Chinese Spring Part 2

Chinese spring: part 2

Shanghai is called the Paris of the East for good reason. Farmers’ houses, new and neat as baby teeth, give way to apartment megaplexes between the airport and Pudong side (still Shanghai, though) where buildings shaped like bows and spirals, topped with spires, domes and crowns line one side of the river. French and British colonial buildings crowd the opposite bank. Bridges boats and ferries carry lively commerce between the two. Underneath, one of Shanghai’s new subways roars through a tunnel.

 

Shanghai is beyond words, beyond beautiful, bustling, brash. It sparkles like a sapphire on a fine day, broods like a child in the rain. In a 19^th century set of trade agreements, the Chinese government ceded land to the French, the British and the Americans along the river. The chic French concession offers shop after shop crammed with silk dresses, soft leathers, fine jade in rainbow colors, much of all the tea in China. Old town is thronged with gawking Spaniards, Aussies, Brits and Koreans. A Swedish festival is on offer along with thousands of red paper lanterns and rows of plastic cats sitting on their hunches waving one arm up and down.

Our guide tells us we must just say “no” to all the vendors and beggars, but Larry slides a few yuan into the bowl of a woman who reminds us how unfathomable fate is and how privileged we are.

 

We figure out how to take the subway, forcing our ears to pick up unfamiliar sounds, our brains to focus on words that have zero meaning even when translated into Western letters. We struggle to make the sounds that convey “please” and “thank you, good morning, yes and no.” All we really master is Nihau, “hello.” We fall into bed at night, mindful of blurred impressions, bellies full of pork and noodles, pickled green sea creatures and watermelon.

 

Suzhou

 

My students, Jane and Wendy, both live in Shanghai. They invite us to visit Suzhou, a city of several million an hour and a half from Shanghai by car. We plan to spend the night at the ancient house and garden of a famous scholar that has just been renovated and renamed Blossom Hill Resort. We follow Jane and Wendy down a narrow alley paved with smooth stones, lined with low whitewashed houses that sport black tile roofs.  Hung from the end of each row of tile, pewter medallions shaped like fat arrows appear where simple gutters are lodged in American homes.

Through a carved lattice gateway, we enter a modest looking lobby that opens on a quiet garden. A garden is the pride of the Chinese courtyard home. We roll our luggage past the middle building and climb the narrow steep stairs in the back of the second courtyard. Through another latticed gate, we find a lovely sitting room with bedrooms on either side. This was the quarters of the scholar’s wife 700 years ago. Our room lies behind an old wooden door. An antique table and chairs greets us, a carved wooden sofa in a nook beyond.

A silk screen, 10 feet high and embroidered with the mountainous landscape serves as a headboard for the king-sized bed. The ceiling is beamed with polished mahogany. The mahogany is carved at the corners and where the beams meet to form a cathedral ceiling. The bathroom has a Japanese toilet (if you don’t know about these, look them up) and a frosted glass shower that reaches to the cathedral ceiling. It’s possible that we have died and gone to heaven.

The first afternoon, we visit the Humble Administrators Garden, a place with Chinese lupines and azaleas. We wander over the smooth rock pathways inlaid with frogs, cranes, bats and flowers. We wind around the streams, over the bridges, through the tiled roofs; each turn offers a new perspective. Willows drape down from banks lined with boulders, each chosen for its color and shape. Mosses and vines grow from cliffs and crevices. Wood ducks float in the ponds.

On the second day, the highlight of the entire trip arrives in an invitation to a private luncheon at the Suzhou Art Institute. The Institute features the work of a multimedia artist and we are about to understand what that means. We are ushered into a long, dimly lit room.  A dark wood table, long enough for 8 chairs on each side is set with only four places. Jane and Wendy sit across from us. Lotus leaves flow down a blue river in the middle of the table, projected, in brilliant colors, from the ceiling. Gold and white Koi swim among the leaves. For some reason, I reach out for a tiny Koi. It darts away, we all catch our breath. Larry lays his hand in the stream. The water ripples out from his fingers. We giggle like six-year-olds.

