A Citizen of the World
Trip Start
Nov 29, 2008
1
16
Trip End
Jan 03, 2009
Beijing,
China
Saturday, December 27, 2008
I climb the stairs leading up from Sequoia Café and find at the top a crowd in rapt attention, listening to a young Chinese writer, her voice quavering slightly with nerves as she speaks.
A woman leaps out of her seat and offers it to me. I've come to Garden Books to browse, but why not attend the reading? I thank her and sit. For the next forty minutes or so I listen to Karmia Cao tell her complex and lyrical story about the aftermath of the earthquake in Sichuan province earlier this year. The earthquake killed approximately 70,000 people and left almost five million homeless.
Cao is a brave writer, especially for someone so young. She tells the story from the points of view of a grandfather, a young boy, and a news cameraman. The grandfather is trapped under the rubble, and the young boy, his grandson, carries his baby sister on his back for 13 hours to get help, leaving his grandparents at the side of the road.
Men with cameras glued to their eyes focus on Karmia, capturing her gestures as she speaks. Shutters click as she stamps her foot to emphasize rain hitting the ground. Her writing shakes slightly in her hands. It reminds me of when I was a young poet in Victoria, Canada, giving my first reading, trying to control my body but the nerves taking over.
In Karmia's story, the news cameraman arrives on the scene. One of the relief workers says to him, "Are you a volunteer or a journalist?"
After a brief hesitation he replies, "A volunteer."
"Well, get to work," the organizer says. "I have enough mothers to save. I don't want to have to call yours."
With this scene, Karmia touches on a critical issue in journalism, that moment when the journalist must choose between being an objective eye witness or an active participant in the conflict or tragedy.
I'm glad Karma has allowed the human being to take over the journalist. In any event, a true journalist is supposed to serve humanity. The story can always be told later, and with more insight than that of a mere eyewitness.
I want to know more about this young woman with big ideas. I sense she is also a participant in her own story, that she might be the cameraman. Her accent sounds familiar; Canadian, in fact. The accent is becoming more obvious now that I have been away from the country for almost two years. It has a bit of a Scottish lilt to it.
I reach for one of the books on display. Ere. It's a book of poetry, not a novel of the people affected by the earthquake. Half is Mandarin, the other English. I flip to the back to find her biography. "Born in Xinjiang, China in 1989, Karmia spent her early years in Umumqui, Beijing, Qingdao, Canton and Hong Kong before settling in Vancouver, Canada."
I knew it! Though she now studies at Stanford University in California, she seems, in an essential way, quite Canadian from her six years spent there. It's the international background, the accent, the brown leather cowboy boots.
Karmia is also a journalist who writes for humanitarian organizations in her spare time. All this, and she is only 19 years old. I buy the book and wait for the crowd to clear before I speak with her.
Sweet and unassuming, her personality seems unlike the powerful words inside her. She seems surprised and grateful that people have turned up to hear her speak. She writes in my book, "Wendy, happy reading! Take care! Thank you!" Her name is an indecipherable, writerly squiggle.
The characters in her reading are all real people, she says. She met them when working as a volunteer in the earthquake zone with her father. It's not a book yet, but hopefully it will be when she finds a publisher. I have no doubt she will. She gives me her contact information so we can talk more later.
I browse the books and finally find what I have been looking for in every bookstore for the past year since I read Dreams From My Father: Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope. Like Obama, Karmia represents a new consciousness in the world. A young person with an international background, she has a strong conscience and a certain kind of fearlessness to follow it. A citizen of the world.
As I paint these white canvases white.
You told me so:
A star will rise
From every cage we leave behind.
Watch for this girl. She's going to do good things.
***
Verse excerpted from "Amen" by Karmia Cao, in her book, Ere.
Garden Books: 44 Ganghua Rd, 2nd Ring Rd (E), second floor up from Sequoia Café.
www.gardenbooks.com Email: gardenbooks@yahoo.com Phone: (010) 6585-1435
