National Identi-tea or The First Whiff

First photo is a homebrew of some oo-long (Ali Shan). Note the particularly large leaf. The second photo is the puerh shop in Malaysia.

July 31st, Imagine Children's School Office; a particularly bright and sunny day

Today I decided to explore the Taiwan rails leading out of Chiayi city. I was tired of futzing about my apartment, and, since I was rained in the last couple of days, and because the sky surrounding the mountains since the rain left have been so clear, I decided it was time to see the countryside. First, I walked down to the school and picked up some books to prepare before classes begin. Then I rode my bike into the center of town, packing in my satchel some fine dried Italian sausage that I finally decided was time to eat (purchased all the way back in London Borough market some five or six weeks ago, it made it’s way through the various and rough climates of Ladakh, Delhi, and Malaysia all without cultivating any rogue strands of mold as far as I can tell) some morning pastry stuff that is purple and that tastes like purple, some water, and a mandarin language phrase book that I take with me everywhere. My plan was to go to Ali Shan today. Shan, in mandarin, means mountain; it is one of the few words I knew before coming here. When I was in Taiwan two years ago, it was on the occasion of attending an academic program at a Taiwanese Buddhist monastery in Khaosiung in the southern part of the island. The campus of the monastery there is called Fo Guang Shan, which means, in English, Buddha Light Mountain.

(Actually, the program that I participated in two years ago was occurring again all this last month and in their last week, in their cultural tour, they actually stopped by in Chiayi City last Friday to visit the main producing plant of Ten In faux meat products just outside of the city. I got in touch with the venerable who co-ordinates the program and took a taxi to meet them for lunch at the plant, which I knew would be extravagant. Yifa, the venerable, was always making the point to the American, Canadian, and British students participating that vegetarian and fake meat foods could be just as good if not better than meat foods. She takes each group of skeptical western, steak-loving students to all the best vegetarian buffet restaurants in Taiwan. Some of these restaurants I consider taking the ninety minute train to Khaosiung just on the hope of finding again. As I expected, half-way through the meal the students were saying, “oh I can’t eat another bite,” and, “more?—really?” And the enthusiastic factory workers were still bringing platter after platter of bizarre Taiwan food, complete with ice sculptures, dry-ice burning away into steam for affect, watermelon rind cut to resemble bird-of-paradise flower, and so on. The meal was incredible. All the while, we were served in a large factory room at large round tables, in junky chairs, that were completely tied up and dress up in pink ribbons and brocade for the special occasion.)

As I don’t have anything like a guidebook to tell me the interesting things to do in this area, I’ve relied only what other people have told me, and so far Ali Shan is the only place I really know about. The poster at the train station clearly noted the times that it left the station, the next one being in thirty minutes at one something o’clock. But it also clearly described the trains coming back from Ali Shan, and the latest one described was at one something, too, so I thought I would not be able to make the three hour mountainous ride there and back simultaneously today, so I settled for a random stop Douliou (actually on the way to Ali Shan) to try my blind luck. I was hoping Douliou would be a quaint no-where place at the foot of the mountains where I could walk around and sit under the shade of some tree, listen to the insects hissing and crackling and enjoy my packed lunch. Unfortunately, after the thirty minute train ride or so, I was dropped off at a metropolitan square something like the one I had just left and so exasperated and slightly trapped I went looking for the next best thing: if I could not have wilderness and mountain landscapes, then I could at least have tea.

