Living for the Other...

Two and a half years ago the earth shook in Lhasa and a Chinese girl came walking up to me to introduce herself. We've been friends ever since. Life introduced us.

The drive from the airport of Wuhan into the city was a sliding view of grime and poverty paused only for endless construction and traffic jams so dense that it felt like I was in a box which had buses crammed with people for sides. When I arrived at the school where my friend now worked to spend the next week or so with her I didn't realize at first what had changed. It all seemed the same as last years visit. Same numbingly frosty air, same sidewalks thick with muck, same girl.

Only this time, we weren't just friends...

We lived together in her apartment, and I learned what it meant to be a young Chinese professional: survivor. Words like: rickety, moldy, dusty, broken, dangerous, old, stressful, uncertain... would have populated legions of conversations regarding the general environment. Case in point: She plugged a small hair dryer into the wall for me to use and the power went out in her room. She called the landlord who sent an irritated young man to look at it. He arrived with nothing except some wire clippers which he used to knock the switch off the wall in a shower of whitewash. Later, he grumbled his way outside where he flipped another switch a few times until the electricity came back on. My friend gave him some yogurt and shrugged happens all the time. We decided that outlet was off limits.

When she wasn't busy we walked around, bought bread at bakeries, ran errands, took pictures, stayed warm, chatted, met her friends. But she was often busy. Add that to the list of defining words.

So I spent time with her younger sister. I spent time listening to a quiet girl who doesn't get heard much in the noise and rush of China. I spent time wandering with her in buildings adorned with cross and decorated with paintings of stories that she didn't know but that I was overjoyed to tell. I spent time with the truly beautiful, ignoring all the rest.

As the days slipped by and friends were met and made and milk tea was drunk and streets were walked and my friend remarked for the second time that it's so good to have you here because we have a routine now I realized that I had somehow just been assimilated into life in general, my pulse melded with the city, my chopsticks clinked in sync with theirs, my feet stomped to keep warm alongside everyone else's. I had been adopted into her family, having met all of its members, spit my fish bones out on the table next to them, laughed about nothing in particular, developed a language of shared experiences that only we could possibly understand, been bored, been cold, been tired, been irked, been amused, been accepted.

We weren't just friends because we were family.

And I realized that had it not been for an earthquake I would never have had such a family.

That is how, from Wuhan, praise went to the Shaker of the earth and the Introducer of all things.

A dance dedicated to my dear friends Charlie Brown and Lucy who so generously allowed me to enter their lives for a week as an ever present Snoopy.

Su Zhuo is famous for its bridges. More bridges than any other city in China, even the elderly are apt to declare to you that they have walked more bridges than your foolish feet have walked streets. They probably have. Bridges just burst forth from the ground for no particular reason in Su Zhuo.

I arrived smelling acutely like two days on a train from Lhasa. I felt as though I had arrived on a spaceship from another planet; baffled immediately by the
cleanliness, beauty, and quaintness of the town-esque city I had arrived in. Ancient but with hot water. Like a fairy tale. Hobbled streets and hobbled people. Slanting roof tiles and water stains. Stone canals outlined with neon lights. The cacophony of shopping malls and the delicate twitter of birds. Flaky pastry eaten with chopsticks. Gardens, pagodas, buses, shallow boats on lazy rivers, and ragged old men selling roasted sweet potatoes from blackened ovens on wheels.

In my bowl of soup I found a fish so slender and translucent I would have thought it was an egg white save for the tiny black eyes. In my temporary residence in the Chinese student dorms I found two quilts and an electric hot water bottle I would have considered fearsome weapons had I been the ice cold draft filling the room. In my spirit I found scabby wounds I would have
thought beyond healing had I found them in any other place. In my Chinese friends I found friendship that is recognizable only to them, and now, to me as well.

We idled away our days walking through parks, taking pictures, finding places to eat, peeling oranges, escaping into heated shopping malls, chatting, wandering around, joining tour groups, trying on boots, staying warm. The places are nearly a blur to me as one day ran into the next and I learned the art of warmth from a glass jar filled with boiling water and a leak
proof lid. The sounds of that city are diluted to me because they were distinct from one another only in our pauses for breath between laughter. During my time there I learned the dance that is required for the body to receive rest, for the mind to receive peace, and for the soul to receive joy. A dance that looks like a bridge.

Some bridges are extravagant, some utilitarian, but most are simply modest. There was a bridge that was so humble one might have walked over it without ever guessing the impossibility of the walk had the bridge not been there. It was composed of two slabs of stone hardly two meters long grown old and stained permanent side by side. So many feet had trod there, so many
shoe scuffs and bike tire treads, yet the stones bore no slippery smoothness. The sludgy green water underneath it moved at the pace of a whisper or fog from a breath on a cold morning which was every morning there. We must have passed over that bridge more than two dozen times. One of many, nothing more.

A bridge takes you places you would not otherwise go. It connects two things which, by default, are not connected. A bridge uplifts, a bridge quickens, a bridge joins. All my weary semester what I've needed most is such a bridge, such a dance.

My week in Su Zhuo was a dance, it was a bridge. A bridge between a tortured yesterday and a hopeful tomorrow constructed out of beautiful scenes and dear friends without which I may have never gotten to this other side.

A dance of bridges.

Because a two day train ride spent laughing with teachers from our school, sharing meat and tea with a Tibetan couple, getting to know the train cabin mates, giving free English lessons, learning again who I am, and watching a tough semester slip away to the rhythmic chug of the highest train in the world... deserves a song. 


The clickity clack of the wheels on the track
Massage weights off my soul
I am free
I am whole

I beat the sun to the start of the day
Bags packed, door closed, and keys put away
The city I drive through grays with decay
Reasons to leave but not one to stay

The clickity clack of the wheels on the track

Lazy yak herds and plains dusted with snow
Pass quickly by the grimy window
Boiled meat shared by a chatty fellow
Anxiety subsides and a pounding heart slows

Massage weights off my soul

Behind lies a city therein lies a past
Of calouses formed and chains tightened fast
Of joy in rare places and bruises that last
Why hope for a change when the die has been cast?

I am free

But this is my train song so I dare to sing
Of life and of love and of every good thing
The clouds of back there tossed aside with a fling
And though tears have been cried I know laughter rings

I am whole

So I'll sing again at the dawn of the day
I'll sing of friends and tea given away
And I'll sing of hope, let come what may
I might lose again but I'll step into the fray

The clickity clack of the wheels on the track
Massage weights off my soul
I am free
I am whole.