Part 3
As I write this the question of why I’m writing is continuing to mull through my mind. And I’ve come up with something. I don’t believe that there is a single part of my life, who I am now, that hasn’t been effected, in a big way or a small way, by this story here. So if you are to read anything I’ve written, or anything I will ever read again, you have to know this story. Now as to why I want you to understand, and understand this part of me, you friends and strangers who might come across this, I’m not sure exactly. I have always tried to write honestly to people no matter who they are, it’s the only way I can do it, if I don’t tell the whole truth I feel like I’ve been fucking a stranger. It’s pointless and useless to me. For me to enjoy anything that I’m doing in this atmosphere, I have to have truth and love, it’s not just an assignment, it’s an instinct of the heart. So here is the continuation.
After our period of discontent, things just kept getting better, and for the rest of my time in China, we were just happy. I want to get the description of this just right though, because this was the important part, this is the state of things that you really need to understand. The problem is that I’m not sure if it’s possible to write this purely. Because I want to remember it as it was, I want to remember how I felt at the time, how I was happy, how I loved this person. How I felt my life was complete now, and that I could start a whole new chapter in my life with this new partner. I want to see her how I saw her then, and not let the things that would happen later taint my view of her, don’t want to read into things that I didn’t notice at the time. But in doing this I wonder if I glorify her more than I did at the time. As time passes it scares me how unsure I am about how I really felt. I know I loved her, I know I spent a lot of time with her, and I know I felt that I needed her, but I don’t know what feelings I truly had and to what degree they were there. This happened a long time ago, almost 2 years ago now.
But here is what I believe I felt. I felt passion, I felt agony when we were apart. I loved everything she did. When I spent a month starving because I ran out of money, she would bring me food from her house. As I wrestled with a stomach parasite for 4 months straight, she held my hands because while I was in the most pain, and I clung to her as my stomach rocked my body in fire, she was the only thing that comforted me. I dreamed of the day I could show her my country, and my city, and my home. I marveled as our love matured, because it felt like it was boundless, that the longer I lived, all I would ever feel was the continued growth of our love, the greater understanding of how we worked in each others lives.
While I was in China I became tremendously skilled at letting things go. I didn’t worry about anything, I just let the universe direct me and that’s where I went, it’s that relaxed way of looking at the world that led me from one end of China to the other. It’s what took me to Rye in the first place, it’s what let me love her with no boundaries, because I had given up being worried about what I felt, or what I should feel, I loved her in an instant cause my heart was open to find my soul mate, and that’s who she was to me. The person that clicked in with my soul.
So though me and Rye both knew we had a time limit on our relationship, I didn’t think about it much. And when the day finally came for me to leave. At the airport I had the same kind of departure that I’d had from my parents nearly a year ago. A simple goodbye, a hug, but no kiss because that was unseemly in China. No tears, no great emotion, because in my heart I felt like we were only going to be apart for a short time, I was just saying good bye for a moment. Though I knew it might be a long time intellectually, I couldn’t feel it. Also we both believed she would very soon be an au pair in America and I would see her in a month or two. As for me though I was off on my trip to Beijing to meet my parents, then with them to Tibet, before I we made our way home. I continued to talk with Rye on the phone and through texts while I was in China, and in Tibet. Tibet was amazing, but a different story. But important in that, a few days after I got home in the US, she also went on a trip to Tibet, it was a few weeks where I couldn’t talk to her, but I felt closer to her knowing we had shared such an amazing place even if not at exactly the same time.
At home though as time went by we started getting bad news about the au pair program. It was proving much harder to get a US visa than we had expected, in fact it was pretty near impossible for Rye to get one any time soon. For a month or two we kept trying though, she would get connected with an au pair family, and stuff, but then they would turn her down in favor of someone who already had a visa lined up to come to the US. It was getting frustrating because even if she were to get with one of these families, she would most likely be living somewhere on the east coast, in New York, or at the closest yet, in Minnesota. After a while it became apparent things weren’t going to work out. And we made the very hard, but seemingly necessary choice to break up. To go our separate ways but remain friends. And who knows, maybe someday rekindle something when we were both done with school and ready to undergo something like that. It was hard to let her go, of all the acts of faith I had been asked to make as a result of my China trip. All the times I would be on a plain or a train and have no idea where I was going, or where I would be sleeping that night, how many times I knew so little about anything that I was doing what just kept walking forward out of faith that things would work out, this was the hardest, and quite honestly, it’s a choice I failed, and it’s this failed test of my faith that I believe led to all the hell to come.
A few weeks after we had broken up, I got an e-mail from Rye, attached was a letter from a family in America that wanted her to be an au pair. A family that lived here, in Portland. We were both shocked, and excited. And we both decided that we would try for it. I took it as a sign that the universe really was backing us up, that it was really going to support us, we were soul mates for sure. The next month or so involved Rye franticly getting paper work turned in to every necessary place. And finally having her visa interview. For Chinese people they cannot simply come to the US, they must be interviewed and evaluated before they are granted entry into the US, to determine weather they are a risk of over staying their visa, staying in the US illegally.
We started talking about all the things we would do when she got here. How she would come over to my house for holidays, she would meet my family, I would show her every wonderful thing about my city, there wasn’t a second that I was walking down the street and not imagining her walking beside me, telling her everything about the places we were seeing, all the stories of my life that had taken place there. My heart was on fire, because I was sure she would be with me soon.
