Reflections

Great Days Great Wall

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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E found the website (www.wildwall.com) and the adventure offered intriguing potential…off the beaten track, away from the Chinese tourist groups that follow a guide with a microphone and colored flag held high in the air to designate location. After two short emails to William, arrangements were easily made and in the lobby of our Beijing guesthouse I met with the driver (No English) who carried a placard for “Mr. Bob.” After smiles and incomprehensible introductions his black auto carried us through a three-hour adventure negotiating Beijing traffic…bikes, pedestrians, tractors, donkey carts all navigate the same lanes, avenues, freeways where the basic rule is ” Bigger Has The Right of Way.” As throughout Asia, good brakes, good horn and good luck prevails.

My understanding was that we were to pick up another couple but as we finally exited Beijing for the countryside I began to make an alternative plan if perhaps this was an abduction…the imagination can wonder…

We finally entered mountain terrain and the pavement ended. After another 20 minutes we arrived at a small village surrounded by hills We parked and I carried backpack uphill to a courtyard surrounding a small idyllic farmhouse. There was evidence of other foreigners. William casually came out of the farmhouse and introduced himself. An Aussie couple, attired in the hippest of trek fashion had already arrived and they and I completed our trekking group. Subsequently I appreciated their humor, enthusiasm and good cheer and we shared good times and laughs.

After being shown my room, the first of many superb meals was served. Lily was William’s Chinese helper and sous chef…fresh trout in a spicy (picante) sauce. After the meal Schnapps was offered (an acquired taste I guess) and I learned that William was in his late forties, formerly from Liverpool England, but has lived in China for the past 15 years. He has a Chinese spouse and two sons. He is a former long distance runner, who because of his fascination with the Great Wall as a child, later decided to run it’s length. After an initial abortive try he was subsequently able to run most of the wall in the early 1990’s and it has since become his passion. He has authored several books, spear-headed environmental efforts and has become the local expert/personality/guru of all things Great Wall. On our hikes, whenever we were passed by local Chinese hikers he would be recognized and asked to pose for pictures. His affect was such that he always obliged with a smile and some Mandarin conversation.

For the next two days we arose at 5 a.m. and took off in darkness for a 4-6 hour trek that included a significant climb up to the Great Wall and then excursions for varying lengths of time on top of the wall. We were able to stand on the wall and observe the sunrise. Along the way there would be frequent stops for short antidotes or explanations of various aspects of the wall–its history, construction, functions etc.

The Wall was initially started in about 400 BC and continued until the Ming Dynasty (approximately 1600 AD). It was built in sections to protect the Han Chinese from the Northern nomads (Mongolian and Manchu). Initial construction was at points of obvious invasion routes…river valleys…and through the years the Wall was extended up the sides of the valleys and across mountain ranges. It is not one continuous structure but various branches meander and double back. Initial construction was simple but later architectural efforts became more sophisticated.
In c. 220 B.C., under Qin Shi Huang, sections of earlier fortifications were joined together to form a united defence system against invasions from the north. Construction continued up to the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), when the Great Wall became the world’s largest military structure. Its historic and strategic importance is matched only by its architectural significance and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The areas we traversed were constructed of large carved stones, kilned bricks and morter which contained rice. As well as security, the Wall was used for storage, shelter and as a highway. It varied in width from two yards to 10 yards. In the area we were in, there has been no restoration and time and erosion have caused crumbling in many parts with an overgrowth of vegetation both on the sides and on top. It would seem that any minor earthquake could produce serious additional damage. William said his ecologic efforts have produced minimal results to date and he has been happy just to see that his efforts have caused fewer Chinese to litter. Ideally it would seem that stabilization against future damage without restoration would be the way to proceed. But the Wall is so long (estimates vary from 7000 to 10,000 kilometers) that total protection is impossible.

On descent: as frequently happens on hikes there is time for thought, reflection and subsequent contentment…and coming off the Great Wall of China in brisk warm autumn days a few magical to mystical moments. On one occasion while walking solo I heard leaves rustling in the trees –only a few colored leaves remained on each tree. Looking up the leaves would twirl on one tree then sequentially on another– like a self-conducted symphony—only in China. When I asked William whether his operation had reached a size sufficient for an assistant he replied, “I think I will see you again.”

