Friday 30 March 2012

The Hangzhou diaries - Day One

The beauty of life is you never know, literally and metaphorically, what lies ahead of you in the next bend in the road. And that was it for me. One weekend. One weekend was all it took to change my life and its travails, and perspectives about living and traveling in China. Almost as though my life spun about a full circle on its axis, and wiped the entire slate clean as it swept the cobwebs off.
Walking into a large temple courtyard at 11pm at night, lit only by two large square glass flame-holders, with warm orange flames burning in them, throwing strange shadows around, that made the whole thing look like the night scene from The House of Flying Daggers, complete with the sound of swaying bamboo trees in the night sky… and all the gloom from my life suddenly fell away.  Wonderment!! Is that a word? This IS what all those Chinese movies are about! IT EXISTS! These places EXIST!!
So we walked to our quarters – women to the women’s wing and men to the men’s. Eat, Drink, Man, Woman (no Sleep, mind you!). Monastery, chastity and all that!
But wait, more wonderment was speeding down the high-speed train our way! We were going to sleep in a dorm on iron beds with fat mattresses with no heating, and two huge duvets for each bed. Let’s add some more excitement to this, shall we? How about no hot water in the taps (and I am talking early March winter in Hangzhou), and no bathrooms as we know them in the modern world. Attached baths? Umm what does that mean, I wonder!! But then this was a temple monastery (Fa Jin Tse) in the middle of the mountains in Hangzhou, and who cares about modern plumbing, yes? J You want modern plumbing, daily turndown  service for your room, and a towel that is a sitting duck on your bed, make yourself at home at the Four Seasons in Hangzhou. For the rest of us migrant workers, a temple monastery will do just fine, thank you!
All of a sudden, we all began mentally calculating our amount of food and beverage intake that day and for the days to come, how much tissue paper we all had amongst ourselves, if we had any soaps or alcohol hand-wash or hand sanitizers even. However, after the initial horror had settled in, we sat down on our beds and just laughed and decided to make the most of it! I am surprised constantly by the human capacity for tolerance and adjustment. None of us had seen a dorm room in probably over 20 years and here we were in one, in rural China, with no modern plumbing in the loos, no hot water or heating in temps of close to zero degrees at night, and all we cared about, really, was being able to wake up at 6:00am the next morning, and Painting Class 101!
By the time we tossed and turned in our respective creaking beds trying to get warm despite going to bed in our jackets and two layers of socks, it was 2:00 am. And by 4:00am the monks were up, chanting and praying in the monastery below!
6:00am and dawn was breaking. A new day was dawning and well, one has to catch the day while it is still untouched and pure. Can I just say that splashing freezing cold water on your face on a cold winter’s morning until you can’t feel your nose from your forehead or your mouth from your cheeks, is the most wonderful way to be wide awake in under one minute?!
Breakfast was well, glue-y to say the least. Some porridge like thing which neither tasted, nor looked like, nor smelt like porridge – more like glue. Maybe some snotty concoction of something. I thought some sugar would make it better. So I went asking the kitchen staff for “tang” (not tang as in Tang-o, the dance form, but tang with the flat “a” “hung” sound). Of course with the tonal intonations, tang also means heaven or soup or sugar. First I was given a vigorous shake of the head to articulate that “no, you CANNOT have heaven in your porridge!” Then I was asked if I wanted more soup or more porridge. Finally, having exhausted all the “tang” sounds, somebody inferred that Maybe, just MAYBE I wanted some sugar! Voila! My day is made! J
Outside, the temple workers were up, cleaning, ash-sweeping, lighting up the flames for incense burners (more like torch burners – going by the number of incense sticks the pilgrims had in their hands!), and lighting up, themselves! Yeah, like let’s torch it all down all at once! The sun was filtering through after the previous night’s rain and we have a crisp, clear blue Spring day! The Gods are happy indeed, and look, Mama, Buddha is smiling on His birthday! It was the birthday of one of Buddha’s incarnations, we were told. 
My gloom and doom was now going to be a thing of the past, I was convinced! Hereonward, I refuse to be the gin in the gin-soaked boy (girl in my case) anymore.

3 comments:

  1. Oh, this is simply marvelous. Tales of the wanderer, tales from the soul. You have the gift of the word. Please share more. It is as much pleasure reading it, as it is imagining oneself in that place.

    Thanks for sharing :)

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    1. Oh thank you, BuraNaMaano! :) Just so I know, did you simply stumble upon this page by accident, or do you happen to be one of my friends writing under a pseudonym perchance? I just started the travelogue today, thus be asking! :)

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  2. :) We who now know who you are, BuraNaMaano!

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