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. )