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| Wild Goose Pagoda, Xi'an |
Paper or plastic?
My mind left the supermarket in small town Nevada and I was transported
across the globe.
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| learning to use brush and ink at the Wild Goose Pagoda art school |
Paper or plastic?
Paper: I had seen this
simple two dimensional, utilitarian yet often overlooked staple of modern life
transformed into a work of art by the dancing of a brush dipped in rich
pigment. The artists in the Wild Goose Pagoda quietly and studiously
brought life and meaning to the flat, white surface while we westerns watched
wide eyed. The calligraphers were neither bored nor energized as they
worked their craft. I remember watching our young, delightful guide draw
simple yet extraordinary characters with the humblest of intentions. To
me, it seemed like art, beauty and meaning were pouring out of him onto the
page. Were it I who was creating the art I would have been buzzing with
pride bordering on arrogance, but his face showed peaceful resignation as
though his only job was to allow the ink to flow from the brush to the page in
precisely the right way. That was the paper that I contemplated as I
stood in line, my groceries being bagged.
Paper or plastic?
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| potato delicacies--a favorite food in Lijiang |
Another type of paper I
remember with a smile. Little, small squares of soft thin, cloth-like
paper in small stacks or organized in little boxes on dinner tables. How
pointless and useless these little kerchiefs were, but how culturally
informative. Why would anyone need a paper napkin while eating? Who
would let food fall from chopsticks on the way from the dish to one’s mouth? Who
would spill food? Food: the very essence of life--along with water and
air. Although we never experienced a shortage of it on our travels, most
people in China have known tables where dishes were empty before their bellies
were full. In such a world, who would need a piece of paper to clean up
what was meant for their mouths? And yet, those who catered to us knew of
our inadequacies with their prandial tools and knew that as we dropped and
dripped bits of their mouthwatering dishes we would seek paper to clean up our
messes. Ironically, they had been told in decades past that we were the
ones starving at home.
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| vegetable vendor, Suzhou |
My mind moved from what
type of bag my groceries would be loaded into, to the very groceries
themselves. I had a cart filled with bright, rich fruits and vegetables
and yet I knew I would do them a disservice when they reached my kitchen.
How could I pretend to create anything even slightly edible after the
delicacies I had enjoyed in China? Green beans. Yes, I had fresh,
locally grown green beans in my cart, but I might as well have had canned beans
because I knew that when I blanched them and perhaps even audaciously tossed
them with olive oil, they would seem like card board compared to taste of the
green beans we had eaten in China. There, the beans were firm, but soft
with flavors that tempted and melted the mouth. At the tables where we
ate, the eggplant, the tofu, the beef, the chicken, all the came together as
part of a bigger plan. Not only did they regale our senses, but they informed
us of the different regions and ethnic cultures within China. As we shared
our food, we shared our impression of the what we were seeing and learning of
what we looked forward to and what we didn’t understand. Discussions of our cultural explorations
needed a safe and quiet place where we could unfold our thoughts; our private
rooms with our personal culinary roulette table provided just that.
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| baby panda in Chengdu |
Breakfasts, of course
were feasts fit for the Empress Dowager. Once my body had been more of a reluctant
fast breaker, but in China I delighted in all the options. Of course, I
enjoyed the fruit (only peeled, Gail) but missed the paper. Again paper.
The morning paper: such a ubiquitous daily starter in the US but in China
is conspicuously lacking. When there were newspapers, I was struck by
their thinness; they reminded me of the meager (if you pronounce this with a French
accent you will get the double-entandre) belted waistlines of the Chinese.
The paucity of print in the periodicals was almost as laughable as the
print on some of the t-shirts proudly worn as fashion not political statements.
What did people need to know? That the belt and road initiative
would be good for Asia? That the pandas were thriving? That an
addled American had driven erratically through Times Square? How would
this change the lives of those in China? What could they do about
anything anyway?
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| chef carving Peking duck at multi-stared restaurant |
To ground myself, I
reached into my pocket. Perhaps to touch a dry-cleaning stub, piece of
round metal money, or a horse treat. But instead of finding something
that would bring me back to the present, I touch a small plastic package with
delicate paper, tissue really. A rush of warm emotion, a sense of
camaraderie flushed over me. These were of course the tissues that the
XX-chromosomed ones carried when we needed to visit the ladies room. We
did so quite often with a sense of solidarity that comes from foreigners facing
the reality of being in a foreign land. Hidden behind the door, would it
be a pedestal or the more minimalist, local version? Would there be paper or an
empty tissue paper container? Might someone already be occupying the
private space behind the door but had left the door unlatched? It was all part
of the adventure. Sometimes we soldiered on doing our best to ignore the practically
emetic fumes; staying faithfully together as though together we were
invincible. Other times we were delighted to find a truly starred
lavatory experience. Remember the decadently decorated washroom in
Shanghai that addressed certain issues that would no doubt confound our
Congress? How is it that the food was so amazing but Michelin ratings
seemed to have passed the restaurants by and yet the bathrooms were often
referred to with galactic ratings?
