We’re nowhere. No town, no people, no animals. No sounds, no movement. Huge sky, green hills, muddy road. Anton stands beside me, taking it all in. He points and we start up the smaller road. He’s a tall, sort of wiry fellow, slight but strong, with fine blond hair he parts on the left. Calm and quiet, he—Does he open himself to what the world brings? Does he trust himself, others, strangers, women? I don’t ask.
We round a hillside and cross a vast plateau of lush verdure, and with each step I feel my limbs awaken and my lungs fill with sweet, sharp air. Ahead, we spy towering rock walls that are half sedimentary strata and half lava-like igneous formations. We stare at the shifting shades of burgundy, orange, and black rock but have no theory for what geology formed it. We’re at the very confluence of China’s greatest mountain ranges: the Himalaya, Daxue, Kunlun, and Qinling.
The road runs alongside a river, and our feet sink an inch into the road as it turns to mud. We crest a hill, and the village of Langmusi lies before us, a small hamlet with crisscrossing dirt roads, houses made from wood beams and adobe brick, and crescent moons astride tall spires. High on a hillside, across town, a small Tibetan monastery perches, crowned with red, gold, and green tiered roofs. Hui Muslims and Tibetans seem to share the town, as they did the larger Xiahe. Apparently Tibetans predominate here in Langmusi.
Children rush up and walk alongside us as we enter town, touching our legs and our backpacks, but they don’t ask for pens, or for anything else. Passing a blocky concrete hotel that is even more out of place in this venerable town than the one was in Luqu, I realize there are essentially two architectural styles in China: the old style, which is hand-crafted, thoughtful, and ornate; and this one, the new style, functional, Bauhaus, anonymous, glorifying modernity without frivolities. Thanks to the Cultural Revolution, 95% of China seems to demonstrate the new style. Two Tibetan cowboys wearing the traditional beads and red headscarves step out of the door of the hotel.
Anton and I continue on and step into a low-roofed Hui restaurant. Its sign indicates it’s qīngzhēn (Muslim), a place in which the meat is prepared scrupulously in accordance with Islamic law. The tables are made of a chocolate-hued wood, and bright tomatoes and clumps of scallions hang on the wall beside the kitchen. Coal smoke hangs in the air. Old men wearing white skullcaps look up as we take an open table by the door. Before long a cook brings us piping hot bowls of noodle soup, and thick steam redolent of garlic and lamb rushes into my face, cleansing my sinuses. I grab the chunks with chopsticks and hold the bowl to my lips to drink the broth. Anton orders a pot of Eight Treasures Tea, a tasty blend of fermented tea, rock sugar, chrysanthemum flowers, and dried fruit. The meal feels like a private banquet.
We discuss politics and war, and Anton too suggests I look into the history of America and its military. “Is there a blameless land?” I ask.
“There are a couple,” he says. “Not many. But there are a few that deserve most of the blame.”
“Maybe love and war are man’s only real passions,” I say. There’s a long pause.
“Man’s, maybe,” he says. “Women seem to have other ones.”
“And maybe they’re also man’s only real fears?” I ask.
Anton turns reticent, and we leave the restaurant and climb the winding road to the monastery. The white walls are covered by gigantic brown tapestries, each of which is embroidered with mysterious white symbols: twin fish kissing in an upside-down heart, interlocking diamonds with wings, a compass wheel with eight spokes. We climb the stone steps tentatively, and pause below the tapestries, not wanting to trespass or interrupt. A slow drumbeat rises from within, like a heartbeat, and it grows in volume until a deep human chant joins in. We sit on the stairs to listen. Haloed by the sacred sounds and the scent of incense, we gaze upon the valley stretching before us: Below on our right stands a stupa—a sacred Tibetan stone tower that resembles a chess pawn; further down, nestled in a crease in the terrain, the village’s hundred peaked wooden roofs huddle together; beyond the homes, jutting into a dazzling sky, naked rocky mountaintops touch the clouds. Behind us, the chanting continues. I notice my breathing slow down, down to the pace of the drumbeat, down to the pace of the clouds. There in my inner silence is regret, welling up inside me, whole, full, abiding, staining everything, like the saddle bruise.
