tian chi (heaven lake) by tour bus

In the morning, I woke in darkness at 7:30 a.m. and did core exercises lackadaisically on the bed while reading the introduction to Between the Acts. I’m glad I took the time to read the criticism first, for context, because I am scared of being too stupid to understand Virginia Woolf’s later works. At 8:50, I went to wait for the bus tour to Tian Chi. On the way to the bus I ate a half dozen pork baozi and two hardboiled eggs and their shells (peeling problems) and bought a half pound of mac nuts for munching on the road. The mac nuts helped me befriend the woman sitting next to me, a retiree from Jiangsu visiting her son for the week. She was my companion for the rest of the day. We chatted about blah blah blah – tourism in Xinjiang, the prices of things, how rude Uighurs are to Han people in Kashgar, all the things Chinese people on tour can talk about. None of her comments betrayed any particular assumption about my gender, though she must have heard the tour guide call out my Chinese name. It’s an outdated, unmistakably feminine name. Perhaps an equivalent name in English would be Victoria, or Betty Lou, or Esmerelda. Then she referred to me later as a xian sheng. Mister. Very confusing. [Mosquitoes are biting every inch of my face - Internet cafes aghhhhhhhh what I won't do to serenade you by blog]

On the hour and a half drive there, our tour guide stood at the front of the bus, facing the passengers, and spoke into the microphone a mile a minute. I would barely have understood her even if she had spoken slowly, but with their speed her words were unable to make more than a gentle water lily's impression in the dark pond of my brain. I caught a couple of declarations – about the color of Uighur mens’ hats, and how traveling in Xinjiang for Han Chinese people was as good as traveling overseas, because one could see blue eyed and light haired people within one’s own borders. At a rest stop, the tour guide began collecting money from passengers for some huodong or another, and I learned that my Chinese understanding had failed to locate the key points in the tour guide’s speech. I handed over my money not knowing what it was for.

It was a day of partial understanding. The confusion deepened after we entered the Tian Chi park, which, like many national parks in America, was enormous and required a vehicle to see in full. The land turned from Xinjiang bleak into a mountain range with steep slopes covered in golden dust and stands of pines, with vertical granite outcroppings every quarter mile or so. Behind these slopes were mountains that must have inspired mystics, 16,000 foot peaks with snow blowing off at the top. Again the strange quality of Xinjiang sunlight made this landscape feel coiled with potential. We got up to six thousand feet or so. Our bus driver honked to scatter mountain goats that had wandered onto the street.

All this time our tour guide prattled on. So familiar – the busload of obedient tourists nodding along to the words of a knowledgeable Chinese guide. Sometimes I think these guides contemptible, snake-oil salesmen – so much of the industry depends on the tour guide pushing customers to buy shit from the vendors they force us to patronize – but often the contempt will soften into gratitude and eventually feelings of affection and then desperate hunger for parental validation. I couldn’t have figured out the logistics to visit Tian Chi on my own, and I worried most of the day that my tour would leave me behind and strand me in the alpine hinterland, so our guide started to represent salvation for me. The tour made me wonder how I could communicate this experience, understand as I do, not totally as an outsider but not as an insider either, with affectionate contempt. It’s very Chinese. Do I want my children to have this experience, even though I was so bored with the form as a child myself, simply because I want to transmit this aspect of my culture?

Our first stop was billed as a geography and cultural center. The tour guide led us into a windowless classroom that was empty except for forty seats, a mural-sized photo of Tian Chi, four or five glass jars of herbs, roots, and mushrooms, and a big chart depicting all of the energy flow spots on the hand, with little illustrated organs superimposed showing which parts of the hand corresponded with the liver, spine, heart, etc. A broad woman in a white lab coat entered and spoke slowly about the importance of Chinese medicine and the herbs found on the mountain. She said that today, and today only, they were offering free consultations with a Chinese doctor: there are only four spots left; who would like to take them? Four people from my tour immediately leapt to the door. The woman in the white lab coat peered through the curtain blocking the door, and said, Now there are four more spots! Who would like those? Another four leapt up. I waited until everybody had leapt up and left for their consultations before snapping a discreet photograph of the hand-energy chart, and then wandered around the next hall, where there were dozens of bored sales people ready to offer plants as medicine to whatever fool was willing to buy. I left. Outside, I attempted to bargain for drinking game dice (the faces said things like “Drink two glasses!” in Chinese) with a hawker, but he refused to budge and I refused to buy.

