Eight Thoughts From the Silk Road
Byron Au Yong is a composer and performer based in Seattle. He was nominated by the Wing Luke Asian Museum to be part of the Dragon 100, a yearly delegation of overseas and mainland Chinese leaders who are under the age of 35.
This essay started as an attempt to answer questions about my cultural heritage, yet my relationship with being Chinese continually changes. To definitively codify my identity as “Chinese American” with predetermined sets of cultural characteristics is disingenuous. At times I feel like a scholar, at other times a punk. I am as varied as the musicians I listen to or the authors I read. With this in mind, I write an essay that attempts to escape the confines of false conclusions to enter the ever-expanding space of continued dialogue. Together, we can begin to grasp, if not define, heritage and identity through our commonalities and differences.
My thoughts jumps from place to place. Conclusions contradict. Personal ruminations mix with poems, anecdotes, and asides. Ideas truncate mid-sentence defying completeness. In short, this essay is a mess, at times distasteful, at times elegant, sometimes befuddling, but hopefully clear as a tactic to encapsulate the complexity I feel surrounding my Chinese heritage.
1. Bronze Mirrors at the Shaanxi History Museum
When does a child first realize they are alone? Is it when she hears, “look at the Chinese girl,” from a parent at the playground? Is it when his Auntie finds him eating pizza instead of rice? Or perhaps it is when the entire group turns away, covering their noses at the smell of something dirty.
Unable to see
the boy paws
the Plexiglas
leaving fingerprints,
an indecipherable hieroglyphic.I watch him search for his face,
in this museum where black mat floors
puddle from the water of
pipes hidden above the ceiling,
wet condensation from the dripping air-con.“This is your heritage,”
the gallery laughs
each drop of water
like blood from
a punctured vein
that slowly bleeds.The boy’s fingerprints
become an oval maze,
cold miniature lines I decipher
to find my Chinese self
in the bronze mirror.
2. Museum of Qin Terra-Cotta Warriors and Horses
“Questions?” The tour guide asks at the end of each explanation. She knows dates and artifacts. I’m too embarrassed to ask about my feelings of loss.
Ask the farmer. He found that clay head in his water-well bucket. The clay head, that upturned the earth to reveal an army, changed the farmer’s life.
The old guy smokes a pipe and smiles. He’s getting stoned. He smiles and forgets. Entering bliss, he takes a break from signing books translated into over a dozen languages about clay warriors and horses. Look past his distant gaze and move on.
In the gift shop, the tail comes off this horse and the head from that warrior; easy portability for tourists with carry-on luggage.
I handle the replicas in a dream or was it a nightmare? Farmers, with no more land, sell warrior after warrior, horse after horse, a never-ending phalanx of clay figurines. What do they eat for food when their water has turned to mud?
I secretly smile at the enormity of this archaeological site, yet how can I be proud of being Chinese where thousands were slaughtered for the glory of one? How can I be proud of a place that forces farmers to kowtow with figurines made of polluted dirt? How can I be nourished by this mass grave?
$2. For you, overseas Chinese guy, only $2.
When did I become a tourist in my ancestral home? Like the obese European photographer, my stomach starts to bulge from over-eating at every meal. Shameful.
3. Tour Bus
(Lost in thought…)
Pigs stare quietly
from the holding pen
of the truck.On the bus
tourists chatter noisily
until one passes out
from the air-con mixed with
the stale taste of pork fat
from breakfast.
My seatmate speaks to me,
“The other coach has the Putonghua speaking tour guide.”
“Oh,” I exhale.
(I stare out the tour bus window. My elbow pushes the scratchy blue curtain aside. I see the bus with the Chinese-speaking guide and resolve to hang out with the other delegates as much as possible, even though my Putonghua is basic.
After all, language is an intangible cultural asset, and while Putonghua will be around for a long time, I want to feel the nuances of being with native Chinese speakers.
I resolve that my future partner will be Chinese speaking. Love? Oh no. All becomes chaotic.)
4. Aurum International Hotel, Xi’an
What I eat in a day
could feed 100 people.
What I see in one hour
could inspire 100 lives.How did I become so lucky
to be descended from a dragon,
to be fed and clothed
with a wooden comb for my black hair?How can I lift this fork and feel blessed
when children come to the hotel window
hungry ghosts all waiting to be fed?When my bones are brittle and my breath is cold
acid raindrops from the dark grey sky
beat the drum tower down to red splinters.I crawl towards a tiny bird
to warm the blood in my veins
with fire from her flapping wings.
5. Xi’an Jiao tong University
Lip speak.
“We are proud of our Chinese heritage.”
Lip speak.
Proud of what? The students sing American pop songs as thank-you gifts to us delegates. One girl tries to sound like Karen Carpenter:
“But they’re back again
just like a long lost friend
all the songs I loved so well…”
I walk out.
An anthem from the past
echoes through
the hollow auditorium.Hands raise a salute
of the mimed cigarette lighters
with sputtering flames.
Lip speak.