Two monks in burgundy robes step through the tapestry above us and sit on the top stair quietly. The chanting fades to a hum, then to silence. One monk gathers his robes, stands, and invites us in, so we follow him up the stairs, through the tapestries, and into a large, candle-lit chamber of Buddhist paintings and sculptures. Giant trumpets and a gong stand near the door. Enthroned in the center of the room is a statue of the Buddha, showing a broad, peaceful, welcoming palm to us. The monk guides us through a curtain, into an area where five monks kneel around a low table. They huddle over something resembling a blueprint.
When we get close enough, we see it’s actually a giant sheet of white parchment covered with piles of bright red, blue, yellow, and green sand. The monks are carefully scratching sticks on long wooden pens in order to sprinkle sand onto the paper a few grains at a time. We watch for a while. It will take years to cover the whole sheet. Anton asks about this, and amazingly, the monk says it will be finished for the festival on Friday, two days away. “It’s a mandala,” he explains, “a map of heaven.” Lines of colored sand make concentric circles, leading to the center, but there are all kinds of geometric interruptions: flights of fancy, lions, dragons. I watch grains the hue of fresh spinach fall into place, one at a time, becoming part of a diamond. Each grain commands its own moment. Beside the diamond is a yellow lion, then a blue tree.
One monk tells a joke in Tibetan and looks up at me with a smile. A young monk with a flattened nose motions me over and asks if my shirt is silk. I shake my head, letting him touch it. I ask him how the mandala will be used in the festival, but my Mandarin must be wrong, because he tells me instead how they make it. He gestures for me to kneel next to him, so I place my knees on a red cushion, and bow my head beside theirs, barely a foot above the exquisite map. He takes one of the ridged straw-like implements and hands it to me. I point to my untrained hand, shake my head, and chuckle. Again, I ask about using the mandala at the festival, and he finally nods and says it’s important, something to do with prayers and blessings.
“And the mandala?” I ask.
“We dump it into the river.”
“The river?”
A monk sprinkling blue looks up at me. “To remember the transience of human undertaking.”
His words ring in my brain. I try to imagine an American spending days on something and then destroying it, but all I can see is how different an hour with the mandala is from an hour at an American college or business. Most Americans are guided by something they’re chasing—pursuit of achievement, pursuit of pleasure, pursuit of happiness. This is about something else, a different happiness, a happiness not bound to the fulfillment of desires. It’s a happiness bound to something that already exists.
The grains continue to fall from their wands, and the mandala takes shape, comprising four artistically distinct quadrants. Nothing but this world—this mandala—will occupy the minds of these monks until it is completed; they follow their life’s path with an acuity I’ve never before seen.
Some time later I step back outside with Anton. The sky is split between good and evil. Thick, dark clouds have rolled in right next to the deep blue we admired before, and the rocky crags now appear black and menacing. Yellow sunlight still glints off the green and gold eaves above us, and we hike up the hillside behind the temple onto a grassy plateau at the same altitude as the fat honey sun. A white tent stands at the far edge of the plateau, overlooking Langmusi and its valley. We cross the plateau towards the tent, out of which a crowd of young monks rush en masse. They approach us, surround us, and with curious smiles on their faces pelt us with questions. We answer as best we can, watching their eyes search to understand. They
look about twelve, but they’re already in robes of fiery crimson, brick red, and day-glow fuchsia. Their heads are shaven. All of us sit down together in the thick grass and white wildflowers, but of course we can’t convey the other world. “Are you Christian? Is college difficult? Are cars expensive?” Like everyone, they assume Americans are very rich, so I say some Americans are poor and explain many need loans to go to college if they can go at all.
They show us their campground. With just a tiny campfire to battle imminent night, it reminds me of camping I did as a boy, carefree. This may be their obligation. The youngsters find the same pleasure the teenagers on the bus did in tinkering with our watches and wallets; my Swiss Army knife mystifies one mischievous young monk; another flips open the lens of my camera. My mind is suddenly invaded by Michiko—that honey in her hair, the taste of her skin—and I feel her presence and see her suffering, pregnant, missing me. My mouth goes dry. I blink and silently make myself a teacher for the young monks. How about a skit? How about if we do a skit about freedom, about choices, about women?
