Five Bestselling Travel Memoirs Box Set

by Twead, Victoria

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Every day that we got closer to Tiananmen Square and Mao, I felt myself becoming more and more anxious. I couldn’t believe I was really getting excited about this. Ammon had gone over the basic historical facts with us earlier and managed to really intrigue me. It was like reading a textbook out loud and then jumping straight into it. The information was still fresh in my mind, and I was as thrilled as if we were going back in time to see cavemen. I never imagined how fascinating a boring square and a foreign leader could be.

  I was surprised to hear how recently the 1989 protests and the massacre had taken place. I didn’t think things like this still went on. Heck, Bree was born just before it all happened! The story of the “unknown rebel” who singularly made history by standing up to a whole column of tanks impressed me the most. With nothing more than an outstretched hand, he stopped the military tanks that were ready to crush him like a tiny bug. I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of him and was eager to see the famous photo one day.

  “That guy became a powerful icon of the last century,” Ammon told us as we emerged from the crowded streets into the third-largest square in the world.

  “What made him do it!? What did he say about it?!?” Bree sounded equally impressed, but I was busy watching the pods of soldiers kicking one leg straight into the air as they marched in unison. There was no doubt the square was huge. It was 440,000 m² (4,736,120ft²), almost as large as eighty football fields. A very large museum of history, Tiananmen Gate, an old railway station, and the Great Hall of the People made up the square’s perimeter.

  “Well, that’s the thing. No one ever found him.” Wow! A real live mystery! Imagine if we found him and could talk to him in person? That would be amazing! The fact that I found myself unintentionally inspecting each young male on the off chance that I’d be able to pick out a face I’d never even seen before gives you some idea of the effect the story had on me.

  When I spotted a particularly large poster of Mao Zedong, I remembered what we had come for. We quickly found the long line snaking outside his mausoleum, and we stood and waited in it with hundreds of others. The old dictator could often be seen on posters, and because his face was displayed on all Chinese bills and coins, I felt like I already knew him.

  “So, what can you tell us about this dead dude?” Bree said.

  “First, he’s not just a ‘dead dude’,” Ammon said almost defensively. “This is major history. He’s been dead for thirty years, since September 9, 1976, and he’s fully preserved and looks as if he’d died yesterday. So you’re literally going to see his body. You won’t just be looking at a coffin.”

  “Oh, gross!” Bree said, realizing the implication of that bit of information.

  “Crazy! Who would want to do that?” I asked.

  “I think he, like Ho Chi Minh – the guy who won the Vietnam War, actually wanted to be cremated. They both specifically said they didn’t want to be put on display, but the people missed them so much that they did it anyway. Lenin was preserved because he was “The Man” in Russia, and Mao made China what it is today. They’re the great communist leaders, and now I’ll be able to say I’ve seen all three!”

  “Good for you. You go ahead and collect your dead body sightings. Next you’re going to expect me to have an embalmment count,” I said, refusing to become caught up in anything so ghoulish.

  “I’ve never heard of any of them,” Bree said, and I nodded in agreement.

  “You will, especially since we’re going to Russia soon,” Mom said, shuffling along in line.

  “People seem to really love him,” I whispered an hour later, acknowledging the number of people laying flowers for him just inside the building.

  “He was, among other things, a scholar, a poet, and the founder of Communist China. Oh, and he killed seventy million people,” Ammon threw in casually but very quietly before entering the chamber where he lay. I choked at that. My eyes bulged and Ammon, moving forward with the line, warned me with one of his looks that I should stay silent.

  “Seventy million!?” I mouthed silently. I was still reeling over that figure when we entered the room where the great emperor lies for eternity. There is no speaking, taking photos, or stopping allowed; you just trundle along in single file on the red carpet encircling his crystal coffin and glance at him as you pass. I stared curiously at his sallow skin and imagined him standing in Tiananmen Square just outside the doors in the sunlight. I guess this must be what evil looks like. There was no remorse in his expression as he laid with his arms crossed nobly over his belly. I wondered whether his spirit lingered there in the room, full of guilt. Would the spirits of all those people be chasing him, holding him down or standing guard at the gates of heaven to refuse him entry? Or would they be able to forgive in heaven? Why would I even assume he’d get as far as the pearly gates?

