A FULL SPECTRUM KIND SPECIES

Like I said before, we’re a full spectrum kind of species. We are capable of just as much good as we are bad. We run the gamut.

Saturday September 16th, I made plans to spend time in the Muslim Quarter with a new Chinese friend, his wife and lovely daughter. I was asked if after the Muslim Quarter, I would like to go for a massage with him as his wife and daughter needed to get back home for his daughter’s schooling. I glanced briefly at the wife, as the sisterhood is more trustworthy than the brotherhood for a woman here, and she assured me he goes every month and that I should go too. So, I agreed.

The whole family took me on a tour of the Muslim Quarter not found in any guidebook. We walked around and watched the tourists. At each stall, we stopped to watch the, I find, surprisingly vulgar Westerners haggle with the native Chinese. It’s not that the merchants won’t take you for every cent they can, it’s just not personal with them. For them, it’s business. They will make a profit off you, the question is just how much of a profit. With the tourists, it’s personal; as if a good price is your visa-given right and if you don’t get it, you’re taking your money to somewhere where you’re appreciated. I found myself shockingly disappointed every time I watched a Western storm away, snooty nose in the air hand flailing in a gesture of dismissal as if their presence was what would make or break the single stall in an alley so crowded in the off hours of the day that you can barely breathe. No wonder much of China views the West as imperialist bastards. Between our foreign policy and our foreign presence, there’s really very little other conclusion to come to.

Between my Chinese guides and my tendency not to make a grand scene wherever I go, I was left alone, free to observe the tourists fighting with the vendors. I explained which countries each group of tourists was from and how I could tell; either by the language they conversed in with each other or by the accent their English held. I explained to my hosts the difference between the British accent that holds the letter “a” deep in the throat while Americans place it high in the nasal cavity. I explained the rolling rhythm of Italian and the lisp of Castilian Spanish.

We continued on a bit until my new Chinese friend spied a beautiful building behind one of the stalls. (The stalls are built out from the houses the merchants live in, like a garage placed directly in front of the façade of a house.) He pushed through, said something to the young man manning the stall in front and we were allowed access back to see the front of the house.

Hanging on the wall of the house was a plaque from UNESCO’s Asia Pacific Heritage awarded to 125 Huajue Alley (run a web search for it and on UNESCO’s site, you will find photos of the place). 125 Huajue is, apparently, the only restoration project in China to receive the award for excellent restoration. Only 13 awards have been given out in Asia total and 125 Huajue is the one that China received for.

Technical awards aside, the front of the home is beautiful. The façade is beautifully carved stone with a small moat or drain running along the front doorway. Every inch is covered in some sort of carving. Flanking the large keystone with the family name are intricately carved, lifesize writing implements of brush, ink and tablet. Incredibly realistic stone foliage adorns the various still-lifes. The solid stone rods that support the roof shingles are all tipped with a gargoyle-like face and no two are the same.

While we were studying the façade, an old man came out to speak with us. He spoke with my Chinese friend and my friend translated that the old man was “a teacher, like [me].” We nodded hello and it was explained that I was an English teacher from America, New York. As my hometown always affords me, I got a respectful nod. The old man gestured for us to enter his home and he said he would give us a tour.

You must step on the stone island in the moat to reach the door and as you pass through, you’re greeted with traditional Qing dynasty architecture. Specifically, a large, minimalist, rectangular pond serves as the courtyard with narrow walkways on either side to walk towards the house. As you approach the front entrance to the house on the far end of the long rectangle, rooms only accessible within the home flanking the rectangular pond, the front courtyard flares out like a capital “T” with the smaller ponds on either side of the entrance adorned with wooden hand cranks to pump water into the pond. The front door to the house proper is a long, woven shade and you pull the shade back and enter through the side of the flap.

Once inside the house, one is amazed at the serenity. Not fifty feet away (granted, on the other side of large, thick stone walls) is a throng of tourists so thick you feel as if you’re drowning but inside the house is silence. The thick wooden beams supporting the house are painted black and each room is framed at the entrance with an ornate almost picture-like frame. As we entered, I saw the illuminated Koran pages on the wall and greeted the old teacher in Arabic as my Muslim friends growing up taught me to do. He reciprocated and I was offered a high seat in the sitting room off the right of the entrance.

As I sat with my friend in the two high chairs and the old teacher and my friend’s wife sat in the low chairs, I felt the handles of my chair. Being an art history major with a fetish for all art Asian, I immediately pegged my chair as period appropriate for the Qing dynasty. Considering how sturdy it was under my massive self, I nailed it as a reproduction. I guessed that the artist was going for early Qing dynasty, making it several centuries “old.” I marveled at the craftsmanship and thought how amazing that current artists have kept such a tradition alive. I was finally able to pull my eyes from the chair to look around and see how many pieces really fit the period. Not to mention, the stunning “4 Seasons” scrolls (the four seasons are a very popular theme in Chinese scrolls) on the wall behind me and the calligraphy scrolls to my right, the window overlooking courtyard being to my left.

