Pulling up Roots

If we lived superficially and didn’t put down roots, this process of packing up and moving back would be so much easier. But I think the experience itself would have been like a pencil sketch instead of the oil painting it was.

Our sweet friend Kerry in Taitung just had wisdom teeth pulled, and we went swimming in the river to rinse off the heat together. She had a swollen jaw, and was miserable. I instantly thought ‘that’s how it feels!’ Only the tooth is a dimensional lump of love and friends and memories that is lodged just where the ribs come together.

Julia, the Taoist missionary who has been teaching McKinley to play the Chinese cello, the er-hu, was able to find us a way to ship things home that didn’t cost $2000. One friend made us a crate, and Thursday morning, came to the house and we filled it to the brim. Then we brought it to the shipper who would truck it to Kaoshiung. There, another friend of hers arranged for the crate to go on a boat to New York. It will arrive a few days after we get home, and who knows what the final cost will be, but it will be significantly less than the other options. (“Sure, we can Fed-Ex your suitcase”)

Morfar comes to Taiwan!

My father came Friday morning, and I flew to Taipei to meet him, and our friend Constance who lives there, so got up early to greet him first.

We spent the day at the National museum, where the display of 5,000 years of Chinese culture is perfectly presented. Constance loves the tiny gilded figures, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, who look like exquisite chocolates. I was stunned by the 5000 year old pot that was nearly identical to pots that the Anasazi did… 800 years ago. Then Chinese art and civilization developed from there, so that by 800 years ago, the Chinese were doing elegant and ornate artwork that the western world couldn’t dream of.

It was the perfect introduction to a trip to China.

Saying Goodbye

Back in Taitung, we had to say goodbye. One party for Joplin’s teachers was up on the mountain looking out over the whole city of Taitung as evening fell, at the Aboriginal restaurant. The second party was at the Don Tair hot springs; we bought 65 tickets and gave them to all the people who had helped us through the year.

It’s not helpful to clutch onto a moment, missing it, aching for it, but perhaps it is okay to freeze an instant in time and remember it like a favorite song. My moment is this: sitting in the very hot outside pool, the palm trees overhead, the sky bright blue, and across the river the tree-carpeted mountains rise past my vision. Though the place was more crowded than I’d ever seen, I felt absolutely serene and alone. I can’t allow myself to think about living in a place with no hot springs.

Our friends saw us off at the train station, and the photo – usually full of smiling faces – is so sad! The train drew away from Taitung – we looked for the school, we looked at our favorite places in the mountains, we paused in Jibben Station and contemplated getting off and living at the hot springs instead of going home. We slid past the ocean, with its two-toned water, turquoise over the sand and azure in the deep water. Then the train took to the mountains and we were off to Kaoshiung, where Fred Chai, McKinley’s cello teacher, had arranged to meet us and take us to the airport.

And then we flew away.

Sleeper Bus

Danesh had a friend in China, just over the Macau border, who arranged to meet us, and purchased our bus tickets for us. It was such a relief to not have to have our first moments in China confused and disoriented. As it was, we barely found which bus was the right one, and scrambled to get our things aboard. We bought a little food, but we were pretty unprepared for the bus experience.

The bus was a sleeper – 36 beds, lower and upper, three across in a regular-size bus. The beds tilted up slightly at the head so you could lie back but still see out. We had the seats at the front, so we could really see well through the front and side windows. It was 6pm when we left, set to arrive in the morning in Yangshou, Guailin province.

At first we just drove through city and suburbs, and the biggest challenge was keeping McKinley seat belted into her upper bunk. Then it was a challenge because we discovered that the on-board toilet was non-functional. But the bus made regular stops, and we had to dash off, use the available facilities, and dash back on. Everyone drifted off to sleep but me. At 10:15, I noticed the bus driver showing a sign of confusion. The road we were on had been a highway, but now it was dirt, and potholed with huge potholes – half a meter deep. A meter or more around. It was obviously a work in progress. The second driver was sleeping, and the attendant was discussing directions with the driver.

They stopped to ask. They turned around. They drove for a while. The stopped to ask.

After the fourth or fifth time doing this routine, the second driver woke up. The driver’s voice had risen a bit in frustration. The second driver was no help. Apparently the route to the highway was under construction, and the signposts had been removed. We were completely lost.

By now, Joplin and my dad were awake, and we all sat back, comfortably relaxed, and quite grateful that we were not the drivers. We’d come in late, but it was no problem. We were off on our adventure, and timeless freedom was a gift we had.

Finally at 12:30, we maneuvered down a few side streets, saw a tiny road sign for the highway, and we were on our way.

When we woke up in the morning, it was clear that we were not in Kansas anymore.

The highway was very rough, broken pavement. The bus blared its horn and plowed through traffic, which was bicycles, small cars, and big trucks, as well as people on foot and some animals. We passed villages of brick houses and miles and miles of fields – rice and corn. Then the distinctive Guailin mountains popped out of the ground, like a giant poking his fingers into a forested glove.

