Old & New

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Sometimes just a random comment can challenge an entire way of thinking. No, I’m not talking about Steve Colbert’s scathing address to the White House Correspondent’s Dinner the other day, I’m talking about a guy I met the other day. He’d asked if I’d gotten out and seen much of China in my six months here.

“Not much besides Shanghai,” I told him. “I’m waiting until my language skills improve.”

I knew the lie of it before I even said the words. The truth of my homebody status is that despite all the travel I do, leaving home frightens me. I mean, face it, despite the flashy brochures published by travel agencies, travel is neither always easy nor comfortable. There are language difficulties, misunderstandings and where I usually go, a huge disparity between my relative wealth and that of the locals. I have fears of getting my money stolen, of eating bad food and getting sick, of the bus I’m riding in driving off a cliff. My mind contains fertile ground for fear-making.

With that in mind, during the recent May 1st Workers Holiday, I booked myself into a hard-class train seat to Beijing. Sixteen hours, 1000 miles, packed with the people on a neck-bending wooden bench. Sure I could have flown, but I’m curious about the Chinese characteristic of forbearance. Having become accustomed to the little annoyances of getting cut off in traffic or elbowed out of a queue, I upped the ante.

It wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d thought. The seat was cushioned and actually had lumbar support. By chance I landed a window. My seatmates were mostly college kids who chatted through the night playing cards under the fluorescent glare. The intercom blared announcements during a tape loop of Chinese pop songs. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as I imagined and before long, I’d nodded off amid the din.

The next words I heard were the familiar ‘Do you speak English?’ I cracked open an eye. It was 5:30, the sun was rising and one of the cuties told me I’d surprised everyone by sleeping through the night. Eight hours down, eight to go. After breakfast and several more naps, everyone at our table of six were best friends, had swapped phone numbers and we’d arrived in Beijing.

I booked myself a place over the web at the Zen Hostelry which promotes itself as a hostel ‘but so much more’ including English speaking staff. This, I discovered, is a relative term. The ‘tour booking service’ lacked simple pamphlets and my words “Great Wall” were met with blinking stares. But between my busted Chinese and their mangled English, in my first hour I’d bought a map, rejected an offer to hire a private car to take me 60 miles to the Disneyfied section of the Great Wall and I’d found out where I could see the Shaolin Kung Fu Monks.

Map in hand I set out on foot, giving myself 3 hours to walk 20 minutes to get tickets for the show. Having misread the map, I spent the first hour of the time breathing diesel fumes and retracing my steps along a dusty highway. Finally arriving at the theater, I learned the show the hotel staff directed me to was the Acrobats of China, not the Kung Fu Monks. But Chinese are super helpful to foreigners and a guy told me to get a bus to a different theater.

But the thing about buses is, they run in two directions. Without being able to read Chinese, that means I had an even chance of going the wrong way. In three days in Beijing, I managed to beat those odds, boarding the wrong bus in only seven out of 15 attempts. The subway was much easier and with the help of English maps, I managed to bat 6 for 6.

With an hour to spare, I found the Red Theater, bought a $20 ticket and ate a plate of fried rice.

My first inkling about the show came from a promotional blurb I saw at the box office. It quoted Ireland’s deputy Ambassador who said “This show is more energetic than ‘River Dance.’” PBS viewers might remember RiverDance as RiverPants. The show prominently featured traditional Irish dancer Michael Flatley’s shapely butt and bare chest. However, in terms of ‘more energetic” I took the Irishman’s review to mean that the Chinese performers would be moving their arms AND legs.

I sat next to a 10-year-old French kid named Pierre and had a pleasant little conversation, trying to keep the French in my language cortex from mixing with Chinese. Together we enjoyed watching the story of little Chun Yi (Pure One) leave his mother, dedicate himself to the path, get diverted by the ‘beautiful fairy he has created in his mind’ and suffer great remorse only to recover, pass through the temple gate, reach enlightenment and break flat metal bars over his head. Again, something Flatley never even attempted in his dance show.

