Song of the Silk Road

by Mingmei Yip

  Outside the museum, we walked for a while and soon found a bench in a quiet corner shadowed by a heavy-foliaged tree.

  We sat down. Alex looked me in the eyes and uttered softly, “Lily, I was adopted.”

  The statement came as a surprise. “Oh….” I didn’t know what more to say.

  “It’s OK.” He covered my hand with his for a moment, then went on. “My mom and dad had been married for years, but Mom could not conceive. So they decided to adopt. Dad’s friend, a gynecologist, told him about me, a perfect baby, whose mother had a healthy pregnancy—no diseases or drugs. She was Chinese from Taiwan—a theater student.”

  So he was half Chinese—I wondered, what was the other half?

  He chuckled at my intense scrutiny; now his eyes appeared the same shade as the temple roof in the far distance.

  “Something funny, Alex?”

  “No, ironic. I was an extremely coveted baby for a couple desperate to adopt. But my own mother didn’t want me.”

  “Do you know why your Chinese mother gave you up?”

  He shook his head while staring at an elderly couple playing with a chubby toddler under that far-off temple roof.

  “What about your biological father, you know anything about him?”

  He turned back to me. “Only that he’s American.”

  So Alex was Eurasian—he seemed to have gotten the best from two ethnicities.

  He went on. “Even after they adopted me, my parents still tried to conceive. But it never happened, and so they began to fight and ended up divorcing. Then, somehow, they both had children with someone else.”

  This was a story even juicier than my Chinese family saga novel in progress. But I hid my smile and asked instead, “Then what happened?”

  “After their divorce, I lived alternately with Mom and Dad, their new spouses, and my two sort-of half brothers.”

  “Do you get along with them?”

  “I know my place in their families.” His voice came out low-watted.

  I put my hand on his shoulder, then, feeling his body heat, quickly withdrew it.

  He looked happy again. Was it due to the physical contact, brief as it was?

  “Your parents nice to you now?”

  Alex lowered his head, thinking. Silhouetted against the clear, distant sky, his profile was etched in the air like a haiku—simple, crisp, sharp.

  “Yes and no. I believe they still care about me, but I also think they care more about their biological children, although they try not to show it.”

  “Do you know where your biological mother is?”

  “No. Only that after she gave me up for adoption, she went back to Taiwan.”

  I remained silent, not knowing what more to say.

  Suddenly his face lit up. “Soon my parents will be visiting me here in China for a few weeks.”

  Poor kid, he looked so happy just to have a few weeks with his parents, not even blood relatives.

  Some silence, then I asked, “Alex, what are you doing here in China?”

  “Sightseeing, but mostly trying to improve my Chinese.”

  Moments of silence passed, then he asked again, “Can we… travel together?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “But why not, since you’re traveling alone?”

  Yes, why not? My aunt Mindy Madison did not specify that I couldn’t make friends during my journey. I was still very tempted to have him along for company, but I hardly knew him. What if he learned about my inheritance?

  Though my heart was melting, my voice came out firm. “Hey, Alex, look, you seem to be a smart young man. Very nice, too. But I’m older than you. You’re just a kid, and this is a kid’s fantasy. You need to find someone your age.”

  “I am not a kid and you are not old.”

  “I’m twenty-nine, and you’re only twenty-one. Alex, please, I don’t want to take care of a younger brother when I have enough problems myself.” Of course I couldn’t tell him the real reason—my inheritance. I swallowed hard.

  “That doesn’t matter. I like you and want to travel with you.”

  I blurted out, “Jesus, Alex! Stop being ridiculous and acting like a child!”

  “Stop calling me a child!” he retorted.

  A young Chinese couple walking out from the museum turned to stare at us.

  A long, awkward silence.

  Finally I said, “Alex, we’re basically strangers.”

  “You’re a traveler, an adventurer. I am, too, so I think we’re very compatible.”

  I gave him an annoyed look. “But you have no idea why I’m traveling and what I do when I’m not traveling.”

  “Then why don’t you tell me?”