Moon Hill

Our guest house owner, June, met us on a scooter, with a van to carry our luggage and ourselves to her village – Moon Hill, which is just south of Yangshou. We settled into two rooms ($9/night each, including meals) and met June’s family – her parents, her sister in law, and her 2 year old daughter who was heart wrenchingly cute. June confessed to me on our last day there, that she was sometimes afraid that an American might kidnap her little girl, as so many Americans like to adopt Chinese girls. Once again, I was challenged by how others see us.

It was hot. It was truly very hot. It was so hot that our plans to go visit the terraced rice fields, and to go rock climbing, evaporated. Instead, we rented a scooter (only electric scooters available to rent – great for air quality!) We zipped around the back country, searching for a swimable river. When we found one, we slipped into bliss.

about moon hill village:

http://asianencounters.org/community/moonhill/

to book the guest house:

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/reavley/moonhill.htm

Swimming in Mud

The other cooling activity of our time in Moon Hill was the mud caves. A good couple-hour tour through the inside of those amazing karst mountains, where stalactites hung like hollow billowing sheets from the ceiling, so that when you tap on them, they thrum like kettle drums. All kinds of shapes appear in the stalagmites – from Buddha’s head, to the goddess Kuanyin, to Harry Potter’s owl Hedwig.

Deep inside the cave are pools of silted mud. We were prepared – doing the caving in bathing suits, and trepidatiously, we stepped into the muddy water. It is fantastic for the skin, according to the notices, but it felt like crumbly slime. Instantly our bodies all became the same warm brown color. Caucasians no more, we descended into the cool slippery water.

A miracle happened. There was so much sediment in the water that the body’s buoyancy changed, even more so than salt water. When we finally gathered the courage to lie back in the mud, instead of swimming with our toes dragging the bottom, our legs plopped up to the surface: bloop! bloop! It was hysterically funny and a little unnerving.

Fortunately next to the mud pool was a clear-water pool that we quickly muddied washing ourselves off.

Trains in China

Trains in China: there are compartments of four beds, two up, two down. If you don’t know what you’re doing (like us) you end up buying tickets for the upper berths, as the lower beds sell out first and fast, even though they are slightly more expensive. We got on the train with our tickets, thinking we had ‘i-ge-baushang’ – one compartment to ourselves, and instead we still had the upper berths in two rooms. We tried to trade with the people we were sharing with, but they had paid more for their prized lower beds, and refused. However, when the men sharing the room with Joplin and my dad discovered that my father is 81 years old, one of them insisted on giving up his lower bunk out of respect for his age. It was the start of a wonderful conversation, both in that room, and McKinley’s and my room, which we shared with a couple and their 5 year old boy. She was a children’s book editor (!) and he worked with teacher training in the government. When we arrived in Beijing, they made sure we knew where we were going, wrote a note to our taxi driver, and even called the guest house to make sure we’d arrived safely.

Royal Accomodations

We arrived in Beijing late, the train was late, and the night was dark. Our guest house was a little hard to find, on one of the old hutongs, which are the winding alleyways that surround the Forbidden City. It was down the street from where the Empress used to live. These hutongs, in their run-down grey stone way, are the unassuming façade for courtyard houses: a square of rooms around an outdoor courtyard garden. Ours was renovated, freshly painted, and stunning. The garden was glassed in so that the house could be air-conditioned, and McKinley got a silken bed. When we arrived, tired and grubby from the train, McKinely reclined on her bed and sighed, “Now I know why princesses are so happy.”

Entering the Forbidden City

It is hard to describe the immensity of the center of Beijing – Tiananmen Square is so fast that it is like Grand Canyon – difficult to get perspective and appreciate. The Forbidden City, however, we walked through, so we’ve marked its size through the soles of our feet. At first there are large gates and courtyards – large? No, vast. We walked and walked. It would have been stunning with a blue sky, but the sky seems to be where Beijing sweeps its pollution under the carpet. (At least it didn’t feel dirty on the skin, in the eyes, in our lungs.) Gate and Courtyard, Gate and Courtyard, then a honeycomb of living spaces which curled beyond the public spaces in a labyrinth of complexity. We got lost among the twists and turns, all the buildings painted elaborately, saffron yellow and green… Then at the very top, we entered a garden, as graceful as any Japanese garden, only elaborate in a Chinese way, not Zen like.

Peiking Acrobatics

That night we went to see an acrobatic show, stunning and splendid. Eighteen girls balanced on one bicycle… lousy pictures, but you get the idea!

Yonghegong lamasery

We were intrigued to visit the Tibetan

monastery – an active tribute to the Tibetan Buddhist faith that the Chinese have so violently overruled. We let the politics of the situation settle into the backs of our minds while we visited the monastery (Lamasery actually- with lamas instead of monks). It was an elaborate complex, being renovated with glossy red paint, beautiful and living, a center of peaceful feeling in the midst of Beijing.

The Great Wall from the Train

Early on Tuesday we left for the train again, a 30 hour journey north-northwest to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The train was our neighborhood, and the kids scampered from one cabin to the next, deck of cards in hand. We shared food, shared stories, languages, and excitement when we passed the Great Wall. We went by in several places and had wonderful views. Here the sky was blue, the missing sky from Beijing.