Reflections on the Steppe

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We are lucky…days are brisk but sunny…the sun glints off bare hills covered in golden fall grass. This feels like fall in southeast Oregon where I grew up. I soak it all in while Bob goes on a 4 hour hike through birch groves and box canyons full of grazing mustangs. How do you know they were mustangs I ask Bob…he says” they had labels on each side.” Places were steeper than he anticipated…had to run from one tree to another to keep from falling down the hill.

The next afternoon we paid three dollars to an elder Mongolian in traditional clothing to take us riding horses through the hills with him. Give him his head, I said to Bob who was trying to make his horse gallop! But there was no saddle horn on the tiny saddle to hang onto and it was difficult to post in the ornate metal stirrups. Mongolian saddles are definitely different than Western saddles I was used to as a girl in cowboy country USA. Still, the same freedom I used to feel…while riding…in the wind…in the hills…where I grew up… This is as close to heaven as it gets I thought…connected…connected to the earth.

End of a Disastrous Experiment

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I want to emphatically state (and I think Bob would concur) that I have nothing but admiration for this proud and resilient people who have survived 70 years of this “ideological tidal wave that affected virtually the entire globe,” according to Robert Harvey in his “Comrades…The Rise and Fall of World Communism,” “that left maybe 100 million dead in its wake, as well as twice that number homeless and suffering, and more than 30 million as slave labor of one kind or another and that shaped the lives of billions.”

Robert Conquest in “Reflections on a Ravaged Century,” argues that a group of sub-intellectuals fastened upon Marx’s convoluted and half-baked theories because of the new turn-of-the-century faith in science as the answer to every problem, including human ones” which was one response to a bewildering new world of social upheavel and unseen forces as lost men sought to gain control over the destiny of their lives.

I mention to three of our homestay hosts that I see T-shirts with CCCP (USSR or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) and hammer and sickle on the backs…black humor born of a young generation that did not have to live through the bloodbaths…and when I see the responses on the faces of these women, I know I will not wear this T-shirt. It is not funny.

Are not some Muslim men today, full of shame because they are jobless and without family also reaching from out of a medieval creed with a leveling response in a desperate attempt to gain control over their lives? From communism to this?

Lingering Images of Russia

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Siberian countryside with endless kilometers of grassland and golden pine and white birch trees… small wooden, weathered, unpainted, picturesque, single story bungalows throughout Sibera with blue painted shutters-the banya (toilet and shower) in a small building nearby…Outside the cities groups of small two-story dachas (2nd homes with three-sided pitched roofs with garden in front providing relief from tiny flats and a chance to grow their own vegetables for those who can afford it…intensely flavored wine-red berry jam on Olkhon Island.

Drab, dilapidated Stalin-era block style apartment buildings that make maximum use of space but with absolutely no aesthetic value… there’s definitely a market niche in this country, Bob laments, for brooms, scrub brushes, soap and paint…. black leather jackets, Lenin-style hats (never saw any baseball style hats) and shoes with pointed curled up toes on men and women with spike heels—click click click)…. Especially in evenings, but any time of day, people strolling or standing around with an open bottle of beer in hand… Occasionally someone toppling over from inebriation to be caught by a comrade before falling…people with an aloof veneer-not an air of superiority-just reserved as in “I’m minding my own business…you mind yours”-sometimes seemingly shy but when the exterior is cracked they smile readily and extend themselves with varying degrees of warmth and good humor-especially on the train where we have an opportunity to interact……deep underground metros-monumental works of art in themselves (no photos allowed)…wonderful rich soups and more soup, each a little different than the next…

Experiencing daily life in cozy cluttered apartment homestays with friendly middle-aged to elderly single women who get 30% of what we paid. The provided breakfasts range anywhere from here’s the eggs-cook your own to elaborate spreads in tiny rooms… tiny bathrooms (literally wc’s) with sit down toilets that took three times to flush clean…overheard conversations that sound like arguments in a tone of voice you and I would take offense at but then we think it’s all just bluster…people walking in-between and in front of us with no regard for personal boundaries but not intending to be rude…urban store windows full of fashionable clothing and products that only about l% of the people can afford and then only because they operate on the black market (one woman who works for the central bank whispered “yes, we take white money and black money.”

