“When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.” –John F. Kennedy
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The autumn wind enters through the window,
The gauze curtain starts to flutter and fly. I raise my head and look at the bright moon, And send my feelings a thousand miles in its light. –Listed as anonymous Yue Fu (乐府, folk songs) I am forever searching for the passage to India—the one of the mind, constantly probing the rivers and streams, sifting through estuaries, channels, harbors, inlets, becalmed, stormed tossed, triumphant, sailing misty, porpoise leaping, purple-dark interior seas, looking for wisdom, knowledge, connection, mystery. My mythic quest leads me out and into the world everyday, trying to connect the dots, uncover a truth, reverse-engineer logic, to gawk, to gaze, to gape, to penetrate my cognitive bias in order to relearn once again how to see. I wander far and wide storing up impressions as a camel stores water for some dry day ahead. I can lose myself in the way the sun transforms dirty sidewalk tiles into a thing of beauty, get spooked at my sudden appearance in a surprise bit of mirrored glass, stop dead in my tracks to watch an unfolding photograph. I startle easily, and always give a laugh to those who take delight in intentionally rattling foreigners. Most of the people in my Lanzhou neighborhood have gotten used to me—and my strange ways, and treat me like a harmless and well-meaning barbarian. The shopkeepers now dote and fuss over me, after having gotten over their initial shock of seeing a laowai stumbling into their place of business. They are kind and treat me honestly, and I am indebted to them. Yet, I have seen and still see the pained, smiling grimace on the faces of employees of stores and restaurants whenever I walk into a new place, a stunned look of suppressed horror, usually covered up with nervous giggles, and it took me a while to understand why. They are basically terrified. Their experience in dealing with foreigners is nonexistent and usually goes something like this: they can’t understand what you are saying, they won’t be able to give you what you want, you will be persistent and try to explain with sad mimes or pen and pad srcribblings, yet this will only compound their confusion, they will giggle even more because they are uncomfortable and don't know how to respond, you will get annoyed thinking they are laughing at you, maybe even raise your voice, swear, walk out in a huff, people will notice, face will be lost, their boss maybe will yell at them, their coworkers will tease them, and even if everything goes well, they will be constantly on guard for any change in your attitude, pretending nonchalance but energetically watching in stereo and under great stress all the while you are in their establishment. For this reason, for some, it’s better that you didn’t come in at all. “Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.” – George Eliot It’s been years since I’ve seen a proper fall. I caught the end of one last year in New England, but an early snow took the green leaves by surprise and shocked them into withered brown chaos. Before that, I had spent years in Costa Rica, a riot of a thousand shades of green during the rainy season that runs from mid-April to mid-November, and before that, in Alaska where it’s more a surrender than a season. I came to Lanzhou in the spring, watched summer take hold, bake the dazed and delighted earth, sprout watermelons and corn and sunflowers and onion stalks that ended up being sold out of flatbed trucks parked everywhere along the willow-shaded boulevards. Now, as the Mid-Autumn mooncakes have all been given out, on my walks through the city I see the first leaves turning yellow, and thorny climbing bushes turning slowly scarlet, to the slow motion beat of sad autumn earth music, I am basically ecstatic. Walking along I saw an advertisement for some product, and the tag line was written in English and read, “Being Compressed Happiness.” I felt like compact happiness and walked along wishing everyone happiness in return. Some smiled back, others looked vaguely resentful, others suspicious. Too much happiness makes people nervous. Autumn, Spring I want to stop the forward progress of these diaries and hit rewind, back to spring, to when the brown tree limbs were blurred by new Cezanne-green growth, that eventually elongated into spear point leaf blades—not in a burst as they do in Alaska during its brief but explosive summer, but gradually, drawn out like a well told tale, drooping from the predominant willow trees that line the boulevards in Lanzhou, blocking out the chalk dusty Soviet era six to eight storey apartment blocks in their dizzying redundancy. Back to spring when I wandered the along the banks of the Yellow River, when the anchored riverboats serving as floating taverns/restaurants were opening for business, work crews sweeping and cleaning and painting away the last remnants of winter, and I sat drinking hot tea or lukewarm beer (China does not like cold beer) as the river swept by carrying my spontaneous haiku downstream where they would bother no one. I loved these riverboats, and had my favorites, where I mildly flirted with the waitresses (to the extent that I could actually communicate flirtation), ate new mostly unidentifiable things, watched the night lights turn the mocha Yellow River into blazing multicolored streaks of purple, yellow, blue, and red neon, met new people, learned Chinese drinking games, sang songs to the river, sank my wishes and prayers like rocks, and opened myself enough to let the river flow through me.
Though it didn’t rain much in Lanzhou, it did everywhere else in Asia, and the Yellow River rose as a result, and swelled its banks, till soon it flooded the walkways and stairways and approaches to the riverboats, and stayed that way for most of the summer, coating everything with a thick, silty brown mud. Tennis courts and playgrounds and public exercise machines were buried and the only thing that dried up was the riverboat merriment. |
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