Another one of those things that I miss quite a bit, although not as much as I do with our dogs, is high-speed connection when it comes to downloading my travel writing and shots. I sit here, bleary-eyed and half a battery emptied from a fully charged laptop, to finally getting the ... damned be the darnest of all - the connection probably jumped off its hops before the rabbit signed off. I don't know what the heck I'm spewing out but after trying for as many times it took to finish one full bottle of lemonade green tea, I am still nowhere as successful as a salmon swimming upstream with one fin to getting a stable stretch to load up the shots.
So, as I sit here, imagning the faces of my faithfuls, I couldn't let you down, never, as if that word had never been crafted into the great dictionaries of mankind. I whipped out the humble Wordpad and concentrated, thoughts drifted only momentarily to the heavy-weighted decision on whether I should invest a RMB20 for the hostel's chocolate cookie ice smoothie. Maybe later.
What can I say about the oldest capital of the empire? That I'm a lost fart faffing away about bygone eras that had hungry peasants revolting against the powerful with their spades, brooms, and barren lands? Nay, for I stand here, loud and proud declaring on top of my imaginary hill that I love Xi'an (okay Chengdu, you're my summer getaway right?) and it's not difficult to understand the simple reason of a plain ol' writer that has an itch to see the bigger world outside of her hut that this city bursts with character befitting the bloody history of a tyrant king that would rise to become the first self-proclaimed emperor of China, unifying the old scripts and conscripted as many heads to build his massive terracotta army, tomb and mausoleum in all, plus a throbbing Muslim quarter that thrives still today that no nights will ever be the same again without the timely smoke in the evening air luring even the Great Buddha himself with smells of sizzling skewers, salted vegetables tangy with minced meat and garlic in a bowl of soupy noodles, glazed apples and red dates the size of a ping pong ball, and fruit wholesalers carving mounts of preserved kiwi fruit, almonds and walnuts, Uighur peddlers that looked more at home in a Bollywood flick and the looming shadows of the Bell Tower alongside its sister, the Drum Tower to foretell the hour of the dawn and dusk as had been done in decades to the centuries.
Welcome to Xi'an, a city that you never really come to possess except to be possessed.
We lived by a small lane that littered with "small eats" sold by the locals. At this point I have gotten relatively comfortable to the varying tones of the ever-changing local pronunciations of the same word and mind you, even have a little swagger in the way I order or bargain. So much so that I found myself digging into fried little sticks of dough that melted in your mouth, glutinuous cakes that took me back to when I was seven as my maternal grandmother handed me my first cake of the same, tasting a hot bowl of tofu served with a savoury broth of chilli, soy sauce, yellow beans, coriander and oil. They kept you coming back and they were more than happy to accommodate your request for a "remix" - I had my bowl of tofu this morning with brown sugar instead - more the way I liked it since I developed this lasting love affair with soy tofu "fa" from the age that didn't matter when your tax return was due and that your only concern was to ensure you handed in your homework on time.
In a strange way, it's like a smaller version (and that's still big in a lot of terms) of Beijing, what not with a thriving train station that nearly never sleeps, parks strewn everywhere with lively displays of Tai Chi, fan dance, the smog, the odd blue sky, the mix of the young and old, the cyclo, beggars and homeless people, hippies and hippies-wannabe, spoilt dogs, pitiful dogs looking for a way out, a smogasboard of cuisine, big roads, buses, small dwellings and skyscrapers, universities and ancient relics. I could seriously live here.
Never really thinking too much into anything, I went head-on falling over heels with this city. Maybe it's something in the air. Maybe it's the way the ancient gates that shut and open the secrets held by the walls rebuilt many a time over from the periods leading on to the Ming Dynasty. Maybe it's just one of those places you see in life and you just go "what the heck, I think I'll build a hut here and live off the rest of my days". Now a hut would be entirely out of place amidst the modern roads, that it would be at risk of being swept off by the dutiful cleaners everyday, or the heavens forbid, spat on or served as a wiping board for someone's post-nose digging business.
Yet if I was to be given a note to come here and learn about China, Chinese, Culture and maybe a bit of "char" you tiao, why not? Where is the dotted line now?
I like our hostel, the best to date but I will most likely be moving into a little box housed in one of those many communist-era buildings, now wired with Wireless and pumped with "Western Toilets". Maybe I'll paint the wall an eggshell white and frame it with dark wood frames of B&W shots (of my own, of course!). Maybe I'll get a China daybed, put in a little corner with plum red silk cushions, top with a low table, serving little dainty cups of tea accompanied with saucers of sunflower seeds. We'll definitely be filling up the courtyard with as many dogs as we can get away with, the mornings will be punctuated with singing little larks and finches free to roam on the seeds we pour out on the feeding bowl. We'll have friends and families over to visit and dig into our communal hot pot.
I'm in Xi'an and I think it's all too late for me. To be wrapped inside the possession of passion, is at yet, the best way to get lost for a long time...
