Echoes of the Past

Before we could get to the Terracotta warriors, perhaps the most famous testament to a man’s desire to fight until the end – and beyond, we had to do our own battle with the Xian traffic. Later on that day our bus would get into a honking battle with another bus, only to have the other bus violently cut us off and then stop so that their driver could walk back and yell at our driver. Despite our high hopes, there was no kung fu fighting. On that front, China has been a bit of a letdown.

But back to the morning. As we were clawing our way through the traffic, we were afforded an excellent view of Xian’s old city wall, the best preserved city wall in China, running 9 miles around the center of the city. It was old, it was beautiful. It only had four openings, one in each face of the wall. Our tour guide Cindy indulged in a rare moment of criticism, and informed us that while Xian traffic is normally very efficient, the wall tends to create bottlenecks and back the traffic up a bit.

I think her statement might have managed to sum up all of China. It is a place where the future’s greatest impediment is the past. And yet the quandary is, were they to give up the past in search of a better future, would they actually be gaining anything?

There are few things as outmoded and obsolete as city walls. Most old artifacts are still capable of performing their intended function. Old pots still hold water, old cotton gins can still do whatever it was that they originally did (1). This wall keeps people neither in nor out, but it does keep them in gridlock. Somehow I doubt that was part of the plan. It would be unthinkable to destroy it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if every single Xian citizen with a driver’s license hasn’t, at some point, wished that this particular national treasure were located a few miles outside of city limits.

China is China. It is almost a mantra that I have occasion to repeat daily. It is full of quirks and inefficiencies that have equal capacity to either enrage or endear. In the end, it boils down to being China. I don’t anger easily, but recently the quickest way to raise my ire has been to assume that the American way is normative without taking any time to consider the vast cultural and economic differences that make the two countries, in some ways, incomparable.

What angers me is that people come and refuse to take China on its own terms, ignoring its charms and crucifying its weaknesses. They see how it could be improved, but fail to see the cost to the national identity. And yet, where do we draw lines? Where must they sacrifice being Chinese in order to fit into the currently western-dominated business sphere? What is the price tag that we put on an identity? What should I give up of myself in order to go forward? What should I hold onto and allow to shape the way in which I advance?

Later I will get the opportunity to walk the wall. The day will be cold and eerily clammy, the sky misty and mysterious. The wall will fade into the fog about a hundred feet in either direction, and even though I know it is only 9 miles in circumference, at that time it will seem like it could stretch on forever, implacable and solid as the stones of which it is comprised. I will stand there on the wall that has stood against armies and traffic, the wall that has stood against time itself, and I will look down at the cars as they honk and scurry through the city, and I will wonder which I would prefer to be. Then I will turn and walk along the wall, through the fog, into the fog, trying to find the point where the mist touches the stone, because maybe at that point things will begin to make sense.


(1) Which, I have been told by a reliable sources, is not ‘make gin out of cotton.’ Sigh…

Beginnings

I arrived at Southwest University expecting… something. It represents the end of my prolonged unemployment; the beginning of the next phase, whatever that may be. And so, at 8:13 PM, I stepped out of the taxi into the dark and the rain. A solitary light lit the entrance and framed Mrs. Niu, who runs the Foreign Experts housing. Except for her initial mutterings of “ta jong wen hai ke yi,” we walked up the four narrow flights of steps in silence and darkness, the sound-activated lights turning on late and dim, really only highlighting the darkness that they briefly interrupted.

It has been a long time since I have ever walked up a flight of stairs without knowing my destination. Mrs. Niu didn’t offer, and I didn’t ask, choosing to savor yet another small mystery. Without knowledge of my destination, the steps seemed as if they could have stretched onto into the darkness forever, and I was content to blithely chase the dark, one step at a time, forever. The lights faced down the stairs, but were rarely triggered until I was right under them, with the effect that I would walk through the dark, and when the lights did turn on, they would illuminate barely more than my heels and the flight of stairs that I had just finished climbing. It seemed appropriate, strangely analogous to my recent history, walking blindly forward, clarity coming only infrequently and retroactively.

We did not climb forever; we only climbed to the fourth floor, into an amazing apartment, with hardwood floors and high ceilings, a double bed, and a fuzzy Bugs Bunny blanket, though I would not find that until later. Mrs. Niu let me into my new home and then she and her husband, Mr. Liu, set about connecting the appliances and turning on the water heater. I was left in the living room, the sparse furnishings only calling attention to my abundance of luggage in the middle of the room. I brought very little, and yet… I have too much crap. With promises to help me with any problems that I might have, they left me standing in the living room – my living room – feeling that I should be feeling more. Some excitement, maybe some fear, wonder, appreciation; even hunger would have at least been something to latch onto. But I just felt… right, maybe even satisfied. Alone, but satisfied.

This past year I have been forced to wring the meaning from every day, because there has been nothing external to do it for me. As opportunities did nothing but dry up, plans did nothing but die, the fertile landscape of my everyday life also dried up and died. There were no 5-year plans to cultivate, not office projects to nurture, and so I found myself in a wasteland with nothing to do but set fire to my expectations and revel in the unexpected, sometimes treacherous, freedom that twisted and curled out of the destruction. There was no slow-and-steady for me, I was either active or I was a lazy, unemployed bum. I think I came to depend on that fire, that burning resolve to keep myself from fading away into insignificance, and I would do it by pure force of personality if necessary.

So it was unsettling for me, so accustomed to fire and passion, to feel… I don’t know. Was it the grind of machinery? The sense that as I moved, something would move in response, that what I did now made a difference? That my next actions would have lasting consequence, if only for a year? And so I unpacked for the future, folding and stacking my clothes in the way that I would want them for the next year. Should the shirts go in a drawer or a shelf? The shelf was unorthodox, but did I really want to bend down every morning? And that was the thing. In the smallest of ways, I was preparing for the future. I have no doubt that a balance will eventually be struck, that the machinery and the fire will alternate and intermingle, enhancing and interrupting each other; they always do. But for now I am content to stand in the stillness, slowly folding and stacking clothes, sure in the knowledge that things are changing.