Last Solo Excursion in Xi'an

Last Sunday was the last trip I would be taking into Xi'an and environs -- this time. I decided to touch base with my Taoist leanings and go to Ba Xian An, or the monastery of the Eight Immortals.

I have had some contact with other Meiguoren interested in the Eight Immortals, particularly a tai chi teacher in the Boston area, so it was kind of cool to make this, um circle, no pun related to yin yangs intended.

I threw all caution and some Yuan to the wind and hailed a cab to get there. I have been taking cabs with Y and buses on my own, fearing somehow that I would ripped off as a white female if I was by myself. However for this trip, I wasn't sure which buses to take and the internet was vague on that point. I did know about where the place was, so when i got into the cab and told the driver where I wanted to go, I figured I could "do something" if I was being led on a Wild Goose chase. (Like what, given my limited Chinese? Say some key phrases? : "Not here! There!" "Yes, I would like tofu!" "Stop driving""My bicycle is not expensive!"" I teach history. " "Thank you, I am only a student of Mandarin. " "I am enjoying Xi'an" "The food is very spicy here!""Everything I do, I do for the People." ) The cab ride was about 30 minutes, but I know Xi'an enough to know that in fact the guy wasn't driving around willy nilly. The ride cost about $3 American. OK.

Outside the temple, you could see dozens of vendors with their wares on blankets or in stalls, and you had to walk through this to get to the temple itself. It was a little like one of the large temples in Tokyo where there was a giant bazaar at its doorstep as well, but this was, as Y would say Chinese "style", dustier, older, edgier in a way. I was also reminded as I was in Japan about the money changers and the sellers of animals for sacrifice outside the Great Temple in Jerusalem like the Bible describes. (Earlier in my time here, I read Anne Rice's Christ the Lord and she wonderfully describes this scene as Jesus first sees it as a boy.) I am sort of digressing I guess, but the intensity of the commerce outside this temple dedicated to the Tao was a little incongruous, I would say.

It has been fun to speak the Mandarin I do know when I get a chance, but occasionally if I do speak, it opens a torrent of Chinese from whomever I am speaking to. For example, as I walked through this bazaar, people would pick up things and show them to me. I have gotten beyond "Bu yao" which means literally "Don't want" to "How does that work?" for example, when one guy showed me a sort of trick lock made out of brass. He went on about something, but did show me. Y thinks people are surprised a white person would know any Chinese and also that my pronunciation is understandable. This is good, but it also means I have to manage the energy of interacting with people a lot. This also can be very good, but it means I am not anonymous, although I stand out here no matter what, especially in non-touristy areas.

The Chinese concept of personal space is very different than what we are used to. People will tug on you, hand you things, and stand very close. If they bump into you, they do not say "Excuse me" usually and if they want to get past you, they just move you out of the way. They do this to each other; it isn't just a thing they do with foreigners. I took some pictures with the video camera, and this old guy just came up behind me and looked over my shoulder to see what I was recording. He didn't even try to pretend that he wasn't doing that. So, you can't just stop to look at something without an interaction. I have also learned to say "Just looking, thank you". Though one woman said, "Look at this!" and then handed me something. But I wasn't in buying mode.

The temple was quite a contrast energetically -- very peaceful with many halls for prayer and incense vats. A fair amount of people were there praying and it looked like the monastery had an active membership of male and female monks. In the back garden, they had a rock walkway where they had created a stone ying yang and the eight trigrams of the I Ching. Many of the doorways were octagonal as well. The temple had been renovated by the Empress CiCi as she used it hide from people at one point and it had many intact steles and statues. In the hall of the Eight Immortals, a young monk was on duty and he talked to me, I am guessing because he was bored sitting there. He showed me how to pray and kowtow, asked my nationality. He was very nice, really just a young guy who seemed like he was glad to see something different at his post.

Once I finished there, I wanted to go to the Muslim area to get something to eat, and thought I would hail a cab again. But for the life of me, I could not come up with the name of the street, so I said "Mosque?" "Muslim quarter?", in English and the guy didn't know any English. But before I could pull out the dictionary, he said, "Wait," in Chinese and pulled out his cellphone. He then called some woman and said in Chinese, "Speak." So I told her in English I wanted to go to the Mosque or the Drum Tower, and she said in English, "I understand your meaning. Give phone to driver." So, I handed it back, and he listened for a second, then said to her, "Dui, Dui, Dui, so, so, so," which roughly means, "Gotcha" and we drove off. He was a very nice guy, you could just tell that really, and I thought that whole thing he did was very clever. I wonder who the woman on the phone was!

It was fun to be back in familiar territory actually, and it was also one of the nicest days weather wise we have had. The area was much more crowded than the day we were there with the kids, however, and I made my way down past the largest numbers of people to a restaurant where they were cooking outside. I had lamb and what I thought was potatoes (I didn't ask), but was tofu and some bread. Again, about $2 American. The Chinese people paid me no mind, but a white guy came into the place at one point with his girlfriend and we just stared at each other for a second. "Ni hao!" I said. He laughed and said, "Ni Hao!" His girlfriend found the place unsuitable as there were "No spare tables," and pulled him out of there. I hope someone clues them in on the "If There's a Seat, Sit in It, Even if There Are Other People At The Table" Rule that applies in these sort of eateries.

I wandered a bit. There were two Italian women trying to find the Mosque, and I had watched them unsuccessfully ask a Chinese woman first in Italian and then English, so I just went up to them and offered to point them in the right direction. (In English) They'd tried an alley someone had suggested, but it was closed off and had construction work in it. It was nice to be able to tell them another way. I had remembered this place from '04, and this was the third time I had been in the neighborhood this trip, so I felt like an old hand.

Then, I was done. I walked back up to the main street to a taxi stand. The first driver didn't want to drive out to where the school is I guess, but the second guy didn't mind, so I got back to school in one piece.