Morning dawned again at 5:30. Time enough to catch a bus (in the right direction) to the subway and emerge at 6:30 in the morning amid a throng carrying innumerable overstuffed bags, all walking toward the Station of One Hundred Buses. My directions told me to look for the Number 12 tourist bus but it was not in sight. Instead I located one whose driver nodded when I asked for Simatai, a section of the Great Wall, about 3 hours away.

My first clue about this bus was the complete lack of foreigners. My second was the 10 yuan ticket price. I was figuring it would be more like 60. But seeing no other buses, I boarded the 980 and for the next 90 minutes, it worked its way north. All the while I was creating an ‘ugly fairy in my mind’ about having taken the wrong bus. The occasional road sign indicating Simatai was reassuring and half way there, we stopped and a man wearing the familiar blue and orange bus driver’s jacket got on and announced “Simatai.” I followed him off, expecting to change buses. But while this driver had a jacket, he had no bus. The 980 sped off in a cloud of sand and diesel. I stood amid ten people all looking to give me a helpful ride.

“Shit!” I yelled. The people who’d gathered took a step back. I knew in that moment all the ugly fairy I’d nurtured on the 980 convinced me I should leave the safety of the scheduled bus. And standing here at an intersection, the lone foreigner, I’d been marked for a sap by a guy with no bus.
“Okay,” I resigned. “How much?”
For 180 yuan he would take me to Simitai and back, an hour drive each way in his own car. And in that moment, I took a breath and a new thought entered my head.

Travel, like practicing yoga postures, puts me into challenging places and asks that I ‘find comfort amid the discomfort.’ When I was younger, the thought of leaving home made me physically ill. I’d often catch a cold before a trip and along the way, the fear made me a difficult person to travel with. But I’ve begun noticing that and letting go. Besides, I realized, what’s 20 bucks?

“Hao, zoa le” I said. “Good. Lets go.” I didn’t even bargain.

Along the way we got to talking. My driver told me today was a busman’s holiday, so he was working privately. My hiring him would pay the same as nearly three days of bus driving, minus car expenses. He offered me a cigarette and when I declined, he asked permission for himself to light up. ‘Please do,” I said. There’s no reason to deprive a driver of the chemicals that help him stay sharp.

An hour later, I paid him half the fare and he accompanied me to the ticket booth. We agreed to meet in three hours and I set off walking.

Simatai is a more rustic version of the Great Wall than most visitors see, partially preserved and appearing much as it did during the Ming Dynasty of the 1400s. Along the way, I was huffing my way up the stairs when an old man, maybe 70 or 80 appeared at my side. He’d caught up to me and didn’t appear to be as winded as I. His remaining brown teeth and wizened face earned my immediate appreciation. And his fitness was remarkable as I had been passing others left and right. He asked, as everyone does, which country I was from and then told me he really likes Americans. Well, yeah. Then he delivered his pitch. In addition to being a farmer, he carried a pouch of souvenirs. Picture books, T-shirts, the standard goods. Only I wasn’t buying. And I felt kinda bad about this. Here was an old, old man who’d been through so much hardship and all he wanted was for me to part with a few quai for a lousy shirt. But I have enough stuff and every thing I needed for four days fit into my day-pack with room to spare. I told him the only thing I buy is food, water and shelter. I left him standing there, sad faced, telling him I was sorry.

He did, however, give me a lesson that I only realized days later. Everyone who is trying to sell me something is just trying to make it through the day. My driver, the numerous ‘art students’ in Tiananmen offering to take me to see their master’s works, the shoe shiners. Most of them, with the exception of at least one shoe shiner, are just honest people trying to make a living. Knowing that, I let go of the fearful stories of getting jumped and rolled. Not that it doesn’t happen, it just doesn’t happen often enough to worry about. Especially as much as I worry.

