My Time as a Human

Reva Patwardhan and Orlando Reyes called me out yesterday for leaving out the best parts of my China story. I think in particular they wanted to hear about (not quite) dying. I think it’s valuable for me to share this in a little more detail because it wasn’t what most people might expect. First, though, I’ll give a little context.

Sarita Chawla introduced me to the “Island Where It All Works Out”. This is the idea that if we work really hard, stay focused and don’t screw around we’ll wrap up our struggles and arrive, around age 65, at the Island Where it All Works Out, a beautiful place where we hang around swinging a golf club and playing with grandchildren until we die. Sadly, a lot of people don’t live that long, as someone pointed out by telling the story of their hardworking mother who lived for that dream but died in her mid fifties.

I never believed in that dream. I threw some money into an IRA and snuck onto the island early to get a peek. It was kind of boring, so then I ran around playing everywhere else. I made bargains along the way, mixing in hard work so that I could stir in an equal portion of joy and adventure during the time of life where I still had strong working legs and a sharp mind.

It cannot be said that I haven’t lived fully. But an interesting thing happened that, in part, lead me to China. I reached a point where I felt like I had done it all. Oh sure, there were still several businesses to start, hang gliding hadn’t worked out yet, and I had five unfinished book ideas. But I looked back and felt satisfied that I’d taken a good big bite of the cookie and shared it with a lot of other humans. I felt like an adult, like I’d made it, not in a way related to status or accomplishments but as a result of being aware and seeing and doing so much.

Before I flew to China I had reached a point in my life that I can only describe as the “bonus round”. I felt like anything else I took on was just for fun. Life had already happened.

By the time I reached Taiwan, the damage the carbon monoxide had done to me (summary) had me shaking, unable to walk in more than a shuffle, and in a deep fog. The world was a distant place that seemed to be slipping further and further away. I had all of the symptoms of advanced Parkinson’s disease and a general confusion. I certainly had moments of fear. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get to the hostel, or to the hospital. I wondered if I would ever be able to speak again. But the overwhelming majority of the time I was… exploring. My old instincts kicked in. I was in wonder at this new experience. The world was strange, which made it new and interesting. I made challenges for myself, like walking a block to the bank. I had to stop repeatedly to remember where I was and what I was doing, but I kept the hospital bill in my hand to remind me. Sometimes it was frustrating. I kept reminding myself to try to stand up straight. I would find myself hunched over, yet again, and snap at myself. Mostly, though, I laughed. I laughed at the absurdity of it all. I laughed at my enjoyment of the strange new experience and the new challenge.

I also felt thankful. Thankful to the many strangers who went out of their way to help me. Thankful for what time I had left.

Mostly, though, I felt thankful that everyone I loved knew I loved them. There were no loose ends. For years I had told my parents and sisters and nephews and niece that I loved them. I had hugged my friends and lovers and told them I loved them. I did my best not to let conflicts sit and grudges take root with my friendships. There was no desperate need to fix anything.

The only fragment, the one piece that emerged, was that there were still little things that could be done with the gifts I had been given for writing and working with people. Even as I struggled to get my tired, aching brain to focus and my words came out like slow, wet drops from a tightly closed faucet there were people who stayed with me for hours, somehow unable to go where they had planned, staying because they felt like they were learning to see themselves and the world in a new way. I don’t know what I was saying or what I was doing, but somehow my grandfather’s magic was still working through me, through those last thin threads connecting me to the world as they snapped and fell away one by one. I’m working on finding a way to make some use of this now.

I lived. I slept for several months. My brain is still slow. But there is a connection I have with still being here on the planet that has evolved. The idea of the bonus round is even more tangible. Where before every new project was a bonus, now every moment is a bonus. The moment I touch the waxy leaf of a jade plant. The moment I smell fresh basil. The moment I hear a deep, rich note hum from an acoustic bass.

A few months back I was walking in the hot sun, feeling a little cranky about having to go retrieve a car, and suddenly… something happened. I stopped. I straightened. Like suddenly noticing a note left by a lover… a thought appeared. “I’m Alive”. I held up my thumb and second finger and gently, quietly, slowly rubbed them together, immersed in the feeling of their touch. There was nothing else. Everything was in that touch, that moment. Everything that needed to be.

