China Reflection

My friend, Liu Yi, asks me to join him to go to a section of the Great Wall that I’ve never been to before called Huang Hua Great Wall.   We drive there in a car that he rented on the previous day.  Besides myself and Liu Yi, the other two people who join us are Zhang Yue, and Guo Tao.  Zhang Yue is a beautiful young girl with a face that turns bright red like a tomato in the Sun.  Guo Tao is 20 years old from Yunnan Province.  His eyes are different from most Chinese and have the consistency and color of milk chocolate.  I know all 3 of them from a tea shop I like to go to once or twice a week called “Zheng Yun Tea House.”  This is the first time that I meet them outside of the shop.  Breakthrough. 

Liu Yi is a policeman and a regular that I know from the tea house.  The shop is named for its owner, Zheng Yun, and it fits snuggly into a small space on Jiu Gulou Street.  When newcomers walk in, Zheng Yun always welcomes them with a smile and offers them to drink tea with him for free.  I have purchased cakes of Pu’er tea (from Yunnan^W Province in Southwest China) as gifts and for myself, but I have never once paid to sit and drink with him.  He always refuses to take money for the tea that I drink, and he has never once asked me to make a purchase.  Still, I buy at least one bag a month, so as to keep me awake while I work in the office.  The shop itself only has one table, but what a table it is!  It’s made of baby-bottom smooth wood, with the stools underneath shining under the interior lights.  If there is a big crowd in the shop, Zheng Yun pulls out handmade stools for guests to sit on, making us feel as if we are in his living room, rather than in a tea shop.  Like the diabolo grounds where I meet with my old friends, this tea shop is another spot that creates a world within my world.  It’s a place where the silence between conversations is pregnant with philosophy.

I first met Liu Yi before the Olympics when I was still in search of a visa at the time.  During our first encounter I was a bit wary that he might want to search me and ask to look at my passport and visa.  Authorities were a bit touchy concerning foreigners at that time.  My worries disappeared immediately when he began to speak his broken but easily understood English to me.  I’ve also encountered Zhang Yue a number of times.  Sometimes when I enter the shop, she is pouring the tea instead of Zheng Yun or Guo Tao.  Guo Tao is Zheng Yun’s younger cousin and has only been in Beijing for a few months.  This visit to Huang Hua Great Wall is the first time for both of them to get there.  As for Liu Yi and myself, we’ve been to the Great Wall more times than the number of fingers we have on our hands.  Each time I go is like  clearing the dust from eyes.

When we arrive at the Wall, Liu Yi parks his tiny, steaming rental car next to the gate where we have to purchase tickets.  We walk our way over a bridge that leads to a path up to the Wall.  The ascent upwards is quick and dusty, ending at a small iron ladder that we have to climb to scale the side of the Wall.  After a few rungs of the ladder, we’re over and in–the invading American amidst a group of Pu’er drinking friends.

There aren’t many people on the Wall today.  This section is not the most popular, but the scenery is gorgeous.  Every section of the Great Wall that I’ve been to has its own particular beauty.  Like a good book of short stories, I’m always a little winded when I finish one section, but I know that the next one I read will be ever bit as good.  My backpack is full of nectarines, buscuits, cucumbers, and water that I bought for the hike today.  I take one nectarine out of my pocket and begin to stuff it into my mouth, transferring the weight from my back to my mouth, and then from my mouth to my stomach.  Offering my backpack’s contents to Zhang Yue, she agrees to eat one of my cucumbers.

The sun is hot as we make our descent up the steps.  The only shade that we receive is when we enter the towers that occur about every 10 minutes.  Liu Yi and Zhang Yue are having a hard time on the ascent.  Liu Yi is a smoker, and Zhang Yue breathlessly pants, her face turning tomato red as we ascend.  Guo Tao bounds forward, his youth showing from the spring in his step.  I don’t feel tired, but my neck and back already have that sticky sweaty feeling.  The sweat begins to absorb the dust from the Great Wall every time we enter one of the towers.  Walking upwards doesn’t bother me so much as treacherous descents do. 

After about 4 towers we notice there is only one group of people in front of us at the steepest incline of the day.  They are coming back down, and we encounter them at the beginning of the waterfall of steps that face us ahead.  There are 3 westerners and one Chinese.

“I think you could go back.  It’s very steep.  Maybe dangerous,” the Chinese guy says to me.

