Hangzhou Diaries - II (Willow Talk, anyone?)

Up the stone steps we climbed, with our easels and charcoal pencils and pencils made of willow bark, to the back of the monastery at the top of the hill – which housed a single tea house sitting snugly, as the 8AM sunshine snaked around its many secret corners, and lay to waste the night’s mysteries.  

And from there, it was a clear view of the mountains dense with pine trees and fern on one side, and the bright yellow monastery gates and distant Lonjing tea plantations along the hillside on the other, all of it fingered deliciously by the lazy winter sunshine, the flirting-teasing kind that leaves you wanting more.

And in between setting up my easel, watching Coco set up hers, fumbling as one of my screws fell off the easel, and Eduardo’s big warm genuine smile as he helped set my easel right, something happened. Something rather simple and unexpected.

Happiness struck. That is all. All these months of seeking H A P P I N E S S as THE GOAL and here it was – presenting itself to me, out of nowhere, rather unceremoniously, but without apology – like a child late for class picking up earthworms along the way, but too self-contained to apologise about it.

“What you seek is seeking you.” Rumi’s words. And suddenly they struck home. Here was Happiness – seeking ME and waiting for ME – all the time. Where the fish was I??

Anyway, let us now turn to Bob. Our painting instructor – and all of 17. Well, Ok, not quite 17 but he looked 22 and actually is 27. Unlike the Occidentals, one cannot always tell with the Orientals and the number game, no? So, as Boeb (we shall call him Boeb from now on, as all the French and Italians in the group did!) says - Our first assignment today is sketching an Apple. And Boeb says he is nervous because his English is not where it should be. And I tell him “Hey Boeb, I am nervous too – my apple is not where it should be!”  I don’t think he got the joke.

Why an apple, you may ask? Good question! Apparently, an apple or an egg is the hardest thing to draw! So if you can crack an apple, chances are, you could be giving Monet’s “Water Lilies” a serious run for the money!

Guess what, for the next 2 hours we kept at the APPLE. It had now become venerable as “Her Highness, The Apple”. Mine had too much heart in it. As Boeb said, you need an apple that looks like it is waiting to be eaten, not one that loves you right back! Ok, Boeb I get the picture! My heart is happy today, after months and months of being not-so-happy – are you going to give me grief about my “hearty” apple?

  So we drew and drew the apple with charcoal pencils and willow bark with a 3 o’clock and a 5 o’clock and a whatever clock shadow, until I wanted to beat the shit out of it, and drink up some apple juice. I was going nowhere.

Needless to say, I lay my canvas down and smiled up at the sun and lay down on the grass, as the monks chanted away in the background down below, and the sun made everything strangely techni-colored and over-saturated in the clear mountain air – this was THE MOMENT.

I was HERE. I was NOW. I was HERE NOW. Not thinking of anything but the sun and its warmth on my face and how life had found me at last, or I, it. After that languorous time, my responses to any question were various intonations of “hmmm! Or Mmmm? Or Hmmm-snort-grunt” – I mean, like really, do you guys not know the power of this word! Unleash “Hmm” on the world, I say!

11:30AM and it was time to go down to the local village for lunch – which had PROPER (read non-gluey) food and PROPER Chinese bistros serving Hangzhou cuisine (mostly fresh water fish steamed and then dropped in a big bowl of oil and vinegar and broth, swimming with Sichuan pepper and burnt red chillies, but DIVINE!). But NOT until we made good use of the MODERN loo next to the tea house, complete with a FLUSH. Joy to the world!! J

I have to warn all you folks though, that if you EVER travel in offbeat places in China, please carry your hand-sanitizers or some form of soap AND tissue – most places have neither and just a large tap or two for washing hands.

Walking down to the village along stone paths flanked by coniferous trees, and women roasting Lonjing tea leaves the old fashioned way (in deep iron pans) on the sidewalk, we finally stopped at a bistro which led to a ‘secret’  wooden veranda/deck on the other side facing the clear mountain stream and the distant blue mountains, away from the street – for special “laowai” folks (in other words, foreigners)!

I tell you – when God gives, he opens it all up. An afternoon of perfect sunshine, clear mountain air, the bluest of Spring days, plum blossoms opening up, the company of like-minded people from everywhere in the world (including a lovely French woman from the Reunion Islands – I mean that was a dot on the map for me till now!) all getting to know each other- amidst charcoal drawing misses, picking bones off of the fish from the catch of the day, chants of monks in the background, and much laughter.

Eat, Pray, Love – Indeed.

Thank you, God in the heavens, for my cup runneth over today.