The next stop was a yurt. Kazakh. Dancers. Tried on traditional clothes. Ate some of their extremely stale food. The dancers seemed to hate us. The tour guide told us to go pee in the woods. She said wait by the apple seller. Nobody was buying apples.

Then we went to the temple and climbed the 300 steps to eternal health. I thought the man who led us through the temple was so serious and knowledgeable. He spoke like my imagination of a Shaolin monk trainee. He told us how to respect the space and what the bagua meant. He gave us silk scarves to wear while in the temple. We learned how to bow. Right thumb clasped in left hand. Saw the white tiger, blue dragon statues; human forms with the animal form embedded in the forehead. I was very curious. People bowing three times holding up bedroll-sized incense sticks. I wanted to hold the weight. I wanted to ring the refrigerator-sized bell. But then he led us to more snake oil! First a room where today, and today only! (again! Today is the greatest day I've ever known!) there was some sort of a man in Tang Song Ming or some very old dynasty monk getup who asked us our birth years, said some words about our horoscopes that I didn’t comprehend, sprinkled our palms with water with a brush made of drooping leaves, whipped a horsetail flog over our heads (it touched my hair) and then directed us to stalls with wise men. We were to bring a question in our hearts to these wise men. I thought very seriously about it and my question was a variation of the question I asked A.'s tarot cards; today’s question was “Will I become the person I know I am capable of being?” The answer is obviously yes, don't need a yahoo in a monk suit to tell me this. We were instructed not to say hello, goodbye, or thank you, only to utter some mystical words that I only caught a few phonemes of. It all felt so convincingly ritualistic I wasn’t aware even then that they were running a scam. My wise man asked my birth date, month, and year, and wrote these three numbers on a piece of paper, then wrote “300 600 900” underneath. As instructed, I said “Wooloomooloo!” instead of hello. He kept saying things to me I didn’t understand at all in a very, very serious tone of voice, as he was telling my fortune, and then asking me, at the end of each very serious incomprehensible phrase, “Do you understand?” And I’d say: “Yes.” Then, “Wooloomooloo!” After four such exchanges I started to think the situation so ridiculous – him saying very life-changing things and me not comprehending a word but nodding yes, yes I understand, wooloomooloo – that I started to giggle, then tried to twist my face into a grimace of seriousness rather than a wide toothy grin, which only made “ssss ssss ssss” sounds come from my mouth, which made me feel even more ridiculous. I could not stop giggling until the man asked if I was ready to pay. Having not understood anything, I didn’t know what I was to pay for, so with great embarrassment, I took out my wallet and dropped a ten yuan bill in to the slot marked for donations. The wise man’s eyes bulged out at me and he underlined the numbers he had written under my birthday: “300 600 900.” I understood then that I had three levels of sooth to be said, and what I would get would correspond with the amount of yuan I was willing to part with to hear it. I backed away with my palms held up and said, “No!! Don’t want!!” and left the room. I heard the man spitting on the ground after I left.

Then I wandered around Tian Chi. We were free of the tour guide for an hour. That was nice. Pretty. Then foolish Brian compared it unfavorably to the Sierras. Back on the bus, more chatting with the retiree, fatigue, hotel, street food ordered in travel-special style (“What do want?” “Whatever that is [pointing]” “We don’t serve that anymore” “Okay that [pointing]” “Do you want it cooked with blingee blongee or bloop blap?” “[not comprehending] Sure,” bowl of surprise placed before me ten minutes later, 10 kuai goodbye), disgusting Internet café.