A Boy of China

by Richard Loseby

  Rite of passage over, it was just a short scramble from here down a wooded slope to the valley bottom. The doors to the temple were open and, having finished the kora, the monks were eager to complete their pilgrimage by prostrating themselves before a statue of Buddha. The venerable old man in charge allowed me to enter the inner courtyard and even the shrine itself. It was quiet and eerily dark, and the ceiling seemed not to exist, as if the quilt-wrapped columns on either side of the massive golden Buddha climbed all the way to heaven. Everywhere, on every available surface, there were ornate paintings, carvings or relief sculptures of Buddha. The colours were deep blues, bright reds and golds, with a smattering of white wherever a silk scarf was depicted. A photograph of a smiling Panchen Lama was attached to one of the columns and Tibetan script flowed across the walls. I was invited to follow the monks and prostrate myself before the altar, which I did, copying their actions exactly. Like a holy sacrament, water was then administered to each of us by the old man out of a silver cup. It was a moving experience, to be ushered into such an ancient place and made to feel welcome. The holy shrines of Islam were off limits to non-believers, and I had talked my way into those on the odd occasion. But I did not feel for one minute like an imposter here. Simply, I was a man from the outer world, of computers and corporate ladders, given a brief but uplifting audience with Buddha.

  Tenzin and the others were staying on at the temple that night, preparing to spend time meditating in one of the hillside retreats, so I took my leave as the sun began to sink lower and I started upon the long hike back. On the return leg I discovered a possible reason why the boards of the suspension bridge were loose. There were wild dogs in the area, some of whom followed me to the river, so I reversed across the bridge, picking up the boards as I went, creating a gap they had no hope of broaching. Between us ran the river, swift and cold and too deep for them to cross, a moat of safety. We looked at each other across the divide. The largest of the beasts pawed the ground malevolently, drooling into the dust. When I set off again along the other side of the river, they followed me for a while, keeping pace on the opposite bank, then lost interest when the first humble homesteads of Yushu came into view.

  TEN

  TWO WESTERNERS STOOD BY THE KERB IN THE MID-AFTERNOON sun, surrounded by an alien world of horse-drawn carts and burning incense, and talked about the places they had come from. Queensland was home for Danielle, a land of pineapples and ice-cold Castlemaine beer, while Dominique hankered for a fine cheese from his native France. They were both teaching English at Thrangu Monastery, an ancient seat of Buddhist philosophy on the outskirts of Yushu, known in the fourteenth century as the ‘Monastery of 1,000 Lamas’, until the Mongolian hordes came and killed them all. On hearing about the reason for my journey, they happily invited me up there to take a look around. They were practising Buddhists, and in return for their labours they received spiritual guidance from the monks.

  We found a taxi and within half an hour were pulling into the car park beneath the ochre-coloured ramparts of their Tibetan home. Children in red-and-saffron robes ran squealing across a courtyard, chased by an older monk wearing one sandal — the other was being gleefully held aloft by one of the fast-escaping children.

  We went up some steps and through a large archway. I was shown into a narrow, walled courtyard set with unpainted doors leading into a variety of rooms. I followed my hosts up a steep wooden staircase to an upstairs level where there were more bedrooms, each with a small window looking out over the valley. The windows were open and the bright yellow curtains wafted in and out in the cool mountain breeze.

  Downstairs was the teachers’ common room and kitchen, a place where they could escape from the routines of monastic life. It smelt of ash, cooking oil and last night’s dinner. A wood stove sat in the middle of the room and an old table was pushed against a window seat, affording anyone seated there a panoramic view of the countryside down below. The room was spartanly furnished, but the overall feeling was warm and cosy.

  When news spread of my arrival, we were joined by Scott, Danielle’s boyfriend, who was also from Australia.

  ‘You’ll stay for a feed?’ he asked.

  I nodded. ‘Anything I can do to help?’

