Attached like fire escape stairs to the sides of a red brick tenement, the way up the cliff-face Maiji Mountain Grottoes rose up, threatening, impossibly high for someone like me who is deathly afraid of heights. From Wikipedia, “Acrophobia (from the Greek: ἄκρον, ákron , meaning ‘peak, summit, edge’ and φόβος, phóbos, ‘fear’) is an extreme or irrational fear of heights, especially when one is not particularly high up.” For me, unfortunately, anything above the height of a one-story roof was high up.
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I put on my finest green, painted two shamrocks on my cheeks and went out in public. As usual, everyone stared, but at the supermarket I was a Leprechaun trickster, moving into their space as if to say boo, thrusting my face into theirs, backing them up, then laughing and leaving them to their bewilderment. Back out on the streets, to the occasional Chinese who like to hawk loudly and spit on the ground whenever a foreigner passes, I stopped, looked them square in the eyes, hawked and spit back. This spooked them but other onlookers liked it and actually smiled at me, enjoying this small drama, a St. Patrick’s victory of sorts. And on this day I will take every victory I can get. You see, ever since I was young, I have always felt my Irishness. An ache for a land I have inhabited in my mind even before I was conscious enough to know that ideas can reside in the deepest part of the unconscious and will themselves into being, because, even before I could understand it, I was Irish Proud and distrustful of overlords I’d never even been under the yoke of yet, and Irish creative like the great James Joyce, riffing off on imaginary soliloquies, bouncing this word off that word, and that word off this word, in my head you see, making up all sorts of imaginary universes, that by the way, all resisted the British. But it was more than that, it was a kind of sword to the sky defiance, mixed with a moss covered peacefulness, the peace of valleys not yet invaded, and a deep down, born-in melancholy that could make all the leprechauns cry, because I inherited the idea of a sad, lonely, unjust world, yet still, I was a wild Irish lad in the best sense, curious, innately tender, wily, stubborn, willing to take on all comers and then cry by myself because I had beaten them, confused by the terror of my inborn ferocity, snapping and snarling and leaping out at the first sign of oppression, doing battle with Don Quixote windmills I would later become well acquainted with, a ferocity I still saw in the faces of booze-beaten men who stalked about looking for something worth the fighting of the good fight, but settled instead for turning on those who most dearly loved them, creating the age-old Irish sadness that sings its sad dirge to this day from Limerick to Londonderry, from Boston to Nova Scotia. Yet, the world owes so much to the Irish. Its words and phrases have entered the vocabulary. Its music was absorbed and co-opted, birthing new musical movements. True Irish charm launched legions of imitators, and sadly, most of them are politicians, the Kennedy’s included, and so on and so on. Scratch against the skin of diverse nationalities and you will discover some Irish moss in all of them. Dunhuang, whose name means to flourish and prosper, was established as a military garrison city in 111 BC at an oasis where the two Silk Road routes traversing the Taklamakan Desert to the west, merged. It anchored the Hexi Corridor, running southeast to Lanzhou and protected the merchants, monks, imperial envoys and camel traders carrying China’s precious silk and spices eastward. Located in Gansu Province—China’s most ethnically diverse—like all of Gansu, it retains the crossroads flavor, the intermingled lineage broadcast in faces, as well as the friendliness of a longstanding oasis town. Yet, all of the friendliness—the constant smiles, hellos and helpful gestures—were about to be outdone by a considerate act so unusual and from such an unexpected source that nothing like it had ever happened to me before anywhere in the world. A reliable, tried and true way to get to know yourself as well as your culture is to move to another country. The more different the country is, the deeper the experience. The deeper the experience, the deeper the insight. But no matter where you go, no matter how far you go, your country’s stereotype will always be waiting there to greet you. The Hutongs in Beijing is where real life occurs. Hutong is a Mongolian word that means water well and was given to the small lanes and alleyways during the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) that spread out from the four corners of the Forbidden City, gathering around wells and gardens that from the ground make little sense to the visitor, yet seen from the air look like interlaced chessboards with all the dwellings