But of course as things turned out, it didn’t work. On the day of her interview, she sent me an e-mail telling me that she had failed, she said the woman who had done the interview said that a girl her age, with no college degree, and with no clear bonds to China that would require her to come back, had basically no chance of getting a US visa.
We were both so sad, but as the time to move on came about again, I realized something, realized that I needed her in my life. And this is where I realized wrong. This is where I failed, Because I felt like I had let the universe run so freely for so long, that it owed me this one thing and so I told Rye that I loved her, told her I only wanted her, and I said I would rather be with her in spirit for the 3 years it would take the two of us to finish college than to just let it go. I asked if she felt she could stand being in such a long distance relationship for that long. And she agreed. We were going to be strong, we were going to persevere. I had the ultimate trust in her. There was no one in my life EVER that I had trusted this much to be strong. Because I loved her, and I knew she loved me, and I knew this was a rare type of love that only a few people were ever lucky enough to feel. And this is when I finally made that choice to turn from trusting of the universe to simply trusting in my own strength. But inevitably, the fall would come, and it fell hard.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
story of Rye part 2
Part 2
When we came back from the mountain, we had two weeks left. In that time I met Rye’s family, aunts uncles, nephews and nieces. I was introduced to her friends, started learning more and more about her, and her history. I learned about Tim, her mentored and confidant through her teen years, an old American man who was a Vietnam vet, and now traveled the world teaching English. He was a published writer and sounded like an amazing person, a spiritual and accomplished man.
And in that time, out physical relationship felt like it was being rocket propelled. We would take every free moment to sneak a kiss, or hold hands behind Rye’s parents backs. And in longer periods of freedom we would indulge our passions as far as we dared. Experiencing everything we’d never done before. Our hearts and minds were opening so fast to each other, and out clothes seemed to only hinder the progress. Though we didn’t make love at the time. We were both virgins, both unsure.
As this was going on though, I was becoming sure of something. There was no way I could go back to school now. My heart was calling so strongly for Rye, I had no choice. And at the end of my 2 week visit. When I went back to Jinan. I began the process of moving out and packing my bags to move to Sichuan permanently. It took about 2 weeks back in Jinan to get my things together. To move out of what had been my home of 4 months. I threw away everything I couldn’t give away. I opened my door and let anyone that wanted to come and take anything they wanted from the pile of things on my desk. I kept a few things that I had bought there, and mailed them back home to the US. But my guitar, my Chinese chess set, books, water cooler, everything that I wouldn’t need was discarded. And when it was all done. I had only my bags filled with clothes, and a few books.
This whole time I talked with Rye every day, on the phone, on the internet, any time I was free I was talking with her. She told me about how she was planning to go to Holland, but she had learned about a new program called Au Pair America. A program where she could travel to America and work as an au pair for a year. This was something she had started looking into before she had met me. This would be the makings of our plan. This was what we hoped would lead us to hold on to each other, she could come to America and we could be together. I never expected it to be the sword through my heart that it would later become.
Finally when I had everything worked out I boarded my plane and headed for Sichuan once again. It was just one of the eventual 14 plains I would fly on through this year long adventure, but I think this one is when I was the happiest. I was so excited to be with the person that after only 2 weeks together, I already knew I loved. When She met me at the airport, I still didn’t know where I would sleep that night, I didn’t know if I would live near her, I didn’t know anything. But when I saw her I was so happy, my heart felt so at ease with her. We hailed a cab together and went towards her house.
I ended up living a few floors above one of her best friends. There was a food market, and the bus terminal near by, it was an hour or two bus ride to where Rye was but I had no other plans so it wasn’t so bad. In the beginning Rye came over almost every other day, taking the long bus ride to see me. It was only days after I arrived that we did finally make love. And from that, a dam broke, and it was all we could do. We would spend every waking moment together in bed. We laughed, kissed, told stories. We would engage in epic tickle wars that would reduce us both to uncontrolled laughter, and lay next to each other so tiered that we would fall asleep still breathing heavily.
There was no feeling in the world like being in her arms, it was the warmest feeling of “home” I could ever describe. And I could fall asleep in an instant if we were tangled up with each others limbs.
When we made love, I have to explain something. Though it was out first time, and we were awkward at first, flopping around you might say, as rookies in a new sport. Her eyes were key, because as passion would overcome us and caution would disappear, her eyes would lock with mine, and as the act took place, the intensity of those eyes, there was meaning there that could break your mind to try and understand. In simplest terms her eyes said to me that she would follow me anywhere. That she would give everything she had to me. That she would follow me into hell because she trusted me. And as we moved together I did everything in my power to live up to that promise, each kiss, caress, each whisper of love and devotion, everything I did I did to be worthy of the message she gave me with those eyes.
After a month things began to change, as they have to, relationships don’t stay the same they evolve. And for us the change came when I suddenly had to go to Hong Kong, for a new visa. I was gone for a week and when I cam back, I needed a place to stay again. We decided though before we found a place for me to stay, we should go on a trip together
After my trip to Hong Kong (another long, and horrifying tale) I found that I had to go back to jinan to withdraw my money from my bank account at the Bank of China there. So we decided to go on a trip to the near by city of Qing Dao, a beach town with plenty of tourism, most famous for Tsing Dao beer, which is shipped all over the world, including here in the US. On the way back we would swing through Jinan and get my money.
