The Senator and the Queen

Life Imitates Art

little joys

since i was young i have heard about "the joys of teaching." lately i hadn't thought of that much, as i have been letting myself get bogged down by grading papers, teaching grammar, and formulating my first midterm. i also have to make corrections on each student's diary, which they write in two or three times a week.

this entry, written by a student whose English name is Nikki, reminded me of a lot of things. i've decided to leave it the way she wrote it, except where i think it's absolutely necessary:

"Miss

'The miss taste like a bitter coffee.' I can't sing any song but I can remembe this song. Because It likes [is like] my heart.
Today is a sunny day. But my heart is raining day. I left my grandmother and my relatives there is a miss in my heart. I want to fly into my home. But I can't what can I do? Please tall me what can I do? I hate times keep my grandmother and I part [apart]. I want to go back to when I was chiled [a child] I can't either.
I don't want to be the daytime and the night. When the time finish They need to leave. They can't alway daytime or night. [It can't always be daytime or nighttime.] I like the sky. it alway in there. everybady can see it. when I see the sky, maybe my grandmother see the sky too. Maybe I can convey my heart to its. Let it takes to them for my grandmother. If that [is so, then] I will be the sky look after my grandmother and my relatives of corse also my teacher classmate, friend and everything.
Next lifetime I will be a in frot of my home's tree, because after the tree grow a place then alway can't another place. [In my next lifetime, I will be a tree in front of my home, because after the tree grows in a place then it can't grow in another place.] So I will never leave my family."

i will finish the story of my holiday soon. suffice it to say i miss all of you; my old friends, flames, pals, and families.

yours,

[Aside]

[My internet service provider no longer seems willing or able to connect me to blogspot.com. Apparently, the powers that be have discovered some of the reactionary and/or rightist propaganda I view and contribute on online journals such as Cenlamar, WeSawThat, KilgoreSmith, CenlaAntics and MediaGangBang.

Fortunately, accessing blogger.com is no trouble at all, so I do not foresee any difficulty in continuing to update this website. On the other hand, proxify.com is not blocked, so I will continue to read these blogs as I see fit. However, until I find an IP cloaker that will allow me to post content in addition to reading it, I won't be able to contribute to the online discussions.

Thanks Proxify! And Fkuc Yuo hCenise voGrennemt!]



UPDATE: I have found that NinjaIP runs cleanly and allows webposting. I'm back.

Day Three: Part Two

The townspeople of Yuke are in the process of building a bridge over the small river. Currently, all traffic from the small mountain must endure a short makeshift crossing of planks and logs, barely wide enough for the motorcycle. I had to dismount as Dorje spun it across the earthen banks and flimsy boards. Entering Yuke, however, was worth the small inconvenience. "The word for this kind of place," I explained to Dorje, "is 'Fronteir.'" In addition to the bridge project, workers were "resurfacing" the main drag in town. Large craggly stones were assembled in the floor of the road, and then covered by gravel and an upper layer of dirt. A curious pounding machine flattened the new, concrete-less road.

From the outside Yuke looks rather small, a neat conglomeration of wooden homes and a single Chinese style structure (replete with the Red Flag), the local primary school. As we rode across the unfinished road through town, numerous Tibetan pedestrians and monks waved greetings to us. I imagine that few foreigners make their way down that road from Daofu, despite its stunning natural beauty, and in spite of the stares I enjoyed the relatively warm reception. We immediately headed to the school, where Dorje's sister works as a Chinese teacher. She unlocked the gate for us, and we went inside to rest and eat.

We were starving. It was past one o'clock, so everyone had eaten and the students and most teachers were in class. Dorje's sister helped us to their left-overs, and we also brought some food out of the rough sack that we had strapped to the back of the hog. One of the plastic bags containing cold spicy noodles had broken. It was no matter to Dorje and the rest; they scooped it together onto a plate and served it as if nothing had happened. I, on the other hand, attempted to stick mainly to the relatively fresh food left from lunch.

The room had a wood stove, similar to the one in Dorje's home. Yuke sits at around four thousand kilometers, and was significantly colder than Daofu. I kept my new hat on as we drank tea and relaxed from the journey, warming ourselves by the fire. After a while we decided to walk explore the small town. When the children saw us, they crowded and pressed around me, saying simple non sequiturs like "Good Evening!" and "Good Morning!," and trying to hold my hand or kick me in the butt. Most of them had ruddy cheeks from numerous winters, and nostrils permanently crusted with snot. Down to the first grade the students lived at the school away from their mostly nomadic families. We finally dislodged them all and made our way through town.

There aren't many things in Yuke other than the unique mountian homes and the beautiful mountains. It certainly was enough. After walking a short ways we found ourselves in the back of town at the monastery, a towering single-roomed square building of stone that faces away from the rest of the community. Around the courtyard there were men stripping large logs and preparing them for lumber. Later I learned that they would be building simple living quarters for the monks of the six year old gompa. We went inside, prostrated three times, and seated ourselves in the back among the little children and the old ladies that had brought them at the back of the colorful room.

The group had come to listen to the monks chant and play their horns and drums. The group sat in six rows, three facing three with the large drum in the center. In one of the middle rows, a beautiful adolescent boy with long straight hair and a golden jacket sat among the other monk. Some of the older monks dozed toward the back. Dorje explained that the boy with long hair was probably a Rinpoche, a "Precious Jewel," a thulku or reincarnated high lama from the past. He also explained to me that I had been prostrating incorrectly. Since first learning to sit still at the Zen Club at Rice University, I have pressed my palms flatly together with my left thumb sitting over the right thumb. Dorje explained that I should leave an empty space between my palms, and not allow any fingers to cross the others.

