Portrait of an LBX

By Evan

Before I begin, I want to say that thanks to everybody’s valuable input, I think I’m starting finally to get an idea of how to write this blog. A month on the road has taught me that we have the most fun experiencing and writing about long durations with LBXes, when we can really get into the experience and learn something a propos to our mission statement outlined in the about page. Without staying too long in one place, we tend to pass quickly through the enormous, grimy, de-naturalized machine that is modernizing China without getting to the substance that is man, and naturally the sentiments we pass on through the site come off negative (what else could they be?). In that vein, we have vowed to go more slowly and try to probe more deeply from now on. Hopefully that means that we’ll have more and more meaningful substance to post.

Getting back to the story, over the last few days we’ve finally passed out of Henan (which we unfortunately spent too little time exploring considering it’s the most populous province and origin of Chinese society) and into Anhui, the last province that can be considered completely Northern China we will pass through for many months. Nevertheless, Henan, not being a stingy host, left in all of us a lasting souvenir of gastrointestinal turmoil, the tail end of which we’re just pulling through as I write this post from several hundred km into Anhui. Despite making us miserable for days, the stomach bug did afford us the opportunity to stop in some unusual places.

After crossing the Henan border we stopped in the first noisy little highway town we could find, Shuanggou, where we had the pleasure of seeing a local pre-wedding ceremony complete with highway-side red tent, trays of cigarettes, and traditional humor routine set to bamboo flute music about a son not being respectful to his mother (now if you can’t get your yucks to that material…). We also had the pleasure of diarrhea when the bathroom (a hole in concrete as always, but this time emptying into the drainage ditch behind the tenement) also served as the chicken coop. If you’ve never squat pooped on top of a bunch of other poops three times in the middle of the night less than a foot from three chickens, let me tell you: you haven’t lived.

After leaving the town that quality forgot, we headed across some actually pretty beautiful farmlands. Nowadays all the fields are full of just budding wheat grass, which we were told won’t be ready until May or so. This is part of the heartland breadbasket. There are also signs everywhere instructing farmers to maximize their use of fertilizers and pesticides to achieve the quota of 500 kg of wheat per 1/6 acre. I don’t know much about wheat production, but I know a little about the way these local quotas work — I’m pretty sure that’s just got to be an unnaturally high number. Eventually we joined a huge arterial highway that cuts the province diagonally and heads in the direction of Shanghai, which meant lots of huge trucks blaring past us and a lot of dust and grime, as usual. Oh well, we’re pressed for time after so many sick days and have to take the fastest route.

On the way southeast we passed through the city of Guoyang (涡阳), which claims to be the birthplace of Laozi, the author of the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching). As we entered the city, a huge statue of what I’m sure they guess he would have looked like sits in the middle of a helter-skelter traffic circle, overlooking the giant mess that is Chinese modern development. More on this later. We went another 42 km down the road to the almost identical city of Mengcheng (蒙城), where after 102 km on the day Andy was thoroughly ruined as the sun went down. That night as we checked into a cheap hotel, I was elated to find out we had stumbled onto the supposed hometown of my favorite ancient Chinese philosopher, Zhuangzi (Chuang tzu), the 6th copy of whose book I recently bought in Taiwan and carry with me on this trip. I immediately grabbed out my copy and leafed through the introduction to his life, and I found that Mengcheng is indeed considered one of two possible sites of Zhuangzi’s birth, the other being in Henan. Oh sweet providence! The next morning Andy was feeling horrible, and so it was decided we should stay another day, thus affording me a chance to explore Mengcheng and the legacy of my man. Now just to see the place, you’d never know there was academic doubt about whether Zhuangzi really came from there. The streets and businesses all were named after him or parts of his book, and as in Guoyang there was a statue of him in a huge, anarchic traffic circle looking out over a giant street full of gray, ugly buildings and blaring horn-ed trucks in complete disarray. Backing up a step, I should say that this is the place Alexis called, “the most rotten city we’ve seen so far.” I agreed with the assessment wholeheartedly.

Despite the conditions of the city, I was excited to check out the Zhuangzi temple, which is the only such place I’ve wanted to enter despite having passed through the traditional homes of Confucius, Sunzi (The Art of War), Cao Cao, and others. Alexis and I asked the female driver of an electric pedicab how much to the Zhuangzi temple, to which she responded four yuan. Deal accepted, she promptly drove us to the Zhuangzi traffic circle. Well, this is beautiful, but it isn’t where we told you to go. Then she admitted she didn’t know where it was and asked some cops how to get there. After passing the worst parts of the city, including other traffic circles that featured huge statue advertisements for car parts and beef jerky and one of a nondescript horse, and finally arriving at our destination, she demanded 50 yuan for having to make multiple trips. We threw a ten at her, and after extricating ourselves from her kung fu grip and the screams of herself and a midget pedicabber outside the gate, we walked into the temple.

