself near her and gladly took some hand sanitizer offered to me. I like to think I don’t fret about such things, and almost never will you see me using hand sanitizer, but this was a very, very special occasion. Maggots. We chatted with Yu Laoshi and enjoyed the breeze while the rest of the group climbed up and then climbed down. Afterwards we returned to the bus and went to lunch at a restaurant in the shopping district. After lunch, some students peeled off from the group and went shopping. I intended to return to my room to write as I mentioned above. Before those of us returning to campus got back on the bus, we walked to the river and saw two pagodas, the sun and the moon. Someone asked what was inside of the pagodas and Qin Laoshi responded with a serious casualness, “There are several souvenir stands on each floor. That’s about it.” Someone else asked what the pagodas were built for, and I almost expected Qin Laoshi to respond, “They were built so tourists would have something to look at”. Instead he said he wasn’t sure.
Si Da Ming (Tim) probably wins the award for most enthusiastic student. He’s been looking forward to this trip for six months now. He was in the second year intensive class with me this summer and his Chinese has really improved to the point where he can casually converse with almost anyone. Among the things he’s been waiting for is shopping. He has spent more money in the past week than I spent on souvenirs during my entire year in China. Somehow, vendors see him and just KNOW that he’s the one to approach. Not only is he very willing to buy, he’s exceedingly friendly and a self-proclaimed pushover. Whenever we are in a place with children selling flowers or young women selling photos of themselves, he gets nearly attacked. Today, by the sun and moon pagodas, a very smart little girl came right up to him and almost forced him to buy a rose. She had all kinds of tricks up her tiny sleeves and yet he managed to fend her off. It was the first time I’d seen Si Da Ming walk away without handing over even a few kuai. I can only think that he disliked seeing this little girl living on the street so much that he didn’t want to support what he saw. At one point he asked her why she wasn’t in school and she said, “Because I don’t want to go to school and my mom prefers I be here anyway.” In some way, I think Si Da Ming felt that giving her money showed support for her street lifestyle.
Well, in the most roundabout way, I’ve managed to record another day. There have been a slew of them between this one and the last entry but I still feel as though I’ve made progress. Now I must go write for the other blog and then I must do my Chinese homework, which was due three days ago!!!
