Dazzled by being blasted out of the last of a long series of dark tunnels, the first snowfall was blinding on the late autumn hills as the sleek new bullet train whispered westward past stuttering images of sheep feeding on the frayed edges of summer. Golden Van Gogh cornstalks, gathered and tied in straining bundles, were stacked like muskets taken from surrendering soldiers. Other stalks stood defiant, still rooted to the earth but October-bleached and faded down-down-down into the color of weak tea. Stillness and motion, the high-speed train and the silence of the fields: yellow ochre, raw sienna, burnt umber, Mars orange, viridian, Van Dyke brown . . . gray-metal . . . skies. It was a brand-new-dollar-crisp autumn day when I flagged down a taxi in my neighborhood. The driver balked when he learned that I wanted to go all the way to the other side of town to the brand new West Lanzhou Railway Station. Treacherous roadways lay in between with the main thoroughfares carved up and riven by the building of the new subway system. He released the clutch and endured it in such a typical Chinese fashion that in my mind I reworked the poem written by William Carlos Williams: The Red China Wheelbarrow so much depends upon a once red wheel barrow glazed with family duty beside the soiled white chickens. China is currently engaged in building a high-speed railway corridor along the ancient Silk Road. The trains are sleek, modern and ultra-fast. As we rolled up into hyper-glide, it was eerie how silent and smooth it was, the large windows letting in the passing landscape, but it took some time to tune out the passing railway line posts so that you could enjoy the view. When you came upon a city or town, sound barriers blocked the view and made you imagine what it looked like. Then, it fell away, allowing the scenery to rush back in, in a blast of hill, mountain, town, earth, lonely field workers, bent over ledges once planted with the now collapsing crops, blurring into valleys pocked with ancestral grave markers, dunnages of railway window scrap whisking by, taking you along into the wind and the breach and the fury of the train’s passing, calling out your name as you wonder what it is you are hearing . . . feeling . . . groping for, as it all rushes back in, again and again and again . . . suspended in this raw moment’s time, the flash and wonder of this glimpse into the sprawling universe, beckoning, inviting, hurling you along . . . into the inevitability of it all as well as the gnaw of it gnawing, gnawing, gnawing, without relief, or relent, or . . . We glided into Zhanye Railway Station and I once again noticed how all the railway stations in Gansu Province were brand new, sprawling as train stations are supposed to be, welcoming yet imperious, totally in sync with the new China. To get into town, you could choose a taxi, which cost about 10 Yuan ($1.55) or take a bus at a cost of 1 Yuan. I chose the bus and smiled to the everyday people who smiled right back. This is the way I always strive to enter a new town or city, and in this way, it always strives to enter me. I was once again at home in the delight of a new unexplored city. Part 2 of Late Autumn, Danxia Landforms, Sad Ferris Wheel, Gansu Province, China will follow. It's amazing how the holidays creep up on you like a stalking tiger, and so, they are almost here, please have yourself a merry little Christmas and the best and brightest new year.
1 Comment
Mary (Merry)
12/23/2015 02:04:22 pm
Wow I missed your posts!!! So descriptive and captivating in a very short read. I love reading them! What a shinny new bullet train, just the word bullet sounds fast. I have not had this train experience yet.
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