Back home, after showering, we hike into the hills as the day fades to twilight. We scramble up onto a choice ridge above the grassy slopes. Xiahe lies below us, twinkling and peaceful. Michiko rests her head in the crook of my shoulder, in the warm blue wool of my new sweater, and we breathe together, recline together, and watch as the sun approaches the peaks like a lover. We watch the consummation, we watch until the fireball is gone and darkness envelops everything. The moon’s cold coat of ivory shines brightly. Michiko takes my hand as we descend back to the road.
When we reach the inn, she writes her address down for me. We sit on my bed, side by side, thighs and shoulders touching, and all I know is that she’s leaving in the morning on a bus for Lanzhou. I see that the characters in her name mean “Little Forest, Pleasing River.” In her book, I write my name, Bao Tongning, which means “Shared Peacefulness.” She sighs, leaning back into me, murmuring something about gratitude, and there’s a wistfulness in her voice I can’t read. Should she come with me? My breathing catches. Why does my heart always whisper no? I say nothing and just hold her, her cheek in my chest, my lips traveling through her hair. I kiss her forehead, and her skin is still warm from all the sunlight and exertion. She looks at me and there is a sheen like porcelain in the glow above her cheekbones. I kiss her beautiful lips. Her neck radiates heat, and she lies back on the bed and looks up at me as I lean all the way down so we can touch noses. Like a horse, I nuzzle her ears and neck with my nose, then her breasts. She smiles, giggles, arching her back and running her fingers through my hair. I feel the mild cut of her fingernails on my scalp. As clumsy as before, we remove our clothing, wiggle, shift, and laugh. There’s a moment of hesitation, a fork in the road. The touches become caresses, and I align with a deep longing, the slowing flow of time, the unfolding of the obvious, the letting go. I descend from above to meet her. We challenge each other, accept each other, unwind into each other, fall and rise with each other. The light of the moon pours in through the window.
She kisses me awake. The morning is already crisp and bright, stunning my eyes. She pulls on one small white sock, then the other. She kisses me again, and this time it’s goodbye. My lips feel sunburned as hers push against them. “Yī lù shūn fēng,” I say. She smiles and repeats my words.
She’s gone. A storm swirls up in me as I surrender again to sleep.
Several hours later, I rise and pack my things. I hike slowly into town. My destination, Hezuo, is nearby and there are plenty of buses. Emotions sweep through me in sudden gusts. Anger comes first—at my lack of control. I’m an idiot. Pleasure comes next, at my renewed freedom, but it’s tinged with a numbing sadness about solitude and abandonment. Finally I feel frustrated with a sense that I’m pushing everyone away. Am I really free now? What occurs to me is that she’s probably not on birth control. I remember hearing they don’t even have the pill in Japan. “It’s possible,” she replied, when I asked about pregnancy, and I miss most subtleties in Mandarin. What about sexually transmitted diseases? God, I’m an idiot. Why did I let her in? Four times, unthinking, unhesitating, unprotected. Unbelievable. My whole face is painfully sunburned from the biking and horseback riding.
Perhaps every delicious taste coats a poison, every dessert conceals a stupid choice. Excruciating pain cries out from where the saddle chafed my butt, right at the top of the crack of my ass. Saying that phrase—“the crack of my ass”—makes me smile for some reason, irreverent in spite of myself. But it feels serious, burning, jagged, like it could be an open cut. The stirrups were too low. God, I’m an idiot.
The puny bus station has a filthy floor. The ticket man argues with me, so I pay double the locals’ price. Onboard, I have breakfast, a banana. Soon the bus begins to bounce and to pummel my bruise on the crack of my ass. Goodbye Xiahe, exquisite Xiahe, tragic Xiahe, magical Xiahe, a place of dreams, of heaven, of hell. I open Narcissus, and Goldmund comes upon a strange village where the people don’t welcome him—they attack him. Perplexed, he learns that the Plague has invaded the German countryside. He wanders about in horror, not making love anymore or carving masterpieces, but fleeing, running from town to town, clinging to his own life amidst death and ghastly diseased flesh.
