Beijing

Part 3 -- Lotus hands


Disclaimer from Hao Wang

About the author -- Lucy Friedland

Disclaimers: If you've made it onto this distribution list, it's because I thought you might enjoy hearing about my Asia trip from time to time. Because I'm being charged by the hour to use this computer, I'm rushing to write this letter, so please forgive any spelling errors or other imperfections. Also, not everyone may understand my references since I know you all from different walks of life. I apologize for this as well. If you rather not continue to receive these letters, please let me know--I won't be insulted--and I will happily remove you from the list. I'm really not that arrogant to think that the whole world is interested in reading of my travels and travails. If you write me back, it will probably take me a very, very long while to reply. Please don't be impatient with me. I'm not sure how often I'll be able to find one of these Internet centers and whether the connections will be decent.

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Hello everyone,

I'm realizing that there's no way I can possibly capture many of the things that have happened in three or more weeks since I last wrote. Plus, I'm not sure if you will have the patience to read volumes. I'll try and get down the best stuff.

Last you heard, I was having trepidations about leaving the bright lights/big city for the big mountains/small town of Xiahe, a Tibetan town in Gansu Province. Xiahe was a tame enough place--small and easy to navigate. Its Tibetan name is Labdang. The main draw is Labrang Monastery, one of the most important Tibetan monasteries in China. About 1,600 monks live there now, down from its peak of 4,000 monks in the 1700s. During the Cultural Revolution (of the 1960s), two-thirds of the residences inside the monastery walls were destroyed.

But first: Remember Lixia? The town where I nearly found myself due to the wayward minibus barrelling out of the Lanzhou bus station? Well, the bus to Xiahe stopped for a bathroom and lunch break in Lixia in the middle of the seven-hour ride. What a dump. It's a Muslim town and very poor. The public bathroom, if you could call it that, offered my first glimpse of maggots at work--in the roiling, stewing mess a few feet down from the toilet hole. The bathroom did provide a bonding opportunity with the Chinese women on the bus because even they were revolted.

I didn't dare eat at the roadside restaurant. It's never clear exactly how long a bus break will last. While the Chinese can order, eat and be reseated in lightening speed, I will have just geared up my chopsticks as the bus is revving its engines to leave. The recompense for Lixia was that the scenery on the way to Xiahe kept getting better and better. The mountains were reasonable (brownish and not too big), the sky was bright blue, and the villages along the route were an eyeful.

I stayed in Xiahe a couple of nights, long enough to tour the monastery and walk the 2.5-mile pilgrim route around the monastery walls. I wore out my arms spinning big, wooden prayer wheels. There were hundreds. I was told that the brightly painted wheels are installed in holy places so that people who cannot read books can send prayers to heaven by spinning the wheels.

In walking the route, three Tibetan Bhuddist nuns took a shine to me and insisted on leading me around by the arm. Guess they're just friendly folk. About 300 nuns live in a nunnery a couple of miles away. They sport scarlet robes, magenta shawls and buzzcuts. I had shared my dorm room (US$1/night) with one who was up late praying the night before. She must have been an out-of-towner. One of the three nuns on the route read my palm and indicated I had a good life to come. (Or was it just long?)

I had my first bicycle ride in about 20 years. It was hard--I lasted only two hours on this bike with a scraping chain. The ride got even harder when a Tibetan teenage girl helped herself to a ride on the back. She was surprised by how weak I was and dismounted before her destination. But I was very proud of myself even though I only pedaled a wee bit out of town and back.

In Xiahe, I had my first taste of yak butter. I was longing to try it because I like pungent cheese. Tsumpa was my first yak-butter dish--a starchy, grainy substance, stuck to the side of a bowl with yellow oil pooled around it. It was foul, but domo was even worse. Domo was a grey, dry, yeasty, yak paste, lightly sweetened and salted. It tasted just shy of Vegemite, an Australian breakfast spread which is the most disgusting thing I've ever eaten. [My apologies to the Aussies on this e-mail list.] But the Tibetan steamed bread, yoguert and honey were sublime. For those of you who don't know me well, you'll find that you'll have to put up with my food ravings. I'll unabashedly admit that good food is more important to me than good scenery.

I caught the bus back to Lanzhou and a booked a hard-sleeper bunk for the 28-hour train ride south to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province. The main events in Chengdu were Ong and the Sichuan opera. When I arrived in Chengdu, I took a cab to the Traffic Hotel, which turned out to be Backpacker Central. It was a shock to run across my first critical mass of backpackers.

When I walked into my triple dorm room (US$5/night), two Asian women swamped me with questions, facts and figures before I could even sling off my pack. They asked me where I was from, where I'd been and where I was going--three questions that seem to begin every conversation with a backpacker. Then they started quoting prices for everything, including the Bennetton shirt one of them had just bought. I was pretty flustered by their scrutiny, and I could barely speak.