  He threw me a can of Chinese beer, which was only slightly cool, and poured some nuts into a bowl. ‘Nah mate, you just sit tight and enjoy.’

  It was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. Over my shoulder the valley was changing colour by the minute as the sun went down, while Danielle talked about life at the monastery. The head lama was a ‘good bloke’ who was away, she said, on business.

  ‘What kind of business does a lama do?’ I asked, looking around the room for any sign of a cottage-industry product.

  ‘He attracts wealthy benefactors who give money to help run the whole show here. Right now he’s in Taiwan with a billionaire who says she wants to invest.’

  ‘In the building?’

  ‘Well, yes, that and her soul we reckon. Paying for the upkeep of a monastery is one way of making sure your karma is up to scratch.’

  Scott laughed in the background. ‘Pay now and have a better time in the next life.’ He whacked the head off a carrot with a knife the size of a meat cleaver. ‘Don’t think that’s how it works though.’

  They were completely open and frank in their appraisal of everything. The monks were good, they said, but could be brutal on the kids if they stepped out of line. I found this surprising, but apparently it was not an uncommon practice in Tibet for monks to discipline children with beatings. Some monks were quicker to strike than others and the teachers tried to make sure the worst offenders were not allowed anywhere near their students. But Danielle and the others couldn’t be everywhere all the time.

  ‘It doesn’t help that a lot of the monks are not here voluntarily,’ she said. ‘They are simply the kids their families couldn’t care for, or, in the case of a child born with a mental illness, didn’t want to care for. They get sent to a monastery for the rest of their lives and they don’t have a choice. It’s no wonder some of them are screwed up and take it out on the younger ones.’

  For a religion based on non-violence, this was a disturbing revelation and at odds with its image of gentleness and harmony.

  ‘There are many good monks too,’ added Dominique in a thick French accent. ‘Many here in this monastery, and up in the mountains.’

  It turned out that way above this monastery was another, smaller retreat. Once those monks who were deemed worthy of selection entered its gates, they could not leave for three years and spent most of that time in meditation. They were cut off, marooned in semi-isolation and allowed only one weekly visitor, who would leave food and supplies outside their gate.

  Scott waved a hand in the direction of the hills. ‘When we first came here, I hiked into the mountains and found myself high above the building, looking down onto it. I wasn’t supposed to be there, so I got out pretty fast, but I saw that these guys had long hair down to their waists.’

  A month later, he said, these same monks had completed their time. Their heads were shaved and their clothes stripped away so that they were naked save for a loincloth. Then they sat in a chair while a wet cloth was draped over them. It was a test. In order to become a lama, each monk had to dry the cloth by raising his own body temperature using only the power of meditation.

  Night fell and we ate a meal of tofu and vegetables with rice. Afterwards, any remaining scraps were sealed in metal rubbish tins so that the mice and rats couldn’t get at them. I asked if they had much of a rodent problem and they all laughed.

  ‘You could say that,’ grinned Scott. Then he showed me the gnawed woodwork around the cupboards and some steel mesh over a ventilation hole that was bitten right through. ‘But don’t let that put you off staying the night.’

  We discussed a good many things that evening and much of it related to the lives they had left behind and how their fate had led them to this part of the world. They were
just ordinary Australians and a Frenchman, from traditional family backgrounds, who, as Buddhists, had decided they had something to give back to their faith. Teaching was one way they could make a difference and experience a very different kind of life from their own. They weren’t missionaries, but simply religious travellers keen to do more than just backpack around the place snapping photographs. I admired them for their conviction and their sense of duty to their fellow human beings. Compared with most other religions I had encountered, Buddhism seemed more likeable and displayed a greater generosity of spirit. Not that the same couldn’t be said for adherents of Christianity or Islam, to a degree. It was just that the ordinary humble practitioner of this faith, the common or garden variety of Buddhist, seemed to be on the whole a more affable and caring character.

