China Reflection

Over the clickety-clack and bang-bang-bang of the train tracks, her story unfolds.  We’re both on the same sleeper car.  I’m in a middle bunk, sandwiched between the top and bottom, and she’s also in a middle across from me.  The sleeper cars in China are set up like this, sleeping six people to one small space, all stacked on top of each other.  Mingling with bunkmates always happens sooner or later.  My stop is the final destination of the train, Yinchuan City which is the capital of Ningxia^W Province.  The trip should take about 20 hours, but if I’m lucky I’ll sleep through most of it.  I always look forward to these marathon train rides in China as they are the places where I get some of the best sleep of my life.  Still, it’s only 3:30pm when my train departs Beijing…all the time in the world for a story. 

 

When I first see her, I can’t help but think that she just doesn’t seem like she is the kind of person who would be classified as a chatterbox.  She just seems like a “normal” girl with a librarian’s face and a couple of books, keeping quietly to herself until her arrival home.  Bookworm.  Innocent.  Harmless.  These are the words that first come to my mind when I look at her.  First impressions can be deceiving.  She wears a black dress with a small black buckle in the middle.  Little white polka dots are evenly patterned around the dress.  It’s the kind of dress that reminds me of an American grandmother trying to look younger, fraying back and forth loosely in the wind that rushes through the train’s windows.

 

I’m not sure how we begin our conversation, but once we begin, we’re in there.  I think maybe I offered her a cracker and she refused in well-spoken English.  We begin our talk well after we have left the outskirts of Beijing for the rough and shoddy mountains of Hebei Province.  She tells me that her English name is Amanda and she is studying in Tianjin City to get her Masters in English education.  She is returning home for the summer holidays to the small town of Wuhai, bordering the Golbi desert of Inner Mongolia.  Our conversation is interrupted on and off by the deafening noise of the train cutting in and out of tunnels.  Every time we are in a tunnel, the light in the train is extinguished and the roar of the tunnel’s echo makes Amanda squint her left eyeball.  Sometimes she puts a finger in her ear to block out the sound.

When we are in the tunnel portion of the conversation, I look in her hand and make a comment about the two books that she is carrying.  One of them reads with the title, “Lao Zi says…..” and the other reads with the title,

“Zhuang Zi says….”  Both Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi are well-known Chinese philosphers.  The books she holds, however, are well below her level and seem more suitable for a junior high school student.

“That’s because these were books that I got when I was in junior high school.  I just picked these books up last time when I was home because I think there’s a lot of things that make sense…kind of a way to live our life.  Also, ever since I was baptized by my friend I….”

Bambambambamwhoooooosh.  We go through another tunnel.  Amanda squints her left eye and puts her finger in her ear.  We sit there in uncomfortable noise-silence, the sentence that she started cut off abruptly by the train’s progress.  When we come out into the light, she doesn’t continue for fear of another tunnel.  I continue for her.

“Wait, you’re Christian?” I ask.  I’m always curious about how conversions to Christianity happen in China, especially out in the middle of Inner Monglia.  It’s a puzzle to me.

“Yes, my friend baptized me.  It was in her apartment.  She’s from the U.S.”

“Can you be baptized in a Church in China?” I ask

“Well, it’s better to do something like this secretly, so I did it in my American friend’s apartment in Tianjin.  I’ve been a Christian for a few years now.”

“What do your parents think about this?  Are they Christian, too?”

“My mother told me that she wants to believe.  She is thinking of becoming one, too.  My dad…well, we don’t get much time to talk.  He and my mother are herdsmen.  They have about 100 goats.  Maybe when I go home, I sometimes don’t even see my father.”

“Why not?”

“The grassland that my father takes the sheep to graze on is about 30 km away from our village.  If you ride a donkey cart to get there, it probably takes 7 hours or so to make it to the grassland.”

