Twilight Zone theme music...

Do do do do, do do do do, do do do do...

-Kelly, Mr. Huang wants you to have a dinner with his friends... do you know him?
-Nope.
-Yes you do, he's short.
-Oh yes, him, sure I know. When's the dinner?
-Tonight. Are you okay?
-I'm okay.

Do do do do, do do do do, do do do do...

I stood at the school gate chatting with some students about the topic of choice: dinner. The wind blew cold off the snow dusted mountains and I checked my watch. A gray Buick minivan pulled up and the side door slid open. Kelly, get in. So I did.

The owner and driver of the minivan was indeed a short Chinese man with a dimple in his left cheek whose name turned out to be Mr. Huang. Mr. Huang from Jiangsu province. Mr. Huang whose Believing son was studying in America. Mr. Huang the vice president of our school. I didn't know it as the minivan swerved and screeched down the road making even the taxi drivers nervous, but I would know a lot more about Mr. Huang by the time the night was over.

As we were ushered into a restaurant famous because the waiters all wore Mao outfits and random bits of plastic fruit hung from the ceiling, I was informed by the nearly ecstatic Mr. Huang that since I would soon be leaving it was important for us to have a dinner together. One look into the room, steamy from mushroom hot pot bowls and crowded with about twenty people I didn't know, I was sure the dinner was not in my honor. So I did what any foreign girl whose been in China for nearly three years would do: took up the role of banquet decoration with finesse. 

The food sat idle and strong Chinese liquor was downed as the table of Chinese men I would later discover were all provincial leaders of some sort made comments about my professional use of chopsticks, the way that sunshine escaped from me, how perfect my spice consumption was, my respectful countenance... and when the man sitting next to me proclaimed to my translator that I was like an angel I knew I had successfully completed my role as foreign face giver to the, now slightly drunk though still beaming, Mr. Huang.

Before I had taken three sips of my favorite sweet rice porridge Mr. Huang announced that dinner was over, though how he came to that conclusion was a mystery to me since it seemed like most people had done little aside from smoke and there was enough food left untouched on the table to feed a moderately sized village. Nonetheless, the entire dinner party made our exit, politely leaving the kadas given to us by the singing waitresses on the chairs. Ten minutes later the sun set, casting golden shadows over the sluggish Lhasa river and we arrived at the largest Karaoke club I'd ever seen.

The multicolored lights in a web pattern on the outside of the building blinked in time with the Twilight Zone's theme song and the now euphoric Mr. Huang guided us all inside to a room decorated with gaudy chandeliers, cream colored columns, renessiance-esque life sized paintings of mostly naked buxom women, and glass tables supported by golden cherubs. We ordered glasses of rose tea, which unfortunately didn't come with ear plugs, and by the time we had settled into the sage colored couches everyone had gone completely silly.

Songs were added to an on screen playlist by the various leaders we had dined with but the first up was 'Xiao Fang', an 80's Chinese love song of the highest order, and the only one I could sing any part of. Suffice it to say that a rousing duet remix with Mr. Huang and the night had only begun. At least four songs were sung/ attempted in honor of 'foreign friends', I stumble giggled through a slow dance with Mr. Huang who later insisted I sing Lionel Richies version of 'Say you Say me' which I had never heard until that moment, and didn't find out that 'One love' by the pop group Blue was an option until after the party had ended, about two and a half music blaring head pounding culturally confusing hours later.

The next time the minivan door slid open it was under a starry sky at the entrance to our school and I could have sworn that the shadowy trees were humming do do do do, do do do do, do do do do...

And as if life in general could make less sense I got on a bus this afternoon and sat next to a very creased Tibetan grandmother wearing a belt with a prominently placed wicked looking little knife hanging from it who stared at me until she got up the nerve to shake my hand with a spontaneous vigor I did not see coming and gave me the Chinese equivalent of an icey pop as she hobbled off the bus. How could she have known how much I love those things?

And just a moment ago I got a text from a student that contained a rather cryptic message reading:  "wu wu can you help? me please" to which I didn't respond, not having the faintest idea how one could respond to that.

Do do do do, do do do do, do do do do... Twilight zone theme music couldn't be more appropriate... except that the zone is for real.

A plea on behalf of others...