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| rapids at Tiger Leaping Gorge |
I looked up in time to see
that before I could object, the chicken (bone in and skin on thanks Peter)
I planned to purchase was been protected by a plastic bag. Plastic.
Plastic bags. Plastic bottles. The fluctuating levels of the upper
Yangtze River had left a foam of plastic waste along the steep cliff ravine the
River had carved. The River was more powerful than I could imagine.
I had seen it with my very own eyes yet still couldn’t conceive of its
force: its hydraulic power mesmerized me as it moved from smooth water to a
tumbling, building battle rolling over on itself, fighting with itself,
churning itself inside and out. To me, it seemed like the River was
taunting those watching it to dare question its greatness. Had the tiger?
Had the River been angered by the Tiger’s legendary ability to leap it without
batting an eye? How could any living thing not be humbled by this; one of
the greatest and simplest forces of nature doing what it simply does following
the laws of physics?
But the plastics.
The plastic foam, the detritus of human consumption lay on its bank just
out of reach from the lapping water. Occasionally small islands of
bottles and bags and toys slipped into the water or ebbed out from some hidden
rocky enclave and circled in on itself teasing the water. “You can't hurt
me,” it seemed to mockingly call out to the raging water. But the River was
too great, its roar too thunderous to take notice of the small insignificant
pock on its majesty. Centuries ago, the Yangtze had been a determining
factor in the development of civilization in that part of the world. In
many ways, that River has contributed to the world’s economy and affected the
world politically and now it is decorated with garish and sun bleached plastic.
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| Tiger Leaping Gorge above the rapids |
I was a contributor of
course. I chugged bottle after bottle of water everywhere we went.
I had a supersized American habit of drinking water and since I could not
use a refillable container, I drank from and then disposed of plastic bottle
after plastic bottle. Did some of my consumption end up dancing in the
gorge’s eddies? What is to happen with all the plastic waste? What does
it mean for a society to celebrate its history and natural resources and trash
them at the same time? How can this duality be reconciled? How can
the drive of “progress” and goal to be the world’s most super powerful power
miss the basic need to keep its nest clean? Where does this happen in our
lives on US soil?
Plastic. We were
told very matter-of-factly by your delightful cousin that rice had been tainted
with small pieces of plastic. Rice in China, tainted. Had I heard
this story before I set foot in China, I would have dismissed it as a tragic
piece of news in a foreign land. An
unfortunate lapse of human rights by an economic-political complex that I
didn’t understand. By the end of the trip, when I did hear the story, I
felt I understood how this could happen. I was still enraged, but felt
that I could begin to understand your cousin’s “such is life in China”
attitude. I had begun to understand China.
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| women playing cards at Temple of Heaven, Beijing |
Through our journey, I
saw the sights and monuments that were on perfectly crafted itinerary. In my daily wanderings, I saw the faces of
the people in the streets, the people placidly moving with the flow of traffic
on rickety bikes. I watched their
movements, their pace—always moving but somehow not in complete control of
where they were going. I watched the
faces and eyes of the Chinese travelers, tourists in their own country, proud
of their redacted history and of their modern-day accomplishments that show the
world what they can do. I saw the
contrasts that are China, the extremes: gargantuan towers rising up from
agricultural fields reaching high into the hazy air. I saw the pencil girls costumed in Versace
strolling the luxury boulevards in Chengdu while a few corners away a woman
strung rags together to make a sun shield to patch her roof. In Shangri-La, my eyes were ablaze with the
colorful prayer flags as they flapped in the wind carrying prayers to the
wherever the believers needed them to go and in the cities, infinite flags of
colorful laundry hung prayerless against dirty sky-rise buildings. This was the country that could plasticize
rice and move on to produce self-driving cars en masse. After all they had human assembly lines
replacing potted flowers nightly along city roads and sidewalks.
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| women pilgrims at Sumtsenling Monastery, Shangri La |
I reached into my cart
to check the label on the plastic food containers I wanted to purchase. Made in China. Human assembly lines turning petroleum
products into everything that we touch.
We had heard about how factory workers, particularly girls had become
the new economic force in China, disrupting the traditional social-economic
constraints. At what cost? They can do anything, but what is the cost? How could our present-day world exist without
all the plastic gadgets that make life easy and inexpensive in the short term,
but when will we as a world realize that this can’t continue. When will it matter that we are making new
floating continents of plastic, that sea life and now people are consuming
plastic unwittingly, that our garbage pits are becoming mountain ranges. How
does it end?
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