Soon a monk came over to us, and offered to show us around the monastery. I was a bit embarrassed as we had already been attracting (distracting?) a lot of attention from the monks. The man was Hannah's uncle, and Dorje and I recognized him from the thukpa shop in Daofu that her cousin owns. We agreed to the tour, and he began by showing bringing us to the rear of the hall. There was a large statue of Padmasambhava, the Guru Rinpoche, in a rear section of the hall that was surrounded by workers painting thanka on the walls around the icon. Dorje informed me that it had been "made of" a deceased lama, which disturbed me somewhat until I realized that he meant to say that it was "made by" (the financial offerings of) a previous lama. In fact, the new monastery and the housing project is underwritten by some wealthy lamas and practitioners that have taken the Yuke community under their care.

He next showed us the thanka, or paintings, that surrounded the perimeter of the hall. Each colorfully and stylistically depict a Buddha, Rinpoche, deity, or Dharma protector important to their lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. Soon we came across Chenrezig, an immanation of Avolakiteshvara, the Guardian of Compassion. Some suggest the he takes the female form of GuanYin in Chinese Buddhism, and Kannon in Japan. When Michael and I visited Lama Wangdu with Ian McCormick in Kathmandu, He gave us each a colored metal medallion to wear around our necks. I was blessed with one of Chenrezig. Michael told me that the Lama had said it was because I have a "white heart." Chenrezig has four arms, two of which are holding a mediation mudra (hand gesture) and two of which are pressed together at his sternum. His hands are slightly parted, as if he is holding something very special...

Soon we returned to the school after circumambulating the gompa a few times. We ate dinner with Dorje's sister and one of her friends. The conversation drifted between Mandarin and the dialect of Daofu, with a bit of English here and there. Although the girls were not English teachers, English is a requirement on all teaching and government examinations in China. After a while a young man named Gonga Sonam joined us. He was a recent graduate of the Bridge Fund program, and had just begun at the school as a Tibetan teacher. He was only twenty, deciding not to take the exams to go to University. He was a little concerned with his school placement; when requesting to teach in Daofu county, he had not expected to be placed so far into the countryside. He said if he was a judge's son, he could easily get moved, but since he didn't know anyone there was a chance he'd be teaching in Daofu for the next three of four decades. The eligible batchelorettes in Yuke are few and far between.

Dorje and I took a bit of time to watch the children as they ate their dinner. Each child gets noodles for dinner, enhanced with a bit of cooked cabbage floating around the soup. Although it is a simple meal, they are welcome to as many helpings as they like. Dorje said that for lunch they get some vegetables, although he wasn't certain. Meat is expensive. Dorje felt that watching the poor students was good for us both: "It really makes my heart open." He asked me about certain words in English, begging me translate terms like "depressed economy," "development," and "resources."

I took the opportunity to dispel a myth that I hear constantly as I travel in China, that all people in America are rich. I explained to him that although even dishwashers make at least $800 a month, which is quite a good salary in China [a little more than what I'm making as a foreign instructor, incidentally], it is rarely enough to live on in America. I explained to him that rent, health and automotive insurance, gasoline, a car note, energy bills, and basic living expenses generally add up to over $800 per month; even for a person living on their own, making a living on the minimum wage is extremely difficult. We also went into credit card debt a bit. People in developing countries tend to focus on the higher wages that people in developed countries earn for even the most menial tasks. They often forget the fact that an inflated economy means that everything costs a lot more, too.

Soon the sun set and it became dark, much darker than I expected, actually. A light drizzle moistened the deep night. Yuke does not have a central power grid. Sometimes they stoke up the generator at the school, but not this evening, apparently. Gonga returned with a few beers for the two of us, and Pepsis for the girls and Dorje. Students in the Bridge Fund are not allowed to drink booze. I've been drinking a lot less myself. Beside the stove, the five of us chatted by candlelight about numerous useless topics as ate sunflower seeds and some god-awful hard-candy.

I stopped after one beer, as I was concerned about a relapse of my morning headache, which by now I was ready to attribute to the altitude. Gonga offered to let me sleep in the extra bed in his room, which he shared with two other teachers. As I got into bed, Gonga threw an extra blanket on top of me and Dorje actually tucked me in, on all sides. They acted very concerned that I would be too cold during the night. I assured them that I had fared much worse in my old sleeping bag and thin ground pad in the mountains of Colorado and New Mexico. I pulled my hat on tight. Gonga told me that if I needed to pee during the night, just to step outside and go in the grass. I certainly had no problem with that. It was not yet midnight, but I fell asleep quickly, and did not need to get up until breakfast.

Day Three: Part One

I awoke to a low sun filtered through thin white curtains. The day promised warmth, a welcome change from the drizzly chill of the previous afternoon. I washed, stretched a bit, and sat cross-legged on the couchbed for about ten minutes. I stared blankly at the opposite wall, trying to ignore the patterns of gold paint traced amid patches of pink and green and blue that make up the majority of the designs around the walls of the home. I finished packing away the sweaters and hats we had horded for the upcoming journey, and readied myself for breakfast.