We climb mountains and reach rain. The bus parks in a village, a scratch in the map called Hezuo. I step out into a downpour to look for a bus to Luqu, an even smaller town further south. Onion pancakes sizzle on a street vendor’s greasy box, and I slide one into the belly. The words on my lips are pregnancy, marriage, abortion, disease. This is what all that openness brings. Stupidity one day, regret the next.
On the bus to Luqu, two Tibetan boys laugh at me and call me names. I call back at them in Mandarin: “Little nose! Native!”
They giggle and approve and sit by me, handing me bits of a strange, delicious ginger candy.
Chapter 28
A Mandala’s Permanence
不為一陣寒徹骨
那得清香撲鼻來
Without enduring bone-chilling cold,
Could its delicate sweetness so assail the nose?
—Poem on the Chinese winter plum blossom
Rain falls steadily as I trudge through the twilight and puddles on Luqu’s only street. I step into the lobby of a cheap hotel. The woman informs me it’s full. “Go to Hotel Luqu,” she orders, pointing to the door. Back in the rain, I find this other hotel, which, with three stories, is the town’s tallest building. It’s a modern, white, concrete box in a Tibetan village that is only just starting to be “civilized.” The lobby boasts the new, pseudo-luxurious style common in Guangzhou and Beijing: broad fake wood surfaces and lots of mirrors. Behind the counter is a shelf of toiletries. 3元 for a comb. 1元 for a bar of soap.
55元 for a foreigner. They don’t rent beds individually, so I have to buy an entire room. I argue again that I’m a resident of China, a poor teacher, one deserving a discount. The young woman is not interested in my sad Mandarin or my logic. I fill out the form, and hand her 56元, since I’m out of toilet paper.
Threadbare pink carpet covers the floor, stained white blankets cover the bed. I sit on a red vinyl chair by the window and stare down at the cold street below, where the falling rain stabs repetitive concentric circles in the puddles.
I leave again and walk through the rain to a diner on the corner. The diner has three tables, all empty. The mom of the mom-and-pop welcomes me. “Where are you from?” she asks. “How old are you? How is Guangzhou?”
“Everybody wants to make money,” I say.
“Are you traveling alone?”
“Yes.”
“You must be very lonely.”
“Sometimes.”
“How is your family?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s so cold and rainy today,” she shakes her head. “You should have some soup. We just made it.”
“Fine. Soup. And some fried rice.”
Her rail-thin husband greets me from behind a curtain that hides the kitchen. The plump woman brings out a steaming bowl of soup—tofu and some dark leafy greens—and sits down to chat. They’ve just moved here from Lanzhou because he finally lined up a job as a math teacher at the middle school. Problem is, Luqu #1 Middle School changed its mind and doesn’t need another math teacher. Not for at least two years. Or they hired someone with better guānxì. “So we opened this little restaurant,” she says. The bok choy and broth warm my belly, tingling like anise and soothing like rum. “It’s delicious soup,” I remark. I eat every last grain of the greasy fried rice, too. A glass cylinder holds long, soft golden sticks, and the woman follows my eyes. “Yoútiáo, tasty and sweet,” she jabs her finger at me happily. “Five mao apiece.” I buy two of the honey-sweetened fried dough wands, eating one on the way home and saving one for later.
In Narcissus, Goldmund settles happily in the wilderness, away from the Black Death. He has two companions: a cheerful boy and a melancholy girl. It is the girl who asks him one bleak afternoon about death. “How ca
n one ever be happy,” she asks, “when one knows that soon all will be finished and over?” Goldmund pauses before answering. “About that, the wise men and saints have wracked their brains. There is no lasting happiness. But if what we now have is not good enough for you, if it no longer pleases you, then I’ll set fire to this hut this very minute and each of us can go his way.”