  ‘Do you feel like a walk tomorrow?’ asked Scott. ‘Some of the monks are making a pilgrimage to one of the local mountaintops. We could join them.’

  ‘Count me in,’ came the voice of Dominique from the next room.

  ‘Me too,’ added Danielle.

  How could I say no?

  The head lama’s room was empty, they said, and he wouldn’t mind if I bunked down there.

  It was a small room beside the kitchen, with just a single bed, a locked wooden chest under the window, and a dresser on which was perched a black-and-white photograph of a monk, who smiled out at me with a radiant benevolence. A silk scarf was draped over one corner of the frame. A pair of sandals sat just inside the door, waiting, like a faithful dog, for their owner to return. I placed my cracked and worn leather boots alongside them. In comparison they appeared massive and outlandish.

  When the light from the single bulb in the roof went out and the dogs stopped their barking, I heard the rodents come. The scraping of their claws as they ran across the rafters above my head was like a stampede. Then came the sound of dishes clattering next door. Someone had forgotten to put them away, perhaps, or the invaders were already in the cupboards. I lay still on my bed in the dark, not wanting to see what my mind imagined, an army of rats with their red eyes glinting.

  Amazingly, I must have dozed off. But then I woke up smartly when something crawled across my face. I brushed it away, flicked on a torch and there on the floor was an impressively large spider. It moved sedately back towards me, as if stunned. Fearing a repeat of the close encounter, I placed one of my boots gently on top of it and returned to bed. A few hours later, however, when a knock on the door signalled the monks were gathering to start the pilgrimage, I flicked on a torch and found it was squashed flat, a small animal murdered by my own hand — not exactly a very Buddhist thing to do, and in the head lama’s bedroom no less. Guiltily, I swept the remains under the bed, and tried to avoid the gaze coming from the photograph on the dresser.

  It was pitch black outside in the courtyard when I caught up with the small group, and I could feel the chill of the flagstones coming up through the soles of my walking boots. It wasn’t numbingly cold, but cold enough to cause me to wonder if the clothes I had on would be adequate for the possible extremes of temperature at an even higher altitude. But then, as the occasional flash of a penlight illuminated the friendly enquiring figures of the monks around me, providing glimpses of their humble robes and sandals, I decided not to worry. And, as it turned out, the cold was to be the least of the hurdles that day.

  We set off in single file, a quartet of monks taking the lead because they possessed the solitary penlight, while the rest of us half trudged, half stumbled in their wake. Danielle had slept in, so it was just Scott, Dominique and me who began to chat as we climbed over a low stone wall and found the bare earth of a rutted mountain track. Not that we were able to talk for long. It soon became blindingly obvious that the pace the monks were setting meant that every breath had to be conserved for one purpose, sucking in oxygen. What made matters worse was not being able to see where we were going. And although the path occasionally evened out, raising our spirits and giving us a chance to recover, it was never long before it would be almost vertical again — a veritable staircase without end.

  Scott was the first to go down. We’d been walking for an hour when the sound of his footsteps behind me suddenly halted. I looked back into the darkness and although I couldn’t see him I could definitely hear him. Our sole torch was soon brought to bear upon the sad, crumpled form hanging onto a rock and spewing everything he had in his stomach into some bushes.

  He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the light: ‘S’okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll catch you guys up.’

  Dominique was not so sure. He had been brought up in the French Alps near Mont Blanc and knew all too well the first signs of altitude sickness. He offered Scott his water bottle and a handful of nuts, then tried to talk him into going back, but Scott was having none of it. He got back on his feet, wiped the vomit from his chin and carried on walking as if nothing had happened. As he went past he slapped me on the shoulder and said cheerfully, ‘See ya at the top.’