I had a dull headache as I ate the endless stream of boiled eggs presented to me. It was an annoying throb, unusual because I hadn't had anything to drink since Kangding three nights before. I drank extra bowls of water, and after Dorje finished his tsampa I grabbed the bag and we headed to the back of the house to check out the motorcycle he had borrowed. He informed me that he used to drive bikes very recklessly in the days of his rebellious youth. About two years ago, at the age of sixteen, he realized the emotional trouble he was causing his parents and decided to "change his heart." Now he is one of the top students in my class, and a conscientious Buddhist.

The bike was red, and had a colored Tibetan snow lion etched below the seat on the back panel. It reminded me of Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace's freewheeling hog from the film The Rockers. He kicked the foot starter, and the engine whined but refused to turn over. After a few more tries, Dorje asked me to push the bike as he tried the ignition. Soon the right throttle handle came completely loose. Dorje was not pleased, and decisively unscrewed the steel nuts that held in place the thin cable that runs from the chassis to the throttle. The wire slipped easily out of the handle, clearly frayed at its end. By twisting the skinny steel cable around his fingers, he was able to get it to start as I, pack on my back, pushed the motorcycle all the way down the rocky driveway and into the thin highway. He gassed it up the road a bit, and spun around to pick me up. As I mounted the hog, I could see that the wire was already causing his fingers to turn bright red.

We rode the five clicks to Daofu with high spirits after our potentially abortive obstacle. This was the second time in five days that I had been on the back of a motorcycle, out of perhaps five times in my entire life. It was far more pleasant than whipping through Chengdu, and certainly beat the hell out of drunkenly crossing Houston on the back of a rice rocket. In a cabin in the Himalayan foothills of India Michael had recounted a story about his trip from New Orleans to D.C. in a busted jeep. He moralized his story by saying, "if it seems that everything is trying to keep you from doing something, then perhaps you shouldn't do it." My headache was growing more persistant, but my spirits had risen considerably.

As Dorje had the bike repaired in a roadside shop in Daofu, I ducked into a local drug store and purchase some headache medicine. After resisting the shopkeepers attempts at selling me some extra cold medicine, I took a few of the pills with a cup of hot water and rejoined Dorje by the bike. He was having it serviced fully for the trip. I watched the motor oil pool on the sidewalk as a couple of young Tibetan men were having a tape deck installed on their roadhog. Their motorcycle was decked out with colored carpet on the seat and streamers on the handlebars. Dorje bought some white gloves, the same as the technicians were using to repair the bikes. We mounted, crossed town for some petrol, and turned on a paved road rising steeply from the town's main road. Soon it became a rocky dirt road.

As we snaked up the hill, I asked him if the road would be so bad the entire way to Yuke, the nomad community to which we were headed. He said no, and I remarked that it must be a shortcut. He said he understood, which was clearly not the case as the road would only get less smooth from then on. I thought it was a good time to explain to Dorje the English language concept of the open road. Freedom, Captain America riding his chopper across an unencumbered New Mexico, limitless possibility, the Zen of a moment. Soon we were eye level with the hillside mantras. I began to see the way in which Daofu sits within an accommodating valley, as the rest of the countryside rolls and slopes through grassland and forest on average a good thousand feet above the river below. It was breathtaking. Stunning prehistoric mountains started to peer from above the more gentle and still autumn grasslands. My headache was gone, and we made numerous stops to pee and to bundle up as the wind and air grew more frigid. I could see snow above the pines. We curved numerous times around progressively more threatening bends. I got my first look at the range that contained our pass to Yuke, a snowy razor edge of grey stone and patchy snow. The bike glided up the last few hundred meters and slipped through the aperture that separated this side from that.

The top of the pass sits at well over four thousand meters, and is marked with a couple of shrines to mountain deities. The vertical flags make a colorful contrast to the brown and grey, white and deep green that is evident at every angle. I forced Dorje to stop for a couple of pictures. By now my bag was empty as we had layered every sweater and jacket that we had brought. I was wearing two hats, and it was more than worth it. On the opposite side of the pass from which we had ascended, there was a thousand-plus foot drop into a pristine valley, alpine yet fertile, walled on the other side by an even higher strip of mountains and passes. Delta-like threads of blue-white snowmelt cut down it's face, the lifeblood of the plain below. A few black yak-fur tents dotted its grassy floor. We got back on the bike and rolled down the frozen path.

It took no time for the sub-tundra plain to fade into nomad plains, and soon we dipped below tree line. Vast triangular configurations of prayer flags melted with pines in both directions of the valley. Soon squatty horses and shaggy yaks could be seen grazing in fields beside the road. Crude fences appeared, and homesteads of frontier cabins and black tents established themselves in the ever more lush valley.

Dorje steered the bike off the road at one settlement to check out the tent, and although a hat was hung on a peg outside and smoke poured from the slit of a door, no one was to be seen. My legs had stiffened completely. Soon we passed through a real community, and within another ten clicks we had arrived at our destination, the small mountain town of Yuke. From the back of the motorcycle I felt very free and very fortunate.

It was the culmination of two months of blemish-free karma. I vowed not to forget the feeling once the karmic pendulum began its decent.

For the first time in a couple of years, I really felt there. Everything was totally with it, and my thoughts were with you through it all. I tried to enjoy it all for its own sake, for my sake alone. I couldn't help but anticipate recanting the tale, threatened by my own motivations of vanity. It is my pride and my ego, but it also the only gift I have for you now. This is my love.