The trip was fine, but along the way for the first time we started to fight. Little arguments that would cause major problems. And much of the trip was spent rather darkly. In this time of restructuring, I feel like we were just learning how things were going to work together. We began to figure out how to deal with our problems together. But the fighting didn’t end soon.
I began to think that our relationship was simply at it’s end, that we had hit the natural end to what was an incredibly powerfully burning love. But of course that’s not what happened, after about a month of on and off fighting. We finally came to a place of peace, I can’t explain quite what happened. I just remember at some point. She came over to my hotel. She sat in my room with me, and we talked, we talked for a long time about us, about what we wanted, and by the end we were both crying quite a lot. And with tears rolling down our faces. We both agreed that we needed each other. That night we held each other for hours. And kept telling each other how much we were in love. And this new feeling washed over me. Not the same as the feverish love I had felt, this was matured, it was stronger, but more subtle. And again my heart filled, ever more full and more beautifuly than it had been filled before, with this new, and even more amazing feeling of pure love. That was the beginning of me wondering how much I didn’t know at all. I wondered what this love would feel like in a year, in a decade.
After this time, we began to talk much more about the future, something we hadn’t really discussed. We talked about getting married, about traveling all over the world together. We would go to Australia, Holland, new Zealand, Tib6et. We would go everywhere together and never stop. It was a dream that we just knew would come true. It almost seemed impossible that it wouldn’t. And as it had happened so many times in her presence up till now, I had never been so happy in all my life.
When we came back from the mountain, we had two weeks left. In that time I met Rye’s family, aunts uncles, nephews and nieces. I was introduced to her friends, started learning more and more about her, and her history. I learned about Tim, her mentored and confidant through her teen years, an old American man who was a Vietnam vet, and now traveled the world teaching English. He was a published writer and sounded like an amazing person, a spiritual and accomplished man.
And in that time, out physical relationship felt like it was being rocket propelled. We would take every free moment to sneak a kiss, or hold hands behind Rye’s parents backs. And in longer periods of freedom we would indulge our passions as far as we dared. Experiencing everything we’d never done before. Our hearts and minds were opening so fast to each other, and out clothes seemed to only hinder the progress. Though we didn’t make love at the time. We were both virgins, both unsure.
As this was going on though, I was becoming sure of something. There was no way I could go back to school now. My heart was calling so strongly for Rye, I had no choice. And at the end of my 2 week visit. When I went back to Jinan. I began the process of moving out and packing my bags to move to Sichuan permanently. It took about 2 weeks back in Jinan to get my things together. To move out of what had been my home of 4 months. I threw away everything I couldn’t give away. I opened my door and let anyone that wanted to come and take anything they wanted from the pile of things on my desk. I kept a few things that I had bought there, and mailed them back home to the US. But my guitar, my Chinese chess set, books, water cooler, everything that I wouldn’t need was discarded. And when it was all done. I had only my bags filled with clothes, and a few books.
This whole time I talked with Rye every day, on the phone, on the internet, any time I was free I was talking with her. She told me about how she was planning to go to Holland, but she had learned about a new program called Au Pair America. A program where she could travel to America and work as an au pair for a year. This was something she had started looking into before she had met me. This would be the makings of our plan. This was what we hoped would lead us to hold on to each other, she could come to America and we could be together. I never expected it to be the sword through my heart that it would later become.
Finally when I had everything worked out I boarded my plane and headed for Sichuan once again. It was just one of the eventual 14 plains I would fly on through this year long adventure, but I think this one is when I was the happiest. I was so excited to be with the person that after only 2 weeks together, I already knew I loved. When She met me at the airport, I still didn’t know where I would sleep that night, I didn’t know if I would live near her, I didn’t know anything. But when I saw her I was so happy, my heart felt so at ease with her. We hailed a cab together and went towards her house.
I ended up living a few floors above one of her best friends. There was a food market, and the bus terminal near by, it was an hour or two bus ride to where Rye was but I had no other plans so it wasn’t so bad. In the beginning Rye came over almost every other day, taking the long bus ride to see me. It was only days after I arrived that we did finally make love. And from that, a dam broke, and it was all we could do. We would spend every waking moment together in bed. We laughed, kissed, told stories. We would engage in epic tickle wars that would reduce us both to uncontrolled laughter, and lay next to each other so tiered that we would fall asleep still breathing heavily.
There was no feeling in the world like being in her arms, it was the warmest feeling of “home” I could ever describe. And I could fall asleep in an instant if we were tangled up with each others limbs.
When we made love, I have to explain something. Though it was out first time, and we were awkward at first, flopping around you might say, as rookies in a new sport. Her eyes were key, because as passion would overcome us and caution would disappear, her eyes would lock with mine, and as the act took place, the intensity of those eyes, there was meaning there that could break your mind to try and understand. In simplest terms her eyes said to me that she would follow me anywhere. That she would give everything she had to me. That she would follow me into hell because she trusted me. And as we moved together I did everything in my power to live up to that promise, each kiss, caress, each whisper of love and devotion, everything I did I did to be worthy of the message she gave me with those eyes.