Eight video screens come to life on the walls behind us. The theme of the lunch is the Lotus, we are told by the narrator in Chinese with English subtitles. Most of the film recalls the history of the feast, of feasting together, of music and dance, art and wine with food, fine cognac and theater. It is not just what you eat, the narrator explains; it’s with whom you eat it. We feel in fine company.

There are 13 courses: lotus soup, lotus seeds, lotus pods arrive, some as food, some as decor. Of the 13, three are fragrance courses. A small ceramic pot, topped with a ceramic lotus, opens to release the heady scent of a lotus flower. At some point, we are served a tiny portion of vegetables, perfectly plated, accompanied by two tiny goldfish in a shot glass that sports a lotus sprout. At another moment, I cannot stop the tears from streaming down my face.

Wendy sits silent through most of the meal. “Words are powerless”, she says later. “Yes, there are none,” I say. I feel like I have seen the future of art, a sensory fusion beyond some thin layer of words. We are all deeply touched by this work. I am honored that somehow, the universe has delivered this experience to my doorstep.

We trail out through the exhibit. Two dozen steel lotus blossoms rise up from a pond in the courtyard. A larger number of blown glass lotus seed pods stand side-by-side in another room. The walls are hung with life-size photographs of the artist. Bound by wide gauze strips, she struggles to free herself. In one piece, her arms are tied to her side by bras and garters that stretch tight across her belly, her thighs, her shoulders. Her life’s arrow has found my heart.

I know that we will have other wonderful meals, love other artists, but this experience will never happen again. Travel helps you appreciate the singularity of things, the importance of being open, the power of culture and energy of life.

Spring in China

This blog is going to appear in two parts because it’s a little longer than usual. It’s about my adventures in China over the last month since so many of you have asked about the trip.

Arriving in Beijing for the first time, made me feel like a newborn baby. As John Thorndike said of newborn babies, “the environment is a blooming buzzing confusion.”

What hits you first is the scale of it: gigantic, crowded, noisy, high and wide, brash, yes but the scale is not in two dimensions or three. Time, the fourth dimension, is palpable here, moving along the path that has been civilized for the last 6000 years. Before we went, people asked me why I wanted to go to China. On the one hand, I was surprised by this question since it seemed obvious to me that everyone should want to go to China. On the other, I couldn’t really say why. I think it is because I love the ancient history of the human race.

The Forbidden City dominates the soul of Beijing. It was built before Columbus arrived in America and for 500 years, no one ever entered it but royalty, high government officials, their servants and concubines. Just before the last of five hand carved gates reaching maybe four stories tall, lies a moat at least as wide as half a football field. Inside, there are 9,999 rooms (it is an auspicious number). Every piece of wood seems to have a hand carved pattern; every tile is painted: every stone is hand laid. Every wooden or stone creature has a meaning. All the numbers on every building have been crunched. If there are 12 pillars, there is a reason. If there are nine monkeys on the end of a roof beam, it is significant. There are omens and symbols, talismans and signs everywhere. For the ancient Chinese, the natural world was alive with indications.

Off an alley just northeast of the Forbidden City, houses built around courtyards cost millions of USD because persons of high rank owned them hundreds of years ago. The houses have no bathrooms. Neighbors share public bathhouses that serve dozens of residents. Kitchens barely qualify as functional. These courtyard houses are surrounded by new high rise apartments and hotels that stretch for blocks and tower over even the office building shaped like a 30 story Dragon.

Back in the city, it becomes clear that crossing the street is going to be a major adventure. We have been told that the best way to cross a major street in Beijing is to stand on the corner until a crowd gathers, take a place in the middle of the crowd and move at the moment they do. There are cars, trucks, buses, scooters, motorbikes, bicycles and carts. You need to look both ways because scooters, motorbikes, bicycles and carts are not considered vehicles. Also, driving in Beijing is such an aggressive sport that cars weave in and out of pedestrians regardless of the color of the signal.

