a shrine to buddhism...and also, consumerism

“Waiting with patience means actively accepting the current circumstances and giving up the illusion that you can control the world. Actually, patience is a practice. The best way to cultivate it is to remind yourself constantly that every moment is the only place your life is occurring. The point is to train yourself to live completely in the present, in peace, even if you’re sitting in the middle of a traffic jam.”

[Geoffrey Arnold, Buddhist monk]

This quotation, which has adorned my notebooks and walls and now my desk in China, is my omnipresent reminder to live in the present. Not easy for me, but I’m getting there. At the very least, I’ve got the “remind yourself constantly” part down cold—it’s just actual peacefulness part that still eludes me.

On that note, my roommate and I set off the other day to Yuantong Temple, a Buddhist temple in Kunming which is roughly 1,200 years old. We entered the temple through a path of cypress trees and a sign welcoming you, in Chinese, to the “yuantong wonderland.” An early morning fog hung over the gardens and ponds, as if you could inhale the palpable peacefulness or feel its coolness upon your skin. The temples themselves were ornate, overflowing with colorful cushions and banners and flowers. And the Buddha(s?): these enormous gold statues shining from within. Silently, and one by one, worshippers would come forward to kneel and say a brief prayer. I felt much like an intruder, with my fast-talking and photo-taking and inability to ascend stairs without falling. But I’ve been a proponent of Buddhism, however much a novice, for a little over a year now, and this was my first visit to a real place of practice.  The grounds truly emanated this sense of calm; I wanted to lie down in the shallow, sunny water with one of the hundreds of turtles and snooze for awhile, or maybe more.  

 But, being an avid practitioner of a different form of religion—namely, capitalism—my roommate and I eventually left and met some other friends at the Kunming second-hand market.  The second-hand market is, quite frankly, like Goodwill done Chinese style: mountains upon mountains of cheap clothes, heaps of used undergarments (uh, gross!), racks of furs and shoes and dresses, all of it radiating some sort of synthetic stench. Even so, we had fun combing through the various goods and haggling with the vendors….and by haggling, I mean making sad-puppy dog eyes and asking “Duō shǎo qián?” (how much?) over and over until they lowered the price. [Sidenote: my Chinese is so terrible that sometimes I find it amusing to speak with a different accent--usually some sort of British/Scottish/drunken-slur-sounding hybrid. Somehow this is less embarrassing? And why I find myself wiggling my eyebrows excessively when attempting to order food or drinks from kindly waitresses, I do not know. Apparently I’m well on my way to becoming some sort of faux alcoholic British/Chinese womanizer?…]  I ended up with four cardigans (I’m in grad school in New England, cut me a break!) and a funky 70-ish rainbow-stripe dress that I may never wear but was fun to buy. Exhausted from our day, we headed back to the flat, where we were confronted with more strenuous decision making: to watch Precious or The Blindside…or, ok, ok, I’ll admit it:  maybe just more bootleg copies of Ugly Betty. Tough life. 

sidenote: i can't post pictures on this blog b/c the internet is far too slow. if you want to see pics, check out my album on facebook called "china y'all"...and if we're not friends already, add me!

donde el crepusculo corre borrando estatuas

My favorite time of day here is twilight. The streets awash in a buttery light, the sidewalks and shops bustle with parents and children returning home. In my apartment complex, a calm missing from the rest of the day settles over the courtyard: grey-haired women line up to dance, waving red fans and gently swaying to the music floating from a nearby boom-box. The old men- most of them toothless, or soon-to-be- are finishing up their games of cards or dominoes, their voices often rising and pitching in angry outbursts over the din of children playing on the sidewalks.

Freshly showered, I move through the dusty streets silently, spinning stories in my head from the day just past or repeating some fragment of Chinese over and over like an impromptu mantra. (Hong shan nan lu, for example, is the name of my street, which I so badly mispronounced to a taxi driver the other day that I ended up in a strange suburb before “phoning-a-friend” for help). I can’t help but grinning nearly constantly. How is it possible that I am here, in a Chinese market, haggling over eggplant for tonight’s dinner, when a year ago I was in a cube counting down each agonizing minute until my 5 o’clock escape? Everything delights me: the men brushing their teeth in the streets, the sudden burst of sparks from a second story construction site, the smoky scent of sidewalk barbeque. I seem to evoke a similar effect; although the Chinese are fairly discrete, I catch both men and women secretly staring. Dressed in a summer top and flowy skirt, “yellow” hair falling around my shoulders, I’m not sure if they think I’m Pamela Anderson or a blonde Godzilla. “Nihao,” I say as I walk past, smiling brightly into their curious faces.

Ironically, the only thing tainting my twilight zen is the residual anxiety of life in New Haven. Walking along some dusty railroad tracks with my roommate the other evening, we were approached from behind by a menacing figure.

“There’s someone behind us,” my roommate warned, well aware of my Dwight-Street paranoia. I shrieked and spun around to confront our attacker: a four-foot-five Chinese woman, balancing on her hip a watermelon that may have outweighed her. I laugh sheepishly and let her pass.

Except for these minor aberrations, evening in Kunming is a laid-back affair. It’s refreshing for the sky ‘s darkening to signal the end of the day as opposed to the start of another endless night of studying, for a change. So I go back inside and stir-fry my vegetables, read a little, write a little, and finally, after a year of perpetual motion, relax.