Lisa, the one with the new shirt, was a fashion designer from Seoul Korea; and Ong was an accountant from Penang Island, Malaysia, who was teaching English in Beijing. They had hooked up in Chengdu and decided to make their way to Tibet together. While Lisa never stopped babbling about bargains, I came to admire Ong. She was Chinese-Malaysian, the youngest of ten children. She was tiny and wiry with thick, black shoulder-length hair. At 47, she was still single and still traveling solo. Both choices are completely unorthodox for most Chinese and Malaysian women. She believed marriage involves too much compromise, and her independence was more important to her. This was her sixth trip to China. Her first was in 1991, when China was initially opened up to travel by Malaysians.

Ong was jonesing for Beijing duck, so Lisa and I were led to a place Ong had seen earlier in the day that specialized in that delicacy. In Beijing, my stomach was too messed up to handle duck, so here I was eating it in Sichuan instead, which is known for its hot and spicy food, not for duck. Ong said it was the genuine article, so now I know what good Beijing duck tastes like. Actually, it tastes a lot like the Beijing duck my former boss Arnie Weissmann procured for the company holiday party in Austin, Texas.

I only spent a couple of days in Chengdu, but I enjoyed spending time with Ong. When I told her of my fascination with Beijing opera, she asked if I had seen the movie "Farewell My Concubine." Just so happens that this movie provided the inspiration for me to go to China in the first place. It could be my very favorite movie. It won the Palm d'Or at Cannes [the annual international film festival in France] in 1993. For those of you who don't know the film, it's directed by Chen Kaige and explores the intersection of love, art and politics, in the context of 50 years of Chinese history (from the 1920s-1970s, I think). It's about two boys who are rigorously trained at opera school at an early age and go on to become Beijing's most respected stars. The one played by my hearthrob, the famous Hong Kong actor Leslie Cheung, cross-dresses for the female role of the concubine and the other guy (don't know the actor's name) plays the king. In the 1920s only men were permitted to enter the opera.

Many people in China have seen the movie even though it was extremely controversial. It was one of the first Chinese films to address the theme of homosexuality, which according to government propaganda is only a "foreign problem" and does not exist in China. The Leslie Cheung character carries a lifelong torch for his operatic co-star, a love which is unrequited, because offstage the guy marries a (female) prostitute, played by Gong Li, another famous Hong Kong actor. Hao [my buddy in Xi'An] had told me that he thought the film was famous only because it covered an "unusual" theme, and that Kaige is really a hack director. Ong told me that she loved the movie and saw it twice.

Plus, she told me the dish on Leslie Cheung: He used to be China's number one pop singer some years back, before he started acting in John Woo action pictures and other movies. She told me I could still buy his recordings in the stores. But the best part is that he recently came out [as gay] and introduced his "girlfriend" to the public. I asked her whether that had diminished his popularity, either as a pop singer or as an actor. She said she didn't think so. She said that he was finding it more difficult to get recording contracts since he was asking for too much money. Younger, hungrier singers who work for less pay have come along to take his place. (He's about 40 now.) The last movie I saw him in was "Happy Together," directed by Wong Ka Wei, which was about two Hong Kong men who unsuccessfully try to transplant themselves and their relationship in Buenos Aires.

So, it was Leslie Cheung who began my love affair with Beijing opera, and now I was taking it on the road. In Chengdu, I hit the jackpot. I was told about three-hour Sichuanese operas that were held only on Sunday afternoons at an old hall close to the Traffic Hotel. By golly, if it wasn't Saturday the day I found out about them. The three performances I had seen thus far (two in Beijing and one in Chengdu the night before) were geared towards Chinese and Western tourists: They were abridged productions, peppered with more acrobatics and fight scenes than would normally be packed into an opera.

The first show I saw in Chengdu was a travesty. Pricey, too. It was a goofy variety show, packed with comedy routines, majorettes twirling batons, and lengthy speeches in Chinese by this grinning, grating Master of Ceremonies dude. About 20 minutes out of the hour and a half were actually Sichuanese opera. The problem is that most Chinese people dislike Chinese opera, especially younger people who find it dated and boring. These hybrid shows are created to appeal to larger audiences.

On Sunday afternoon, I set out to find the old opera hall. The travel agent at the Traffic Hotel had circled the Chinese characters for me on my map. The half-hour walk along the river that circles Chengdu was very pleasant. As I got closer to where the hall should have been, the neighborhood took a nosedive. The streets were suddenly very dirty, and people were looking very poor. I would get directions by pointing to my map. Everyone knew where this place was but I was going back and forth through these narrow, grimey alleyways, not finding it. Finally, one elderly lady dressed in her Sunday finest seemed to indicate that she was going there too and that I should follow her.

