The Three Stooges in China: Pursuing the Sacred Mountain in 1984
A True Record of an Actual Journey--Part One of Three
By Raymond Barnett
www.raymondbarnett.com
For Kyle and AJ
Sacred Mountain, Sacred Friendships
The Three Stooges:
Ray. The Professor
Chinese History and Language at Yale.
Duke PhD in Biology; has taught at CA State Univ., Chico for 8 years
AJ. The Rebel
American Studies at Yale; lives in Kyoto; travels Asia studying Qi Gong body work
Kyle. The Adventurer
Student of Ray at Chico State; avid world traveler; handsome and sunny
The setting: China, spring 1984.
Eight years after Mao's death and end of Cultural Revolution.
Kyle and Ray return to China for first year Independent Travelers permitted.
Their goal: travel "with the people" to Szechuan's Emei Shan: the sacred mountain
Chapter One: Meeting the People: 27 hours "standing, aisle" train to Beijing
Even in the arranging of it, the train ride boded ill.
Ray stared incredulously at the impassive lady within the ticket window. "No tickets left to Beijing, tomorrow?" he repeated dumbly, in his passable Chinese.
She nodded curtly. The 50 people in line behind him began to jostle and add more than their fair share to the din in the Hangzhou railway station, a vast cavernous structure of ancient stone containing another dozen lengthy lines of impatient Chinese to either side of them.
"No hard seat?" Ray asked.
Her eyes flickered to the compartments in the ticket box. Another negative shake of the head, this time with a hint of annoyance.
He thought quickly, feeling the impatient jostlings behind him. A glance to his side at Kyle, who looked very incongruous in his battered blue ball cap amidst hundreds of Chinese. "Nothing at all for tomorrow," Ray commented in English.
"How about the day after?" Kyle immediately enquired in his cheerful, can-do style.
Back to the lady. The Chinese for "day after tomorrow" escaped Ray, so he resorted to the day of the week. "Thursday?"
Another flicker of the eyes. Another negative shake of the head, but definitely annoyed now.
"Nothing at all, today or tomorrow?"
She shrugged. "Sleeping berths," she intoned.
Ray's turn to shake his head, quickly and decisively. Kyle and he were determined to mix with the local folks. Two years ago they had traveled through China on an official tour, "Foreign Devil Tourists" stamped on their foreheads as they stared at the Chinese people through the windows of a mammoth air-conditioned bus. This time they were going to be on the other side of that window.
"And standing, of course," the lady at the window added with a shrug.
The word was vaguely familiar. "Not-sitting?" Ray asked.
Finally a positive nod from the head.
Ray turned to Kyle. "Standing is available."
Kyle stared at him. "A 27-hour trip?"
Ray nodded.
Kyle broke into a smile. "No problem. I mean, how bad could it get?"
The ominous ring to that query completely escaped both of them, although they would come back to it many times.
Happily, Ray turned to the lady. "Two tickets, not-sitting," he announced. "To Beijing, tomorrow."
The lady raised an eyebrow, pulled the tickets from a compartment, marked and stamped them, scratched a tally on a sheet, and informed Ray that it would cost him and Kyle what amounted to $12 each to ride 1200 miles across half a continent in a little over a day. Standing in the hard-seat car. Like idiots they grinned and handed her the money. They were really going to be "with the people"!
* * * * * *
Early the next morning, munching on long, doughnut-like rolls bought from street vendors outside the station, they found the car indicated on their tickets and thrust themselves into the human sea mounting the high steps and flowing into the car. Pandemonium reigned inside, with much happy shouting and shoving of suitcases and bundles and crates into the car through the windows, some of the latter containing chickens and produce.
Kyle and Ray joined the people standing in the aisle, noting that their fellow standers seemed much more poorly dressed, young, and rural than those seated. No matter. After ten days in China's southern parts visiting tea plantations and classic gardens, they were headed for the ancient capital of the Empire.
Before they even thought about storage, all the available space for luggage in the racks above the seats was completed crammed, leaving their backpacks sitting in the aisle along with sacks and duffel bags of their fellow standers. They were, of course, the only foreign devils in the car, or for that matter on the train, that they could notice.
The other passengers studiously avoided looking at them, except for a little girl in the family taking up two facing benches near the door. She gazed wide-eyed at Kyle for several seconds, then burst loudly into tears and would not disengage from her mother for twenty minutes into the ride. Ray was not the least bit surprised at this. Kyle always evoked strong reactions from females, although his rugged good looks and inherent sunny disposition typically brought forth something closer to admiration.
But this was China, in the mid 1980's, and one couldn't be sure. The week before in a famous garden of Suzhou, for example, Kyle had been mildly flirting with several young ladies when something dropped onto his head from a pavilion above where he stood. Kyle at first thought it was spittle, but gazing down had discovered a folded note. Ray's written Chinese was more rudimentary than his spoken. Examining the note, he informed Kyle that it either said "We Chinese ladies admire you; we would be happy to meet you at 7:30 this evening," or on the other hand might mean "We Chinese resent you flirting with our ladies; you will be dead by 7:30 this evening." Kyle kept the note, hoping to get a more definitive translation later.
