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Published: December 12th 2010
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It is 4am. The rain wakes me as it will when it is pelting down on a thousand old hollow clay plant pots – the fabric of my roof.
I think of the last two days and my friend who lives in the old lanes in Suzhou.
Within the first two days of arriving back in Suzhou, I went to see him but he wasn’t in. I waited by his door then knocked on the next door, the home of his mother but she wasn’t in either. I should have known that things had changed because she is always in. She can’t go anywhere at 87 years – except one last place.
The next day, I went back and waited silently in his doorway. My friend was holding the newspaper about three inches from his forehead. His head and eyes were tilted upwards to read the words and he was reading slowly with the ever constant Buddhist music chanting in the background. All quiet. No hair to cut. A Buddhist barber for over 50 years in front of me. This is the way I will catch him look at anything to see it closely from now on.
I waited silently for about a minute and then he felt me, lowered the paper and only then turned his head towards me and his face lit up. We greeted each other, he poured me a tea and as we were sitting, the first thing he said was that his mother had died. He looked a sliver of the man he was and as I drank tea, I asked what he was drinking, smelled it and figured it was what I would say to be cheap strong Chinese whisky. It was 11am. He said that he had cried only once then silently looked straight at me. He is grieving every minute of the day. It is pouring from him. It pours across the table to me and I feel deeply sad for him and hot tears roll down my face and I feel weak. He talked of living and money and the house all meaning nothing. It wasn’t his house or his money. In the end it isn’t anyone’s to take. People give him money to cut their hair but the money isn’t his. It is not real. It goes in his pocket but what for? I said he is
thinking this way because his mother has died and he nods. After a long silence, I ask him if he drinks every day. He says he doesn’t and I believe him.
Almost two years ago, this man helped me when I was so deeply sad that I couldn’t breath. When Chris lied and cheated and shattered my daily world, this man sat with me, poured tea, spoke words I couldn’t understand and helped me by being there. He wrote a long list of words which I had translated and the last line has stayed with me ever since. He said:
'Falling down is not terrible. The terrible thing is that you don’t stand up in time.
You should stand up and brush off the dust and go on walking proudly as you used to do'
But I could not say this to him because death is different. It is final. But I can be here. For him, for a while.
I asked him if he would like to walk with me. Where? Anywhere, let’s walk. We walked in the warm breezy day, past the old hostel I used to live in and I took
him inside to meet everyone, past the old hutong houses and the classical garden and into the park. Briefly and from time to time I can take his mind away. My Mandarin conversation is limited but it doesn’t matter because he trusts me. And trust doesn’t come packaged in words, or with money, it isn’t bought, it is born out of years of knowing each other, experiences under belts, time moving on taking in the good and bolstering the bad times and me returning again and again and again.
I made an arrangement to visit him the next day (yesterday) and I turned up at 11.30. He was in exactly the same position as the day before, reading the paper above his forehead but no whisky and no cigarettes.
He packed up to go. I offered lunch at Pin Von. He said the food is bad there and took me to a wonton place on Lindun Lu where you push and shove in line, get a ticket, go to a window and receive a plastic bowl of hot dishy water with floating, wet wontons and a garnish of dried egg. I am the only westerner and everyone is
looking at me. I’m more used to it. The other bowl of big large doughy balls frightens me. I know I can’t put them in my mouth let alone digest them but the wontons are good. Afterwards, the large doughy ball thing is left floating in the dishy water and he doesn’t complain that I should eat it. We just rise and leave.
We catch the 301 and 331 local buses to the farthest part of Suzhou in the west, just before the mountains begin. It takes almost two hours to get to the temple where he prays for his mother. We meet his wife. I eventually understand that she is living and praying every day in the temple for 10 days and nights to support her mother in law to the afterlife. The temple complex is huge and new and the only people here, I gather, are here for the same reason as my friend's wife or to send offerings to the dead. I’ve seen this time and time again in China. Paper offerings in different shapes and forms are made and bagged or boxed in red paper and burned to send on to the dead to help
them in the after life. Paper money, food, wine, clothes, cars and even houses and servants are all forwarded. The red bags of offerings are piled high waiting for the families to burn them. I ask if we can send offerings to his mother but I learn that we cannot until 35 days after the death are up. I realise now how recently she died. This picture comes to me in fragmented pieces that I haphazardly fit together. Sometimes incorrectly.
Each year I am here, I learn more on top of what I have already learned and still I know nothing. My layers of knowledge and understanding are not enough and thin. But I am really grateful to be embraced into this family and learn with fresh eyes what has gone on for thousands of years in China.
On the bus, on the way home, I thank him for taking me and showing me his private life.
With sharing this with you, I hope that I have not abused this trust because this man is a very special man and he is grieving so deeply that he is not a story. He is a way of life. I have not written his name but if you know me well, you will also know him.
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Traveling Hawk
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The right thing to do
I understand him very good. I went through this agony 6 years ago, and part of it is still with me. It will always be. You did the right thing, just being there for him.