Absurdity, Allegory and China

Back in Tianjin after several days in Beijing with Qinghai students and teachers. We went to the Great Wall at Huanyaguan on Saturday, 27 January 2007, and Tian’anmen Square, the Forbidden City and Jing Shan Park on the 28th. Not everyone went to Jing Shan, since some of the group wanted to stroll along Wangfujing. Seven of us went to the park, while the eight others headed off to Wangfujing. I have been there enough to know that I’d nearly always choose to go to the park.

After we left the north gate of the Forbidden City we crossed the street and climbed to the pavilion that overlooks the Forbidden City, as well as commanding an omni-directional view of all of Beijing. The ’shan’ (mountain) is a man-made knoll that rises out of the flats of the city; the material for the ‘mountain’ came from the displaced material from the excavation of the moat that surrounds the Forbidden City. Jing Shan is the reported site where the last Ming emperor, Chongzhen, hanged himself as the peasant rebel Li Zicheng entered the city in April, 1644, thus clearing the way for the Manchus to roll in and begin the Qing dynastic rule in June of the same year.

The trip to Tianjin, Huangyaguan and Beijing by the Tibetans was a resounding success, despite my periodic voicing throughout the week of the Richard Brautigan title Loading Mercury With A Pitchfork, as I referred to what it was like trying to keep everyone on-time and schedule. They returned to Xining on the 2:23 PM train and got a taste of what traveling in China during the long lead-up to the Chinese Spring Festival is like. We had to push and shove our way into the station, as well as doing the same to maintain our position in the #6 Waiting Hall prior to boarding. Three phone calls on late Tuesday (30 January) afternoon let me know that the trip had gone well, and that everyone had returned safely, at least as far as Xining. Most of the students walked across the street from the train station and left on the 4:20 bus to Gui’de. I have still not heard from anyone about their arrival, though I imagine that all is well, since I subscribe to the idea that ‘no news is good news,’ and that, given the odds, the routine generally holds, even in Qinghai where mountains, roads and weather can come together in such a way as to turn a common bus trip into more of an adventure than one would care to have.