Kanding

There is a saying in Sichuan province, “Dogs bark at the sun in Chengdu.” In warm weather, the haze feels lush and tropical, even under the dense banks of clouds that clot the valley; in the cool of fall, the world becomes sunless and small. The whiteness forgets the size of the sky and erases all things infinite.

October 4, 8:00 am. It was pissing rain, water hissing onto the cement and the streets. It pierced the clouds on its way down and dragged them into its descent; the air was cold steam. The rain felt not so much like a collection of drops as it did a weight, a watery pressure on a sopping sky that crumbled into soggy bits and splashed down around us. The whiteness of it rested on our shoulders and pinned us to the ground; we dragged our bags out of the back of the taxi and stood, getting hissed on, soaking wet.

The bus station was identifiable only in its greater density of human chaos than the street itself – that, and the enormous dreary sign in rare sensical English: Welcome to Chengdu, barely visible through the murk. We dodged inside and dried ourselves off, shaking like dogs and smiling with thoughts of escape. Buses meant leaving meant somewhere else, meant something new. The station was full of people pushing and worried and smoking, and the smell of newly printed tickets and wet umbrellas and the stress of being late. We studied an illuminated wall map with all of Sichuan province as we waited for our friends – a fellow Fellow posted in Urumqi (Xinjiang Autonomous Region), and his girlfriend, a Chinese woman living in Beijing. We were taking off for a few days for the National Week vacation, just like everyone else in China. I wandered around the block seeking coffee (having just learned those characters), though the only place that had them on the sign was locked, so we boarded the bus damp and sleepy and undercaffeinated, but it didn’t matter. The bus had legroom and a bathroom and we were getting out of town. Three days in the mountains, the cultural (if not political) beginning of Tibet – Kanding.

Western Sichuan is actually higher in elevation than Lhasa, so although Chengdu sits on a plain, the only way out to the west is to climb. The suburbs stretched on for a disappointingly long time, a predictable copycat sprawl of industrial projects, many abandoned in the twilight of local investment. Once the city deteriorated and grew into a ruralscape, however, the road rose up quickly and we began to wind, and wind, and wind, up-up-up through canyons and passes carved by the patient strength of waters in various states of riverdom. The ride itself was dreamlike and sleepy; something about the motion of it, the relentless curving way up the mountain, the insistence of the in-cabin televisions coughing up musical after Sichuanese musical (followed by a horror film with full-volume shrieks and then something about a paraplegic athlete), and the endless close shaves with death as we careened time and again, horn blaring, into helpless oncoming traffic on the narrow mountain ledges made me need to doze for much of the ride. I would awaken from Paul’s shoulder to see sheer red rocks slicing upwards for hundreds of feet, gorges spilling over with bamboo and ferns, the mountain peaks pointed with the impossible geology of Chinese paintings. Tiny villages slid past our windows and were gone, isolated and apparently self-sufficient, often nothing more than two or three concrete shells of buildings with patchy slate-tile roofs. Many had stacks of corncobs drying, or clean-swept patches of earth covered in yellow mounds of shucked kernels. Glassless windows held bunches of herbs tied with string; women crouched, sorting leaves and beans into bowls and piles, some staring at the bus as it passed, mostly not, busy with lives I could not imagine living. One village had a rusty pulley system arranged across the canyon with a hand-cranked gondola for transporting goods (and maybe passengers) over the chasm. Another, somewhat larger, village had stand after stand after stand of men and women selling kiwis: kiwis in bowls, kiwis on trays, kiwis arranged in geometric piles, little kiwis, big kiwis, brown kiwis, green fuzzy kiwis, baby kiwis. I couldn’t quite grasp the economic principle that allowed them all to operate at each other’s elbows like that, a kiwi-only market, but imagined that there was a definite logic to it that simply escaped me. A quarter-mile down the road was another stand, a lone man in a shabby brown suit with his own card table covered in kiwis. I silently applauded his entrepreneurial spirit. The bus didn’t stop.