I drop the book, lie back on the bed, and stare at the peeling ceiling. Set fire to this hut this very minute. Forget everything. Go my own way. There’s a big brown stain up there, probably from an old water leak. Silence envelops the room completely, like miles of cotton. I imagine a travel agent’s brochure: Cold, Wet, Silent. Visit Luqu.
How beautiful it was with her. Would I regret anything had it been just one night, one risk? I pull out the blue pocket atlas, the one Lu Lan gave me, and I think of her: her distant smile; her predilection for orange velvet; her conservative, meandering, elusive sense of romance; the safety of her demure standoffs. Gansu Province is a pale blue vulture on page 125. Langmusi, another Tibetan village, lies fifty miles south, and it has an alluring ring to it. Better to keep moving.
In the bathroom, to brush my teeth, I turn on the sink faucet, and a powerful spurt of water soaks my thighs and crotch. I look under the sink and find a whole pipe joint missing.
I sleep solidly, corpse-like, in the utter noiselessness.
Luqu spits out a brisk, damp morning, and the wooden bus hut is devoid of customers. Its sole occupant is a bullish ticket man, and I ask him about Langmusi. He’s never heard of it. When I ask a second time, he snaps at me: “The bus doesn’t go there.” He unbuttons the top of his thick green coat and launches into a rundown of every car and bus that comes or goes for a week. His neck looks fatter than my head.
“I want to leave today,” I finally say.
“Rouergai or Hezuo?”
“Does the bus to Rouergai stop at Langmusi?”
“No!” he says. “There’s no bus.”
“What about Maqü?”
“You can’t go to Maqü. It’s closed to foreigners.”
“But there is a bus to Maqü?”
“Yes.”
“And on the way, it passes Langmusi, right?”
“Mm.”
“Where does that bus end up?”
“Rouergai.”
“OK, one ticket for Rouergai.”
He stares through me. “18元. Do you have insurance?”
“Yes,” I lie, pulling out two 10元 bills.
“It leaves at 9:15, in one hour,” he says. “There’s a foreigner.”
“What?” I look back at him.
“A foreigner.”
“Me?” Getting no answer, I pick up my pack and step back outside as a gale blows down the vacant, colorless street. Water and the leftover yoútiáo treat become breakfast as I sit my bottom on the cold concrete curb, wincing when I graze my bruise. Looking around me, the town’s rawness and slow transition to Han China are on display. The “minority” Tibetans still outnumber the Chinese here, and it was probably off-limits to foreigners until, who knows, last week.
Back in the bus hut, a pale face, an aquiline nose, blond hair, blue eyes, a huge lime green backpack—the shock never wears off. We gape at each other, and then Anton and I are talking about California and UC Santa Cruz, and we’re friends. Maybe back home we’d hesitate, but here—two Americans in Luqu, Gansu, China? The ticket man was right. We carry our bags to a gravel parking lot riddled with mud puddles, and Anton groans that the bus only comes through on Tuesdays and Thursdays; he arrived Sunday night and coincidentally intends to visit Langmusi too. After studying Mandarin in Beijing for the year, he’s now on a traveling kick. Just like Michiko. I sigh and step into a lushly overgrown corner of the lot to urinate, enduring a stench of rotting cabbage mingling with the odor of motor oil.
A long square bus pulls in and turns around as tightly as it can, scraping tree branches. It’s nearly full, and Anton and I have to sit near the back. A strange frisson of elation overtakes me as we roll out of the town and climb higher into the misty hills. We wind on a circuitous road that grows muddier and more treacherous with successive switchbacks. Tibetans fill the seats around us, and I comment to Anton that they as a people remain here in their native lands rather than try to assimilate into some “melting pot” because they’re not immigrants and, since there’s a little more tolerance here, they still own the land. Anton looks out the window. “Well,” he begins, “communism says the government owns the land, right? Also, if you haven’t noticed, the government is moving Han Chinese into these Western areas continuously, like an ongoing conquest. From Xigatse to Turpan, Han Chinese settlers are here, everywhere. They rise fast through local government and business because of racism or corruption or Beijing’s deliberate strategy to dilute independence movements. Every city is becoming a Han city.”
