As a last-ditch effort, Martin and I spend a week together over the May Day holiday in Xi’an visiting the Terra Cotta Warriors. Martin, ever the creative traveler, suggests we rent bicycles and find our way from the city to the soldiers by bike, unlike all the tourists on the crowded air-conditioned tourist buses. On the way home, we get lost, our thighs burning, foreheads scorched. It’s too dark to continue on, so we stumble into a suburban inn that asks for our marriage license. We laugh at the request, slightly buzzed from the sun and a rest stop where we downed two beers, and convince the front desk manager we forgot our license in Beijing. That night, I dream we are actually married, but even marriage itself is not a life but a ritual filled with dancing, drinking, and the promise of never letting go. I tell Martin about my dream when I wake up. He kisses the words away as I’m brushing my teeth, but the next day we’re back in Beijing where the idea of becoming who we were in Xi’an feels buried beneath stone walls. Martin’s still not ready to let go of his past, and I’m not ready to commit to my future.
A week later, I join a band and am seduced (like many a lead vocalist) by my drummer. He’s Chinese, from Fujian. His hair is shoulder-length and he once had a crush on his male drumming instructor. I tell my boyfriend he’s bisexual, but he seems to like me just fine and this makes me like him more. Or maybe I just like the idea of him, the idea of us walking through the night markets of Wangfujing as an American woman and a Chinese man, as something other than what I was with Martin. Even in the early days of this relationship, I can tell it won’t last, not because I fear commitment, but because I still don’t know who I’m meant to be.
Before Martin returns to Austria that summer, I tell him about the drummer. He’s angry again, but in a defeated way. We walk circles around The Nameless Lake at our campus’s heart, trying to figure out what made us so incompatible.
"I don’t understand,” Martin says. We’re at that deflated part of our story where we know no matter what we do, we’ll never find our way back to the beauty of the beginning.
"Me neither,” I say, without knowing we’re too young to understand our failed romance had nothing to do with who we were, but everything to do with who we were afraid of becoming. Our stories had to be told separately, our journeys, for now, solo.
A few years later I return to that lake with the American man who will become my husband. It’s the only place that feels somewhat the same in a city already unrecognizable to me—Moon Bar is now a six-lane highway, Sculpting in Time replaced by a high-rise office building. I’ve lost my physical markers in the city where I first learned how to love.
*
Place: Guangzhou-Hong Kong High-Speed Train, Somewhere in Guangdong
Time: Mid-afternoon, February, 2001
On the high-speed train from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, an attendant passes out free moist wipes and I collect as many as I can, having exhausted my supply on the long bus ride. I am covered with exhaust, the filth of a 45-hour journey by sleeper bus. I quickly open the packages and rub my body raw. Soon I smell like an American sterilized toilet.
When I arrive, Hong Kong is just like it looks in photographs: sparkling-clean and ritzy compared to where I’ve been. The city glistens above the bay, bright reds and golds flashing on the skyscrapers in celebration of the Chinese New Year. Children set off firecrackers between buildings. Taxis idle at stoplights. Young women click in high heels down crowded streets, Louis Vuitton handbags swinging, cat eyes hidden behind dark Chanel glasses.
I think of my new Chinese girlfriend walking the streets of Guangzhou, shopping at the back-alley malls she’d proclaimed to love, eating the Southern-fried noodles she says she only partakes of on vacations (this, her secret to keeping a good figure—only indulge once a year). Eventually, she’ll return to her home in that Kunming suburban high-rise. She’ll be someone’s wife, just like eventually I will as well, but for now she is blissfully free to live her life as a woman of the world, riding on buses and befriending young foreigners to whom she can dispel free relationship advice and feel like a girl again, as if the world is hers—ours—to conquer.
Before my friend arrives from Scotland, I take a long, hot shower at our hostel, the infamous Chungking Mansions. I contemplate calling Martin, but he doesn’t have a cell phone and I have no idea which itinerary he and the others decided to take—would they stay in Lijiang or depart for Dali, or further yet, the treacherous trails of Tiger Leaping Gorge?