“Oh, it’s ok.  I don’t know how much further we’ll go.  Maybe we’ll just see the view at the top,” I respond.  Guo Tao literally runs past me and bolts up the stairs.  His legs are pistons powering an engine.

“That friend of yours is crazy,” says one of the Westerners.  I can tell by his accent that he is american.  He gives me his business card and tells me that he is in the tourism business.  We exchange information.  Networking on the Great Wall.  We chit chat a few minutes about places of interest to visit in Beijing, and then I trudge after Guo Tao to get to the view at the top.

Guo Tao waits for me at the top of the steepest incline that we need to climb for the day and the view is spectacular and about as clear a day as one can hope for in and around dusty Beijing.  We can see villages below, as well as the road that we drove up on.  Liu Yi and Zhang Yue make their way up after us.  In front of us I can see the Wall make a treacherous hairpin turn downhill towards a a small village and pathway before it starts shooting back up again.  How the hell did they make this damn thing?  My instinct tells me not to go past this hairpin.  I am a little afraid of heights…but then, isn’t everyone a little afraid of heights.  We decide to walk it anyway.

Right before the hairpin turn, the Wall is smooth and easy sailing, like a runway before take-off, or a bowling alley on top of tree tops.  I make my way ahead of everyone else because I know that I will be the slowest to descend.  I’m just like that.  Making the hairpin turn, I creep to the precipice and beginning of the descent, leaning over the top as I would lean over the edge of a waterfall.  The steps look okay at first, but it they are also incredibly steep.  Additionally, there is quite a bit of loose rubble along the way, making it easy to slip if one rushes.

“It’s safe to walk,” Guo Tao yells back to Zhang Yue and Liu Yi.  They come forth and we start the descent.

We make our way slowly down the steps, bit by bit.  There is nowhere to hide from the Sun, and it beats down incessantly on the ever growing bald spot on the top of my head.  I walk foot over foot down the steps.  Sometimes there are parts where there are no steps, only portions of steps and small rocks.  I brace myself along the Wall, going hand over hand.  My eyes catch something moving on the wall.  A small lizard peeks his head out of a cravasse and looks at me for an instant, as if to say, you idiot, what the hell are you doing here?  He easily scampers his way away from me and over the side through a small hole, sticking his tongue out to make fun of me.

“Hey Jeffrey, catch!” Guo Tao yells.  I turn around quickly, maybe too quickly, and look.  Guo Tao has picked a small fruit off a tree’s branch.  From where, I don’t know.  He tosses it down at me just to watch it bounce.  The green fruit bounces its way down the steep steps like a rubber bouncy ball, the kind I used to by in quarter machines when I was a kid.  As I watch the fruit bounce towards me, my depth perception is slightly thrown off balance, and I feel a slightly nautious as I contemplate whether or not to try and catch it.  If I try, maybe I’ll misjudge it’s bounce and velocity and get thrown off balance.  My body tumbles down the steps of the Wall, my brains being bash inside of my head as I slip on a stone, fumbling the bouncing green fruit between my fingers.  My head fills with blood…I’ll never walk again….These images go through my head in that flash of an instant that it takes for the fruit to whiz past me.  Instead, I half-heartedly pretend to try to catch the fruit in order to appear like I’m having fun.  Just thinking about playing games on this descent sends me into a slight panic.  The fruit bounces past me harmlessly, and I can continue to concentrate on staying alive while we make our way down to the small village at the bottom.

After some time we come to a part of the Wall that has been cut off.  There is a complete drop off of about 5 or 6 feet.  In order to continue our descent, we’ll have to actually climb this part, not walk it.  Normally, I feel more comfortable doing steeper descents walking forward, so that I can see where I am going.  This part of the descent will be impossibly to do this way.  We’ll have to turn our backs towards the abyss this time.  It’s not a long drop off, it’s just that if one were to slip, injury would be certain.  The only uncertainty is the severity of the injury.  My fingertips sweat again.