Anton produces a photo of the Dalai Lama, and the boys rejoice so openly that it forces me back into the moment, now. Ah, my lungs open, and I could give away everything, all my possessions, just to share, just to keep breathing, just to keep giving and receiving. Perhaps I could even give away this anger, this regret, as if it were a thing. They toss around my camera, and I feel a different, materialistic anxiety, and I voice it. I ask the one holding my camera if he’s ever taken a photo before.
His face is pure innocence. “No.”
Everybody laughs.
“Look through here,” I point. “When you can see all of us, push this button.” The sun is sinking behind the distant peaks, but its last rays shine fiercely, striking us between the eyes. The young novice takes a photograph of…heaven only knows. “Thanks,” I say, grateful for the picture, for the honesty, for the reminder of so much I’d forgotten. Months into my future, in a different land, at a different elevation, I will discover this monk’s magical, perfect, innocent photograph.
A cold wind whips up, and the boys tell us an address to use when sending Dalai Lama portraits, and then we all embrace and shake hands. They show us a steep shortcut down to town. Anton and I wish them well and descend the path. I remind him of his words about caution, since pictures of the Dalai Lama could be caught in the mail inspection and get the monks into trouble. He eyes the piece of cardboard scratched with Chinese characters. “I can’t really read this address anyway. Too bad nobody out here ever has a pen.”
Thick, orange mud cakes our shoes, and when we reach the streets we stop to kick it off in a village square. Kids of all ages are playing, chasing a soccer ball, playing cards, or just sitting in the dirt; a gaunt, smiling, toothless man sells soft drinks. One by one, they all stop to wave at us as we pass by.
“Would you live here?” I turn to Anton.
“It’s nice,” he murmurs, as we stop at a water wheel where the river runs through town. We watch the current turn the wheel.
“Living right in the middle of town might be trouble,” I say. “But who would know if some guy just pitched a tent up in the hills? How long would I last?”
He smiles. “I doubt China has much of an immigration policy. They wouldn’t know what to do. I mean, how many immigrants has China had in the last fifty years?”
I peer up at the hills.
“A few Koreans, I guess,” he answers his own question.
“I could live here, though. What worries would I have? A bank account with a few thousand dollars, and I’m set for a decade.”
“It’s beautiful now, but what about the next revolution? As they say, ‘The Kingdom long divided must unite, the Kingdom long united must divide.’”
“Good point. I guess in America I could live a peaceful, inexpensive life too, people just don’t. People want to get rich and have everything. We’re so stupid.”
“Free, I think, is what we say.”
“Free.” I try out the word. “Free. The advertising makes us want big cars and homes and perfect spouses and all of that, and to get enough money we take jobs that stress us out. We’d be a better country if everyone came here for a while.”
Raindrops test the air, and we step into the Bauhaus hotel to get a room. I climb into one of the two beds and listen to the precipitation ring on the metal roof for an hour before my mind dissolves into sleep.
Anton is on a tight schedule and decides in the morning to leave Langmusi. I consider my alternatives and opt to move on with him. The woman at the hotel desk informs us that a bus usually swings by that curve in the road “around two in the afternoon.”
A man near the front door shakes his head. “It comes around noon.”
We breakfast at Momma Jun’s, which has only two tables, and we ask Momma Jun herself. A sturdy woman in a traditional Tibetan woman’s black dress, brilliant sky blue apron, and scarlet headscarf, she says, “Ten or eleven.” Anton and I chuckle at the disparate intelligence we’ve gathered. She serves us fruit, tangy yogurt, Eight Treasures Tea, and husky slices of local bread. Onions, eggs, and tomatoes sizzle in her big black pan, then land on our plates.
Bellies warm, we leave right away. Children run alongside us, screaming goodbyes, petting or punching our legs. The river, swollen from excessive rain, has forgotten its banks and rushes along carelessly beside the road. A truck barrels by and kicks fistfuls of wet earth up at us, making us dodge and slip on the bank. Anton nearly falls into the stream. I throw him a hand, and he regains his footing.