I spend an hour picking my pimples, exfoliating my cheeks with a coarse washcloth, plucking my unruly eyebrows. My friend will be arriving at the airport, where I am to meet him, any minute now, but I almost wish he weren’t coming, that I could explore this island alone, unfettered by the demands of someone else, able to climb whichever forested hill, wander into whichever gaudy temple, drink in whichever noisy pub I choose.
I apply a layer of concealer over the bags beneath my eyes, comb dense mascara into my eyelashes, brush glittery blue eye shadow on my lids. I check my reflection one last time, as if to confirm its existence, before striding out the door and into the crowded streets where I am anonymous, myself, once more.
Raised in New England, Kaitlin Solimine has considered China a second home since 1996. She’s been a Harvard-Yenching scholar, Fulbright Fellow, and Donald E. Axinn Scholar in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She wrote and edited Let’s Go: China (St. Martin’s Press) and her first novel, Empire of Glass, won the 2012 Dzanc Books/Disquiet International Literary Program award. Her writing has appeared in Guernica Magazine, National Geographic, Kartika Review, China Daily, and more. She is a co-founder of the curatorial website, Hippo Reads, and currently resides in Singapore.
GODS RUSHING IN
By Jenna Lynn Cody
You could hear the drums before you even pulled into town.
For the second time in six years, I stepped off the bus in Donggang for the opening day of the triennial King Boat Festival. A makeshift night market strung with halogen lights and blinking LEDs had been slapped together around Donglong Gong, the town’s main temple. An ornate golden gate fronted Donglong Gong, showing how much money flowed through this fishing town in southern Taiwan.
King Boat is held in celebration of Wen Hong, also known as Wufudadi, the Thousand Years Grandfather, Dai Tian Xun Shou, or Wang Ye (Chinese immortals tend to have a lot of names), a god known for driving away pestilence and disease. He’s the main deity worshipped in Donglong Temple. Legend has it that he attained godly status after he—a 7th century man named Wen Hong—was killed when his ship sank on an ocean patrol.
Every three years, his spirit is called in from the sea, implored to come inland by the myriad cries of a thousand other gods, and is paraded and feted around Donggang and its ancillary villages for the next week. Wang Ye is supposed to drive out sickness and disease during this time, as well as bring good fortune.
We had attended King Boat for the first time three years ago, and had decided to return to see the opening ceremony one more time.
Delegations from temples around Taiwan, carrying idols on carved palanquins, held up traffic. Many of these sedan chairs were dotted with LEDs, and some blasted their own music: traditional temple music, local pop hits from the ‘70s in the Taiwanese language, or occasional Western hits. One went by thumping "Empire State of Mind.” Another proudly filled the streets with "Gangnam Style.” The gods, apparently, have very eclectic taste in music. Drummers followed and firecrackers snapped underfoot. The three of us elbowed through the crowds to drop off our bags.
Tonight, my husband Brendan, our friend Joseph, and I would see the King Boat itself, sheltered in the temple complex, and make wishes on the little wooden plaques that would hang on a fence around the perimeter of the boat for the next week. We would then feast on the freshest seafood at a row of restaurants in the harbor’s famous market.
Tomorrow, we would head to the beach and watch as gods, spirits, and immortals rushed in from the ocean to a grues
ome display of blood, incense, and pierced skin. They would possess the bodies of hundreds of trained spirit mediums. We’d look them in the eyes. We’d see what they could do with spiked clubs and balls, swords, pins, and burning incense. Tomorrow, there would be blood.
I wasn’t quite sure why I’d come back. I’d ostensibly seen everything there was to see three years before. In fact, I wasn’t quite sure why I was still in Taiwan. I had spent a semester in Madurai, India and loved it—from climbing a rock escarpment over neon-green rice paddies to a Jain monument at the summit to running into a puja to the goddess who watched over the local market, as well as the everyday joy of living with a host family. I swore I’d move back. I’ve visited many times since, but never returned for good. I’d lived in China for a year after college as a travel-happy, pseudo-ambitious young graduate. I had countless adventures—including being on a bus that drove up a flight of stairs—and announced I wanted to move back in order to continue studying Chinese. I never did.
