After returning from my winter break travels in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, I wrote a note to my closest friends, family members, and professors. I never published it to my blog. Unabashed and unworried about criticism, I have decided to post my email and note. This is an important note because future posts will refer back to the things mentioned here.
Email: dated 3.6.07
Hello Friends!
Unfortunately, due to laziness and Chinese internet restrictions, it has been a long time since I have written on my blog. I can no longer access my newest blog (via the website or proxy): http://thebeckoningcounts.bigbulgarian.com. Although Gary has strongly encouraged me to create a third blog, I cannot assure you that I will do this. So, it is with a heavy heart that I send this (possibly) last email concerning my adventures.
I attached my last public blog/journal entry. However, if you choose to read it, I would like to explain why I wrote it. Because it was inspired by both good and bad things, it is quite different from other entries.
As most of you know, I recently celebrated the Chinese New Year by traveling to Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces. One of my American friends (who will remain nameless) decided to join me on this three-week peregrination. I was delighted to have her company. She told me she would enjoy anything I planned....so Gary and I put together a fantastic itinerary for Yunnan Province, and our friend, Mark, planned a fabulous adventure throughout Sichuan.
But, things didn't go so well. Nothing truly suited my friend.
The weather was too cold. The mountains were too high. All of our hiking adventures were too rigorous. We were working on too tight of a budget ( i.e. sleeping in hostels). The squatters were abominable (after all, everyone in the world uses a western toilet, right?). Et cetera. Et cetera.
I endured her complaints for two and a half weeks. However, everything came crashing down on the second day of hiking on Tiger Leaping Gorge.
We started talking about the things that we found bothersome. What I didn't know is that I would be forever changed by one of her responses.
As she complained about her hardships, I tried to encourage her to look at those around her. These people had to live--their entire lives--in the cold, without showers, hungry. These people had to climb 10,000ft mountains and hike 18 miles in order to live and work so that we may enjoy Emei Shan and Tiger Leaping Gorge. She was here for three weeks; these people were here until they died.
Her response (verbatim):
What do you want me to do, bend down and kiss their feet?
I am livid as I write this.
And so, I wrote the attached document because of her actions. Because of my anger. Because of my inability to ever attempt to understand how she could say such a thing.
I will never look at traveling the same again. And I will sadly never mend the broken relationship I now have with this person.
I want you to understand the foundation of my thoughts.
Please understand that I wrote this blog like I would a journal. I don't critique and revise my writing; I write fluidly...without stopping....sometimes without consciously thinking about every word I type. So if you find this entry's sequence hard to follow, or the diction could be re-worked, or its simply verbose, please consider it what it is: a stream of consciousness entry.
I hope you are well. I still love China......more and more everyday.
love from across the pond,
leslie-ann
Attached Note
“And yet, I admit I was shocked as well to see the people of No Name Place. I had not encountered anything like this when I was alive, never in all my previous trips to Burma. But, when I was alive, I was not looking for tragedy. I was looking for bargains, the best places to eat, for pagodas that were not overrun with tourists, for the loveliest scenes to photograph.”
Amy Tan, Saving Fish from Drowning
I recently embarked on a month-long backpacking escapade through China’s Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. As some know, China celebrated the New Lunar Year on February 17th; this was closely followed by the beloved Spring festival.
My travels, needless to say, were splendid, unique, inspiring, enlightening—any positive adjective can be supplanted here to describe my journey. However, unlike my previous trips, I don’t want to recount all of my steps through beautiful Emei Shan, or the mystical old town of Chongqing, or the arduous 18 mile hike through Tiger Leaping Gorge. I want to write about what I saw….how I was changed.
You can pick up any Chinese guidebook, from Frommers to The Lonely Planet; they show beautiful landscapes seeped in color, sublime cultural excursions, charming people swaddled in traditional clothes, and succulent cuisines. The beautiful pictures combined with well-written passages about the country create a desire in most humans: a desire to travel, see, touch, learn, feel—a desire to fly into a foreign land and pry into all its wonders. The Lonely Planet doesn’t photograph poverty, hunger, homelessness, and mistreatment: these are omnipresent “tragedies” we don’t wish to see when traveling.
I would lie if I said I didn’t see beautiful landscapes, enjoy succulent foods, and meet charming people. But, I focused a little less on “the best bargains”, “the best places to eat”, “and the loveliest scenes to photograph”, and a little more on “tragedy”:
The gray “dustbowl” towns saddled with poverty and misfortune we saw on our 5 hour bus ride from LeShan to Chongqing.
The men and women on Emei Shan who endured—with songs and smiles—grueling construction work for a meager paycheck that hardly feeds and clothes their families.
The family who ran the Five Fingers Guesthouse at Tiger Leaping Gorge: full of charm and generosity, they never disclosed the hardships, loneliness, and discomfort they endured on the mountain.
The eight year old child who was made—by her parents—to do grotesque acrobatic stunts day and night on a sidewalk in Lijiang for pedestrian handouts.
The saddest thing about this tragedy is that most of these people live much better than so many all over the world. And yet when we travel—when we are closest to those who endure insufferable starvation, poverty, disease, war, humanitarian crises—we simply don’t take notice. We are indifferent.
In W.H. Auden’s poem “The More Loving One”, he writes: “But on earth indifference is the least/ We have to dread from man or beast.”
I disagree. I believe it is our crippling indifference that allows such atrocities to occur.
My "friend" went home on the 21st of February where she will enjoy her posh lifestyle and flip through her scrapbook, commenting about the great bargains, the pretty pagodas, and the scrumptious Chinese cuisine. But she won't recall China, because China is more than its history, porcelain, landscapes, and food. It is a country of many people who live--ever so quietly--in a world of tragedy.
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