For all of the visually imparied girls whose only assistance they can offer to their ailing grandmothers is a gentle massage...

For all the teachers and staff who have to tout party lines and wear masks and avoid intimacy...

For all the tiny girls whose parents dissappear on an evening leaving them out in the cold and dark until after ten at night when in desperation they come banging on the only door that will open to them, a foreigners...

For all the nuns who can't leave... 

For all the beggar children who go about disheveled and thin, discarded by the world, with piercingly honest requests for only bread and a place to wash their filth scarred hands...

For all the students with drunken, abusive parents and horror stories hidden behind shy smiles...

For all the aging janitors who have a tendency to lean from exhaustion into those who dare to stop and chat with them...

For all of the students who ache with a desire to be known and safe that they cannot name but is plainly revealed in their furtive glances and cryptic remarks about loneliness and fatigue...

For all the vegetable sellers with swollen, pussy hands and permanently twisted fingernails that visibly tingle with pain...

For all of the monks who can't explain...

For all of the young women with explosive husbands who refuse to give them even a second thought as they rage about divorce and leave them to shed violently silent tears during a break between classes...

For all the victims of change...

For all the prisoners of idols...

For all the slaves of fear...

I offer you, Holy of Holies, this modest plea... come save.

Even now my witness is in heaven, my advocate is on high. My intercessor is my friend as I pour out my tears to the Holy One.

A conversation with the Wind

The wind is angry tonight. It pounds its fists against the nonchalant concrete of the building and bullies the frail windows till they shudder and start. You can hear its anger as it rips though the prayer flags on the buildings near by and you can see it as it throws masses of dirt and garbage in every direction. It screams its rage and obscures the valley with its fuss.

What are you so angry about, Wind?

Sometimes I wonder if the classroom itself seems grayer because the students are so colorful and dear to me. They have changed a lot in three years, my students, yet somehow, noting their sly way of photographing me with their cell phone cameras, not at all. A recent conversation in which a student reminisced about a lesson on clothing I had taught my first term in Lhasa had me laughing until tears formed in my eyes which stayed there and I had to blink away when I realized that our time together had been memorable for her too.  Maybe they, not really changing at all, have just allowed me to behold their openness... a passerby who only sees a bud would hardly recognize the same petals in full bloom... I rubbed my icy chalk covered hands together, and thought about the best time to dispose of the homemade barley beer candy I'd been given fistfuls of by the same grinning students only moments ago.

From my adoring reverie during the mid class break, I was beckoned out into the familiar dullness of the hallway by the newly returned, bearing gifts of kangaroo printed wallets and kangaroo jerky, Mr. Wu. Your students will not have class for at least one month he intoned and the new teacher will not come until maybe mid April... he handed me a crumpled half sheet of paper... so you will teach her classes, starting next week. I nodded, not even phased by the sheer randomness of life any longer. No problem, I replied, to his visible relief.

But when I returned to the classroom it was with a mixture of deflation and a vague sense of some far greater plan unfolding with the painful slowness of all things oxygen deprived. More time that I had longed to have with these my students had been stolen from me... but it was being given to others. I finished up our week of review, which seemed now like a week made valuable just because I had been among them rather than anything I had taught, and set about planning for totally different classes.

The schedule that now requires my temporary fulfillment has only one class of students that I know, having taught them for the past year, and two classes that are completely unknown to me. Though confused by the presence of more than eighty unfamiliar students in my last semester in Lhasa, gratitude for getting one last chance to be among the other class that I have come to know and love pretty much overwhelmed me.

This afternoon I was met at the gate while the sun hid behind a thick cloak of clouds by a few of those students. Quintessentially Chinese, they asked if I had eaten and offered me their newly purchased bananas which I declined. We chatted for a minute more and I mentioned, with utter sincerity,  how happy I was that I could see them in class tomorrow. One slim girl squinted with effort and asked beseechingly Ms. Kelly, will you now be our teacher forever? Though everything in me wanted to respond affirmatively, I knew I needed to explain the temporary nature of the schedule. After doing which, I couldn't tell if it was the sky or only their faces that darkened.

Wind, maybe I understand your fury. Something, perhaps everything, smacks of injustice so deep that even the snot running down my neighbor's daughter's nose as she merrily draws pictures of me while we sit entertaining each other in my apartment can't help but display it. And, Wind, you can throw tantrums that steal clothes from the backs of beggar children and rip our fingers and faces to cracked shreds, and pound and howl until we wince with your pain, but know this Wind... all your raging will not change it.

