By LOU STANT, guest columnist
It has been a painstakingly gradual process over the past week, finding the right words to adequately describe a trip that we took to China at the end of last year. I feared that I could easily mischaracterize it in too simplistic terms, and/or, as is often my tendency, over-philosophize to the point of boring people who might otherwise be kind enough to read the material.
In contrast to that process, I found everything in China coming at me fast and hard when I was there, especially in the urban area of Dongguan, where we spent the first week. Walking on a crosswalk or sidewalk often involved a competitive exercise in which pedestrians, bicycles, motor vehicles and various other modes of transport swiftly vied for every foot of space. My soon-to-be-married son, Zachary, yelled back at me at one point when I hesitated, “Just get in front of them before they get in front of you! No one will run you over!” I did not find his words reassuring in the beginning, but after a few days I got into the swing of walking the streets. The only place in the states that I’d remembered so many honking horns and angry voices was in New York City, and in Dongguan, as in NYC, the only time it would quiet down was during the wee hours of the morning.
On Dec. 17 and 18, my wife Mira, and I, along with another two seasoned world travelers, our daughter Marina and our good friend Frank Buchanan, boarded three separate flights in Indianapolis and Houston, Texas, and converged on Hong Kong for the purpose of attending the eventual wedding ceremony of our son, Zack, and his Chinese fiancée, Cindy. Our son, Gabriel, who is currently traveling in southeast Asia, had already left a week before and was there with Zack and Cindy to greet us at the airport.
Our time in China was relatively brief, and roughly split in half between the city of Dongguan, a few hours northwest of Hong Kong, and the rural area surrounding the village of Fubao, southwest of an even-bigger city, Chongquing (population of roughly 30 million in the city and outskirts) in the Sichuan Province bordering Tibet. Our modes of travel, outside of plentiful walking, included taxis, buses, subways, and a round-trip air flight from the city of Guangzhou to Chongquing and back.
Dongguan, where Zack and Cindy live and work at an international school, has a population of around 8 million. Our impression was that city-dwellers in China mostly live in high-rise apartment buildings everywhere one would look. There was no escaping their imposing presence, along with the colorful look of drying laundry on clotheslines, hanging on the outside decks of each apartment. People use washing machines for clothes, but there are few who have dryers, including Zack and Cindy, who were both acclimated to the routine of hanging their clothes out to dry.
In addition to the high-rises and office buildings, there were restaurants and retail establishments everywhere, much like in American and European cities. At night the buildings were all lit up with lights of various colors, to the point of the environment being reminiscent of Las Vegas. There were Christmas decorations everywhere, and at times I felt like a pedestrian back home trespassing on the lawns of people who pride themselves on their elaborate Christmas lighting displays. There were huge, multi-storied shopping malls, and bustling outdoor markets, making a newcomer such as myself feel as if entertainment could simply consist of walking around outside and taking it all in. It was like Times Square.
In contrast with the city, where activity on the streets would ramp up at night, the time to be out and about in the village of Fubao was during the day, especially in the area within and surrounding the vast open market, which was endowed with a plethora of various products, both food-related and otherwise. There were numerous little hole-in-the-wall restaurants where we would eat bowls of brothy soup loaded with noodles and vegetables. Despite being paved, the streets and walkways were often muddy, making it virtually impossible to avoid getting shoes, pants and dresses soiled. While the urbanites rarely gave us a second look, in Fubao we were repeatedly surrounded by groups of 20, 30 or more people who would take photos of us, and selfies with us, seeming awe-struck, as if they’d never seen Caucasians before. The men were particularly fascinated with my white beard, often asking me how old I was, though I only knew this when our translator, Cindy, was with us, being the only one of us who could speak both Mandarin and English.
The food and drink in Chinese restaurants was challenging, and surprisingly different from the Chinese food one might consume in the USA or Europe. In addition to the general spiciness of the food, the preeminent challenge lay in food that contained meat. With the exception of that which was deep-fried for Westerners, if one were to eat a chicken or pork dish, a major part of that endeavor would involve spitting out bones, cartilage and tendons. Unlike in the West where meat is extracted from the carcass, in China it is common for the whole chicken to be cut up and put into the dish. As we expected, white rice was often a part of the meal, though not always. What I found most surprising was that we couldn’t find an eggroll anywhere, leading us to suspect that such a deep-fried item may have been something invented by Chinese ex-pats in the West to please Americans and Europeans.
