Wednesday, April 10, 2002

From: Meg Thomsen meginchina@yahoo.com
Subject: Manman zhu!

Hello Friends and Family,

"I remember the first time I ate chocolate," Luo Lan said to us. "It was after my parents went to Beijing. They brought some back, and none of us had ever eaten it. My brother and I saved it, and ate it bit by bit. We thought that it was delicious and didn't want it to be gone. Things are different now. You can buy chocolate everywhere. And somehow, it's not as special."

How often do we buy a Snickers or Hershey's bar? Thirty seconds of gluttonous pleasure and it's gone. There is little to savor. Somehow, there is pleasure in that which is rare, that which we cannot often savor.

Luo Lan continued, "When I was a child, it was very difficult to travel. Now, the train is so cheap! Roads have been built all over China. As a child, I was thrilled to travel to the next village. Now, I often travel for my job, and it's lost its excitement."

Do you remember that feeling? I remember being five years old and standing next to Route 1A in North Beverly. It was the biggest road that I'd ever been on (and those of you who know it know that it's hardly a major thoroughfare!). I looked at the road, and the cars seemed to whiz by so quickly, and there were more than I'd ever seen before. I wanted to take the road to Show and Tell at kindergarten. Now, that road looks like just another road filled with strip malls and SUV. It's lost its beauty somewhere along the way.

Luo Lan finished, "How I wish that I could find that feeling again. Of being excited, of the feeling of newness."

The world is full of stunning vistas, glistening photos in the Sierra Club calendar, the kind of stuff of which that ballads are made. But sometimes it is the most common that is beautiful. I often meet travellers that somehow end up in the hinterlands of Sichuan province. They tell me about all of the things that they've "hit" in China. "Yeah, in the last two weeks, I hit the Great Wall and Xi'an. Then I hopped a plane to Chengdu and caught the Sichuan Opera, ate some mapo tofu, went to Du Fu's cottage and saw the pandas. Cute little buggers. Now I'm heading down to Yunnan to hike Tiger Leaping Gorge, climb Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, try to find Shangri-La and learn the art of Tao from a monk before I go home next Tuesday." I think that they're missing the point.

In Sichuan, when you leave a place, everyone says, "Manman zuo." This means, "Go slowly." Before you eat, they'll say, "Manman chi." This means, "Eat slowly." Now they've got the right idea. Perhaps all is not right in China. Living in a totalitarian society has got its drawbacks. But when I see a peasant sleeping happily in the back of a pick-up truck as it bounces down a dirt road, or watch the monk in Songpan invite every passer-by into his teahouse to drink yak-butter tea, I know that this "go slowly" philosophy is all right by me.

Don't get me wrong. Not all people are happy in Sichuan. Free expression is highly censored, the news is a joke, someone from the Public Security Bureau is probably reading this e-mail right now. But there are moments, moments of such pure and shining happiness. "What are you doing?," Andy said to his neighbor. "Meditating!" said his neighbor as the sunshine shone on his bald head.

Tomorrow, Julie, John, Andy will take the five hour boat ride from Chongqing to Wanxian for an Earth Day festival with some other volunteers. Julie and I will continue on to the Three Gorges. We'll watch as the bubbling and brown waters of the Yangtze surround our boat. Hours and hours of countryside stretching out before us.

Manman zhu. Anju le ye. Live slowly, in peace and contentment.

Meg

P.S. Last weekend, we gave a Project WET and PLT (Project Learning Tree) teacher training in Mian Yang for teachers interested in learning environmental curricula. Joanne set up a photo album. Check it out!