December 28, 2000

 

Dear All,

I am writing this between Christmas and New Years, about ten days before I return to the United States. The experience of the holidays in another culture is new to me (although familiar to those of you who have lived abroad) so I thought I might share some of my reflections.

First, the Chinese are quite aware of Christmas. I was wondering if I might see evidence of this originally Christian holiday in an officially non-religious country. But yes, it has hit, although a Chinese friend told me that it has only been a big thing for two or three years. Around the first of December the local supermarket pasted Santas in the windows with the greeting, "Meuy Christmay" but the spelling was corrected about two weeks later. There are tinsel garlands, little evergreen trees with ornaments, and fake snow sprayed liberally. Christmas carols are played everywhere, although some of the combinations are strange. Tunes that I consider religious are done in a pop bubblegum style, others are made into almost military marches, and some are converted into romantic schmaltz. A bit like the Bob Dylan songs turned into ballroom dancing music.

I didn't quiz my students or friends but I have the impression that people here have little understanding of the traditional meaning of Christmas. For them it is a good reason for a party, and there were lots of parties over the weekend, and an excuse for children to extort gifts from their parents. Maybe all the children in Chengdu conspired somehow to make Christmas a major celebration!

My Christmas was very enjoyable if untraditional by American standards. Several of my Chinese friends wanted to be sure I was not lonely. On the morning of the 24th, one couple took me to a local park with a 13 story pagoda, but the main reason for going was the grove with hundreds of yellow plum trees. These are the first spring flowers to bloom, with almost transparent silky petals and a heavenly fragrance. The trees are low, almost like tall bushes, and blossoms all along the bare branches. Although the yellow color is more delicate than forsythia, the effect is somewhat the same. We sat among the plum trees drinking tea, chatting, enjoying the lovely smells, eating snacks, and generally appreciating the nice day--nice by Chengdu standards anyway.

I mentioned that many Chinese buildings lack heat. Because of that, people keep their windows open, further exacerbating the problem (the American interpretation) or maintaining the balance between indoors and out of doors (the Chinese interpretation?). The tolerance of low temperatures also means that people sit outside in weather that would not be considered appropriate for outdoor activity in the US. I suspect that the temperatures among the plum trees were somewhere in the 50s with weak sunshine at times but clouds (fog? pollution?) most of the time.

Plum blossom is one of the flowers I have learned to paint as part of my lessons, but the classic plum of the Chinese artist is different from the yellow plum. I learned that the red or pink plum which will bloom soon. It has the same symbolism, however, a flower that opens in late winter, hence a harbinger of spring and a representative of bravery in the face of adversity. The pink plum, which I have seen in the U.S., is a showier flower, but it lacks the perfume of the yellow plum. Upon return from the park in midafternoon, I got several branches from the market and put them in a vase in my apartment. The fragrance is a wonderful reminder of a lovely Christmas Eve.

That evening I was invited to dinner by the same couple. They both received master's degrees from Chuanda; she is teaching English to undergraduates and he is working for a corporation in town. She is also serving as my translator for Chinese painting lessons so we have become quite close over the many hours we have spent together. They have what is a very nice apartment by Chinese standards in a new building erected by the university for young faculty and grad students. They actually have two rooms plus a porch which serves as kitchen, drying rack for damp clothing, and storage of miscellaneous stuff. They also have a small table on the porch and that's where we ate our dinner, with the windows wide open. With typical Chinese modesty they described the dinner as just simple dishes but I suspect they worked very hard to prepare the six different plates of food. I am sure they don't eat like that every day. So my Christmas dinner was Sichuan tofu, pork meat balls, fish pieces in an interesting sauce, several kinds of vegetables both fried and pickled, and rice of course. Quite delicious but not on my grandmother's traditional menu. Similarly, my Thanksgiving dinner was Kung Bao chicken, the closest I could come to turkey in Chengdu.

