My new home is just a few minutes north of a big city park called 地坛 (Ditan), or Temple of Heaven, constructed in 1530 and the site of summer solstice ritual offerings of Ming and Qing emperors for many centuries following. One bright, clear day in early October (probably just after the CCP-instigated rain showers cleared the skies in preparation for the National Day ceremony), I went there for a walk and a look-see.
Although Ditan has nothing on my favorite city park, Ritan, it has its charms, one of which is that the place is teeming with cats. This ginger buddy was the first to catch my eye. I guessed he must be a stray but was surprised by how well-fed and generally mellow he was. He didn’t mind being pet but neither did he go crazy for it like most strays would.
A little farther on I saw another cat sleeping in the grass and then two more being stroked and admired by a young man and woman engaged in conversation. I approached and gleaned the gist of it: the cats were all “liulang” (roaming about, or stray) and a corps of volunteers had developed to take responsibility for their feed and care. The young man unlocked the door you see below and showed me around the otherwise unused pavilion where the cat food and milk was stored, and around which a few old couches and chairs held some healthy, chilled-out cats. I told the man I was happy there were good people out there taking on such projects and went on my way, whistling a happy tune.
I did a lot of this exploratory flâneuring my first month to regain the feel of a city alive with 18 million heartbeats. My favorite kind of wandering is the kind that is perfectly aimless but with, at its heart, the great aim of understanding and fusing with a place. My jet lag was destroyed within the first few days of striding through urban streets, delighted to be back, loving all the tiny moments that reminded me of what I missed, soaking up the humanity. This is my religion, or something like it. It’s my job too, and I am a mighty lucky lady on that count. Last week I had lunch with one of my committee members, also here in Beijing doing research. and he reminded me of something I forgot this summer in all that reading and note-writing and plodding through abstract theories and self-referential ethnographies, that anthropology is first and foremost about meaning-making, about how we humans use and interact with ideas and physical objects and each other to make sense of the world around us and to survive in it.
In that light, my visit to the “cat sanctuary” at Ditan Park, my chats on trains and at market stalls, my public transport observations (last week on a bus I watched as a white-haired old man successfully opened a bottle of lemonade for a frivolously dressed young lady, who then offered him the first sip), and all the rest, form a background and reference point for my research. My ultimate goal, of course, is to inspire students with the kind of wonder I feel at encountering ideas, traditions, cultures that are different from my own while preserving (if they still have it) a curiosity in humanity. I want them to see that allowing that people around the world eat, work, talk, and love in so many different ways doesn't make "them" a freakshow when compared to "us", but shows us that culture both constrains our spirits and allows them expression, and that there are infinite other ways, infinite other worlds.
I loved the spark of interest or perhaps of recognition when I would relate some anecdote about China to my students or when, in discussion, we would work at understanding something that seemed foreign and irrational and then turn the lens back on those bizarre but taking for granted traditions of our own culture. I hoped the students would be empowered, rather than only discomfited, by taking a new perspective, and I really believe that a few of them were.
I've tangled myself up in words a bit here but what I really mean to say is that there is merit in watching & wandering, in living in a place and understanding the language and getting to know it's people. While the small talk or phone conversation of my fellow public transportation-users in the States only irritated me when I had things to go and places to go, it is almost a hobby here where my only job is to understand. I also love when this language, with which I have struggled for so long, lays down and surrenders itself to me, and the world opens up.
Of course it isn't all heart-warming chats and humanity-confirming scenarios: I hear and see plenty of awful and sad things too, but all of it, good and bad, inspires me to learn more, to see life here as full of fears, joys, possibilities, and dizzying change. Right now, I am enchanted. I might leave this coffee shop and see a street vendor hawking miserable under-weaned animals in tiny cages or a fragile old man shuffling cross the street as cars and motorbikes zoom recklessly by him and feel like crying, but my hunger for life here will not be dimmed in the least.
And, now, to balance my trite philosophizing, some pictures of the children’s amusement area at Ditan Park, a place clearly designed several decades ago by demented, hawkish, and not particularly safety conscious individuals.