Soon after the train ride began, Ray was adopted by a family across the aisle, whose mother instructed her two young ones to crowd closer together on the bench, thus leaving him six inches or so at the end to perch precariously upon. It was actually more uncomfortable than standing, but he could not of course reject her generosity, and with many "xie xie"s ("thank you") he followed her fluttering, commanding hand onto the seat, which was very hard indeed. The occasion of his sitting permitted the others in the facing bench to finally make eye contact, with friendly nods. Next to the window was a young, scholarly looking fellow with a mason jar placed on the small window ledge in front of him. Beside him was a young couple, newly married judging from their happy absorption in each other.
Not long into the journey a large family by the door pulled out a picnic basket complete with fried chicken, and happily began munching. The paper in which the food was wrapped was carefully crumpled and casually dropped onto the floor. As gristle and small bones were encountered, they were noisily spat out onto the floor, usually towards the aisle where sat Kyle and Ray's backpacks. They exchanged a bemused glance; how curious. Quaint, even. Then the newlyweds across the aisle pulled a nectarine out of a bag and carefully peeled it, the peels dropping onto the floor at Ray's feet.
With an occasional nervous look at their backpacks on the rapidly-filling floor—the hulls of pistachio nuts from several passengers were falling like rain—Ray gazed through the train window at the magnificent scenery through which the train was passing. Hangzhou is in the middle of China, close to the coast, and in this early spring the terraced hills glowed with bright ribbons of color.
The upper reaches of the hills were decked with the dark green of newly emerged tea leaves, the short bushes stretching along in neat rows widely enough spaced to permit the ladies gathering the prized "first pick" to move along filling their baskets. The lower parts of the hills were usually gaily clothed in the bright yellow flowers of the rapeseed plant, whose dark seeds would be crushed to yield cooking oil. And in the lowlands between the hills the nearly phosphorescent light green of rice beds alternated with dark, shimmering newly ploughed and flooded paddies awaiting the transplant of the young seedlings.
They were several hours into the ride now, viewing peasants in the fields outside patiently directing their water buffaloes in breaking up and ploughing the fields. Inside their coach, most of the travelers had finished their initial snacks and were luxuriating in an after-meal smoke. Now Kyle is normally a healthy fellow. Robustly healthy, actually. But Kyle has an Achilles heel. Or lung, to be precise. He is acutely allergic to cigarette smoke. So Kyle began to droop as the car filled with smoke, from every male and many females. All the windows were open, of course, on this warm spring day. They didn't know about the other cars, but the hard-seat car certainly had no air conditioning, for which Kyle was thankful. Even so, he turned quiet and his sunny aura began to dissipate as the smoke burgeoned.
The conductress soon entered the car and bustled up the aisle taking tickets. When she saw Kyle still standing she scowled and glanced around accusingly at the passengers. An old fellow several benches back smiled and waved Kyle over as he pleasantly enlisted the support of the conductress to cajole his two bench-mates to crowd together to make room. The fellow sported a beard, vest, and hat perched atop his white head at a rakish angle. Kyle graciously declined the favor, but allowed himself to be persuaded and soon was perched on the end of this bench.
Behind the conductress came a young lady, also in train company blue, with a huge kettle of steaming water in a quilted insulating cover. The young scholar in the window seat opposite Ray's bench whipped out a small tin cannister, sprinkled some shriveled tea leaves from it into his mason jar, and brusquely indicated it to the tea lady. With a practiced hand she directed a long arc of scalding hot water over the legs of all of the people on the facing benches into the mason jar, spilling not a drop on the small ledge nor, more importantly, on Ray's legs. Perhaps half the folks in the car also had jars or cups, often quite crude, which they filled with the steaming water and added a store of leaves to it. The scholar sighed, happily cupping his hands about the jar, and took a gingerly sip, straining the still swirling leaves with his lip at the edge of the jar. This tea-water lady passed through the car every several hours for the remainder of the day.
Which all leads quite naturally to a trip to the restroom at the end of the car some time later. Kyle and Ray noticed with interest that a standing passenger promptly occupied the seat of someone who left to visit the restroom, or even just to stretch their legs. The interloper grudgingly relinquished their new seat when the passenger returned, though not without a brusque command from the returning ticket holder. As ticketed folks reached their destinations throughout the day and disembarked, though, and their now vacant seats were claimed by standing passengers, another etiquette pertained. When a former stander made a trip to the restroom, his seat was of course promptly claimed by another stander, and his brusque command upon his return was stolidly ignored. This seat was now the possession of whomever currently occupied it.
