Crepuscular China

  Kaifeng, China
Monday, January 7, 2008

I didn't sleep the first night I was in China.  I was too excited, too scared, too exhausted, too everything.  By the time I made it to my bed for my first night in this strange country, daylight was breaking through my curtains and China was awake.  Sleep was tauntingly close as I lay in bed, but instead my ears were ravaged by a prolonged dry scratching sound outside.  I fumbled about my new and dark apartment trying to find where the sound was coming from. But every time I thought I pinpointed its source, it moved.  I gave up and crawled into my rock hard bed, trying to fall asleep.  The scratching sound was soon joined by the gentle thwacking noises of badminton, basketball thuds, and groaning construction machinery coming to life with the complementary sound of Chinese construction workers already drunk on baijou. Randomly, the gate to the apartment complex clanged shut. Old Man Tank Top jabbered away with a man who kept raucously spitting underneath my bedroom window. And that damn scraping wouldn't go away! Conceding defeat, I dragged my blanket that resembled a large towel more than bedding, and stretched out on my much softer couch, hiding my head underneath my pillow.  My first Chinese morning had begun and it wouldn't be quiet.
 
Not much has changed since that first morning.  The scraping sound continues and belongs to the fastidiousness of Mama Tank Top's cleaning.  She is resolute in her sweeping of debris and fallen foliage with her straw broom, whether it really exists or not.  The construction project behind my apartment has ceased, but is now replaced by an athletic complex and its massive sound system.  The sound system is programmed to come on every morning at five and blares the Chinese equivalent to Celine Dion until seven in the morning.  The mangy white cat that lurks around our apartments and the International Students' Dorm is either pregnant or crazy.  It lets out this intensely guttural, painful and ear-splitting cry in fifteen minute intervals throughout the night.  Mingling with the cat's shrieks is a man bellowing out barbaric yawps to rouse the migrant workers for their work day starting at four in the morning.  Most mornings his yawp is answered by several other yawps around campus.  There is the confusing jumbled sound of bicycles and beng-bengs with the shuffle and slap of feet moving across the pedestrian street in front of our apartments.  And lately, the morning cacophony has acquired a woman who rides in circles around our apartments on a yellow bicycle singing Chinese opera (quite badly) at the top of her lungs.
 
I don't sleep well.
 
Most mornings I hide underneath my beizi (thick quilt) to insulate myself from the sounds penetrating through my apartment's thin walls.  But even though inside my apartment the Chinese morning can take on a loud and abrasive character, I discovered that once you step outside the door and into the creamy blue of daybreak, China becomes almost demure.
 
The morning smells like burning leaves and cold.  The cold smoky smell mixes in my nose, reminding me of cold autumn mornings, of past bon fires and past conversations.  It smells like home.  When you walk past her in the morning, Mama Tank Top beams a welcoming smile with the straw broom in hand.  Her smile is a Chinese smile, the type that cracks open wide to show off her shockingly white teeth against the buttery folds of her skin.  It's the type of smile that seems almost unnaturally possible after everything that she has lived through. 
 
Walking along Zhai Jin Lu, the pedestrian street in front of our apartments, the baby blue sky of soon-to-be sunny days casts a bluish glow on the small courtyards.

the track in the morning

Old men wear dark track suits and white cotton gloves as they run in circles in these small courtyard spaces with pools of steamy breath melting out of their mouths.
 
Zhai Jin Lu runs until it collides with the auditorium, one of China's many "national treasures."  It was inside this building where the Japanese kept horses during the occupation, a sore spot in the hearts of many Kaifengren.  The horses and the Japanese are long gone and now the auditorium is a hulk of ancient architecture in the middle of HeDa's life.  The square in front of the auditorium normally teems with bicyclists and motorized vehicles careening through the sea of pedestrians and tourists taking their picture in front of the ancient-styled building.  But now, as a thin slice of orange sun crests above buildings frosted with morning coolness, the square is practically desolate. 
 
The wide expanse of the square's checkerboard cement tiles are stripped bare of its blanket of people, except in the far right corner.   A group of twenty women perform a bizarre aerobics routine to techno music on a boombox with strained speakers.  They jerk, sway and effortlessly glide around in a jazz square pattern. Their bodies defy all constraints that their thickly padded outfits that make them look more like oversized swaddled babies put on them.  Above them, the air lightly shimmers with the clouds of their body heat.  As the organic world wakes up around them, the swirls, bends, and jerks of the women's bodies blends them into the batter that is the morning.  The music stops.  The ladies squat on their haunches and the sound of their chatter bubbles over their heads, over the shimmering body heat cloud above them, and finally bubbles and pops into the song of the birds waking up.
 
