Night Journey

(2/6/07)

I wish to speak of 'the hero's journey,' a concept I find indescirbably fascinating, though I've never actually gotten around to reading its holy text, Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces. To summarize the idea for those unfamiliar, it is the idea that a basic structure of events remains constant for all mythological heroes--everyone from Ulysses to Hamlet to Jesus. It also asserts that the structure is a result of human psychology, that hero stories all punch the same buttons because they get the same timeless reactions out of everyone. That's my understanding at least.

Last spring, I took John Elder's "Visions of Nature" course in which we delved into the perceptions of nature in English and American literature—Wordsworth, Darwin, artists, poets, and nonfiction writers. One aspect that remains with me is Professor Elder’s continual reference to the night journey, in which the hero finds himself adrift between worlds where the fantastical transpires.

My night journey was more literal: a night train from Beijing to Hangzhou, an experience I found more interesting (and maybe a bit fun) that anything else. Starting in the late afternoon, a dozen or so classmates and I set off from the northern capital on a 16 hour ride. The car was divided into cubicles of six bunks (“hard sleepers”) and we pleasantly passed the hours with snacks, instant noodles, cards, and the last bit of guiltless English conversation before the third language pledge I’ve taken twelve months’ time. The lights went out at 9:30.

Alex Garland’s The Beach (the book on which the movie I previously referenced) touches on night trains. The main character, Richard, says he likes night trains; whenever he rides one, he climbs into the bunk and pretends he’s on a spaceship on a deep-space journey—train-rocking just interstellar turbulence, train-noise just the engine-hum. And so I lay in the dark, watching through the curtains passing lights like stars or nebulas—lonely bodies left behind in the dark.

I awoke in the south, and it was truly a different world. The yellow-chalky fields of the frigid, barren north were replaced by the misty and lush paddies of northern Zhejiang. Beijing was fiercely dry, but Hangzhou greeted me with a surprisingly chilly humidity. The city reminds me in a way of Florida: green in the winter, and often buildings will open up to reveal water—West Lake or various streamlets, canals, etc. pervading the city. The city is filled with mist, often cloudy until afternoon, and though I’m fairly certain there’s a contribution of pollution to the air, it is mostly forgettable. Rain is the best part (I say now of course), a bit of my life I had realized I missed terribly the last week or two in Beijing. It is usually light, but I should wait a month or two.

But night journey or not, it is still strange, it is still an otherworld in which I daily feel alien and lost. For its comforts after Beijing, there are as many tribulations, inside and out. I may have arrived, but I still do not know where I’m going.