This is the End - This is the Beginning...

For every beginning there is an end and today marks the end of our China portion of the Silk Road Overland.  As I sit in my room at the Semen Hotel in Kashgar, I find myself getting nostalgic.  There are many things to love and hate about China but within that dialectic lays awareness – an awareness that no other place in the world could offer up the following:

Monumental engineering feats such as the Great Wall, Three Gorges Dam and enough solar and wind power to light up all three Western Canadian Provinces.  But building ergonomical stairs remain elusive.  I will miss the steps of all the cities and towns I have visited with signs like “Mind you steps.  Bad falling is expectation.”

Nightly massage calls.  Where else can you go where every night around 9 pm you get a call offering a rub down.  Where else can you get a call on the phone in the bathroom by the toilet?  (Yes I got a call and yes I answered because hey, I was there and it made me feel like Elvis.) 

Caller:  “Wei – massage?”

Me:  “Latte?”

Caller:  <awkward pause>  “Massage?”

Me: “Latte?”

Caller:  “Only use hands.”

Me: “That’s find.  I’m cool with old school Italian press.”

Caller: “I go now.”

<Phone rings again 10 minutes later>

Caller <male>:  “You want man massage?  Latte right?”

Hand made street noodles.  I am going to miss my $2 bowls of noodles.  There is nothing like sitting on a dirty street side while a smiling man displays his mad noodle stretching skills right in front of your eyes.  Bonus points for dudes who can toss and stretch within inches of it ever touching the pavement. 

Ridiculously bad signage.  Things like:

Grass is smiling.  Grass forbids shoe feet.

Walk this way to Happy Amorous Market

If you are 1.3 meters you should not be here

No smocking in theatre or talking in voices

Tourist toilets not for peoples

No washing clothes, feet or babies in sink

Feet and intestines on fire and sticks here

If you must leave then please leave now so performance is not interrupted

Temple is quiet.  Loudness not allowed.

Hotel room forbids gambling, prostitutes and smoking (sign beside ash tray next to box of complementary condoms and a deck of cards you can buy for 5 yuan.)

Our Chinese Guide/”Handler”, Jason.  For the entire trip he said one sentence to me: “I don’t like this job.”  Ken wanted him fired but this is communist China so firing is not an option.  Jason always smiled, always directed with razor efficiently where our driver should go, booked our hotels, and sometimes helped order our food.   He was polite, self-effacing and is a fine example of how to withhold information under interrogation <Seal Teams could learn a lot off this man…> He told us nothing about China.  Or did he?  Three days before we are to leave Jason and I sit in abject heat and utter exhaustion in John’s Café in Turpan.  He taps away on his iPhone and I, in one last heroic but resigned to defeat moment, say, “So tell me why I should come back to China Jason.”  “I would never come back to Northern China,” he replies.  But then… But then he opens an album on his phone and begins to show me photos of Southern China.  Of green mountains and peaceful rivers.  Of smiling villagers.  Of vibrant sunrises and epic sunsets.  For the next hour he tells me his love for nature and the places in his country that give him joy.  He shares his wish to come to Canada and the US to see the mountains.  He says he doesn’t want to do this job for long because he misses home and he misses green grass and quiet.  He wants the woman he loves to fall in love with him.  And to do that, he cannot remain forever on the Silk Road.  In that moment, I learned everything about China.  China does not give its secrets freely.  You must work for them.  You must be prepared to find them in the least likely of places.  China is polite, deferential and a keen observer.  China is discreetly curious of the West but wary of our charms.  China knows what it wants and does not need us to tell it.  China wants time to breathe and does not have time to do so.  This China, Jason’s China, is on the edge of epic change and they WANT change.  Change is scary.  It is costly.  You make many mistakes because you are learning a new way of being.  China is on the cusp of becoming and in that becoming we witness our own past, our own failings.  Reminders of where we were (and may not have wanted to be) and possibilities of what may lay ahead. We are all on that journey.  Jason and I walk back to the hotel and make a stop to collect our laundry hanging on the grape trellises.  “I’m sorry if I took too much space,” he says apologetically.  “There is more than enough space Jason,” I reply and we both laugh.  In all its chaos, noise, too much of everything, China yields pockets of spaciousness and grace.  You just have to know how to look with fresh eyes and an open heart.

From Kashgar this is Jedi Queen and the Good Doctor bidding China farewell (but not good bye).  Next stop:  Kyrgyzstan.  See you on the other side!

(This post is short on pics but I will make up for it next time!  Endings are about reflection.  Beginnings are  for endless images of what is possible!)

Mao and I bid you Welcome and Adieu from Kashgar

Sector 1 Complete - Now onto Stalin!