Journey to DongPingLe

Written on August 7, 2006

I stood there for a moment staring at the metal contraption attached to the back of JunE’s bicycle.  It resembled something akin to a miniature luggage rack and didn’t appear to be built to support the weight of anything much heaver than a bag full of groceries, certainly not a fully grown adult, but I had seen men twice my size cruise by seated on one of these inventions and I figured, they hadn’t died yet, so what the heck. 

The sky was winter white, the air was crisp, we had fifteen minutes of wind-chill ahead of us and, though I trusted JunE, I could easily imagine myself falling off of her bike and being promptly squashed under the tires of a passing car… 

“Don’t be silly!”  I told myself as she maneuvered her Giant around a row of parked motorcycles to a more suitable launching site. 

“This would be easier” I muttered to no one in particular, “if there weren’t so many people watching us.” 

I hadn’t thought much of it when I accepted the offer to learn how to sew.  I was extremely excited by the prospect of getting to spend time with JunE outside of the hotel’s microcosm of human nature, but I hadn’t placed a great deal of importance on the fact that I’d not seen anyone else from the Academy’s side of the wall being peddled around on the back of a local’s bike, or on the possibility that I could be one of the first foreigners invited to any of the homes in the area.  However, as JunE beamed at me, patting her “jump seat” encouragingly, and as the row of onlookers began to giggle and wave their goodbyes, I began to feel nervous. 

Pausing momentarily to make one last inspection of this extremely uncomfortable looking apparatus, I sighed, turned, backed onto the skeletal like frame, grasped anything I could lace my fingers through and held on for dear life as JunE, the bicycle and I began to gain momentum.

We were accompanied by the tiny little woman who came to the hotel every morning to wash dishes and, though my hands had instinctively found JunE’s sides when we bounced over the first of several bumps, the fact that I had not balanced my weight well and had been actively praying that I wouldn’t fly off the vehicle bringing serious injury, possibly death, to our little trio of travelers must have been readily apparent in the expression I was wearing because the tiny woman chuckled as she shouted something at a high enough volume to cause me to open my eyes for the moment necessary to see her gesturing for me to tighten up my grip.

Thankful that someone had given me permission to do so, I wrapped my right arm about JunE’s waist and placed my other hand on her left side to steady myself.  She laughed a bit, looked over her shoulder, said, “Mei shi, mei shi.” then continued to pump away towards our destination.

I didn’t know where we were going.  She lived in a village adjacent to XinChengPu and there seemed to be several of those.  Still, the simple shift in my positioning and the gentle nudging of JunE’s thigh against my arm each time the peddle would swing her leg upward helped me to settle into the rhythm of the bicycle comfortably enough that, after a further two or three minutes, I found myself able to look around at my surroundings.

The fields were yellowed and dampened by the misty air.  The trees, though often silhouetted reminded me of those which had surrounded the little community Rod and I had lived in as newlyweds.  Everything seemed to be a bit saddened by the weather; all of the colors were less vibrant than one would expect and every person we passed was dressed in black, brown, burgundy or dark blue, yet, always in the immediacy of my peripheral vision was JunE.

I’d only seen her out of uniform once prior to this.  She strode across the Lobby so quickly though, that memory barely served me with a vague impression of her as such.  When I’d picture JunE, I’d also picture the long-sleeved turquoise jacket which stood as a mark of her employment, but her coat of choice, the one she was wearing at present, was the color of dried roses. 

It felt warm and safe up against the washed out tones of the countryside and seemed to fit perfectly with the demeanor of its owner. 

She too stood out from the others around her.  Her hair had a bit more of a copper hue to it, her cheeks held more blush, though I knew she wasn’t wearing make-up, and her eyes were an ever-so-slightly lighter shade of brown than average.  She was breathtakingly beautiful and she wore her approximately fifty years with such remarkable grace that I found it difficult to believe I hadn’t noticed these things before, but she looked different in this environment.

The hotel seemed to drain something from her.  She didn’t smile as often there, nor did she look up much from her work.  She seemed shy and a little unhappy when filtered through the screen of that heartless Lobby, but out here, her features shone with benevolence.  She appeared contented.  She appeared strong…

We had been traveling along two-lane, fairly active roads for the better half of ten minutes, but, soon enough, we made a right turn onto a single-lane paved, but narrow street framed on either side by fallow fields and the occasional brick structure whose purposes I could not have guessed.

JunE pointed straight ahead at a small jumble of houses huddled together in the mist and I realized that this must be DongPingLe. 

Everything about the place intrigued me.  It was so different from anywhere I’d been before, but it felt familiar in the way which China itself had felt like home.  I loved it and knew that I would come to cherish the memory of any time spent there.

We parted ways with our traveling companion at the first cross-street.  A few moments later, JunE steered us onto a narrow little road tracing a path in the opposite direction of the wider street to our right which seemed to lead towards whatever form of down town this community called its own. 

After passing a few doors I felt our momentum begin to slow to a halt.  There before me, positioned a bit further from the road than the other houses and set into a cement wall, stood a huge iron gate.  On either side of the gate were two enormous tiles on which were painted murals in the traditional Chinese style.  All of these details were framed in Chestnut colored woodwork and, cut into the iron gate, was a smaller door which stood open.  It was through this door JunE pushed her bike, beckoning me to follow. 