Christmas Day was a Monday, a work day for people in Chengdu. I bicycled over to a little American style bakery and café, thinking they might have coffee and rolls in the morning but they were closed. So I ended up with steamed buns stuffed with pork, eaten while reading the International Herald Tribune. In the afternoon I had my regular Monday painting lesson, but afterwards I went to the Daoist temple nearby.

Although I have seen many Buddhist temples, I had not visited a Daoist temple before. I thought it would be a good thing to do on Christmas. Daoism is the only indigenous religion of China, if you discount Confucianism as a religion. (I think of Confucianism as a philosophy of social organization) You probably know Daoism best for the yin-yang symbol and its books the "Dao De Jing" (or Tao Te Ching in the older spelling) and Yi Qing (or I Ching). Daoism is related to shamanism in its attention to nature and its desire to understand the relationship of the material world and the world of the spirits.

Laozi, the founder of Daoism, is an elusive figure. He apparently went west at the end of his life and tradition has it that he rode a green ram through Chengdu on his way to wherever. Thus there is a statue of a green ram in the Qing Yang Gong temple here. While there are lots of different schools of Daoism, the basic idea is the maintenance of balance between Heaven and Earth, yin and yang. Each needs the other to exist, but too much of one is unhealthy for the individual and for the society. One of my books explains it this way:

"To have balance within one's self, means you must be in balance with what is around you, your environment. Don't ignore or fight it. Become one with it. Do not go against nature, for that is to go against the Dao [the Way]. Abandon yourself to where you are and through this you can transcend the here and now, move out into the whirl of chaos which is chance and finally emerge at the point of Taiji [the Great Ultimate], and be united with the flow of the Dao which moves through and in all things."

Not a bad approach even for someone who is not a Daoist. Be in balance; don't fight the realities of your environment. Some of the other elements of Daoism include a belief in magic, exorcism, alchemy, and evil spirits; and a desire for long life and immortality. The pursuit of long life leads to slow meditative exercise to help the body last as long as possible and to conserve the essential breath of life which is known as the qi (pronounced CHEE). Hence the people in the park doing taiqi in the mornings, and even the practices of the outlawed sect, Falung Gong.

Immortality is also sought through moral and ethical practices and a healthy life. Thus eating the right foods is very important. I have had four or five people warn me about eating too many tangerines, which are now plentiful in the market, because tangerines have a lot of yang. Too much yang puts your body out of balance. Ditto for too much yin. Some of the most interesting dinner table conversations I've had in China have resulted from my seemingly simple question, "Which foods on this table are yin and which are yang?" General agreement on the basics -- most meat is yang and many vegetables are yin -- but a lot of disagreement on the details.

The Qing Yang Gong looks very much like a Buddhist temple, except the statuary inside is different -- Chinese looking men rather than fat Buddhas with long earlobes. But the arrangement of the buildings is similar and the structures themselves look the same. It takes a lot more knowledge than I have to understand the subtle differences, just as Chinese people are mystified when I tell them that there are many different varieties of Christians, even of Protestants.

Apparently there is a Daoist liturgy which is recited regularly to dispel evil spirits and to maintain balance of yin and yang. I don't know if the Chengdu temple does it daily or not although it would be interesting to see and hear. Perhaps I will try it on New Years, as my book suggests, although maybe the activity is on the lunar new year not the calendar new year. There is a certain casualness about Chinese temples that comes as a contrast to western churches and synagogues. People walk around at will, some burn incense or bow down before various statues (and there are cushions thoughtfully placed on the stones or cement at the appropriate locations). Qing Yang Gong has a teahouse with a good collection of people there on Christmas afternoon, chatting, drinking tea, knitting, reading the paper, and playing mah jongg. Lots of mah jongg playing in Chengdu.

My real Christmas treat, however, was a trip to Yunnan Province just before the holiday. Yunnan is south of Sichuan; the name means "south of the clouds" and that is exactly what it is. Its nickname is the City of Eternal Spring and I found that accurate for even in December there were flowers blooming.

