Semester in China, Spring 2009

Burma was cool...

2009-03-31T05:07:00.000-07:00

They might as well build a fence... My adventure across Sino-Burmese border was more of an accident than anything else. "Zhe shi Zhongguo ba?" A smirk appeared on my Wazu guide's face. I pointed at the ground again, having had some idea of the general direction which we drove and then hiked - West - "Zhe shi Zhongguo ba? Mian dian zai na li?"

Might as well not have asked. He didn't say it specifically, but we were in Burma.

Here there was a massacre, a war, and the ancient ruins of a Lafuzu temple. I had no clear understanding of where we were. West of Laoxianchen - that's about all I know. Up a dirt road, up a hidden mountain path, over a rock wall (shown above), and into Burma. Simple. Not many foriegners come to this place. Hardly anyone outside of Ximeng has heard of it.

The shuiniu, or water buffalo, lined the road, lead by men holding large crossbows. The men had small, brightly colored satchels over their shoulders. I would see more of these people later - in an area where Chinese wasn't standard, where they spoke the old languages.

The baskets is where the men would put the heads. The Wazu most highly valued men with beards. Sikhs were prized for their beards. These non-Chinese trans-national minority represent Southwest China for what it once was. In Ximeng, outside of the inaugural city, destined for a great future they said, now in shambles, China doesn't exist.

People exist.

We went to this village before Burma. They offered me beer at 11:30 in the morning, I remember looking at my watch. The men were chopping meat, a recently slaughtered pig. Two men were washing out pig intestines while shoo-ing away the hungry bush chickens.

One old man was shaving mugua, at least that is what they called it. I asked a young man next to him about the baskets - already knowing what they were. As I asked in Chinese and pointed across the field, the old man remembered, he looked up at me and roared a dirty, short laugh. He remembered.

Nine baskets in total, each at one point in their history erected for the fulfilled purpose of holding a human head. This man remembered.

Today, I Found China

2009-03-08T05:40:00.001-07:00

The group went clubbing the night before. I am just not one for massive amounts of beer, cigarettes, and dancing. I simply tagged along in hopes of meeting a few Chinese students. The experience was overwhelming.

We entered the club only to find it packed. We were all crowded into one corner. Eventually all twenty-two of us were tightly fitted into one section of the bar.

A rather eccentric college-aged Chinese man sat next to us. His hair exploded out of a bun into the air. His shirt was opened down to his stomach and he wore a long silver chain around his neck which followed the curve of his plaid shirt. Twenty-five beers and a platter of fruit sat on his table.

He was absolutely uninterested in any of us waiguo ren, completely unamused. I think all I did was try and figure out, through observation, who he was the entire hour I was there. At first I thought he was some loner. I later realized the twenty-five beers at his table, which he didn't pay for, were not for him, but the club staff.

He was systematically getting the staff and the dancing girls drunk. He was the owner.

I have never been in a more Western, or maybe even Chinese, place in my life. The lasers and lights danced across moving bodies, and dancing girls; the light shot through the smoke with strength. The beat of the music made one's heart strike out of sequence.

I tried to have a beer but ended up leaving instead. It was surreal.

Apparently not a single soul in Kunming has heard of Kunming Minzu Daxue, not even the most experienced of taxi drivers. With extremely broken Chinese I tried my hardest to communicate with the taxi driver about where exactly it was that I was going.

Wo yao qu Kunming Minzu Daxue. Ni zhidao zai na li?

From there my experience began. The taxi driver had no idea what I was talking about - or at least where I was trying to go. After lots of apologies, telling him "Cong zher wo keyi zou," lots of laughter, and a cell phone call, we arrived. It was awesome.

I got home, or at least to my dormitory, around midnight. The rest of the group got back around 3AM.

The next morning I woke up around 9:45AM. I waited for a few of the others to get up. At about 11:00 AM, after an ice cream bar and a bicycle repair, two others and I left for the Bamboo Temple, a 12 kilometer ride.

