Eric's Beijing Diary

I went to the desk at the youth hostel last week to see about staying a few more nights because I didn't have a train ticket yet. They told me they were booked up, so I went to the Yunnan Normal University to see if they had a Foreign Experts Building. Fortunately, they did. I have stayed at the Foreign Experts Building in at Northwest Normal University several times, and found it to be very accommodating. This one is a little more old-fashioned. A few days ago, the hotel maid was very animated and talking really fast. She seemed to be upset about something, so I asked her to come to my room and show me. She showed me a stain on the cover sheet (In China, they use a bottom sheet and then a cover slip for the quilt). I didn't think it was that big a deal, but I had not noticed it before. If I had, I would have just taken a damp cloth and rubbed it out, so that is what I started to do. But the hotel maid would have none of it. She ripped the cover sheet off, handed me a bar of soap, and ordered me to go to the sink and wash it "properly." Of course, I dutifully obeyed. I should be more careful next time.

Interesting story. I think many Americans would be inclined to shrug their shoulders and say, "That's China." True, but also not true. It's true because it actually happened. But it's not true because that's only one part of China. I'll tell you another story to illustrate what I mean. I have stayed at the Foreign Experts Building on the campus of Northwest Normal University in Lanzhou several times. One time I was coming into Lanzhou, so I called Holly at the Foreign Experts Building and told her I would be coming. She welcomed me. When I got there, the place was packed to the gills. There was some kind of conference or something, and there was absolutely no room. Holly told me not to worry. She was very busy (of course), but she left someone else in charge of the place and insisted on walking me over to the International Students' dormitory where she had arranged for me to have a room. She told me to come the next day and they would have a place for me. That was a pretty important favor, because I didn't have anywhere else to stay. Kunming has lots of youth hostels, but Lanzhou doesn't have any.

You see, the first story is true--I didn't make it up. That's China. But the second story is also true, and that's also China. And I have had many more experiences like the second story than like the first. Many more. A couple days ago, I was at a bus stop trying to figure out which bus to take. I was frustrated, because in Beijing they have an arrow showing which way the bus is going, so you can easily see whether you are going the right direction, or if you need to cross the street and take a bus in the other direction. In Kunming, no arrows. There was a young lady standing there, and I asked her if she knew which way I should be going to get to the stop I was headed for. She asked me for my ultimate destination and then told me that there was no bus going there from this stop. She insisted on walking me to another bus stop where I could get a connection. She showed me a short-cut along the railroad tracks for about 150 meters. She walked boldly down the middle of the tracks, stepping gingerly from one tie to the next and I walked along the side. As we were walking, she continued to lecture me about how the bus system worked. When we got to the bus stop, she explained how the sign indicates which direction the bus is going, using characters instead of an arrow. It was all very simple, and as soon as she pointed out the characters to me (开往), I saw it, but I would not have noticed it without her help. A bus stopped. As soon as the door opened, she stepped forward abruptly and gave me a brief lecture on the ticketing system. She explained how to tell what the fair was (they have regular busses and air conditioned busses) and the different ways of paying, and she made the driver wait until she was through with her lesson. When she had assured herself that I was situated, she told me she had to go and she left. Just like that. That's unusual? No, that's China. I have had so many experiences like this in the years I have been traveling in China.

There's another thing about a blog post like this that can be very misleading. This blog is written in English, so I have related these conversations as if they took place in English. In fact, none of them did. None of the encounters I have told you about would have been possible if I had not taken the trouble to learn a little Putonghua. I don't know...the last young lady who showed me the bus system looked to be in her twenties--it's possible she spoke a little English. I didn't ask her, because I did not want to give any idea that English language proficiency was a prerequisite for being able to help me. That would have been self-defeating. As a general rule, if young people feel comfortable with English, they will answer you in English even if you start the conversation in Chinese. She did not, so it's a pretty safe bet she perhaps did not feel comfortable with English, although most young people have better language ability than they give themselves credit for. But basically, if you want to travel by yourself in Western China, you need to learn Chinese. I was lucky, because when I first came to Beijing I lived very near Wudaokou, which has many small language schools for studying Mandarin. There are expensive ones, but also cheap ones. It was 12 kuai an hour when I signed up for two hours a day during the first year I was in China. In 2009-2010 I did it again, and the price had gone up to 30 kuai for an hour-and-a-half. That's cheap. That's China. I don't take classes anymore, because I'm too busy and I don't live near the language schools now. But I developed a twenty-minute listening and reading exercise that I go through every day. I also have some other study projects--chiefly the one I set up with friends from church to study the Japanese and Chinese Bibles. I try to work away at that a few nights a week. But I do the listening exercises every day. The reason I am so picky about listening is because even if your grasp of a given language is not strong, it's amazing what you can get by with if you basically understand what people are saying to you. And speaking naturally follows listening. Young people in China are very self-conscious about their speaking ability. They always tell me that they can read and understand better than they can speak. So what often happens is that they neglect listening and focus on speaking. They want to get their speaking level up to their listening level. Big mistake. Your listening ability will always be greater than your speaking ability. The most affective approach is to forget about speaking and focus on listening. If you get your listening comprehension up, your speaking ability will be right behind. Young people always want to focus on speaking. That may be a good short-term approach, but it is not a good long-term approach.

