The Safely Unknown: A Letter Home
Laurie Moberg
As the physical pace of travel provided a reprieve in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China, my head and heart found a space to engage more richly and vigorously with the experiences of being abroad. I sat outside a café reading these beautiful words from Scott Russell Sanders' Writing from the Center:
"From slicing out identical squares of real estate to stamping out identical parts in factories to dishing out identical meals in franchises, we have been following the slope of our desire for the safely known. The trouble is, we cannot banish ugly surprises without banishing lovely ones as well. The unexpected may annoy us, but may also wake us up. If you seal your windows against the odor of skunks and the shrieks of sirens, you will also miss the lilacs and finches, the yeasty breath of bakeries, and the playground squeal of children.... We have good evolutionary reason to fear the unknown, for it may poison us, bewilder us, or devour us. But we have equally good reason to crave the unknown, for it may feed, renew, or enlighten us. We learn by coming up against what we do not already know."
Moments after I read this, while I rested the book closed on my lap to consider the potent words, a parade of children crossed the street in their own beautiful flurry of giggles. As they slipped into a gate of an elementary school, a small boy stopped to whistle a high pitch and cheer himself for the victory of crossing through the traffic. I couldn't hear his cheer over the din of cars moving through
the street, but I smiled as he disappeared from my view behind a bus. His triumph resonated somewhere beyond my ears.
In this time, Sanders' words came alive to me. Yes, I could easily make this trip a journey to find what I already know. I could hide myself in a Starbuck's (which seem everywhere in Asia) and isolate myself from the rivers of experience ready to flow into my senses. I could avoid the thick black exhaust that emanates from the proliferation of cars with minimal emissions standards. I could even avoid the blaring car horns on the China street. But if I had chosen this route, I would have missed so much. I might not have learned to hear the honking of cars as an intriguing and complex form of communication between drivers and all the other people on the streets, the duration, intensity, and repetition of the horn conveying subtle differences of meaning. I also learned to appreciate this communication almost as a form of albeit discordant music.
By opening my senses, a group of us met a Yunnan University student at the top of our mountain hike in Kunming. In our struggle to communicate through his minimal English and our eight words of Chinese, he disappeared for a while and returned with freshly cooked corn to offer. It was an unexpected surprise (especially since I had just eaten lunch!) but a wonderful result of mixed messages nonetheless.
I learned that pushing in China is not unusual or unacceptable or rude. Instead, it is a form of movement that may seem a bit uncomfortable to those of us used to our space bubble. I admit, I cried in the Beijing train station because the pushing was overwhelming. This movement actually meshes well with the ideas of pride, equality, and insufficiency that seemed to echo in the language of Chinese students and guides. Perhaps the need to push to improve position is a reflection that people don't ever expect there to be enough of anything and often, they are right. At the train station, people push to get ahead in line, hoping they will then have the privilege of a seat. On our 7 hour ride from Dali to Kunming, people stood in the aisles because the train was so crowded. Yet even this competitive frame does not seem to capture the meaning of this movement. People often are not trying to push others out of the way, they are simply willing to be close to each other, to engage in a type of dance that allows touch as something not at all threatening. Certainly in the
moments when I thought I might be trampled at the Forbidden City this pressurized touch was incredibly threatening, but the intent was not to hurt others, but to move together as a larger community rather than as an encapsulated individual. There is certainly something beautiful tucked into this even as I struggled to understand it and all of its complexities.
By opening my senses, I could see the stark realities of life standing side-by-side in these cities. In Shanghai, the main tourist road offers a plethora of familiar places - Hagen-Daz, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, and everything with an English name or menu. On this street the tourists were plentiful but just a short distance from this main street a different voice echoes in the night. The bright lights faded and the music became less obtrusive. In the dim light, amid slightly shorter tall buildings with less glitz and more crumbling brick, we came across a street market. The people here did not speak English to us, for once - this was not a place where tourists are expected to venture. And yet the night life is full! People circle the stands of fruit, little boys hide behind their mothers, and the tone of conversation seems rich with the spirit of bargaining. I was disappointed I could not speak the language, but I'm thrilled to be in this place removed from the common path of tourism. Instead of this static image of what China was and what it is captured in tourist centers, I finally had a chance to see people live.
Although I truly enjoyed China from the first day, amidst all the conflicting emotions, struggles, and unsavory smells, Yunnan Province still holds the dearest place in my heart. Our final destination in China, we stayed in Lijiang, Dali, and Kunming. This SW China province is actually the seat of many ethnic minorities. As we traveled through, we were often in our tourist role. We visited cultural park after cultural park after dance performance after traditional dinner and performance. While part of me appreciated seeing the beauty in these actions, another part of me kept wondering what value people now placed on these so-called traditions? What might the dance have meant to people in the past and how is that meaning constantly changing? Do the Bai people near Dali actually still wear the headdresses that denote whether they are married or not or do they simply put them on for the market in the touristy old town area because tourists find it "quaint"? On our free days, I tried to see a different side of these places. Yes, I did go back into the old town areas we had toured, but with a mindset not of a shopper following a yellow flag like a crowd of kindergarteners clumping together on a zoo field trip. I went with the idea of simply watching people and of wandering a bit off the beaten path to see where people live and how. I stopped listening to the vendors calls. I started finding little places that spoke to my heart, places where I could sit outside and journal or watch the traffic. and every once in a while, see a crowd of children cross the street, giggling with success. Yunnan province holds a piece of my heart, and I hold a bit of its peace.
