If I just stop making any sense at all in the middle of this post, I apologize. I can barely keep my eyes open, which is understandable, since I did climb a damn mountain today. Yesterday was probably my worst day in China (for a few hours, anyhow) and today was probably my best. Here was my route for yesterday:
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And then for the journey:
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And then for today:
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I checked out of my beloved hostel early yesterday morning and schlepped my stupid heavy bags to the train station by subway. It is really, obviously dumb to carry this much stuff with me, and the Chinese make fun of me for it or grunt with annoyance. At the train station, I had probably my worst mandarin experience of the trip, having the woman scream with annoyance at me, not understanding a damn word, as I tried to squeeze my bags into the lockers. She also tried to convey to me the closing date, which I understood, but the way she insisted on it made it sound like the Apocalypse. I felt awful, dispirited and depressed; I wanted to just curl up in the fetal position. But since I had already paid to store my bags, I went to the Marco Polo Bridge,
I took the bus to the bridge, and it actually went very smoothly. I got a bunch of odd looks and mutters from the locals (it was in a part of the city where the signs aren't even transliterated into pinyin, and that's a part of town that you know must not see a lot of westerners). One of the buses I took was more or less the crosstown local, and if you could pack more people into a bus, I'd like to see it. It even makes the rush hour IRT look like a cakewalk. I spent pretty much the whole hour-long ride standing up, pressed up against the window, just trying to keep it together, while thinking about everything I don't like about Beijing. There were people on that bus who were more intimate with my body than some girls I've hooked up with.
There is a memorial at the bridge (where World War II started, if you count the Sino-Japanese war, which you probably should) which I found a stirring, amazing piece of Socialist Realism. People knock socialist realism for being trash, and most of it definitely is, but it's also art designed for a specific purpose, and when it's employed for that purpose, the effect can be striking. There were a series of remarkable reliefs, with dramatic, exciting compositions, and creepy ideas about why the Chinese prevailed (the creepiest: "undying hatred for the enemy"). What it impressed on me is the reality that we in America have no comprehension of the sheer disaster and horror that the Sino-Japanese war and the various conflicts preceding it was for the Chinese. The slaughter and the terror is simply unimaginable, and the memory burns brightly at least in the government approved narrative of the conflict. It is something they won't just forget and maybe that we shouldn't expect them to forget.
What I wasn't taught in Social Studies was that the Marco Polo Bridge was not only where World War II started (and, in fact, it didn't actually start there, but right nearby, at a railway junction near the walled village of Wanping) but a gorgeous piece of architecture. The bridge is lined with about 150 carved stone lions, each of them unique. This was one of the few times this trip where I was really impressed by something on an artistic level. The detail and posing of these lions is really exquisite. It's also one of the few really old things in Beijing, dating back to the Liao Dynasty. Most of Beijing is actually relatively new, since the Mongols razed Beijing to the ground in the 1100s, and the Ming destroyed most of the old Yuan structures. Additionally, what many people don't realize (or at least, I didn't) is that Beijing was not the capital or even main city in China until Kublai Khan's time. Most native Chinese dynasties had other cities (Nanjing, Xian, Kaifeng) as their capital. The Ming were the only fully Chinese dynasty to have Beijing as their capital.
I loved the bridge, and spent a few hours walking up and down. I sat and finished the spare ribs from the previous night for lunch, which, as expected, were hella delicious. Then I took the bus back to the subway, and headed off to walk along the old Ming City Walls. The walls themselves are nothing special, not particularly beautiful, but interesting for historical reasons and for the purposes of envisioning what the old city must have been like. Also, the city walls park borders a busy, noisy, heavily trafficked street and so is Beijing in a microcosm, the tranquil ancient and the hectic modern in direct juxtaposition, in a strange coexistence.
Once that was done, I found that I still had a bunch of hours to kill, but no hotel and nowhere particular to go. I just walked around the railway station, which was a bad idea. That atmosphere is absolutely lethal to me, and left to my own devices, with nothing better to do, I just kept running the nightmare scenarios over and over again in my head: I wouldn't get my bags back, I wouldn't be able to get them on the train, I'd miss my stop, I wouldn't be able to find my hotel. This trip, I must say, has really humbled me. I was so arrogant in planning it, so sure I could do things myself and it would all go swimmingly. I wouldn't listen to anybody's advice. Having worked myself into a panic, I retreated to a familiar haven: Starbucks. I could probably write a paper on the symbolism that swirls around coffee in modern China: it is the affluent West and its attending freedoms and culture of the individual in a cup. In any case, as stupid and as much of a ripoff as it was, I was glad to retreat into a familiar world of cushy chairs, tables with things written on them, soft American music and lattes (although here, it is pronounced natie).
I got an awful set of baozi (big bready dumplings) and ate what I could of them while wandering around. Then I returned to my bags, and a funny thing happened. The same woman was sitting, watching them, and she engaged me in a long conversation about Beijing, and she was perfectly lovely and nice. It was a revalation. I had totally misjudged the situation before, and it served as a perfect example of how these sort of cross-cultural communications can be totally misread. I left with my bags, and absolutely sure everything was going to be alright.