I chose Yunnan because of its sunny days, magnificent mountain scenery, historic charm, and fascinating ethnic minorities. In many ways it reminded me of Colorado. The air was cool but the radiant heat of the sun made it comfortable to sit outside in the middle of the day. Dali and Lijiang, the two other cities I visited besides Kunming, the capital, are about the same elevation as Colorado Springs with similar clean air and fresh feeling. Dali even has a big mountain to the west which dominated the town just as Pikes Peak dominates Colorado Springs.

Part of the time I traveled with Lily, the Chinese woman who teaches English whom I mentioned regarding the yellow plum blossoms; part of the time I was on my own. We did all the things good tourists do -- ride the chairlift up the side of the mountain, take a boat ride on the lake, walk on top of the restored city wall, take photos, visit the temple with the largest camellia tree in the world (not so interesting when it is just in bud but it IS big). Take photos. Go to the markets where the locals shop and look at the products and produce, admire the architecture of the old houses in the old towns of Dali and Lijiang, take photos.

And while I do have lots of photos, the most interesting parts of the trip were the interactions with local people. Perhaps because these are smaller places, the people seemed more open to outsiders. Perhaps because I had a Chinese speaker with me part of the time, we were able to negotiate situations that I could not have handled on my own. Perhaps we were just lucky. Let me tell you about a few of my experiences.

Miao embroidery -- We arrived in Dali after dinner so Lily and I decided to take a stroll around the main part of town, a pedestrian zone, to get a sense of the place. We went into one shop that advertised art of the Miao people, because one of the American teachers down the hall had asked me to bring her a piece of Miao embroidery. The work is intricate, some with geometric designs and some with floral, some brightly colored and some subdued. I had the impression that a number of these pieces had been made specifically for the tourist trade, some were items of use in the Miao culture, and some were combined to make purses, vests, and other items for sale. We looked at the stuff just to get a sense of what Miao embroidery looked like, so we would know when we saw it in what we thought might be a less expensive place.

Shortly after we exited that shop, two women came up to us and started talking excitedly and ultimately persuasively in Chinese to Lily. "We have some authentic Miao work at cheaper prices, want to take a look?" We agreed, figuring it wouldn't hurt, and they started to lead us down a very dark passageway between two shops. Lily was clearly dubious, but a vendor at the mouth of the passageway said to her, "Don't worry, these people are very friendly."

We went up a narrow stairway into the home of one of the women. They had converted a room into a shop which was full of textiles. These women had stacks and stacks of embroidery in different sizes, some clearly old and worn, some new. With a few oddly shaped pieces we learned something about their purpose -- to carry a baby papoose-style, to use as a belt, to wear as a cape for decoration.

I finally settled on a nice piece with some round shapes in the center and some geometric figures around the outside, mostly in blue. It was one of those situations in which you assume that, having gotten into someone's home and having spent a half hour or more looking and discussing, you probably needed to buy something. The women told us how many hours it took, how the center designs were embroidered with silk thread, how you couldn't get this kind of thing any more, and on and on. Lily and I both rolled our eyes when she quoted a starting price of 300 yuan (almost $40). We went through the usual haggling; my theory is that you offer one third of what they started with and see what happens. Of course they did another round of telling us how fine this work is, how many hours it took to make, etcetcetc. It was lovely work but I figure all of that was positioning for the negotiation.

My latest ploy in bargaining, which seems to work reasonably well, is to say, "We are just teachers, we don't have a lot of money." I can say that in Chinese. It did generate one additional reduction in price without a corresponding increase from me. We ended up at 110, which wasn't a steal but seemed reasonable given where they had started. On the other hand, one look at me, the foreigner, and the starting price probably had doubled anyway. But the experience was worth it. I will long remember going down that dark alley and up the stairs into the bedroom-cum-embroidery shop.