connected. Erika wrote this: “ . . . just ready to live sensations only our soul understands.” I rode the train to Beijing standing between the cars in solitude, watching the fields, the villages, and the ordinary, unassuming Chinese life sweep by, my soul alive and bursting, yet every now and then a roving Chinese passenger would pause trying to figure out what I was taking such joy in, scratching their collective heads wondering what in the hell I was looking so raptly at. Somewhere long ago, in the ribboning ebbs and bends of time, the first cavemen met on neutral ground for trade, and ever since then we’ve been confusing each other with language. When I first arrived in China, so completely and absurdly alone, stunned into a linguistic stupor, grasping for an aural kernel of meaning, searching—frantic for a gesture to convey—well, everything, retreating behind a dumb smile, chastened, humbled, depending solely upon luck to once again pull me through, but later, reviewing what happened made me realize how thoughts could form words, intentions, communicate needs, and convey them in a quantum language that everyone subliminally understands and responds to, although I’ve yet to become fluent in it. For me it’s similar to how bees perform instructional nectar location dances to give the rest of the hive a fix on the locale of newly discovered flowers, or schools of fish communicating the need to turn collectively—in an instant, over and over again, or birds stopping automatically in the exact same trees on their migrations, generation after generation, or how dogs learn to distinguish and respond to human words like, “Walkies,” By the way, I’d like to share my new favorite quote concerning dogs: “Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think that is how dogs spend their lives.” – Sue Murphy Anyway, I figured where there was a will, there was a way to communicate, and China was the perfect place to field-test some of my wackier theories. I combined the belief that thoughts are actions with the accepted theory that language was originally developed by our hairy ancestors mimicking sounds animals made. There are times, especially at night, when I feel as if I am living in a computer chip. The odd black skyline shapes, the blinking, bending streams of smooth neon light, the roaring electric density, the unexpected quiet of the squat residential apartment blocks with their dark, narrow, maze-like private streets, protected by guarded gates, the square Lanzhou street grids broken up by random angular byways, all fold into a William Gibson dream of a computer city plexus of pulsating, artificially lit intensity. This is not necessarily a bad feeling, in fact it’s often energizing, occasionally alienating, always interesting. Whenever I feel the need to bring it back down to a more personal level, day or night, I hit the streets and wander about like a demented monk. The streets always reconnect me, revive me, engage me. So, I thought I would take you along with me on a walk through my neighborhood. I leave my 3rd floor apartment, walk down the clean swept but dingy concrete stairs and out into a courtyard surrounded by the buildings that make up my apartment complex, with parking spaces for the cars my neighbors own and a small playground where residents practice a tai chi-sword dance most mornings, where groups of school children play in the evenings, and over which, sometimes, the moon playfully hangs. I turn left, right, left, walk along a brown wall covered with climbing vines turned reddish autumn, unlock the gate by the guard shack with a small, blue plastic disk, hold the door for whomever is waiting, pass the shop with the boiling metal cauldron out front where you select delicacies from the refrigerated case, pre-skewered on long wooden sticks, the offerings include meat, mushrooms, seaweed, veggies and tofu in various shapes, then hand it to the cooker who drops in into the steaming pot, select your noodles, then wait a few minutes, after which it is whisked into a bowl and wham-bam the cooker scoops spices into the mixture, with broth, cilantro, and things I can’t name and serves it with a flourish, charging approximately 13 RMB (US $2.05). 