Queuing In Russia

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Back in Irkutsk we watch women walking swiftly always carrying a plastic shopping sack or two (ovoiska from the Russian ‘ovois’ meaning ‘just in case’) of varying brands that have to be purchased)…a hold-over from Soviet-era shopping methods that, according to the British journalist Fiona Fleck who described in the ‘Guardian’ how Soviet era panic buying of bread, rice, cereal and flour affected the ordinary Russian even in late 1990’s: “whenever they go out they are constantly dropping into shops when passing by just in case something had arrived, sometimes joining queues in the hope that something will eventually arrive that day.

Queuing has always been a life-principle for the Soviet shopper and is enshrined in what must be the most roundabout way of buying in the world.” Even now at one consignment shop Bob had to stand in line to choose an item at which time the clerk wrote out a voucher that he was supposed to take this way and that way and then this way and that and then to stand in line to pay a cashier stamped the voucher indicating the item had been paid for and then stand in the first line again to show the stamped voucher to the original clerk and obtain the item. In Soviet times people would buy in bulk and shop in teams, often paying someone a little to stand in line for them.

Today, the queuing of cars is a machiavellian event . We are amazed at the ability of cars to “crowd” their way into a queuing line for example lanes merging into each other. When our driver to Olkhon Island arrived at the Ferry we were second “in line.” In the course of an hour there were about five lines across all waiting to crowd, inch by inch, into the two lanes that would lead onto the ferry. Apparently this is the accepted modus operandi…however we did see one car full of women get out of their car and take on the driver of another…yelling and gesturing and taking down the license number. The scene made me vow to never get into an argument with a Russian woman!

People have no trouble crowding to get onto a bus…in fact it sometimes becomes a matter of who can push harder. If you stand back and wait “your turn” like the nice people we learned how to be from our first grade teacher your reward will be to end up standing on the street with no ride.

The Case For Solo Travel

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Inspired by and quotes from Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel, (2002)

Friends often ask why we want to travel independently and when they do, it sets off a flood of thoughts and images.

Being a wanderer, crossing different lands among people who speak languages strange to one’s ear…meditating dreamily to the rhythm of train wheels, allowing the sounds of the world to be one’s mantra, enables one to grow…to transcend one’s known life. The silence of being alone (much like being on retreat in a monastery) without the ease of familiarity allows one to stand outside oneself… large sublime views and new smells revealing new thoughts and emotions…thrilling or disappointing aspects of oneself…heretofor hidden from one’s awareness.

If we find poetry in tattered old men weaving home on bicycles, a grateful charm in smiling young country girls… and a shared intimacy in the look of recognition in the eyes of kindred travelers we have found “an alternative to the ease, habits and confinement of the ordinary rooted world.”

introspective reflections revealed by large sublime views and new places may reveal thrilling or disappointing aspects of ourselves heretofore hidden from our awareness. Another travel writer says “it is not necessarily [only] at home that we encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we [think] we are in ordinary life…who may not be who we essentially are.”

Traveling companions can keep us tethered to our predefined idea of ourselves. They may expect certain reactions from us that obligates us…underneath our awareness…forces us to accommodate in a way that feels unnatural. Or in our companion’s desire to have their own experiences, they may not have the patience to reciprocate and share. In traveling alone we are free to connect with what and whom comes our way, as a friend puts it…”chasing a new flicker in the water or diving under it just for the pleasure, not knowing why, but just responding” to the spirit that moves…like the koi in the pond at home.

If it is true that love is the pursuit in another of qualities we lack in ourselves, then in one’s attraction to people from another country, one’s underlying desire may be to acquire values missing from our own culture or in our own personalities. What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home. For me, “home” is anywhere my heart feels connected to heaven and earth…sometimes a lot to ask for anywhere.

Perspective On China

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China is big.