After a month things began to change, as they have to, relationships don’t stay the same they evolve. And for us the change came when I suddenly had to go to Hong Kong, for a new visa. I was gone for a week and when I cam back, I needed a place to stay again. We decided though before we found a place for me to stay, we should go on a trip together
After my trip to Hong Kong (another long, and horrifying tale) I found that I had to go back to jinan to withdraw my money from my bank account at the Bank of China there. So we decided to go on a trip to the near by city of Qing Dao, a beach town with plenty of tourism, most famous for Tsing Dao beer, which is shipped all over the world, including here in the US. On the way back we would swing through Jinan and get my money.
The trip was fine, but along the way for the first time we started to fight. Little arguments that would cause major problems. And much of the trip was spent rather darkly. In this time of restructuring, I feel like we were just learning how things were going to work together. We began to figure out how to deal with our problems together. But the fighting didn’t end soon.
I began to think that our relationship was simply at it’s end, that we had hit the natural end to what was an incredibly powerfully burning love. But of course that’s not what happened, after about a month of on and off fighting. We finally came to a place of peace, I can’t explain quite what happened. I just remember at some point. She came over to my hotel. She sat in my room with me, and we talked, we talked for a long time about us, about what we wanted, and by the end we were both crying quite a lot. And with tears rolling down our faces. We both agreed that we needed each other. That night we held each other for hours. And kept telling each other how much we were in love. And this new feeling washed over me. Not the same as the feverish love I had felt, this was matured, it was stronger, but more subtle. And again my heart filled, ever more full and more beautifuly than it had been filled before, with this new, and even more amazing feeling of pure love. That was the beginning of me wondering how much I didn’t know at all. I wondered what this love would feel like in a year, in a decade.
After this time, we began to talk much more about the future, something we hadn’t really discussed. We talked about getting married, about traveling all over the world together. We would go to Australia, Holland, new Zealand, Tib6et. We would go everywhere together and never stop. It was a dream that we just knew would come true. It almost seemed impossible that it wouldn’t. And as it had happened so many times in her presence up till now, I had never been so happy in all my life.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
pictures from the story of Rye
These pictures go with the last post I made, they are all mixed up in no particular order, you can guess what part of the story they're from. after I got off the boat the batteries in my camera died so that's why there is nothing that takes place after the picture of the boat landing with the buddha statue. The girl in the pink coat is Rye, the woman in purple is her mother
2
2
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
The Story of Rye: Part One
What Happened
The story of Rye
Intro
When I went to China I had a very unclear idea of my goals. I thought I was going in order to learn Chinese, but really there were so many other hopes for my trip, things I knew only on a subconscious level. I looked at this trip as a time for growth, this would be the thing that would change me, make me a man, it would be the journey of life and change. And I did change, and I did experience, and I did grow. So many things happened while I was there, so many little stories, but the important story, the big story that has shaped, and will continue to shape who I am for who knows how long into the future is the story of Rye. It is a painful story for me to tell, but one I can’t get away from. I don’t know what effect writing this out and posting it for the world will do. I don’t know why I want to do this, only that it is a story I want to tell.
Part 1
When I first came to china I stayed at Shandong University in Jinan city. The Capitol of Shandong province, Jinan was exceedingly boring. But it didn’t matter to me because I was so caught up with being in China, a place I had dreamed about for so long, and I had many many adventures in my time there. The classes were difficult for my ADDled brain, as I was expected to attend 4 hours of straight class 5 days a week, and I quickly started to fall behind in school work. The friends I made there were good people, and I was so excited to get to know people from so many different backgrounds, people from Australia, Hungary, France, Finland, Ireland, Japan, Korea and of course China. But I didn’t connect with anyone on a very personal level. No one of these details would have been such a bad thing but combined I started to feel depressed. Started to feel that living in a tiny dorm for 10 months wasn’t exactly what I had had in mind when I dreamed of the far east all these years.
As I became more and more depressed I started spending more time feeling sorry for myself sitting in my dorm room talking with strangers online. I found that with Skype, I could do random searches for people from anywhere in the world. And I began talking with hundreds of Chinese people. People from all parts of China. Again no close friendships were made, but it was simply a minor form of social interaction to take the edge off the encroaching loneliness. But one day in one of my random searches, I came across Rye. Rye was a girl from Sichuan. And the first time I talked to her lasted about 2 minutes. I said hi, she said “hi, sorry I am just about to leave, I can talk with you later”. the only thing I saw of here was a tiny 1 inch by 1 inch photo of her in her profile, but for some reason that made a pretty strong impression. And the next day I went to look for her again. I couldn’t find her on my buddy list, even though I knew I had added her. And I started to panic, I felt a great deal of loss thinking that perhaps she had blocked me for some unknown reason.
Eventually I found her, she had simply changed her name online, something I would learn she did a lot. And I suddenly felt incredibly foolish, I hadn’t said more than one word to this girl, I couldn’t explain why I had reacted that way and I was a bit embraced at myself for the strange lack of control I’d suddenly experienced.
When I was able to talk with her again, it was right after class had let out for the day, I’d gone straight to my dorm, flipped open the computer and found she was online. We wrote back and forth for ages, I took breaks to get food, and to go to the bathroom when I needed to, but for the most part we talked non stop until, the sun had gone down, and then, come up again, and suddenly it was time for me to go to class again and I hadn’t slept a wink. In class I couldn’t keep my head up. 4 hours later though I was back online again and we talked for another many hours till I fell asleep at my computer.