Taiwan was different. I had just put in my application for permanent residency, wishing to stay but not fully understanding why.
I approached the King Boat. It was bedecked with lanterns, ornately painted in traditional Chinese patterns of dragons and clouds, and surrounded by a wall of wishes. For a small fee, you could buy a wooden plaque about the size of a smartphone. On it, you would write your name and address, followed by your wish. Most people wished for personal fortune: I want two children, a son and a daughter, and a promotion at work. I want to study in Australia. Please help me find a good and handsome husband. I want a perfect score on my college entrance exam! I want my in-laws to move out. I want to get a job in Singapore. I want my girlfriend to say yes when I propose to her. I want a bigger apartment, and I want my boss to notice my hard work. Predictable but moving wishes. Everyone’s common struggle on little pieces of wood, destined to reach the sky in a cloud of smoke.
You can put more than one wish on one plaque, so I made two. One was for my permanent residency application to go through without any more problems, of which there had already been many. The other was simple but political: I made a wish for Taiwan – for its recognition and sovereignty.
Why did I care so much? This wasn’t my homeland. I had no ancestral or cultural connection here. I could have wished for a continued happy marriage, or for a career break, or more money. Everyone else had. In America, my country of birth, I probably would have. It wouldn’t have even crossed my mind to wish anything "for America.” Although I was an expat, I wasn’t wishing as one. Taiwan’s unique history has brought Chinese, Japanese, and aboriginal influences to its shores. This mix has created a unique culture, but sadly one that attracts little international interest. A culture that, due to the nature of Chinese folk belief—indigenous and multifaceted, grounded more in tradition and ceremony than concerns about the spiritual health of its followers—is quite accepting of the vagaries of individual belief. As a skeptic who has clashed with and felt judged by people in the United States who question my personal beliefs, this was an important facet of life in Taiwan for me. I would make a wish to Wen Hong precisely because it didn’t matter whether I believed in his power in order to make that wish. That may sound odd from a Western perspective, but in Taiwan it is perfectly normal. The ability to hold these two ideas in your head—doing the rite, yet believing as you please—is considered a measure of the most basic intelligence.
And so, I circled the boat three times and tied my wish to the fence with red cord.
One week later, the King Boat would be loaded with ghost money, wishing plaques, and other offerings, and brought to the beach, where it would be engulfed at dawn in a spectacular bonfire that would burn for up to three days. Wen Hong would be sent back out to sea laden with gifts and money and take all of Donggang’s illness and bad luck with him.
We barely slept that night – the processions wound their way through the darkest hours; firecrackers abided no time restrictions. Puffs of music floated past the window of our bathroom-tiled hotel room near the harbor until dawn. We woke into a muggy heat, took ineffective showers, and sought a breakfast shop before heading to the beach.
"I can’t wait to get a traditional Taiwanese breakfast!” Brendan said.
"What, you mean a sandwich with some corn in it?”
"Exactly!”
A true "traditional” breakfast in Taiwan would be rice congee with cabbage, egg, and preserved tofu, but white-bread sandwiches with improbable fillings, chased down with soy milk, were now a far more typical way to break one’s fast in Taiwan.
We could still hear the drums. They had now left the temple area and beaten their way down to the beach. More temple delegations arrived from the corners of Taiwan bearing idols of Matsu, goddess of the sea, the Baosheng Emperor, god of herbal and Chinese medicine, Wenchang Dijun, god of literature, and more. We followed the noise and light over the bridge and onto the sand.
Troupes of Eight Generals began to appear – men and boys in elaborate face paint who participate in temple processionals around Taiwan. Each painting style was different depending on the general being portrayed. The Eight Generals act as the protectors of gods and people, and may not talk or smile when in their roles. At certain points in a processional—generally in front of important temples—they do martial demonstrations accompanied by ominous trumpets and deep drums. The weapons (pitchforks, tridents, swords, and spears made with real metal), the concentration, the unique makeup, and the powerful gazes of the performers make the Eight Generals seem terrifying despite their role as protectors. Although they originated in a temple in Fujian, China, they are now associated exclusively with Taiwan.