The Wall itself is beautiful. A masterful work of architecture even if it was designed to keep foreigners out of China’s own comfort zone. And likewise, the Forbidden City and the Tiananmen. But to me those places lacked. Partly it is my own ignorance and the Chinese tour infrastructure hasn’t developed enough to include story amid the structures. Signage is limited to nearly meaningless dates or figures of weights and measures. No one could tell me how many Huns had tried to breach the wall. Or how soldiers defended the palace. Missing are the things that make history come alive. Fortunately, there are books and movies that help bring imagination to the concrete. Without that, I’d have really been at a loss.

Story, however, does exist in Beijing. I found it in an old military factory called Dashanzi. The place was built in the early 50s designed by East German architects. I can’t think of a better recipe for an argument than pitting German designers with Chinese builders and naturally the project ran over budget trying to fit the German’s demanding quality standards for things like earthquake safety. But the high ceilings and natural light made Dashanzi one of the most livable factories in China. Then in the 80s, the government cut loose its money-losing factory and now, amid the brick Bauhaus warehouses and living quarters, Dashanzi has become home to a loose collection of artists of all measure occupying probably 100 studios.

From almost the first step inside, I found inspiration. One artist sculpted clay and created quirky ‘Wallace and Grommet” animations of modern scenes like Saddam Hussein’s trial and Jack Ruby’s killing Lee Harvey Oswald. Coming from the shoulder-to-shoulder sardine can of the Forbidden City, I felt an openness that lifted my mood. It affected those around me as well and a moment later I was speaking with two Americans and the conversation turned to yoga. The 60ish man asked if it could help him lose weight. “It will help you make choices about what you do with your body,” I said. His overweight friend appreciated my explanation of yoga’s Zen-like qualities. “Wow,” she said after I’d explained some of yoga’s deeper meaning. “I think this was just a very significant conversation.”

I love this about art spaces. When the built environment is designed well, it allows openness among people. We’re all craving connection with others, but our typical coat, tie and concrete cube lives don’t encourage such risk-taking. But artists in China are exploring all sorts of risks.

One of my favorite pieces challenged China’s nationalist egotism and penchant for being first. It was a grainy video created by a team of “mountaineers” who ascended the high country. Armed with cutting equipment and some editing, they wrapped a chain around the snowy peak of what they called Mt. Everest. Then enduring the challenges of high altitude and low temperature, they spent two hours cutting off 1.6 meters of the peak and finally pushing it off the side. Then, as if they were at a football game uttering ‘We’re Number One” they triumphantly danced on the former summit and waved Chinese flags. “Everest is gone,” the narrator explained. Chinese hard work and vision can move even the biggest mountains.

Then there were the contrasts. At a photography studio, an attendant was working full time prohibiting shutter-happy visitors from taking pictures with their ubiquitous camera phones. Another studio mounted a sign-board protest against a Chinese TV documentary on the art factory, blaming it for distorting truth. Wow, I thought, artists complaining about the artistic license of a filmmaker. And a photographer attempting to protect copyright. And an 8-year-old kid selling me water as a fat American lady in a green dress told her friend “It’s interesting. Like, the other day the Ambassador and I were down in Shanghai…”

I finished the evening watching a performance piece by Australian artist Ana Wojak. She’d back-lit a large doorway and covered it with butcher paper. As we watched her swaying shadow, she dripped her own blood from a intravenous insertion, the white surface between us turning orange, saturating and finally splitting open like a scar.
The performance was a reminder of her larger work in which she and another artist, draped anonymously under white gauze, walked slowly towards each other over a white paper ‘carpet’, dripping blood, before nearly touching and finally collapsing in ‘death.’ Both artists had lost at least a pint of blood. The paper and accompanying video were also on display.

Art, for people like Wojak, is not about being comfortable.