Did foreign devils have any special privileges in this scheme of things? Kyle soon tested the proposition. When one of the three men in his bench disembarked, Kyle of course merely took the fellow's space quite naturally and quickly, so he was no longer perched on the edge of a bench but was comfortably sitting, a condition noted irritably by Ray, still clinging with acute discomfort to his six inches on the edge of a seat. Some four hours later, Kyle answered the call of nature. To Ray's chagrin, he noted that Kyle's seat was indeed promptly claimed by a young man who had been sitting disconsolately upon a duffel bag in the littered aisle. And upon Kyle's return the young fellow made no move to relinquish the seat, studiously avoiding Kyle's outraged stare. Not even the intervention of Kyle's old bearded benefactor could dislodge him. After all, the seat was fair game for all, now. So Kyle was once again standing.
Ray was able to make several trips to the restroom so long as his benefactor family was occupying his bench—they simply expanded to fill the entire bench when he left, and contracted to afford him his precious six inches when he returned. In the midafternoon they disembarked, however, with many friendly nods to Ray and many thanks and "Dzai jian"s ("Goodbye") from him. Kyle was not sufficiently nimble or pushy to elbow his way in the confusion into the now vacant seats, although Ray managed to expand his edge into a real seat on the end of the bench.
Thus they spent the day, all the while marveling at the pile of debris growing on the floor. To the hulls, gristle, bones, wrappers, and spittle already there a new element was added mid-day when the farm boy who had claimed Kyle's seat leaned over into the aisle, placed a finger on one side of his nostrils, and noisily cleared the other nostril onto the floor. The procedure was repeated for the opposite nostril as Kyle and Ray gaped incredulously. No one else on the car took the slightest notice, however. Evidently floors were fair game for any sort of refuse, short of that deposited in the restroom.
This train was by no means an express. It stopped at towns and villages every several hours, in addition to mysterious stops in the middle of the countryside. At the latter, all the windows on the train would be opened to their maximum extent and a veritable rain of trash would pour out the windows—the larger chicken bones wrapped by the family next to the door, food containers, disposable chopsticks, plus any trash too large or bulky to be dropped onto the floor.
"Don't let me be caught standing next to a train coming to a stop, ever," Kyle whispered to Ray.
As evening approached, some 12 hours into their journey, Kyle and Ray were both standing again and had been for some hours. They were stiff, tired, and uncomfortable. Also famished. They had not been quick-witted enough—and Ray's Chinese was too limited to realize what was happening—when the lady had come through in the late morning selling tickets for box lunches. When the old man followed her some half hour later distributing disposable chopsticks and small boxes crammed with rice and vegetables and scraps of meat, they could only look on longingly--desperately, even—as their compatriots claimed the lunches and happily munched away.
So as evening arrived Kyle and Ray prayed fervently for the appearance of the lady selling another round of meals. Their hearts leapt with joy as she entered the car and made her way towards them. For the grand sum of 50 fen—about 20 cents—they purchased the coveted tickets. And as the boxes arrived they were in heaven as they dipped into the rice and vegetables and few meat chunks. Though simple, the fare was delicious and quite filling. Needless to say, the lady never made another trip through their car without their buying a pair of her tickets. When the meals were consumed, of course, their boxes and chopsticks were casually chucked out the windows with all the others.
As the young scholar by the window made to stretch his legs and enjoy a smoke, he motioned to Ray and made sure Ray obtained his seat. Ray of course was in heaven again as he eased his stiff and aching body and full belly into the seat. Stars burst in his head as he eased it down onto the narrow window ledge and actually closed his eyes. The wind whipped fresh, clean air through the window past his nose, and he made a mental note to let Kyle have the window seat if ever again he obtained it—next time, that is. After several minutes rest he looked up. His scholar friend was still smoking. Ray decorously sat up, sighed, and stared contented out the window. Life was indeed good. He was sitting, his stomach was full, fresh air was available, and outside the window the countryside of China sped by, hillsides where the dark green of tea glowed above the bright yellow of rapeseed flowers, here and there interrupted by the small domed ancestral burial crypts scattered on most of the hills they had passed that day, the arch of bricks or rocks marking a burial site fronted by a small stick of bamboo with a narrow white cloth fluttering in the gentle breeze. Ancestor remembrance, flourishing still. Amazing. Peasants preparing the fields and planting their rice just as they had two thousand—no, just as they had four thousand years ago, surrounded on the flanking hills by the tended graves of their ancestors. China.
Ray's benefactor finished his cigarette, and Ray graciously and with many thanks returned his seat to him. Within half an hour they arrived at the station of a sizable town, and quite a few of the folks in their car rose from their seats and began to pull luggage from the overhead racks. Several of them motioned Kyle and Ray to take their seats, and they gratefully complied with alacrity. Actually, the steady attrition of passengers had opened seats for most of those originally standing in Hangzhou, so competition was not severe, and a lucky stander could always hope that the seat just scrounged would remain open for at least an hour or so.