She led me through an archway that I would never have identified as leading to an opera hall, and lo and behold, there we were. The place had a wooden interior that was very shabby. It could hold about 300 people, and it was filling up with almost exclusively elderly people in festive moods, fanning themselves and chatting happily with their friends. When I appeared at the doorway, one man started to fuss over me. For 10 yuan (US$1.20), he led me to the very first row of the theater and set up a chair for me in front of the front row. I felt like a celebrity. People were smiling and talking to me, though I have no idea about what. Then the man brought me a plastic jar of tea. Everyone received a plastic jar of tea with the price of admission, which was constantly being refilled by attendants.

I had heard that sometimes tourists are permitted backstage to watch the performers apply their makeup. I was timid about asking for this favor even though there was still a good half-hour before the show was to start. Since my Chinese phrasebook had the word for "makeup" in it, I figured it was destiny. I flagged down the man and repeated the word in Mandarin and patted my cheeks. He nodded, knowing exactly what I wanted, and led me backstage. I was so excited, I thought my head was going to fly off my body. First he took me to the woman's side, where I glimpsed two performers in the process of putting on their makeup. Then he quickly led me over to the men's side where the men were only half dressed, smoking and applying black and white warrior makeup. They said hello to me, but I became even more shy around those guys with their shirts off, so I hightailed it back to the woman's side.

The two women smiled at me, and one of them motioned for me to sit in the chair she had been sitting in. In pantomime, I said, no, no you are busy, I'll stand here. Then she insisted that I sit on the bed that was to their side. They asked me a bunch of questions, but I told them that I didn't speak Chinese. I got the feeling that they thought it was very uneducated of me not to speak Chinese. (They were speaking Sichuanese anyway, I think.) I did manage to ask them whether the opera would be performed in Mandarin or Sichuanese, and they said Sichuanese. I watched them in awe as they got ready. One of them had completed her makeup and was putting on her black wig, headress and jewelled headress ornaments. The second was fastidiously putting on layer after layer of white and pink foundation and black eye makeup. I estimated that it took 40 minutes to get all the makeup on.

Since they seemed to be in no rush, I had the bright idea of showing them my scrapbook that had my ticket stubs in it from the Beijing opera performances. They took my book from my hands and paged through the whole thing. They seemed deeply interested in the ticket stubs from the various attractions that I had visited in other cities in China.

Then, to my amazement, another Western backpacker appeared from behind the curtain. Part of me wanted to strangle her. She shattered my illusion that I was the only tourist who would be granted admission to this special world--at least on that day. She had been directed to the hall from the same hotel I was staying at. Finding the place was not exactly rocket science, but still. She spoke no Chinese. She was from Scotland. Her boyfriend was saving a seat for her outside. I was polite. She knew nothing about Chinese opera, so I told her what little I knew about it.

Then a gong from the orchestra announced that the show was about to begin. One of the women parted the curtain for us to return to our seats. My fronter than front-row center seat was still waiting for me with my tea jar on it. But the elderly women just behind me were motioning for me to go sit with the other two Westerners in the front row. I wasn't keen on it, but they insisted. I pantomimed the question whether I was blocking their view, but they seemed to indicate that I was so far forward I wouldn't be able to see properly. I said, okay, okay, I'll go sit with the others. They were right. The view was better from the first row, right.

Up close, I could tell that this was a low-budget production. The costumes were a bit raggedy and dingy and there was no special lighting or props. But it was the real deal. The opera went on for a full three hours. I couldn't make out a story line. I could only tell when characters were flirting, fighting or being funny. But I loved the sound and look of it. The female characters were captivating, with their other-worldly voices and subtle finger movements, which I learned were called lotus hands and orchid hands.

Midway through the performance, a female singer appeared who clearly was the star of the show. She had the cleanest and shiniest costume, and a tiny mike was pinned to her gown. She appeared opposite the king, who had no mike. Her voice soared above everyone else's, pitched loud and high, shattering the haze and chatter of the room. In comparison, the king suddenly sounded like he was whispering his lines. The crowd went wild.

A woman had been selling faded fake flowers from a cardboard box on the floor in the front of the stage. People had been shelling out wads of cash to purchase these flowers and place them at the edge of the stage to honor their favorite performers who would pick them up before exiting backstage. At the end of each act, the flower lady would retrieve the flowers and resell them. When the main star appeared on stage, a mass of people rushed the flower lady. She ran out of flowers before the star ran out of fans.

When the opera was over, I slowly walked back along the river to the hotel, stalling to gain distance between me and the other two backpackers. I was busy practicing my lotus hands.

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Copyright 2000. Lucy Friedland
E-mail: lucyfriedland@gmail.com
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Part 4 -- Tiger Leaping Torrent

Copyright Wonderlandİ 1999