But I digress. I got off on that language tangent because language is the chief reason some foreigners have a negative view of China. Foreigners who never learn Chinese and spend all their time in Beijing do avoid some unpleasant experiences. But they also miss out on a lot of extraordinary human kindness such as I have received from ordinary people all over this country. That's China.

Labels: Kindness, Laobaixing, Lodging, Travel

Heading up into the mountains out of Chengdu. I flew to Chengdu from Beijing last Saturday. When I got the Dreams Travel youth hostel they told me that there had been torrential rains in the mountains, so I decided to delay my trip for a few days. It's very cold in the mountains. When it gets cold and wet and rainy, it can be quite unpleasant.

Monday evening, I had dinner with Leander and his girlfriend. He goes by Joel now and his company is growing. Leander was one of the students who stayed in Beijing during Spring Festival when I first came to China ten years ago. Leander and his classmates were in the IC design class at the Software College. Most of them are now doing IC design, but Leander started his own company.

The next day, one of my English majors from the past school year sent me a message. He was on his way to Chengdu and he had seen my post on WeChat (everyone in China has WeChat). So he and his classmate took me to a local hotpot restaurant. You really need to do this when you come to Chengdu.

The next day I had dinner with Mary and her classmate. Mary is a young traveler I met last summer in Manzhouli. She had seen my posts on WeChat and told me she was studying in Chengdu. I meet a lot of people in my travels, so I was not sure who she was, but I told her to meet me and we would have dinner. She brought her classmate along, and we wandered through the classic streets in Chengdu looking for street food. Turned out to be a rainy evening, but we made it work. We managed to find a shelter just big enough to protect us from the downpour, and I was eating the little bit of street food I had managed to buy. I was fine. I told them I didn't need to eat that much. I have been eating quite well this week, and it doesn't hurt to eat a little lightly after all of that. But Mary was worried about me so she went out into the rain and bought a biscuit for me so that I would not go hungry.

Labels: Kindness, Travel Sichuan

I don't think anyone knows for sure when the "Back to Jerusalem" movement began, but it seems to have developed as an active movement by the 1940's. Phyllis Thompson, a CIM missionary stationed in Chongqing made the following observation in a prayer letter written in 1949:

"The thing that has impressed me most has been the strange, unaccountable urge of a number of different Chinese groups of Christians to press forward in faith, taking the gospel towards the west. I know of at least five different groups, quite unconnected with each other, who have left their homes in east China and gone forth, leaving practically everything behind them, to the west. Some are in Sikang [now western Sichuan], some in Kansu [Gansu Province], some right away in the great northwestern province of Sinkiang [now Xinjiang] or Chinese Turkestan. It seems like a movement of the Spirit which is irresistible. The striking thing is that they are disconnected, and in most cases seem to know nothing about each other. Yet all are convinced that the Lord is sending them to the western borders to preach the gospel, and they are going with a strong sense of urgency of the shortness of the time, and the imminence of the Lord's return."

As far as I can tell, the "Back to Jerusalem" movement seemed to have three characteristics:

1. It involved separate groups and individuals who, as Phyllis Thompson observed, did not know each other, but seemed to have gotten the same vision at the same time.
   

   
   

2. It was based on the belief that the development of what we often call the "Great Comission" has historically moved in a primarily westward direction, beginning with the missionary journeys of Paul, and moving into Europe, down into Africa and across to the Americas, and finally to Asia.
   

   
   

3. Last, and most important, is the belief that God has given to the Chinese people the responsibility to "complete the circle," bringing the gospel through the Moslem world on the way back to Jerusalem.
   

At any rate, during the forties, several different groups of missionaries began move toward the northwest. One of these missionaries was a man by the name of Simon Zhao.

