When life introduces you: Wuhan

The great gift of family is to be intimately acquainted with people you might never even introduce yourself to, had life not done it for you. 

-K. Hailey

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.

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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.

Come here, come here, I like you: Wuhan

A dance for Su Zhuo

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.

More bridges than streets: Su Zhuo

My train song

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. 

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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.

All my things are yours.

The worst part of the past few days has been just waking up. 

The sun claws through the grimy windows and you blink your eyes and wince, teary eyed from the cold biting at your face and the thought of all the steps your going to have to take to make it through that day are a dull pressure at your temples. 

You think that maybe if you are just still enough the day won't find you. 

You close your eyes. 

Open again. 

The morning is still there. 

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Sometimes the things we battle hardest against are footsteps like lead, or steam from your breath on a frosty morning as you sit inside your house thinking warm thoughts, or the strain of a smile and the flash of the camera as you take your fourth set of visa pictures.

It's those things... the stumble up to the fourth floor personnel office, the meandering car rides to the police station, the night of vomiting horrors, the misinformation, the old woman on the bus who leans her surprisingly substantial body weight on you for no good reason, the endless layers of dust, the forlorn food left in the fridge, the empty bag of clothes detergent when you only have one load left to wash anyway, the bike tire that is nearly flat, the tedious conversation that ends with a jab at your weight, the advice to 'find a hobby', the stares, the poverty and pain that is all around you at every moment... those things that dim your eyes and put a curve in your shoulders.

And somehow all those little mundane weights attach themselves to your skin, to the very marrow of your bones, until even your thoughts begin to drag and the blessed moments of deep, astounding beauty come across lusterless...

The beggar children whom you recognize by name, knowing their whole family and having wiped their tears, cleaned their wounds, grabbed their shoes out of the creek, and bought countless meals for, appearing at a very random tea house in the city center where you sit slumped though in good company and who hug you and walk hand in hand with you as you leave and you are compelled to admit that they are your beggars, your children, to the delight of your friends.

The sister with deeply slanted eyes who insists that you are her truest sister in the presence of her slightly stunned biological brothers and whose simple command of English leaves you giggling at every word and whose cup of butter tea is so salty that you feel your insides pickle and whose bowl of handmade noodles that you stretched out yourself fill not only your belly but your soul as well. 

The delegation of personnel officials who have been sent with you to the police station, where you mostly just wait behind an icy counter in line with some fidgety Nepalease people trying to pin down why you recognize the police officer in front of you until you realize that he's been in your house before, telling you that in fact you should never worry because you have done a very perfect job at our school.

The Christmas gift of a set of Tibetan books that are so far above your skill level as to be laughable given in genuine hospitality and signed on the inside: to the beautiful Kelly, best fortunes to you. And the teachers and gate security grandfathers who grab your hands and then do their best to warm them as they chatter away at you. And the teachers who lean out of windows to call you beautiful and ask where you are going. And the teachers who beg you to come back though you haven't left yet. 

The grocery shop lady with hands so red and swollen that they are bursting open in cuts and with puss, painful just on sight, who gladly accepts your extra tube of lotion sent from America and smiles at you in that way that doesn't need any language and gives you a hug that immediately assures you that you are in fact family.

The Chinese grandfather who looks nearly lost in his own tattered clothes and whose grizzled face does nothing to conceal the countless days of toil that add up to make his lifetime, whose milky eyes try to catch your own as you offer him your seat on the bus and he flops into it with all the force of a sigh and rubs his cracked hands with wrinkles so deep that they are permanently lined with dirt and in gratitude gives you a nod that might have required the last bit of energy he had in him for the day. 

Because when your eyes are too dry and your heart too distracted to see the beauty in those moments, such achingly clear beauty that you know they must have been knit by your Father's hand in some place that is gloriously other, it is perhaps the case that you have forgotten that all of His things are yours.

And all of your things... those useless piece of junk make you feel like you're a thousand years old worrisome uncomfortable lonely as a stone in a field of wheat makes you not want to wake up troubles... those things... they are His.

And in the most unfair exchange that was ever made you get joy for garbage.

All my things are yours.

The Class 09 Christmas mircale.

I heaved against the warped, peeling gray door of the classroom, arms loaded with Christmas goodies sent from saints in America, prepared for the last class of the term, and nearly dropped everything.

The normally drab classroom was decorated with a few odd balloons and the bowed chalkboard was covered with pictures of Christmas trees and snowmen. The students were all wearing identical Santa hats, throwing confetti, and shouting Christmas greetings. A bewildered looking teddy bear the size of an eight year old child was perched on the teacher's desk next to some hand made cards. I blinked. Took a minute to catch my breath while the confetti settled to the floor. 

Could this really be the class that at the beginning of the term had confounded me to the point of dispair when their admittedly favorite things to do were sleep and drink beer?

Could these stary eyed, remarkably attentive students really be the same students who cleaned their friends ears during class and worked harder at looking bored than any other single activity? 

As I stood at the front of class and slipped an extra Santa hat that lay awaiting my arrival from the desk onto my head, the typical Christmas words, hope, joy, peace, flashed through my mind and quickly away. For perhaps the first Christmas ever another word came to mind and hovered stuck there, entering forever into my seasonal vocabulary:

Redemption. 


The Angels heralded it. The Shepherds came to see it. Herod killed because of it. The Wise Men followed a star to it. A baby in a feeding trough... and redemption became real. 

So we spent the next nearly two hours, talking about Christmas symbols, making Christmas ornaments, singing Christmas songs, acting out the nativity story, taking pictures and spraying fake snow everywhere. When I handed out their gifts, stockings filled with candies and cards written to them specifically, there was a pause... I realized from the looks of wonder and gratitude on their faces, not to mention the momentary silence, that most of them had never received Christmas gifts before.

When we ran out of things to do, I dismissed them. But not before I thanked them for celebrating with me. The chours' of 'we love you teacher' 'thank you teacher' that sounded uncannily like a heavenly host saying 'Glory to Him in the highest...'

A difficult semester, a history of failure and loss, a class that had given up, a people that had almost stopped waiting, a Christmas miracle, a baby in a feeding trough, a class full of merriement and attention, a night of wonder, a semester, a world, redeemed.

Merry Christmas.