The Shaping market and lunch in Xizhou Town -- About a hour's bus ride north of Dali, Shaping is a sleepy village most of the time, but on Mondays everyone from the surrounding area comes to buy and sell. Merchandise ranged from bedspreads to false teeth to musical instruments covered in snakeskin to fresh pork to bananas from Ecuador. A few stands were devoted to "antiques" but most things were designed for the local people. I love walking around markets and Shaping was no exception. The color and bustle and authenticity provide a wonderful contrast to the settings more obviously directed at tourists.

After Shaping, I wanted to go to a nearby town, Xizhou, because one book mentioned it having interesting architecture of the Bai people, the dominant minority group in this area. We arranged for the local bus to drop us off at the intersection with the road to Xizhou (the buses pick up and discharge passengers anywhere on the route) and then took a little jitney the several kilometers over to the town. And the architecture was fascinating. This area was on the southern Silk Road coming through India and Southeast Asia, as opposed to the Silk Road going north through Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. Later it was the terminus of the old Burma Road, with eucalyptus trees as a testimony to the Indochinese influence of a century ago.

Lily and I wandered around Xizhou, generally appreciating the lack of tourism in this still traditional town. A fascinating irony. Xizhou made much of its wealth in the 1920s to the 1940s, especially during the war when many of the institutions and organizations of coastal China retreated inland from the Japanese. Some of the biggest homes were built in this century, although the architecture was traditional in style. In one case the original owner was clearly described as a capitalist. After Liberation (see how easily these propaganda slogans come?) the houses were certainly divided up and used for other purposes, or at least for multiple families, but now visitors are attracted to Xizhou because of these big homes of the despised capitalists. An interesting circle of history.

We kept walking around, sometimes going down narrow passageways if a gate looked intriguing. In one place the entryway was particularly old so we peeked into the courtyard. Lily said, step inside if you want to take a picture, so I did. Just at the moment a man walked down the steps right where I was standing so I had no choice but to greet him rather than just retreat politely. I put on my best "Ni hao" and, to my surprise, he asked Lily and me if we wanted to go upstairs at sit for a while. We were both a bit skeptical, thinking perhaps he had a room full of Miao embroidery, but no, this was just his home. We sat on the sofa and chatted a bit, Lily interpreting. Turns out he is a Bai man whose family had owned this house; since the Cultural Revolution they share it with several other families. His wife is from the Dai minority group.

Mr. Yan pulled out his stamp albums to show us his stamps from the U.S. once he realized I was an American. So we chatted about them. At the same time, Lily became engaged in a longer conversation, I presume asking him more about himself, the house, his family, and so on. I keep looking up from the stamps to the bust of Mao in the corner, perhaps 30 inches tall! I don't ask but boy am I curious why, in such a small room, so much space was devoted to this bust. Maybe I should not have been so circumspect because there might have been an interesting story there.

In his stamp collection are some of the Chinese New Year stamps that have come out in the last few years -- I have often purchased them. We got into a discussion about the fact that the characters on the stamp are, in fact, incorrect. So our host pulled out his ink and brushes and painted the proper characters in beautiful calligraphy. I then ask him for his address and promised to send him some stamps from the U.S. He was duly pleased.

Soon Mr. Yan invited us to stay for lunch; he and his wife were making preparations for the noon meal when we appeared on the scene. In fact, Mr. Yan was carrying several green onions when he came down the stairs originally. We did the polite Chinese demurrals but not very convincingly because obviously we were fascinated by the whole situation. He told us to sit tight, he wanted to invite a friend to join us, none other than Mr. Yang the artist, whom we had met an hour earlier in his studio. So the five of us sat down to a meal that was differently flavored than many of the foods I have eaten, kind of a cinnamon taste in the background, although one dish had a fair bit of ground chili powder sprinkled on it. I'm not quite sure how their simple lunch turned into a meal for five people with two kinds of meat; maybe Mr. Yan stopped at a restaurant and bought something when he went out to go get the artist.