Now this place reeked of half-ass just-built-for-a-tourism-boost from the moment we set foot through the door. It was haphazardly thrown together and completely uncared for. The fish pool was light-blocking green, and there were piles of construction materials in knee high weeds everywhere. At least the entrance was free. Seeing a family walk in, I asked, do you know who Zhuangzi was? None of the five member family, from the area, really knew anything but that he was famous. Have you read his book? “No, but my brother did once, I think,” said the mother. Finally the daughter chimed in, “He was a Confucian, and a famous government official here.” [note: he was a Daoist, diametrically opposed to Confucians and generally advocated questioning of accepted norms and withdrawal from mundane frustrations of society] I asked the same question of two 50+ year old peasant men, also from the area, who were at least honest with me, “We don’t know who he is. This is our first time here. We just know this is a place you should come in this city.” Finally I found a groundskeeper, who unlocked the central exhibition room and tried to answer some of my questions. “He was a Daoist,” he told me, but more than that he knew nothing. Have you read his book? “No, we didn’t have that sort of thing in school during my generation.” Is it taught now, I asked knowing the answer already (They don’t teach any traditional Chinese philosophy in schools here by rule. It’s all strictly historical curiosity as far as the texts are concerned). “No, it’s not taught, but the book is on sale in bookstores if anybody wanted to read it.” Well, if nobody knows who he was or what he talked about, why is there a temple to him here? “There was a temple to him before which was destroyed a long time ago, so we built a new one a few years ago.” Why did they think he was important enough to build the first temple? “I don’t know, but I think he had some important ideas.” I had forgotten that most LBXes don’t question anything ever. He then showed me the ‘library,’ a bookshelf full of books about Zhuangzi to which there is no public access, and explained they’re trying to organize a conference of Zhuangzi scholars to come to the site. On the way out, a girl walking in a large group asked me in perfect Mandarin to take a picture with her. Favor obliged, and after she told me they were from the Planned Birth Council out of Hefei on business in the area, I asked her who Zhuangzi was. She responded that Laozi (a Daoist) was a Confucian and that Zhuangzi was a Daoist. Those two and Confucius had all talked about the importance of maintaining society, she informed me. Of course, she had no idea what Zhuangzi specifically talked about or why he was important. Then why would you want to come to a temple dedicated to the thoughts of somebody you don’t know anything about? “I know that some of his thoughts are now backward and outdated, but some of his thoughts can contribute to the construction of our modern society.” Wow, what a centrally planned thing to say about a philosopher you know nothing about. I wanted to tell her that Zhuangzi would probably defaecate himself if he saw the ruinous moral state one of his two supposed hometowns was in, but I knew it was useless.

Finally we went back to get Andy and go look for a cafe with internet. After yet another old woman in an electric pedicab pulled the same trick — to no avail as she was trying to mess with the wrong dudes — we got in a cab. Do you know who Zhuangzi is? “Yeah, he was a philosopher and a famous person from here.” What were his important ideas? “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t have any culture,” he confessed before telling us the local police are all bandits and offering to find us some hookers, “not a day over 20!” Arriving at our intersection, I asked how much, at which point he let me know his meter was broken. “Give as much as you think it should be,” he tested my conscience. Thinking it should be ten, I said fifteen and handed him twenty, to which he gave me two in change. After taking my own change from his stash and hear his screaming accusations that we’re cheap, we left to seek out the supposed cafe. Google Maps having failed us again, we got an hourly room (yes, there was a “how to prevent AIDS” poster on the door – classy joint) in a busted old hotel near the crowded, hopping center of the town that had internet so we could update pictures.

