Rubber Trees
How Deep is Your Love?
Ah but the spur du moment to fire up that ‘puter was this: How Deep IS Your Love? This is Bee Gees Week in so much world, so little time land! And we’re not talking “Staying Alive,” or “Nights on Broadway,” or any of those other fine songs that have so sadly vanished from the American airwaves. Please recall: Monday’s highlight was 3 Venezuelans humming and singing along to “HDIYL” in a swank little Indonesian-Burmese joint frequented by embassy diplomats from the neighborhood. Today’s early-morning (it’s 9:15 as I type this) highlight? Malaysia Airlines was playing “HDIYL” a la piano Muzak when I boarded! The stars have aligned! Clearly, at last and long overdue, underappreciated 70s Americana is taking over the airwaves of Asia. Perhaps a Chinese Kung Fu director will soon do for the boys in white pants and bad hair what “Priscilla” and “Muriel” did for ABBA? ‘Nights on Broadway, the Musical’ opening on the West End, anyone? You heard it here first!
离开中国 – Leaving China
亲 爱的，尊敬的朋友们；dear and respected friends, I have much to share with you. First and foremost: be careful what you wish. To quote my dear old self, a mere handful of days ago: “…I’m becoming bored by China and ready to move to whatever comes next.” To be mildly trite about it, the future is now. Eleven days have taken me from fairly confident MSF would keep me here until the end of December, to leaving my mission in China sixty hours from this moment, now, as I sit at my desk on my computer listening to OMD cycling on the MP3 player. Saturday morning I’m bound for a week’s R&R in a soon-to-be-disclosed location (if you watch the blog, you too can find out where and envy me), whence I shall jet to my new assignment in MSF’s Sri Lanka mission.
More about the future when I’ve started living it. For the moment, I choose to look back fondly on the 18 months that have been since I left the US and hitched my star to MSF. This pic of me at the Eastern Qing Tombs Spirit Way arrived recently from Davey, one of the many friends and colleagues I’m sad to be bidding adieu. You must note that I’m holding a water bottle that claims to be Pabst Blue Ribbon Water. Wow – even weaker than the old 3.2 beer! For the sheer fun of it and to honor 18 kick-ass months, I’ve selected this and nine other shots to represent outstanding moments since I boarded that flight in Cleveland.
It’s My Birthday…And I’ll Reminisce if I Want To!
After work today, I had my last class with my Chinese teacher, who’s become one of my best Chinese friends here; then I invited her and her boyfriend for dinner. To my delight, they’d secretly arranged a wonderful cake with candles and even a little cardboard hat. Being 44 and headed demnaechst for a locale which is rather less stable than 北京, I allowed myself to walk all the way home with that cardboard crown on my head. Feeling silly has its merits on occasion.
The week has highlighed the joys and sadnesses of my current life. With my friend and tennis opponent from the Venezuelan embassy for a final lunch on Monday, along with one of his colleagues and her daughter, I had the unique pleasure of observing American influence on the world as all three spontaneously started singing along with the Bee Gees in our Indonesian-Burmese restaurant, “How deep is your love, I really need to know…’cuz we’re living in a world of…” You get the idea. Yes friends, I managed NOT to join the chorus. Had it been Abba, all bets are off…but then that’s Swedish cultural imperialism, ain’t it? 🙂
I’m also very sad. True, adrenaline junkies R Us here at “so much world, so little time.” But I’ve put down roots here. I’m truly going to miss Ditan Park, biking to the gym for my morning swims, an office where I know the ins and outs, and the increasing joy of actually understanding a lot of those street signs! And I’m sad to leave Catherine, 石灿, Davey, Linda, Paul LB, Yuning, Nico, Ahsong and Michelle and all my Nanning colleagues.
On the other hand…the island nation of Sri Lanka awaits me, a land I’ve heard and fantasized about since my college years. Testing my ability to walk the walk. Seeing more of this world. That little kick in my stomach to know MSF trusts me with what’s surely a more challenging spot than where I’ve been so far.
