Double Happiness: One Man's Tale of Love, Loss, and Wonder on the Long Roads of China

by Tony Brasunas

  A thin, brown-skinned Tibetan in ragged clothes boards the bus and points to my seat. I rise to give him the window. He lands tiredly on the vinyl and wedges his ancient canvas sack by his knee. A deep cough convulses his whole body, and a disgusting stench wafts over my face. I turn involuntarily to the aisle to inhale. Glancing sideways, I watch his head drop between his knees as he coughs up something wet and fist-sized, like a spleen. He looks at me with bloodshot eyes and then stands to open the window. He expectorates phlegm laced with blood out into the day. With a moan, he crumples back into his chair, and slowly reaches into his jacket… for a cigarette. He sucks in smoke, exhales a gray cloud, and then doubles over and hacks violently. I’m torn between revulsion, compassion, and fascination—this isn’t just gănmào, the ubiquitous Chinese cough; this is tuberculosis, lung cancer, death.

  SMASH! The man’s head crashes against the glass window like a wrecking ball. He holds his head rigidly erect again, eyes closed, trying to sleep. We bounce along and pitch sideways on boulders—BANG!—his head crashes again and his eyes fly open and dart about, then droop, then close. I wonder which will come first: death by bronchitis, or unconsciousness by concussion. He leans towards me, onto me, onto my shoulder. His filthy ear and hair roll around on me, and I shudder and shrug him off. He holds his head erect again. Instinctively, I realize something—others’ death won’t kill me. It doesn’t work that way. I allow him to sleep on my shoulder. Past his head, out the window, there’s nothing but sky. He won’t last much longer, this dying Tibetan—one more dying Tibetan, after so many have been treated so horribly by the Han.

  I switch seats with him, to make his ride safer and mine more relaxed, and his head lolls out into the aisle. Now I see much more: green mountainsides, the thin edge of the rocky road below us, and miles further down, a tiny river. I open Narcissus, and Goldmund is back at the monastery, the school, his childhood home, and the end is near. With Narcissus, he discusses the meaning of everything, the existence of God. He speaks with the passion of his heart and the honed acuity of his senses, while Narcissus speaks with the rigor and perspicuity of his mind. To Goldmund, God has created the world badly—full of blindness, suffering, and cruelty. But he sets to work carving magical images for the cloister pulpit, and a new joy and love of creation—and then a new wanderlust—overtake him. He strikes off once again, into the world, alone. This time, however, the world is too big, too hard, too cruel, and it breaks his bones and steals his health. He finally returns to the cloister to die. He lies spellbound, imagining without worry that his heart is being plucked from his ribs by the source of love and life, the eternal Mother. He accepts everything, releases everything, trusts everything. His last words are to Narcissus. “Love. Without love one cannot live, without love one cannot die.”

  The story ends, and with hacking and drooling Death beside me, and patiently waiting Death at my right, darting like a bird through empty space, I feel Goldmund’s death inside me. A strength suddenly ripples through my body. I’m still alive.

  Everywhere across the vast valley things are beginning and breathing, or ending and wilting. Birth is everywhere; death is everywhere. Fear is new, created each moment that birth sees death. My birthed body, my animal, tenses at every bump that threatens to throw us off this narrow shelf, but my heart, mind, and soul worry not. They fear other things, bigger things, lessons they long to learn. The driver at the helm whips the wheel around the switchbacks, focused but unafraid. Yet if he sneezes, we die. My body is scared, and I leave the window open so that if we go over I can at least try to lunge for an outcropping. The body’s fear invigorates me. It’s the mind’s fear that can paralyze me. And yet it is the mind’s fear that also guides me—towards my blindnesses, towards the source of my inner power, towards union with my heart and soul. This is the paradox. We fear what we long for.

  Up ahead, a dozen boulders speckle the road. It’s road construction, and I recognize the method. Clever men set dynamite on the mountainside, run away, watch the explosion, then return and toss the resulting boulders over the edge. Voila! More road. But this stretch before us hasn’t been cleared yet—or else there was an avalanche. Yet we hurtle headlong, unabating. The driver indeed seems unafraid. Or lazy. Or blind. We don’t stop, we don’t slow down. Our front wheels slam into the rocks and the whole bus leaps skyward, flying towards the edge.

