by Richard Bell
Chapter 3
In my walk from Nan Hua to the river, the familiar streets became dirtier, people poorer and buildings more crowded and squalid. I mused on Master Lu’s silent lecture. Such connections are a classic element of our Chan tradition; deep communicated without concepts. It was just what it seemed like, a teacher seeing a student onto the endless roads ahead…and nothing of importance had left unsaid. I’d understood his heart and his deepest understanding of Chan and was warmed and inspired by his trust. If indeed I saw tears maybe they glistened for a son he never had.
Feeling aware of every sound and sight, I felt I learned something profound. Pausing to watch a clutch of children crossing a street, I realized I was smiling. Never had I felt so ready for the world.
I remember that walk to the river; the cloud-streaked skies stretching above the alleys and tenements, the kitchen gardens rich with smells of manure and compost. Open doorways and porches revealed women weaving and men doing daily chores. Children ran about as an old shopkeeper watched me pass before his open stall and his neighbor wooed a customer with a line of chatter.
As I paused at a corner, some young women offered polite bows before moving on, but one seemed to pause and after a nervous glance to her friends, looked back at me and pursed her lips as if to say something. I looked up and met her eyes.
Given the morning I’m sure my smile was warm; I certainly would have stopped if she had lingered a moment longer. But being a priest the situation was awkward and with a glance ahead to her friends she pinched her lips and turned away. If I wasn’t a priest would she have stopped and talked? If I had been a merchant’s boy, an apprentice or scholar…anything but a priest, would she have dared to linger and speak? Or did she merely have a problem that needed a priestly ear?
The girls disappeared into a doorway and I continued on. The world was colorful and vibrant, I wanted to soak up each nuance and take it with me. Cart ruts, splashed footprints, yellowed leaves and the dark turned-soil of winter gardens…each nuance seemed rich with special meaning. Every shadow had fine distinctions, every half-glimpsed fragment held meaning; curbside pavements, wooden steps…laundry hung to dry. For me each thing was laden with significance. How had I walked through it for so many years without seeing? Why was I only aware as I left?
Dark clouds massed overhead. On both sides of the street, doors and windows were opened to the heavy air, offering views of households, goods piled to ceilings and workers assembling brooms. An unseen rooster gave a half-hearted crow; a baby’s cry overlay chanted nursery rhymes. Chickens clucked as they picked at insects in the remains of summer gardens. Women sipped tea and gossiped, but instead of words, I only caught their pleasure at being together. An unseen argument flared in a shadowed alley. Young girls by a window sang a popular song, their voices contrasting against the commotion, sawing and shouts from building site next door. The world unfurled about me, alive and droning with reassuring normality and humbling me with its richness. The scene deserved a poem of poignant simplicity, I had the inspiration, but lacked time and paper and ink. The moment, merely an incredible, everyday blessing, was destined to pass un-memorialized.
Built at what was once the city’s outskirts, the Nan-Hua monastery was now well within its urban bustle. It would be a long difficult walk through the city’s crowded neighborhoods to reach the harbor; and an impossible job to find a specific ship amid the ever-shifting mazes of piers and quays.
It was arranged that I would travel by boat…thus avoiding the streets. The idea had appeal; as a boy I’d accompanied my father along the route, watching the Pearl River’s eroding banks give way to swarming piers whose pilings sprouted as thick as hair along the harbor’s busy wharves.
I was an insecure and doubtful first-time traveler despite repeated assurances that the details had been arranged through my landing in Korea. Knowing my inexperience I was awed by the incredible faith being placed on me. I was an untested young priest. My incompetence shamed me. Still in my childhood neighborhood, before even reaching the river I had been humbled by how much of the world I’d never seen.
By the time the river was in sight I was almost in tears. Every nuance sparked insights and staggered me. Far from important, I was a trifling speck in a teeming, over-filled world. My senses had opened wide as I inhaled the world’s essence and awakened to who I was.
The boatman was waiting at the rickety pier just as I was told he would be.
Tottering toward him just before me, an elderly couple clasped each other with obvious pleasure. And though it appeared a common trip for them, they chattered as if they were on a true adventure.
I, in contrast, feigned experience I didn’t have. I pretended it was commonplace even while I was almost breathless at the novelty. The old woman dipped her head in respect for my robe and I touched my palms in a blessing as the boatman settled her with infinite patience and then assisted her partner with their bags.
So far, everything was unfolding as planned. But strangely, after helping the elderly couple so gently and despite my respectful bow, the boatman simply snatched my bundle and pushed me to my seat. Suddenly he was in a rush.
Surprised by the change, I fumbled insecurely; “Do you know the Guangzhou wharfs…Auntie Chen at the Eternal Blossom…she knows which ship…”
Nodding impatiently he slipped my fare into his purse and taking up his oar he mumbled, “Don’t worry. I know where you go.”
Timidly and blushing with embarrassment I took my seat at the boat’s pointed prow. Behind me the boatman’s oar rasped rhythmically between its dowels. “Auntie Chen’s…of course. I discussed it with your Abbot…”
I turned in surprise for the comment was uttered so casually an equal could have made it. Master Lu had described the boatman as a “friend.” What connection could there be between a venerable abbot and a riverside boatman? Childhood acquaintance? Distant relative? Ignorant and inexperienced, I was unsettled by the way he shrugged-off of the distinctions that defined my self-importance.
We skimmed easily across the brown water. Our little boat was not the smallest of those plying the river, but with our boatman’s skill with his stern-oar we seemed among the nimblest as we flitted through the churning mélange of boats and cumbersome rafts.