Liu Yi goes first.  It’s a completely blind descent, and it only takes him about 10 to 15 seconds, but he has to feel his way down towards stable footing, unable to see what is below him.  Watching him going down, I wonder how I can do this.  Guo Tao goes next and easily makes his way down like a mountain goat.  Zhang Yue looks at me and motions for me to go first.  I pass my backpack to Liu Yi below me and then turn my back to the unknown.  I decide to start off by getting down on all fours and backing my legs over the small drop off.  I feel like I’m moving my legs over the top of a skyscraper.  It’s all mental, I know, but I’m helpless in my mind.  Then I freeze. I don’t want to move.  I see myself not going up, not going down, just staying in this spot for eternity, burning up like a raisin in the Sun.  I stand up on the ledge again and shake my head, motioning for Zhang Yue to go first.  I need to get another breath.  I watch Zhang Yue make her way down the drop off.  Liu Yi and Guo Tao guide her feet with their words.

“Move your foot to the right.  There’s a good stone there.  Ok. Ok. Good.”  She makes her way down easily.  She’s the second most nervous person here.  Now it’s up to me, the big chicken.  I wonder, should I enter a state of panic, would I still be able to understand and think in Chinese?

I turn around again.  The view in front of me is the empty descent that we have made so far.  I can still see the top of the hairpin where we have come from.  Maybe I should just walk back that way.  No.  It’s just a little drop off.  Just a little thing.  Fingers sweating again.  Damn.  I stick my right leg out behind me blindly, piercing the clear blue sky with my fear.  Liu Yi directs me to the nearest rock.

“Ok. Just move your foot a little bit over to the right.  Ok.  Right there.”  My foot fumbles around like a coal miner in winter trying to light  a match to warm a stove.  My leg finds the stone jutting out, and I press down on it, expecting it to give way so that I can fall into the chasm that my brain tells me is right below me.  The stone doesn’t move.  It sticks.  I grab onto the ledge with my sweaty fingers.  The dust sticks to my hands like chalk.  My left foot finds another stone.  The Wall is still there.  My hands are still grabbing it.  My feet do not slip.  The chasm in my brain shrinks.  Before I know it, I’m standing next to my friends once again.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Liu Yi says.  They’ll never know.  They’ll never know.  Ahead of us is the small village.  The steepest part of the descent is over and done with.  We carefully make our way down towards the houses.  My knees are shaking slightly from the descent.  Going down is always tougher than coming up.  Our plan is to walk through the village, turn right, and then loop our way back to Liu Yi’s rental car.  Just before we get to the village, I notice that the green fruit that Guo Tao bounced at me before is lying in the middle of the pathway, its green color covered with a sheen of grey Great Wall dust.  My head no longer dizzy, I reach over and pick up the small fruit.  I place it in my pocket, saving my new friend from the treacherous beauty of Huang Hua Great Wall.

As I scrunch my feet up inside my woolen socks, I can still feel grains of sand from a Korean beach rubbing and scratching the spaces between my toes.  I’m going back to Beijing.  Having only just left Korean soil ten minutes before, I glance outside at the blue day.  My eyes wander towards the papers that my seatmate is studying.  She is a pretty girl, my age (one month older than me, to be precise), who is traveling to Hong Kong for work.  We cannot communicate much, as I only have ten days of Korean language under my belt, and her English is not so good.  Still, she has kind eyes, the kind a stranger can trust.  These eyes saw first-hand the faces of Ethiopian boys and girls in hospitals as her missionary work led her to the far away African country for one year of her life.  We do the madatory airplane chitchat for some minutes, and then it occurs to me that it’s 2009.  I want to ask her about her New Year’s resolutions. 

“I want marriage,” she says with a sly smile.

My resolutions are too many.  It seems with each year, I think of more and more challenges for myself.  Most of the challenges I make are not so monumental.  I can usually see my New Year’s resoultions come to light.  Why make a challenge for myself, if it is impossible to achieve?  Marriage is not on the list of my challenges at the moment.  In 2008 I pledged not to eat at McDonald’s or KFC for a year.  This task was simple enough to accomplish.  For 2009 I decide to give up eating chocolate, drinking coke and sprite, and eating “jian bing,” a kind of Chinese pancake that I love but has absolutely no nutritional value.  I also want to improve my Chinese and Korean language skills.  And last, but not least, for a physical challenge, I’d like to have a six-pack.  I know once one hits 30 it gets harder and harder to tone those stomach muscles, so I want to go against the inertia of my slightly aging body. 

When there’s no more left to say to the airplane missionary, a silence comes between us, and I feel the sleep creeping behind my eyes, along with the sand between my toes.