Beijing is a city of twenty million people and a hundred damn chairs in the train waiting room. I sat on the floor for a few hours with my bags, listening to my iPod (Clipse's "Chinese New Year" acquires quite another meaning when listened to here). Then we crowded on to the train (which makes no goddamn sense, but the Chinese crowd on to everything). Hard sleeper is really fine, perfectly comfortable, and I slept pretty much as soon as I hit the sack. I was concerned about missing my stop because it wasn't the last on the line (doubly so when a woman said that I had gotten on the wrong train; I was proud of myself, however, because I also understood that she was mistaken) but the conductor woke me up, and so it was a nonissue. Once arrived here, I headed straight for the ticket counter. To my disappointment, they didn't have any tickets for Shanghai tomorrow, except for a Soft Sleeper in the afternoon, which put me out a few yuan and means I'll have to miss Qufu, which I'm really pissed about. On the other hand, it might be a good idea to waste a day, if it means giving me a night to get comfortable in Shanghai.
Getting to the hotel turned out to be fine. After a mantralike repeating of the information I had about the hotel to the assembled cab drivers, it clicked for one of them and we got there, no problem. He was a really nice guy, though as with most cab drivers, the driving itself was probably not the best. My suitcase didn't fit all the way in the trunk, so he just let the trunk flap open, and there was a full on roll cage, right out of "Death Proof", for the driver, but not for me. When I looked back at the trunk nervously after we hit a bump, the driver said, oh, it's nothing, and I said, I hope it's nothing. The hotel I am staying at here is embarassingly ritzy, although, as a lovely added touch, it quite openly advertises a prostitute service in the room and in the lobby. Stay classy, China.
Overall, I wonder if my rough first week was more of a Beijing issue than a China issue. People here in Shandong are mostly friendly and very pleasant, and I'm less on edge as a result. Tai'an is an ugly, noisy little city, that somehow has worse air than Beijing. But the people have been really great, and it picks me up.
After putting my stuff in my room and taking a shower, I headed off for Taishan, China's holiest mountain. Mao climbed the top of Taishan to watch the sunrise and famously proclaimed, "The East is Red", which is something that's always captivated me, I don't know quite why. Confucius and a variety of emperors, dating back to ancient times, have climbed up Taishan's 6600 steps to the peak. It's said if you climb to the top of Taishan, you live for a 100 years. So that's what I decided to do.
It's not an easy climb, but it's doable for a not-particularly-in-shape amateur (like me), or Chinese grandmothers, or even a couple of daring crippled beggars. The mountain itself is gorgeous, all cypress and pine and ancient rocks. Taishan is one of those places where you sit and look and listen, and it seems like nature is of one piece, and that it was created and is working towards a unified purpose. Even the rocks, billion year old metamorphic schists (think Old Man in The Mountain back in the states), have a sort of ancient mystery to them.
I've been having an interesting experience visiting these holy sights, because invariably there are shrines with idols, and the Chinese want you to bow and offer incense. What's surprised me is how much I resist this. I am a Jew and I do believe in God, but I've never thought of him as this jealous human presense, God with a capital G. Yet something in me makes it feel wrong to bow down to an idol, something deep inside of me. Today, at the urging of the Chinese, I made an awkward bow to the deity of Taishan, but I felt bad immediately afterward and said the sh'ma to myself. It's a funny thing.
The foreigner experience on Taishan was unreal, because I was one of the only white faces there. I was asked to take a picture with someone no less than four times today (which gets annoying, but how can I say no?), and I cannot count how many times I heard "Hello!" said half in jest, or was referred to as a foreigner. It's just odd to me, at this point, that the Chinese would still be so startled by a foreigner. Also, in case you were wondering if the Chinese wouldn't spit on Taishan, they did spit on Taishan. At this point, I don't understand the spitting from a physical perspective; I don't understand how the Chinese can have so much spit in them.
But Taishan, Taishan was magnificent. My happiest day, and probably the best thing I've seen here. The view is amazing. I went to the platform overlooking the ancient state of Lu and sat there alone, reading the Dao De Jing, and suddenly, I felt a distinct harmony with the universe. For the first time in my life, I really felt small. I realized that it wasn't Confucius that made the mountain, but the mountain that made Confucius. And suddenly, with this uncanny feeling of being nothing before the universe, all the petty anxieties over whether I'm a good enough writer, whether I'll ever get a job, all the anger and loneliness that I usually feel, melted away. I walked around so blissful that I didn't want to come down. I seriously just wanted to stay on top of Taishan forever. It actually felt like a spiritual experience, and its kind of shaken me.
I did, however, eventually catch the cable car and then a bus down, with the intention of seeing Taishan's other site, the Dai Temple. Unfortunately, the temple was closed for a New Year's event. I'll try to see it tomorrow maybe. I walked around and went to this dumpling house recommended by the guide book, and to my surprise, a couple of westerners walked in. I invited them to eat with me. They were Dutch post-grad travellers who planned on spending four months in China, and were really doing the lonely planet thing, hard seating it everywhere. They were nice guys, and I was happy to have someone to discuss my experiences with and not to eat alone for once.
Tomorrow should be pretty boring, just the train, although if I can store my bags, I'll try to see the Dai Temple too. I'll have to see what the internet situation is, but I'll probably be able to write an abbreviated (for once) dispatch. Till tomorrow.
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