Day Two

By the time I eased off the couch every member of Dorje's family had finished their prostrations in the adjoining shrine room. As I washed my face and teeth, hands and feet on the upper patio, which opens down the length of the long pastoral valley, I really noticed it's simple and meditative quality. I wondered if when growing up Dorje had ever gotten tired or failed to notice the gentle ochre hills backdropped by more impressive stoic snowcaps, or the practical grace of the wheat plots set against the idle river. I knew that in a weeks time I would not. I climbed to the roof to get a better view, and I allowed my thoughts to mingle with the morning incense smoke rising from his home, and ever other house, stupa, and mountain deity shrine I could see.

We breakfasted on tsampa, a staple of ground roasted barley mixed with the low-quality nomad brick tea to make a very palatable ball of dough. They offered me butter, dried cheese, and sugar for flavor, and insisted I eat more boiled eggs and drink more fresh unpasteurized milk than my weak and shrunken stomach could handle. They were very insistent, as they would be the entire week, and also very successful at making me rather bloated by the end of each mealtime. By the end of the meal my pants were covered in a fine barley powder from my amateurish attemps at molding my breakfast ball of dough.

Not long after breakfast word came upstairs that Dorje's robed uncle had invited a number of Chinese tourists from Chongqing to tour the home. I stood at the top of the steep stairs and listened to their clean hiking boots stamp out their ascent. Upon reaching the second floor they greeted me with a hearty "Tashi Deleg!" before realizing I did not look as Tibetan as the rest of the family. Everyone was introduced, and I enjoyed bantering with a couple of them as they toured the family home and the shrine room. One of the tourists pointed to the upstairs outhouse door and asked if it was a staircase. They seemed very happy to give their respects to The Venerable One, who's face peers from multiple directions in the elaborate wooden house. They gave gifts of terrible tasteless Chinese candy, and I was given a pack of cigarettes, a special Chongqing brand. I explained that I don't smoke, but they wouldn't take them back. "For bribing taxi drivers not to cheat me," I concluded to myself.

Soon the tourists moved on, giving Dorje's mother a ride so she wouldn't have make the hourlong walk to town. Dorje explained to me that his parents worked very hard and do not like to waste money. He hopes to learn English and make money abroad, so that they will not have to continue their manual, agricultural tasks into their old age. The hardships of half a century are already visible on his mother's dark wrinkled face, and his father's broad body and curled hands. As we waited for a cab to town, we turned a large prayer wheel suspended in a nearby earthen shack.

We met Hannah, my other student, in her cousin's noodle shop, and immediately set out for the monastery. We peered into each shrine room, and I was surprised and how many statues and images we continued to find. Many of the carvings made from colored yak butter had begun to melt with last summer's heat. I made a few donations here and there, and Dorje showed me the rooms set aside as "bedrooms" for the previous Panchen lama and the current Big Lama. I especially enjoyed His Picture set in a spiral of shiny plastic, making it appear as the focal point of some crazed hypnotist's device.

As we did one large korwa, a circumambulation, I snapped photos of the view of the city and the outside of the monastery. I prefer not to take pictures inside temples, though I'm not exactly sure why. I really love looking at the detailed thanka paintings, my favorites being the ones painted on black backgrounds with colorful subjects like burning skulls and vajrayoginis and protector dieties. I just feel a little strange snapping their photos. I also felt immediately ashamed when I clandestinely took the picture of a monk, about my age and wearing a brazil soccer jersey beneath his maroon robe, as he walked up a path between the low, mud buildings of the monastery. The complex is a rather beautiful combination of a simple monastic style and the specialized wooden structures of the Daofu area homes. I have heard them described as giant Tibetan chocolate cakes covered in white icing, but I don't really think that does them justice.

After lunching on the thick Tibetan noodles at the restaurant, we grabbed a cheap taxi across town to see the large Daofu stupa. It reminded me quite a bit of the one in Boudha, Kathmandu, at which Mike and I spent many an afternoon in ambling korwa. You could actully go inside of this one, climbing a series of narrow wooden ladders to get to each of the smaller, cocentric levels. From the inside, one can see the small buddhas placed in each small, glassy archer's window. At the top of the stupa we took the customary photographs in front of the Buddha Eyes and the mantra arranged on the hillside. Dorje and Hannah pointed out to me which local mountains were worthy of "mountain gods," hold-over deities from the pre-Buddhist religion called Bon that were recruited by Guru Rinpoche Padmasambhava to protect the Dharma.

During the afternoon Dorje informed me that he had been asking around to borrow a motorcycle for us to ride up over one of the mountains to a local nomad community. His sister is an English teacher in a very small town called Yuke, and that afternoon I purchased a maroon stocking cap for $0.75 in anticipation of the ride. After saying goodbye to Hannah, we took a cab to an orphan school about halfway back to his house. The school was established by a network of do-gooders from Germany, and there was very tall and very friendly Swiss English teacher, near my age, on a two or three month stint in Daofu. The students were typically over-fond, and one of them with the English name Sunshine asked me if I knew Karma Sonam, one of the students in my program and a classmate of Dorje's. Karma is one of my favorite students, and his cousins Tashi Nema (Lucky Sun) and Tashi Dawa (Lucky Moon) offered to show me around. After seeing the thanka and weaving classrooms, Dorje and I set out to his home accompanied by four or five of the local schoolchildren.

