MTP - I Am The Lightning

Tis' a very strange feeling to touch a keyboard again.

I'm back. Travel stained, vastly. Light in the head, full of sympathy for myself for needing to go back to work tomorrow. It has been a amazing trip, for an urbanite like me.

Day One was plainly travel. Flew three hours to Hong Kong for a two hour transit. Upon passing through the customs, a mob was heard shouting in unison. Apparently a tour of China folks was struck in the airport, probably transiting too, due to delayed flights. They crawled up to a thick line and patrolled around the airport, yelling in chants demanding that they want to go home. It was almost like a demonstration. This is interesting enough for HuiLing and me as such demonstrations were prohibited in both China and Singapore. Such zest and abundance in expression of personal space and freedom!

Then we realised we are too struck for an extra hour in the airport which according to calculation forced us to cancel our trip to visit HL bestie and to spent a day in Beijing.

People had asked me how I felt about this trip. I just waved them off and grunted that I wasn't supposed to enjoy this trip as meeting the parents and the rest of the family was all about judgement and scrutiny. Furthermore, I wasn't groomed to socialise. I often behave awkwardly around people and reluctant to make contact. To triumph such judgement would require me to be outwardly reaching and jovially geared. Tis' a challenge. Seeing that we need to delay another day to see her parents was somewhat welcoming.

Flew another four hours to Beijing. The most interesting discovery of the day's worth was how much I loved airports. A constellation of nationalities and backgrounds intersecting between seas of plastic waiting seats, colors alternating at each junctions of illuminating signboards overhead and its ever fear clouded meticulously in sterile security. There is a breath of quiet desperation inside the doors that separated us from the metallic monstrous flight birds in ushering the flocks of both weary and eager travellers lost in the vastness of nowhere and everywhere.

I liked how airports reminded me of my ever quest to attempting to dye and cross-stitch stories and characters' lives, intravenous and intertwined into a beautiful mess. The shuffle of feet and trolleys, the fleeting sights of duty-free shops peddling untaxed alcohol, cigars and leather-bags. There is certainly no suspense nor mystery in these places, for it's most intriguing beauty is probably this is the place, that frame where all the magic begins and dies simultaneously.

Found a motel around Beijing airport for RMB235, showered and hit the sacks.

Day Two, we needed to travel by coach to a place interestingly called 公主坟 (Princess Tomb). Two princesses or Ge Ge were buried in the east and the west. Both had died very young. According to the traditional laws back then, married princesses weren't allowed to be buried with their parental cometary nor could they be buried with their in-laws, so a special area had to be located where the princesses could rest forever.

Unlike the confined roads in Singapore, the traffic space in Beijing was wide and plenty of rooms to drive. The mainframe of Beijing traffic spanned out in circles amidst its heart on the map. It had five Ring Roads with the first closer to the central of Beijing and the 5th (Olympic Avenue) encircling ten kilometres away.

Arriving at 公主坟, we bought bus tickets for the night route as the ride would exhaust almost ten hours, so it would be better if we had slept through the journey. We have half a day to kill, so we decided to leave our baggage at the service counter and tried to navigate Beijing public buses to Tiananmen and Gugong.

Old school grenade!

So we found ourselves with a Beijing map all sticky with Cherry Candy (冰糖葫芦) and our confounded sense of direction, usually good but totally offset at a foreign land. There were several bus stops at a corner of a street and more around the bends. We had to ask around to get on the right bus.

And we reached Tiananmen in afternoon. The sky were ever barren grayish in Beijing's horizon, apparently due to the pollution, its air cooling to the skin unlike what HL had so perilously warned about. Probably due to the excitement of seeing the famous Mao's portrait, I took off my coat and made haste.

My fascination with Communism started when I couldn't understand why Korea was divided when I had read the news in my Poly years. In those days, Alfred and I were feverish in conversations of Communism. Can Communism work? Can Communism last? Although now we are no longer in speaking terms, we were still fascinated with Communism in our own separate ways. His was in North Korea and mine was with North Vietnam. Singapore had its own battles (the fiercest) against World Communism in its developing years and in fact PAP won its elections with the Malayan Communists backing Lee Kuan Yew, in which he had turned to rid them in Cold Store. Though China had relaxed and lost the spots and traits of its communism in today's world, nevertheless it was breathtaking to visit a land where Mao's red democracy had strike to the veins and hearts of China's earlier generations.

I was so glad I wore my 'Obey' T-shirt for this shot.

After the tour through Tiananmen and Gugong, HL decided to show me the Orchard Road of Beijing - The Shopping Street Of 王府井. The weather was wearing us down as the country's autumn had gotten colder. As we strolled along the wispy crowd of tourists and shopping centers, Beijing was getting dreamier as the evening approached where the sight could not fathom beyond the fog. It was as if the world was flat and we were all walking towards the fall. The air pollution in Beijing contributed largely to the looming haze that devoured the entire skies of clouds and the sun. My nose boogies were black, for crying out loud. According to the news report in Beijing's broadcasting while we were cramped in the evening bus ride back to the bus station, there was apparently an Air Quality Report that indicated the levels of air pollution and its danger posed to mortal health.

My one hand photoshooting's getting acer.

The only church we see in our trip.

In that night, we made it just in time for our ten hour bus ride to her village 朝阳坡村 (Chaoyangpo). The coach was campy and had installed a television overhead which looped loud and crackly 小品 (Skits) and 相声 (Crosstalk) throughout the entire twilight. The coach had stopped every few hours at the petrol stations where we could used the toilets or purchased some ice teas and cup noddles. The coach had also broke down on several occasions, delaying the journey in our fitful sleep perturbed by the howling noises from the television.

Apparently Chaoyangpo village was so remote that there was no road built into it. It appeared that the coach had to dump us at a cross section of the expressway and there, hopefully we could taxi a ride to Chaoyangpo village in the dawning hours then.

With each toilet breaks and each breakdown of the vehicle, we gotten down the bus to stretch our legs to discover that it was growing fiercely colder each stop. I had looked into the dark wildness and felt nothing but anxiety over meeting her folks. Before we came, she was worried about the culture shock that I would be facing. I wondered if drastic adaptation would be required and tried to imagine a world that I could believe in Chaoyangpo village. The biting freeze and the hazy wildness told me nothing.

Rolling my fists as I hacked a chilling cough into them, I pulled up my collar and got back into the bus. It sped red blurry into an oblivion of her mysterious birthright.

The photojournal of this entry can be found here.

This entry is part one of a four-part travelogue.