This is the first time I have spent so long in a country and seen so little of it. My entire Chinese experience (before the trip to Kanding) had been limited to Beijing and Chengdu, cities of 15 and 11 million, respectively, and no ground transportation between them. My sensory world has been colonized by the stimuli of the urban, the logic of mass and crush and crowd, sardine bus-cans, scooter whizz-beepery, dense marketplaces, and the creep and cloak of westernization. I had had no sense of what lay beyond the concrete walls, no frame of reference even to measure the size of a city that I couldn’t find the boundaries of. The university with which I am affiliated lies at the southeast corner of the urban bullseye (Chinese metropolises are generally organized in rings rather than grids) and the building in which I teach has a balcony facing out, away from downtown, open to the air and the low, low crawl of the clouds. On breaks, I often stand there and stretch – deep breaths do little when the air is nothing but water vapor and smoke, but I like the breeze, and the ubiquitous whirring of crickets, and the damp air feels good on chalk-parched hands. From there, I look out onto a cluster of condos, thoughtless and uniform and cheap just like anywhere, but beyond I can see green – it is a richly agricultural valley, for all its waste and filth and sunlessness. Fields break open the landscape just beyond the housing projects, and they stretch and stretch and are sliced with dull ribbons of irrigation flow, on until the mist obscures them from view. I think of the women who sell vegetables in the markets. and realize that they must come from there, must grow things themselves and bring them in every morning, by bicycle and wicker basket or by a shared ride in someone’s truck. This is my only clue to the countryside, to a nature beyond the tame but significant efforts of the planned and exuberant plant life that distinguishes Chengdu as an urban space – the trees and bushes and medians everywhere are blooming and growing and greening an otherwise lifeless contemporary symphony of concrete. While I appreciate the sensitivity the city has for cultivating flora, it is not the same as being in a place where things are wild, and alive. A trip to the mountains was exactly what I needed.

After a harrowing 7 hours of cramped near-death experiences counterbalanced with breathtaking scenery and a stop for a roadside meal, we arrived, stiff-jointed and happy, in Kanding. The first thing you notice about it is the sky. Despite being nestled into the pit of a very deep canyon, the city’s buildings are low enough and its protective mountains triangular enough to slice open a big wedge of bright blue up above. Unlike many such burrowed mountain places, Kanding is airy, and the sun beamed down with an intensity that made me feel awake for the first time in weeks. The next thing you notice is that you are no longer in China. That is to say, you are no longer in a predominately Han ethnic territory – since Tibet is, of course, part of the One China. Emerging from the bus station, we were immediately set upon by a handful of street hustlers, each eager to drive us somewhere for an exorbitant price. After learning to hate this practice with a passion in North Africa, I was surprised to find that I enjoyed the aggression of it here – it seemed much closer to friendly than the hands-off silence and furtive stares we get in Chengdu. They were laid back, as well, and didn’t follow us down the street, nor did they make any noises that sounded particularly lewd or offensive; they were just offering us rides, and doing it in a language that none of us, the Chinese woman included, could understand. They laughed, another rare sound in Chengdu, and showed uneven rows of teeth. We walked down the middle of the street, dodging the slow-moving traffic and taking in the sun, the new shapes of faces, the women with red yarn in their braids, and the bursts of colors woven into every jacket and tunic we passed. The signs were different – most bearing the now-familiar yet still mostly impenetrable Chinese characters – but also now with new lettering, something even more foreign yet clearly more alphabetic, the beautifully knifelike whippings of Tibetan script. Everything had a dusty, sun-bleached feeling of humor and commerce, a true frontier town accustomed to strange faces on all manner of business passing briefly through. It was at once equal parts Wild West and Thunderdome, full of wind and wires and silk and wooden carts laden with meat. Once a stop on the Silk Road and a trading point for Chinese tea headed westward, Kanding is now the gateway through which most things pass in transit from Sichuan province to the high Tagong grasslands, the glaciers and the jagged peaks of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Eager to drop off our bags and do some exploring, we took a taxi to a nearby backpackers’ hostel and arranged a shared room for the four of us for the night.

There are two kinds of hostels in the world, all over the world: the hip, worldly hangout for trekkers, hippies, urbanites and erstwhile globetrotters, often staffed by multilingual youngsters eager to learn the latest slang from as many countries as possible; and the creepy, dingy, cold-water-only rip-off joint that specializes in overcharging scared young women, and serves as a watering hole for local sleaze bags who prowl the naive. Luckily, Sally’s Backpack Inn was the former. The entrance said it all – a flagstone courtyard surrounded with a high wooden fence and colorful murals painted by several generations of artist-types, fluffy pink and purple cosmos nodding in pots along one wall, and a pot-bellied stove in the center for warmth and tea water, around which gathered a disarray of all manner of loungy wicker chairs with cushions and sheepskins. Spacey, dark trip-hop wafted from an unseen speaker, and beautiful young Tibetans dressed like tiny versions of NYC rappers smoked cigarettes from bone holders and took pictures of each other in sultry poses with a digital camera. A set of poi hung from nails on one wall, which I later played with and ended up in some Japanese hipsters’ vacation photos.