The population is staggering with a billion and a half people. It’s a matter of getting perspective. Our home state of Oregon only has about 1.5 million people. By comparison Hong Kong has 7 million. Westerners hear mainly about the Chinese cities of Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, but Guangzhou, the first mainland city we visited two hours north of Hong Kong is a westernized city of commerce with nearly 7 million people…it’s province of Guangdong having 46 million. Kunming, which reminds us of Denver Colorado…a mile high, cold but sunny…has nearly 4 million people but its located in rural province of Yunnan that has nearly 44 million people.

Guilin has nearly 1.4 million people…it�s province of Guangxi having nearly 75 million. Yangshuo, an hour south of Guilin, felt like a small village in comparison with the bigger cities but the guidebook shows it with a population of 300,000…bigger than our home town of Salem, Oregon.

Chengdu has over 11 million people but it’s province, Sichuan, has 109 million. Chongqing, the city where we started our Chang Jiang (Yangze) River trip, is a sophisticated lively city that reminds us of San Francisco with 5.8 million people…it�s province having 32.5 million. You get the idea–lots of Chinese folks—and lots more on the way even with their one child policy. Ultimately a formidable group.

How is China Doing?
As near as we can tell, China’s cities and it�s citizens are doing well. The significant story is in the poorer rural areas where only 10% of China’s land mass is capable of agriculture…encouraging genetic engineering of food to force an increase in production and where unemployment and disastisfaction is high…and where China’s leadership will continue to be challenged by demonstrations that are never reported in the Chinese or Western press.

The arguments against the Yangze River dam pale in comparison to the country’s need for electricity…and in comparison to the economic power China will become because of it. Mao Tse Tung decreed nine categories of enemy: landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad elements, rightists, traitors, foreign agents, capitalist-roaders and…The Stinking Ninth…intellectuals. The motto then was “Serve The People.” “To Be Rich Is Glorious” is the motto used now by a new practical generation…the first to grow up with no spirituality, no Confucius and no interest in politics…unhampered by religion and it’s dogmas-Taoism, Buddhism and even Christianity-unhampered by emperors, by chairmen, by gods.

China’s youth wants democracy and freedom. But the Chinese “never know when to stop,” says Paul Theroux who recounted his trip through China by train in the 80’s in his “Riding The Iron Rooster.” Where will the brakes come from when China is headed toward excess…in a China already plagued by corruption?

When I asked one of the teenagers in Ruili if he could go to Hong Kong if he wanted to answered “No Money…No Happy!” Another, Paul, a teenager who plays the guitar in his rock band, when asked what he thought about Hong Kong, answered: “Paradise!” You Western capitalist running dogs…look out for the younger generation in Communist China…the generation that is so excited that they are finally free to work hard…free to put money in their pocket…already making materialism in the West look ascetic.

I would love to have a conversation with Ma Jian, the poet, painter and writer who, being harassed by communist cadres, left Beijing in the early 80’s and traveled through China for three years. In his book “Red Dust” Ma foreshadowed the thinking of the next generation when he recounted his thoughts after getting lost and nearly dying in a desert: Walking through the wilds freed me from “worries and fears, but this is not real freedom. You need money to be free.”

When, after a student demonstration in the 80’s in Guangzhou, Paul Theroux asked Andrew, a university student, if he expected to become a capitalist-roader, Andrew answered “I think we have a lot to learn. We want to use the good features of capitalism but not the bad ones.” “Is that possible? Paul asked. “We can try” Andrew answered. Maybe it is only fair that now China gets it’s turn to try…

What We Miss About Home

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I have been asked about this so here it is: After nearly a year, the thing I miss the most about living in the States is EFFICIENCY.

Everywhere in the world there seems to be a right and wrong way to do everything and pity the poor soul who tries to find a better or different or more creative way of doing something. There seems to be no flexibility and over time the forced conformity would likely drive me nuts! You just have to surrender..

And the other thing I miss is seeing my kids! Other than that I am not missing anything other than my own home brewed coffee with my own ground coffee beans, even though I am beginning to like instant Nescafe coffee which I thought would never happen.