Then next day I visited the Red Gate Gallery, housed in one of Beijing’s remaining ancient city gates. The art was neat, but the history was powerful. In 1900, the ‘8-power allied forces’ invaded China. They came to protect western business interests from the Righteous and Harmonious Fists known to westerners as “The Boxers.” These rebels were creating an uncomfortable business climate by killing and raping westerners. The uprising is noted in an understated plaque in a corner of the wall. Under a plastic cover lay another reminder of American foreign policy, carved in stone: “Paul F. USA.” In a later conversation with my Chinese teacher Norman, I mentioned my ignorance about this element of American history. “They didn’t teach you that in school?” he asked. “It is very famous.” No wonder some of China’s newly created wealth is fortifying its military.

I boarded the train in the afternoon, facing 15 hours in an aisle seat. I buried myself in a book for a few hours, then emerged to have dinner, my own mix of raw vegetables I’d picked up during the day. One of my seat-mates was hogging some extra space, so I stood in the aisle. As is customary, everyone was curious about what I was eating. So inspired by the performance the night before, I opened my pocket knife and slit my wrists. Okay, no, I am kidding. I did, however, perform “eating a carrot and bell pepper” showing off to the 50 faces around me that vegetables don’t all have to be cooked. I dipped an apple in some sesame butter and offered a slice. “Any takers,” I asked? One hand shot up. “I’ll try,” he said. Ah, I’d found an independent thinker in the crowd. With good English as well. His name was David. He sat with a friend named Hudson.

Before I left America, I’d read a story that Microsoft had come to China to staff it’s new research center in Beijing. They wanted to hire thousand people and they were looking for top employees who they characterized as ‘one in a million.’ The quotation I remember talked about the fierce competition. “In a country with 1.3 billion people, being one in a million means there are 1300 just like you,” it said.

David was studying to be a doctor. Hudson was about to finish an advanced degree in computer science. He had just signed with Microsoft earning $1200 a month, about ten times the average workers salary. He’s 26. After telling him the one in a million story, I congratulated him on his catch. “Do you want to touch me?” he joked.

I mentioned my inability to log onto my Hotmail account and the growing height of the Chinese Firewall, but contrasted with the secret American way of domestic spying, I said I preferred the Chinese method in which the government admits it is watching. “Yes, it’s a secret here, but its an open secret,” Hudson said.

For the next hour we talked about yoga, the contrasts between Chinese and Western relationships and having watched a man nearby feed his infant the equivalent of a Twinkie, the importance of food. “KFC and McDonalds are not food in China,” David said. “It’s a lifestyle.”

And then, along came another one in a million. One of the college girls with whom I’d shared the train north was walking by and she knew of my preference for sleeping prone. “There are still some beds available,” she said. “Would you like one?”

In addition to learning to endure difficulty, travel also teaches me how to flexibly respond to changing circumstances. Good fortune had appeared and for $15 I slept in comfort for 500 miles.

Reference Links:
Boxers: http://www.awm.gov.au/atwar/boxer.htm
Censorship: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/09/world/asia/09internet.html
Colbert: http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2006/04/stephen_colbert_2.html
Red Gate Gallery http://www.redgategallery.com/residency.php
Ana Wojak http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/11/17/1100574540011.html
Kung Fu Monks http://www.etours.cn/china_nightlife/shownews.jsp?news_id=241
Dashanzi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashanzi_Art_District

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Photos

Beijing bound
Here are all the people I slept with on the train ride to Beijing. Well, I slept. They played cards all night and after 16 hours together were best of friends.

Comments

[LJ]

good stuff, thanks for sharing
Thanks, John, many keen and interesting observations here. Do I take it that you can't read your hotmail account? I sent you an article yesterday about expats in China... Snow is almost all gone but mud remains. No leaves yet, but any minute... I am flying to L.A. Sunday to drive up the Alcan with Matt. House purchase not complete yet but should be this week. Cmcmt this Sunday. The world here continues in your absence--amazing, isn't it! Thanks for enriching mine from there...