Hostel entrance and courtyard

The interior boasted couches, a variety of board games and cards, and two clunky computers that looked cobbled together from calculators and office furniture, but which served up free internet service that loaded faster than at home. A tiny kitchen offered yak snacks and soups and breads, and strange omelettes with cucumber and lettuce; the tea was hot and the beer was cold, and we were given a glass-walled rooftop room with plastic flowers strewn all over the ceiling and a view of both a monastery and a military compound. I couldn’t have asked for more. Beside the door to the sleeping room was a tiny staircase that led to a lookout perch with a mud-built dutch oven. A tent was pitched on the roof, as well, and we stood looking out at the mountains and listening to the gong from the monastery as the sun went down.

View of Jinggang monastery from the rooftop

Kanding is not large. Situated as it is, along the river crevice between the haunches of several jaggy mountains, it has little room for sprawl. There is one main street, which goes north on one side of the water and south on the other. A few small commercial spurs splinter off from this boulevard, but it is relatively impossible to get lost, as two blocks in any direction off the artery will lead a wanderer to either a cliff face or the river. The first evening we were eager to walk and explore, and to wrap our senses around as many differences from Chengdu as we could. We walked a ways in the dark before catching a cab, and the equivalent of a handful of pocket change got us to the heart of town, surrounded by the blink and hum of neon everywhere, and the vibrant holiday energy brought by the scores of Chinese tourists filling the cafes and sidewalks.

The river is crisscrossed by a number of walking and driving bridges, and we stood on one, marveling at the crash and vigor of the water as it charged underfoot, part of a highly successful hydroelectric system that powers the entire region. We strolled to the square in the central section of town, where a number of people seemed to be gathered. On mounting the steps, we saw an enormous ring of people, all Tibetans by their faces and aspect, moving slowly in unison, rotating, smiling, lifting and waving their arms at unspoken cues. Music piped onto the plaza through an enormous PA system, and some dancers joined their voices with the singing, some tuneless, others poignant and clear. The music sped up and became a lively stomp, and the dancers turned faster, their collective mass churning like an enormous waterwheel, the sound of the river audible over the singing. The gestures waved and flowed; some were excellent dancers, others were floundering, laughing and lost. Women danced, mostly: old women with their hair in yarn and their faces like leathery moons; young women wearing the striped aprons that mean they are married, others with long horse’s tail hair that whipped behind them when they turned; some small children skipped along, shrieking with wide-eyed abandon; men danced too, some in the sweaters and trousers of the region, others in business suits – there were all kinds, girls in denim and ladies in heels, boys in fleece jackets and men with thick bone beads around their necks and sheep’s wool along their collars. All smiled, gently, happily; some fierce with concentration; a hundred people or more. I think I held my breath. I grew dizzy with it, with the collective dream of it, the simplicity and pace of the gestures, the warmth of the evening air, the sound of the river crashing behind us and the lament and rhythm of the music. I wondered if this were something they did for themselves, or if it happened only when tourists were there to watch. I noticed that no Han Chinese joined in, nor did they seem welcome to. The dance was there to remind the dancers of something, of something that was theirs and that was shared; a small shame seemed to ride those who had forgotten the movements; a strong pride rang from those who knew them well. I was reminded of the Tibetan dances I had been privileged to see in my yard when I lived in the beautiful old house on 35th and Washington in Portland – my landlord was a touchstone in the community of Tibetan refugees there, and he would host celebrations and rituals in our garden, and they would dance these dances, and I would watch… I could have watched for hours, the shuffle, the turn, the faces. We left taking deep breaths of mountain air and feeling quiet and good. We all realized we were starving, and went to discover some things about Tibetan food.

