Monthly Archive for February, 2011

“Let freedom be your clothing, meditation your food and your passion for life guide the path you follow. Set your life on fire, seek those who fan yours flames,”
– Daniel

Evening walk, Lanzhou

This is a (love) letter. This is a (prose) poem. This is a blog post. This is written for everyone. This is written for you. (I would love to write endlessly to each and every one of you, truly; as you are infinitely important to me, but to do so would impose some sort of hierarchy among friendships, and I usually oppose hierarchy. Which is as interesting prejudice to have when exploring Chinese culture. I wonder what Edward Said would think of all this.)

The hour is late. It’s about 5 am, and I’ve been awake for about an hour and a half. The plan was to nap shortly and then have a big Saturday night out in Xi’an, but this did not occur. The day was big enough.

I awoke this morning at 8:30 (too early) to call Benjamin in the other room; the night previous Luke and I had stayed out until about 2 (too early). I plaintively asked Luke to push back the morning’s pull of travel appointments, as only the Chinese are capable of.

The next morning: “The driver is picking us up at 10 am. I thought you could use some rest.” The voice on the other end of the line, and about a hundred meters down the hall is Benjamin’s, a voice that is quite incredible: a mixture of Bill Clinton, Isaac Hayes and Barack Obama. In his mastery of English pronunciation, he has clearly become two things: presidential, and black. G(i)leefully, I hop back into bed. I merely doze, celebrating my small victory against planning: notes from the underground.

Benjamin beef noodle breakfast, Lanzhou

In sleep, I am naked: There are several reasons for this, none of them as exciting as I would hope: first, as is the case in all hotel rooms, the heat is impossible to control; currently, the screen reads 27 degrees Celsius. I am not a camel. This is too hot for clothing. Also, I realize that now that I am on the road, these moments of privacy are precious; tomorrow night I will be sleeping in a 10-room hostel dorm in Kunming. I must celebrate this moments of solitude; Rilke would want me to be nude. So I sleep in the buff, hot under a white duvet in a white bed, on which now rests a pile of pillows, propped up for late night reading. I bring my habits with me.

Some time later, my iPod does its best UFO impression. Di-di-DO-did-i-do. It’s 9:30.

Days earlier, I tell Benjamin that you have to create your own sunrise: you have to build positive habits in your life to be more productive, to live more effectively: Stretch and meditate first thing, read and write before bed. Again, I let a catnap smog my morning.

Quickly, I salute the sun. Lupe Fiasco. Paris to Tokyo. High Definition. Cookin’ collard greens in the kitchen. Takin’ showers in Xi’an. Go-go-go-go-go gadget flow. My morning routine is apostrophized by my laziness: the yoga is not long enough, I do not enough time to sit.

My stomach rumbles. I am hungry. It’s a ridiculous hour. I have no food in my room. I know that if I hunger, my muse will escape me, and these moments will be wasted. Collecting something to eat will involve several silly things: getting properly dressed, walking around outside, use of my nonexistent Chinese. Deepak Chopra says to take care of inconvenient tasks first. Goddamnit. I want to write.

Four dumplings later, I return with this image:

Predawn neon darkness, Xi'an.

Back to the morning before: We go downstairs and meet our driver, a man going from young adulthood into middle age, bits of gray in his hair. Benjamin introduces me. I don’t recall his name. He is here because of guanxi, a profoundly Chinese practice that is roughly translated as mutually shared obligations: think a favor, but way more intense. It is because of guanxi with Benjamin’s father that we are staying at this hotel for free. It is because of guanxi with Benjamin’s fathert hat we are taken out to dinner every night. It is because of guanxi with Benjamin’s father that we have a driver this morning, and we have had one every day in Xi’an. When any of these people go to Lanzhou, Benjamin’s father will take care of everything. Guanxi.

We get into the camo-colored SUV outside. Faux-fur is over the seats, covering the seat belts. I instinctively reach for the belt, then pull away: Days earlier, in another SUV, with another driver, I pulled the belt over me, smearing dust all over my black coat, to the great amusement of my company.

