In the Land of Confucian -- Foreigners in China

Week 15 (December 5, 1997) -- In the Shadow of Jiuhua, Part 5

by Scott Urban

Introduction: Scott Urban went to China in 1994 to work at the China Daily newspaper in Beijing, where he stayed until 1997. While in China, Scott contracted a severe form of bicycling mania, which manifested itself in his 6,000-kilometer bicycle journey to Xinjiang in 1995 with friend Brice Minnigh.

In the Fall of 1996, Scott Urban and another friend William Lindesay spent every weekend possible cycling to the Great Wall of China to find lost sections of the Wall, with nothing more than curiosity, bicycles, and a map of the greater Beijing area.

This Jiuhua story was written in April 1995 about Scott's brother Pat's visit to China, their unusal encounters with Chinese people. The story begins in the middle of that visit. Jiuhua is one of China's four sacred Buddhist mountains (the other 3 being Pu Tuo in Zhejiang, Emei in SIchuan and Wutai in Shanxi). Jiuhua is located in Anhui Province, East China. In its heyday there were more than 300 monastaries around Jiuhua Mountain.

Scott currently resides in Denver, Colorado, USA, and is involved in a number of China-related projects. He can be reached at scott.urban@dacg.com .

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[Continued from last week]

Morning broke and with it the brushing-of-teeth ritual. Chang’s mother brought out the water and Chang, his four-year-old son, elder brother, my brother and I stood arrayed outside, agitating the toothbrushes in our mouths. Chang and his kid went at it with such vigor that I wondered what kind of gums they’d be left with in a few years.

The extended family slowly gathered in the front room. I told Chang my brother and I would be continuing our trek that morning and would have to say good-bye. He accepted it and pressed us to at least have breakfast before doing so.

Chang’s wife disappeared to get things started, and he led us outside the front door into the bright morning sun. Now we had a better view of the village, and of most interest, the surrounding mountains.

The breakfast preparations afforded us some time to have a morning stroll. Chang led us up the hillside into the farmland and pointed out various crops, he and his boy singing a folk tune called, "It’s not raining, it’s not windy, there’s a sun in the sky." I took note of the fresh air, air so clean I had forgotten there was such a thing. Looming over it all was a sizable mountain.

"That’s Jiuhua," Chang said.

Even though we’d abandoned the Jiuhua plan, there it was. Waiting for us. That’s the one for us, Pat and I decided.

Chang turned onto a foot trail through the bright-green cropland. "Would you like to see our plot?" he asked.

We arrived at a small area of ground with assorted vegetables sprouting forth. He explained it was just for the family’s consumption and wouldn’t be sold at market, though that option is available to China’s farmers today, one part of the agricultural reform initiated by Deng Xiaoping at the close of the 1970s. That reform allowed farmers to grow whatever they liked after producing mandatory quotas of staple grains and selling these to the state at below-market value. Agricultural productivity exploded.

We turned onto a trail back to the village.

"What do you want your son to be when he grows up?" I asked Chang.

"I want him to make his own decision," he said, then thought for a moment. "But to be a doctor would be a very great honor."

Throughout our travels, people expressed admiration for Pat’s profession. They consider it estimable in part, no doubt, because doctors earn less than a factory worker in a successful venture.

Chang’s wife called to us from the foot of the hill, down at the edge of the village. We headed back for breakfast.

Before leaving them I was obliged to fulfill an older woman’s request issued the night before: to ask my brother about a medical problem. Using my dictionary, I had translated the symptoms as best I could the night before: uterus, lining, itching, burning. I asked Chang to call for the woman.

In front of the assembled family and a growing number of neighbors, Pat began the diagnosis, emphasizing that she must seek a Chinese doctor as soon as possible.

It was difficult because the woman spoke only the local dialect, which Chang translated into Mandarin, which I translated in English; and then the other way around. I had to stop the conversation often to look up words, and we had some pretty sensitive ground to cover -- and with an audience.

Pat began narrowing down the ailment. "Is she post-menopausal?" he instructed me to ask. No. "Is she with child?" No. "Is she using birth control?" Yes. "Is there pain in her stomach?" and so it went from Patrick to the woman, who soon said it was not her problem we were discussing.

My brother made some suggestions but stressed that he could not deliver a proper diagnosis under these circumstances and she should consult a Chinese physician as soon as possible.

With that task over with -- and not to be repeated, Pat insisted -- we were free to set off for Jiuhua Mountain. Chang led us back to town to catch a bus there. No motorcycle carts were out, so we walked on and on down the road to town. Trailing along was Chang’s wife on a bicycle, decked out in nice pants, silk blouse and fancy glasses complete with the sticker still attached to the corner of the lenses.

[To be continued]

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