It’s all a bonus. And sometimes I still forget. I get nervous. I get angry. I wonder if I’m “doing it right”. And sometimes, I stop to just touch something near me. One more time. One extra moment. And a smile emerges, and I laugh at the absurd simplicity of it all.

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Having just written a less encouraging view of China, I want to follow immediately with a discussion of one of the things that makes me so eager to go back.

The number one reason to spend time in China is something that cannot easily be put into words. I’d love to find some foreign word that we don’t have in English like, “Fahrvergnügen” or even “Je ne sais quoi” (ironically) that perfectly describes it, but I want something that fits a little better, something that gives a real sense of the buzzing, buoying energy of the place, that magical charge that infects some foreigners for life.

Huángshān

Years ago my friend Vince Zappa and his wife (Americans) spent the first half of their honeymoon visiting some fellow Americans who were teaching in a small village in China. She had a decent time, but when the second half of the honeymoon arrived she was ready to head down to the resort in the Philippines. He was, however, entranced and had no interest in leaving a dirty little town to go to a fancy resort. Vince couldn’t get enough of just being in China. He got ripped off at a restaurant he liked and decided he didn’t care enough to stop going, that instead he’d just be more careful. He was willing to put up with hardships in this weird new place because something captured his heart.

When I first visited China many years ago, it was only for a few weeks but that was enough to trap me. Before we went I liked spending time around my Chinese friends in college and being around Weíshí’s parents and relatives. Weíshí’s second aunt taught me how to play Májiàng and I learned the numbers and directions. I liked the sound of the language, the beautiful characters, and the endless (and I do mean endless) “old Chinese sayings”. But something different happened when I arrived in Běijīng and later visited Xī’ān and Huángshān. I was hooked. I couldn’t get enough of the beautiful mountains, the scrappy street venders, the peach orchards, and above all the endlessly chaotic nature of everything around me. The magic hook is somewhere in that chaos and the way that people are so energized to make things happen. The Chinese people of today don’t bother with safety or laws or aesthetics: they charge ahead and build and make and haul and try.

When Weíshí and I visited the Great Wall we walked the whole length of the top of the restored wall. As we reached the far end, we heard grunting and whispers somewhere on the other side of the large stones that surrounded us. The sounds continued and got closer. The section of wall we stood on was a huge distance from the ground. We walked over just in time to see a hand grasp for the top. I leaned over and saw a series of people standing on each others’ shoulders and the person on top struggling to pull themselves up. Mystified, I grabbed onto his arm and helped him over the wall. He breathed heavily for a moment, then reached inside his jacket as a few more people pulled themselves up behind him. He fumbled a bit more and then, like a magician pulling flags from his sleeve, began heaving out pile after pile of “Great Wall” t-shirts. He immediately tried to sell me one. Apparently there was a fee to sell things on the wall, and they were either too poor or too scrappy and cheap to pay it.

Of course in the midst of this scrappiness and chaos there is still a swirling undercurrent of ancient history spinning through the signs, bricks, buildings, language and culture. It’s all still there, like the old tent that holds the circus. Something in the beauty of this whole mess is the China magic, the magic that entrances, lures, and captures the hearts of people like me.

Chinese people absolutely adore sappy, sweet, sad love songs and movies and if you ask any Chinese person for their favorite movie you’ll almost always get the same response: “Titanic“. Yes, the big cheesy American film. One of my Chinese kung fu brothers has watched this movie more times than he can count.

But the image of two young lovers leaning into the wind isn’t what stuck with me about my experience. Walking through China I felt like I was climbing on board the Titanic as the nose was plunging into the dark ocean. Every person I talked to was running past me, trying desperately to find a way off the boat. There I was, strolling around with my head up and an inflatable life boat under my arm asking, “hey, where’s this great band I’ve heard about”?