  In an instant of sudden silence, I die. Every molecule in me expands, explodes, and I fly—uprooted, unconnected to the world, free.

  The seat below my body crashes down, and the pulse of force rattles my bones like twigs. My mind returns to my body, and I notice my heart bouncing around in its cage like a madman. Two wheels are down in the boulders, the other two are floating at the edge, and we’re perched too close for anyone to leave through the customary door.

  I exhale. Out my window, I can see only the hairline river miles below, but when I lean out and look down, I can see two men pushing boulders under the front wheel, which hangs about a foot off the ground. The driver climbs back in and fires the engine. The world shakes, our wheels grab, and we roll up onto stone, forward, towards the middle of the road, and—BOOM!—the wheels land.

  Our descent carries us into a ragged, apricot sunset. Death gets out in a small farming village. Sichuan Province, looking like a bowl with serrated edges, welcomes our slide down from the mountains into the basin, the center, the capital city.

  Bland apartment towers in every faded shade of pink, yellow, and gray; bustling boulevards with authoritarian metal-fence medians; screeching car horns, ringing bicycle bells, and sidewalks full of gètĭhù vendors; cloying smells of garbage, sewage, and cigarettes; alluring fragrances of ginger, fish sauce, and roasting red peppers. I’m back in a large Chinese city.

  I walk down the sun-baked streets, through the crowds, kicking out the aches of the long ride, remembering Xi’an and my meditation in the Great Mosque as if it were long ago, realizing that the mind measures time not by minutes or days but by new experiences. Xi’an only seems like a year ago.

  This is Chengdu. Its broad noisy Liberation Avenue fades behind me as I turn onto a side street, hoping to find a hostel mentioned in the LP. This side street too is crowded, but it’s quieter. Women fix shoes, men repair motorcycles, and children play soccer; many stare at me, and I smile and wave back. The street narrows, and people brush by my elbows, carrying crates of bok choy, bags of potatoes, and buckets of fish. I walk right into a market that welcomes me back to China’s fertile lowlands: carts, piles, boxes, and barrels of oranges, pineapples, peanuts, eggs, eggplants, leeks, lettuce, yacote squash, bittermelons, and so much more. Hundreds of brown ducks with yellow bills waddle and quack in wire-fence corrals; thousands of silvery orange fish swim in countless shallow tin pans of water. Sellers call out to passersby, arrange their beans, nuts, or vegetables, or just lean back serenely in the shade. A pockmarked woman organizes bundles of green scallions on a cloth on the curb, and she waves to me vigorously. I stoop down, but I can’t understand her dialect, and so we just smile at each other. She rubs her fingers together and points at my face. Wondering if she wants money, I lean down so far that I can smell the earth clinging to the little roots on the round white bulbs. She grabs my beard. I pull back, but she smiles wistfully, rubbing her fingers together again. So I let her feel my beard, rub it between her fingers. I haven’t shaved in weeks. She beams at me, nodding up and down.

  My backpack makes me clumsy and makes me sweat more profusely in the afternoon heat. I weave through the crowds, but the hostel evades me down alley after twisting alley. I double back the other way, trying to decipher the signs. I can now read many of them: Dry Cleaning, Hair Salon, Bakery, Tea, Medicine. The hostel is nowhere to be found. I collapse for a rest on the curb, homeless, thinking back to my faraway home in America. It’s been forever. I go to a phone stand, slap down a five-mao note, and punch the buttons. “AT&T,” says the god of telecommunications, smiling whimsically at me after a series of otherworldly
clicks. Then there’s another voice. Tony? My son? God, it’s so good to hear from you! Your voice! Where are you? Chengdu? OK, I’ll look at a map. Are you OK? Yes, I’m fine, too. Dad wants to talk too. We all miss you. We’re doing well. A flight home? Hong Kong? I’ll try. Early August? See what I can do. Are you safe? The connection is bad. Are you? Safe? I love you.