The Gobi Desert

The Gobi Desert is big and dry. This sounds like a ‘no-duh’ until the bigness is translated into hours and hours, day and night, on the train with only a fan to cool things off, and when the dryness is translated into dust that blows in through any gap, so leaving the window open for fresh air is inviting a thick layer of sand.

Ulaanbaatar - a city of A's

We pulled into Ulaanbaatar and everybody disembarked. All the other foreigners were met by their arranged host, while our arranged host was nowhere to be seen. Ahh, an adventure. This was the day of the 800^th anniversary of Genghis Kahn, celebrated with the Nadaam Festival, a Mongolian Olympics of wrestling, horseback racing and archery. Every hotel was booked full, and way overpriced. A few people were at the station, with slips of paper advertising their ‘guest houses’ – we took them all, then found a taxi to take us to the travel agent who had our Moscow train tickets. After that, we hunted for the agent who had booked our stay in Mongolia, but not arrived at the train station, with no success. We decided to use the slip of paper given to us by a sweet young woman.

Her guest house was in the slums of Ulaanbaatar, dirt alleys, barefoot urchins and all. It was in the shadow of the Tibetan Monastery. When at last we found the right door in the wall, we went in to find a haven for hostellers. At $3/night, we had a springy bed in a bunk room, with travelers from all over Europe. For $5/night you could stay in their ‘ger’ – the felt version of a yurt. This family was well educated, and set up a stay as comfortably as they could without running water. They did have power, but the sink to wash you hands was a tin can with a valve on the bottom. Rainwater, or clean delivered water goes in the top, and you press up on the bottom, much like a soap dispenser, and water pours out.

We found the agent, in a French bakery-café downtown. She apologized, and made arrangements for us to leave the following morning for our ‘homestay.’ We took a public bus, getting there early so that we had seats. This turned out to be vitally important as the bus got more and more crowded. The aisles became so full that our seat was soon shared by several more people, everybody on laps, elbows and hips and shoulders became our preoccupation. That is, until we reached the national park of Terlij.

Terlij National Park

Were we in Colorado? Morfar certainly thought so. The trees, mostly pines, even some with pine borers, and poplars. The rivers were flat and fast, the mountains were like the rugged foothills. The bus let us off in the middle of - somewhere – but just at the edge of a road, where a horse cart was waiting for us with two young Mongolians, a fellow in a blue satin shirt, and his sister, Undra.

The horse cart was boarding over rubber tires, with an old carpet on top for comfort. We loaded up, our family, a German woman named Rosemarie, and the Mongolians. They took us half an hour, across three rivers (lift up the feet!) to their place, where they had three gers set up. We arranged for dinner and breakfast the next morning, but Undra’s mama came in while we were settling into the ger with trays of food: sweet bits of fried dough, flat bread filled with sour cream, fresh bread, and cups of hot milky, salted tea.

In the afternoon, we set off on a horseback ride. One horse, threatened by the proximity of the other, did a swift one-two, and managed to kick Joplin in both legs. Joplin decided to stay back and let Undra’s brother take the grumpy horse and lead McKinley. The horses were supposed to respond to the word, “choo!” but as most ‘rental’ horses, mine didn’t have much ‘choo.’ When Undra’s brother snapped off a willow twig and handed it to me, however, she found her latent choo and chugged off at a brisk trot. Just a glance at that twig was enough to give her fresh motivation.

Undra’s daughter, a lovely 9 year old with typical flat pink Mongolian cheeks, befriended McKinley, and they played chess on McKinley’s new Mongolian felt chess board.

Then in the evening, she brought down a game of Bones. You line up the spine bones of a sheep. Each bone can be tossed like a die, and land either as s Sheep, a Goat, a Camel or a Horse (depending on the bumps of the bone.) We set up a horse race, each player put their bone in line, horse side up. Then we rolled a set of four, hoping for them to land horse side up. It was harder than expected, and we were all whooped by the innocent looking Mongolian girl.

North to Siberia

Our train left just after 1:00 the next day, and this was the long train: five days, Ulaanbaatar to Moscow. Our compartment was not lovely, no ac, not even a fan. This train was the local train, not the fancy foreigner train that runs from Beijing. But at least we had cozy blankets! It was cool at night. We were the only Caucasians on board, except for an English couple 9 cars ahead of us. Our car was filled with Mongolian traders who had purchased piles of things from China and were on their way to sell them in Russia. They didn’t speak much Chinese, and our Mongolian was up to one word: “barlachha” – which is approximately the way to say thank you.

The first night, we hit Russia. First we had to change the bogies of the train, the undercarriage has to fit the tracks, and Russia, with their superior engineering, decided to space the rails farther apart. This is a four-hour procedure, and we were shuffled off the train to go inside and shop. An entire train full of people in a small grocery filled up on food for five days. Their was a dining car, but it wasn’t as tasty as instant ramen noodles. We bought as much as we could carry.