I had hit Beijing wrong. Like astronauts upon reentry, if their trajectory is wrong they bounce off the atmosphere and go screaming and spinning off into space. In my mind I felt that I did just that and set about to make it right.
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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. Here is a travel tip useful in every city in the world: if you don’t want to be ripped off, walk a few blocks away from the train station or bus station, and then hail a taxi. In my train stupor I forgot this and the waiting predatory taxi driver wanted to charge me 100 RMB for a 16 RMB cab ride. I just looked at him and laughed. When I opened the door, he pantomimed that just for me he would do it for the bargain price of 50 RMB. Exactly two blocks away I flagged down a taxi and showed him the address, written in Chinese. When I asked him how much it would cost, he looked at me as if I were an imbecile and gruffly pointed to the meter. And away we went; cab fare to the hotel: 14 RMB. At the front desk, I waited while the clerk gave directions to an English-speaking chap, then conveyed that I had a room reservation made by my friends, Paul and Claire. Suddenly, the man was back. He had come with Paul and Claire and knew that I was expected. And just like that, I had found my people. It was still very early so we decided to go get breakfast. His name was Pat, and also like Paul and Claire he was from the United Kingdom, and they all taught English in the same city in China. As we were searching for breakfast in the Tibetan Quarter we stumbled upon a bizarre scene. There, right on the streets of Chengdu, an ultra-modern city in most respects, a man and woman were murdering a chicken with a meat cleaver, draining blood and guts down onto the curb and into the gutter. While I was taking photos, they calmly whacked another chicken, which, although headless, flapped its wings furiously in protest. In which the birthday boy runs smack into Tibet Sometimes it takes a jet to carry you somewhere over the rainbow, or maybe a train, a boat, a fast car or a powerful wish, but in my case all it took was three and a half hours of patience and a bus filled with happy-go-lucky passengers. We climbed upward, past amazing, terraced hills, planted with produce, the sheer ability to farm the precipitous heights was astonishing, and at one point I saw a farmer pruning his crops by means of a rope attached around his waist, dropping down, then down, and down---we blasted by too fast to know how he managed to get back up. Then we leveled out and entered a biblical zone of fertile valleys with mosques everywhere. Their signature globes and towers rose above the landscape, more plentiful than church steeples in New England. But what was odd to me was that I equated mosques with desert terrain—these rose above green fields bright with a summer’s growth. I stopped counting them after I reached a hundred and one. After passing through Linxia City, which has long been called the “Little Mecca of China” featuring 1,700 mosques and an important stop along the Silk Road, we started climbing up, up, up, then leveled off in earnest, the terrain changing, growing more austere, though still summer green, with stuttering Van Gogh fields absent of crows, then angling almost imperceptivity downward and eventually arriving in Xiahe. 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. |
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