  This kid was really persistent. And annoying.

  “Alex, I really don’t want any company. Please accept that.”

  He cast a dour glance at me, his expression frozen. “You really mean that?”

  “Yes!”

  “You sure?”

  I nodded.

  “All right then, good-bye.” He stood up abruptly and walked away.

  After a few steps, Alex turned back to stare at me, his eyes fierce and sad—seemingly awaiting a signal from me to return. But I waved good-bye, hardening my heart like the thousand-year-old stone tablet we’d left behind in the museum.

  I felt more than a little sad and guilty. Now I wished I hadn’t discarded Alex Luce as if he were my old calendar, or my worn-out running shoes. The kid did seem genuinely concerned about me and wanted my company. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a young man’s company, if not for his youth and beauty to feed my vanity, at least for some pleasant background noise to fill my vacuity? But I warned myself—a dessert-sweet romance should be pushed to the bottom, if not totally off, of my Silk Road menu. What I should be putting on the table now was nothing but the financially nutritious entrées—Dunhuang, Xinjiang, the Mountains of Heaven, Turpan, and finally the Go-In-But-Never-Come-Out Taklamakan Desert.

  Early the next morning, I headed down to the hotel’s simple dining room, gobbled down a steaming bun and scalding hot rice soup, then went back to my room. I quickly packed, checked out, hopped into a taxi, then boarded my flight to Jiayu Guan. I thought of visiting the famous pass with its legendary Great Wall fortress and painted bricks from a thousand-year-old tomb, but I couldn’t wait to go to Dunhuang. So as soon as I got off the plane, I took a five-hour train ride to the Land of Grand Prosperity, then a bus to Mogao.

  Although Dunhuang was not a required destination, I decided—before undertaking the daunting tasks on the Mountains of Heaven—to treat myself to some aesthetic relief by visiting Mogao’s exquisite Buddhist treasures.

  I read that starting from the fourth century, pilgrims, scholars, and especially Buddhist monks passing through this section of the Silk Road decided to stay here to meditate and translate sutras. However, the first cave had not been built until 366 CE by a Buddhist monk who had a vision of thousands of golden dancing lights and a thousand Buddhas. Thus the Mogao Caves are also called Caves of the Thousand Buddhas.

  Later, during the religious persecutions in the Tang dynasty, Buddhist monks had come here to hide both themselves and their treasures inside the caves dug by their own hands. They transported hundreds of thousands of treasures across the desert in mule carts and carried them up the cliffs on their own backs.

  So long after the cave shrines were built, most of the fifteen-hundred-year-old manuscripts, sculptures, and wall paintings had miraculously remained intact as if the monks’ spirits still traveled through the dim corridors to tell us in the present day of their sufferings and triumphs.

  Now, of course, all the monks had long turned into mummies—at least metaphorically—and the Buddhist hideout had become a tourist attraction.

  After getting out of the big bus with the other tourists, feeling the hot wind in my face, I headed straight to the Mogao Tourist Office. At the ticket counter, to the surprise and delight of the skinny salesgirl, I asked for a three-hour priv
ate tour.

  She exclaimed while giving me a once-over, “Welcome to Mogao, the Louvre of the East!”

  Maybe she was wondering, how could this ordinary-dressed young woman afford such a luxury, unaware that I’d been savoring the delicious papery texture of the thick pile of renminbi and U.S. dollars in my pants pocket for some time now. Anyway, I figured three hours of private time should be enough to brush shoulders with beauty.

  After I told Little Zhang—my young, neatly dressed guide—that I was short on time, she smiled politely. “Miss, then I’ll first take you to see something very special in cave number 108.”

  She led me on a short walk before we turned a corner where the cliff face of Mogao revealed its full-fledged majesty in front of my eyes. I held my breath at the stunning site—beehivelike cave temples surrounded by the vast expanse of sand, above which sat a boundless patch of sky in royal blue. More than a thousand years ago the monks, with nothing but their bare hands and a few primitive tools, had carved out the whole mountain to build these temples in the midst of golden infinity.

