The Art of Being Chinese

Xia Ming Yuan
When I arrive in Xia Ming Yuan on a sunny day friends there say thank you for bringing the sun with you - it had been raining and raining. That's how the villagers think - give me face. I categorically deny responsibility - give them face in return. Our dance! They shake their heads indulgently, glad for me because they know I want to swim often - they never would! - in the mountain-creek noisily throwing itself down the deep fault - sometimes catching its breath in calm-clear pools - and green waves of bamboo with flecks of white azalea splashing on either side and up. Scraggly pines holding on for life. Reaching.
Old as the hills.

I unpack, change into my very basic and comfortable village-drag, settle-in - the usual. Are you ready to eat she says. So when will you be ready to eat! I must eat soon, because eating Grandmother's food is the gate. So I eat, and she hovers, nods, watches every bite I take - smoking fiercely. Again and again wanting to know how I like her dishes - always at least four. Hao chi ma she asks. Hen hao chi I say - it's delicious. Smiling much at the food, pointing at and listing the names of vegetables I recognize. And ask which of the ones I don't she picked on mountain-walks. Knowing that there are many wild tasty just-weedish-looking plants - often also used as traditional medicine. There is wild ginger.
We hadn't seen each other in a year, but there's no need to talk about that. Of importance is: I am hungry - Grandmother feeds me. I am happy - she is happy. We communicate!

This larger area of several peaks, craggy ridges, sheer-drop ravines is Jiu Hua Shan, named about 1500 years ago by Li Bai - the most famous poet of the Tang Dynasty and one of the most beloved of all-time China. Jiu Hua Shan is one of the five holy mountains.
Tea grown here - totally organic: meaning left to grow without prodding interference - is prized for its mountain-mist aroma as green tea.

I am home!

And with polite formalities out of the way: everything returns to normal - it starts to rain again!

Continues for days. I object: impatiently insisting on my swimming-routine! Busy with being restless! Going for walks to my favorite places - even with an umbrella - doesn't work either: clothes inevitably get wet and just as inevitably won't dry. I brought little to wear.
Village life almost comes to a full stop - everything here is directly connected to the weather.
But - no matter what - the younger villagers are off selling Buddhist/Taoist trinkets or acting as guides to ever-coming tourists on mountain tops, around temples and monasteries, along many thousand granite-steps way up, way across and way down, connecting all and everything. Few roads only in the center, on the other side of the ridge separating the quiet life of Xia Ming Yuan from the tourist-hustle - parallel realities.
Older villagers now hang-out in MY house: slapping cards, clacking ma jiang tiles. Either accusing or bragging - always loudly - always smoking, expertly cracking melon- or sunflower-seeds with their teeth. The floor a mat of shells and butts.
I brought 1700 pages of War and Peace just in case - and this is one! But with its perceptive and funny society-bits being few and philosophical ramblings on war and peace being many - this clearly is not beach-reading.

 

I begin to see that my only choice is not having a choice - I begin to slow down and pay attention to what is. There are different kinds of rain: from fine mist, soaking-in and through gently but quickly and thoroughly - to rain-bullets, hitting and exploding with a crack. And in between basic rainy rain, curtains of it billowing in the wind. And always the bamboo. Up close single trees(?) - to about 20 meters tall and with leaves on deceptively delicate-looking branches often only close to the top - dip and sway gracefully. From farther away they all are churning green liquid. Bamboo wind. Bamboo rain.

I sit and watch. And as I watch outward I watch myself in relation to it. Then I begin to watch inward: Jingzuo - breath/ Dazuo - meditation/ Jijing - silence.
And my days become full: I pay attention. And not.

Sometimes the rain stops for a while - and I walk. Sometimes the sun comes through - and I don't like it. Too bright, too hot - demanding, taking-over. And I crave the comfort of rain. Sun doesn't automatically mean swimming either. Because for a couple of days after much rain there's the danger of sudden flash-floods slamming down the creek - already much higher, faster and devastatingly powerful. With a flash-flood: deadly!

Before I came to China this year I had thought I may get a piece of calligraphy. While in Xia Ming Yuan I decide I want it from Shi Er - the man who carved my crow seal - wu ya yin zhang - in Beijing just before I came here. I have never seen calligraphy done by him; we have not talked about it - but I feel we have connected deeply while going through the process of the crow seal's evolution this year and that of another one he carved for me a year ago.

Beiing
So back in Beijing I tell him. He says he isn't really into doing calligraphy for its own sake and doesn't do any of the commonly expected/accepted calligraphy of elegant swoosh. Just writes one way - his own! Has nothing to show me but could possibly write something I give him: like a poem or whatever. This doesn't feel right: I tell him it needs to come from him - in the moment. He gets a small piece of paper, a brush, prepares some ink - about 5 minutes. Then writes without hesitation 2 vertical lines of characters - top-right to bottom-left. The old way. Shows it to me - no explanation. Without getting into meaning I just look at the characters to find connection.
Creative calligraphy does not rely on content - form usually is more important, with content being the vehicle.
The 3 top characters in the left vertical bother me, and I tell him so. Asking for scissors I cut them out, leaving the rest as is. Shi Er says nothing. Then I ask him for a possible explanation of what's left of his original intention - before my intuitive amputation.

Much of the meaning of a whole - because of stringing together picture-snippets as opposed to individual letters to form words - is open to an individual's imaginative visualization, unless it is an exact copy of a given  text. Like Chinese poetry: particularly difficult to translate into a foreign language. Exact translation will be choppy-bumpy: the translator's sensitivity and integrity are needed to give it flow - while staying on course.

 

I tell him I now feel comfortable with the characters and their placement as is. He doesn't explain what is gone - I don't ask. He says it now is something like

I sit
and look -
rain

And I start to cry. Telling him that this is what/where I have just cone from. I had not told him - he had not asked - how I spent the previous month - between leaving Beijing and coming back. 
I feel rattled. Explain to him that I see the piece written in a somewhat blotchy, rained-on way. He says: tomorrow. I say: now. Knowing the Chinese way of not making impromptu decisions gladly. But - more specifically - also knowing that he feels rattled, too!

A while later I look through silk samples for the backing of it as a scroll. The kind I feel drawn to promptly is out-of-stock, so the man at the framing-shop - where Shi Er is also writing my piece - tells me. When Shi Er is finished - I cry some more. And when I'm done with that show him the only appropriate silk choice for me and not in stock and everything. Says he to the man, pointing, didn't I see a scrap of it under there somewhere a while ago? Aah you may be right says the man, starts to dig - and there it is: enough for the backing of a framed piece!

The first character - top-right - means sitting; the last character - very bottom-left - means rain. Except here Shi Er added 1 rain-drop to each set of 2.







Calligraphy, crow seal: Shi Er
Bamboo-rain, rocks: Lao Xun Ke