There is only One Righteous Judge that I know.

He gives and He takes away. He gives classes and schedules and He takes them away and gives other ones. And everything He gives is good. And everything He takes away is for good.

I understand your anger, Wind, but I needn't join you... I'm a little too caught up in grace.

Folly's Ferris Wheel

Just when I feel like I'm starting to understand things around here it's like life moons me and runs away laughing...

...and all of my best guesses about what's going on are so far off the mark it's like I showed up at target practice with a monopoly game instead of a bow. 

And I realize that I've somehow gained admittance to this amusement park for the hilariously ridiculous... Today's ride: Folly's Ferris Wheel. 

**************************************************

The classroom full of students back from a semesters worth of practice teaching and two month holiday were all lined up ready to get on. They had come to the first day of class prepared with maybe a dozen sheets of paper and about three pens between the forty of them. I couldn't help but grin along with their innocent faces of dismay and their blundering attempts to remember what the meaning of school was along with where they had left all of their materials. On an assessment test a student wrote: He is skart. Folly gleefully collected tickets.

A break between classes was just enough time for my dear beggar friends to catch sight of me and shout out 'Hello hello how are you?' as though my name was 'Hello'. We went shopping for some snacks and I asked them about their family before meeting two colleages for a lunch of fried lettuce and the Sichuan equivalent of fatback. I found the thrill of the upward swing of the ferris wheel too compelling to take the nap that I wanted before my afternoon class. At the break a teacher from the neighboring classroom came over and sniffed me, asking me about my scent brand. The only thing I could smell was burnt oil from lunch. Folly, waving at us from below, had let my colleage into the same bench with me on today's ride.

After class I was dragged through the ferocious wind and freezing weather over to where the entire staff of Lhasa Teacher's College was planting very large, bare looking sticks they called trees. Nearing its climax, the ferris wheel swung wildly in the breeze. The leaders passed out shovels and shouted orders. I was given a tree that made me feel dangerous and my face chapped from the cold. Teachers pushed the great gusts of dusty wind around the mutant trees lying in shallow holes. We laughed, ate and bathed in the dirt, and two shovel fulls and a dozen pictures later I proclaimed my exhaustion and cold and headed in, begging a teacher just arriving to plant a tree in my honor. From the height of her great wheel, we could hear Folly's contagious laughter echo as she turned it. We, teased into amusement ourselves, caught our breath at its downward swing.

I returned a veritable dust monkey just in time to receive a bag of stale breads and hard cheese from a student who I insisted joing me for dinner. Over a bowl of noodles like the Tibetan cure for cold we made grand plans for things we must do together in this our last semester. We sipped tea and discussed Losar traditions, we leaned back into wooden benches covered with stained towels and she described her month long hospital stay, we zipped our jackets and pulled back the heavy door blanket to make our way back to campus. I saw the shadow of Folly urging guests off of her ride to make way for the legions of others crowding to get on.

A quick stop at a couple of colleagues' apartments not far from my own and our ferris wheel bench neared the ground. We laughed breathlessly at pictures from the afternoon's tree plant on a computer and talked about how filtly we were from it. I looked the impatient Folly imploringly in the eye and asked gently, hopefully, won't you let me go around just once more...

She, errupting into laughter, of course consented... You are a forienger in Lhasa, your ticket never expires... she merrily explained.

Staff tree plant: proof that life is unpredictable

Fireworks and horseshows and a pot of fragrant flowers

I turned my trusted heater on and with a pop and a sizzle that smelled briefly like burnt glue I could trust it no longer. Luckily my winter travels taught me how to stay warm with only hot water on hand and besides this semester is heading for summer. I wheeled my formerly favorite, now busted, household appliance out to the hallway with only the slightest shiver of regret.

My fifth return to Lhasa had made no headlines. I breezed through security in Sichuan, arrived with my luggage and without a headache, and came back to an apartment that, save for the layers of increased dust, was exactly the way I left it. Not even one of my plants had died.