Upon entering the courtyard, I stopped dead in my tracks and stood in silent awe of my surroundings.  The buildings were tiled, but trimmed in burgundy.  All of the outer windows were of an almost pale cobalt hue and the front entrance was painted a beautiful shade of deep red.  There was a secondary building to my right which, at present, appeared to be serving as a place of storage though I doubted that was its primary function.  Some large vases, flower pots etcetera were stacked in the narrow space between this building and the living quarters.  To my left I observed a large mound of coal piled opposite of a structure in the far corner of the courtyard. This, I concluded, was the restroom.

I followed JunE through the front doors and again found myself momentarily unable to move as the beauty of my surroundings overwhelmed me.

To either side of us ran a long, white-washed hallway.  Parallel to the front doors stood a secondary entrance almost identical in design to its predecessor.  These opened up into the Living Room. 

On the far wall hung a giant photograph of a waterfront whose location was I was unfamiliar with.  The wall to my right was bare, but spanning the breadth of the wall to my left was a mirror around which had been draped a garland of silken sunflowers.

The furniture was a dark mahogany in color as was the door leading off to the more functional areas of the dwelling.

Her house was one of the loveliest homes I’d ever been in and, before I knew it, I found myself ushered into a chair and fetched a glass of something hot to drink.

Directly across from me, sitting next to JunE was an extremely handsome middle-aged man who she had pointed to, smiled at, and then pointed towards herself in indication that this was her husband. 

He didn’t look particularly Asian to me for some reason, but they complimented each other well, and I found it very easy to believe they’d spent the past twenty-five years together.  They fit.  Everything fit and it didn’t matter that I couldn’t speak to them, because, somehow, I also fit into this picture.

JunE had told me that her neighbor would be the one to demonstrate how to cut the cloth, since she didn’t have the patterns memorized. 

I had tried not to build any expectations, but when this short, round little woman with a wide smile, dark eyes and deep laugh lines etched around the contours of her face entered the Cui home, I couldn’t have stopped myself from smiling if I’d wanted to.

She wore a grey vest over a black and white striped sweater which had come slightly untucked from the waistband of her brown floral embroidered slacks.  Her shoes were made of canvas and everything about her seemed to be characteristic of the Chinese culture I’d been taught about in elementary school.

She seemed as amused with my presence as I was with hers, but I sensed no hostility tangled with her curiosity.  In fact, her nature appeared to be that of one with a very kind heart and I liked her. 

She pulled a stool from the corner and sat down across the living room at a slight angle from me.  The three of them buzzed in and out of conversation for a while, but, eventually, the lesson began.

A manually powered sewing machine was lugged out from somewhere in the depths of the house and placed, facing the court yard, at the far left corner of the front hall.  Fabric was laid on the bed in the room where the lesson was to be held.  I was given a stool, a good view of JunE’s neighbor as she showed me, one step at a time, how to fold the material, how to mark it, and what shapes to cut from it. 

When she was finished with the scissor work, she checked my notes, corrected a few things, but grinned as she said something to JunE which, in turn, caused a broad smile to stretch across her features.

I was shown how to stitch the pieces together and how to quilt the legs of the outfit in an almost invisible, yet effective way.  Those two women taught me an amazingly vast amount of techniques in a staggeringly short period of time and it was all accomplished without the use of words.  Everything was demonstrated. 

Occasionally JunE would reach out in much the same way as a parent teaching a small child how to write and guide my hands through the proper procedure, but mostly I sat there on my stool completing one stitch to her twenty, trying not to stab myself with the needle. 

When six o’clock snuck up on us, she invited me to dinner, but I’d promised Rod I’d be home in time to help him put the kids in bed, so I declined. 

Our tiny traveling companion, I soon learned, was supposed to give me a lift home, but, try as she might, she couldn’t balance with me on her bike.  

JunE fetched her sienna toned overcoat, motioned for me to tuck in my scarf, patted the miniature luggage rack on the back of her bike as if to say, “Hop on” then peddled her way out of DongPingLe with me in tow.

Throughout the duration of our return trip, I couldn’t stop smiling.  The evening sun had burnt off some of the mist and the golden rivulets of light which were steadily fading into burgundy again filled the landscape with beauty. I sat there with my arms around JunE’s waist, steadying myself, but no longer afraid, wondering if this span of a few hours would, in time, prove to be a pivotal moment in my life.  I felt different; I felt changed somehow...

I wanted to thank her, but knew I didn’t have the words.  I wanted to tell her I thought her house was beautiful and that her being brave enough to open her door to me meant more to me than I could possibly describe.  There was so much I wanted to say, but we had spent an entire afternoon proving that words were grossly overrated and it seemed inappropriate to encroach upon such an experience, so, as we turned the corner of the main road which led to the airport, I tightened my arms around her a little more and allowed the side my head to rest against her back for a moment.

She chuckled a bit, reached down, gave my arm a loving pat, and we rolled through the remainder of the journey in a warm, astoundingly eloquent silence.   

Mei shi - In this case, "Don't worry about it" or "That's alright"