Chapter 29
Storms, Death, and Six Dollars
When the breath ceases…
the knower will experience the clear light
of the natural condition.
—Tibetan Book of the Dead
Rain runs down the Himalayan foothills, carving little paths in the orange earth at our feet. Anton is shivering. There are others here too at the bend in the road: A Tibetan family of four—father, mother, daughter, and son—huddle under a translucent sheet of plastic. I hold my poncho close as the downpour pitter-patters to me about the long journey north these summer monsoons make from Bangladesh.
A white bus bounces down the mountainside. The Tibetans remain on the ground, but we lăowài practically do jumping jacks in our ponchos. The bus approaches, passes, never slows, and the Chinese tourists behind the wet windowpanes apparently don’t even notice us. To amuse myself I call them “Taiwanese,” a word that connotes “foreigner.” In Beijing, this was blasphemy. Taiwan is a part of China; all Taiwanese people are renegades who fled the mainland; China must fight to defend its unity and sovereignty. But out here, who cares? Who cares if there’s a world war over Taiwan? In the middle of this cold muddy nowhere, as the bus flees from sight, I blaspheme freely.
At least it’s gorgeous. The hills around us are ridiculously green from all the rain, the road is a stripe of dark mahogany, and a silvery river dances down a nearby hillside. An hour passes by, and I hike fifty yards to where the river crosses beneath the road, discovering a dry hideout under a stone bridge. I call to Anton, suggesting we take turns at lookout, and he yells back his approval. I doff my pack and rest in the dryness, listening to the rush of the monsoon overhead, letting my eyes and mind flow with the stream. The quiet artistry of the monks replays in my mind. I picture the red, green, yellow, and blue sands slipping off of the mandala, falling into the currents, swimming by, carrying away my troubles, their troubles, everyone’s troubles. Today they will finish the enormous mosaic, and at a festival tomorrow they will bring it to this river. The vision of this dispassionate destruction, this earthly consecration of a map of heaven, captivates my mind as the water becomes my world. Now. It happens now. Everything, now. The end, now. The beginning, now. The present expands to envelop me, to envelop all possibilities, and I’m floating in the clouds, swimming in warm seas, doing everything I’ve ever done, simultaneously, right now. Hours, weeks, months go by.
An
ton switches places with me; he’s almost ready to give up. I can see why when I’m back up in the storm, the cold shoving my mind into this moment. This blue sweater scratches my neck but keeps me cozy while it reminds me of her. I wear it every day now for its closeness and insulation, but it seems to chain lodestones around my neck. Do I have a disease? Is she pregnant? Am I bound to her forever? Am I bound to be alone? It hugs my chest, constricting, loosening, constricting.
Through the rain, a huge sky-blue truck crashes down the slope and blows its horn. I flail my arms and legs and call to Anton. The behemoth with a wooden trailer actually slows down on the bridge, sending my spirits soaring. It lurches to a stop right in front of me. A boyish head shoots out of the passenger-side window. “Hello?”
The tired English word melts my anger, sweeter than the yoútiáo honey wand in Luqu.
“Whither dost thou go?” I use my most polite Mandarin.
“Lande,” he says.
Not that it matters. “Old master,” I say. “Could we possibly get a ride?”
He throws open the door like the gate of St. Peter, and we pull ourselves up into the cab as he moves to a small back seat. Anton and I sit in front, too delighted with the warm and dry to follow what he’s saying about some “crazy brother.” The musty air and cigarette smoke smell comforting, almost refreshing, as we arrange our bags and ponchos on the floor, trying not to slog in too much mud.
“Where are you from?” The guy leans forward. His Mandarin has a heavy Tibetan accent, and his white work shirt is unbuttoned halfway down his chest. He looks about twenty. Beside him in the backseat sits a young woman with a calm, noncommittal smile.
“America,” I say, sighing, invoking home for the thousandth time. “A long way away.” The driver’s seat is empty, and the door stands wide open.
“He’s checking the wheels,” the young man explains. “It’s a heavy load today.” Leaning back, he extracts a cigarette from a tan pack, lights up, and offers us the pack.
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