Kanding from the mountain – situated along the river

Tibetan food is, like many mountain-cuisines, somewhat limited in the materials that it has at its disposal for producing what most would consider a varied menu. They are inventive and thoughtful with their preparations and presentation, and manage to create a decent spectrum of dining experiences from…well, from yak and cabbage and potatoes. And ginseng. One of the benefits of being on a trade route is that spices seem readily available, even if fresh things like vegetables and fish are not. A typical Tibetan menu reads something like this: boiled yak, sliced yak, fried yak, yak tongue, yak on a stick, yak with cabbage, cabbage and yak soup, yak and potato soup, fried potatoes, rice with potatoes, rice with yak, yak and potatoes. And then your beverage options are: yak butter tea, Tibetan sweet tea, barley wine, or honey barley wine. You can also get buttered ginseng. They recommend you shake sugar over it. The butter is made from yak.

Where to begin?

First, I would like to say that Tibetan sweet tea is one of the great, undiscovered epicurean secrets of the world. It comes in enormous teapots that each hold around a gallon of liquid and are made from some cheap metal that turns boiling hot on contact with the tea. Tape is often wrapped around the handle to make it less dangerous for pouring, but the task is best not given to ones with sensitive fingers. Leave it to those who, like my mother, have “asbestos hands.” The tea itself is quite similar to Indian chai: it is milky and redolent with ginger and pepper and cardamom, and has a tinge of sweetness in its aftertaste. Different establishments ranged in their tea along these two lines – some were spicier and less sweet, others were sweeter and had less zip, all were wonderfully warming and had a distinctly calming effect, probably due to the amount of milk included. We drank it in its traditional, curved-lip bowls without any tact or reservation whatsoever, falling over ourselves to keep our cups filled and shaking the pot to be sure we had plenty left, whining when it was gone before food arrived. We have since tried to duplicate it at home, with varying degrees of success. It will be a frequent solace in the coming winter.

Looking back on our first meal, I have tried to decide whether the food would have tasted so good had we not gotten the private room. We went to a rather touristy spot: large, done up like a log cabin outside, full of Tibetan paintings and garish colors inside. The menus were multilingual – a sure sign of tourism – and had lots of helpful photographs to guide newcomers. They also managed to provide a tremendous number of vegetarian options, mostly based on cabbage and root variants: carrots, radishes, tubers, for which I was doubly grateful. My sense of adventure does not extend to eating meat except under very rare circumstances, especially when I’ve seen the hacked-up chunks of yak sticking out of the back of trucks, sitting in the sun and exhaust and flies for hours before being delivered to the restaurants. I’ll take cooked cabbage that grew watered with sewer irrigation any day. These are the choices you end up making, sometimes. They originally seated us next to another table of foreigners, but that made one in our party feel uncomfortable, so he asked if we could sit in one of the private banquet rooms, and to our surprise, they were happy to move us. A “banquet room” was really just a small, perhaps 10-by-10 foot side chamber, but it was encircled with harem-style couches and filled with a long, low table and gilded from ceiling to floor with shiny gold leaf. The walls were covered in the outrageous paintings of the region, the monstrous creatures with bulging eyes and psychedelic landscapes that are the trademark of Tibetan Buddhism and the cultural heritage of the people whose symbolism dates back to the pre-Buddhist Bon religion. The overall effect was supposed to be a combined hallucination of dining in both a temple and a yurt, and all in all, it was pretty successful. The tea tasted better, and the food made more sense being leered at as we were by big-breasted lions clutching serpents, and dragons rolling their eyes as they stormed through mountainous clouds. We devoured our way through platters of spicy fried potatoes, sour cabbage with a marvelous kick but the consistency of swamp reeds, some mysterious vegetable dish that made us all swoon but which none of us could identify – something woody and purple and full of tang and depth, creamed rice with gouji berries and honey, dishes of crushed chilies slathered in oil, and large fried wonton-like pies stuffed with celery and carrots. The carrots are worth a mention in themselves. They are, in all of China, totally unlike the pathetic orange spikes we munch gust-lessly on diets in America. Eating carrots in China is like eating vegetable history – these carrots are what I imagine carrots must have been like before we bred the life out of them however many thousand years ago. These are grand carrots, robust, bleeding, prehistoric carnivorous carrots. They are dense and phallic and blood red, and possess a hearty sweetness and a sense of self, a particularity and juicy flavorspirit that puts all American carrots completely to shame. They are barely related, and I am sad to know that I shall probably never again have one of these utterly kick-ass, noble roots again once I leave this country. The meal included other dishes as well, some meaty dumplings and a yak thing that I didn’t try. We washed it all down with ceramic pots of barley “wine”, a potent brew as unlike wine as sake, and just as strange at first taste. One pot was honeyed, but hard to swallow after the first tiny cup or two. The other kind was far less sweet, and although it will not become a favorite on our table, it did lend an authentic feel to a very strange and multisensory feast.