Kyle had actually obtained a window seat, finally, and he desperately clawed at the window to open it fully and stuck his nose out to gulp in the fresh air. As he thrust his nose out the window he very nearly thrust it into a fudgecycle being offered by a vendor along the platform of the station. Immediately upon every stop at a village or city the platforms would be clogged with vendors as they were now. Loudly they hawked everything from ice cream to fruits to rolls to dumplings. Kyle succumbed to the allure of the fudgecycle at his nose, purchased two, and handed one to Ray. As experienced travelers on several continents, they shied away from the street dumplings and vegetables, but reckoned that frozen ice cream was a relatively good gamble.
Kyle and Ray looked forward to these periodic arrivals at stations, not just for the opportunity to claim a coveted seat, but for the sheer happy pandemonium that always ensued. People joyously greeting each other, luggage being shoved through windows in both directions, vendors loudly hawking their wares, children on the platform screaming at the sight of long-nosed foreign devils thrusting their bizarre faces out the train windows—it was all a thoroughly enjoyable interlude to the numbing grind of standing for the great bulk of twenty seven straight hours in an aisle filled with an ever growing piles of hulls, bones, gristle, snot, spittle, and who knows what else.
But now they had seats! Hard, to be sure, but seats, including a window seat for Kyle. And to compound their joy they were not claimed by those boarding at this stop. They could retain them until the next large town, most likely, and—delicious hope—perhaps all the way for the next 15 hours remaining to Beijing.
Dusk gathered as they sped into the countryside, and virtually everyone in the car (except them) proceeded to take turns at the water basin at the end of the car. Each carefully unfolded a cotton cloth, wet it, then vigorously cleaned their face and neck and hands. Some used soap, some not. But all scrubbed away assiduously. Then the tooth brush came out, and a thorough cleansing of the teeth ensued. With a final noisy spat of rinse water into the basin, each person would take several deep breaths and, on the way back to their seat, carefully fold the wash cloth in half. Upon reaching the seat, they neatly hung the wet wash cloth over a wooden dowel which ran the length of the car just above the windows on each side. Soon the whole car was festooned with these wash clothes, each one neatly folded as it dried.
Kyle and Ray marveled. That a people who could endure the floor beneath them at present could be so assiduous about their personal hygiene. They had noticed long wash basins at every railway station, always busily occupied, at all hours, by Chinese washing their faces, their hands, perhaps their chopsticks. Clearly they were not traveling with the elite, yet just as clearly these folks were, personally at least, very cleanly. Ray wondered what these Chinese thought of Kyle and him, who travelled with no washcloth handy, and who must have exuded a different smell than they were used to. Yet their fellow passengers had shared seats with them and shown them many favors, in spite of their strange appearances and smell.
Of course, there was the condition of the floor, to balance against these folks' personal cleanliness. Ray tried not to think of their packs still sitting in the aisle as he settled back. The lady with the tea kettle came by one last time. The car grew quiet as night gathered, no radios blaring anywhere, the folks with the noisy chickens having long disembarked, only the quiet talk of the friends and families aboard filling the car, above the rustling of the wind through the windows. Ray looked at Kyle's bench, and saw that he seemed to be dozing, his nose still pressed close to the open window. Kyle's eyes opened, and he raised his eyebrows at Ray. "Comfortable?" Ray enquired, knowing fully well how hard his bench was.
He stared back at Ray, then spoke. "I've got a window. I ain't moving until we get to Beijing." This with quiet conviction.
"And when you have to piss?" Ray asked.
"I'm not risking the loss of my window seat for anything," Kyle reiterated. "I will not piss again until we reach Beijing." Ray laughed. But as a matter of fact, it turned out to be true. Kyle urinated a grand total of twice in the 27 hours they were on the train, both instances prior to this point where he had commandeered a window seat.
Stiff and sore, they dozed fitfully through the night as the train hurtled through the dark, north to Beijing. A hand gripped Ray's shoulder somewhat past midnight. The young scholar, up for a smoke and to stretch his legs, directed Ray to his window seat where Ray could rest his head on the ledge and be more comfortable. Ray politely declined, but the fellow knew very well how uncomfortable Ray was, and insisted. Gratefully Ray yielded, determined not to enjoy his hospitality long. Ray put his head down on the ledge, sighed deeply, and fell into an instant deep sleep. With a jerk he straightened up an hour later. The scholar was seated in Ray's former seat, thoughtfully smoking still. Ray returned his seat to him sheepishly, and with many apologies, which the fellow waved aside graciously.
The lights came on at four o'clock in the morning, and everyone stirred and began their procession to the wash basin, including the two foreign devils now, though barbarically Kyle and Ray had no wash clothes. But they rubbed their hands under the faucet, splashed water on their faces, and shook it more or less dry, making a conscious effort to be as noisy as their Chinese colleagues. The whole car nodded approvingly as they made their freshened way back to their seats.