3 more times before I would eventually go see her, I stayed up all night long talking with Rye. I could talk with her forever, even though her English wasn’t perfect, I had never felt so connected with a person, and it had happened so fast. It was in the realm of love at first sight, I had seen her and my heart cried out for her. An instant was all I had needed.
The school term was coming to an end, and of course there was only one place I wanted to go for the month break we got to celebrate the Chinese new year. After a failed plain ticket fiasco, and a number of other troubles, I finally made it to Sichuan, in Shuangliu, a suburb of Chengdu, the capitol city. Rye’s parents had graciously allowed me to stay in their apartment for 2 weeks. I was staying in Rye’s room while she spent the night in the guest room. They were very excited to have me, they loved playing host to a foreigner, and were happy to teach me everything they could about China. Though that was limited since they didn’t speak any English. Immediately I noticed the difference between Jinan and Chengdu. Chengdu had so much culture, the people were friendlier, the world was more colorful. There were interesting buildings, and ancient back allies. I loved the city.
Rye’s family had made a number of plans for my visit, as it was also marking Rye‘s return from her university, they took me all over the place. Showing me temples, and parks, and beautiful parts of their city I would never have found. They took me to festivals, to parties, to tea houses, and about 15 weddings. So much of the really amazing memories I have from china I own to Rye’s family, who somehow knew exactly what I wanted to see, and the best things to show me. But the first trip we went on was the most memorable.
Rye’s father was a police officer, and as such had access to the police vehicles. So one day, early in the morning, we had gotten up, gotten bundled up in warm clothes, and piled into a big police van. It was not the first time I’d been in a police car in China, but that’s a different story. I wasn’t sure where we were going. Rye was never very keen on explaining things like that to me, but I didn’t mind that much. Rye was often under a lot of stress trying to be the 24 hour translator between me and her parents so I tried not to ask too many questions. We drove for about an hour, leaving the city, and getting into the mountainous farmlands of Sichuan. When we finally got to a new city it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. The mountains had grown taller and taller as we’d driven. They had such steep sides that they seemed more like pillars shooting out from the flat ground than any mountains I knew. We had driven between these mountains and gotten into a world so surrounded by marvelous topography one couldn’t see anything but sheer cliffs and surreal streams.
In the midst of these mountains we came to a city that was entirely white. The buildings were all constructed out of white stucco and the streets were paved in ancient cobble stones. The tiny little town sat next to a stream and a railroad, and at the far end, rose the biggest mountain we had yet seen. The streets of the town were all edged with streams that had been funneled into aqueducts that ran under your feet, to enter any of the houses meant crossing a tiny stone bridge.
We drove to the end of the town, the foot of the mountain, where a massive courtyard and Taoist temple sat. Rye’s father parked the car and let us out. We were carrying a box of oranges. We took it into the Taoist temple and Rye ran off to find one of the Taoist priests. She talked with him for a moment, as I stood with Rye’s mother. She finally came back with a little slip of paper with a note written on it.
“the priest wrote us this so we can climb up the mountain with out paying” she said. Rye walked and I followed her to the gate at the bottom of the mountain guarded by another Taoist priest. She handed him the note and he let us in with a smile and a quick word that I didn’t understand. We started to climb.
The climb took over 5 hours. Ever hour or so we would come across another Taoist temple nestled in a crevice or around a corner, and at each temple Rye would kneel and pray to one of the alters, and put a piece of fruit in front of one of the marvelously painted statues of Taoist gods. Rye’s mother wasn’t built for the climb though so me and Rye spent a great deal of time far ahead and out of sight of her mother. We talked about all kinds of things. As we walked the terrain changed, sometimes in dense forest, sometimes in almost desert like worlds, every so often waiting for Rye’s mother to catch up with us. (Rye’s father had left after he had dropped us off).
Finally we reached the top. There was a final temple, and in it, a 2 story tall statue of Lao Tzu riding a giant Golden water buffalo, it was so bright it was almost painful to look at. It was an amazing world, and an amazing thing to see. But it was starting to get dark, and there was no way we would make it down the mountain in the day light. We started climbing down none the less. When we got to the last Taoist temple we had passed on the way up we stopped. Rye’s mother talked to one of the Taoist priests, and was directed to another. And finally she beckoned me and Rye over. The woman priest led us around the back of the temple and to two rooms. That night we spent the night at the temple. We ate with the priests in their kitchen then went back to our rooms. The rooms were very small, with no plumbing, or insulation it seemed, but with electric blankets to keep us warm. Out side was a view off the mountain to the valley below, surrounded by the wild forest it was amazing.
Rye spent a little while in my room that night, we watched movies on the laptop I had lugged up the mountain side. But in time she went back to her mothers room and I we went to sleep.
The next morning we got up early. The sun was up and we started down the mountain. But this time we took a different rout down, surrounded by bamboo forests, and sometimes walking along cliffs that seemed to drop down for miles, to farms that were so far below it looked like we were in an airplane, looking down. We passed still more temples on the way down, and when we finally got down, we found another city at the base, and another stream, though this one was smaller, and more pure. We at lunch at a small restaurant next to the water. It was a marvelously small little café, and they had great food.