We ate momos backed on the wood-fire and more thukpa soup, and put all of the warm clothes we would need in my backpack for the trip the following morning. I had no idea what to expect.

Day One

I set out for Kangding at about 6:00 Sunday evening. The road from Guza to Kangding winds for about half an hour through the green rocky river valley. I bantered a bit in rough Sichuanese with my taxi driver, asked him to drop me at the bus station so I could purchase tickets for Daofu for the following morning, and paid him the flat rate of ten yuan. Tenzin, another Bridge Fund instructor, had invited me to have dinner with him at his apartment, a flurry of vegetable dumplings being prepared by a giggling gaggle of six Tibetan teenagers. Tenzin is white, and technically an American (at least his passport says so). The son of a Tibetan-English translator of no little repute, Glenn H. Mullin, Tenzin was born in Northern India and spent his childhood between India, America, Nepal, and New Zealand. And his name really is Tenzin. I've seen his Georgia driver's license. He has taught for the Bridge Fund for five years now, and he's really become one of my closest friends and professional mentors. As such, we went out for beers after the girls cleaned up and left.

Tenzin and I tried a restaurant turned bar turned karioke club that his friend manages. Between the loud music and drunk highschoolers we decided to split, for a less crowded less popular thirtysomethings upstairs bar. We typically get invited to drink with Tibetans or Chinese people immediately upon sitting down, as we are generally the only foreigners around and we are a rather lonely looking pair. We attempted conversation with a Tibetan man from Danba, but his Kham Tibetan was different from Tenzin's, and his Chinese was different than mine. Traveling to Daofu would be the same: From standard Chinese, the Sichuan dialect is once removed, and from standard Tibetan, the Kham dialect is once removed. For places like Daofu and Danba, their local languages (from being relatively isolated half a century ago) a again removed from the local dialects.

Soon some Kangding drinking pals of Tenzin's called him and they showed up almost immediately. I asked a girl that was with them what she was drinking, and one of the men promptly informed me that she was his girlfriend. Insecure punk. Tenzin's friends are very goofy, but good natured and friendly. One of them showed me a picture in his cellphone of the former political leader of Tibet, the main man himself (currently kicking it in the green beauty of the Indian lower Himalayas). Tenzin jovially informed me that he is a traffic cop in Kangding. I guess official political loyalties don't run so deep.

I pestered Tenzin to go home and let us pass out at about midnight, as my bus was leaving at 6:00 the following (Monday) morning. I got up slightly before 5:30 and went looking for a cab. It was dark and there were no cars at the gate of Kangding Zhongxue (Middle School, i.e. High School), where Tenzin lives and teaches. I walked up the road to a few parked taxis next to men loading a work truck, and when I inquired as to the drivers the men told me they were sleeping. No surprise there. I began to become concerned that I'd miss the bus, and jogged up the road with my modest pack. After a while I saw a taxi approaching, followed it to its fare's destination, and directed him to the bus station.

Cars in China generally drive very quickly and recklessly. In my hurry I had probably located the only slow taxi driver in Sichuan. We ambled through the back mountain roads until he finally deposited me at the bus station. I hurried past the luggage scanner and onto the bus platform, searching vainly for about ten minutes. I could not find my bus, and it was already past 6:00. I began to feel some anxiety. I asked some passengers milling about at an empty bus stand, and they remarked casually that it had not come yet. Monday was perhaps the busiest travel day of the holiday, and most of the buses that leave Kangding depart for destinations only once daily, at 6:00 am. I walked out of the traffic entrance to the bus yard and found my bus among a long line of empty vehicles waiting to even get into the station.

I asked the driver if I could put my bag in the trunk. It was the only piece of luggage there. When I climbed on I notice five foreigners struggling to stack their overburdened packs in the aisle and on the seats beside them. They had, likely not by coincidence, been assigned the back row of five seats, slightly elevated. These seats are a blessing in an empty overnight bus on a smooth highway, as one can spread out and catch some sleep. They are notorious, however, or bumpy roads, as the back of the bus tends to amplify the vertical jerks of the potholes. I informed them that I had put my bags in the trunk, and they said that the driver hadn't let them. I asked the driver about it in Chinese, and I barely made out from his dialect that it was because they were not going all the way to Daofu, but rather stopping off at Tagong, a popular grassland community with an impressive, millennia-old monastery.

I didn't feel like sticking around to argue as I really needed "to see a man about a dog." I found the public squatter, and wasn't able to take my time as I like, still slightly anxious about the bus departure. I returned with plenty of time, and I attempted to get some sleep as the bus rolled out, well behind schedule. Soon, the foreigners engaged me in conversation. They were Polish, which I had secretly guessed but didn't want to ask because they could have been Russian or Check or Croatian and probably would have resented being called Poles. They were nice, after all, and dealt with their crappy seat and luggage situation in stride by calling the driver crazy in English, and one of the girls was astonished that I could read Mullin senior's book in spite of the bumpy ride. I was feeling a bit ragged, from my previous encounter in the squatter and my lack of water after drinking the night before and from skipping breakfast, which I hate.