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. In most parts of the world, weary travelers only have to find a hotel, choose a room, agree on a price, and settle in. In China, it’s not that simple. A little known fact is that hotels often turn away foreigners, without explanation, or at least one you can understand, and in my case the shy desk clerk called someone, and a woman with a shellacked helmet of hair came barreling out, stamped her foot and said, “No stay here.” With martial stiffness, she pointed out the door, and away, and up the street. I said, “Umm, what?” She went to the door, and again, pointed up the street. “But, umm, you see—” “No stay here, no stay here.” I blinked, looked around. What could I do except bow and say, “Won’t stay here, no no no, no like-ee here,” and walked out the door and into the hot evening. Some people say hotels have to have a permit for foreigners to stay, others say it’s because they are running an illegal operation (casino, card room, etc.) and don’t want the attention a foreigner can bring, still others are convinced it’s xenophobic panic, while others claim it’s because foreigners smell bad. Me, I think I smell pretty good. I wandered around thinking I should have learned a lot more than how to order a cold beer in Chinese, when a man rushed up to me and said, “Halloo, halloo,” smiling and pointing and waving, as if to say—come along, come along. He was leading me towards the doors of a hotel. I grinned and followed and when we were in the lobby, I successfully mimed sleep, after which it all got complicated. I was quoted three different prices, which, by the way, were reasonable, but then completely stumped them all by trying to explain that I wanted to see a room first. They called in more people. Pretty soon, it appeared to me as if every member of the family was present in the lobby, along with all the workers of the adjoining business, who, each in turn would boldly advance on me saying, “Sleep” and I nodded, but when I repeated my request to see a room, their face froze and they looked from one to another, till the next brave soul tried, failed, retreated. After each one, I would again pick up my bag and head for the door, only to be stopped in my tracks by a vigorous chorus of “NO-NO-NO-NO.” This went on for some time. Then another desert angel appeared. He said, “Hello, what can I do for you?” And I swear, it felt as if everyone in the lobby wanted to burst into a clapping cheer like they do at the end of all the Hollywood movies made in the last three decades, but, being Chinese, they refrained. His name was Martin and he solved all my immediate problems. Arranged to show me the rooms, got me a price that was lower than what I was quoted, told me he would guide me to a great place for dinner, all the while advising me about local prices. He had gone to college in Arizona and his English was very, very good. After I cleaned the road dust off me, I met him outside the hotel and he introduced me to his brother and his friend and we made a short walk to a long plaza lined with restaurants, both indoors and outside, sheltered by bright green sun umbrellas. These three were a merry band and we sat outside as the sun went down and the moon came up, eating the most amazing food, drinking beer, swapping mostly true tales and measuring the distance separating our two cultures. Martin’s brother, whose English was limited, kept saying the things that mattered most, like, “beautiful food, beautiful life,” while encouraging me to try new things like barbecued sheep stomach and lamb kidneys, which I happily did. At one point, I snapped a photo of the trio, and before I put the camera away, I turned, framed and snapped one of my favorite photos. I can speak volumes about this pic but I will suppress the urge. After dinner, they took me on a walk by a manmade lake fringed with a green eco zone and a monolithic dolphin statue, lit up in vibrating, changing, colored lights, and we talked and laughed and ate ice cream, all with the ease of long time friends. I live for moments like this. And China is full of them. I drained the last of the bad KFC coffee boarding the 7:40 a.m. train and scoped out the seats laid out two across, then aisle, then two more, realizing I had a 50/50 chance of scoring a window seat. I was going to Jiayuguan, 7 hours and 770 km away, and had paid 160 RMB (approx. $25) for a first class seat but it didn’t come with the guarantee of a window. Everyone knows ADHD redheads need windows, especially when they are traveling. Car 17, seat 57 . . . c’mon, c’mon . . . oh . . . aisle. I hesitated for a moment and sat at the window anyway. Then, “excuse me”—clear as day. I turned and a woman was showing me her ticket, pointing to the window. I must have sighed—I’m sure I sighed, then moved to a vacant window seat. Less than 10 minutes later, the train stopped in West Lanzhou and the car filled up. I went back and sat in my aisle seat before I was rousted, humiliated, revealed as a shameful laowai seat shifter. Shortly thereafter, a man was standing beside me, motioning me to take the now vacant window seat. In my surprise, I blurted out, “you sure,” as if he could understand me, but he just smiled and kept motioning with his hands toward the window. As I got up to move, I saw the woman now sitting behind me with her husband? Brother? Secret lover? Then it hit me—while I was gone they had gotten together and moved their seats around so that I could have a window seat. These kinds of courtesies happen to me all the time in China. I