Working skiffs and passenger boats coursed the surface like water bugs. It was a floating village, a mobile market where both shops and customers bobbed and rearranged. Barges burdened with barrels or timbers wallowed slowly beside long low flat-bottomed scows carrying produce. Small boats careened about us or idled much as people would in a market. The succulent aromas from boats equipped with braziers, steaming pots and trays of food advertised food of every description. Some boats were stocked with dry goods; others displayed fish or household goods. Every sort of service and craft was offered. Furniture and medicine, eels and catfish, spices or fabric; anything one wanted seemed available.
The smells of fish, peppers, ginger, spices, cabbage and farm animals transported me. On one side of us, bundles of scaffold poles extended from a low-slung scow that maneuvered beside a barge stacked with sweet smelling rope. On the other, towering over a tiny red boat, bales of thatching-reeds rose to an impossible height and trailed the scent of freshly cut grass.
A minute later we were enveloped in a cloud of savory smells wafting from a long low-roofed boat set with braziers. Sizzling skewers of pork and fish were tended by a woman who called out her menu while folding rice into banana leaves and serving customers as they swung alongside. The aromas moistened my mouth and tightened my stomach, but there was no chance that we would stop.
Smelling sweat and something strongly fermented I identified a boat working upriver in the calmer water, carrying coolies. The men chattered cheerfully, washing and joking as they traveled, pleased to be heading home after their long night’s work.
Cutting across our path, a boat carried an official perched on a high, unstable-looking chair. Elevated above our low-life clutter, his status didn’t
seem to bring him comfort. He looked distressed and unhappy under his lacquered hat and silk robes. His boatmen, in their clean blue shifts, pushed through with aggressive self-importance, exploiting every opportunity to hurry their charge along.
Every moment and experience seemed richer than normal. The fetid odor of stagnant water and riverside refuse competed with the urban smells of night soil, evoking complex associations. The sweet, marshy reek of rotting vegetation gave way to the hovering foulness of crowded hovels. On higher banks stood estates with high masonry walls and stately residences swarming with uniformed staff who tended pristine gardens and delivered tea to moon-watching towers.
Suddenly widening and growing choppy, the river abruptly turned from brown to gray as it took a sharp turn east. Our craft veered away from the thousand-island maze and labyrinthine sloughs long famous for harboring pirates. A martial-looking wharf with four military boats and uniformed guards made a significant presence on the southern shore. Across the widening river, the northern bank was a maze of industrial wharfs and shipyards. Those suddenly gave way to the piers of the commercial harbor.
Much of China’s trade moved through Guangtzu and its foreign cantons. Hundreds of ships served by thousands of working boats could be counted on any day. Beyond the harbor and another sharp bend the river swung south again, broadening as it emptied into an enormous bay and the endless sea. Both river currents and ocean swells eroded the rocky shores of the barbarian cantons of Macao and Hong Kong. They seemed islands of prosperity amid a patchwork of abandoned lands only sparsely resettled after Emperor Kangxi’s Great Clearance.
As we swung toward the harbor, earthy, inland smells gave way to the reek of rotting sea-life, spices, salt, tar and freshly made rope. Our short-lived community of boats dissolved.
Great ships of all descriptions were anchored midstream, many with the high gunnels, reinforced prows and hefty masts needed for traversing oceans. Smaller, coastal ships and river-coursing boats crowded the wharves like barnacles. Light shallow-draft vessels ferried goods from warehouses and provisioned the great ships. They moved using current, oars and sails rigged on poles, serving both ocean-going junks and ships with exotic lines formed by hands half-a-world away.
There was a three masted British behemoth with masts that seemed to pierce the clouds. Pointing out the soldiers and three boat escort standing guard, our boatman explained the special dispensations needed for European craft to load anywhere beyond their cantons. Since my father had explained it to me years before, I merely acceded with a knowledgeable nod.
Quays and wharves lined the shore, each one tight against the next and backed by neighborhoods of warehouses, sail lofts and supporting industries. Gleaming brass appointments, specialized fittings and endless miles of twisted hemp lay ready, awaiting need.
Everything from ingenious foreign time machines to exotic animals were unloaded and moved-on to supply the wealthy and noble who could afford them. Grain and lumber moved through this harbor and human hands and backs moved every sliver and grain. Both coming in and going out, every sack and crate and barrel of China’s commerce was lifted by human hands and carried and stacked and loaded again. Human hands lifted the endless bounty shipped to every land on earth.
The largest ships and other deep draft boats were moored mid-channel where they were attended by a legion of barges and skiffs that swarmed about like bees. The whole northern bank was a labyrinthine warren of crowded slips and quays, each as busy and unremarkable as the next; each wharf sprouting docks and piers and attracting hovering crowds of boats, each shifting for advantage and seeking opportunity to move or dock.
I couldn’t tell one pier from the next, but our boatman picked his way with practiced ease amid the chaos. After suddenly swinging between wharfs we made an unexpected turn and slipped among the great ships. He headed with reassuring certainty to a narrow gap along an undistinguished pier. Left to my own devices, I couldn’t have found any particular pier on any particular quay. I certainly wouldn’t have found this one low, decrepit dock within such a jungle of commerce and rigging.
It began raining as the boatman slipped a line about a half-rotten piling then he grabbed my bundle and pulled me along a cracked gangway to the brick-paved quay. From there he led unerringly along an ill-paved lane to a narrow alley deeply shadowed by massive warehouses despite the early hour.
Pushing my bundle back into my hands, he repeated, “Auntie Chen, Eternal Blossom” and pointed to the unmarked, blanket-hung door of a tavern whose oiled-paper windows flickered with the guttering lamps within.