And everyone said those foreign devils couldn't ever learn civilized ways!
More delicious 20 cent box meals for breakfast, which Kyle and Ray tossed out the window with their fellow passengers. As they approached Beijing everyone began to bustle about. The tea kettle lady entered the car with a very stiff broom and proceeded to sweep all the incredible profusion of bones, fruit peels, nut shells, spittle and snot before her. Kyle and Ray quickly and gingerly picked their backpacks off the floor and deposited them in the few spaces now available in the overhead rack, holding the backpacks away from them as far as they could.
The broom-wielder did a thorough job, reaching under every seat and energetically gathering the 27 hours' worth of debris into three hefty piles along the length of the floor of the car. She then brushed the whole mess into a plastic bag. Kyle and Ray thoroughly expected her to nonchalantly toss it out the window, but she surprised them by lugging the bag to some compartment at the end of the car. Then an ancient man tottered into the car dragging, amazingly enough, a mop and a bucket full of water with some disinfectant in it. He proceeded to mop the entire floor with scrupulous vigor, so that as they rolled into the station in Beijing the floor of the car, believe it or not, was immaculate, just as spotlessly clean as it had been 27 hours earlier in Hangzhou.
Shaking their heads in wonder, Kyle and Ray joined the others in retrieving their luggage from the overhead racks. They joined the throng happily flowing from the train and into the station proper. Kyle immediately spotted a restroom, into which he disappeared in some haste. Ray stood nearby with their backpacks in the incredibly vast station, teeming with travelers, the noise level two notches above a roar.
They had finally arrived at Beijing, the ancient and current capital of the Chinese empire. After Beijing they would head far inland and south, to the heart of China: Sichuan, and Emei Shan, the sacred mountain.
Perhaps even by train.
Chapter Two: The Third Stooge, Ray's Near Arrest, and Bicycling in Beiijing
Ray's long hot shower to remove the effects of the train ride from Hangzhou had transformed the hotel's bathroom into a steam room. As he shaved he rubbed the mirror to remove the fog every stroke or two of the razor, clearly fighting a losing battle with the steam. The dim reflection of a bulky figure behind him passed across the mirror, not unexpected since the bathroom was shared by several dozens of rooms along the hallway of this Beijing hotel where travelers not attached to a tour were required to stay.
"You speak English?" he blurted out over his shoulder.
A bemused pause. "No better than I ever have," came the reply in a soft southern drawl, which seemed vaguely familiar.
"The hotel takes 3 days to do laundry," Ray barged on. "You know of any laundry in the neighborhood of the hotel?"
Another pause. "You're worried about finding a laundry in a city with nine million Chinese?" the voice drawled again, this time with warm humor, and this time definitely familiar.
Ray turned around, face half covered with shaving cream, torso wrapped in towel, and peered at this figure in the steam. Large, maybe six foot two or three, and two hundred pounds or so. A handsome face surrounded by a mass of curly auburn hair and a short beard below, hazel eyes twinkling. Suddenly the eyes narrowed, and he learned toward Ray with a quizzical look.
"You…You're…" he began to sputter.
Ray shrank back from the towering bulk, then narrowed his own eyes and peered up through the steam at him more closely. Neurons inactive for decades began to spark erratically. "AJ Dickinson?" he blurted out incredulously, naming a college friend whom he had last seen or thought of a couple of decades earlier, on graduation day at Yale University in New Haven.
The tall fellow nodded in shock, still sputtering. "Ray. Ray Barnett?" he finally managed to say.
Ray nodded, and they both grinned wide in the steam for several moments.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Ray finally asked.
AJ paused to consider it. "Taking a piss," the fellow announced grandly.
They both laughed, and it was Ray's turn to sputter. "But…My God, it's been, what?..." He did some quick calculations. "Seventeen years or so since I've seen you. And never in a Chinese pisser! Let me finish shaving and I'll drop by your room."
"Fine, Bro," AJ replied. "Room 312."
They grinned, looked at each other again, and burst out laughing as he disappeared through the door. As Ray finished his shave he tried to remember what he knew of AJ. From the upper crust of Richmond, Virginia. In a secret society with Ray at Yale, called St. Anthony Hall, where he remembered mainly the legends of AJ's drinking and successful way with the ladies. He had taken a course in Southern history with a roommate of Ray's, turning up at their room just as the roommate, weary from four straight days of study, was leaving for the final exam in the course. "Can I take a quick look at your notes?" AJ had asked, a request which did not surprise my roommate, since he knew AJ's attendance had been spotty. AJ had leisurely read through the lectures notes in the first hour of the exam, strolled to the appointed room, and in the last hour of the test had earned a slightly higher grade than my conscientious roommate. Such was the AJ that Ray had known at Yale.
