“I’ll agree with you that going somewhere hot when
you’re British always seems like a good idea.” [J.K. Rowling]
Sometimes we make
decisions without really thinking about them, then add meaning to them later. For me, visiting Guangxi at the end of
December was such a decision. At the
time I bought my ticket, my logic didn’t go much beyond: (i) must escape
Beijing’s winter at all costs; (ii) to go somewhere hot means travelling to the
south; (jjj) would be fun to go somewhere I haven’t visited before…hey presto,
two weeks later I am on a plane to Nanning, less than 200 kilometres from
Vietnam.
After I arrived,
it struck me that there is an obvious parallel between border regions and New
Year, and that this trip had just provided me with an excuse for all kinds of musings
about Janus, the passage of time, and growing old. This reflection was very much after-the-fact,
however.
As we landed my
first thought was the weather. Beijing
had just been through a week of -15 degree winter fury, and I had been comforting
myself with the idea of tramping around the jungle in shorts. As I stepped off the plane, Nanning greeted
me with a mild yet damp 12 degrees.
Goodbye Beijing, hello…Birmingham.
The other thing
that hits you about the south almost straight away is the accents. Chinese is a tonal language, which means that
each syllable has to be pronounced with the correct change in pitch in order to
be correctly understood. This is the quality
that makes Chinese sound “musical”. “Standard”
Chinese (Putonghua) is based on northern dialects, which have fewer tones
(hence fewer changes in pitch). The
extra tones in southern Chinese give it this incredible elastic quality, which
varies from the snap of sharply flicked rubber bands to the soft stretch of
chewing gum. For someone used to
Putonghua, southern accents have the disconcerting quality of those
ultra-bouncy balls you play with as a child – not only do they bounce too high, they also bounce in all the wrong places.
On Saturday
morning, I took the train to Ningming (宁明), and then went
from there to a small village called Shanzhai (山寨). Shanzhai is set by a slow-flowing river,
among karst scenery that makes you think of a Chinese scroll-painting. The setting is idyllic.
And yet, as I arrived, I noticed that two government
TB prevention jeeps were pulling away.
As I wandered further through the village, I saw signs respectively
educating the villagers about HIV, and urging them not to abandon their female
babies.
Although I do not know the local
extent of these problems, for these signs to be there in the first place someone
must have identified a need. For some reason
I found the existence of these social problems more troubling in such a setting
– as if, absurdly, natural beauty should itself be some kind of barrier to
illness and infanticide.
Later, I bumbled
into a small temple that was celebrating the Buddha’s birthday (佛诞). The group immediately absorbed me, and gave
me a prayer-book so that I could join in with the prayers. The nun who was leading the prayers chanted,
while keeping time on a small drum, only interrupting her rhythm to bark an
urgent order to “拜！” (Kneel!) from time to time. We stood in a loose semi-circle around her,
reading the text that the nun was chanting, and occasionally joining in, echo-like.
I couldn’t fully understand the text, but I
was struck by certain parallels with Christianity, for example, there was a
whole section where we asked Buddha for forgiveness, and promised to cast off
our former selves. The ceremony lasted
about thirty minutes, then we went outside, and walked in chanting circles
around several bags of live fish that were on the ground in the yard. We took the bags to the river, and emptied them
there, thus liberating the fish – this is “放生” (releasing life) –
which I have written about before, although it’s the first time I’ve been a
participant rather than a spectator.
I spoke to a few people
who had attended the ceremony with me: one of them was a retired doctor who had
worked for the local CDC on their child immunization program. In its own way, this was also an echo from my
past, and added to the thoughts I had been having about the New Year, along
with the air of mystical regeneration surrounding my unplanned gate-crashing of
Buddha’s birthday.
I missed a chance
to have lunch with the Buddhists, but they promised me that if we had fate, we
would meet again. They also told me
about their plans to build a temple that is 100 times bigger than the current
one, and modeled on the Forbidden City.
The local government has agreed, and it is only a matter of time...
The next day I
visited Puzhai (普寨) which is one of the official Vietnamese
border-crossings. The minibus driver
told me that most local people do not bother with the formalities of going
through the official border, and instead trek across the hills when they want
to go to Vietnam: always in the daytime though, because there are robbers at
night.
Puzhai certainly
lacks the romance of a furtive flight across the hills – besides the
checkpoint itself, most of the town is made up of small, empty shops selling
Vietnamese imports such as perfume, coffee and chocolate, which are,
ironically, legacies of the French.
After wandering at a loss through the shops, I found a small café owned
by a delicate-boned Vietnamese woman of around 60. She made me good coffee, and talked to me in
Chinese that didn’t sound at all out of place among the general mish-mash of
twangy southern accents. The Vietnamese
community had been invisible to me up to this encounter – I had instead run
into large numbers of “immigrants” from other parts of southern China (Hunan,
Guangdong, Fujian) presumably attracted by the growing cross-border trade. After she had taught me a few words in
Vietnamese, I paid my bill and left. For
some reason, this interaction stayed with me.
It’s the start of
a New Year. Having looked across the
border I am still no wiser about what this year holds, but perhaps I understand
my past a little better. I would like to
wish everyone who has read this blog all the best for a successful, and happy
2013.