  “Amazing, isn’t it? The whole temple built at the precipice of Mingsha Mountain.” The Mount of Singing Sand.

  Before I could respond, she pointed upward to a cave. “You think you can make it up there?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Don’t worry, it looks steep, but the climb is actually not that hard.”

  After about fifteen minutes, during which the relentless sun, fierce concentration, and unsettling silence took over, we finally arrived at the entrance to the cave. She led me inside an officelike area where a young man was arranging paper, pens, pencils, plastic trays, small boxes, and other paraphernalia on a wooden desk.

  “Hi. How come only one guest?” the young fellow asked, giving me a suspicious once-over. “A bad day?”

  Zhang hit his shoulder with her small fist, giggling. “You know very well that’s a good day. Less work and more money.”

  “All right, now go do your job, we’ll talk later.”

  Zhang sent him a flirtatious glance, then handed me a small flashlight and motioned me to follow her into the dim interior. “Every cave here has this narrow entrance leading to the main chamber. This is to protect the cave and its art from the sunlight.”

  Walking in front of me, she directed her light to shine on depictions of flying goddesses playing musical instruments, while continuing to explain in her tourist guide’s singsong voice, “Although this cave is more than one thousand years old, it is very well preserved. See, all the colors—malachite green, ochre, lapis lazuli—all still vibrant with only minimum damage.”

  Seeing the turquoise of one goddess’s robe unbelievably luminous, my finger, as if suddenly possessed by an independent will, reached to touch.

  Quickly Zhang grabbed my wrist. Her move was so sudden and her grip so sharp and strong that I let out a loud “Aiiiiya!”

  “Sorry,” she said, without looking as if she were, “you cannot touch. Any slight human contact will cause severe damage. Miss, if everyone is curious like you, these frescoes will be gone in no time!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, not meaning it either. Bitterness and depression always engulfed me when I could not touch what was beautiful.

  But soon after we stepped inside the main room, both my bitterness and depression fizzled out like bubble water.

  A huge, towering Guan Yin, the Goddess of Compassion, looked down at me with lowered eyes. Gigantic yet refined, her face exuded compassion. I followed her hands up to a small Buddha sitting on the front of her bejeweled crown. Orange-pink, maroon, and turquoise ribbons flew out from behind her brown robe, frolicking in intricately choreographed dances. The goddess looked so powerful and her energy so strong that all my own negative energy was extinguished—even my annoyance at Zhang.

  Just when I was in the process of being purified by this stunning image, Zhang’s voice rose next to my ears. “This is a Tantric Guan Yin done eight hundred years ago. Named Thousand-Arms Guan Yin, she could reach out to help the many needy beings in the sea of suffering. She…”

  I cut off her rote recitation. “Little Zhang, do you mind leaving me alone with Guan Yin for a few minutes?”

  She cast a curious glance at me, as if asking why would I want to be alone when I’d paid extra for the private tour? “All right, but make sure you don’t touch anything and give me your camera. I’ll be waiting at the office.” She had barely finished when her scrawny hand reached out to snatch away my camera. Then her small feet swiftly carried her petite frame outside the cave.

  With Guan Yin all to myself, I quietly admired her serene face, her flowing robe, and the glowing halo behind her back. My desire to take pictures had vanished like the morning dew. Now I did not want to disturb the goddess’s peace or remember her beauty through mere sheets of glossy paper. I stared at her, trying to burn her image into my mind, so it would never get lost but would stay with me till the end of my days.

  More meditative moments passed, then a realization struck me. The circle framing the goddess’s back was not a huge halo but a disc painted with hundreds of compact arms.

  The image was so powerful that I fell back a step. Or was I being pushed by the goddess’s overwhelming qi?

  Captivated by this thousand-year-old, thousand-armed woman, I slowly moved my eyes to meet hers. Besides the pair on her face, there was another on her forehead and one on each of her thousand extended palms. I felt my body floating in a trance, enjoying the delicious sensation of riding waves of her powerful yet gentle vibrations. Then something strange happened.