Twenty minutes later Kyle and Ray walked into 312, down the hall from them. "Kyle, this is AJ, from Richmond, Virginia. We went to college together, seventeen years or so ago. And evidently haven't changed very much, since we both recognized each other. AJ, how in the world did you get from Yale to a steamy shower room in Beijing?"
He raised his shaggy eyebrows and learned back against the bed from his position on the floor, making himself comfortable. "The day we graduated from Yale, I knew I couldn't take the path most of our friends were taking—law school, selling stocks and bonds. Just didn't feel right. So I joined a circus" he declared with a mischievous grin.
"That's right!" Ray blurted out. "Now I remember your coming through Tulsa the summer after graduation!"
"And very much appreciating the hospitality you and your folks showed me," he commented, a Southerner to his bones. "But my days as a circus roustabout were numbered, by the draft board."
Ray nodded sympathetically, remembering how Vietnam had wrenched all their lives in those days. "Did you go into the military?" he asked.
AJ shook his head emphatically. "No way this boy was going to kill peasants in Southeast Asia. I got a job teaching disadvantaged kids in North Carolina—a job that gave me a draft deferment."
"And after that?"
He shrugged. "Lots of wandering around. Finally got interested in Qi Gong, the Asian way to heal the things that go wrong with the body. I studied with most of the best masters in America, and developed a good practice in California."
Ray thought of AJ's social background in Richmond, and the incongruity of that with "body work" in California. "What do your parents think of your profession?" he asked with a wry smile.
A mirroring wry smile from AJ. "Whenever I go home," he said softly, "I open the door to my old room and discover a shrine." His face took on a look of wonderment. "My parents keep my room as a shrine to the son they thought they had. Tennis and basketball trophies, the official tie of my prep school in Richmond, diploma from Yale, certificates of achievement. Of respectability. A shrine to a dead son."
A long moment of silence. Kyle, stretched out on the floor, bent arm holding his head, finally breathed out. "Well, you look plenty alive to me, AJ. Alive and kicking, in fact."
AJ nodded pleasantly. "And what brings you and Kyle here, Ray?"
"Oh, I'm doing research for a novel I'm writing, set mainly here in Beijing," Ray began. "Always wondered if I could write a novel. And also, Kyle and I were here a couple of years ago on a tour, and felt like we missed something in all the tight schedule and tourist spots. Like we missed the real China. So we're here to find it."
AJ's eyes lit up. "And where do you find the real China?" he enquired with a smile.
"In hard-seat trains," Kyle groaned, which brought a laugh from all of them.
"Tea houses. And parks at dawn," Ray said.
"And sacred mountains," Kyle added. AJ's eyes raised as he turned his large head to Kyle and his eyes gleamed.
"Sacred mountains?" he drawled, his voice delicious with anticipation.
"In Sichuan," Kyle informed him.
"The mountain is called Emei Shan," Ray added, pronouncing it "Uh-may-shawn" as in the Mandarin dialect. "Sacred for six thousand years, probably much longer. Li Po was writing poems about it twelve hundred years ago. Dotted with Taoist and Buddhist temples, thronged with pilgrims. We're going to climb it." Ray looked at Kyle with an unspoken question clearly understood between old friends. Kyle imperceptibly nodded his assent, and Ray turned to AJ. "Want to join us on the sacred mountain?"
AJ stared Ray in the eye. He straightened his massive frame, formally. "Sacred mountains can be dangerous," he intoned solemnly. 'Unexpected things happen on them." He glanced over at Kyle, then back at Ray. "You boys will likely need help. Count me in, Bro!"
They all grinned idiotically. And in that moment Kyle and Ray knew they were from then on The Three Stooges in China, stumbling from one misadventure to another, lovable but having a grand time.
AJ had plans with newly-made female acquaintances that afternoon, and Ray wanted to research a place in the Forbidden City for his novel, so Kyle agreed to meet Ray at an island north of there several hours later.
In his research for his novel, Ray had learned that some 700 years ago Kublai Khan had constructed a 1.5 mile chain of "lakes" running north-south to the west of the Forbidden City, on the west shores of which officials entrusted with running the Mongol Empire lived. The lakes were demarcated into three "seas": Zhonghai (Middle sea), Nanhai (South sea) and Beihai (North sea). The North sea and its surrounding shore now comprised the public Beihai Park, where Ray would meet Kyle later. But the area to the west of the lower two seas—collectively known as the Zhong-Nan-Hai—continued to be the site where prominent members of China's ruling class lived and worked through the centuries, up to the Communist Party rulers occupying the area now.
Ray was particularly interested in an ancient Water and Cloud Pavilion standing some six meters off the east shore of the Middle Sea. A stone tablet stood in the center of the pavilion, with a Taoist inscription on it: T'ai I Ch'iu Feng, translated as "The Autumn Wind Coursing Over the Sea of Life."