We are the only Americans at the Marriott City Wall. The other travelers are East Indians, Chinese from other provinces, and the occasional Aussie or Brit. The breakfast buffet offers six or seven different tables set around the edges of the room. There are scrambled eggs, fried eggs and omelettes served with hash browns, sausages, bacon and ketchup. There is one entire table devoted to Congee and its accoutrements, one devoted to miso soup and its accompaniments, one that offers an American-style salad bar, one where you can make the European breakfast of cheese, bread and meat. There is a cereal bar, four espresso machines, a table loaded with various kinds of juice and one with French pastries. There are baskets full of dumplings, there are fried and steamed noodles and Indian pickles. It is awesome. Breakfast in all the other hotels we visit is similar.

We have the great good luck that our group tour never filled, and so we now have our own guide and driver who shepherd us through all the highlights of the city tour and take us for a walk on the Great Wall. After reaching the fourth tower on our upward climb to the top of the first hill, the guide and I decided to have some tea in the gift shop while Larry continues ever upward to the eighth tower, where he believes that he will be able to see forever and there will be no people. There are not ever “no people” in China.  The Chinese believe that if you walk along the Great Wall, you will be a hero.  Near the eighth tower, a cable car delivers scores of tourists that our guide calls “lazy heroes.”

Each night, we stumble into bed by 8 PM and struggle to stay awake at least one more hour so we won’t wake up in the middle of the night. We are jetlagged, sure, but we are also exhausted by the struggle to understand at least some of what has been laid before us. Furthermore, since Google has been outlawed in China, along with Facebook and twitter, and, it now it appears, iBooks and iTunes as well, we have no way of finding answers to the questions that beset us over dinner. It is also tiring to be in a country where the language makes not even the slightest bit of sense. I cannot tell when one word ends and another begins. In Europe or South America, I know enough Spanish or German or French to catch a phrase or two. In Chinese, I can’t remember how to say good morning because it has no relationship to any sounds I know. China is a big experience.

Just an hour and a half flight south west of Beijing, Xian, a recently industrialized city of 4 ½ million, has hidden (literally) one of the grand amazements of the world, the terracotta warriors. You’ve probably seen pictures of them, or seen a few on loan to an American Museum.  I saw them about 15 years ago (Lord knows, probably longer) at the Norton Simone Museum in Pasadena.  Just a few of them leaves an indelible memory, but believe me, seeing a thousand of them standing in trenches a few feet below the viewing platform, is ineffable, though I will proceed to eff it a bit.

First of all, you have to realize that the heads come clean off of these life-sized statues (maybe a bit bigger than the average Chinese warrior of two thousand years ago). Each of these heads was individually carved. Each one is, basically, the head of the real person who posed for the carving.  Numerous molds were used to create the bodies of these soldiers, so they appear to have varied stances, some with a foot more forward; one leans backward a little; one’s arm is slightly more raised, and so on.  So many thoughts come roaring through my head.  This was a real person!  This person stood still for this portrait.  This portrait has been here for nearly 2,300 years.  In a way, they remind me of Romans.  They stand in about eight rows with walls between each row that have not been dug away by the archeologists because there is nothing in those walls but dirt.

Each soldier was reconstructed in place. That’s why they are so far below the viewing deck (which is below the level of the street).  They are standing exactly where they stood thousands of years ago.  That’s how much the earth had grown since then.  There are 6,000 of them and only 1,000 of them have been reconstructed.  The first thousand are so awesome, though, that the rest hardly matter.  I don’t think you could be more awestruck.  And, that’s just the first pit.  There are three pits.  In the second pit they have uncovered the archers and the chariots (complete with charioteers, of course).  The chariots were made of wood, long since deteriorated, but the horses are as exquisite as the warriors themselves.

In the third pit, the high-ranking officers and generals seem almost casually arrayed. Because they weren’t all facing each other, the walls between them seem like the partitions of an office building.  They even seem to meet each other outside one of the offices.  The Emperor has not been unearthed, and may never be.  There seems to be some sentiment that one ought not to disturb the dead.  In fact, the Chinese are pretty sure about this.  In all of the buildings we have seen so far, the threshold of the main entrance is about 6 inches high and two inches wide because, apparently, Chinese ghosts have their feet tied together and can’t clear a threshold that high.

Anyway, they say that under the tomb of the Emperor, is a small scale model of the entire city including its rivers, represented by streams of mercury, which everyone feels may be dangerous. This may have been the Emperor’s way of scaring off grave robbers.  It appears to have worked.