Man of the Tao and Traveling

So I’ve strayed away from the usual posts on a theme, revealing my discoveries and encounters with Chinese culture for a variety of reasons. This is not to say I have not written any posts of this nature; I have in fact written a page or two on one interconnected them, but feel it’s unsuitable to post.

And why? The truth is I don’t love China. I’ve wrestled for a few weeks now with the irritability and quickly-frustrated symptoms I know to be culture shock. It set in shortly after my arrival in Hangzhou, and it has come and gone depending on existence or evasion of stimuli. For this reason, I have thought I was free of it at various points, only to be confronted with a worse bout later on.

At its worse moments, I have felt torn and tortured with thoughts that my 3ish-year pursuit of and labor in the study of Chinese has been in vain, that all of mainland China has nothing of worth, that the future of China (and perhaps the world’s in conjunction) is certainly a hopeless one. The aforementioned post detailed some of my most troubling vexations, but I it is full of generalizations rooted in my resent and moodiness. I normally detest generalizations, so I cannot allow myself to indulge such hypocrisy. In short, I have struggled internally for a few weeks with homesickness, purposelessness, disgust, close-mindedness, resent, and a plethora of other generally irritable-natured phases of contemplation.

And today, Hangzhou hits the mid-60s after enduring the last cold snap of the season. The peach blossoms are in full bloom, and today is crystal clear and full of sunshine, drying every last wet spot left from a night of long drizzling. I will not say I have escaped from the storm, but I have at least found some points of insight with which to anchor myself.

I am American, and I have never been more proud to be one. America is not without faults, but at heart I believe its spirit embodies some of humankind’s greatest qualities. At this moment, we face great obstacles and perils, but we have triumphed at so many fragile points before, I cannot believe we will not now, but we have to take initiative and the people must make the difference. Since being in China, I have come to appreciate so much the freedoms and beliefs I think we too often take for granted.

And now for the more personal, introspective insights—these I have found in the words of others. In the first post of this blog, I included the poem by Jia Dao (as translated by Mike O’Connor):

SEEING OFF A MAN OF THE TAO

When I find you again,
it will be in mountains;
this morning, I lose you
once more to farewell.

Free of attachment
in heart and mind
is it why you can go
ten thousand li alone

to places with such
little human warmth,
where, when you meet someone,
they speak an ancient tongue?

Traveling without disciples,
you have only
a white dog
for company.

Then I could only say I liked the imagery and flow of the words. It struck me with a sense of otherworldliness, and it conveyed to me a glimpse of something spiritual in this ‘man of the Tao.’ But reading it at some point in last few weeks, I realized this poem is not so much about the man of the Tao, as it is about the speaker.

This poem describes a holy man wandering alone to remote and mountainous places; he has no friends or students, and where he goes he can barely communicate. All he has to show that he is not cold and inhuman is ‘a white dog for company.’ In describing this man, however, the speaker is really expressing his wonder and admiration for a man that seems so self-assured, content to be happy in himself. The heart of this poem, two stanzas, is one long question of disbelief. The introduction shows that this self-contented existence is rarely reachable, often disappearing—that which remains hidden in the heavenly reaches of mountains.

Struggling with my own loneliness and sorrow of separation, I felt a compassion and camaraderie with Jia Dao in his poignant contemplation of fleeting happiness. Happiness, I found, is not subject to where you are or whom you are with—it is a state of mind. But being ‘free of attachment in heart and mind,’ is easier said than done.

The second and more recent moment of insight I have experienced comes actually from another friend quoting on his blog the quote one other friend often quotes. If that’s not confusing enough of an introduction, try reading this quote from Calvino:

“… because the traveler's past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, that is, to which each day that goes by adds a day, but the more remote past. Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.”

I don’t know much about Calvino, nor have I read anything of his, so I can’t pretend I know what this means or anything really. But this quote gives me the idea that traveling is as often as not (or perhaps more often) about understanding and seeing what you left behind than understanding the place you have arrived. This reassures me some, as I have often thought about the States, what I miss most, the things I want in my life, the lifestyle I want to live, etc. This is one reason I have not sought to unravel as much of China’s mysteries here as before; I think it’s connected to the ‘stepping outside’ idea, that you have to get outside of something to understand it.

And so travel seems to be the continuous pursuit of understanding the place you were last at, and the person you last were. The pinnacle of this pursuit, I would like to think, is something resembling the Man of the Tao. Ending the last real post I wrote, I said, “I may have arrived, but I still do not know where I’m going.” I now know; I’m going home—the long way.