  “He looked a bit like Snow White!” Bree said when we were back out in the daylight. “Do you think if a princess came and kissed---”

  “Bree, how impossibly irrelevant can you be?”

  “Very!” she said stubbornly, ignoring Ammon’s jibe.

  “Plus, the bigger question is, why would anyone want to go down in history with that haircut?!?” he said, abruptly changing his tune and smiling at her.

  “But seventy million?! That’s unbelievable,” I said.

  “Yep! Hitler is said to be accountable for only seventeen million, and Stalin killed twenty-three million with his genocide and everything else,” he continued. “That makes Mao the single, greatest mass murderer in human history. And just to make things really interesting, you know our most wanted criminal, Bin Laden? If what they say is true, he killed only a few thousand in the Twin Towers, and we’re talking millions here. It’s truly unfathomable.”

  “This just boggles my mind,” I said.

  “They worship this guy even after he lived an evil life and murdered millions of their people?!” Bree asked, understandably clueless for once. “How did he even manage to kill so many?!”

  “He was responsible for the mass famines, which resulted from how he implemented the Great Leap Forward. But I don’t think he necessarily did it intentionally like Stalin, who purposely cut off the food supply to starve the Ukrainians. Never mind, I’ll tell you more about Stalin later.” We were grateful Ammon left it at that and didn’t go into whatever the Great Leap Forward meant. We’d been overloaded enough for one day.

  “How could you ever forgive, let alone worship, a person who killed that many, even if it was an accident? I mean, he was responsible for the number one death toll in history?!” I was appalled.

  “I can’t believe this many people are bringing flowers. They must have incredible censorship going on here,” Mom whispered, observing the long line-up and the dozens of vendors selling flowers as we looked for a spot to play cards. “There’s no way they could possibly know. They have to be in the dark.”

  “That would seem plausible, wouldn’t it? If we can’t even open our blog site, it would make sense for them to block any negative information on their leaders or government,” Ammon said practically. “But that’s how they keep people suppressed. Like you said before, how come millions couldn’t stop the insanity of one man who wanted to build a wall halfway across the country? Mainly, it’s ’cause they weren’t connected, but from now on, people will be united through the Internet. It all starts with one person’s actions setting an example, like the ‘unknown rebel’ of Tiananmen Square. He’s the kind of leader you need to start a movement. The whole world saw the picture, but I bet if you asked the locals here, most wouldn’t know about it. Which makes me think, maybe he doesn’t even realize his worldwide fame and that’s why he never came out. Maybe he never even knew the effect he’d had. Either that, or they killed him.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Venturing out the following day, it was hard to resist popping in for quick looky-looks as we passed shop after shop. Every few feet, the three of us would skitter off
into one of them, leaving Ammon on the curb tapping his foot impatiently. We’d obediently return and then set off with him again, but five minutes later, we’d run off like disobedient ducklings yet again. We had five kilometres to go, but Ammon finally snapped when we entered yet another bra shop.

  “I’m done with this! I’m not going to miss the Temple of Heaven for bloody lingerie shopping.” Throwing us a simple map of Beijing that was reproduced on the back of a business card and marked only with our hostel and the temple, he hissed, “And stop sharing clothes! I can’t tell who’s who from behind anymore. You three are driving me nuts!!” And with that, he stomped off in a huff. The three of us looked at each other rather perplexed, but then we couldn’t help laughing.

  “But we have to shop so we don’t have to trade clothes anymore!!” Bree shouted after him, but he was already gone. I’d like to say he merged into the crowd and disappeared, but it was more like watching the dark ringlet of his short ponytail bobbing above the ocean of people until finally the distance between us became too great to see it anymore. The constant stress resulting from being outnumbered undoubtedly made this a long trip for him. Understandably, I don’t think his personal checklist included sampling every shop in Beijing.

