How to answer the question that I’m often asked now that I’ve returned, “What was my favorite thing about China?” Wish I had a short answer for that.
After all the buddhas and temples and palaces, after the myriad of lazy susans filled with noodles and soup and fish and hot and spicy foods, after the heat and the beer, and the air conditioning and the crowds and the haze and the people, so real and engaged in their lives, after the camaraderie of the group, and the laughter and smiles that kept us going, after the conversations of art, and time, and individuality, and purpose, after the walking and climbing and moving moments confronted by a history so long that it is almost incomprehensible, and a recent history so fluid that everything seems to change every decade, and where commercialism is alive and well and available for all, and Mao statues are thankfully a part of the past, and the distance between Three Shadows and ICP does not seem so vast…. I am left with the haunting feeling that it was all an illusion.
The sinking image of the beautiful Three Shadows complex threatened to be destroyed on an invisible whim with no reason or recourse.It doesn’t make sense to me and blows the wind right out of my China sails.
I think I know less now about China than ever before.
Nancy your answear of how whas China is amazing. You put in words what i am feeling, and i still have not been confronted with the question face to face, just by mail.
ReplyDeleteProbably I will quote you. So greatfull to have been able to do this trip and to share it with you.
Daniela, still in China, 100 degrees under the shadow.
I agree that the question is difficult to answer. I've been trying to do as much for myself for more than five years now. And yet, I think it's more powerful to not-answer than it is to answer simply or naively. There's too much going on, and too much at stake, for us to get it wrong. Better to ponder and meditate a while rather than brush it off with easy cliches. Anyway, that's the way it seems to me....
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