Our bikes were small, rusty, and entirely broken, but they sufficed. A few free repairs were needed along the way.

After about 45 minutes we came to a local market. Fresh meat and vegetables washed in the local stream lined the street. Up the hill, along the street, and through the gate we went. We were stopped by a road block, blocking the entrance to a small village. We stopped for water and to use the bathroom.

Outside the guard post five old men were playing board games. The three of us looked around as we caught our breath. We turned around and got off our bikes. A faded slogan was visible, "The writings of Chairman Mao" adorned the wall behind the guard post.

The entrance opened up onto a square where children were playing. The ruins of some originally well tiled complex lay in the middle of the square. The ruin had been there for some time.

Our guess, based on the size, was that it was either a former Communist Party outpost or a small temple. "This is China," we all said almost simultaneously.

The Flying Tigers and Good Health

2009-03-02T05:21:00.001-08:00

"I enjoy good health," he said. He, an 87 year old man, was a witness to and a survivor of history. He was a Taiji master. He was a survivor of the Great Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). He was an interpreter for the Flying Tigers, the guardian angels of the Burma Road during the Sino-Japanese War. What did this mean - I will never know.

"I enjoy good health," he said. "Taiji is a traditional Chinese art in physical culture," he began, concerning the interaction and relationship between man and nature. It is not limited by gender, age, height, weight, or race. It is not shadow boxing, there is no opponent. The basic actions of martial arts are included in and incorporated into Taiji. Taiji has no appropriate translation, not even the great masters can translate it.

Taiji, however, refers to the root source of the universe, the root source of the universe. Peace of mind at one with nature. "I enjoy good health," he said. This man embodied the function of Taiji, preservation of heart, mind, and body, and the prevention of disease. "I can walk fast, like the young people."

A Buddhist Temple in Tonghai

2009-02-26T04:41:00.000-08:00

This was one of the Buddhist temples we visited in Tonghai, like the Confucian temple built by the Mongolians which we would visit later, this temple had become an active grounds for the elderly community.

There were no saffron robes, neither heaping mounds of incense, nor mystical chanting of mantra filling the air. The temple, now turned into a tourist attraction, seemed dead. Religion seemed to have left it long ago leaving behind rotting statues of the Buddha and famous boddhisatvas.

The only existing community consisted of a few cooks and two monks dressed in grey boiler suit jackets.

The eldest of the two monks was eager to speak to us, approaching us with rapid Chinese and a large smile. He approached me as well, but I couldn't understand him. In desperation I simply said, Wo de Hanyu bu hao (My spoken Chinese is not good). He simply smiled, repeated what I said, and just sat in silence next to me.

Charles, one of our teachers and our interpreter, said the temple was Chen Buddhist, a sect of buddhism which established itself on action, not removed doctrine.

We ate lunch at the temple, in the small courtyard at the base of the mountain complex. The monks and cooks had prepared for us a vegetable meal of feast proportion, including tofu which tasted exactly like meat, crafted into sausage and fish shape.

The vegetarian diet is a distinct characteristic of non-Tibetan Buddhism. After the meal we were free to explore the mountain. The vast complex stretched up the side of a mountain, tucked away behind forest and rock.

Liuyi Village

2009-02-24T05:28:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, February 22nd, our group arrived in Tonghai County. Li xiansheng, the local philanthropist and highly regarded official, introduced us to the beautiful community. Our first trip out that afternoon took us to Liuyi Village, a small traditional village located just a few miles away from our hotel.

Li xiansheng had arranged for us to watch a traditional dance performed by the village elders, a tradition leaping closer to disappearance with every year that passes. The eldest of the women was 93 the youngest was in her early seventies. There were seven dancers in all, one appeared to be missing.

This village was famous...

(to be continued)

A Confucian Temple with History

2009-02-24T04:02:00.000-08:00

Lu Yuan, a teacher of mine, once quoted, "The mountains are high and the emperor is far away;" of its origin I am unsure, yet the quote, in its simplicity, encompasses the complexity with which we must learn to understand Yunnan, or even China, itself.