China’s Secrets I Will Never Know

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Major Cities We Visited

“The opening up of China is a stirring idea,” Lonely Planet says. A foreigner traveling alone today is privileged to see more of China than almost any Chinese has seen in his or her lifetime. I wondered what we could learn-traveling alone. Our images and ideas of China have surely been contradictory and distorted over time.

In the years of the Cultural Revolution after 1966 tens of millions of Chinese had become the instruments of their own terror…a million were killed and some 30 million or more were brutally persecuted and displaced or starved to death. How could so many people be so led?

China has a billion and a half people now. And even now cruelty continues…in a book entitled “China’s New Rulers,” the authors recently published some secret Communist Party documents that admitted to 60,000 Chinese killed by police while fleeing between 1998 and 2001…or 15,000 a year. 97% of the world’s executions take place in China, the book says. It is a historic change that China’s people are becoming less and less afraid of the government than it is of them. For example, 54 year old Mrs. Ma wanted her name published when she told about how she was tortured recently in Zhongxiang, near Shanghai, while her son was tortured in the next cell because the Party wanted her to disclose the names of the people in her church or renounce her Christian faith.

China is a big country. In the two months we have left for travel in China, we have chosen to see Yunnan Province in the southwest…the most varied of China’s provinces ranging from tropical rainforest to snow-capped Tibetan peaks. It is home to nearly a third of all China’s ethnic minorities and nearly 50% of all its people are non-Han Chinese.

Historically, Yunnan, in southern China, was always one of the first regions to break with the northern government in Beijing. During China’s countless political purges, fallen officials often found themselves exiled here, which added to the province’s rebellious character…and probably why it has been so attractive to the countless foreign backpackers who blazed the original trails through it.

I wanted to see China for myself…and now that I am here I feel that every individual Chinese I see is harboring a secret I will never know…

The Myth of “Nam”

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The male fantasy of Saigon that was nurtured in Graham Greene’s “The Quiet American” written in the 1950’s is recreated superficially in bars in Saigon with names like Apocalypse Now and B4 75 where, to the pulse of 1960’s music like The Doors, Vietnamese women again run their hands over the backs of young and adventurous American males with a trust fund…love-you-long-time-you-be-my-big-honey…the twenty-something young guy at the next internet terminal says to his friend behind him…only god saved my life last night! “Nam,” says Lonely Planet guidebook, is a myth bound up with sex, drugs and a rock and roll soundtrack…with images of war, of the smell of napalm in the morning and hookers at night.

First of all, Vietnam is nothing like the mythical “Nam” that is portrayed in most of the post Vietnam literature and film which is that if Americans are caricatures of heavy handed bellicosity, then Vietnamese must be contemplative and peace loving. The jungle was no easier a habitat than it was for the Americans. Bao Ninh, a former North Vietnamese soldier who wrote “The Sorrow of War” (that every young boy in every city tries to sell you) described the forests of central Vietnam through which the many branches of the Ho Chi Minh Trail was carved, as alien: “Here when it is dark, trees and plants moan in awful harmony. When the ghostly music begins it unhinges the soul and the entire wood looks the same no matter where you are standing….living here one could go mad or be frightened to death.”

Writings on Vietnam, according to Robert Templer in his “Shadows and Wind” published in 1998 in the UK, doesn’t take into account the diverse mix of religious and political beliefs that are evolving and changing. Vietnamese fighters were not all heroic martyrs as the propaganda in the museums of Hanoi would have you believe; many did not understand why they were fighting. But the creation of “Nam” and the concept of “Indochine,” French colonial nastalgia, was not possible without complicity on the part of powerful Vietnamese officials, according to Templer; creating a playground of colonial and war memories was a way for the government to mend broken ties and sell the country to tourists. It also had the side effect of isolating foreigners and distracting them from the widening ideological, economic and social issues that afflicted the country. Guilt and sadness that inflected the writing of American reporters who produced books on their returns to Vietnam in the 1990’s tended to offer only the most gentle criticisms of the government. As Templer puts it, “the government ensured that journalists and writers spent more time examining a past over which the government could exercise some control rather than a present that is slipping away from them.”