  Gradually the pre-dawn light made things easier and the going soon became less steep than at the start, though Scott still had to stop periodically to be sick. It must have been rough for him, but he never once looked like quitting, even though every time we came to the crest of one ridge there would be yet another beyond it. By now I could see that the plant life around us was mainly a kind of short brown heather, dotted with dainty alpine flowers in blues and yellows. Rough stones littered the path and would hook any foot not lifted high enough to clear them. The way forward became a war of attrition, with every few steps requiring a pause to recover. My breathing was laboured and my limbs felt like they were filled with lead, yet the monks bounced along, laughing and chatting noisily amongst themselves as if it were a Sunday stroll. They were concerned about Scott, but equally they were worried about making the top in time to see the sunrise, an important part of their ritual. We convinced them to go ahead, and that we would help Scott get through the last few kilometres, something I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure we would manage. More and more often he would sit down and then take longer to get going again. At one stage, close to the summit, he even took to crawling.

  Eventually, however, we all made it to the top. As the sky turned from pink to blue and the first rays of the sun began to strike the lofty, snow-capped peaks around us, the mountain path ended at the foot of a rocky cairn about two metres high, which was wreathed in innumerable prayer flags that fluttered in the strengthening breeze. It was heavenly, dream-like and ethereal. The colours of the flags, contrasting with the monks’ crimson robes and framed by the granite grey of the mountains, were an intoxicating sight. As the light of day started to warm our contented faces, we all stood around grinning at each other, no words being said because none were necessary.

  We stayed there a while, contemplating the incredible view, until the monks decided to continue to some other distant mountaintop. For us it was simply a matter of turning around and heading home again. But Scott was starting to show even worse signs of altitude sickness. His speech was slurred and he walked unsteadily. If we didn’t get him down soon he might lapse into unconsciousness and have to be carried. Taking an arm each, Dominique and I supported him as we retraced our path to the red-roofed monastery far below. It took forever, and the sun turned from friend to foe as it made the going hot and uncomfortable.

  Scott looked as white as a sheet when we eventually got him to a bed. Danielle immediately started to pour liquids into him. The drugs I had on me had no effect and he seemed to be in real trouble. Eventually the decision was made to put him into a car and get him to the local hospital in Yushu as soon as possible. With Scott lying down in the back seat, Danielle in the front and Dominique driving there was no room left for me. I watched them go, the car kicking up an urgent cloud of dust, then followed after on foot until a local farmer came by in a small pick-up truck and took me the rest of the way.

  It was a couple of days later that I saw Danielle again in the town. Scott had made a
full recovery and was back teaching. I apologised, saying we should have forced him to turn around early that morning, even though he was adamant about continuing, but she clicked her tongue and waved away the apology.

  ‘That boy can be bloody stubborn sometimes,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘But I reckon I’ll keep him.’

  Time was ticking on. I caught up again with Hua and her travelling companions, who had finally managed to repair the damaged wheel on the Jeep. They took me off-road to see a lake, although I suspected it was so Wei could show off the Jeep’s 4WD capability. We bumped and trundled our way across sealed and unsealed roads for hours and hours until eventually the shores of Nianjie Cuo came into view. It was beautiful, and the surrounding hills were magnificently reflected in its tranquil waters.

  ‘Here,’ announced Wei, ‘is the start of the mighty Tongtian River, which flows into the Jinsha River and then into our glorious Yangtze.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Hua, unimpressed, ‘not exactly.’

  ‘Yes it is!’ insisted Wei and he strode off to kick a rock into the water.

  Hua smiled cockily and said, ‘He hates me.’

  To be honest, I told her, we’d come over a hundred kilometres to get to the lake, and there was still the same distance to go on the return leg, so as far as I was concerned Wei could think whatever he liked about the lake, birthplace of the Yangtze or not. But Hua wouldn’t drop it. She went on like a worn record about how in school they were taught the many glaciers of the Tibetan plateau were the accepted birthplace of the great rivers of China, not just one location.

  ‘You know a lot, don’t you,’ I said finally.

  ‘I am very well educated.’

  ‘But can you skip a stone?’ I asked.