We walked down the gray familiar street past the quiet frenzy of last minute Tibetan New Year's preparations to a noodle shop that must have mourned our absence. My Chinese colleague, who tried to convince me she'd been working the entire break, while we slurped spinach noodles like they were manna from heaven, impressed on me two significant facts: 1. I need to eat more noodles because I had just returned from a long journey and 2. I need to be more careful and stay at the school for my own safety. I nodded my frustrated acquiescence and ate more noodles.

My head swam a little bit on the walk back to school, as much from the altitude as from the news that I would be refusing New Years celebrations from most of my friends in the city. Perhaps noting my reserved politeness or the uncontrollable glimmer of joy that I get when walking past bicycle carts of potted flowers, my colleague stopped in front of one. She asked me which plant I wanted and I restrained my impulsive answer of 'all of them' opting instead to pick out a serene light hued plant with wildly contorting sage colored stems and humble white flowers. It is my New Year gift to you, she said and I gushed with pleasure.

That night burst and sparkled as the entire cityscape of Lhasa was illuminated by the fizzle and explosion of fireworks that would have put Disney World to shame and made the usually sullen city resplendent with color. I, yet again thankful for the mercies of a well placed window, sipped hot water and watched another years potential reflected in the vibrant flashes of the fireworks as the festivities meant to usher in the new year destroyed the silence of the night.

When the gate security guard had held my ice cold hands as a greeting and welcome back and had urged me to come to the small room shared by him and his wife to celebrate the new year, my heart had twinged with gratitude. My Tibetan rusty from the two month vacation, I went over with a bag of goodies and somehow mistook their offer of chang for cha and ended up with a small glass of foul smelling milky yellow fermented barley beer in my hands when I had been expecting tea. Not able to conjure up the language to refuse now with glass in hand I drank it, the three prescribed sips, before nearly choking on the pungent bitterness of the Tibetan drink of choice, which I had deftly managed to avoid for three years. I put it aside and made diversions by asking about the room's decorations, among which I found a picture that I had taken with him my first year, long before our relationship was anything more than passerby, and had given to him on a whim. The chang bit at my stomach and I marveled at the profound simplicity of the overlap of lives.

A text message from a student and permission granted from the school gave me the opportunity to go for a walk to the nearby horse racing track featuring newly built concrete bleachers. I met my dimpled student at the gate and we promptly cut in front of the hundreds of other people waiting in line in their finest Tibetan outfits and walked straight to her family's house behind the track for a quick snack of meat dumplings washed down with butter tea. Return after the show and stay for a while implored her famed mountaineer of a father in an endearing mixture of English and Tibetan. I nodded and was half dragged out the door by my now impatient student.

Sitting on a mat on concrete bleachers absolutely stuffed with spectators while the sun pierced through the dust and the cold highlighted the horses snorting breath I learned that Tibetan horse shows are not for the faint of heart. Think Cirque du Soleil on horseback at speeds which make your eyes water. Arrows and knives wielded at small targets, girls riding backwards and weightlessly doing handstands, men flipping and hanging now near the horses' pounding hooves now near the fluttering manes. And a chubby Tibetan baby with wispy curls of hair like a halo around her face missed it all because she chose instead to entertain herself by staring at me.

Afterwards, I found myself morphing into a family member of this student as we sat around her relative packed living room drinking various kinds of tea, cutting off hunks of boiled yak to dip in spice before snacking, sharing stories of the holiday, taking understanding for granted, eating gluttonous amounts of prepared dishes, watching visitors come and go, and amusing toddlers. Comfort was obvious and as abundant as home brewed chang, which I knowingly declined, as we went about the business of Losar-ing and it seemed stranger for me to refuse the of a bed to take a short nap on than to accept, though refuse I did. When the afternoon got late and the men went outside to play sho I also made an exit into the bluest afternoon sky I'd ever dreamed of, made bluer by the bareness of the tree limbs against it.

Back in the apartment, I threw off my unnecessary for the afternoon sunshine jacket and flopped gently on the hard couch... just as I chanced to catch a whiff of a pleasantly rich floral fragrance. Shocked by so welcome an aroma in this land of evil smells, I followed my nose to the modest little plant given to me by my colleague a few days before.

May this year be one that dazzles like fireworks, mystifies like horseshows, and delights like tiny white flowers... and may the Artisan who weaves relationships be honored.

Happy Tibetan New Year.

India has everything...