Toilets in rural areas were also challenging. Without going into any graphic detail, it seemed that the biological process of “relieving oneself” invariably involved squatting over holes in the floor. We found ourselves using muscles we weren’t used to utilizing. Showers were often taken in the bathroom with a removable showerhead on a hose in the open with no partitions, but just a drain on the floor. Everything in the bathroom would thereby get wet, which meant toilet paper or towels couldn’t be kept in the bathroom.
Before leaving on our trip, I made the fortuitous decision to purchase a book to read: Robert Hilburn’s biography of Paul Simon. I had not a smidgeon of an idea as to how apropos this choice would turn out to be, for during our time in Fubao, I happened to be reading the section which chronicles Simon’s composition of the award-winning music from the album, “Graceland,” during the mid-’80s. Simon is quoted as having gotten the original inspiration for the title song, “Graceland,” from an impulse to visit Elvis Presley’s home in Memphis, Tennessee, but as the project evolved, the metaphor of Graceland took on a far greater, more universal significance.
The journey to “Graceland” is redemptive, involving the spiritual healing of the human soul through the imparting of “Grace,” a grace that brings us peace and the ability to persevere in the midst of life’s struggles. While in the Fubao area, every day we would journey to the top of a mountain, an area situated in the clouds, where Cindy’s parents lived on a farm where they grew rice and vegetables, and raised pigs and chickens. This was where Cindy grew up before moving to the city to expand her horizons. Zack and Cindy’s wedding would take place on this farm on Dec. 26. In the meantime, we would get to know this locale, as well as get acquainted with Cindy’s parents, to the degree possible when we didn’t know each other’s languages.
On the way up and down that mountain every day, my thinking seemed to gain an odd sort of clarity with the increase and decrease in altitude, and I saw examples of “Grace” — the spark that would somehow enable old men to walk up the mountain and gather bundles of bamboo and carry them back down on their backs for sale in the village. The grit that empowered taxi drivers to transport people up and down the mountain in vans on thin-paved roads with long, curved sections having no guardrails, without ever plunging over dangerous precipices. The tenacity that made it possible for us to trek on foot up the rest of the mountain when the pavement ended and the mud was simply too thick and slick to allow the taxis to get all the way up. And, most importantly, the will to survive and thrive that could be discerned in the daily demeanor of Cindy’s rugged parents — a salt-of-the-earth determination to work the land in such a manner that it would yield the food necessary, and provide the celebratory environment required, to transform a wedding ceremony into a magical experience for the hundreds of people that would be attending.
I was a troubled person when I left our beloved Hills o’ Brown for that mountain in China. There were serious issues that I had been refusing to face in a Christian manner, but rather had buried in a maze of anger within me. I had been struggling and failing to comprehend the actions of one of my relatives, ongoing behaviors that were inflicting untold hurt upon the rest of us. Nothing like this had ever happened to us, and I was incredulous. But until I climbed the mountain out of Fubao, I’d found it too threatening to even articulate the questions: “Why is he doing this?” “What could possibly make him behave in so vengeful a manner?” “How can he cause, and turn a blind eye to, the suffering he is inflicting upon us?” “Doesn’t he love us?” and even more troubling, “Has he come to hate us?” And then, there I was, ascending this mountain in the Sichuan Province of China, suddenly gaining some clarity about the situation. It was as if a veil had been lifted that released buried memories, clues as to how and why this could be happening to us. Why it was necessary for me to go to China to find these answers will remain a mystery to me.
I guess I wound up getting philosophical after all. But I must nonetheless say that, as is often the case, the reason that I thought I was going, as supremely important as it was, turned out somehow to be secondary to the more pressing reason I was going there. Through my journeying to China, I was forced to forego my denial and to engage in the act of forgiveness. Through climbing the mountain near Fubao, and being a witness to the spiritual union of my son and new daughter-in-law, I was, through some ineffable process, confronting a painful situation and finding some answers that I was scarcely aware of my having sought in the first place.
This was the gift that Zack and Cindy unknowingly bestowed upon me. They dared me to take a leap of faith, and somehow I was the recipient of grace by accepting the challenge.
And, in doing so, I climbed a mountain, gained a daughter-in-law, and found peace.
Lou Stant is a Brown County resident and musician. He can be reached through the newspaper at [email protected].