After lunch, Mr. Yang offers to do a sketch portrait of me, so I sit quietly. (FYI, it doesn't look much like me.) At the same time, Mr. Yan is showing Lily some books of Bai poetry. Apparently there was no written language of the Bai people; this is some kind of recent transliteration in roman letters. She is fascinated by the way the sounds are put onto the page and he seems quite pleased to have an attentive audience. As far as we could tell, he doesn't have a job. "Self employed" is what he told Lily. I know what that means in the U.S. but I don't know what it means in China.

Then Mr. Yang says he wants to give me one of his paintings. I do the polite demurrals for real. I didn't want one of his paintings, he shouldn't be giving away his livelihood, and how would I get it home? When we had visited into his studio, however, he was not painting in oils but doing an ink sketch of a Bai girl on rice paper, the traditional Chinese painting method. He said he wanted to give me that. OK, I replied. Then Mr. Yan tried to give me his good ink stone; this was just after Lily had admired the one he was using. He said it was a cheap one; he had a good one but he didn't use it, just kept it as a treasure. I certainly wasn't going to take his treasure, even if it had weighed only a fraction of what it did. This Chinese hospitality was getting out of hand!

So we bade farewell to Mr. Yan and his wife and went back to the artist's studio. He wrote an inscription and put his seal on the painting of the Bai girl. At the same time, he showed Lily a portfolio of ink sketches that he had for sale. I figure I should buy something at this point, although he wouldn't name a price. "Whatever you want to pay, just a few dollars is OK." As we roll up the various pieces of art, the portrait, the ink sketch, and the Bai girl, I give him 100 yuan, way more than the sketch was worth but better to go high than low, I figure.

As we stand outside to determine our next steps, Mr. Yang reappears. He wants to show us the rest of the town. Maybe he was enjoying being the host, maybe he thought he needed to do more for 100 yuan. My first reaction was, oh no, we don't need a guide now. But I was wrong. He had been born in Xizhou and his grandmother was related to one of the big families, so he felt entitled to walk into places that Lily and I would never have entered. As a result we got a tour of several of the big courtyard houses that now divided up among several families. Absolutely fascinating. Lily later remarked that we peeped into the lives of the people of Xizhou rather than just look at the outside of their houses. Who would have thought that we would eat lunch in the home of Bai/Dai people and get a personal tour of Xizhou?

Mah jongg with a Naxi family --  In Lijiang where I was traveling by myself, I arranged for a guide for one day to show me things that could not be done easily by an independent traveler. My guide, He Xin Xan, or Diana as she preferred to be called, was a woman from the Naxi nationality, the dominant minority group of Lijiang. At the end of the afternoon she took me to visit her home in the old town, a charming section of stone and wood buildings with small canals running in between. Diana is mid twenties, and she lives with her sister and grandparents in a traditional home built around an open central courtyard with two story structures all around. One wall is a screen, although this one didn't have anything all that fancy on it, one side is the main building (facing east which is what all Naxi homes are supposed to do -- not south like Han structures) and then two sides are connected buildings with a series of individual rooms. The two sides of the courtyard may have included sleeping rooms upstairs and work rooms downstairs. Now, I suspect, there are more people living there, although I couldn't tell for sure.

I must have spent an hour at Diana's home. Her sister appeared to be in her mid thirties, and her two nieces were four and seven. The smaller one was quite a charmer. Because I have a digital camera, I can show the instant replay on the screen on the back. The little girl didn't get it the first time but once she realized that this was the picture she had just posed for, she went into high gear. Each photo I took, she would come running to me to see what it looked like. Then she laughed with obvious delight. And when I was trying to take pictures of other people or other things, she wormed her way into a lot of them.

A group of elderly people, including Diana's grandparents, were playing mah jongg at a table in the courtyard. Diana and I sat on the sidelines while she told me the rules of the game, much like gin rummy. It was a lot of fun to watch people's gestures and expressions as they played the game. They weren't paying much attention to me except for one younger man who was also kibitzing. He was watching me watching them. I just sat there, for a few minutes part of a Naxi family. The game broke up just as I was getting the hang of it, but the whole experience was delightful.

