3 Chongqing Pix

  What would I have forgotten?  I finished packing for the return trip to Chongqing. I checked the list of things to pack in each suitcase.  However, I knew I would have forgotten something.

As I waited for the taxi to pick me up, I remembered what it was I had forgotten.  To call the north gate security office.  So it was something of a shock to realize that the taxi driver would be arguing to no avail that he had to pick up a passenger at my address.  Of course I had packed the phone in my hand luggage.  Then it was another 5 minutes before the phone was unpacked, turned on, and operating.  Fortunately traffic was rather light Friday morning, and I made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare.

The other thing I forgot?  To pack a sleeping tablet in my carry-on luggage.  So on the long flight from San Francisco to Beijing, I had to rely on Mother Nature’s natural soporific, exhaustion.

I arrived in Chongqing an hour late.  Apparently the plane from San Francisco had overslept as well because we arrived in Beijing’s new terminal 45 minutes late.  That left not enough time to go through Beijing’s medical station where those of us with too high a temperature would be separated out.  Not enough time to get my bags after the international flight and whip over to the domestic Air China flight check-in desk.  And not enough time to catch the train from one end of Terminal C to the far other end nor to walk two additional blocks to the gate for the flight to Chongqing.

I was rather surprised to see that a gentleman was holding a sign with my name on it.  I had just been wondering as I exited the baggage claim area if I could convince a Chongqing cabby to accept American dollars instead of yuan to take me to the university.  I pondered my memory as to the logistics of the taxi line outside, and of course I also wondered if I remembered enough Chinese to tell the cabby where I needed to go.  So the sight of my name in the hands of a driver at the end of 29 hours of travel was like the best Christmas gift ever.

The driver and I piled the bags into the car as best we could and as fast as we could.  It was raining heavily.  We both dashed around and got into the front seats of the car, and the driver started to explain it all to me.  “Wo shuo de bu hau.” I said.  My horrendous accent and the total look of non-comprehension on my face explained it all to the driver.  The honored passenger, me, was hopeless for a pleasant conversation in Chinese.  Fortunately Leni, an English volunteer interpreter, showed up just about then, and my normal life in China began – me speaking English and a few badly pronounced phrases in Chinese, a student or friend who speaks English and is dying to practice their language skills, and the vast country and people writing and speaking Chinese.

I was really grateful to the Foreign Teacher Office for providing the car and interpreter.  Not only had my late arrival caused them much confusion and anxiety, but worse yet it was a late evening pickup on day that is a national family holiday, anevening set aside for viewing the full moon with the rest of the family and eating “moon cakes.”  I could only console myself with the thought that neither the driver nor Leni would have been outside enjoying moon cakes with family and classmates in this driving rain. 

It was my last graded activity in the last class of the week.  By luck of the draw one of the students, Fred, was among the last three students whom I talked with.

The final activity was a one-on-one conversation with each student.  It’s a Spoken English course, or as it might be termed in the US, a “conversational English” course.  So it just seemed logical to end with a short conversation with each of my 284 students.

I was really glad to get to Fred.  He was so near the end of the week and a half of conversations.  Besides Fred is an original thinker.  In class Fred was the ring leader of a group of three students who often worked together contriving conversations or oral presentations that were part of the assignment for the class.  Just as often I found myself holding off calling on the boys until near the end.  They could always be counted on to come up with something out of the ordinary, something guaranteed to break me up.  So it was a welcome moment to have Fred sitting there talking with me for a few minutes.

The last two conversations went by, and I was done with all my final exam testing.  The three boys who had brought up the tail end, stood up to leave, saying good bye.  All of a sudden Fred told me he wanted to teach me a Chinese phrase, “Hou hui you qi.”  It means “We will meet again.”  Since I have a tin ear for Chinese word tones, I asked Fred to write the phrase down for me.  He did.  Four Chinese characters.  I don’t read Chinese characters.  So he wrote it out in PinYin, the Romanized script version of Chinese.  Finally I got the pronunciation right for Fred.  We shook hands and agreed that it would be great to meet again.  Outside in the hallway, I heard the three boys talking and then laughing.  Quickly Fred came in shame-faced and corrected one of the Chinese characters.  He had misquoted it.  I laughed as well.  Trust Fred to say good bye in such a warm, heart-felt manner and for it to break me up one last time.