(FLASHBACK CUTAWAY)
DRAKE: “What’s the deal with seatbelts and the Chinese?
BENJAMIN: “What?”
DRAKE: “You never use them.”
BENJAMIN: “That’s because it’s safe here.”
(Flabbergasted, DRAKE gestures to the tumult outside the SUV: cars, buses, motorcycles, pedestrians swirl.)
DRAKE: “No it’s not! I’ve seen how you (Chinese) drive.”
BENJAMIN: “When you grow up in hell…”
DRAKE: “That’s optimistic.”
BENJAMIN: “I learn from you.”
(CUT TO PRESENT NARRATIVE)

We roll out from the hotel en route to the Shaanxi Province History Museum, concentrating on about two millennia  of history, straddling either side of the Common Era.

I am excited for the museum.
I am not wearing a seatbelt.
Don’t try this at home.

Outside the Jinjiang Inn is a near-Korean smattering of apartment buildings. Highways twist and turn, off-ramps and on-ramps pirouetting in concrete. These roads have been here for 30, maybe 40 years, a blink in the great expanse of Chinese history, and indeed, an illustration of one of the great contradictions of modern China, at once venerable and adolescent.

Xi’an (originally called Chang’an) was the capital of China for two thousand years, for some sixteen dynasties. The history here is deep: here one can catch a glimpse into the ancient, and, unlike many other places in China, Xi’an has preserved its city wall, 1300 years strong.

Lanterns, rabbits, dragons, tourists and other mythical creatures lay siege with Spring Festival vigor. In the daytime, they look a bit pathetic, muted red animals under a gunmetal sky in a whirlpool of traffic. By night, they glow nocturnal, outgrowing their diurnal poses.

With the time already reading 10:30, Benjamin says it’s too late for breakfast. I surprise myself by agreeing with him. What is happening to me. Luckily, Luke brought cookies. Studying to be a mechanical engineer, the young man is practical, prepared: a great party member.

We go inside, and I am greeted by some of the finest museum text I’ve ever encountered: Shaanxi history is a poem, a song; read it, listen to it. Because I am an idiot, I do not record the lines. They should be reproduced here.

Inside we find Yangshao culture first, people that lived in Shaanxi from 7000 to 5000 BC. I see basic tools, traces of rainy day women: some stones for hunting, some for the home. I am mesmerized by the Neolithic, my mind strains to reach into the past.

“Finally, something I’m really interested in!” Benjamin shouts. He shows us a picture on his camera. It’s behind him: written script.

I have to get an audio guide. I run out of the exhibit, run back, listen to the adorably precise intonations: this pottery represents the embryonic form of Chinese writing.

Baby Chinese!

As a Westerner, I keep my history in buildings: the enchanted spires of Prague, the gentle lilt of the Paris metro, the hard angles of Chicago skyscrapers. But in China, the history is not in the structure, but in the script. Calligraphy is the highest art: the poet does not write, but paints the poem. Those symbols, pregnant in Yangshao pottery, are the trunk of the Middle Kingdom, and all of its myriad branches and language are united by the angles, the radicals, the pictograms, the prose, the poetry.

Later, we meandered through the Forest of Stone Tablets, a reservoir of ancient writings, the classics of Confucius and Mencius written on giant stone slabs. Finally, a sunny day in Xi’an. The birds sang their songs, we walked among literature as sculpture.

Gateway to the Forest of Tablets

Finally, we leave Xi’an. Waiting for our late flight, I paint this poem into my notebook:

I am sightseeing,
what do I find?
In ancient capitals some source
of my soul
in fluid writing traces
of myself.

I am leaving, again,
how does it fell?

This was once the largest city on earth,
a million souls millennia ago,
emperors, craftsmen, intellectuals, poets:

somewhere their energy still lingers,
behind the flicking neon and the
circling traffic.

Something inside of me is ancient,
something feels most at home
in the oldest of places.

What is it?
Inside bricks and mortar and
weather and age and age?

In some real way,
these places are timeless,
the union of labor and thought,
conversation and movement.

I could disappear into this history,
beneath these city gates
dissolve into the poet’s
brush.

***

Learning to write my name, Spring Festival, Lanzhou