The next day we awoke in our rooftop room to the sound of chanting. Sun was streaming in the windows, and we had a clear, clear view of the mountains all around. We enjoyed tea and strange bread down in the courtyard, which was still in the shadow of the hill and so full of the sharp chill of mountain mornings. We layered with sweaters and hugged our cups and waited for the air to warm, which it did, and we walked out the gate to explore Jinggang Monastery.

Writing about experiences is a strange alchemical process – it interferes with memory in a way that is perhaps not only unnatural but also dishonest. Memories are shifty things, slippery and translucent, often open to the coloring light of later events or moods. When we remember a thing, a place, an experience, we are possessed momentarily by senses of things no longer with us – ghosts of things – and what visits may or may not have what a positivist may consider the truth of the original; our memories grow and change with the minds that carry them, and requiring their static identity is something best left to photographs. However, when we write a memory, when we summon those ghosts and ask them to remain still long enough to wrap words around their shifting contours, we make permanent an experience that might otherwise have changed with time. What is more, when the words are read, they become another kind of truth, a story believed and witnessed by the reader who relies on their shape to build her or his own mental truths, who pins the version of the experience in place by sharing it with the author, or does so as well as it is possible for two people to share one thought.

I find I am both reluctant and eager to write about the monastery – it is unlikely that I will be able to capture what I saw and thought there in any way that resembles the lightness, the quietude, the humor and wonder that I felt between those walls. It is unlikely that my memory of it will remain the same over time – even in the days that have passed since, I have summoned it time and again to check its truthfulness, its consistency of shape and texture. And for this reason, I am glad to have a reason, a discipline, to tack it down and hold in place what will certainly become flickering and different as I learn more in times to come.

Humans are funny. I am in turn enchanted and repelled by our endless capacity for humility, nobility, cruelty, and pettiness. We are creative and ingenious, clever and scheming and small-minded and pompous and meek. We do strange things, most of which I doubt we understand on many levels beyond the impulse and a tier or two of rationale. Yet we also have a remarkable gift for meaning-making, a flair for cosmology that borders on idiot-savant. Stepping into the courtyard of Jinggang monastery took my breath away and then gave it back in great, warm lungsful. The word “awesome” is reclaimed. Unassuming dark mud walls were opened by huge wooden doors, and we stepped into a broad grassy area that seemed to generate its own sunshine. The courtyard was ringed by two arms of a structure that formed the walls themselves, a two-storey collection of uniform doors and windows ornamented simply with potted flowers and blooming bushes; these doors all lead to monks’ quarters, each of which has a tiny window facing outward onto the street as well, some festooned with surprisingly domestic touches: patterned curtains, dishes of this or that, pretty dangles. And where the two arms meet, an overwhelming structure was seated at the base of the mountain like a demigod of buildings itself, bloated and magnificent in all its gold and ruffle and statue and staircase, a temple radiating self-importance and joy at once as if all moments were cause for celebration, prayer flags fluttering in the breeze with a chorus of snapping cloth, bright bits of intention, wishes moving with the air and with contemplation. People come to pray crossed the grass and went quietly up the staircase to the main temple. Others lingered in the sunshine, lying on the green or sitting in groups, reading, lounging, basking. I had not expected that – both the tremendous ceremonial magnitude of it all, nor the casual ease with which monks and laypeople alike treated the space. Young men with shaved heads and the maroon and saffron of the order chased after one another like children, laughing and holding their robes over their heads like capes. Others walked thoughtfully or sat in the grass.