The houses began to appear more squarish with facades bordered by wood, as opposed to the bathroom tiled external walls of modern Chinese architecture. I saw a few horses with colored yarn braided into their manes and tails, and embroidered rugs with pictures of dragons or snow lions serving as saddles. But as we entered the valley down the road that leads to Tagong I saw the first really beautiful picturesque views that trip, as magnificent as anything I've seen since Colorado and New Mexico and maybe flying over the Himalayas in September (views from planes are magnificent, but a little too alien for inspiration). The hills were green and amber, not as imposing as near Guza, and the sun shone along a clear stream (like really! Clear water does exist in China!) littered with large stones that led to the open grasslands of Tagong. In the distance I could some snowcaps, dark mountains with shining snowy crowns distant and formidable against the rolling meadows and ridges of lower Kham. I decided rather deliberately that my hunger and discomfort would not distract me from the beauty, and henceforth they did not.

The Poles hopped off at Tagong, the bus barely slowing down enough for them to lug their packs into a white and yellow ocean of tourists and a brown gulf of locals. Later I lunched on potatoes and pork, and fell asleep on the last leg of the trip as a couple of rough Tibetan herdsmen sat next to me smelling like strong butter. As I awoke the scenery was as impressive, but with more New England looking trees and low homesteads with haystacks, firewood stacks, and low stone walls capped by transplanted sod. I noticed a few mantras pieced on the distant hillsides, om mani padme hum and others that I didn't recognize. I knew I was close because I had seen them in pictures of Daofu in the past. The mantras as contructed with white stones, in much the same way that college towns put giant "M"s on the hillsides for Michigan State and the Colorado School of Mines, or how evangelical Christians in Central Louisiana fashion giant crosses near the highway in Louisiana.

I heard "Hello Teacher!" before I could see my two students outside of the bus, waiting for me. They were at the station, waiting for a while as the bus was rather behind schedule. I asked the driver to pop the trunk, and it swung open with a cloud of dust like a forgotten treasure chest in some deserted jungle. My bag, normally a stylishly rugged forest green and black affair, was completely tan from the fine dirt that had kicked up from the pocked road. I smiled a thank you at the driver, knocked off an insignificant slew of the dirt, and slung my belongings onto my back, which left two tan racing stripes against the stone grey of my suit coat.

My student Hannah (Namei Deji) has a cousin that owns a noodle shop across from the bus station in Daofu, and we relaxed there as a few Tibetans watched popular Tibetan singers belt out tunes from a VCD. I snacked on some thukpa noodles with bits of meat. Soon, I noticed a man on the VCD that I recognized, His Imminence Adzom Rinpoche himself. I realized that they were watching a copy of the very same VCD that had been given to me free of donation by Lisa and Drako in Chengdu two days before. The beef stuck in my teeth as I watched images of the Rinpoche alternate with pictures of cows getting their throats cut and snakes being skinned alive. Denouement: conscientious Buddhist purchased the animals from the market and set the luckless beasts free.

After a while Joseph (Dorje) and I made our way to his home. The houses in Daofu are very famous, and his parent's home is a classic example. It is set an an extremely pastoral "village" (a collection of seven to ten homes spread out among the farmland about five kilometers from home). His father inherited a plot for growing wheat and potatoes from Dorje's grandfather, in addition to a modest orchard of green and red apples. As we approached, his previous English teacher Catherine's dog Jake became very excited. Being raised by a New Zealander, he was ecstatic to see a white man. I met Dorje's parents, a regular Tibetan Gothic scene with floppy straw hats and classic dusty rural fashion. I was welcomed inside to meet the rest of the family. Dorje's grandmother is eighty-five and her principle interest is turning prayer wheels. She seems with it enough, at least when she responds the tough Daofu dialect shouts of the family members.

Dorje's uncle is a monk at the monastery in Daofu, and he was able to return to the house to celebrate the holiday with the family. He is the younger brother of Dorje's father, and spent the majority of his time plucking beard hairs with a metal clamp, spinning the prayer wheel, mumbling mantras and attending to the family shrine room. Dorje's older sister is a nun as well, and she was at home recovering from an operation. Her face is a beacon of light, her small eyebrows standing apart from the strong muscles of her forehead, in constant motion from her tireless propensity towards laughing and smiling. She spent a great deal of time singing in the shrine room, reading Tibetan books or preparing food wearing her robes over white and pink long johns beneath a tan corduroy jacket that would have made a great Goodwill find.

The house is large, with the downstairs dedicated to the animals, and washing and storage areas. The one staircase upstairs is very steep in the classic Daofu style. Everything is wooden and painted in beautiful Tibetan thanka style, and the ceilings are blue with bright red rafters. Snow lions and dragons peek from behind wall columns. The main hall/foyer of the house leads in to a number of rooms. Dorje and I stayed in the TV room, which connected the house to the shrine room. There are other sleeping rooms, but the center of family life concentrates in the kitchen (naturally). The roof of the kitchen is covered in plastic sheeting to protect the wood from smoke stains. Near the center of the room is a classic wood burning stove, where all of the cooking is performed. It is also the only source of heating in the home. Because of the high ceilings, Dorje's father told me it gets a little chilly in the winter. The toilet, a medieval side room with an open hole to the first floor and an archer's window to match, is across a second floor outside patio. In the corner of the patio is an altar for burning incense. There is also a metal ladder to the roof, which has vertical prayer flags on poles.