Much to my surprise when the meal was over Rye told me we would be climbing back up the mountain again, but this time on another side. I was still sore from the hike the day before, but I didn’t mind. And was very happy to hear that Rye’s mother was not going to accompany us. It would be just me and Rye.
We started our climb, and instantly I could see the difference on this side of the mountain. First of all, there was the stream, a stream that we would follow all the way up the mountain. Secondly this side had a very strong religious connotation as well, but this time it was all Buddhist. Buddhist statues, were carved right into the rock face all the way up the mountain. And this time it was all forest all the way up, walking along the crystal clear creek, over bridges and through caves. And it stayed cool even as the climbing made us sweat.
Again it took as all day to climb. Finally as we got on to the 4th or 5th hour of hiking we came to a building, and a damn. Beyond the damn was a very large ravine. And a long dock. We started walking across the loud wooden boards of the dock, when from up stairs in the two story boat house we heard scuffling, and a man came running down. He immediately told us the cost of the ferry and ushered us onto his little gondola. He pushed the boat off with a very long pole that he then used to propel us through the water. His friend accompanied us in the boat.
The still water was surrounded by trees and as we glided through the jungle you could never see too far ahead, the water bended this way and that turning left then right. Coming around one bend we finally saw another dock, with a large Buddhist statue of the bodhisattva Guanyin. We got off the boat with a smile and payment to the boat man. The other man in the boat got off with us and started talking with Rye as we walked. He told us that he owned a hotel just a few hours walk away with his wife, and that we should stay there. We thought that sounded good and finally he told us to come this way. We went down a path that seemed to hardly be a path at all, it curved around a large out cropping of earth and as we rounded the bend we saw a building half on land, and half floating in the sky.
It was perched on the edge of a massively tall cliff, that dropped down so far you couldn’t distinguish where the bottom was. Looking out from the cliff we saw it was a huge canyon. across on the other side was a tall hill, and on top of the hill a gigantic Buddhist temple dominated the view.
Long stilts anchored the building to the side of the cliff. The man took us up stairs to show us the rooms, more like little shacks than rooms. We asked the price, and asked if we could just get one room, he said if we wanted to share a room we needed to give him proof that we were married. We laughed a little, but didn’t argue, we just got two rooms. I dropped my stuff off in my room and then went over to Rye’s. It was freezing cold here as well, and I kept all my coats on.
I pulled out my laptop again. And we started to watch movies. It was starting to pour mercilessly outside, and in the last light of the day it looked like a waterfall was pouring off the roof. We cranked up the electric blanket all the way and watched movies all night. Sharing the bed. After the 3rd movie, it was almost 2am, we decided to watch one more movie.
By the end of that, the rain had stopped, and in the dark emptiness that comes after the credits have ended, I kissed her. For maybe another hour we tried to stay awake enough to continue what I started. Though we were both exhausted. And in time we both lost the battle, we fell asleep together in each others arms.
The next morning we woke up at 7. We opened the window to find that the rain had not stopped, but had simply turned to snow. The temple on top of the mountain on the other side of the gully was ringed perfectly in a halo of white, as it was right at the perfect altitude, everything below it was merely water. We stepped outside to see the white lay all around.
We said our good bye’s to the hotel owner and his family, and started walking back down the mountain. It took us all day.*
I’d never felt this way before, to have something begin like this, it felt like the whole universe was standing up for me. I couldn’t help but feel like this was the beginning of my new life, that the world had finally opened up for me. I felt so happy and so good about this whole mystical event. I had never been so happy.
*not to ruin the beauty of the night, I was in sever pain from blue balls the entire next day. If you’ve ever spent 5 hours hiking with blue balls you know it‘s the most awful thing, especially when you‘re trying to act normal so no one suspects a thing. )
The story of Rye
Intro
When I went to China I had a very unclear idea of my goals. I thought I was going in order to learn Chinese, but really there were so many other hopes for my trip, things I knew only on a subconscious level. I looked at this trip as a time for growth, this would be the thing that would change me, make me a man, it would be the journey of life and change. And I did change, and I did experience, and I did grow. So many things happened while I was there, so many little stories, but the important story, the big story that has shaped, and will continue to shape who I am for who knows how long into the future is the story of Rye. It is a painful story for me to tell, but one I can’t get away from. I don’t know what effect writing this out and posting it for the world will do. I don’t know why I want to do this, only that it is a story I want to tell.
Part 1
When I first came to china I stayed at Shandong University in Jinan city. The Capitol of Shandong province, Jinan was exceedingly boring. But it didn’t matter to me because I was so caught up with being in China, a place I had dreamed about for so long, and I had many many adventures in my time there. The classes were difficult for my ADDled brain, as I was expected to attend 4 hours of straight class 5 days a week, and I quickly started to fall behind in school work. The friends I made there were good people, and I was so excited to get to know people from so many different backgrounds, people from Australia, Hungary, France, Finland, Ireland, Japan, Korea and of course China. But I didn’t connect with anyone on a very personal level. No one of these details would have been such a bad thing but combined I started to feel depressed. Started to feel that living in a tiny dorm for 10 months wasn’t exactly what I had had in mind when I dreamed of the far east all these years.
