Speaking of Kung-Fu

Hong Kong

The morning we ported in Hong Kong, the Chinese government climbed aboard the ship and took our temperatures with some futuristic infrared light device, uh, thingy. I don’t know how they did it. It’s science, I’m told. Whatever. I was confused. Still am.

Later as I walked around China, I scribbled plenty of question marks in my secret little notebooks. Plenty of confusion. I hid these notebooks, my freedom speeches.

But rumor had it if you were with temperature, you were not getting off the ship. Chinese rules. OH SHIT. I was still feeling less than healthy after Cambodia. Do I have a temperature, I panicked? Hong Kong, wait for me! My face flushed. Oh jeez, oh man I’m burning up, I cried. Do I feel hot? Christ, I’m never going to make it off!

Turns out I’m fine. Just sun burnt.


Everyone but me was stoked for the Great Wall. Wait. The Great Wall? It’s just a wall. Not that it’s not impressive--it’s an impressive wall. Wall. Yeah, I just have no desire to visit a wall. Tell me, what’s the point? To say I’ve climbed the greatest Wall in the world? No thanks. Not this time around. My self-infantilizing is probably starting to annoy some but I don’t care.

I am more concerned with China’s future. And I’m more excited for the street fighting; the Kung Fu. The no-bullshit, no-frills Chinese attitude. The fact that China’s people forgo any kind of pretense. If once their patience was strained, their engineers are now renegades. Those cats as fast as lightning are the warp and woof of China’s modern success. I’m here to say that China is very far ahead of us. And, duh, The Great Wall is overrated.

And what do the Chinese people think of us patriots: We all have AIDS, we are fat, the American media is too liberal, we have sex in streets, we all own guns. I try to tell them this isn’t so. For one, I refrain from street sex and I only go to McDonalds twice.

The Chinese teach me if it doesn’t wrinkle, it’s not 100% silk. I see this in the marketplace. The gloriously wrinkled market.

Early that morning, Austin and I ran onto a ferry and crossed the harbor, somehow losing Kendyll and Carly a long the way. The fog is intense. The girls find us. We take a bus through the hills. We drink some cheap beers and look at the gray sea. We are in yet another marketplace.

“Buy some Tahitian pearls,” someone suggests. I’m not really into pearls, nor is anyone I know. So no thanks.

I can’t believe I’m in yet another marketplace. "No thanks, No thanks, No thanks." I’ve said this everyday since leaving the States. I’ve said this to countless people, in a myriad of ways. And now I’m saying it again. If one thing is consisten throughout the world it is that humans love to shop, shop, shop.

I’m afraid of a lull in conversation, and I’m buzz-drunk. I might blurt out “Tibet” just for a rouse. Don’t mention Tibet, don’t mention Tibet, don’t Mention Tibet. I walk around with this mantra on repeat, my hands in my pockets. Maybe I should buy a pearl necklace and shove it in my mouth just so I’ll shut up. I can’t find anything else to buy. Everything really is exported. I find champs-- rubber stamps with red ink. I’m tempted to give the champ maker my name just to see the design equivalent. But I’m afraid there is something inherently wrong with my aura, and the champ design will resemble a moose or a crack pipe. I try to tell the vendors I’m trying to this new thing: I want to unlearn something everyday in order to digress to a more primitive state so I can be more in-tune with nature. They don’t understand. Maybe I should pickup a book and learn some Mandarin in order to explain, but that means more learning less time for nature. We leave the marketplace and look at the water.

We want to skateboard to sneaker street but there are no skateboards to be found. We jump in a cab. Turns out there are no sneakers to be found either. We ask our cabbie to take us there but he doesn’t speak English so he puts Austin on the phone with a translator.
“Yes, SNEAK-ER STREEEEET,” Austin says.
“I never heard,” the translator insists.
(As a disclaimer, we’re not quite sure this fabled street truly exists, but we’re kinda desperate- and persistent.)
“You know,” Austin turns to the backseat for support. “Nike, Adidas, tennis shoes?”
I nod.
“What you want,” she yells over the receiver.
I roll my eyes. We past a H & M earlier in the day. I suggest we go there. I suggest it because we humans like to shop.
“How you spell street? What street? Snea-kuh?,” I can hear her.
“How about H & M. Is there a H&M?” Austin asks her.
“Why you spell snea-kuh street H & M ??!!” She's pissed.