She tells me more about her parents’ lifestyle, a lifestyle that is completely foreign to me in more ways than one.  Although I was born in the year of the sheep, I know nothing about herding them.  I can barely herd myself.  It’s difficult for me to imagine how hard it must be for them in the winter, living their lives on the sheep wool trade.  It has been Amanda’s goal to help alleviate some of her parents’ hardships that they will otherwise continue to face in the future.  All she wants is to give them a brighter and more comfortable future.  She mentions to me about her dabble in business when she and two others co-invested in their own English training school.  Shaking her head, she tells me she has to be more careful next time she goes into business.  That story is later to come. 

“But the thing is there might be good news.  The government will pay my father a sum for the grassland where he takes his sheep to graze.  Last year, they discovered coal near the grassland, and the government wants to develop this land and mine the coal.  They have already begun paying my father for the land, and my parents should also get payments to help them with new housing.  That’s what I was working so hard for when we started this school.  So, it’s good news.” 

The train goes through another tunnel and our conversations stops once more.  When we come out into the light, I decide to ask her once more about the connection between Lao Zi and Christianity.  She thinks about it for a minute, and then I rephrase my question, asking her to tell me about the most important thing she took from reading this Lao Zi book.

“Well, he often talks of the ‘Wisdom of Water.’”

“You see, water has no form, but it is unbreakable.  It is not too hard, not too soft.  It can bend and can be straight.  It can take any form that you put it into.  It makes me think of the Trinity in Christianity…the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.  Just like that, water has 3 states, and they are totally different…when it’s normal, it flows like a liquid.  In the cold, it freezes into ice.  When it is heated it…how do you say….”

“Evaporates…”

“Yes, evaporates into steam.  These are like the three states of water.  Like the Trinity.  The three states.”  The train goes into another tunnel.  Squint left eye, insert finger into ear.  It’s a long tunnel.  The thread of conversation loses itself in the dark…

“Hello friend!”  They guy who is sitting a few bunks back comes over and pats me on the shoulder.  Oh no…. he’s already started off with the word “friend.”  This can’t be good.

It turns out I don’t have that much to worry about.  This guy is from Hebei, Province, and his stop is coming up within the next hour.  He sits down with me, and I discover that he’s really not such a bad guy at all.  Probably in his late 30s, he’s taking the train from Beijing to the Zhangjiakou stop.  I’ve heard of this place in Hebei.  My boss, Zhao Jing, often asks me if I’d like to go with him to Zhangjiakou to get out of Beijing for a weekend trip.  I haven’t joined him yet.  My new train companion is named Song Ri Cheng, no English name.  He starts out the conversation with an interesting enough question:

“Do you like ancient things?  Do you like to buy them I mean?” he asks.

I tell him that I do appreciate things with history, but I don’t collect them much.  During my childhood I collected He-Man and X-men action figures, and I continue to be an avid comic book collector…but these things do not qualify.  Still, I’d like to think that everyone likes a bit of history. 

He tells me that he is recently out of work.  I have trouble understanding what it is that he used to do for work, but is seems that it was related to the selling and manufacture of engines of some sort.  From our conversation, he explains that he recently went to Beijing for two main reasons.  One of his purposes was his interest in collecting and selling ancient artifacts.  There’s a special market for trading in antiques in Beijing called “Panjiayuan,” and he mentions visiting this market.  He carries with him only a small shoulder bag, but I don’t ask if there are any artifacts inside or not.  We talk about other things instead.

“You know Yong He Gong Llama Temple?” he asks.  Of course I do.  The office where I work everyday is located directly next to the temple, the largest Buddhist Llama temple of its kind outside of Tibet.  He travels to Beijing from time to time to collect antiques and to visit the Llama temple where he burns incense and prays.  He tells me that he is a devout Buddhist.

“Young people today…they don’t really have any thought anymore.  They’re like empty boxes.  They don’t know what to believe in.  Just money.  This is one of the reasons why I’m Buddhist.  This is one of the reaons I like and appreciate ancient things…we have so much history, but everyone just wants to develop.  People just believe in money…”

The train passes in silence.  We’re out of the continuous mountain section of Hebei, and our conversation is only interrupted by our own silences at this point.  I talk with him more about his interests and hobbies, stressing that I agree it’s important that we have something that drives us more than just the next buck.  I may not be religious, but I know I have goals.  I know I still want to learn, to travel, to experience what is around me as it slowly disappears.  As we talk about “what it is we like,” he says something that strikes a chord with me.