I asked about wéi qí (Go) playing. Some people had heard about it, but almost no one knew how to play. Traditional music? Maybe I could try the big theater in town. Kung Fu? I am training with an absolute treasure of China. Master Lǚ has incredible skills earned over a lifetime of intense practice and he’s one of the only heirs to a fascinating branch of Kung Fu. These skills can only be passed down orally and through direct instruction. The small group of people I train with, the people who will carry this knowledge to the next generation if it is to survive at all, are almost all foreigners: American, Canadian, French and Japanese students. His old Chinese students, from a time when his school was huge, are running businesses now. No one in China has any time to mess around with anything that doesn’t make money. They are running for the lifeboats.

It disappointed me greatly, but I can’t blame the Chinese people. Their lives have been wrecked by revolution, violence and starvation for decades. Now that they have a chance to get out, the air is thick with poison and the food and water are equally questionable. Money is the life boat that can literally save the lives of their family and they will stop at nothing to get it.

Fairness

But pollution and poisonous food aren’t the only reasons people want to escape. Even more so is the sense that there is a complete lack of fairness. No matter how hard you work, if you don’t have the right connections it means nothing. The people I talked to felt that in Germany, Canada or the US they would have a fair chance to earn a living through hard work without having to be related to someone in power. They felt like the laws would be fair. They felt like things that weren’t working could be fixed because they could gather with people and make change.

I grew up in a place where I’ve been taught to believe that if I don’t like something I can work to change it. That ideas is deeply, deeply ingrained in me. It’s still difficult for me to think about being completely paralyzed, as many feel they are in China. I’m not talking about petitioning a Senator to make big change, I’m talking about feeling like a street is dangerous and should have a stop sign, and knowing that I can get the community together to get that fixed. Or that I can get a group together and get some land to start a small community garden. If you can’t talk to the people in power (or they don’t have to listen) and you can’t form or gather in groups, there is nothing you can do that won’t get you shot or imprisoned.

In the end, I don’t think China will sink. Many will die in the icy water. The fortunate few will escape to western countries and live out the last days of prosperity there before those places sink. Ultimately China, like the US before it, will slowly make efforts to clean up the disastrous mess they’ve made while building the empire. In a couple of generations, the children or grandchildren of the people who escaped will be looking for a way to get back on board. If I’m still alive I’ll be happy to teach them all of the culture, kung fu, and wéiqí I’ve been saving for when they are ready.

I used to be like most Americans. I wore a jacket in the rain and thought umbrellas were for the weak. When I arrived in China the sun was shining, it was 90 F, and every woman on the street was under a decorated umbrella of some kind. Some carried their own; some had boys to do it for them.

Over time I discovered that it wasn’t just a weird fashion statement. In the U.S., women are obsessed with finding new ways to burn themselves like rotisserie chickens: not too much, just the right amount of brown. They spend their hard earned money on places that will let them sit inside, in artificial sunlight, and rotate and cook just long enough to look like they’ve been outside.

In China, the aesthetic of choice is the whitest possible skin. The sunscreen (although most people don’t use it) actually makes your skin lighter with bleaching chemicals. The umbrellas protect the carefully preserved skin from the ultraviolet and… there’s more. As I started to walk around with girls, as I am wont to do, I found myself underneath their little protective domes. Mysteriously, I noticed that every time I was walking around with a girl, life was more pleasant. It was ten degrees F cooler! Not only that, but when it rained instead of wrapping my body inside a jacket, trapping more of the 90 degree heat, I was nice and cool and dry.

It took a few months to break down a lifetime of American hipness training, but I finally picked up an umbrella and never looked back.

In fairness, I have to point out that Ray Jardine, ultralight backpacking freak and guru, was the first. He’s not one to fear fashion risks, to say the least, and in Beyond Backpacking: Ray Jardine’s Guide to Lightweight Hiking he talks about how much he loves umbrellas on the trail. I thought it was one of his freakier ideas when I read it years ago and had forgotten about it. Now I’m sold. Despite carrying as little as possible when I travel, I keep a little friend called the “Happy Rain” that I picked up in Taiwan tucked into my backpack and it’s a permanent part of my ultralight travel collection.