So I say thank you for the memories. (Identify that line if you can. Yup, that’s ABBA, friends. Sweden rules!) Early faltering efforts, last September, at some form of outreach in Nanning have blossomed into an impressive poster and postcard campaign informing the most excluded populations in and around Nanning that we’re there and encourage them come in and get tested so they can get treated if necessary, and stay healthy and productive. (Honestly, I’ve often felt like I’m back in NYC in the 1980s, the difference being now ARVs have rendered AIDS a chronic, rather than usually fatal disease, if treatment is available. Give to your local MSF chapter in order to keep treatment coming for the millions and millions internationally that need it!) Training in Bangkok gave me a chance to explore Ayuthaya with Anthony – good old Anthony, from the good old days on the NYFR running gear committee. Hell I’ma get maudlin soon! And I will never, no never, forget the beauty of Labrang Monastery and Xiahe in Gansu, or walking Tiger Leaping Gorge with Howard and Gene.
The Year that Was
Year, of course, is not literal here. From arrival on the banks of the Seine in the waning hours of February 2005 for my training (all French – those were they days, when that scared the bejesus out of me, knowing my future w/MSF hung on my ability to pass 10 days of training class en Francais), to following villagers up the path from their washed-away houses to the roadside distribution point we’d set up for for NFI (non-food items) distribution. Breaking out of my rut of the moment in Nanning to hop rattletrap honk-happy local buses and explore hidden corners of Guangxi, leading me to the gorgeous Detian Waterfalls, between Vietnam and China. From hiking steep, quiet magnificent karst trails with Steve in Wulingyuan last October, to watching the kids play cards at Baoji’s Children’s Center this March, on the last day of MSF involvement, before Baoji was reborn the next day, like the phoenix, as Baoji Xinxing Aid for Street Kids, an independent NGO. Tonight at dinner, my teacher’s boyfriend asked what I regretted about leaving that corporate life behind. My answer: “non, rien, rien, je ne regrette rien.”
Daytripping with Friends from Baoji
Remember the Baoji Children’s Center? MSF ended our management of the project March 31, and it was reborn as Baoji Xinxing Aid for Street Kids, to our knowledge the first domestic NGO serving the needs of street children to be registered and recognized in China. As you can imagine, I’m rather proud of this and of my role in encouraging and supporting the staff to push for this outcome to MSF’s exit from the project.
Managing Xinxing now are our former national staff colleagues, advised by the former FieldCo for MSF, who’s chosen to stay on for some time to help the new NGO get up and running, establish a stable funding stream, and hopefully find ways to make this model viable for other regions of China, by reducing costs while maintaining appropriate quality and so on – essentially making it a development project, away from its roots in a humanitarian aid organization. In any case: I remain in touch with the center, and last week I hosted a visit from Margaret, the now-consultant. At the same time my Baoji friend Davey – who showed me around Xi’an last December – took up my invitation to visit Beijing. He’s just graduated from technical school in Xi’an, and is spending the summer volunteering at the center before continuing his studies in a related field in Xi’an.
I used their visit as an excuse for an overnight excursion, which ended with the Qing tombs you’ve been seeing, but which began with a bus ride to Jixian, the nearest town to the tombs (50km) and an overnight in a lovely courtyard building there. Here we are enjoying our bus ride and a beery dinner after the late bus arrival in Jixian.
It often seems every fifth hill in China is a sacred mountain or tourist destination in some sense. After the bus ride and the late night of food and beer, we were up at 6 to begin our 4WD assault on the bumpy roads of Panshan. This is an overpriced tourist trap, compared to any other mountain or temple I’ve been to in China. I don’t recommend it – there are far nicer places, even within Beijing proper, that cost less and are way easier to reach. This may be why it appears in none of my many tourist books: but I gotta admit, I did get a kick out of FINALLY getting off the foreign tourist routes, 16 months after I arrived here. Let me stress: the foreign tourist route: as we descended, the stream of 4WDs bumping their way up the rutted and muddy track was quite astounding, given the frankly mediocre quality of the attractions on offer. Still and all, the surrounding mountains made a lovely backdrop and we enjoyed the views and the air.