Later that night and after dinner, Alexis and I decided to stop off in the Xiaoyao (means “free and unfettered,” taken from a chapter title from Zhuangzi) foot massage joint down the road. My massage girl was 21, a local, and had the smell of alcohol on her breath, and Alexis’s was 22, from coal country Henan, and pretty sharp. Mine had quit school after second year of high school, and Alexis’s hadn’t gone past middle school. They told us that there were only two options for laobaixing like them, go get a job in an office, impossible for somebody without a diploma, or learn a trade. They chose foot massage since the pay was ok (15 yuan or ~$2) per hour, 12 hours a day every day of the month except 2 days they could request off. Free and unfettered indeed. Nonetheless, the work was agreeable enough as it gave them chances to sleep or watch tv when not massaging, and the boss took them to sing karaoke during downtime. Not even the gropy pervert customers could make it too bad. Neither of them liked the job, of course, but what else was there to do? The Henan girl admitted that she had wasted the last three years of her life in this trade not getting anywhere, and that she couldn’t admit to her parents what she did for fear they’d call her a whore (yes, for giving foot massages) but she had finally decided she wanted to be in makeup, a job she would try to find as soon as she could. Without experience, of course, there’d be no pay, but that could wait for later. Neither of them had any clue about Zhuangzi, but they had both worked in bigger cities before, Nanjing and Shanghai. Was it better in the big city, I asked? “Of course, but we can’t be too far from our families.” Don’t you think it’s selfish for your family to make you be close to them even though you want to live your own life? “That’s just the way it is in China.” They asked us what we thought of Mengcheng, to which we responded, it’s ugly and not a good place to live. “You’re right,” the local answered, “it’s not developed enough yet. Once it’s developed more like Hefei (provincial capital), it will be much more beautiful.” I wanted to shake her and tell her breakneck development had made it the polluted mess it was, but again what use? As Alexis got an extra back massage, we talked more to the Henan girl, who confessed that China can have some faults. “We hear news reports about people in the south, Guizhou or Yunnan, living to 80 and 90. Who here lives past 60 these days? All the food is full of chemicals, and the air is poisonous. In my home of Pingdingshan (where coal is king), you get a face full of soot every time you walk down the street.” She had a rough lot in life, but at least she had some street sense. Before we left, as is our new habit, we asked her what her definition of laobaixing is. “People who work the earth or work in cities, just regular people,” was the answer. Was Mao Zedong a laobaixing, asked Alexis? “He was, but then he became a great person. Everybody in China worshiped him and still does worship him. We have a room dedicated to his images in my house in Henan.” After all that sense, who knew she’d come up with that answer. Alexis said it was like an Israeli recounting realities of the holocaust and then proudly attesting to having a picture of Hitler on the wall.

Anyway, we’ve left Mengcheng and have passed through the beginnings of Anhui rice harvest to the metropolis of Bengbu, where we have celebrated our 2200th kilometer. The question that haunts me the most lately, especially after our last two stops, is where would Zhuangzi or Laozi be if they were born in today’s China? Zhuangzi’s special way of questioning established practices would put him square in opposition with the very same government that now insists on maintaining an entire city in his legacy. They’d likely be locked up in the slammer as dissidents or in the best case scenario way out in far Western Qinghai among the high mountains and sheep, probably one of the only places one can withdraw from the insanity. I mean, whether you support what’s going on here or not, you have to admit there’s just no room for anybody here to withdraw from society, no forests, no nature, no any kind of space at all. More than just a lack of physical or political space to be free, the spirit that Zhuangzi embodied is completely missing among the locals. Who sits around and plays an instrument for the fun of it or to refine themselves? Who refines themselves at all in any way? Where is the beauty? What’s the point of trying to make a difference here? I mean so far on our romp through Northern China we’ve seen nothing — absolutely nothing — that resembles passion for excellence or cultural refinement. I mean not once. The overbusy and underinterested attitudes of the people in everything they do reflect the absolute lack of nature.

Here in China we foreigners are constantly reminded that China has 5000 years of history and told that transfers into a deep, rich culture. I tend to define culture as practices that one implements in daily life, and not a way of life that is completely forgotten and gone, and so I usually have to disagree with the former statement. Being the optimist, I always assume that they’re right about the history and that traditional China was a beautiful place full of artisans, artists, scholars, and refined ways of life, manners, respect for nature (among a certain percentage of uncouth ruffians as well since nowhere’s perfect, of course), etc.That’s the assumption I have to make to keep sane here, but the fact is that now people here act in the least civilized ways imaginable. Just once I’d love somebody to approach me with the ritual courtesy that was China’s trademark for thousands of years, but mostly we feel more like we’re in tribal Africa than one of the world’s oldest continual civilizations. The history may be 5000 years old, but the culture is barely pushing a few decades. In order to really understand what we experience on a daily basis, you have to imagine a place that 50 years ago decided to take everything that was beautiful and everybody who understood anything about doing things well and just mightily and absolutely destroy all of it. After that imagine letting everything fester without direction or philosophy for a long time while people die needlessly. Then one day it is decided, hey, everybody needs to rebuild everything and attain a maximum of lofty centralized goals, and as fast as possible! Now that nobody knows how to do anything decent, and all culture or concept of beauty is gone, everybody start building everything now, and I don’t care if you don’t know how. A good analogy would be taking Da Vinci in his late years, destroying all his works, lobotomizing him, and then demanding that he recreate all of his works in one year.

Ok, I’m starting to rant now, but I hope you’ve at least gotten an idea for the way this place comes off to us everywhere. Tomorrow we’re headed out into some countryside and probably camping for our first time in Anhui, and the following day at the end of 140 km we’re staying with the LBX family of my old colleague, which should be another adventure. That’s it for tonight from Bengbu. Good night, all, and please wish good things for China.

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