Last weekend was Double Fifth Day (Duan Wu Jie), more commonly known as Dragon Boat Racing Day.  It is the third and last of the new three-day weekend holidays that replace the week-long Golden Week holiday.  The day actually commemorates the drowning suicide of one of China’s earliest major poets, Qu Yuan.  From Wikipedia: In 278 BC, learning of the capture of his country's capital – Ying, Qu Yuan is said to have written the lengthy poem of lamentation called "Lament for Ying" and later to have waded into a river holding a great rock in order to commit ritual suicide as a form of protest against the corruption of the era.  Other than his literary influence, Qu Yuan is also held as the earliest patriotic poet in China’s history. His political idealism and unbendable patriotism have served as the model for Chinese intellectuals to this day.

And what does that have to do with dragon boat racing, you might ask.  Turns out that villagers were said to have raced their boats out to find and save Qu Yuan.  Hence, the origin of dragon boat racing.  Later villagers believed that they should throw sticky rice wrapped in palm leaves into the river so that Qu’s ghost had something to eat.  Hence, the origin of zongzi, the traditional sticky rice dish served everywhere during the holiday.

We celebrated the holiday by an endless round of suppers with students and friends.  We lived up to Fred’s promise, we will meet again.   We met with some of Babs’ students, a couple of my former eCommerce students, another couple whom we had met two years ago.  We continue that leave-taking throughout this weekend with more evenings. 

Somewhere in the midst of all that, grades will be calculated and posted to the university.  Suitcases will be packed for the wrenching departure from Chongqing.  It has been an amazingly fast and intense few months here.

“Nan Bin Lu 南宾路  • Public area–Free admission; No opening/closing hours

The trendy and the nouveau riche collide here along this strip of restaurants and bars. Impress your business partners by wining and dining them in a private chandeliered room overlooking the river. Afterwards walk it off on the long river walk and take in the nightscape of Chongqing’s skyscrapers across the way. Or relax on giant plush couches and sip cocktails at any of the bars that line the walkway.”  [Blurb from a Chongqing tourist website.]

We do not qualify as trendy nor nouveau riche.  We visited Nan Bin Road to see some fifteen of our former Tourism students.  They all graduated last year, but they live and work in Chongqing.  Bob (Huang Jun) and several of his classmates helped to set up a wonderful evening for us all.  As reported earlier among these blog entries, we have truly enjoyed seeing our former students.  Still Saturday evening was probably one of the true high points for us seeing so many of them at one time.

One of the drawbacks of being a teacher is that one seldom gets the chance to see students after they leave one’s class.  In a teacher’s memory, former students all look and act the way they did when one last saw them.

Over all the years of teaching, it never once crossed my mind that I would get the chance to see my former students as young adults.  Certainly not in China.  Yet here we were chatting with these fifteen young graduates, listening to their descriptions of their jobs and successes, hearing about their plans to move to a different job, teasing one couple about the possibility that they would get married.

I think the evening ended up feeling more like a family reunion to me, and I would be glad to admit my spot in the family tree would be that of proud grandpa.

As long as I am waxing nostalgic, I should tell of another change over the last two years.  When Babs and I were here in the spring of 2006, Jens Olsgaard and I often went to the Music Bar, one of the bars described in the tourist blurb above.  We played Jens’ songs, he on the guitar and me on a set of conga drums.  So I made sure that I got the chance to stop at the Music Bar just to see if the band stand still had the drums and the guitar at the ready for any would-be musicians.  Yes and no.  The guitar was still there although it was gathering dust off to the side of the band stand.  But the drums had become part of the bar’s décor.  They were in the display window as one walked into the bar.  I didn’t have the heart to ask when they retired them.  I was afraid that the waitress would tell me they put them there so that no waiguoren (foreigners) would be tempted to drive away all the paying customers with his ham-handed drumming. 

Of course, it is just barely possible they retired them out of respect for the weiguoren who played so well two years ago. 

In Beijing one of our guides told us that the emperors had incense burning all the time in the Forbidden City.  Emperors, you see, needed to be bathed in the floating clouds of incense to remind them of their heavenly home.  They would have loved it at Lao Jun Taoist Temple.

