Day Five

[Beach Boys, Pet Sounds]

When writing, as when living, some periods are felt to exist merely as filler, sections experienced in reflection of what has transpired and in anticipation of the (un)expected. Friday in Daofu represents just such a day. It was the exact middle of the eighth lunar month (October 6), and consequently over a thousand million Chinese people were celebrating the Mid-August Lantern Festival. The full moon arrives in the middle of the lunar calendar. Chinese people consider the full moons that fall near the Autumnal Equinox to be the largest and the brightest of the year. The full moon classically symbolizes familial and romantic separation, so if possible, Chinese families travel from all corners of the country to reunite. The families cook a large dinner, drink teas, and stuff themselves silly with moon-cakes, the classic symbol of the full moon.

Although my students are Tibetan, many of them expressed in their diaries a longing to be with their families on this day. The October National Day Holiday lasts for only seven days, and because it takes at least two days for many of my students to travel from Kangding to their hometowns scattered across Ganzi Prefecture, few of them were able to return home. In the case of separation, one gazes at the full moon and imagines that one's mother or brother or lover is also viewing the moon with longing (kind of like Fievel Mousekewitz. Did you know that An American Tail was the first full length animated feature released by Universal Pictures? And that the Mousekewitzes are Russian Jews? I [heart] Wikipedia).

Dorje and I decided to take the day very slowly. We slept late, ate slowly and fully, and played with the dog for a couple of hours. There was little reason to leave the house. At lunchtime the family ate boiled yak meat. Yak meat is often very tough, and they let it boil for a couple of hours in the morning. I still found the meat nearly impossible to tear off of the bone and chew into a palatable bolus. Chinese and Tibetan people also enjoy eating gristle and tough fat, which has not been the culture in America since the Second World War. I felt somewhat disrespectful as I discarded some of tearthe hardest fat and tendon with my bones, though Dorje reassured me that it was nothing to worry about.

I spent the afternoon perusing the stations their satellite had to offer. Bloomberg News and some terrible British video-game channel were the only English language stations available. I learned for the first time that I actually kind of enjoy watching economic news, delightfully dryer than either C-SPAN or Oscar Wilde. From the Bloomberg ticker I discovered that Denny Hastert had resisted calls to resign over some unnamed Republican scandal. I would not find out the details of MAF54's explicit instant messages until the start of the following week.

I asked Dorje if we needed to purchase bus tickets for the following morning. He assured me that he would find a ride for us in one of the large blue rigs that transport all kinds of ridiculous things around China. I was skeptical, but he hadn't failed me yet.

We unleashed Jake, the Shandong dog raised by Dorje's previous teacher, a woman from New Zealand. I really enjoy dogs that can jump, and he's a fairly good sized blond something-or-other. He is smart, but I got the feeling he hadn't been trained to perform any tricks, at least not with the kind of commands that we use in America. He wouldn't sit or fetch. I bet that dog won't hunt.

At the slowest part of the late afternoon I learned from broken Chinese that Dorje's uncle, the monk, was preparing to return to the monastery. I also discovered that Dorje and I were to go with him. I scrambled to collect my belongings and my disposable camera (from last Christmas--did you know they have expiration dates?) and asked the family for a group photo, which didn't exactly happen as I had planned. The monk was already sitting on the road and grandma didn't seem very inclined to go downstairs. Dorje took the photo of us in front of the ancestral home, which developed into a distant grainy shot of Dorje's nun sister and mother looking expressionless, and his father with his arm around me. We sat on the windy road and waited for a taxi.

Soon we were in town, braving the cold in a brightly lit, undecorated restaurant. The establishment was noticeably ordinary. We at a large bowl of clay-pot soup, which is an assortment of fungus, cabbage, and meats. We also had fish-fragrant eggplant, recommended as a foreigner delight. I often get these kinds of hit-and-miss suggestions, and while I do like this dish they overcooked the eggplant. This is also the way I was turned onto my favorite dish, dry-fried green (four-seasons) beans. People often recommend tomato and egg soup as a dish loved by foreigners. Tomato and egg soup, as the name may suggest, is noticeably ordinary.

Soon Dorje told me that he was leaving to secure our ride for the following morning. The three of us would be staying the night in the monastery. This new excited me terribly. Although sleeping in a monastery hasn't been as important to me as it has been to my twin brother, I've always thought it would be cool to crash at one. Dorje left, and in a light drizzle the fiftyish monk and I trudged through a light rain and heavy wind to the monastery.

Daofu's monastery is quite unique. It is a complex of buildings at the top of the village, creating a patchwork of yellow mud and wood buildings. It doesn't look much like a monastery, and it's a little difficult to tell where the townspeople's homes end and the monastery begins. It was also very dark. On the way up the hill, the monk stopped to purchase a large bottle of Sprite for himself and his guests. As we got inside the labyrinth of alleys that creates the mosaic of a monastery, he stopped suddenly and squatted towards the side of the alley. It was very dark, and difficult to see exactly what he was doing, but I came to understand that he was somehow peeing without seeming to lift his robe in the slightest. I was impressed.

We soon arrived at his building, and he went ahead across the ground floor to turn one of the only lights in the abode. It dimly illuminated the bottom floor from the second story. I followed him, walking across the dirt floor and taking note of a large wooden beam in the middle of the room. There were bits of wood, hay, and stone strewn about the room, though no sign of any animals. The stairs to the second story were customarily steep, like an angled ladder with thick, wide slats.

A hallway/foyer upstairs was also strewn with wood, and a corner was completely blackened from the wood-burning stove. A side room that seemed to be built into the side of the hill contained the toilet, a wooden rectangle set into the dirt that opened into a larger dirt hole beneath it. The hallway opened directly onto an upstairs patio balcony, which despite the slight rain afforded a wonderful view of the Daofu's florescent evening sky and the surrounding mountains.

The monk's room was quite nice. The floor, walls, and ceiling were wooden. The ceiling was painted blue with the same thick red logs as rafters as in Dorje's family's home. The monk had a number of butter lamps and water-offering bowls, and one of the walls was almost completely covered with pictures of various lamas. Everyone's favorite High Lama In Exile was a centerpiece of his collection, as was the former Panchen Lama, beaming out from beyond his previous incarnation's grave with his characteristically chubby smile. There was also a poster of a very attractive Tibetan woman holding prayer beads hands pressed together in front of her chest. I tried to make it seem I wasn't gawking, though I was definitely surprised.

The monk and I spoke a bit, though it was difficult to get through even elementary conversations about the coldest wintertime cities in Ganzi Prefecture. Even when people in Daofu switch from their native tongue to Chinese, the Sichuan style of speaking is also often difficult to decipher for a Mandarin speaker. He offered me Sprite, but after one bowl's worth I was ready for some straight hot water. My stomach was rather active, and I was cold and exhausted. He chanted silently to himself and turned a microwave-sized prayer wheel on the table. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to sit halfway between reality-like dreams and dreamlike reality.

Dorje returned after the monk had turned off the light and retired to a separate room. I was asleep, and woke slightly for him to tell me that we would be rising at six o'clock the following morning to catch a truck back to Kangding.

[Alice in Chains, Alice in Chains (Tripod)]