Wendy, helpful assistant at Babe School, said “Will you ask for leave for me?” when she offered to go with me to long-awaited Shaoqing, her alma mater city. Bosses told me they “had something else for her, but Nancy could go to interpret.”
I offered Nancy a free three-day vacation. “I wasn’t consulted. I have never been to Shaoqing. I have something else to do!” I quickly told bosses I would go alone. Lisa, a new American teacher “watching me teach” (her words) “for Mama to train” (Zoe’s words), decided on departure morning that she would go too.
Wendy’s college friend, Lena, met us after a three-hour bus ride. We boarded a clearly-marked SHAOXING BUS, and I ended choosing among the spellings in guide books and among Chinese folks and discarded “Xiaoqing/Shaozing/Xiaoxing.”
The lady had a spelling for her name. I’d read that name meant “a female cartoon character” and “to inherit what ancestors have created to develop something new.” The edge of town showed murky green waterways graced by arched bridges between intervals of cranes and building debris. From Yuezhou, its name 2500 years ago, when it was the capital of the State of Yue during China’s Spring and Autumn Period (What happened in summer?), Ruler Zhao Gou moved there for second time, “pretending to do something big by making a decision for amnesty,” his ancestors stayed. I guess he fled during Summer Period. Chinese history can be confusing, especially in English-translated accounts.
We checked into Motel168, with a nice lobby and simple rooms, and caught a bus to The Former Residence of Lu Xun. Past college students, attempting to give me a Chinese name, had often suggested I take Lu Xun’s name. Teacher? Writer? My farm background? They invariably explained, voices reverent, that he was the first to write of life of common people.
I remembered looking at XiAn’s cliff-cave doorways with worn paths down to work tilling gardens or selling street food, hearing teachers tell of Lu Xun’s couragous writing as we commuted to our university jobs. “Lu Xun wrote somewhere near here” directed my gaze out bus windows, imagining Lu Xun bent over a hoe while his head whirled into his next story and how to preserve it for his people, peasants.
The Lu Xun Former Residence monument was huge, with a bronze scholar and teacher outside the entry. I put an arm around each while Lisa took a picture. Later I learned that Lu Xun “was perhaps the boy,” not the spectacled teacher I’d imagined on my right. Pedicab drivers, beggars, venders, and police harrangued us until we found where to get tickets (free, but conscientiously punched at four intervals by guards as our afternoon progressed). We started down several restored blocks of museums, courtyards, and ubiquitous tourist shops. Lu Xun’s grandfather, Zhou, was anything but a peasant. They had sedan-chairs, ornate beds, a leather couch in the parlor, and two golden osmanthus trees in shady courtyards. Lu Xun’s father, a scholar, had his title revoked when he sympathized with the 1898 Reformation Movement. He “got involved with a his grandfather’s bribery case and lost his title,” was another written explanation. I learned that Lu Xun’s wife, married in one chamber in 1906, couldn’t read or write (nor walk far on bound feet), but he provided her “with daily substances for living” while there were hints of a Beijing lady who shared his literary and other interests. We visited plaster-and-costume re-enactments of worshipping at private shrines (men only, in those days), a wedding where the bride’s red attire included a heavy veil, the wedding bed where the bride (still veiled) awaited the first look by her groom, the cave below the kitchen floor where yellow rice wine was put away at a girl child’s birth to be served at her wedding, and proceeded to Lu Xun’s boyhood school. This teacher, replicating the bronze in my picture, showed us the desk where young Lu Xun carved figures for “Get up earlier!” because he like to sleep in and often arrived late.
I had read of “Garden of Hundred Herbs,” among Lu Xun’s writings. The herbs turned out to be a healthy rows of vegetables that could still feed 10 Zhou households.”The Studio of Triple Tastes” with its couplet had a lingering hold on my imagination: “Extremely happy without making known to others is the filial piety; Soup made more delicious when enjoying it with books and poetry.” suggested Lu Xun believed in understatement and a multi-tasking.
Lena said we’d go to “The Statue” next, although we entered “The Studio of Triple Tastes” and learned that “to read classics is like having rice and cereal…history is like a banquiet…while collections of schools of thought is like a kind of seasoning. Delicious! Then I read that its name had changed from “The Studio of Spare Times.” I asked Lena, “Where is the sculpture?” “We’re in it,” she said, indicating the studio where writing and thinking were done. Sculpting ideas is a nice description for using any studio, we laughed, as she corrected her vocabulary glitch.
The sun was setting by the time we left the several-block compound, still abuzz with works, hawkers, and tourists.We had sampled stinky tofu, hadn’t found any yellow rice wine sold in small quantities, and decided to try a restaurant marked COFFEE. We had passable coffee that should have been sold in golden cups for its price and two plates of pistachios, the 20-yuan-person limit for their service, and talked until dark. It has been a while since I’d been part of three generations’ girl talk, a relaxing time.
Lisa left early for visa business in Hangzhou; I caught street breakfast and lots of stares before boarding a bus to Shen Yuan, a private Song Dynasty garden covering several blocks and exhumed in 1985. Lovely ponds, lakes, pavillions with folks doing Tai Ji (or is it Tai Chi here?) captivated me for a couple of hours. How I longed for my forgotten camera! Warm milk tea with black pearls, my favorite in cold weather, and a banana were midmorning snack before I found Bus 3 to KeYan area, 8 km outside the city.I rode with workers’ picks, buckets, and bundles and alighted with maids at Mirror Lake Resort, a hotel complex in progress. Lunch–bitter squash and garlic, rice garnished with an orchid, hot tea, pumpkin balls filled with bean curd, and a complimentary plate of fruit fashioned into a bird–found me alone in a private room (for 10, with a private bathroom) overlooking a rock sculptured courtyard. 48 yuan ($6.50) for all that splendor!
I exited to murky green waterways off Mirror Lake, crossed the hump of an ornate cement bridge, and walked away the afternoon. Some natural sculptures, one topped with a tree, in huge pools probably dated to Yue’s day when this was one of “eight scenic attractions known far and wide.” The largest, with 21-meter Maitreya Buddha overlooking green waters, found me walking both ways so as not to miss a single angle’s view. However, my descriptive brochure confused me: It said “hewn 483-492,” in another it described “three generations of monks carving it over 30 years.” I ascended to three graceful temples, smelling incense. Murals and English paragraphs depicted Sakyamuni’s life at Stone City Temple’s apex.I descended to wander paths between wild gardens, sculptures, pavillions, and guys wanting to make a yuan or two. Below the roaring waterfall, you could have your picture taken on a docile horse or ride in a boat propelled by the boatman’s foot.
I walked a few more paths and bade farewell to KeYan Scenic Area to order afternoon tea, dessert, and another fruit plate in the resort lobby. A quiet piano played, and a soft-spoken waitress urged me to return. I told her, with enthusiasm, that I’d like that very much.
At noon online, I get Lila’s good news that she has a clean bill of health and predictions of a normal future. I’m an unexpressibly grateful grandmother, thankful also for cool days during three-day rainy sprinkles in Sanya. I imagine she’s back to her big grin as she zooms down the slide she navigated at 12 months. Put her in a helmet and watch her go…