“I guess I like things of beauty.  That’s one of the reason why I like antiques.  They are beautiful, and the fact that they have lasted so long against development, this makes them more beautiful.  Antiques, nature…even this conversation.  This is a beautiful thing.”

The comment that he makes gives me goosebumps.  Exactly.  “This is the reason I travel,” I tell him.  “To have conversations like this.” 

We talk for some time until we approach his stop.  He points out the window and names the mountain, “Ji Min” Mountain.  He tells me that near the mountain is an ancient post office…”one of the first in China.”  I look out the window and notice a crumbling wall near the small town we are approaching.  After some more minutes, the train’s speed slows, and he prepares to exit.

“If you come to Zhangjiakou, make sure to give me a call.  I live in Yu County.  I’ll show you some old places that you’ve never even thought of existed before.  Places that most people don’t go to.”  We exchange contact information, and he heads towards the exit.  Perhaps I’ll see him again?  It depends on me.  My curiousity has been plucked.

I look over towards Amanda’s middle bunk and notice that she is resting.  The Sun is begnning to set.  It’s that time of day when the soft light has already begun to shine–the kind of light that makes everything appear beautiful:  from a nuclear reactor to the carton of instant noodles that I eat as the train continues.  I eat to my heart’s delight, the lover of antiques has already exited the train.  My appetite for stories has only just begun.  The instant noodles are only the appetizer.  The main course is still yet to come.

When Amanda wakes up, we start up our conversation again.  This time, instead of talking about Jesus, Lao Zi, Trinity, and “The Wisdom of Water,” she unravels the story of her attempt at starting up a private business.  When she first mentioned it to me earlier in the day, she simply brushed it off as a bad memory.  She and two other co-investors started up a private English training school in her hometown of Wuhai.  They would teach English to learners of all ages.  Originally when I asked her why she pulled out of this investment, she just shook her head and said, “the two other co-investors were always arguing…it wasn’t a very good situation.”  However, as I was about to find out, the story was much, much more complicated.  I listened intently as she told me the details.

David vs. Goliath.  Lawrence of Arabia.  The hero of Wuhai.  Everyone loves this story.  Everyone loves an underdog.  I sat and listened to her tale, dumbstruck at the chain of events, snowballing far past where my imagination could take them.  As I listened, the lights went out, causing her to tell half of it in darkness and the other half at breakfast time.  By the morning we were already well into the heart of Inner Mongolia and nearing her town of Wuhai.  The tale took me past the barren grasslands, nuclear reactors, and coal fields.  She spun her tale, weaving intricate bits of her story in and out of my brain.  I was enraptured.  She was my hero.  This girl, this bookworm, this innocent librarian had stood up to money and corruption.  Her willpower had brought the enemy to his knees and justice had prevailed. 

Before we knew it, the speaker announced that we were arriving in Wuhai.  I looked out the window and could smell the smoke and coal production.   There were black lumps of coal deposits on both the left and right sides of the tracks.  A sort of rusty mountain in the distance.  The dirty Yellow river, filled with sand deposits, ran next to the town.  Who knew that legends were born from these surroundings?  She invited me to visit Wuhai on the way back to Beijing.  I told her that I would think about it, but the truth was I had already decided in my mind that I would definitely have to stop there to see the legend for myself.  And then it was time for her to go.  Just like that, the innocent librarian turned courageous knight of justice arose from her throne and left the train.  I was alone again, on the train.  Two hours later I would be in Yinchuan, capital of Ningxia.  Although the journey had not yet truly started, a hero’s story of justice triumphing over evil was already firmly established.  All it took was one night on a train.  Clickety-clack, bang-bang-bang…to be continued.