One of the most interesting observations in this part of the afternoon came when Diana and her sister took me into the sitting room. This was the old reception room, I'm sure, when one family used the entire courtyard. There was nice carved furniture there, a TV, and some flowers. On the wall behind the TV were four scrolls so I asked Diana what they said. They were all patriotic or famous sayings. "We Chinese want to support our country," she explained. This from a Naxi woman whose grandmother wears the traditional dress. I was struck by this sense of identity to the country at the same time she clearly takes pride in her Naxi culture. I guess a woman who has enough gumption to learn English and become a guide has already taken several big steps away from the traditional culture. Later I asked her whether she identified herself as Chinese and Naxi and she said "Chinese" first, but quickly added, "Of course, Chinese Naxi."

The Chinese author -- One of my guidebooks described a Dali cafe run by He Liyi, a Bai person. Dali cafes seem to be places where you can sit for hours for the price of a cup of coffee. The reason I was intrigued, however, is that the owner is the author of a book entitled, Mr. China's Son: A Villager's Life, published in the US. Mr. He's life is the story of 20th century China -- punished as a rightist in the 1950s, rehabilitated, criticized in the Cultural Revolution, married, divorced, remarried, the whole thing. What is most interesting is the fact that he taught himself English by listening to the BBC, the reason for at least some of his persecutions, and he wrote his autobiography in English.

Mr. He was at his café when we walked in, doing his email in English on his computer. Here is a Chinese man in his seventies with his own website! I went up to him and told him I had heard about his book; he immediately gave me an inspection copy, a collection of reviews and comments, and also a copy of his first book, an English translation of folk tales from minority peoples in China. He got a chance to go to England in the 1980s and somehow this book was the result. In fact, it was the response to the biographical note in that book that inspired the autobiography.

Mr. He is a charming man. Lily and I drank tea while we looked at the three volumes, then chatted a bit with Mr. He, bought a copy of the book which he inscribed for me, got my picture taken with him, and spent a quite enjoyable hour in Mr. China's Son Cultural Exchange Café. He seemed very pleased with the interest we showed in him. He asked that I send a copy of the photo, and then after I read the book send him my reactions and suggestions by email. He is in the process of doing a sequel; he just sent off the manuscript to the publisher last week but has time to make changes. It sounds as if he has written three more chapters but will do only small changes to what has already been published. "Check my website in March or April," he told us, "and you will find information about the new book. It was come out under a different title." If you want to check yourself, it's www.homestead.com/yndali/homepage2.html

What struck me the most about Mr. He was his serenity. I have now read about half the book and it is filled with all too typical stories of labor camps, seemingly irrational punishments, love thwarted because of family background, and brutally hard work. Mr. He's lack of bitterness is even more surprising given his life history.

I could continue to describe my adventures at length. Sitting in the Sunday service of the Dali Church of Christ (an experience as exotic to Lily as any Tibetan monastery was to me); meeting Canadian diplomats in Lijiang; listening to the Naxi Orchestra play music going back to the Tang dynasty; watching the original process of tie dyeing before the hippies expropriated it. But this letter is way too long already.

Next week I leave Chengdu and return to the United States. This sabbatical has been everything I had hoped for and more. I have learned a tremendous amount about China and seen more of this country than most of its citizens. I have challenged myself with living in a very different culture -- and survived. I have taught some wonderful students and met some people who will be part of my life forever. I have rediscovered my love of painting and fulfilled a decades-long dream to learn Chinese. I have eaten well, all too well, and in some cases have been thankful I didn't know exactly what I was eating. I have had the chance to slow down and reflect at the same I have been stimulated in ways I never expected. It has truly been a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Several wise friends have told me to expect culture shock, not only upon arrival in China, but upon my return to the United States. I don't know yet what that will be, just as I cannot predict all the implications of this semester. Right now I can only say thank you again to all the people who made it possible for me to be in China this autumn. Now I am eager to return to Colorado College and rededicate myself to the welfare of this wonderful institution.

Happy New Year as we approach the true start of the next millennium!

Cheers,

Kathryn

 

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