stood up to bow, hands clasped in front of me, and I could see them smiling, knowing I had indeed figured it out, then they looked away quickly as if to forget the whole thing. Now, we were on our way through a long green valley, up into adobe-green hills cut with lots of tunnels. It was---------tunnel, Jonah dark, light--free-free-free, JonahJonahJonah, free, JonahJonah, free for a second, then more Jonah, a smear of crusty cut banks, a hallucination of a manmade lake with dam, then a long Jonah, and free at last, rolling now through flat farmland of sectioned cornfields bordered by swaths of sunflowers, and every now and then bent over workers gathering cut hay into golden mats they could roll up and carry by hand. Eventually the landscape dried out, and I recognized it, familiar yet foreign. Where have I seen those same broad, flat plains, the occasional tree lined windbreaks, distant dry hills, hovering snowcapped peaks, the brief green patch of irrigated field, then the return to brown dirt, when the synaptic oracle lit up and suddenly spoke; it said: Praise be and welcome to . . . Utah! Yes indeed, I was unstuck in time and Balling the Jack through the Beehive State. As I was sitting back and noting the similarities, I saw a very un-Utah-like thing: a herd of wild camels. Then some more. And even more. I got out my camera and stood up, poised to get a wild camel pic. I waited and waited but all I got was a blurry, boulder-stained rubble of a photograph with absolutely no camels present. They were there, I swear. Really. All that camel hunting made me hungry, so I got up and staggered through the train cars looking for a dining car. A helpful passenger said something in English that was either, “Straighten up and fly right,” or maybe, “This damn train has no fried rice.” There was no way I could be certain. I returned to my seat and when the snack cart came by, I scrutinized its offerings. Mostly plastic containers of tea and brightly colored bottles of sugary drinks, with an assortment of vacuum-packed unidentifiable things I’d seen people eat and live to tell about it. I chose a too red package containing what appeared to be a chicken leg that looked like those imitation crab legs made in Korea by robots. I held it in my hand for a long time gathering the courage to open it. Hunger won. Although a little bit slimy from being encased in its vacuum package, it smelled real, and tasted real, but it will always be one of those things I will forever wonder about. Like: from an evolutionary standpoint, why is a panda colored black and white? It is certainly not for camouflage, they stick out like a sore thumb in bamboo groves. Maybe—is it to let you know they are there, so you can avoid them? . . . And why do pigeons, out of all the diverse creatures on this planet, have the greatest ability to detect colors? Is that what drove them to cities? Just then, something flashed by and it wasn’t a camel, and this time I managed to snap off a photo. I had scrutinized enough photographs of the remnants of the Great Wall in Gansu to recognize this bit of crumbling adobe brick. Without warning, more sections appeared, (Gansu Great Wall) and I wanted to shout out, “Stop the train, I want to get off,” but of course I didn’t know how to say that in Chinese, and even so, it wouldn’t have happened. Instead, I stood up and steadied my camera against the window, snapping off photo after photo, saying, “Oh my god, look at that, right there, the Great Wall!” The other passengers, alerted by my manic frenzy looked out, saw nothing, and shook their heads as if to say ‘there is just no understanding foreigners.’ But there it was, crumbling, eroding, and I wanted it to be fenced off, preserved somehow, protected, I wanted to shout out, “Take a look at one of the greatest engineering projects ever undertaken on this planet, or at least acknowledge its magnificence, ‘ooh’ and ‘aaah’ at its proximity just outside the window, or at least note its decay as a symbol of China’s opening, but just don’t sit there and not see anything.” For the rest of the trip, my face was glued to the window, and I saw the Great Wall in every aberration of the landscape, every knoll, rise, bump or arroyo, though mostly they were false alarms. Still, the train was following the ancient Silk Road route through the Hexi Corridor and I was absorbing the vibrations of countless travelers. When I gathered my things to get off the train, a woman spoke to me in English, telling me there was one more stop to go, and everyone around nodded their head in reassurance. And while there may not be any understanding of foreigners, they at least wouldn’t let one get off at the wrong stop. I smiled in my innocent idiocy and rode the train to the last stop on the line: Jiayuguan City. Jiayuguan: Beyond Lay the Barbarian Lands, Part 2 |
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