We did in fact get to Lao Jun on Sunday.  I had written off a visit there because I just didn’t think we would have time in the last three weeks we are here in Chongqing.  Fortunately I was wrong about that.  We downloaded the Chinese name for the temple and printed it out.  We found a cabbie that understood our broken Chinese and with the aid of our printed words, he drove us there in record time.  Oh sure, we passed slower and more cautious drivers by driving in the on-coming traffic lane around blind curves, but everyone expects that here. 

We were an oddity at the temple, the only Westerners there at that time.  We rather guessed our status when some volunteer workers stopped digging just inside the entrance gate to the temple grounds and watched us watch them watch us.  Babs wanted to eat at the vegetarian restaurant on the grounds, and we made our way over to it.  Of course everything was in Chinese, and unfortunately the gentleman taking orders and serving as cashier didn’t speak a word of English.  However, just as we had been saved from accidental death while riding in the taxi, we were blessed and saved from starvation when Babs discovered a young lady who spoke excellent English and who ordered for us. 

Throughout our visit we met people who spoke a bit of English, some of them self taught, who continued to give us information.  We even attracted a small boy who came over to get a closer look at the waiguoren (foreigners) who were taking a break from climbing the endless stairs.  He too decided we needed sustenance and brought us a peanut each.  When that got a heart-felt thank you, he brought back a handful for each of us.  I took his picture and showed it to him.  We bonded.  As he left with his parents he waved good bye to Babs and me.

So how about those floating clouds of incense, you ask.  Well, Lao Jun is built up the side of the South Mountain ridge, and in the afternoon a breeze blows up from hotter valley below.  Worshipers light their incense at the lowest level, and the breeze carries the incense smoke right up to the temple of heaven, that is, the Jade Emperor’s Temple.  At least that’s what happened while we were there.  Everywhere we climbed, we caught a whiff of the incense.

This time we learned a bit more about the history of the temple.  It was a Buddhist temple until 1951.  I suppose that discerning scholars could pick out the details of the former religion, but we didn’t.  The temple has been refurbished and enlarged over the years.  When we visited two years ago, the temple for the Jade Prince was under construction, and it was really interesting to watch the many artisans painting the huge statue of the prince.  Now that statue is complete and preserved behind a glass wall.  So to Westerners like ourselves, the temple seems completely Taoist. 

Having said that I did find one bit of bas-relief painting at one of the new shrine areas.  It shows the Buddha seated and teaching a trio of people.  Still the artists who carved the relief included a cloud floating out of the Buddha’s head.  In the cloud is Lao Tze.  I took it to say pictorially that the Buddha was channeling the wisdom of Lao Tze.  

Getting to heaven to visit the Jade Emperor takes some work.  The first temple starts far down the mountain side.  Those who wish to see the whole grounds must then climb several flights of stairs to get from one temple area to the next and finally to the multi-floored temple at the top of the mountain ridge, the temples of the Jade Prince and his father the Jade Emperor. 

If you are a worshipper it takes even longer.  At the first temple you will want to kneel and bow three times as a monk rings a bell to let heaven know you are there asking for guidance.  Then you pick up a canister filled with numbered sticks.  You must shake the canister earnestly until one stick falls out.  You read the stick number, go to the side of the temple, pay a small fee and get a slip of paper with the appropriate advice printed on it.  Finally you take that outside to one of three senior monks who can read the paper and tell you in more detail what guidance you have received.  Buddhist temples often offer this service as well.  It seems to be a universal human desire to know what’s around the corner in one’s life -- not unlike reading one’s horoscope for the day or looking for inspiration from a Bible passage.

In all, a worshipper can offer devotions and seek spiritual inspiration at some ten temples and shrines as he or she climbs up to the stand before the Jade Emperor.

The visit to Lao Jun was an unexpected delight.  Fun to see how beautifully cared for the temple is.  And great to get back to see the funky dragon statue off to the side of the bas-reliefs.  He – I think it’s a he – looks like he would love to be taken as fierce and testy.  Still the mustache makes him look as though he is fighting hard not to laugh out loud at his own grimacing.