We approached the main temple and went up the staircase, where a collection of rough-looking Tibetan men sat smoking and enjoying the day. Their hair was coarse and unruly, long and bound and looking like it had ridden in on its own on the heels of the wind. Their skin was dark and furrowed in the way that only the weather can make it, and they wore what I imagine are traditional Tibetan cowboy clothes – handsewn trousers of some thick, dark wool, layers of scarlet cotton tunics, maroon jackets of sheepskin and silk thread, the white tufts at the edges of their collars and sleeves gone ragged and dirty with wear. Around their necks they had beautiful things, wild things, thick chunky necklaces with twisted silver and large gobs of amber and turquoise, knots of bloodstone and coral, carved pieces of bone. One wore a bandana around his forehead, and all had the mirrored aviator sunglasses blocking the light from dark, bright eyes. One took his off to look at me, and I couldn’t help but stare. He smiled, taking off his boots, which looked custom-made for Mad Max more than the high prairie, and I longed to stop and talk with them, photograph them, but I remembered that they were here to pray, and I forced myself instead to burn them into my mind: the easy way they wore their bodies, the angle of the weathered wrists holding the cigarettes, the eyes with the dark that went all the way down. They looked old to me, but they had no grey in their hair, and I could not imagine what their lives were like, what wear and tear and aging they had lived through to reach this day. I was reminded again of the strange parallels that run between these people and the Native Americans in the United States, especially the West – the similar bone structures, the similar crafts, the painted cow skulls and turquoise stones and stolen homelands. So many details can be memorized in a handful of breaths, in the time it takes for eyes to adjust to the shade.

The Wheel of Life

Lions curled around the richly painted columns, and stone elephants stood in massive, earthy patience. Every wall was covered in enormous paintings of monsters and beings and heroes, each protectors of the Buddhist tradition in one way or another, either men like Padhmasambava, who came from India to aid in the suppression of the indigenous Bon religion, or the demons of the Bon themselves, converted to wakefulness and now gnashing their teeth and bellowing their fearsome howls in protection of the dharma. More terrifying than these images are the sounds that were coming from within the temple, so we, too, removed our shoes and pulled aside the heavy curtain separating the prayer space from the outside world.

I have always felt that religion says more about and does more for humans than it ever might have done for a god, should one have cared to notice the ritual abuse and suffering and community and solace and good works and murder often committed in his or her name. Religions are, to me, so human, so unlike the infinite. What I beheld behind that curtain – for it was something to behold, rather than see or sense, or even feel – was the culmination of every human urge to describe the divine. Every touch of inspiration that has moved a person to create, to magnify, to ritualize, to frighten, to elaborate, to control, or to explain, was in that room. Every movement to glorify or ennoble, every aspect gory and horrible, every gleaming kingly treasure, every shrieking psychedelic wonder that starts at the base of the spine and then coils and coils, vibrating the body in peals and waves of laughter and awe until it erupts from the crown of the head in the form of snakes, lights, auras, orgasms, offspring or enlightenment, every crude simple offering to a greater power, every weak and unreasonable explanation of how things are or should be, every dull moment of dogmatism and senseless repetition, every gawdy overindulgence of technology and creative expression was in that room. Storeys-high statues of golden gods with glowering eyes burning down on the lowly masses, encased in glass and ringed with ropes of purple christmas lights flashing in an absurd echo of casinos and whorehouse massage parlors; 20-foot pillars wrapped in screaming full-spectrum dragons with yard-long tongues spitting danger and rolling their curlicue eyes; lions with breasts and wings bursting from tiers of fluff and skirts like a young girl’s bedding, colored glass shattering the sun and scattering rainbow bits of light across a wooden floor, in the center of which sat an enormous empty velveteen throne, dishes of fruit and brass bowls of water and rice and burning sweet smokes. Paintings covered the lower storey walls, endless tableaus of human suffering and redemption – tiny bodies hacked to bits, buildings burning, fields being tended, lesson learned, love being made, animals and spirits cavorting with one another and with people and darkness and waters and trees, demons racing, death arriving, buddhas sitting with quiet smiles. The paintings went on and on, wondrous yet naive in their rendering, flat and without perspective yet perfect in description, utterly believable and narrative and nearly like a cartoon. Beneath them all on a narrow ledge burned a thousand electric “candles” flickering with artificial light, and another thousand offerings of plastic “fruit,” shining apples and oranges covered in a sticky layer of dust, the paint peeling from the edges of some. In the center of the room, a dozen or so monks sat in a squared semi-circle formation on low cushions, their scarlet and maroon robes spilling about them like pools of drying blood. On a short table before each of them sat a narrow, rectangle book covered in script, sutras, which they chanted in a blissfully dull monotone, their voices rising and falling in volume in unison, the low, incomprehensible rumble of it sending a slight tremor through the floor and into my stockinged feet. Some had instruments: a taut round drum headed in stretched skin and beaten with a curved stick; brassy cymbals struck with indifferent force that produced a raucous metallic clatter; and best of all, two alpenhorns played by a pair of young monks seated at the side of the throne. The chanting went on and on, rolling, driving, punctuated with the beat and clamor of the percussion – and then, out of nowhere, would come the most incredible roar, the deepest, most gut-turning, obscene, hair-raising blat of horns that shook the room and jolted even the most bound-up thoughts into a higher, frightened consciousness. I was mesmerized – by the wonder of it, the effort of it, the spotless, hard-won sincerity of it, the utter, bizarre ridiculousness of it. I didn’t know whether to fall to my knees or burst into tears or start laughing, and in truth probably did a little of all three – the total humanity of it brought out an odd emotion that walked somewhere between anger and tenderness. I felt very, very alive. We wandered in silence around the room as the chanting went on, stirred by the occasional thunder of horns. People came in and out, shoeless and kowtowing, praying with beads in their fists. I walked slowly, staring into the paintings, trying to catch each detail, trying to imagine the hands that had formed every line, carved every slip of wood, pressed every gold leaf or changed each waning bulb. Before the immense glass cases were more bowls of fake fruit, some overflowing with cash that had been left by visitors. I watched the monks who, despite their discipline, stole stares at us when they could, losing their places in the chants, or yawning hugely with the routine of it all, scratching at various body parts in a most unceremonial fashion. One of the horn players looked across the room at me and I smiled. He smiled back. When I walked around the room behind him, I saw him sneak a cell phone out from inside his robes and tap in a text message between horn blasts. So ludicrous, so beautiful – so real, unreal.