  Guan Yin was crying.

  Tears flooded from her eyes, not only those on her face but all her other eyes in unison.

  My heart knocked against my ribs.

  To my disbelief, something more happened.

  The goddess’s innumerable eyes were moving around as if to scrutinize the room. Her thousand arms made circular movements like an octopus’s tentacles, choreographing some mystical dance in the surreal space….

  I pinched my own cheeks, then rubbed my eyes. “No, this can’t be real. I’m just hallucinating!”

  In fact, I didn’t want to know the truth. I wanted to keep this experience in a secret chamber of my heart, safely locked away forever. Does the truth always matter?

  As I hurried toward the exit, I felt the goddess’s many blinking hands reaching out toward my sweating back….

  I ran to the office, snatched my camera back from Zhang, dashed down the stairs to level ground, and climbed onto the first available bus back to Dunhuang.

  5

  Xinjiang—New Frontier

  That night I stayed at a hotel in Dunhuang. As I lay awake in bed, through my mind floated the image of Guan Yin with her thousand weeping eyes and waltzing arms. Had the goddess tried to tell me something? To be more compassionate—since we sentient beings are all suffering in one way or another on this polluted planet? That I should have been nicer to Alex Luce?

  Apparently, my ability to “see” was still very much alive after all these years.

  As a child, my acute sensitivity to vibrations from other dimensions made me “the little girl who sees things.” Most adults dismissed my “seeing” as a lonely child’s overactive imagination, but a few, mostly older Chinese, asked me to “lend my eyes” to explain mysteries, communicate with the dead, and visit an apartment before its purchase to see if it was still infested with “unclean” presences.

  My ability to “see” had started when I was a child and my mother was accused of stealing a stack of cash from the church where she worked as a cleaning lady. No one could prove if she had really taken the money or if it had been stolen by someone else. I was four, an age when Chinese believe a child can see through all the contaminations of this world down to the bare truth. So, a church member who was a master of Xuanguang Shu, Magic of the Mysterious Light, suggested they use me to find the truth. Of course no one told me what this was all about. I was just asked to tell wh
at I saw.

  So one day, surrounded by the church board members and the minister, the man performed his magic by casting a light onto the wall, then asked me if I saw anything. I told them that a bald man in a checkered shirt went inside a room, opened a drawer, took out something, and put it in his pocket. After that, the accusation against my mother was dropped.

  And my reputation spread. But I hated it when a grinning adult face would thrust itself in front of me, and out of its mouth shot the inevitable, saliva-sprayed-in-all-directions question, “Honey, can I borrow your eyes for a sec?”

  Once, to spite an annoying, ugly-as-death, middle-aged man, I spat back with a thick dollop of mouth water, “Yes! Now, right in front of me, I am seeing you, your debt collectors, your dead wife, your cooked dogs and cats!”

  Unfortunately, at less than four feet in height, I failed to create the arc necessary for my dollop of mouth water to reach his face, so it just landed pathetically on his shoe. However, my dollop’s failed mission was offset by my curse’s successful one. The man dashed away as if he’d just been summoned by the King of Hell with a megaphone.

  Seeing him flee, I laughed till tears spilled from my eyes, blurring my would-be-ten-dollar vision—the price he’d offered to pay for the use of my “eyes.”

  After this incident, I kept to myself what I saw of yin things trespassing into the yang sphere. In fact, I made a deliberate effort to suppress, or ignore, my yin eye.

  But now, all by myself in this remote land, I believed that my other-worldly vision, after all these years, was trying to sneak back like a discarded mistress….

  The following morning, I woke up at six to catch the twelve-hour train ride to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang—a Muslim oasis city in China’s westernmost province.

  I decided to stay at the relatively expensive Welcome Guest Hotel, which cost me one hundred fifty renminbi a night for the cheapest room (the most expensive was five hundred), in the hope that the staff of this international hotel would provide me with information about habitable places near the Mountains of Heaven—the second destination on my Silk Road journey.