I snapped photos. Such festivals were all but gone in most of China, and difficult to track down in India. I felt closer to the common practices of local folk culture in Taiwan than I had in any other country, in part because they were closer to me. We had traversed most of Taiwan to see this procession, but when you live here, one may very well pass right by your front door. I often run into the Eight Generals, tall gods (people wearing tall bamboo casings topped with ten-foot-high costumes depicting various immortal beings), dragon dancers, and lion dancers on my regular ramblings around Taipei. I’ve been stuck on a bus trapped behind a tall god, forced to move out of the way for a group of lion dancers, and been made to dance around unexpected fireworks.
The beach had turned into an encampment under the rising haze. Entire temple delegations parked themselves on small dunes, sticking incense into the sand. There was no water, no toilets. Some troupes of Eight Generals (there were many, and not all numbered eight) were idling about, holding their fans to their faces to chat quietly, answer phones or smoke, all things prohibited when in costume. The fans hid their sacrilegious pleasures from the eyes of the gods. Palanquins with their own generators to keep the lights flashing and music pumping were carried dangerously close to the sea. Some were dragged into the water, held aloft by enthusiastic—and I imagine not very risk-averse—devotees.
We wandered a bit. We sat in wet sand. We drank down our water supply. I clipped off a few more photos. We asked when it was all going to begin. "Soon,” everyone said. "It’ll happen soon.”
"Any idea just when?”
"Three, maybe.”
"It’ll start right after lunch.”
"Four, I think. Later.”
"Now, I think. Just wait.”
"I don’t know.”
Finally, someone answered us straight: "It’ll start when the gods say it’ll start.”
I noticed one woman, fortyish, apple-shaped with a wide-face, standing alone and staring at the ocean.
Gods don’t wait for human thirst, so we didn’t trek back to the market for fear that it would begin without us. A second slapdash congregation of food vendors had popped up at the entrance to the beach.
You could hear the drums, and now some of them had entwined their previously disjointed cacophony and beat out a steady, entranci
ng rhythm.
It was then that I noticed the man next to me was shaking.
His hand rose and fell. It looked as if he was doing musical kung fu, conducting a martial-arts orchestra. He lifted his head toward the glowering sun. His lips shook and his knees wobbled, but he did not fall.
I heard a moan, quite distinct, from the bubbling of the waves at my back. It wasn’t coming from the shaking man, though. It was coming from the water. The woman I’d seen before was now standing knee deep. Someone had tied a red sash around her waist, and she was moving her arms in circles as she cried.
The man had a red sash now, as well. His movements grew more elaborate and he was holding a bundle of burning incense. He uttered a long, deliberate "OooooooOOOoooh” and slowly put the incense, burning end first, into his mouth.
It was starting.
An old man I had seen three years before ran up to my left. He was compact and grey-haired, with teddy-bear features. He dangled a spiked ball from a cord and shouted at the sea, talking to the waves.
Two men—one older, with grey hair and heavy-lidded eyes; one younger, with smooth, tan skin and a buzz cut—stood near each other. They were gazing serenely across the mayhem erupting down the shoreline. Both had pins the thickness of drinking straws in their cheeks. One turned; he also had flags of the kind often found on the back of Chinese folk gods piercing his back, his skin folded to hold them in place. A man near them was beating his back bloody with a spiked club wound with red thread. A woman in a long white robe was grunting and doing tai chi-like moves with her hands. A man holding an aluminum sword cut his own shoulder blade in one fluid motion. Another, holding an idol, got a wild look in his eyes and began to dance slowly, one leg in the air, knees bent, hopping and twisting. He danced with the man with the sword, the idol hoisted into the air and waved about as though its thick wooden weight were nothing.
How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit? True Stories of Expat Women in Asia Page 8