As I became more and more depressed I started spending more time feeling sorry for myself sitting in my dorm room talking with strangers online. I found that with Skype, I could do random searches for people from anywhere in the world. And I began talking with hundreds of Chinese people. People from all parts of China. Again no close friendships were made, but it was simply a minor form of social interaction to take the edge off the encroaching loneliness. But one day in one of my random searches, I came across Rye. Rye was a girl from Sichuan. And the first time I talked to her lasted about 2 minutes. I said hi, she said “hi, sorry I am just about to leave, I can talk with you later”. the only thing I saw of here was a tiny 1 inch by 1 inch photo of her in her profile, but for some reason that made a pretty strong impression. And the next day I went to look for her again. I couldn’t find her on my buddy list, even though I knew I had added her. And I started to panic, I felt a great deal of loss thinking that perhaps she had blocked me for some unknown reason.
Eventually I found her, she had simply changed her name online, something I would learn she did a lot. And I suddenly felt incredibly foolish, I hadn’t said more than one word to this girl, I couldn’t explain why I had reacted that way and I was a bit embraced at myself for the strange lack of control I’d suddenly experienced.
When I was able to talk with her again, it was right after class had let out for the day, I’d gone straight to my dorm, flipped open the computer and found she was online. We wrote back and forth for ages, I took breaks to get food, and to go to the bathroom when I needed to, but for the most part we talked non stop until, the sun had gone down, and then, come up again, and suddenly it was time for me to go to class again and I hadn’t slept a wink. In class I couldn’t keep my head up. 4 hours later though I was back online again and we talked for another many hours till I fell asleep at my computer.
3 more times before I would eventually go see her, I stayed up all night long talking with Rye. I could talk with her forever, even though her English wasn’t perfect, I had never felt so connected with a person, and it had happened so fast. It was in the realm of love at first sight, I had seen her and my heart cried out for her. An instant was all I had needed.
The school term was coming to an end, and of course there was only one place I wanted to go for the month break we got to celebrate the Chinese new year. After a failed plain ticket fiasco, and a number of other troubles, I finally made it to Sichuan, in Shuangliu, a suburb of Chengdu, the capitol city. Rye’s parents had graciously allowed me to stay in their apartment for 2 weeks. I was staying in Rye’s room while she spent the night in the guest room. They were very excited to have me, they loved playing host to a foreigner, and were happy to teach me everything they could about China. Though that was limited since they didn’t speak any English. Immediately I noticed the difference between Jinan and Chengdu. Chengdu had so much culture, the people were friendlier, the world was more colorful. There were interesting buildings, and ancient back allies. I loved the city.
Rye’s family had made a number of plans for my visit, as it was also marking Rye‘s return from her university, they took me all over the place. Showing me temples, and parks, and beautiful parts of their city I would never have found. They took me to festivals, to parties, to tea houses, and about 15 weddings. So much of the really amazing memories I have from china I own to Rye’s family, who somehow knew exactly what I wanted to see, and the best things to show me. But the first trip we went on was the most memorable.
Rye’s father was a police officer, and as such had access to the police vehicles. So one day, early in the morning, we had gotten up, gotten bundled up in warm clothes, and piled into a big police van. It was not the first time I’d been in a police car in China, but that’s a different story. I wasn’t sure where we were going. Rye was never very keen on explaining things like that to me, but I didn’t mind that much. Rye was often under a lot of stress trying to be the 24 hour translator between me and her parents so I tried not to ask too many questions. We drove for about an hour, leaving the city, and getting into the mountainous farmlands of Sichuan. When we finally got to a new city it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. The mountains had grown taller and taller as we’d driven. They had such steep sides that they seemed more like pillars shooting out from the flat ground than any mountains I knew. We had driven between these mountains and gotten into a world so surrounded by marvelous topography one couldn’t see anything but sheer cliffs and surreal streams.
In the midst of these mountains we came to a city that was entirely white. The buildings were all constructed out of white stucco and the streets were paved in ancient cobble stones. The tiny little town sat next to a stream and a railroad, and at the far end, rose the biggest mountain we had yet seen. The streets of the town were all edged with streams that had been funneled into aqueducts that ran under your feet, to enter any of the houses meant crossing a tiny stone bridge.
We drove to the end of the town, the foot of the mountain, where a massive courtyard and Taoist temple sat. Rye’s father parked the car and let us out. We were carrying a box of oranges. We took it into the Taoist temple and Rye ran off to find one of the Taoist priests. She talked with him for a moment, as I stood with Rye’s mother. She finally came back with a little slip of paper with a note written on it.
“the priest wrote us this so we can climb up the mountain with out paying” she said. Rye walked and I followed her to the gate at the bottom of the mountain guarded by another Taoist priest. She handed him the note and he let us in with a smile and a quick word that I didn’t understand. We started to climb.
The climb took over 5 hours. Ever hour or so we would come across another Taoist temple nestled in a crevice or around a corner, and at each temple Rye would kneel and pray to one of the alters, and put a piece of fruit in front of one of the marvelously painted statues of Taoist gods. Rye’s mother wasn’t built for the climb though so me and Rye spent a great deal of time far ahead and out of sight of her mother. We talked about all kinds of things. As we walked the terrain changed, sometimes in dense forest, sometimes in almost desert like worlds, every so often waiting for Rye’s mother to catch up with us. (Rye’s father had left after he had dropped us off).