I look at him, impressed. “Last night I met a Han couple who had just moved to Luqu.”
“I’m not saying they’re racist. It’s just not a coincidence that they’re here.”
“At least China still has its native peoples to mistreat, right? We Americans slaughtered most of ours long ago.”
“Right,” he sighs. “True.”
Behind his head, the sun inches over the green mountaintops. “What I’ve noticed about both the Tibetans and the Hui,” I say, “is that they seem to be accepting it and doing better, to be more at ease, than American minorities who live in so many poorer parts of the United States.”
“But these folks aren’t immigrants—they’ve lived here for centuries.”
“Well, so have lots of minorities in the U.S.”
“In some cases,” he replies, studying me for a moment. “No, what I’ve seen is that the peace here is from resignation, not contentment, and still not everyone is accepting it. This doesn’t work for most people. The empire could crumble or become a superpower, there could be a civil war any day.”
“Don’t you see a longing here to forget the decades of suffering? I think the people sense how much is changing and dying, how much is being created, reborn, how much could happen.”
Two Tibetan men are watching us. The skin on their cheekbones is wind-chapped a dark bronze, and they both wear white work shirts and brown denim jackets. With a broad smile that exposes his teeth, one asks where we’re from and where we’re going. They haven’t heard of Langmusi, which is troubling. They ask a shriveled old man whose hair is almost gone and who apparently speaks only Tibetan, and he does know Langmusi. “It’s up ahead,” the young men report. “Not far. You have to get off and walk.”
“Walk?” asks Anton. They consult the aged man again and promise to tell us when to disembark. Everyone on the bus is now watching us. One large man comes over and tells us he’s going to Lande but occasionally stops in Langmusi. He’s another Tibetan cowboy who wears beads and a red headscarf in his hair and a pea green coat with flamboyant red, white, and orange lines twirling up the arms. Most rural Tibetan men seem to be either cowboys or monks: they ride horses or sit on a prayer cushion. The latter seem the more esteemed. “Langmusi is small. It’s mostly Tibetans, like me.” He has a deep laugh. “Why do you want to go there?”
“We’ve heard good things,” replies Anton, whose Mandarin is excellent.
A monk cuts in: “Langmusi is preparing for a big festival.”
The cowboy nods, accepting a festival as a reason two lăowài might visit.
“The festival is for everyone,” adds the monk. “Tibetans all over the world.”
“Even the Dalai Lama?” I ask.
“Of course,” he replies, saying something about His Holiness. I flip to a picture of the Dalai Lama in the LP and show him. He puts his hands together and bows solemnly to the picture.
“Pictures of the Dalai Lama are illegal here,” Anton murmurs in English. “Be careful.” Another Tibetan rises from his seat and asks to see the picture, and I hand it to him. He hands it solemnly to someone else, and the book
travels the full length of the bus. So much for safety. The ice broken, the passengers now want to see all of our possessions. I hand my knife to two youngsters who eagerly finger its assorted blades. Others take my watch and flip its leather watchband then flash its purple light. I sigh and trust them all, their curiosity. A sensation flashes through me, a shudder of relief, and I breathe it, savor it, seeing in my mind’s eye a vision, a grassy hilltop different from these, with water and a lake, and in that place I’m opening my heart, pouring myself out, gratefully, uncontrollably. It’s like honey to my mind, and I smile—before I remember how that opening up betrayed me. I have to learn to control myself, my heart, my stupidity. The youngsters enjoy my knife more than I ever have, and I’m tempted to let it go, to give it to them. The cowboy tells us to prepare. We roll down into a grassy valley, and at a bend in the dirt road, a smaller road splits off to the right. The bus pulls over. We thank the cowboy, the monk, the driver, and everyone else, and disembark. A dozen hands wave to us through dirty windows, and then those windows roll on down the hill, around a bend, and out of sight.
Double Happiness: One Man's Tale of Love, Loss, and Wonder on the Long Roads of China Page 22