On the opposite side of the square, the creamy blue of morning is violated by the stark and abrasive brightness of fluorescent lights.  The four lights, with their sharp four angles and cold steel composition, stave off the soothing tones of early morning.  They serve only one purpose, to expose the reds and yellows of the People's Republic as it whips and tosses in the air.  The reds and yellows are ceremoniously lowered by five PLA officers.  They're faces and individual features are blurred away by the harsh white light, but the olive greens, reds and yellows in their uniforms violently glow. 
 
Suddenly, without preamble or logic, the PLA turns just as sharply as the light boxes, and parades the flag in an equally austere and sharp formation throughout the square.  They look like soldiers from the Nutcracker. Every leg jut, every crook of the arm is exact. It is precise. It is in sync. It is inhuman.  But the darkness of the morning gives them away.  Their puffs of air shoot from their mouths in a long, extended manner like fire shooting from a dragon.  They reach the long, icy steel flag pole that slices through the air as the sharp light reflects off it.  Two soldiers slowly, deliberately, and reverently raise the flapping flag.  The other three stand still as their elbows jut out of their sides before their arms arc back towards their heads as they salute. 
 
A solitary girl carrying a backpack too large for her small frame stands respectfully in the center of the auditorium square.  She's hoisting several pounds of books on her back and unlike the rest of the people awake at this morning, she is not bundled up to ward off the cold.  But she stands respectfully, waiting for the flag to rise.  The aerobics women still chat and rest, oblivious to the nationalistic ceremony happening a hundred feet in front of them.  Eventually the flag is suspended from the top of its mast and the five soldiers march away, leaving the girl alone in the square with only her sense of nationalism and the oblivious old women.  She comes out of her reverie and looks around sheepishly, realizing she is the only one paying respects to her country.  She quickly shuffles out of the square and towards the morning market.  The aerobics women resume their fluid movements and their rightful place as the square's main morning attraction.

buying breakfast

 

The soldiers are replaced by Zhao, a small man with a voice struggling for identity - it cannot decide if it wants to be high or low.  But this does not stop Zhao as he leads a small group of students in a morning exercise on the auditorium's landing.
 
"Come on! Come on! Come on! YEAAAAAAHHHH!" The group shouts after Zhao's commands. 
 
I know Zhao.  He is one of many students obsessed beyond reason with English.  Talking to Zhao is a continual exercise in patience and self-restraint.  He only wants to talk about English and how to improve his language ability.  I try to not make eye contact and only look at the group's activities by glancing sideways.  Sitting on the auditorium's steps in my large orange down coat with my white skin already makes me conspicuous enough and I don't have a good excuse handy for not participating in the morning's exercise. 
 
The group stands in a circle with Zhao at the head as he begins the exercises. 
 
"What is what!" he cries, his indecisive voice cracking at the loud decibel.
 
"What is what!" they repeat, methodically slicing out and removing any trace of emotion from their words.
 
"Why is why!" Zhao cries, adding hand movements.
 
"Why is why!" they repeat, now mimicking his motions.
 
"Where is where! When is when! Which is which!" He continues to shout and adding bizarre
circular hand motions to every word.  The crowd follows everything he does completely, no sign of protest, no sign of individualism.  They are following him in everything he does.  I feel like I am looking in on some strange early morning cult ritual being performed to the Gods of Language.
 
I continue to hear the cult's cries and emotionless questions as I move beyond the auditorium's square.  The morning light begins to blend into the orbs of fluorescent light emitted from the academic buildings as the migrant street cleaners lazily drag their straw brooms across sidewalks.  The dark greens, grays and browns of wintered plants and buildings are violated by the abrasive orange of the street cleaners' outfits and equipment.  The standard "Old Chinese Man" dark navy blue newsboy caps hobble around on top of the withered bodies of the Chinese elderly as they shuffle around campus with their hands folded neatly behind their backs.  One old man stands in the middle of the garden near the auditorium, wearing a Cosby-like sweater, loose black pants and white tennis shoes dirtied from use.  The Iron Pagoda and the auditorium stand behind him.  The muted colors of his clothes weave him into his surroundings: the wide expanse of yellowed grass and the stark bare and straight brown trees that rigidly stand behind him on all sides, framing him like watchful sentries.  They look like sad, lonely and underfed sentries, destined to struggle and ultimately fail against an insurmountable attacker.  The old man begins to hop and clap around him, like he is Peter Pan and bringing Tinkerbell back to life. Clap clap hop hop. Clap clap hop hop.  Except his surroundings are dead already.  The only color and life come from the creamy blue swirls and swathes of clouds colored in ice cream pinks and reds against the morning sky.  A migrant worker ambles by the old man, dragging her straw broom as Zhao's cult can still be heard.  She walks past, leaving the sound of the broom's scratchy dry tines raking against the cement in her wake.
 
The Chinese morning will never be quiet.