I am, so far, unable to describe the feelings I have had. Driving to Tonghai from Kunming one is not oblivious in any way to the apparent poverty and tradition, clashing and composing with the modern, industrial, and highly technical new China. Is it a matter of change, or of cultural preservation?

The rape seed lined the highway with its delicate yellow blossom, stopped by the occasional dyke or a cluster of bricks and squaller which cannot be avoided. Yet, amongst these shacks, these homes, lives religion, and life.

One cannot avoid it. An eighteenth century Confucian temple was one of our last stops in Tonghai, this supporting beams one of the last things we were shown. Amidst the hustle of the men and women smoking and playing games, amidst the children running and shouting, sat this pillar. This supporting pillar, built some three hundred years ago, bares the marks of a people. Now faded, these characters scream of a free China, unsuppressed by war. These marks, painted during the Sino-Japanese War, claim death to the Japanese, and victory for the Chinese.

It is hard to know what to think, what is right, and what it all means. Kong Fuzi was a philosopher and a great politician. I am not sure if there exists any material culture which might separate Confucian followers from others, yet this temple seemed to serve as a social place for the elderly community.

Here, China existed. The remnants of a former communist union, controlled and regulated by the state were strewn throughout Tonghai and, later, Hexi Village.

A Cry for Help!

2009-02-24T03:52:00.000-08:00

So, gmail is a no go.... for some reason it has been really slow and won't start up. For now my college e-mail seems to be working well...

Comment with your e-mail address so I can get in touch!!!!

Baller Documentary

2009-02-14T19:58:00.001-08:00

So... I saw a baller documentary today on Discovery Chanel Theatre... actually it was one which I had recorded. Totally worth the watch if you can track it down. The documentaries are collectively known as "China Rises: Behind the Great Wall."

Each installment of this four part series is approximately 45 minutes long.

I recently watched "China Rises: Getting Rich," the second documentary of the series, examining the growing economic gap between the poor and rich in China due to the vast and sharp reintroduction of private enterprise in the late 1980s.

First Attempt

2009-01-17T20:52:00.000-08:00

I am young and naive. I profess to truly know very little. I have my convictions; yet, even of those I am unsure.

I am most unsure of what I will experience over the next four months. Kunming, a city located in Southwest China, has a population of 6.6 million people.

Depending on what one accounts for, Richmond City has a residence population of approximately 200,000. If one were to extend the boundaries beyond that of the city, to what is collectively known as Richmond, one could quote a population of 1,194,008. The Commonwealth of Virginia has a population of 7.8 million people.

Any assumptions one might have seem to drift away with such a comparison.

I don't know how I feel about China. I am not sure such a question could even be answered. One could call upon the atrocities, committed only recently by the Chinese government, to form an opinion. One could call upon the oppressive Chinese constitution, one which denies the practice of superstition. Superstition, here, defined simply by the state. If one so desired they could consider the rampant poverty existant within several of China's provinces.

Yet one might consider a population of 1.4 billion people. A nation struggling to exist as a nation. One could consider them all heathens, needing Christianization, mission, and God. One might struggle himself with the impoverished minority cultures, knowing modernization ultimately means erradication. The fear of modernization seems still, despite my teachers confidence of the contrary, to represent loss.

One might consider its beauty, something to which I have yet to be accustomed. We see existant within our media a sad story of oppression and death, for it is exactly this which sells. We are quick to point out the indecency of a government which enforces a national dress code prior to the dawn of its first stance on the national stage as a civilization, as a people, a unified country. I will never know how I feel about china. Yet, I do know we need to stop denying their existance.

My friend recently cautioned me to watch out for what I ate, "They put cardboard in their food."

They cheat. They steal. They are unclean, filthy.

I don't know how I feel about China. I profess to know truly little. I invite you to do the same, to learn how to be ignorant, and to acknowledge it.

When you ask me, "Why China?" I will not know how to answer.