Though we had to argue more than I’d have liked about prices, it was still great to get out of town, to a little town surrounded green mountains and relatively clean air. Here are a few more images from Jixian.
Shanhaiguan: Eastern Terminus of the Wall
The Great Wall of China runs from the Yellow Sea at Shanhaiguan (two+ hours northeast of Beijing by train) inland and west to Jiayuguan in Gansu, at the edge of the Tarim Basin and the deserts of Central Asia, 2700 kilometers away. I’ve previously shown plenty of views of unrestored sections of the Wall in the hills around Beijing, but so far I’ve never been to any of the highly-touristed and rightly famous restored sections, such as Badaling, Jinshanling or Mutianyu. No doubt at some point I’ll go to these when someone visits me (Mom, are you ever really going to come?) – but for now I’ve enjoyed hiking on the unrestored and more remote sections of the Wall.
In June, though, my friend Catherine asked me to join her and some classmates on a weekend excursion to Shanhaiguan and Beidaihe, the beach resort 30 km or so south of Shanhaiguan. I couldn’t say no to such an offer, and we had a wonderful weekend – despite rain in Beidaihe.
Shanhaiguan is also known as “the first pass under heaven,” meaning the first place where people can pass the wall, working inland from the ocean. In fact, for quite a long stretch, it’s the only place where the wall passes through flatland, in the several kilometers in from the ocean. This, of course, was the point – to protect the fertile and productive Han Chinese heartland from the nomadic tribes that from earliest history had occasionally raided Chinese communities and headed off with livestock and other valuables.
And it was at Shanhaiguan, in 1644, that the Qing Manchu leader Dorgon, who had already consolidated his control over the northeastern areas outside the Great Wall and imposed vassal status on the Korean peninsula, led his armies through the Great Wall and into the Han heartland. From there it was a short march to Beijing, where the last Ming emperor had already hanged himself – an inglorious death for the man supposed to be the son of heaven. I hope you enjoy these shots. With any luck, my next weeklong R&R will be out to Kashgar in far western Xinjiang – on the western edge of the Takla Makan: so perhaps a post in the near future will contain some shots of that region!
Laolongtou: The Wall Meets the Sea
The section right next to the sea is called Laolongtou, or old dragon’s head. Don’t ask me why. The Chinese love to say that various geologic formations look like various animals. I almost never see it. But it’s certainly lovely, and an interesting feeling to think that you’re at the end of a wall that stretched uninterrupted and well-guarded, at various points in history, right up to the edge of the Takla Makan desert.
We were interested to note lots of Russian being spoken here. Seems this area is a popular warmer-water resort area for people from the Russian far east – Vladivostok in particular, I guess. Indeed, the water was quite nice when we did some rock-skipping and wading! 🙂
The Great Wall at Shanhaiguan
Between the ocean and the hills lies a flat coastal plain that’s perhaps 10 kilometers wide. At the end of the plain, the wall again climbs steeply into the hills that separate the north China plain from inner Mongolia, and Manchuria. These shots are various views of the first stretch of Wall climbing into the hills. As you can see, it’s pretty darn steep!
Paul and Catherine at the Wall
Here are two shots of me at the section of the wall on the inland side of Shanhaiguan town, where it climbs the first set of mountains in from the sea. In the first, I’ve got the wall running downhill toward the plain by the ocean; in the second, I’ve got the wall climbing uphill and inland behind me. Then there’s a shot of Catherine coming out of the ladder used to climb the high tower. It’s same high tower you see behind me in the second shot. Quite the aerobic workout, to climb this – or just about any – section of the wall! And not necessarily for those who don’t love heights!
Quiet Corners of Shanhaiguan Old Town
Exploring the lanes and alleys of old town Shanhaiguan – where I can easily imagine becoming very lost, though it’s not really all that big a town – revealed many lovely courtyard buildings with gardens, bougainvillea and other flowers overhanging gateways and walls, and other lovely sights.
(so much world, so little time....) 