That night I encounter some fresh kicks. They were on the feet of my new Japanese friends. They gave us the directions to La Fawn Kai. We were going to squeeze into a cab - all eight of us- but we couldn’t fit. Our cab follows their cab to the Rugby World Cup street party. I couldn’t loose my Japanese boys. Their flock of seagull haircuts stood out in the masses like glowing halos. The Japanese boys were actually more like a gaggle of swans lost amongst a flock of raging, horny Billy goats. But then after a pint of whiskey, I lost everything- including my lunch of wasabi peas, the only Chinese-Chinese food I thought I could keep.

A few days later I’m in Shanghai, at a Hot Pot restaurant, suffering from Chinese restaurant syndrome. I scoop MSG into my boiling pot of ham water. Colin orders the Bovine Pizzle and eats every last bite. He doesn't know that Pizzle is animal penis.

Shanghai is cold and harsh. We don’t know what to do with ourselves. I drink rice wine, and we sing karaoke for three hours until I loose, not my stomach this time, but my voice.

Where the hell is all the kung-fu? I get out of Shanghai.

My first immediate draw to Suzhou is the city’s magnolia trees. I am attracted to many other things —the pagodas, the bridges, the bicycles —but there is something particularly endearing about a magnolia tree in China. The Magnolia reminds me of the Buffalo Bayou. I’ve never been to Texas, only the airports. The tree reminds me I want to go to Texas. I was so comforted by the familiarity of the tree that the Chinese gardens—a place designed for meditation and appreciation of nature—seemed unnecessary. However, I decided to give the gardens a chance.

The classical gardens of Suzhou date back to the Zhou dynasty of 221 BCE. The city of Suzhou became a cosmopolitan destination for merchants and traders after the opening of the Grand Canal. Marco Polo dubbed it the "Venice of the East." The city saw a proliferation of garderns during the Ming and Qing dynasties and the wet climate of Suzhou, with an annual rainfall of 43 inches, is ideal for the flourishing plant life found in the garden.

I weave around the garden. I’m freezing. I haven’t been this cold since I left Portland in January. I weave between the Bamboo, the resilience, the Pines, the longevity. I’m recognizing the disparities in life, the hard and soft, the water versus the rocks. The Ying. The Yang. So much symbolism my head is spinning.

What isn’t important to the Chinese, I think to myself.

I am instructed by the tour guide to take off my shoes and rub my bare feet across the stones of the path. She takes off her heals. I think it’s weird that a tour guide—whose job it is to walk around all day—would choose heals over loafers. Maybe she got lost trying to find sneaker street. Or maybe it’s a matter of fashion over practicality. I mean, I’m standing in a garden for chrissakes—how beautiful and yet unattainable.

She rubs her tiny, tiny feet over the stones. People say I have small feet, but hers are microscopic.

“This increases one’s circulation. It improves one’s digestive system.”
“No way!”I follow in her foot steps. Literally. It felt great.

I sit with a group of Chinese art students as they sketch the thatched roofs of the pagoda, the crescent-shaped doors and the bonsai trees. For some, looking at a piece of art is a personal experience. I look over their shoulders. They're talented, I tell them. I find that walking through a garden is such a shared, public experience that it becomes a lesson in socialization, not musing. I’m talking. Not thinking. But then I start thinking. And I’m thinking of Nelson Algren because he suggests,

”For pratically everyone can feel. If you can’t do that, of course, you’re gone. You can’t go out and get a new set of emotions. But if it’s simply a matter of not knowing anything, that’s not so serious; because most writers don’t. But they do develop an ability to listen. To listen to people talk. And in the talk of people, especially of those on the streets, lies an endless wealth of story-stuff.”

I agree with his words, but uh, damn, I’ve talked to so many people, I’ve listened to so many people, I have a notebook full of writings, but for what? Like the Great Wall has made a mountain out of a molehole, I’m afraid that my stories are not important, just self-important.

I walk down the garden path. I find a quiet pond. Oh my god, I’m itching in my skin. Chinese water torture. I can’t do this meditation thing. Someone tells me that jumping koi are good luck. There’s a good story behind this. I see no fish. And as fast as lightning, I'm gone.