“Cycle the river, feel wonder”

I love when adventures just arise. After lunch I started to walk along the river and almost immediately came across a little bike shop that was hiring bikes out for 5 yuan an hour – about $1.20/hr. I hired one and found myself on the only cycleway I have ever come across in China. Yichang 宜昌 seems to be on a bit of a health kick – they have a marathon coming up next month, they’re very proud of their cycleway and riverside development, and there were people swimming in the river at one point, next to what seems to be the equivalent of a lifesaving club. They had photographs of groups of them swimming across the river, about 600m at that point. In short, all of the ingredients are here for a triathlon, though I’m not sure swimming in the Yangtze is a great idea.

I crossed the first bridge I came to, the Yiling Yangtze Bridge 夷陵长江大桥. This involved first riding my bike up about 10 ramps to get to the top of the bridge, and then across it, right next to the not-so-high guard rail. It was a little unnerving at first, but not really very scary. I rode across to the other side and looked around a little monument park there. Established in 2002, it is dedicated to China-Japan friendship – not something you expect to see in China. After I rode back over the bridge and continued a little further there was another monument memorialising the Yichang Evacuation 宜昌大撤退铭文, in the face of Japanese invasion in the autumn of 1938. When the Japanese took Wuhan, thousands of people and goods were sent up the Yangtze to Yichang, and then when it looked likely that Yichang would also be taken, people and things were sent further up the river to Chongqing. The monument suggests that Yichang is very proud of the role it played in saving thousands of lives and important items and goods, and is also a tribute to the many lives lost during that time. The memorial actually states that the Yichang Evacuation “is as renowned as the Battle of Dunkirk in France”.

There were all kinds of monuments and sculptures, and a traditional pagoda, along the riverfront. But most interesting was just watching all the people. There were countless groups of old people clustered along the park playing cards, and many gathered together playing traditional Chinese instruments and singing. I came across several photographic shoots – one child portraiture, one wedding and two glamour shoots. There were cyclists of all kinds, a few joggers on the dedicated jogging track, a wide variety of walkers, and even a few people in wheelchairs (not a common sight in China, given the uneven state of footpaths in most places). I cycled nearly five kilometres up to the Zhixi Yangtze Bridge 至喜长江大桥, where the jogging and cycling tracks ended, and then came back again, mostly on the road side of the cycleway. I told the guy at the bike shop he should put an English language sign out the front so foreigners would be more likely to hire his bikes. He unconvincingly replied that he might do it one day.

It was just such an unexpected, enjoyable and leisurely afternoon, topped off by tea at the top of the Crowne Plaza, watching the life on the Yangtze slowly flow by. Another giant boatload of new cars has just docked opposite the hotel. We saw two similar boats yesterday. The demand for cars is high everywhere in China, and the Yangtze is an efficient way to get them out to western China.

Grief, wave number something

Rebecca is sick and has gone to see a doctor, with a suspected chest infection; Kirrily is ill in bed. Priscilla and Gretchen are looking after them. In short, our sightseeing plans for today have been cancelled. The little village we were going to visit, on a tributary of the Yangtze River, did look interesting when we floated past it yesterday. However it’s a fact that we haven’t had a day off since we left Australia, a fortnight ago tomorrow. We have been on the go every day and are all happy to step off the schedule, to take a day to replenish ourselves. 

There is nothing extra I can help Rebecca and Kirrily with, so I’ve caught a cab to the river. We passed the Crowne Plaza Hotel 皇冠假日酒店 yesterday, and I’ve returned here this morning, hoping to be able to drink tea and write while overlooking the Yangtze. According to the very friendly ‘Robert’, who welcomed me when I entered the hotel, this is possible on the 23rd floor, but not until 2pm. Meanwhile I’m happily ensconced in their breakfast restaurant. There’s no view, but it’s quiet and comfortable, and they have given me a complimentary coffee 咖啡. It did take a couple of people to work out how to use the coffee machine, but the result is better than passable, at least in the sense that it’s my first coffee in a fortnight. Robert has been to Perth, Melbourne and Sydney, through the Crowne Plaza chain of hotels, and he was keen to talk about Australia. He spoke in good English, but I realised halfway through our conversation that although he was speaking all in English, I was speaking all in Chinese. It’s just the way my brain has become accustomed to communicating with people here. I had to consciously switch to English. One other thing about ‘Robert’: his name tag actually says his name is Alex Hu. He said that his English name is Robert, however when a new manager came and his name was also Robert, reception Robert was told he would now be Alex. Just like that, a new identity, as if there were no other Roberts in the world.

Language is such an intriguing entity. I still think that there is just one language, that of communication, and that everyone just uses portions and subsets of it. Us six teachers usually speak English with each other, other times in Chinese, but mostly in English peppered with Chinese words and phrases, simply because our thoughts can be more easily or precisely expressed in one language or the other. Native bilingualism is such a precious gift: to know from birth that thoughts, objects and ideas are separate things from our capacity to communicate them, and that words are merely our best attempt to describe or ascribe a reality. I suspect that second (and multi) language learning is the next best way to understand this, and may even exceed the more utilitarian benefits of learning languages. Art also. I don’t know if I can bring this belief more into my pedagogy, at least at junior levels. Maybe I should try…

Grief, wave number something. With this trip I couldn’t have immersed myself into a more different experience than home in the last six months. I thought it might work, in terms of alleviating grief. The immediate torment of losing Mum has transformed into a cluster of hyper-real vignettes, the irrational responses to everyday events in the weeks after she died have ceased, and the acceptance that I will never speak with her again is in place. Kind of. Nights are difficult and I often wake, grasping for a memory of Mum so vivid just moments before, then weeping at its intangibility, its determination to evaporate despite my reaching for it. There’s a baseline melancholy, and a fluctuating sadness that, following moments of preoccupation when I become aware it has almost dissipated, immediately escalates and overwhelms me. I hear her voice all the time, a different voice or perspective, depending on which stage of her health or illness she’s speaking from. It’s a commentary on my daily meanderings, even here by the banks of the Yangtze, and it often sparks tears. I never brought Mum to China, and I should have. I guess by the time I realised that, it was way too late and she couldn’t leave Australia. And before long New South Wales, then Newcastle, then her nursing home, and then her bed. It’s just too cruel, the way life can rein you in before you realise you’ve got limited experiences ahead. I know there would be many things about China that Mum would not have liked: smoking, loud noise, dust and grime. But she also had an almost irritating capacity for optimism, and she would have appreciated the things I could show her here. Carpe diem. I need to lean in and listen more for life’s opportunities. Mum’s voice will always be with me if I lean in and listen, à la John Keating. [Dead Poets Society clip] A concept so crisply expressed in Latin, a language I should learn more of.

I have a choice: I can pretend to convince myself to let go of Mum, or I can keep riding the waves of grief until they calm. I choose the latter, even though I’m not very good at finding the words to describe it. Yet.