  I put the phone down and let a sweet sensation work its way inside me. My wad of colorful rénmínbì notes is thinning, but it’s time for a nicer hostel. Chengdu is home to the Traffic Hotel, “the backpackers’ headquarters of western China,” according to the LP, and with a map I navigate my way there. I step through its doors into the lobby, and for the first time in forever I encounter a land of lăowài. Big noses protrude everywhere. To bring down the price, I share a room with a Danish couple. I listen to a double-earringed Scotsman sing Bob Marley as I shower in an immaculate bathroom. Everything is communal: a café where strangers share tables, a bookshelf of English-language novels, a bulletin board with friendly notes: “To Penelope Hudson, I left this morning and took the box of digestives. See you in Kunming on the 28th. We’ll conquer the elephants! Much love, Julia.”

  In the evening, after dinner, I find a note on my bed—from Anton! “Find me in room 417, Anton DeSales,” it says. I climb two flights of stairs and knock on the door, and, yes, there he is. We grin and catch up, and his roommate Dorjee, a tall Australian, ethnically Tibetan, laughs as we describe our latest journeys. We both share our stories, and, seemingly, a strange feeling of immortality, but Anton changes the subject when I feel it going there—to the spiritual, to the dimension of the unfolding soul—and this surprises me and disappoints me.

  Dorjee’s first comment comes when we discuss Tibet. In his thick accent he denounces the exploitation of what he calls “Tibetan Chic.” “People in Melbourne sell beads and clothes, and this whole…mystique. It’s disgusting. It has nothing to do with Tibet.”

  “Same thing in America,” Anton nods. “Rock bands work Tibet into their image. You should hear Richard Gere.”

  “At least people become more aware of Tibet, that it exists,” I say, removing my shoes to massage my feet.

  “But does it really help people understand anything?” Dorjee asks. “People just believe in the Tibet they’re sold, and see it the way they want to. Of course Tibet should regain its independence, but let’s be objective about it. You need to look at the States. You Americans lock up more people in prison than any other country. Work on your own oppression! Look at yourselves. You’re seen as loud and self-righteous. It’s the quieter people—people truly free who can look at their own shortcomings—who change the world.” His ponytail is swinging as he looks from Anton to me, and I absorb his words and admire his conviction.

  Anton brings up the other touchy T. To avoid war, he says, the island of Taiwan should just be recognized by the world as part of China. “It’s time. But we should draw up a new political model. Taiwan’s status should be more separate, more independent, and more secure than Hong Kong’s. Taiwan shouldn’t have to host any military, except maybe a tiny bit for national defense, and their own government should run everything.”

  “What happens to their democracy?” I ask.

  “They keep it and elect their own leaders. It will be more secure that way, rather than in this political ping-pong between China and the U.S.”

  Dorjee considers this. “We could grant the same status to Tibet. There’s a harmony to it. Taiwan’s current situation is unstable. Partially freeing Tibet would balance the karma, if you will, of partially abandoning the Taiwanese. Right? The two provinces would be tied together by a common system, an autonomy. It would actually be decent, honorable.”

  “That would be amazing, to grant that status to Tibet,” I say.

  “It would actually be decent,” repeats Dorjee.

  Anton is leaving bright and early for Xishuangbanna, so we renew our farewells, and I return downstairs to my solitude. The Danish couple are out. I open my journal and in a free flow write of my gratitude for the journey; for seeing, learning, and surviving; for the opportunity to wander through this beautiful world with this variety of people—not just Tibetans, Chinese, Americans, and the rest, but the variety within each group. Every person, like a waterfall, has a story, a beauty, an unexpected twist to discover, a trajectory and a velocity. Before closing the journal, I remove the letter to Michiko. I seal it in an envelope. I take it downstairs and listen as it slips from my fingers into a green mailbox.

  Sleep steals over me, and I dream of her. We are in some big, hot city, maybe Beijing, sitting in a college dorm room, gazing into each other’s eyes. The word “girlfriend” tumbles from her lips; she longs to stay with me; she says she isn’t pregnant; she asks what I would’ve done had she lied about pregnancy and asked for five hundred dollars; I laugh and feel great happiness; she really wants to know about the money; anxiety, confusion, and suspicion sweep over me; the dorm room vanishes and I’m riding a bicycle in city sunlight; she’s riding ahead of me but I cannot see her; my bicycle has no handle bars and I pitch forward; I remember that I can ride a bicycle no-handed; I lean my weight back over my hips and glide; the bicycle disappears and I’m on a horse, galloping on a country road. Sunbeams push open my eyelids. The blades of an electric fan blow air and sweat across my forehead. I roll out of bed.

