“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.
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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. Surrounded by a desolate, Martian-red expanse of bulging desert, a gleaming new Jiayuguan City has arisen on ancient ground that has been continually inhabited since around 1375, 120 years before Christopher Columbus bumped into the Americas on his way to India. Everything looks brand new. Civic auditoriums, government buildings, parks, stadium and sports center, statues, row after row of lofty apartment complexes, office towers, shopping districts, the broad boulevards lined with shade trees and lit at night with graceful light fixtures I’ve never seen anywhere except in urban design catalogs. Workers were everywhere, staining wood trim, laying paving tile, pouring cement for curbs and sidewalks, planting flowers and trees, all as if getting everything ready for buyers impatient to move in, but when I was there, the city looked hardly lived in yet. I’m used to scuffed up, bruised and bluesy cities; I really don’t know how to act in a brand new one. It was the old ground that I was interested in. I rode the magic green #4 bus out to the fort built at the narrowest part of the Hexi Corridor at Jiayuguan Pass (guan in Chinese means pass, so writing pass is redundant, it should be written Jiayu Guan . . . thanks Wikipedia!), bought a combo ticket (which allows you to visit the fort and some additional historic sites) for 130 RMB and walked up the hill as lazy fockers passed me riding the 10 RMB shuttle. I was glad I did, as I was able to capture the photograph below of some workers grooming the landscaped grounds. Tennessee Williams penned the classic line, “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers,” and though he meant it in an entirely different context, it certainly applies to travel in China. Not only do you need the kindness of strangers, but their sympathy, their cooperation, and quite possibly their pity as well. I was only eighteen when I went to Europe alone and managed to wander about for 2 months. Back in the States, I used my thumb to crisscross the continent numerous times. You could pick me up and drop me in any city, and I would always find my way. I had a built in compass, a fairly flawless sense of direction, an almost total recall of places I’d been to before, similar to a nomad’s ability to consistently revisit watering holes in the formless desert. Later, I wandered all over the state of Alaska and survived. I also lived in and navigated my way around Central America for almost a decade, as well as numerous other places too tedious to recall. But absolutely nothing prepared me for China; traveling in this country is in an entirely new category all by itself. First of all, no one that you want to speak English, does. And even if they do, they are not going to readily admit it. This includes ticket sellers, taxi drivers, hotel clerks, hustlers, hospital workers, restaurant employees, food sellers, bus drivers, prostitutes, policemen, pharmacists, pirates, poets, pawns and a few kings. You are all on your own and no one has a clue as to what the f*** you are talking about. Next, once you get out of the airport or train station, there is barely any written English anywhere. Sure, there might be some road signs that you can decipher, but everything else is incomprehensible. Seriously incomprehensible. It looks like this: 認真難以理解認真難以理解認真難以理解. Over and over again. If you can’t point to a picture or mime what you want, you’re lost. I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. With the above in mind, I arrived in desert city of Jiayuguan, expecting it to be a small place I could easily find my way around, unaided. But when I got away from the train station, I could see gleaming tall buildings off in the distance like the Emerald City. It was too far to walk and I didn’t know where the hell I was going anyway. I had done some research, and knew I could take the #4 bus to get to the fort, (ah numbers, you can always read numbers) but according to the signs, it didn’t stop on this street. After pausing briefly at a hotel and confusing everyone, then trying to hire a taxi driver who didn’t understand where I was trying to go, I made a tactical retreat and headed back to the train station. I accosted a ticket checker and pointed to the poster for the famous fort at Jiayuguan Pass, handed her my notebook, and she scribbled something, then pointed. Encouraged, I saw the number 4 and wandered in the direction she had pointed. Hallelujah brothers and sisters, there, idling patiently, was the magical #4 bus, waiting to whisk me away and into Jiayuguan City. I paid the 1 RMB fare (approx. sixteen cents) and the bus took me on a long looping tour of the city, then to the outskirts, eventually ejecting me at the last stop on the route, the famous fort at the Jiayuguan Pass. I was pretty wowed that I had pulled this off, and with new determination haggled with a woman selling straw hats, gaining laughter and respect from the man in the adjoining booth, and the curses of the woman who had started out at 50 RMB, but settled for 10 RMB. This pattern would repeat itself all throughout this trip. Haggling is an art in China. The grounds of the fort are beautiful with landscaped parks, statues and sweeping vistas. At the visitors center, I was handed a map and an info page printed in English, then motioned to have a seat and wait. Soon, a young woman came toward me and greeted me in English. She sat and patiently answered all my questions about the fort and surrounding places of interest. This was a bright stroke of luck and afterward I went to back outside, ordered a beer and sat at a table under a sheltering Tsingtao umbrella. It was late afternoon and there was no need to rush to see everything, so I decided to go back into town and get a hotel. Waiting for the magical mystery green #4 bus, I met another in a series of desert angels who would help me when I needed it most. She came right up to me, looked deeply into my face and said, “Hi. I used to live in New Jersey.” Blinking in surprise, I said hello, and smiled as she assaulted me with her knowledge about New York, New Jersey, Atlantic City, and regrettably, Donald Trump, all in rapid-fire, well-accented English, and before I could respond, the bus pulled up. I paid her fare, and we sat together in the back. I wanted to ask her so many questions, but she was rabid to talk, so I sat back and mainly listened. She was, of course, Chinese, fit, maybe thirty-five or upward, attractive. I thought she was trying to pick me up (vanity, I know thy name) until she mentioned her husband. All along the route she pointed out so many things that later on would come in handy as I wandered about that she amounted to a living map, welcoming committee, Jiayuguan brochure, gossip columnist, tour guide, monologist, history buff, and so on, all pouring forth in a snap-crackle and pop surge of English word power. Clearly, she was another light twin. Abruptly, she signaled the bus driver, then told me that I had to get off at the next stop and walk 2 blocks north to a great hotel. And though I wanted to protest, to keep listening to her very good English, to remain in the bubble of known, shared things, the bus lurched to a stop and I fumbled my way through the standing passengers, stepped down into the street, and stood, slowly waving goodbye as she put her hand to her lips, then touched the window, moving off into the land of never seen again. God, I love China. So I walked north, and as promised, there was a hotel. Jiayuguan: Beyond Lay the Barbarian Lands, Part 3 |
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