The Pen is Mightier than the Sword

Flashback 4 years ago to Tokyo, Japan…

I sit on the Narita Express^W high speed train going from Tokyo station to Narita aiport.  Today my girlfriend from Portland, Oregon is coming to Japan for the second time and I should meet her at the airport.  The trees pass by the window in a blur.  Neon lights give way to a quieter landscape, the kind of of no soul life that surround airport vicinities.  A girl sits beside me, and I decide to strike up a conversation with her. 

“I’m sorry, I don’t speak Japanese,” she says to me.  It turns out that she, Kyung Hui, is from Korea.  She has only been in Japan for a few days on business.  I’m not sure exactly what it is she does, but I know it has something to do with bakeries, restaurant chains, marketing, etc.  She mentions “Baskin Robbins,” “Dunkin Donuts.”  These companies are associated with her job in some way or another.  We talk for a bit about our interests, signficant others, etc.  She is looking forward to getting back to her country.  As we exit the train, she gives me a pen as a gift.  I look at the pen and notice that it’s not just any ordinary pen.  It has a light at the end of the pen.  When I twist the end to the right, the light turns on, illuminating the words on my paper.  I’ve never seen a pen like this before.  I thank her and think to myself, “I have to visit Korea someday.”  This pen is the seed that sprouts the oak.

Today…

Before arriving in Korea I contacted selected Korean friends that I have met throughout my life’s various journeys.  One of the friends I contacted was Kyung Hui.  As soon as I arrive at my youth hostel that I booked before coming to Korea I give her a call and ask her out for dinner.  She meets me at the nearest metro station.  As we greet each other, I reach in my bag and pull out a gift that I prepared specifically for her.  It’s a special pen that has ten or so different colored inks to choose from.  Should the writer press down on the back of the pen, the ink changes color.  I give her my gift, and she laughs as the circle is complete.  We head to a Korean barbecue restaurant for dinner.  After some minutes, it comes to my attention that our waitress is from China.  After we take this fact in, the dinner conversation switches back and forth between three languages–Korean, Chinese, and English.  I’m at home again.

Chinatown Korea

Besides Kyung Hui, all of my other Korean friends I know from my time spent in China.  In an odd coincidence, they are all girls.  It’s not something that I planned.  It’s just that I know most of them from studying Chinese, and a disproportionate amount of my classmates were females.  These friends are the reason I came to Korea.  Chinese have an old saying that roughly translates to, “one more friend, one more road,” and I believe it.  What better reason to travel than to see a friend from afar?  There’s Yang Yang, Piao Si Qi, and Sunny, three classmates of mine I know from the one semester of Chinese I took at Beijing Language and Culture University^W this last Spring.  During that term while on a class excursion to the Great Wall I met another girl studying at BLCU, the lovely Kim Min Zhi (English nickname is “Pebble”).   A year and a half ago I also took a 6 week Chinese course at BLCU where I met another classmate named Kim Se Jin.  I will see all of these friends during this trip.  

In one of the many odd stories of frequent coincidences that grace my life from time to time, I met Somi.  It was a year and a half ago and my former boss from Jiangxi asked me to return to Nanchang^W to receive the Lushan^W Award for excellence in teaching.  At the time I was living in Nanjing^W where I was teaching in a private training college called “Ewings College.”  The award ceremony was to be on a weekend, so I left on a Thursday to make it an extended trip.  When I arrived at the awards banquet, I learned that I was one of many teachers from around Jiangxi Province who would be receiving an award.  At the table where I was sitting were some students from South Korea who had been invited as special guests.  One of these students was Somi.  We talked for some minutes in English and Chinese.  I can’t remember what we talked about, but I do know she was excited to be in Jiangxi.  The night went on, the words flew by, I received my award, I went back to Nanjing.  We exchanged e-mail addresses, and I told her to contact me if she ever came to Yichun^W.  I never truly expected we would meet again.  But life throws me surprises all the time.  Some weeks later I visited Shanghai for a weekend.  In the evening I was walking back to my hotel when I noticed that there, in front of another hotel, was Somi.  She was standing in front of the door staring at me with a smile of surprise on her face.  It was as if she had been waiting for and expecting me the entire time.  Neither of us knew the other would be coming to Shanghai, and yet there we both were.    She was there on a weekend with friends.  I joined her and her friends for dinner that evening and promised that if I ever went to Korea I would be sure to call her.  A year and a half later, I fulfill the promise.