  On a bike, I pedal through the busy boulevards in the hot, hazy Chengdu morning, pondering the dream. Immediately, intuitively, I accept its message: I’m fine, she’s fine, she’s carrying neither a disease nor a baby. It was a powerful dream. I gaze at the sky through the leaves of the trees. I lean back, no-handed for a moment, smiling around me at the avenue’s healthy gaggle of pedestrians, and one by one, young Chinese women catch my eye with their beauty and innocence, their conservative dress and sweet cuteness. I’m lost in thought, and the road turns to dirt, then to orange mud, and I find myself alone, stranded in a construction site. Is this another dream? Turning left, then right, I finally work my way back onto a paved road. To my amazement, my destination lies straight ahead: Qingyang Gong, western China’s most famous Taoist temple.

  My bike fits between two others in a long rack, and I lock it there. I step past two fiercely scowling statues tasked from time immemorial with scaring off evil spirits and barbarians. At a shoebox-sized admissions window, I appeal for a Chinese-priced ticket, but the girl inside only giggles and asks more questions. I duck to look at her as I answer. She sells me the cheap ticket but won’t return my residency permit. “I’m keeping this. I have to check on it.” She smiles mischievously, dimples denting her cheeks. I step through the enormous front doors into a stone-floored chamber with huge, lacquered black columns, calligraphy scrolls on the walls, and incense troughs exhaling fragrant clouds of smoke. The chamber opens before me, without a back wall, onto a complex of gardens that surround a golden pagoda. Supplicants mill about, chanting, planting sticks of incense, burning piles of fake money, praying while moving. I knock on the door to the ticket office, and two different girls motion me inside. The one who sold me the ticket has more questions: Where am I traveling? Where do I get my hair cut? Why is my Chinese so bad? Her name is Shihui, and she smiles as I offer self-deprecating answers, but she won’t return my permit.

  I change tactics and request a tour of the temple. “I know nothing about Taoism,” I explain hopefully.

  She goes quiet. She rolls the sleeves of her white tunic to her elbows but finally shakes her head. “Sorry. I have to sell tickets.”

  “There are three of you,” I say, looking from face to face. “And there’s no one in line.”

  I suggest that one of her friends come too, and this seems to convince her. She puts her hair up in a bun and leads me and the friend out and down the stone path and into the gardens. She walks right beside me, telling me Laotse himself visited this place when he was a boy. “He was the original author of the Tao Te Ching, right?” I ask. She nods and grabs my forearm, talking excite
dly. I barely catch a word. I just walk beside her, enjoying the sound of her voice and the brush of her fingers as she releases my arm. Around us, ginkgo trees exude their fresh floral fragrances. The friend, whose long hair flows all the way to the top of denim shorts, is less talkative, and there’s a gap in the conversation. I try to think up a clever question about Taoism, but for once I have nothing to say. I remain quiet and notice myself accepting who I really am, where I really am, how ignorant I really am.

  The columns of the golden pagoda are carved into gorgeous dragons, wind spirits, phoenixes, and gods. We climb to the second floor, where she introduces me to an old monk in flowing black robes. He holds a watering can, and bowing from the waist, he pours a trickle at the stems of yellow flowers until pools form in the potted earth. His presence and his quiet manner transfix me for a minute, and it’s as if I’m waking from another dream.

  I’m back on the ground, looking around as if for the first time. The trees and buildings flow in harmony, and the atmosphere is ineffably more serene than I had noticed, a striking contrast to the city outside. Shihui guides me past a series of nature murals, and then my eyes are drawn again to her smile and the too-distracting pinkness in her cheeks. She’s lovely. It’s time for a photograph. I aim the camera, but she and her friend giggle and move away, refusing to pose. Behind them, visitors insert sticks of fuchsia into a censer of spent ash, and behind the censer stands a meditation building etched with a great black and white yīn-yáng circle. The girls stop to sniff the long-stemmed purple orchids. They sneak a furtive glance at me, and I can’t resist. I shoot. With a shriek, they spin back around and scurry all the way back to the office.