Cloudy in Beijing Blogging about my time in China

This would have been easier if I were white

Everyone's Googled their name before. But recently I decided to Google my Chinese name, ??? (Gan Shi Jie).

I came up with a few hits belonging to me. Apparently I had been in the news again.

Back in January I was invited by another university here to go to a small city far south of Xi'an. The area we were headed to was declared a disaster area due to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. We came with supplies meant for a local elementary school that had been devastated by the disaster. (Above is a picture of me, my pale white head is in the upper left corner).

This was actually one of the best trips I've had so far (though, I've neglected to write anything about it). But as for why I was invited on this trip on the first place sort of has some awkward reasoning. Basically, they wanted me because I was a foreigner.

The university wanted to make this trip a big news worthy event for the college. And so they had asked for a local TV news station to come to do a story about it. But to spice up the story they decided it would be a good idea to invite some foreigners along.

The thing is I'm not exactly a true bona-fide foreigner. I'm a Chinese-American, and so I was thinking I was probably not the best person to feature for a televised news report, since I don't look like your typical blonde-hair, blue-eyed expat. But even after expressing my concern, the university didn't seem to care.

Well, it was an awkward experience. During the trip, I felt like a prop at times. "Here is our foreigner" the University would basically say, and then I would be filmed by the TV station, or asked to say some dull quotes. They even had me write Chinese caligraphy in front of the public.

You see, the native people in China are often very intrigued to see a foreigner. I sometimes describe it as being a celebrity/zoo animal; during my first classes at my school a few students even took pictures of me with their cell phone cameras.

But for me, the uncomfortable issue was how I didn't look like a typical foreigner. So to announce to a bunch of people we have an American here with us, and for them to suddenly see me, you could feel the disappointment. "Where is his blonde hair, and blue eyes?" I imagined the local populace of the city thinking as I was introduced them.

Yes, this was only time I thought, this would be much easier if I were white. I guess, I was a letdown. Oh well.

I never did see the news report and I even asked the news reporter if they ever aired it, but he didn't reply. I guess my debut on Chinese television will have to wait another day. Thankfully. But I did come across a government press release on Google detailing our trip.

Below I wrote some about my trip. Figured I try to remember it.

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They call this Chinese city Lueyang, and taken literally it can mean “brief sun.”
When I arrived there earlier this year, I thought it to be an apt name: up above, in the repressed sky, all I could see was a halogen red sun, shrouded in the white smoke that could only be smog.

Located in the south of Shaanxi province, Lueyang is about an eight hour bus-ride from Xi’an. The local tour book I bought calls this modest place an ancient mountain city almost 2,000 years old. A nice escape into rural areas of the country, I thought.

But on that day I came, it was clear some time ago Lueyang had also become and industrial city, one with a behemoth steel factory that I remember situated itself like a mechanical black tarantula. No doubt it had something to do with the city’s soiled air, along with the green-tinged and muddied waters that oozed in one of the nearby stream — yuck. Like many cities in China, Lueyang clearly had a prevalent pollution problem.

More than 47,000 people live in this city and Lueyang’s best days don’t seem to lie so much in its recent history. The county (which also goes by the name Lueyang) was designated a disaster area after China’s Sichuan Earthquake last May. I traveled to the city in January as part of trip sponsored by a Chinese university to help a local elementary school.

While the actual city remained in tact with few traces of damage, the school we visited had nearly been destroyed in the disaster. We came bringing supplies for the students along with packaged food. Once we arrived, we found that the school building — a three story boxed structure — was still in repair. Caged behind yellow construction rods, two wings of the building remained unfinished. All the while piles of brown brick lay in a great mound nearby.

It was easy to feel that I had visited Lueyang at the wrong time. Winter had made the city feel dry, the air smoky, with the trees and shrubs all withered brown. But even as I could see the unfortunate faults of the city, they all seemed to become small blemishes once I had a chance to go beyond first impressions. For in the next day, I found myself in a cave of all places, covered in darkness, and walking among praying statutes.

Lueyang is a modern city, filled with multi-story buildings and apartments; during my short-stay I lodged in a comfortable hotel no different from any other I had been to in the country. But English use among the populace is sparse. In fact a crowd of people gathered around me while at a street market after a teacher announced I was an American. One old man eagerly chatted with me, seeing it as an opportunity to practice his English.

On my first day in the city, pollution seemed to distract from the surrounding nature. But on the next day, as I left my hotel, something had changed: the smog had cleared. And in its place I could see the great hills that surrounded the city. Growing across them were fields of tree and bushes, hushed into a smoked green by the winter cold. One hill in particular that seemed to sleep like a giant as its peak lay pressed into a cloud.

Looking at the scenery, I felt that nature had once again reasserted itself; and suddenly, everything man-made in the city seemed to contract and shrink. A far departure from the endless high-rises and sprawling concrete found in most of China’s major cities.

It was these humpback hills that I found to be a beautiful sight in Lueyang; like they were some remnant of the Lueyang’s ancient past. And in a way that was true. I, along with teachers from the university I was traveling with, visited an old temple built in one of these mountains. It dates back to the Tang Dynasty in the eighth century. In Chinese they call the shrine Ling-Ya-Shi, but in English it means “Spiritual Cliff.”

Originally I hadn’t expected too much. We had just come from another temple in the city, one that was small and box-like, encircled by brick apartment buildings that hovered over it. From the outside, it was a pocket of age-old Chinese architecture in an urban landscape. But here in the Spiritual Cliff temple, nature ruled.

We walked up the mountain side and eventually arrived at its front gates. The place itself is made up of traditional Chinese buildings that seem to ascend as one passes through it. And while there, my eyes had plenty to feast on: the classical architecture, the hand-carved stone tablets, the numerous religious statutes, and the surrounding view of the neighboring mountains, just to name some.

But what’s most special about this temple was how it wasn’t simply built on a mountain side, but next to a vast depression in a rock wall. While there, I sometimes felt like I was in a grotto of sorts. One portion of the temple sits under day light; the other was inside the cavity of the cliff wall.

I thought I had seen through most of the place, when the temple tour guide showed us a cave in the temple’s mountain wall. We walked inside, sinking into darkness, but seeing rows of colored religious statutes against the cavern walls. Why were there so many sculptures in near darkness I wondered? Then as I carefully walked to the end of the cave, I could see it. For a moment it looked like a large tree trunk had been growing inside the cave.

Up it grew, a tan pillar bridging to the top of a cave wall. Curious, I touched it, feeling only the hard surface of rock. This was a stalactite column, I later learned, where mineral deposits had dripped down and formed the column of rock. Coincidently, it looked like an ancient tree, one that lay inside these hills. No doubt someone had seen it long ago and felt inspired.

Truly, this place was a perfect spot to build such a religious shrine. The temple seemed to want to nurture and worship the environment it thrived in. Before I left, I remember looking at one statute in particular. It was of smiling monk reaching above and cradling a tree branch.

Later that day we left the city of Lueyang. I talked to a newly made friend who had come on the trip with me. He had visited this city 15 years ago. “Back then it was even more beautiful,” he told me. “But pollution had changed it,” he added.

Thankfully, the city’s pollution had not changed everything. And hopefully Spiritual Cliff temple, along with its sacredness, will never be affected by it.