Suddenly, the old teacher and my friend erupted into excited chatter. My friend, a passionate interior decorator and calligraphy enthusiast, had recognized the scrolls to my right. It turns out that the beautiful calligraphy scrolls on the walls were the old teacher’s and he was a teacher of calligraphy. Not just that but apparently, he is one of the most famous calligraphers alive. Granted, I was never given his name nor would I have retained if I had been but considering the passion the Chinese have for calligraphy, it was not unlike suddenly discovering I was sitting in Picasso’s sitting room.

By the window to my right, there was a large basket of scrolls and work the old teacher had been working on and we were invited to take a look. One by one, we unfurled the scrolls, some flecked with gold, some on brown paper, some on brilliantly white paper, some with sketches and some completed masterpieces. It was all stunning and, once again, I find myself incredibly frustrated at my inability to comprehend Chinese.

After many photos were taken, both of the scrolls and us, we were given a tour of the house. Directly across from the sitting room and to the left of the front entrance, is a bedroom. The frame around the bedroom was larger, therefore leaving less space for heat to get escape and I studied the inserts adorned with vignettes as my friend, his wife and daughter and the old teacher all looked at the furniture in the bedroom. I was told to come into the bedroom and inspect one of the armoires. I immediately pegged the clean lines, simple clasp and overwhelming brute size of the armoire as late Qing dynasty (a little over a century old). “Good repro” I thought again.

I was then informed that the armoire was “over a hundred years old.” It occurred to me that this was no repro and I looked at my hand touching the silken, lacquered wood as my stomach dropped. Then I realized that there were no museum security guards to wrestle me to the ground and scold me. I had, in fact, been invited to touch this gem. Since I was old enough to walk, I have wanted more than anything to touch history, to break through the fourth wall of museums and breathe life into those lonely objects so derived from their original purpose. I’ve always thought of museum pieces as incarcerated from their real life; that they must sit there, night after night, wishing for the good old days when they had stolen moments with their owners who were willing to treat them as their maker had intended and not some idolized, precious object to be adored in some strange guided cage. I see museums as filled with lost pets left to wonder where their owners are and why they are no longer loved but merely studied behind glass. I go to museums to say “hello” to these pieces of the past the way many people visit pet stores to pet the lonely puppies.

And there I was, touching the previously forbidden. I found myself smiling at the thought of this piece of history having such a good home and my smile became infectious. Soon everyone was smiling and the old teacher was dating everything in the house for us.

It turns out that my repro chair that was so sturdy, was in fact, as I had dated the “forger’s” intended date; early Qing dynasty. Frankly, I’m glad I didn’t know that sitting down or I never would have been able to relax at the thought of a several-hundred-year-old chair supporting my fat ass.

We left the old teacher’s home high on life and wandered into the streets of the Muslim Quarter. We quickly traversed a maze of streets and wandered into a residential street where I was clearly the only Westerner to be there in quite some time. I noticed there was no pretense of Imperial Chinese beauty, simply the light brown of the dirt and dust and mud of my alley back home. We walked along this street as people stared at me and then we came upon a doorway with several older folks sitting, eating soupy rice out of their bowls, just watching the world go by. My friend entered the doorway quickly and we followed a long, winding hallway back past open fire pits, nut grinders and sweating workers to a baker’s shop.

Inside the shop were large, wheel-able crates of every baked good they make in China. Moon cakes (to celebrate the upcoming Moon Festival on October 6th; it’s the harvest festival) of every variety (they are phyllo dough little buns stamped with red; they have dense centers ranging from the sweet kind with a paste of walnuts, raisins, dates and brown sugar to savory with meat and spices) as well as peanut butter cookies, fried pieces of dough that taste sweet like a hard doughnut or salty like a wonton and a wide variety of things I could not place.

The smell was a fantastic mix of baking starch, sugar and meats. As we left, my friend bought me a package of sweet moon cakes and I was quite excited as I really like them.

We then stumbled about the local streets buying various things for lunch. My friend and his wife bought raw beef, a solid rice pudding with unsweetened stewed prunes, berry flat buns (berry starch with a berry jam center fried up hot and soft) and then we found a noodle place for lunch. I was given a large bowl of sesame noodles (while in America, the noodles are usually cold and spaghetti like, here they are broad, hot and al dente) spiced up very hot, a bowl of rice, a large communal bowl of some sort of cooked meat with a gelatin-like soup and a communal red soup with couscous –like grains at the bottom.