Intrigued by the ancient pavilion and its cryptic inscription, Ray wanted to incorporate it into his novel; to do that, he had to be able to describe it; to do that, he had to see it and get a photo of it. Which could pose a problem. Because the photo would require aiming his camera towards the Middle "Sea" leaders' compound directly behind and beyond the pavilion. Ray reconnoitered the surroundings, noting the armed soldiers standing every 30 yards or so, keenly vigilant against those who wouldn't respect the absolute privacy of the leadership compound. Hmmm. Really had to get a photo of that pavilion and its inscription for his novel. Ray ambled casually around the perimeter, glanced at the guards to his left and right, then when their attention wasn't focused on him, very quickly aimed his camera and got a good photo of the pavilion. No outcry, no nothing. Whew! He ambled a bit further, past another couple of guards to his right, and took another quick photo from what was marginally a different angle.
Mistake.
This time he quickly found himself herded by two of the armed guards to a small open space near the public park of the North "Sea". Very soon another dozen or so soldiers arrived, weapons aloft, guarding him ominously. Then their leader arrived, an old grizzled, hard-bitten fellow wearing a pistol at his waist.
He glared at Ray a long moment, as if he regretted what he had to do. He curtly told Ray to give him the film from his camera. Ray understood the Chinese, but pretended not to. He volunteered to take a photo of everyone. He of the pistol elaborately pantomimed what he wanted Ray to do: take the film out of the bloody camera and give it to him.
Ordinarily, Ray would have been happy to do that. But this particular roll was a 72-shot roll, and it had numerous photos of locations he would use in his novel, including his precious pavilion. He could not lose those shots. So he offered to take everyone's photo again. The fellow with the pistol became angry, and shouted something at him. He reached out for Ray, as if to take him into custody. It was the make-or-break moment. For some reason—this was Ray's first novel the fellow was about to torpedo!—Ray backed away from him, turned, shoved his way through the fifty or so bystanders, and walked shakily across the street toward the public gardens in the North "Sea", where Kyle was waiting. Ray fully expected a rough hand on his shoulder turning him around to take him into custody. He walked further. No hand. As he got into the public gardens, Ray ventured a look around. He was already, miraculously, out of sight of the soldiers, the pistoled one, and the crowd. He stumbled on, found Kyle on a bench.
"What the hell's wrong with you?" Kyle enquired when he saw Ray's face and his shaky walking. Ray couldn't answer. With trembling hands he shakily took the film out of the camera.
"Take this. Put it in your backpack," Ray croaked to Kyle. He did so, to Ray's relief. He was still awaiting the pistoled fellow to catch up with him and take him wherever they took enemies of the state. He took out a new roll of film and put it in the camera. If the pistoled one confiscated the camera for evidence, Ray wouldn't lose his precious photos of scenes. Ray sat back on the bench, and recounted his misadventure to Kyle.
Kyle laughed. Annoyed, Ray turned to him. "See that high Dagoba behind us?" Kyle asked. Ray nodded at the faux Tibetan tower in the North "Sea" park. "From there you can see everything. Including your pavilion in the Middle 'Sea'. I put my telephoto lens on, mounted the camera on the tripod, and got plenty of pictures of it for you!"
Ray groaned.
He never did understand why the fellow with the pistol didn't pursue him. Perhaps the fellow didn't think the whole ruckus was worth it; after all, it was just a skinny foreign devil that had merely taken a photo of the distant leader's compound. Perhaps he had other more pressing things to do that day. Perhaps he was late to meet his young wife for an afternoon liaison. Kyle and Ray had seen the limousines squiring President Reagan on a visit to Beijing while they were there. Perhaps the authorities were avoiding run-ins with American tourists while Reagan was there. However it had happened, Ray had eluded prison in China.
Early the next morning, Kyle, AJ, and Ray rented bicycles. The streets of Beijing swarmed with bicycles. The main east-west drag, Chang'an Boulelvard leading either direction from Tiananmen Square, was perhaps 50 yards wide, of which a least 30 yards were set aside for cyclers. Since virtually no one owned private vehicles in China, the only trucks and cars on the streets belonged to work units, and the bicycles vastly outnumbered those.
Soon The Three Stooges were breezing down Beijing's streets, reveling in the freedom and whooping like little boys, which they felt like very much. To be part of a thousand people within 50 yards of you, flowing along in a tide of humanity on wheels, was something to celebrate.
From every direction came the pleasant ringing of the bells found on every bicycle. AJ was so taken with his bell that he rang it incessantly. He was all smiles and at least a head taller than the rest of humanity around him, beaming and nodding and ringing his bell non-stop. Soon we entered Tiananmen Square and walked our bikes around the Square for an hour or so. It was early May, and families were picnicking on the cobblestones of the place. Children rushed about squealing and having a wonderful time. AJ, Kyle and Ray never saw a single Chinese child that was not clean and cute and well-behaved in their six weeks in China. Doubtless dirty, snot-nosed children throwing tantrums must exist in China. They never saw one, though, in town or country or train stations or noodle shops. Moreover, the studied indifference or barely-submerged hostility of parents toward children, so frequently seen in America, was never observed by them in China, either.
