National Day

Today is the 59th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. 59 years ago Mao Zi Dong announced from atop the Gate of Heavenly Peace overlooking the tens of thousands of people who packed Tian An Men Square that the Communist Party had defeated the nationalists and a new nation had been born. We will discuss the magnitude of this event with our students when they return to class. Many of them have left Kunming to travel with their host families. One is in a village near the border of Myanmar, another is in the ancient city of Dali, and two others are in the villages bordering the city at the weddings of relatives. I am in Kunming, enjoying a day to myself. 

I woke up late this morning and lay around drinking cups of instant Nescafe and figuring out if I should spend my day organizing the office in the instructor house or preparing my lessons for next week. I was flipping through my educator's resource guide when Lear came into the living room and told me that I should put down my book, forget about doing any work today and get out and spend this day of celebration out in the city. It was a good kick in the pants. I was hiding in the house and not really being in China, hibernating in a bit of culture shock.

So often we tell our students to challenge themselves- to get on a random bus and ride it until you have no idea where you are, get off, and find your way home. We tell them to do something everyday that pushes the limits of their comfort zone. I need to be better at telling myself those same things. Luckily, today, Lear did it for me. 

I wandered out my door and found myself at Yuan Tong Si, a Tang dynasty Buddhist temple. I paid my 4元 entrance fee ($.60) and entered an oasis. Bamboo groves line the walls of the temple grounds and porous rock pillars tower above ponds teeming with koi fish and turtles. Inscribed sutras gleam red from cliff faces pocked with small caverns, homes to golden Buddhas and porcelain Guan yin Bodhisattva's. Walking the slate paths, incense smoke swirls out from giant urns and curls around ankles and calves. I got lost here for several hours, listening to the drone of chanting and the shrieks of children trying to reach the turtles that sun themselves on pond edges- just out of arms reach. 

The brilliance of the red pillars and the greens and blues and fuchsias of the sweeping temple roofs would seem gaudy in Montana or Minnesota, but here they compliment the gold and orange flash of the koi fish, the vivid yellow-green of the bamboo groves and the grey-blue of the rock pillars. I watched families buy incense and burn candles, bow their heads at the feet of the meters tall golden Sakyamuni Buddha. Nuns in grey and monks in saffron swept the incense papers from the ground and tended pots of marigolds and petunias. 

Outside of the temple entrance, yi-ching fortune tellers shook their mugs of yin and yang sticks shouting their prowess and beggars displaying missing or misshapen limbs shook their mugs of coins, murmuring blessings. I took a left and walked until I didn't recognize my surroundings. I began taking rights and lefts depending on which blinking walk sign was in favor. Around one corner I found myself at the elementary school down the street from the program house where we have class. The school was empty of its throngs of uniformed children, now dispersed around the province spending the holiday with family. I walked up the street to the program house, eager to share my adventure with my home far away and my family overseas.