  “I guess we have been acting a bit like Donald Duck’s nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie,” Mom said, feeling for him.

  We could understand Ammon not wanting to spend all his time shopping, but the issue of sharing clothing was something else entirely. We each had our colours, Mom generally in red, Bree in black, and me in pink, and even I got confused when Mom wore Bree’s black shirt or Bree sported Mom’s red one. The three of us were around the same height and we all had long brown hair. On the other hand, we found sharing quite liberating, as it tripled our meagre, five-item wardrobes. Unfortunately for Ammon, this was a habit we wouldn’t soon be quitting. We shrugged off his concerns, possibly underestimating the needs and frustrations of a man who is attached, sometimes uncomfortably, to three related females.

  As we made our way uncertainly towards the Taoist Temple of Heaven, we wove through narrow side streets boasting shops of all kinds. It felt like there was a garage sale on every corner where you could find absolutely anything, all of it unbelievably cheap. By the time we arrived at the temple, we had run short of money, and we were grateful Ammon wasn’t there to witness it. Without our leader to keep us in line and enforce the rules, we’d clearly lost all self-control. We tried the few ATMs we found along the way, but none wanted to give Mom any money. We were really not looking forward to asking Ammon for dinner money with our tails between our legs, but the more immediate problem was that, without him there to bail us out, we couldn’t even afford the price of full admission tickets. We had to rely on Mom’s amazing ability to “always get what she wants,” and she came through again, somehow wangling discounted student tickets for each of us.

  Stepping into the gardens surrounding the Temple of Heaven, Mom filled in for our tour guide, “So, this temple was built in the fifteenth century.”

  “And Taoism is the one with the yin and yang symbol, right?” I said, remembering what Ammon had taught us at previous Taoist temples.

  “It represents balance: black and white, heaven and earth,” she agreed.

  “That’s so romantic!” I said.

  “So how long did it take to build this?” Bree asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Mom admitted.

  “I know who would know,” I chipped in helpfully.

  “Where is Ammon anyway? We’re never going to find him in here!” Bree said, suddenly inspecting the area. We twirled and spun as we walked down pebbled pathways in the beautiful garden complex, taking in the beauty of all the gorgeous flowers while keeping an eye out for the trusty leader who’d abandoned us. The Temple of Heaven gardens were too much like a maze for us to have any hope of finding Ammon, though, so we left before too long.

  Though we’d paid the cheaper student rates, we had only enough left to buy a small bottle of water for our long walk back to the hostel. We set off in its general direction, this time with Mom leading. After inspecting the small map carefully, she decided to take what looked like a shortcut, a plan that gave me a distinctly uneasy feeling. Nonetheless, someone had to take charge, so off we went. As we might have predicted, before too long, we didn’t recognize any signs from the tiny map that only named major roads.

  “Hmmm ... This must be the right way, but I’m just going to ask someone to make sure.” Mom walked over to a man on the curb who was idly watching traffic go by. She began speaking in English and pointing in the direction we were walking. He nodded in agreement. “Okay, so he says it’s down this way. We’re on the right track.” When we’d gone a bit further and still not seen any familiar street names, she tried again and stopped a young couple, this time showing them the hostel’s business card map. They looked at each other uncertainly before they, too, nodded. “Well? Is it that way?” Mom pressed them for more and pointed again down the same route we’d been taking, and they again responded with one more simple bob. “Okay then, we must still be heading in the right direction,” she assured us, and we kept walking. The streets were getting busier and louder with a lot of honking and shopkeepers shouting. My head was buzzing and I wasn’t at all confident about the directions we’d been given.

  “Oh, I don’t remember any of this,” I said, having hoped that we’d start to recognize things again after walking thirty minutes. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. Ask another person.”