In the warm, breezy spring day dozens of kites were being flown in the Square, many of them of elaborate shapes, all of them brightly colored and going through fancy maneuvers. It struck them that the atmosphere in the Square was that of a small town in America, simple pleasures and family-centered.
As they bicycled out of the Square and around to various sights, Kyle soon formulated his Eight Rules of Beijing Bicycling.
Rule 1: Buses, trucks, and taxis have right of way at all times and all situations. The idea of a motor vehicle courteously making any effort whatever to avoid hitting a cyclist was quickly shown to be laughable.
Rule 2: Use your bicycle bell to signal your location at least once every five seconds. Lady cyclists double this frequency.
Rule 3: Assume that riders around you are poor cyclists and will swerve and veer and stop for no apparent reason at all. Partly this is because they are often carrying bulky loads: shopping bags, crates of chickens, small pigs, or wide sofas.
Rule 4: Beware the young hot-rodders. These males (always) had playing cards stuck in their hubs to make clicking noises against the spokes (which all The Three Stooges had done when younger). These young men were particularly dangerous and unpredictable.
Rule 5: Never believe or, indeed, pay attention to a traffic cop's hand signals at intersections. Large intersections usually have several such cops directing traffic. Invariably they are giving conflicting signals. You're on your own at intersections.
Rule 6: Left-hand turns on bicycles are free-for-alls, always an adventure and frequently dangerous.
Rule 7: Use the bicycle parking lots and pay the little white-haired lady her two fen (about a penny). If you attempt to escape her, she pursues you, foreign devil or not. But it's worth it; if it rains, she will dutifully drape your bike seat in plastic.
Rule 8: Lock the absent-minded professor's bike for him, engaging devices built in behind the seat, quickly and easily engaged—if you can remember it. Kyle kindly looked after Ray in this regard (and many others).
Once Kyle's 8 Rules became second-nature, bicycling in Beijing was relatively safe, and opened up the city for them. Every morning they'd go to a new, nearby park at first light. The songs of cage-birds filled the air, hanging from tree limbs. All the people were engaged in some sort of physical exercise. There were a few joggers—invariably young, Yuppie-looking males. But everyone else was doing some form of traditional exercise, usually in groups ranging from four to a hundred. There were old folks merely walking slowly and deliberately, swinging their arms in a stylized manner, breathing very deliberately also. Others were stretching in a series of poses, both of those a form of Qi Gong. A few young folks did vigorous martials arts, such as Kung Fu boxing patterns or routines with lances or sticks.
But the most prominent exercise by far was the slow, graceful movements of T'ai Chi Ch'uan, what Westerners sometimes call Shadow Boxing. As many as a hundred folks, mainly middle-aged or old but including some youngsters, would synchronously go through a 10- or 15-minute routine of whirling, feinting, kicking ballet-like movements in slow motion. It was beautiful. Occasionally they'd see a smaller group doing T'ai Chi Jian, in which the dancers wielded a sword, sometimes steel, more usually bamboo.
Whatever their form of exercise, the people in the parks would slowly break off about an hour after dawn. But rather than rushing off to their homes or jobs, they'd stick around and mingle, socializing in an unhurried manner, with plenty of friendly bantering. In another ten minutes they'd reclaim their songbirds and drift away in groups or three or four, still joking. Not once did The Three Stooges notice anyone looking at a watch.
They soon realized in their rambles around the city that it exhibited a distinctly rural aura. Morning and evening they'd find the people squatting on the stoops before their homes, smoking cigarettes and chatting away, the men with pants rolled up above their knees. Spitting was quite common, with spittoons found everywhere and well-used. The warmly-dressed toddlers wore pants with slits in them, and their parents carried them over to the curb or to a spittoon when they needed to urinate. The basis for this rural feel was straightforward: the country itself was still overwhelmingly rural, many of the city's residents only recently arrived from farms and villages.
Invariably The Three Stooges would end the day bicycling to Tiananmen Square, where a festive air always prevailed. Families sat on blankets or mats, eating a picnic dinner, enjoying the cool evening breeze in the great open Square. As the hour grew late, The Three Stooges bicycled down the vast expanse of Chang'an Boulevard to their hotel on the eastern edge of the city, enjoying the cool breeze of the evening and the relative lack of bicycles on the great thoroughfare. AJ towered straight upon his seat leading them, arms folded across his chest, bellowing an improvised ditty about "Bicycling Through Beijing" as they whizzed along, attracting bemused stares all around them for this bizarre auburn-haired giant of a foreign devil with his gold Bison Instruments hat (festooned with a gold buffalo) and his two companions.