In January I
traveled to China for a little over two weeks. I stayed mostly in Shanghai,
studying “Tradition & Modernity” with 18 of my Wofford College colleagues.
Our lodging was comfortable, a modern hotel on the edge of Fudan University, one
the educational institutions fueling China’s mad economic sprint.
I’d never been to
Asia so everything was startling at first—the sharp, rhythmic speech so far
from my own English, the magic sweeping strokes of calligraphy adorning walls
and signs, tai chi in the parks, a large smiling Mao statue at the university’s
front gate, and sweet potatoes roasting on 55-gallon drums on corners around
campus.
Mornings there
were lectures by Chinese academics. Afternoons we took excursions into the city
center, 15 minutes away by bus.
Those first few
nights I fell asleep by 8:30 p.m. China time and I woke up around 3 a.m.
Internet service was consistent in the hotel, and so in the early hours before
dawn I surfed the web freely. Before I left the United States I’d downloaded a
program on my laptop that would allow me to access the sites the Chinese
blocked. As one of our Chinese hosts put it, I could “climb the wall.”
Of course I was a
little paranoid too. Was some Big Brother monitoring my every query, in spite
of the software? Would I be confronted with my Google transgressions when I
passed through Chinese security on the way home?
Shanghai has 22
million people and I don’t believe any of them had the China in their head I
arrived with. Mine was derived mostly from reading Gary Snyder’s translations
of Han Shan’s Cold Mountain Poems in the 1970s.
On our second
night we went to the Chinese opera, and I was so tired from the day’s activity
I nodded off. As I came in and out of sleep I thought that the characters on
stage were speaking nonsense English, and so I wrote a poem as I sat there in
the theater. I thought it was a liminal poem and maybe I was balancing on a
threshold between cultures, trying to find my way from one to the other.
That night I
decided to bring my knowledge of Chinese poetry into the century I was surfing.
I’d find out a little about Chinese contemporary poetry. I’d see if I could
find some poets online in translation who didn’t write about mountains or misty
islands or lonely hermits among the bamboo.
I left the Chinese nature poets behind and wrote a poem in Bei Dao’s style--fragmented, surreal, and gritty. It opened up for me a way to write about the power of what I could experience in contemporary urban China.
The next night I
broke through my city fears. I left my room and headed out with my colleagues.
I did what poets have always done. I entered the hidden flow of a far-away
place.
I enjoyed this very much, John. Thanks.
Posted by: Jason Crane | jasoncrane.org | March 02, 2010 at 08:44 PM
This is a lovely post John. I would love to learn more about you trip. Did you write about it elsewhere? We were in China a couple of years ago, though not in Shanghai. We met Eleanor Goodman, who has written for us here, and who is a talented translator of Chinese poetry.
Posted by: Stacey | March 03, 2010 at 09:08 AM
Thanks to you both for the kind comments. Stacey, there are some China pieces up online I wrote for my weekly Kudzu Telegraph column (www.kudzutelegraph.com). Just search for "China" on the site. One of the things I really regret about my trip is that I didn't get to meet anyone in the local literary or environmental scenes. Our trip focused mostly on "the economic takeoff" and the shift to modernity and the arts were sort of left out except a few references in the lectures. I wrote a series of poems too that I like a great deal. I'll send you them off-line.
Posted by: john lane | March 03, 2010 at 09:20 AM