“We are proud of our Chinese heritage.”
Lip speak.
Chinese heritage, my ass. This phrase rings empty like the shell of a grenade. Lip speak exploding.
6. Xi’an Drum Tower
Hope.
Bryan: a delegate from the United States helped start a business called TerraCycle. He and his friends liquidized worms to feed plants. They packaged this organic fertilizer into used plastic bottles and sold them throughout North America. Even Wal-Mart carries TerraCycle.
From the Drum Tower, Bryan snaps photos of the pollution in Xi’an. In his camera, digital stills of smog alternate with smiling Chinese in suits.
It became like this: me running off to find other places to photograph.
My paternal grandparents, founders of a school, burned photographs of teachers to protect their colleagues. I think about these charred photos decomposed in the dirt of the mountains where my father was born to refugees, as I try to stand a bit taller while posing for another photo. In front of the Xi’an government building, I want to shrink from embarrassment. Will someone burn these Dragon 100 photos someday?
11th photo op
of an old man with cigarette
who stares at the camera
while the tea pot bleeds.His ashes surround two cups —
cracked blue and white porcelain.Above a Mao jacket
his eyes declaim:
Good morning, Young Dragons.
Zhao an, Xiao Long (早安, 小龍).
I run to a dirt road, but can’t find worms. Where is Bryan? TerraCycle, TerraCycle. My lungs fill with blackness.
Behind my eyelids, I find my grandparents as young teachers. Their smooth skin and shining eyes welcome me. Be careful what you inherit, they admonish. Be careful what you pass on to the next generation. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a memory is priceless.
I reach to touch them and pass out. My mouth fills with dust.
Hope. The Chinese drummers play.
Hope. I like wearing red.
Hope. Bryan applauds the drumming.
Hope. We leave the Tower energized.
Hope. We are the next generation.
7. Xi’an Airport
In the Xi’an airport at midnight
unattended baggage waits
in the empty load/unload zone.A body becomes the testing ground
for paperwork between countries.
(I take photos of our luggage all lined up, tagged and ready for the hotel. Annie is still stuck in immigration while the other delegates eat noisily in the airport restaurant. I stand outside with the luggage taking photos, and then remember that photographs are forbidden in Chinese airports. I make my way to dinner.)
Concrete encased flowers learn not to cry out.
Just bloom a pretty purple fed by sugar water.
(Pass the Sprite. Wow, the Korean pop star on the can is so sexy.)
8. Another Chinese Banquet
I turn the clanging utensils and dishes down in my mind’s ear to silently scan the room. I have never been around so many Chinese people from around the world. I want to remember this image without sound as a quiet painting called Crowd of Unsure Grins.
These are the next generation of not just global Chinese leaders, but parents. Will their children be Hong Kong educated like Stanley and Samuel? American educated like Liz? Australian educated like Jen and Jason? Will they speak Putonghua like Eric, Tieng Viet like Niem, or Tagalog like Aizza? Will they give their children Chinese and English names? Or choose one like Gary did? Will they sing Do-Re-Mi, Long de Chuan Ren (龙的传人 Descendents of the Dragon), both, or make up new songs?
Delegate and staff faces vary: some have full lips, others thin. I notice gradations of black hair: some matte, some shiny. Noses range from flat to pointy. I see my cousin’s eyes in one and my uncle’s walk in another. Looking in the mirror, I smile and notice how I look like each of them, yet hold my own.
I reflect on these faces and the countless other Chinese faces outside of this banquet hall. I realize that to be Chinese is to be unique. All this time, I thought the answer was unification, but now I realize that our different backgrounds, accomplishments, regrets, aspirations, origins, beliefs, disappointments, and birthplaces are our heritage.
“Include without silencing” becomes my mantra. I open my ears to let the noisy din of the banquet refill my head. In the past noisy Chinese people embarrassed me, but now I know that these multiple sounds provide possibilities beyond comprehension. I just hope that my great-great-grandchildren’s children will inherit a world where they can be as excited about the future.
China becoming an economic superpower during the 21st century is inevitable. The potential buying power of the billion-plus-and-growing population is enormous. China has no choice.
Chinese individuals however have choices, perhaps too many. We can stuff ourselves at a banquet or eat responsibly. We can talk about how we are going to party tonight or discuss solutions to pollution and poverty.
The round banquet table center tray spins and points. Are you a global citizen concerned about the world or a Chinese leader interested in your own comfort?
Which way should I go? The crisscrossing paths of the Silk Road surround me. Before I reach my chopsticks out, I take a moment to remember the dirty, shameful, chaotic, lucky, exploding, priceless, sexy Dragon 100 Tour and, for a moment, realize that I am proud of the uncertainty at what it means to be Chinese.
Author’s Note: “Eight Thoughts From the Silk Road” was initially written in August 2006, then edited in various versions on my blog in September and November, before it appeared in the International Examiner in March 2007.
Essay in the International Examiner, Vol. 34, № 6, on March 21, 2007, page 8–9. See IE Archives at iexaminer.org/archives
