The Ramblings of an Old Chinese Woman

The other day I ran for two hours, and this is what I saw:

I saw twelve weddings and twelve cream cheese dresses and twelve happy grooms. I saw a man in a car taking my picture. I saw a protest of Chinese students with signs and shouts. I saw the police yelling and forcing them back, back from the streets. I saw my first golden retriever in Asia. I saw Nanjing Road flooded by tourists during Golden Week, and I thought of osmosis as I ran toward the areas with more space. I saw a building within a building, shaped like an upside-down kidney bean and suspended in the air.

There are many things you may see if you run for two hours in China.

* 

Once I passed through People’s Park and into a confluence of older men and women, each holding an umbrella and a sign and apparently in the midst of some great happening. I discovered soon after that these were mothers and fathers of single sons and daughters, gathering together in the Chinese version of matchmaking. The umbrellas provided shade, the signs provided the name, age, and career of thousands of children – all of whom, apparently, were busy working and had no time to come on their own accord. “Only in China,” my Chinese friend explained, beaming. Just then, a woman handed me a card for a dating service web site. I pocketed it, knowing I would check it later, especially since the title simply read “date me” (so much more direct than “eharmony”). This China grows more mysterious and interesting every moment.

*

The ancient Chinese word for beautiful, mei li, depicted a quiet,                gentle, submissive woman with tiny feet. Now, however, a new word is emerging in Mandarin vernacular: piao liang, which literally translates as “flow bright.” Piao liang is a vibrant and active beauty, alive and colorful and used for the modern Chinese woman. It is, in essence, a way of being. A verb. I want to be piao liang, and so I flow bright.

*

Today is my birthday. I am twenty years old.

Last night, my friends and I watched Ip Man II, and dearest Craig made me a goopy and beautiful pink velvet cake, swathed in chocolate bar and Oreo gobs, and then we gussied up in little black dresses (well, not Craig) and experienced an underground club in the shape of an airplane. The servers were stewardesses. Some of my friends ordered vodka and orange juice with the intention of mixing the two, but I managed to snag the orange juice before it was contaminated and drink in my new age with several glasses.

I left early, just after midnight, and slept well and deeply so I could enjoy today without any sort of sleep deprivation. I woke and ran, and talked to God, and ate peanut buttered toast and granola, and went to a children’s story reading in Mandarin, and went to brunch on a patio surrounded by trees and filled my stomach with mozzarella and basil omelet and bruschetta, and then I studied and went to Shanghai Community Fellowship Church, where I worshiped God and made a new friend, then returned home and strummed a few songs on my guitar. My girl friends and I went to house church at 8:08 p.m., and then I had a long and lovely conversation with Maria, my housemother. I received perfume that smells like rain from Craig, with a commission to be fragrant for Christ, Shel Silverstein children’s books in mandarin from Jason, Christine, and Nadine, mascara from Molly, dark chocolate cookies and Heinz ketchup from Melissa, and a blissful autumn day from my Daddy in Heaven.

Mmmm, mmm.

Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!

Weird Mountains

Dr. Seuss must’ve visited Yangshuo. The mountains there are strange, disconnected—plopped as an afterthought atop a plain of rice patties and marshes. One looks like a rumpled Sorting Hat, another, a Diglett. There are Bird Beaks and Mashed Potatoes and Totems and Marshmallows and Others that surely inspired The Lorax.

I visited this lovely, mystifying area, located in the Southern province of Guangxi, during Chinese National Holiday. The National Holiday celebrates the inauguration of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949, a monumental event only overshadowed by the installation of the world’s first automatic streetlights in Connecticut, the testing of the Soviet Union’s first atomic bomb, and the birth of Meryl Streep. The Holiday ushers in one of China’s two Golden Weeks—seven days of vacation, frolic, and paid holidays for employees.

I traveled with a group of eight others, a tiny pocket of familiar faces amongst China’s 1.3 billion people, all of whom seemed to take the 20-hour train ride from Shanghai to Guilin, a city near Yangshuo, for their Holiday. We were fortunate to ride in the hard-sleeper car on the train, an area smushed with three-tiered bunk beds, squashed pillows, and squatty potties. One group of Pepperdine students last year had, apparently, failed to purchase hard-sleeper tickets and were forced into a car with standing room only for a 30-hour train ride. To me, this is bu hao (not good) and our group made sure we did not repeat the experience.

The ride itself passed without much event, although I was mocked for ordering two bowls of mifan (white rice) in the dining car without a main dish of pork or chicken or fish head. Apparently, ordering only rice in China is like ordering only butter in the United States. You get strange looks.

Other than that, and the fact that the bathroom walls were splattered with an unidentifiable liquid, it was as if we were on a Chinese-muggle version of the Hogwarts Express. Every thirty minutes or so, a fruit trolley would pass by, and we bought grapes, and apples, and jujubes, and we wished they were chocolate frogs stuffed with Mao Zedong and Confucius cards.

The morning after we arrived in Yangshuo, we woke at dawn and sunrise-hiked to the top of a Diglett, where the men of the group proceeded to take “epic” photographs, otherwise known as Johnny Bravo posing. After admiring God’s creativity, we then experienced a three-hour kayaking adventure, followed by a scenic, four-hour bike journey that ended in a tour of the Buddha Water Cave, where a man bathing in mud yelled “white people!” at us.

The next day, tianqi xiayu le (it rained). It rained, and we hiked, and gulped clean air, and ate banana pancakes and drank hot chocolate, and my heart and mind and body and spirit were replenished and refreshed, and I remembered what it felt like to be fully alive and fully awake and fully present, three “fullys” that I had not yet experienced in China. But now I remember, and now I am awake. Let the morning bring signs of God’s love.