To the side of the foyer is a group of photos of the Great Spiritual and Political Leader that Dares not Speak His Name. I was a bit surprised to see his amiable, paternal face peering from behind his bespectacled old eyes. In America, there are many misconceptions about the stringency in which certain Chinese policies are enforced. Moreover, I spent my time in western Sichuan, which does not suffer from many of the prejudices of the Tibetan Autonomous Region and Lhasa. Also, the night before in Kangding, there was the aforementioned episode with Tenzin's traffic cop buddy.

That evening we dined on thukpa and they force fed me meat momos. I also drank milk tea, which I rather prefer to butter tea. We watched a little TV, aided by the family satellite dish. There were more channels in Arabic than English. I read a bit of Mullin's Gem's of Wisdom, snuggled into the colorful Tibetan style couchbed. Dorje turned off the television, prostrated three times on his couchbed, took off his clothes and killed the lights.

Pre-Trip

The holiday to celebrate the establishment of the Chinese People's Republic officially began on Sunday, October 1, 2006. It would be my last extended period off of work until January, which seems like a long time for someone who enjoys taking semi-permanent sabbaticals of unemployment. Thursday classes were to be repeated on Saturday, and Friday classes were to be repeated the following Sunday. Fortunately, my schedule has a hole on Friday, and I moved my typical Saturday morning class to Thursday afternoon, citing "important" weekend business in Chengdu (important for me to get the hell out of dodge). Upon providing my itinerary to the Tibetan Department Head (an amiable Tibetan man named Maibo, who informed me in Chinese that it was a formality for the government and that he didn't really care I went), I skirted out of Guza Friday morning and headed west for the five and a half hour busride to Sichuan's provincial capital, Chengdu.

Catching buses on the road of the nearby intersection town Wasigou is relatively painless, and the one I flagged was complete with reclining seats, buckets for sunflower seed husks, and a VCD TV system (Video Compact Disk, a runup to the DVD that is highly popular in Asia). The airing of Jackie Chan's Legend of the Drunken Master was truly an auspicious sign for the vacation. The first few hours of the trip provide the kind of impressive green cliffs and lush gorges that one might envision when thinking of the area of Western China that is the original home to the giant panda. Closer to Chengdu is less interesting, and the air quality diminishes considerably upon entering the Sichuan Freeway. The traffic was terrible, and I was not taken to the New South Bus station (Xin Nanmen) as expected. At one point we sat at the same red light for three cycles, only to discover that the northern bus station was less than a block away.

As I usually do upon finding myself in an unfamiliar place, I impulsively pursued the first option that presented itself. As I exited the bus station onto the busy street, a man wearing a white helmet standing next to a line of motorcycles excitedly approached me, inquiring as to my destination. He quoted me thirty yuan, which seemed excessive, especially considering the free-lancer's propensity to hustle butt-thumbed foreigners. He assured me it wasn't too high, and handed me a white helmet to match his own. As Mike would certainly agree after hogbacking it for a few weeks in Kathmandu, the motorcycle is hands-down the transportation of choice for high-density traffic situations in Asia. I rather enjoyed my reckless sojourn spanning a city that has a population three times that of Houston.

My business at the Bridge Fund Office in Chengdu was little more than signing a couple of contracts and scanning my address in Chinese so that my mother can send me holiday cards across the planet. I also picked up two hefty packages of new dictionaries for my students in Guza. I called my friend Olivia's friend Lisa, who works for Anne Klein's lama Ad.z.m R, but Lisa was busy for the evening and I would have to work out other sleeping arrangements. I went for a dinner of hotpot and beers with Gabzung, my boss (I think). Afterward I briefly met Drako, a coworker of Lisa and a translation master's student at Sichuan Daxue (University). Drako is Gabzung's former student from Hongyuan in northern Sichuan; they are both Tibetan. (The circle of connections of people I have met since leaving New Orleans on August 10th has impressed me, and I'm uncertain if it is the forced result of "networking" or the natural result of karma. It has certainly felt like the latter.) I faked being tipsy for Drako as he disapproves of alcohol for the Dharma-inclined among us. He helped me to Holly's Hostel, an over-popular backpacker's hostel that was completely different than what I remember from three years ago. I got a thirty yuan four-bedder (again, expensive for my tastes) but I only had to share it with a reverent Chinese touriBuddist on his way to Tibet.

I spent Saturday morning in dreamland and returned to the office for lunch. Later, I met Lisa and helped her and Drako purchase and mail a few bundles of zens, or disciple robes. The were for shipment to the United States and Italy, and were two toned in maroon, the color for ordained monks, and white, the color for lay practitioners. Ad.z.m R prefers his disciples to be in the cloth when he makes his American and European tours. The types of robes they wear, as they are not full monks, are akin to what Michael has expressed interest in wearing in the future: the robes of the nakpas (my favorite rough translation of which is "lay Tantric householder priests"). Afterward we spent some time at the impressive penthouse apartment for Ad.z.m R (who stays at his monastery in Chamdo) and her imminence his sister, Jetsunma-la.