The Reason

A classmate, a first impression on the Great Wall, a chance encounter in a city of more than 20 million, a pen with a light…these are the reasons I travel.  These are the reasons I go places.  I don’t want to get away from people who float by.  I want to find them…to find the face in the crowd and the story behind the face.  I want to speak her language.  I want to know his family.  I want to see where her father works.  I want to give back the gift that was given to me.  What’s it like to live in their skins and be a part of their worlds, even if only for a day?  There’s something inside of me that wants to explore people as much as places when I  travel.  That’s why, when I look back on my stay in Korea, it seems more to me that I did not visit a country on a sightseeing trip, but rather visited a family of friends for a reunion.  Even when I meet strangers who cannot speak the same language as I do, I try to do my best to make a connection.  There was the old man in front of Gyeonbok Palace^W who I took a picture with.  I quickly exhausted my Korean vocabulary and resorted to speaking the only language we both knew…a smile and a pat on the back.  He responded by giving me a piece of his Korean art and calligraphy witha message that roughly translates to, “I’ll do my best today because it’s a good day.  I’m happy with who I’m with.”  Well said, bearded old man.  Well said.

Everyday I spent in Korea I was able to share my time with friends (new and old), seeing their country through their eyes.  I stayed with Sunny’s family for one night in Daegu^W and Pebble’s family for 5 nights in Busan^W.  When someone asks me my first impression of Korea, I just say, ”it’s  like family there.”  In my experience, this is how the world can be when one travels…like one big family.  It all depends on point of view. 

While sites of historic interest do hold some fascination for me, I cannot get around the fact that places are only places, and history was made by people.  I don’t need to go to a beautiful place to have a wonderful time, and I don’t need to see beautiful scenery in order for me to be satisfied.  For me, it’s more about the company I keep, the conversations I have, and the memories I make with the company of conversations.   A magical moment can happen anytime, anywhere.   Be it at a fish market in Busan, a temple in Daegu, or at a restaurant in Seoul, magical moments are waiting behind every corner.  It’s up to me to open me eyes and find these in the faces of the stranger who is a potential friend.

Sand

Bing!

The captain turns on the seatbelt sign and I open my eyes.  With only a few more minutes left before we land I put my seat in its upright and full position, as requested.  I turn my head again to the nurse sitting by my side and inform her that next time we meet I hope she can introduce me to her husband.  She laughs.  When it’s time to exit the aircraft, she simply says, “good luck,” and I think to myself, yes, my luck certainly is good.

As I exit the plane and pass smoothly through customs without interruption, I have one destination in mind:  the diabolo^W grounds in the park.  I don’t even want to go home.  I don’t want to waste a moment of my time.  Korea will stay with me, but I’m back and China now, and it’s only 2:00pm.  If I hurry, I can get to the park before my old friends leave.  I board Beijing’s high speed airport transit system and book it back to the city, changing to metro line 10 and getting off at the exit nearest to my favorite park.  Surrounded by Beijingers again, the only sound I can hear in my head is the buzzing and whirring of the diabolo.

Whhhrrrrr…zzzzzzzz….whrrrrr…zzzzzzzz.

I exit the metro and trot at a brisk pace to the diabolo grounds.  Under the bright New Year’s Sun, the cast of characters are all there:  The Smooth Scholar, The Entertainer, Marlborough Man, many others.  They yell at me and greet me for a grand homecoming.  I reach into my bag to pull out some sweets that I bought for them while in Korea.

“Hao!  You’re back!”  The Entertainer yells.  We embrace.

They surround me for some minutes, asking me questions about Korea and Pebble (she used to accompany me to the diabolo grounds).  They are curious for some information about Korea, this country that is not so far, but ”oh so far” away.  After a while, they start to wander off with their diabolo’s.  The Smooth Scholar has pulled out a Rubik’s cube.  I pick up a spare diabolo that The Entertainer lends to me.  It spins in front of my eyes and I once again scrunch up my feet inside of my shoes, this time for warmth.  The sand still in between my toes, my toes inside my my socks, my socks encased by my shoes, my shoes on top of the dusty diabolo grounds, and me surrounded by my friends.  I think about the Korean sand in my shoes so close in proximity to the particles of Beijing earth and dust beneath my feet.  With the whirring and buzzing and laughing around my head, I know that it all fits together.  Everything is in its place.  The Earth is my home and my home has no walls.