Finally we reached the top. There was a final temple, and in it, a 2 story tall statue of Lao Tzu riding a giant Golden water buffalo, it was so bright it was almost painful to look at. It was an amazing world, and an amazing thing to see. But it was starting to get dark, and there was no way we would make it down the mountain in the day light. We started climbing down none the less. When we got to the last Taoist temple we had passed on the way up we stopped. Rye’s mother talked to one of the Taoist priests, and was directed to another. And finally she beckoned me and Rye over. The woman priest led us around the back of the temple and to two rooms. That night we spent the night at the temple. We ate with the priests in their kitchen then went back to our rooms. The rooms were very small, with no plumbing, or insulation it seemed, but with electric blankets to keep us warm. Out side was a view off the mountain to the valley below, surrounded by the wild forest it was amazing.
Rye spent a little while in my room that night, we watched movies on the laptop I had lugged up the mountain side. But in time she went back to her mothers room and I we went to sleep.
The next morning we got up early. The sun was up and we started down the mountain. But this time we took a different rout down, surrounded by bamboo forests, and sometimes walking along cliffs that seemed to drop down for miles, to farms that were so far below it looked like we were in an airplane, looking down. We passed still more temples on the way down, and when we finally got down, we found another city at the base, and another stream, though this one was smaller, and more pure. We at lunch at a small restaurant next to the water. It was a marvelously small little café, and they had great food.
Much to my surprise when the meal was over Rye told me we would be climbing back up the mountain again, but this time on another side. I was still sore from the hike the day before, but I didn’t mind. And was very happy to hear that Rye’s mother was not going to accompany us. It would be just me and Rye.
We started our climb, and instantly I could see the difference on this side of the mountain. First of all, there was the stream, a stream that we would follow all the way up the mountain. Secondly this side had a very strong religious connotation as well, but this time it was all Buddhist. Buddhist statues, were carved right into the rock face all the way up the mountain. And this time it was all forest all the way up, walking along the crystal clear creek, over bridges and through caves. And it stayed cool even as the climbing made us sweat.
Again it took as all day to climb. Finally as we got on to the 4th or 5th hour of hiking we came to a building, and a damn. Beyond the damn was a very large ravine. And a long dock. We started walking across the loud wooden boards of the dock, when from up stairs in the two story boat house we heard scuffling, and a man came running down. He immediately told us the cost of the ferry and ushered us onto his little gondola. He pushed the boat off with a very long pole that he then used to propel us through the water. His friend accompanied us in the boat.
The still water was surrounded by trees and as we glided through the jungle you could never see too far ahead, the water bended this way and that turning left then right. Coming around one bend we finally saw another dock, with a large Buddhist statue of the bodhisattva Guanyin. We got off the boat with a smile and payment to the boat man. The other man in the boat got off with us and started talking with Rye as we walked. He told us that he owned a hotel just a few hours walk away with his wife, and that we should stay there. We thought that sounded good and finally he told us to come this way. We went down a path that seemed to hardly be a path at all, it curved around a large out cropping of earth and as we rounded the bend we saw a building half on land, and half floating in the sky.
It was perched on the edge of a massively tall cliff, that dropped down so far you couldn’t distinguish where the bottom was. Looking out from the cliff we saw it was a huge canyon. across on the other side was a tall hill, and on top of the hill a gigantic Buddhist temple dominated the view.
Long stilts anchored the building to the side of the cliff. The man took us up stairs to show us the rooms, more like little shacks than rooms. We asked the price, and asked if we could just get one room, he said if we wanted to share a room we needed to give him proof that we were married. We laughed a little, but didn’t argue, we just got two rooms. I dropped my stuff off in my room and then went over to Rye’s. It was freezing cold here as well, and I kept all my coats on.
I pulled out my laptop again. And we started to watch movies. It was starting to pour mercilessly outside, and in the last light of the day it looked like a waterfall was pouring off the roof. We cranked up the electric blanket all the way and watched movies all night. Sharing the bed. After the 3rd movie, it was almost 2am, we decided to watch one more movie.
By the end of that, the rain had stopped, and in the dark emptiness that comes after the credits have ended, I kissed her. For maybe another hour we tried to stay awake enough to continue what I started. Though we were both exhausted. And in time we both lost the battle, we fell asleep together in each others arms.
The next morning we woke up at 7. We opened the window to find that the rain had not stopped, but had simply turned to snow. The temple on top of the mountain on the other side of the gully was ringed perfectly in a halo of white, as it was right at the perfect altitude, everything below it was merely water. We stepped outside to see the white lay all around.
We said our good bye’s to the hotel owner and his family, and started walking back down the mountain. It took us all day.*
I’d never felt this way before, to have something begin like this, it felt like the whole universe was standing up for me. I couldn’t help but feel like this was the beginning of my new life, that the world had finally opened up for me. I felt so happy and so good about this whole mystical event. I had never been so happy.
*not to ruin the beauty of the night, I was in sever pain from blue balls the entire next day. If you’ve ever spent 5 hours hiking with blue balls you know it‘s the most awful thing, especially when you‘re trying to act normal so no one suspects a thing. )
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)