Simon Zhao's involvement with the "Back to Jerusalem" movement began one winter day as he entered the prayer tower of the old American Presbyterian Church in Mukden (now Shenyang), the capital of Manchuria. Tony Lambert, writing in China Insight, tells the story,

"One day when it was his turn to pray in the tower, he was still wrestling with this question, so he brought a large map with him. It had been snowing hard so he opened the door of the prayer-tower with some difficulty. Alone in the vast silence, he laid out the map and prayed.

"He was drawn to Xinjiang with its strange-sounding place-names. Was this the place the Lord had for him? The more he prayed, the more Xinjiang imprinted itself in his mind. But Xinjiang was far away, plagued with many political, religious and racial problems, so he could not help feeling afraid. But had he not placed himself on the altar? Had not Christ given up his life for him? He ceased to resist any longer.

"He married Wen Muling, a fourth generation descendent of a Qing dynasty first-rank imperial councilor. They both went to study at the Taidong Seminary in Nanjing. There they met two women from Jinan who shared their vision to preach the gospel in Xinjiang. Zhao was very moved and determined to go there. In 1949 he, his wife and the two sisters set sail up the Yangtze from Nanjing. They were seen off personally by Rev. Yang Shaotang, one of China's leading preachers. This raises the fascinating question as to how much Rev. Yang may have had a burden for the evangelization of the far Northwest and "Back to Jerusalem."

"China was torn apart by the civil war between Nationalists and Communists. Everywhere there were refugees. Uncle Simon had already prepared himself for suffering, even prison, so did not complain about the hardships of the journey. Eventually they reached Hami on the eastern edge of Xinjiang and joined members of the North West Evangelization Band who had arrived there a year or two previously..."

I began my own "Back to Jerusalem" journey yesterday morning when I boarded a plane for Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Province. I had bought a backpack for this trip. I am not a backpacker in the classic sense of the term, but I have found that a backpack is much less troublesome than a suitcase when traveling alone. Michael, my neighbor in the foreign teachers' dormitory, helped me adjust the thing so that the weight rests on my hips, and not on my back. I don't think it's a major issue, becuase I am not planning to walk from Mexico to Canada as he did, but he is right that one should keep weight off the back as much as possible. This is especially true in my case, because I do carry a few books with me, which tends to make my backpack a bit heavy.

The four hour flight to Urumqi was uneventful. I spent most of the time watching a movie about this guy who is trapped in the New York airport due to lack of proper documentation. When it got to the part where he was describing his mission to a seemingly missionless airline stewardess, I found myself struck by the futility of his mission, which was to obtain the autograph of a famous band leader for his father, who was not able to obtain it before he died.

But while his mission may seem futile, I guess you would have to say that it was at least noble, because it was done to honor someone who had passed on. And I couldn't help being impressed by his commitment to his mission, and by how clearly he saw and understood exactly what he wanted to accomplish. I hate to use a secular film to illustrate a spiritual truth, but I think we can see from this movie, that a missionary is defined by the clarity of his vision, the quality of his mission, and the depth of his commitment to it.

Joy (one of the translators at the Haidian church) had arranged for me to stay with her sister. Her sister had told me which bus to catch from the airport in order to get to her neighborhood. For some reason, that bus was not immediately accessible from the airport, so I took another one that was going to that particular part of the city. When I got off, I was still some distance from where I needed to be. Fortunately for me, a kind passerby asked me where I was going, so I called the number Joy's sister had given me, and the friend who was at her home told the guy where I needed to go. He found the bus for me, and insisted on riding with me to the right place, not leaving until he was sure I had met my party. I have always been impressed by the kindness of ordinary Chinese people, who go out of their way to help a complete stranger.

Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Province, has the distinction of being the farthest from any ocean of all the cities in the world. Pick any direction, and it is a very, very long drive to the beach. It is the quintessential inland city. And it was a welcome relief from the humidity of a Beijing summer. Everyone has their preferences, but I definitely prefer a dry climate, which is what Beijing is, most of the time. Fall, Winter and Spring, Beijing is very dry. But there is that one period during the summer, when the climate seems to reverse, and Beijing becomes a steam bath.

Xinjiang Province is the home of the Uygur minority, but Han Chinese are moving in fast, and Urumqi, as the capital city, is definitely dominated by the Chinese. It has become a popular choice for modern Chinese yuppies (Young Urban Professionals), because they can enjoy the "good life" of the city, at a cost which is quite a bit less than what it would cost them in Beijing or Shanghai.

Labels: Back to Jerusalem, Kindness, Xinjiang