Drako left us after the three of us ate thukpa (noodles) and momo (dumplings) at a Tibetan restaurant, and Lisa and I headed to Paul's Tex-Mex, a Western-style (double-meaning) hangout of missionaries and margharitas. Lisa and I share a certain favorite vice, and stopped at her apartment to prepare for the evening. She was having a French guest that evening, so we had to be discrete. We went to another Western-style lounge, Parisian themed, replete with low sofas and red lighting. Lisa ordered a red-bull and vodka that came back as apple juice and vodka. I had white wine and beer, somewhat less prone to bartender error. As we lounged upstairs and I helped her finish her second drink, I discovered a note in a bureau drawer from a month before, in broken Chinglish, expressing the author's prescient fascination at the synchronicity of me looking in that drawer to discover said note. Lisa and I added our own message and returned it duly to its place.

We wandered the blocks around the bar trying to look like we weren't covertly smoking anything, wondering if any of the Chinese squares with teased hair and ripped jeans and punk-mullets would have known what they smelled anyway. At one point I looked up from a long drag to glance at a building sign and read the Chinese word jingcha, the meaning of which registered a moment before looking next to it and seeing the clearly printed English word "POLICE." Naturally, no one was on duty.

Drako and I had purchased bus tickets the evening before for 8:00 Sunday morning, departing from the nearby Kangding Hotel. I ate a favorite Chinese breakfast of mine, fried dough strips and soymilk. I gave a half a yuan to an older monk panhandling next to the bus, and soon we were on the road with basically the rest of Chengdu. Although Chinese people love to hate the Japanese, and express their cultural mutual exclusivity and superiority, the ever growing middle class in China has produced legions of camera toting, hiking boot wearing Asian Tourists. The leg of the journey along the freeway went well enough, but as we got to the single lane road that leads back to Guza and Kangding the traffic began to pile up. We lunched with hundreds of other vacationers at a roadside restaurant. I ate a favorite meal of mine, kuguo chaodan (bitter melon fried with eggs). Drako ate apples, as he is prone to car sickness. I shared a table with some of the only other foreigners around, an adult couple with English accents and a grade-school aged daughter. She asked Daddy if they would ride horses. The scene was sweet enough, but seldom have I been more appreciative of my situation as a young, unattached, and culturally fluent traveler.

The border of Ganzi Prefecture (roughly the area that Western Sichuan shares with eastern Kham) is generally a peaceful, scenic tunnel mouth that overlooks verdant but foreboding mountains. We sat at the tunnel exit for half an hour as cars and buses were individually sent through a stretch of alternating contraflow traffic. Chinese workers sat on the side of the rode with walkie-talkies conducting the vehicles. I watched a woman get out of a car and then put on her pants. We arrived in Wasigou a couple of hours late, struggled with the dictionaries up the river to Guza, and I showered, laundered, and packed for the coming advent of my real vacation.

A General Map of the Tibetan Regions

The town in which I currently reside lies somewhere between Chengdu and Lithang, in the extreme eastern part of Tibet in Sichuan Province. Notice how far the Tibetan cultural region extends beyond the borders of the Tibetan "Autonomous" Region. During much of the somewhat recent history of Tibet, Lhasa exerted only nominal control over the federated snow lands of Tibet. The general area of my vacation adventure lies in the middle of the "m" of "Kham." Kathmandu is near the "A" in "NEPAL," and Mount Everest lies along the border between Nepal and Tibet. This summer I hope to visit Amdo. My lifelong dreams include spending time in Xinjiang, the far northwestern area of China, and traveling the Gansu Corridor, in the top-right corner of this map. Don't miss how cute the little Kingdom of Bhutan looks next to Tibet and India.
(Thank you Wikipedia for allowing the free distribution of images.)

Internet Established

Late this morning a tech from the Dianxin Ju (electric letters office) in Guza and a Kangding Teacher's College collegue named Chenbo met with me in my flat to set up my ADSL connection. The speed is acceptable and reliable, and as I had planned I am establishing this thread so that interested persons like my mother can keep track of my goings-on. I envisioned this site, as well as it's title, during a recent trip to the Kham countryside with a student of mine, Dorje. After teaching for a mere two weeks, one and a half billion Chinese people and I celebrated Chinese National Day with a week off of work (a true seven days, with work on Saturday and the following Sunday, so that no student comrade can enjoy the coveted American double weekend nine-day Thanksgiving/Easter recess). In the course of enjoying Dorje's hospitality I ended a two-plus year hiatus from my love of dirt, woodstoves and mountain hail, the elementals of inspiration. I almost named this blog Twinspiration, but I feared that invoking the spirit of my facsimile might have unmasked the fact that this journal is a facsimile of his. Of course I miss him mightily, and I'd due well to be more like him, the Able to my Cain, the firstborn twin, the right-hander to my sinister left-handedness.
I hope to use the next few posts to detail, day by day, my vacation. Do not worry, I would not subject a reader to such minute tedium unless I believed it revealed something interesting, or true, about myself or the nature of my experience. On the other hand, because you cannot read as I write, at this moment I am imaginary to you, as you are imaginary to me. By my count (and my hermeunetics may be off), there is at least a threefold mediation of language from what I perceived and what you understand, discounting electronic factors:

a) events occur in conventionally assigned objective reality, in the Chinese countryside,
b) I construct them as meaningful and construct a narrative of experience to myself,
c) I type what I can remember from that primary narrative,
d) and you compare my adjectives and similes to experiences you have narrated about yourself.

This observation serves as both an introduction and a disclaimer. I wanted to get that out, and I promise I won't resort to such heady discourse for a while. I haven't written much lately, and I've been teaching grammar on a daily basis. I intend for the following recollection of adventure to be substantially more compelling.

Yours