  “I can always backtrack. I know how to backtrack. I just want to try this shortcut for a while longer before we give up on it.” This time when she asked someone, she pointed in the direction we’d just come from and got more nods. “OOH, okay, so we went the wrong way. Maybe we walked a bit too far.”

  “Mom, I think they just don’t understand anything!” Bree insisted.

  A couple of the people we’d asked without pointing had simply shrugged and walked off. As a test, we purposely pointed in what we knew was completely the wrong direction the next time, and that person also nodded.

  “It’s probably your terrible pronunciation,” I complained, feeling too hot and tired to be gentler about it.

  “But I’m showing them the map! They should be able to understand that,” she said, as she reached out to another couple and started pointing at the map all over again and asking for a specific street.

  “Oh my goodness! We are actually getting lost,” I grumbled.

  We stopped to ask a couple of young military men. “Is it this way?” Mom asked pointing to the right. They nodded. “Or is it this way?” she ignored their nods and pointed to the left. Another nod. “So it’s in this direction, this way?!” Mom repeated, her arm motioning to the right. They nodded, then gave a confused shrug. “Okay, thanks anyway. Xie, xie.”

  They must be thinking, “Just agree with them, and they’ll leave us alone,” I thought as I watched Mom struggling and sweating. After walking a few more discouraging steps, she gave up. “Yah, they don’t understand. We’ll just have to backtrack then, if we still can.” Our shortcut had turned into a very long exercise in frustration. Two hours later, we finally arrived at the hostel with blazing red cheeks, our hair all frizzed and fly-away, and our clothes dark with sweat from going way over our daily average of 10km (6.2mi).

  I wondered if Ammon even knew about Travel Rule # 4 – Never point any particular way when you’re asking for directions, and if he did, why he never told us about it. Maybe he didn’t want to give away all of his leadership secrets and didn’t expect we’d ever need to use them.

  When we finally walked into the lobby, Ammon was sitting there and looked up from his book with a cheeky grin. He was just sitting there, seemingly unworried and wearing a smile that said, “SEE? You need me.”

  I knew it was true. As annoying, anal and downright mean as Ammon could sometimes be, we wanted a smooth, successful journey, and he was our ticket to that, in addition to being a de
arly loved family member. I realized that, beneath his smirk, he couldn’t hide a subtle sigh when we arrived safely. Nothing but worry would cause him to sit and wait in the lobby like a watchdog. I’d seen how expertly he could control his emotions when he’d dealt with his cancer, but for the first time, I saw past his beard and furrowed brows and into his heart. Of course he was going to razz us that it took a few extra hours roasting in the sun to get back without his guidance, but it was all a cover-up. He had abandoned us in a big, strange city, and he felt responsible. At that moment, I understood how much he cared for all of us, and I directed an equally cheeky grin right back at him, pleased that I’d discovered his secret. I think I can live with that.

  Chapter 29: New Territory

  “What?! What do you mean, ‘we have to separate’?” I gasped when Ammon brought back “the good, the bad, and the ugly” news from the insanely chaotic ticket stand.

  “I thought you checked it all out yesterday?” Mom said.

  “I did! I got our four tickets. But now they’re saying there isn’t enough room on one bus. It’s kind of hard when they’re all jabbering at me in broken English, you know? We’re just gonna have to meet up at the end. The buses are supposed to go in tandem, though, so we shouldn’t be too far apart.”

  “I’m going with Mom,” I said eagerly. As a hopeless Momma’s girl, I naturally felt safest with her. The many honking, roaring noises of the bus station made me nervous, especially with this new plan added to my standard sense of unease. Ignoring the few scattered, metal benches, we sat on our big backpacks in a circle, as if around a comforting campfire, and pulled out the cards. I still felt the weight on my shoulders from carrying the heavy pack all the way there. Smiling at them beneath us, I wondered why we didn’t use them as portable seating more often. The daypack that secured my journal and Rhett was strapped around my foot as a safety precaution.