Eating beef raw is something to behold. It was fresh and delicious as was the rest of the food… except for the cooked meat stew with gelatin soup. For whatever reason, I couldn’t get thoughts of haggis out of my mind, and so it was an active effort not to gag as I ate it the gelatinous muck. Of course, I took some of everything I was offered and wished my stomach was larger so I could eat more. Unfortunately, the cooked meat stew seemed to be the true delicacy so they kept heaping it on to my rice and I had to eat until I was bursting at the seams.
We finished lunch and my friend’s wife and daughter found their way back so the daughter could attend her schooling. My friend and I found our way to his friend’s spa.

When we got off the bus, my friend took my hand and would not let it go. Now, I do not come from a handholding culture. I don’t know where the lines between “appropriate” and “inappropriate” handholding lie. Frankly, no one has held my hand in public since college and while I have no problem taking someone’s arm, handholding just seems too intimate for me.

Nevertheless, there I was being led, by the hand, up the street by this giddy, middle-aged man who is friends with the head of my school. His wife had suggested I go with him to the spa, so I took her comfort at face value but I knew I was in over my head. Harmless or not, this was definitely something I had no compass for.
We went up the stairs to the spa, holding hands and into the massage room together holding hands. I took a seat in the lounger chair and as we watched tv, waiting for the masseurs to show up, he lay on his side, watching me with child-like interest and invading my “dance space” as they say in Dirty Dancing. “This is my dance space. This is your dance space. Got it?”

We chatted and then the masseurs arrived to rub us down. I had to take off my shoes and roll up my pants. Actually, those things were done for me and I realized, Toto, we weren’t in Kansas anymore. First of all, my legs weren’t shaved because A) they don’t sell razors in Xi’An except for at Carrefour and there it’s for 50 yuan (like spending 50 bucks on a razor) while the spare heads cost 20 yuan a pop and B) I hadn’t expected to be showing my legs. Considering the cost of blades, I’ve been rather lax about the whole leg hair thing as they’re covered by long pants every day and I’ve got no one seeing my legs. Nevertheless, my friend was unphased by my hairy legs and he started waxing poetic about my beautiful hands and my beautiful feet.

He declared them to be the most beautiful in the world. He then took my hand again to study it and caress it.

Now, I’m from the United States of America; we don’t do sensual if it doesn’t lead to sex. In a country where men walk hand-in-hand, I can’t tell where the sexual line and the sensual line is drawn. I just can’t. I’m not calibrated like that and having to sort that out in crunch time is hard.

However, the rational part of me understood that his masseur was touching him far more intimately than a little hand holding AND his wife suggested I be here, so the argument could be made that I was being alarmist at being so ridiculously uncomfortable.

Freaking out aside, the massage was incredible. I got rubbed and pulled and bent and flexed and crawled upon so deeply and thoroughly, I’m still relaxed… though I do have bruises all over me from the acupressure. Ironically, the masseur explained to my friend that I was so fresh and delicate that she was afraid to massage me as hard as she normally does for fear of bruising me. She did but I loved every second of it.

Once the massages were over and it was just the two of us in the room alone, things got a little weird again as he curled up next to me and wanted to hear me speak of the US. Of course, conversation eventually turned to my “boyfriend” as my friend knows lots of people at the school I work at and all I had to do was mention to one person that I “have” a boyfriend and instantly everyone knows.

So, the single American girl is sitting there on the lounging chairs with the married Chinese man who is extolling her great beauty and caressing every inch of her hand as he starts asking if I’ve ever been away from my boyfriend before. Not wanting to sound like some wide-eyed innocent, I said, “Yes, we’ve been apart many times before.” The next question was if I ever cheated on him or he on me. Now, I wanted to leave no wiggle room for argument as to why he should be able to partake in my body so I said, “No.”

“Never? Not once?”

“No, never. Not once.” I stood my ground.

“How many boyfriends did you have before?”

Again, I wanted NO wiggle room for him to make the argument for sex with him. “None.”

“Only one boyfriend?” He asked, amazed. Granted, I was amazed too considering I have more in common with Samantha from Sex and the City than Elizabeth from Pride and Prejudice. “Most American women have many boyfriend. They do not care how many.”

I must admit, there’s nothing more heartwarming than being told what my culture does and does not do by a person who not only has never experienced it but I am their first contact with it. All I could do was shrug.

“I think you are like traditional Chinese girl.” He said, his tone and body language subtly changing. I was immediately given much more personal space and his air changed from suitor to father.

All because I just lied to appear as a “good” girl.

The rest of the afternoon was a lovely haze of napping while waiting for friends. As soon as his flock of buddies showed up, I was shuffled off into a taxi and sent home. The moment I closed my door behind me, I breathed a deep sigh of relief.