Outside in the air again, I shook off the spell and we continued our slow, clockwise tour of the grounds. The monastery seemed to serve not only as a site of prayer and meditation, but also a common place for study and relaxation. Students with books draped themselves around on tables and grassy spots. A woman read to another from a holy text, the two of them at the base of a tree in the sun.

There were several smaller side temples as well, some with further elaborate and gory tableaux, others with prayer wheels of a variety of sizes: some took up entire rooms, while others were smaller and lined up in a row for people to turn as they passed. Paul says prayer wheels are cheap – you can neglect your practice for weeks or months, and then come to a monastery and spin a prayer wheel for an hour and rack up the merit you lost in your errant time. It sounds like the old practice in the Catholic church of selling indulgences – creating an out for those who stray. I know little about either, but I like the physicality of the cylinders, the minor resistance the wheel gives the hand, the patterns that bloom when you let your eyes see them without focus.

Off to one side of the grounds was a stupa, which, to the best of my understanding, functions something like a divine magnifying glass, concentrating power or intention in one place and then channeling it like a lightning rod. People walked around them in prayer the same way they did with the big wheels, some chanting, others fingering long strands of beads.

I was reluctant to leave the monastery – the sounds and rhythms of it appealed to me, and the combination of the sunshine and the sense of peace I felt created a tremendous swell of well-being and rightness. A week of lying in the grass of the courtyard sounded like time perfectly well spent, but our companions were restless, and we eventually wandered onward. While we never returned, we did visit another monastery the next day, which was much older – over 1600 years old – and while not as warm or inviting as Jinggang, it had a deep quiet bred of history, and I fell in love with the unruly thickets of yellow roses that had overtaken the front steps.

The rest of our time in Kanding was spent doing touristy things – we took the gondola up the mountain, only to discover we had to pay again if we wanted to see more than the concrete pad where we disembarked at the top. The view from the carriages themselves, though, was interesting, and it made for good stories, later. We photographed the “graffiti” in town, which were beautiful images of deities carved directly into the mountain face.

Green Tara

The remainder of the trip was spent sipping tea, eating variations on the first meal, sleeping in an odd little hotel where the shower was also the toilet, buying scarves and jewels for friends on the other side of the world, and longing for more time. We descended the mountain and the sun and the air and sunk back under the clouds to a damp and grey Chengdu, which was soggy but feeling strangely like home.

This photo was taken on the steps of the old monastery – I look terrible but am very happy. (Paul looks great as usual.)

~ by knifemaker on October 21, 2007.