I Am Made Of What Mountains Are Made Of

"The reality we can put into words is never reality itself." — Werner Heisenberg

—A young boy flying over the heads of a crowd, jumping from rock to rock, teetering on the abyssal edge

—One dozen people sleeping in a bedbunked room; a huddled pair, middle cot

—Lotus Peak, the Highest Point, awarded medals, celebrate with Dr. Pepper, picture with old woman

—solitary-ish morning walk through a dense mistvapor shroud

—16 hours total of up-and-down stairs

—sharp granite fingers thrusting up through the crust of the earth, reaching through the clouds for a gossamered sun, crumbling fingernails with crawling, four-limbed miniatures sliding down the face

In Huangshan, one can be bring keys and padlocks to secure to the protective ropes and railings at the higher points of the range. Thousands cover the barricades, some rusted, some shiny and new, some seemingly about to fall apart. The old story goes that if one fastens their lock to the top railings of the mountain, makes a wish for the health of family or a loved one and throws the key into the chasm, their wish will come true. A hailstorm of lightweight keys constantly peppers the beat-cut bushes of the sudden-drop valleys, dotting the landscape with bits of invisible common earths. Thousands, millions(?) should have good health; thousands, millions are loved.

—Calves hard as rock, tired, though not as large and stony as the calves of workers who climb the steps each day

—Impossible views of mountains emerging darkfaced from the mist

—stealthing through a half-lit hotel for the rich in search of warmth and privacy

—the Mass Tourism of a UNESCO World Heritage Site swarmed by uncountable visitors dropping peanut shells at the feet of trees and half-empty water bottles at the tops of mountains

—"The mountain is inspecting your behavior while you are appreciating its beauty"

—the state of being a tourist and knowing the surreality of your visits, hoping that knowing grants something more

Taking notes on Huangshan while climbing Huangshan and sleeping on Huangshan and thinking about Huangshan for days and days post-Huangshan isn't a bad way to find yourself unable to write about what it really meant to go to and see Huangshan because at least you still have the notes. What I remember thinking is that these mountains were made somehow, and it couldn't have been from a fault line because I remember how that works from Geology 101. They definitely weren't volcanic. Only later did I find out that these sharp granite peaks were formed beneath the waters of a great sea that drained millions of years ago, and these stalagmitic juts from the earth were once covered in mesozoic seaweed. What's more, glaciers came through and cut all this up, sharpening the tallest of the teeth. And this granite, these pine trees, they share with me the base ingredients of everything. Make of that what can be made.

The Only Compass That I Need (is the one that leads back to you)*

"It's been so long..." — David Bowie, off "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" from Let's Dance, 1983†

On returning from an eight-day spring-break vacation that spanned three cities, two major bodies of water, and one mountain range, upon arriving in Beijing on a rumble-roar red-eye train at 5:45 am with gunk in my eyelids and more sleep on my mind, when standing in line at the subway station with a leaky right eye and a stomach that screams for breakfast, I realize that I've been returning all the while to Beijing as if it were my Ithaca, my home. The idea must have been inceived somewhere between our trip to Yunnan and this very travel from which I have just returned, and it is alien, strange. Is it possible that over the course of a short two months I've become so accustomed to the busybodysea of Beijing that I could call its iron-and-concrete sprawl home? Maybe it's because I've been forced to become fast friends with 20-odd students around the same age as me who are now like a small family, maybe it's because the program I'm enrolled in has been so welcoming, or maybe it's because of a certain crazy-for girl, but the prospect of sticking around in Beijing is actually almost comforting. I don't plan on living here, and I certainly plan on returning home to my friends and loved ones in America this June, but still, there's something there in that first microgranular thought in the dark night of that train ride when I thought, "I'm going home."

There is nothing worse†† than being ripped off as a tourist other than being ripped off as a tourist while being fully aware of and helpless against the fact. So were we, my travel companion Emily and I, stuck in Huangshan at the base of the mountain: a ride, needed; a taxi, the only available. We had trekked the small town around the mountain looking for the bus back to the city (also Huangshan), to our hostel, asking hotel managers and restaurateurs alike for directions (Emily's Chinese is a few levels beyond mine, so she did most of the talking) but to no avail. We wandered into a Traffic Police station to find the place open yet empty, a cup of tea still steaming on a desk, the place silent and muggy. A tripod series of pictures propped up near the entrance featured grisly scenes of motorcycle crashes with Blood on the Pavement, the traffic police's deterrent against unlicensed driving or something. We found out, finally, from a few clerks at a Super-8, that the bus stops running at five pm. It was 5:30. Emily called the hostel we booked at, and they told her we could only take a cab. 

The taxi manager knew right away what was up. He was like a dead-eyed dog: he could smell our helplessness. Beneath brash attempts at bartering with his price, he could see that our only option was to take one of his cabs. He knew it and he took advantage, and though the price we paid was considerably less than others have paid in the past, and though in the US the price was more than reasonable, we knew that for what the meter would have been and what a Huangshan native would have paid, we were certainly ripped off. What could we do? We sat on our hands and thought spiteful thoughts. Emily hoped he had kids to feed to justify such dealings. I hoped (and later wished otherwise for the man) that he lived alone, that his only real happiness in life was earning rip-off money—a poor happiness, indeed. As a tourist, though, such is expected. People yell "hello" to you, they snap pictures, they mutter "外国人," they stare. 怎么办？ No harm done. When you're a tourist, you have to realize that you're already (in the pessimistic light) leeching off someone else's real culture†††, so you should, theoretically, just bite the bullet and take what karma kicks your way. 

So maybe that train ride home in the pitch hours of a lightless seaboard gave me peace of mind because I knew I'd be returning to the familiar, to a place where folks didn't care if you were different, to a place (Wudaokou) where the familiar thing was the foreign student intermingling with the Beijing native. Maybe Beijing felt like home because in Beijing the slurred-speech cabbies always run the meter. Maybe I was comforted by the quasi-family that mitosis'd in the fluorescent halls of a high-floored dormitory. Either way, Beijing felt like home, and though there's another home out there waiting for me, the fact that something feels like a duck and looks like a duck is enough, right?

*From the song "Compass" by Jamie Lidell

†It has been so long (since writing here, since being in Beijing). I'll update throughout the next week or two regarding the actual trip: climbing Huangshan, visiting Nanjing, cruising the coast at Qingdao, accidentally consuming duck heads, seeing the reaction to the Nanjing massacre ~70 years later, etc.

††Of course there is worse than being ripped off while traveling. There is being robbed/mugged, trafficked, killed, becoming a homeless stray, nearly starving, running out of money, finding our you were adopted, losing all one's teeth, getting in a knife fight, and on and on. It's only a figure of speech.

†††There is something to be said, though, about the certain types of tourism that permeate such places as the Grand Canyon, Sun Yat-sen's Mausoleum, or even Huangshan: is there really a local culture being leeched off, or has the place been robbed of anything real it once had and turned into a corpuscle of pure disgustingly-fat greasy-boned mass tourism? When thousands flood a crevasse in the recesses of Huangshan to fight for position at the stairs leading, eventually, to Yingkesong, is anyone being leeched off of, or is the rock dry?