Tea shops are everywhere in Taiwan—but they are more aptly named, tea stands, and they sell chilled milk tea, bubble tea, jelly teas, and various other tea gimmicks that are sometimes quite good, but what I was looking for was a real tea shop, like the one I had been to in Malaysia, where I could sit with the owner and drink tea for thirty or sixty minutes before pretending to buy something. It was my luck that I did find such a shop. The man said he was a teacher who taught Chinese, and I told him I taught English and some how it came out that we both liked tea too and so soon he was doing the inevitable, serving me tea. These friendships you have to be careful with because they occasionally involve money and after enjoying yourself, and feeling completely wealthy, you have no qualms about buying this or that, but, nor, on the other hand, is the proprietor so strict with the prices and so knocks off decimal points or numbers, by howeversomuch he is feeling generous. We talked about family, we drank tea, we laughed at my pronunciation of Chinese and at his failed attempts to communicate something, but we got on all right. He had a very limited vocabulary but it was surprising when he spoke because it was with a perfect accent—except when he said black. Black with the students at our school, I already have noticed, is a particularly dreadful word to say. It comes out like they’re chewing marbles. But we made it through the different names for tea, and I innocently enough asked him if he liked Puerh tea (see blog, “Drinking Golden Dust”) but thankfully I didn’t say it. It took him a couple times to understand me. “Puerh?” he said. “Ah puerh,” he said. He shook his head and his hands in front of him at the same time. “I don’t like puerh,” he said. “Puerh is from China.” Ah, I thought, of course. The distinction that some Taiwanese make between themselves and China is sometimes very strict. There is a further contention with the appellation of “Taiwanese,” disputed by the various peoples who are not ethnically Chinese, or who are the Hakka who came and populated the area before Chiang Keishek and his government. This man even noted that my guidebook unfortunately was “Chinese” which is true enough but it’s nothing I felt like I could or should apologize for.

But as puerh is “China’s tea,” oo-long is Taiwan’s. Taiwan, or earlier named by the Portuguese, That Beautiful Island, is composed in the interior by mountains, which since I don’t know when have been devoted to growing some of the finest and freshest tasting oo-long teas. Oo-long tea derives its potency by its freshness and is usually categorized as having a flowery taste, which is usually in contrast to the chlorophyll taste of green tea. So, although I didn’t make it to Ali Shan, I at least could drink the tea grown and produced there in Douliou. Like wines, depending on the mountain and the method of manufacturing, they are of a better quality or lesser quality. For example, the leaves of most oo-long are rolled tightly into small balls that unfurl when you brew them. Sometimes these leaves are machine rolled, but the better ones are hand rolled.
We also drank a tea from Lee Mountain. He kept pointing to the Ali Shan tea and saying, “good,” and then pointing to the Lee Shan tea and saying, “great!” I got the idea and indeed his scaling was accurate. Ali Shan oo-long was indeed very good. It had a fullness of flavor and freshness that was all a breath of life to me. The qualities of oo-long are of health and radiance; its effects are cosmetic in the sense that what was at default is now perfected and what was ailing has now been brought back into the whole. Just like flower or vegetable essence, the first scent of a good oo-long immediately soothes and clears your many distractions and worries fall away like rain. Like the phrase, “stop and smell the roses,” the smell of the oo-long instead stops you. And then of course you can taste it.

Recently more carried away with puerh tea, I had forgotten the certain manner and distinction of brewing oo-long. For both teas, you can brew in water just boiling and both teas have enough measure and potency to them that they can last 6 or 8 brews easily. But here the similarities seize including in terms of the items in which you use to brew them.

All teas in this style are brewed over a table that in some measure has a drain so that the water that is inevitably splashed or spilled is taken into account (in my apartment I can get by simply with a bowl with a large lip to place the brewing pot and strainer in). Instead of the miniature brown clay teapot used for puerhs, oo-long is brewed in a gaiwan, a container the size and shape of a hotel issue western tea-cup without a handle, which proves a difficulty.

The gaiwan has a lid that sits on top that helps contain the heat. One places the tightly rolled oo-long tea into the gaiwan (only to 1/5 the measure of the container, otherwise, when they come unrolled, like popped popcorn, the tea will overflow the container) and blanches it quickly with boiling water. This is very literally and judiciously splashed over the teacups. I had forgotten how long you may steep the tea. The old puerhs I have been drinking seem like they brew instantly and anything too long turns dangerous. But this tea just gets good when it’s left in there for a good 30 seconds. The leaves are potent but they are more rubbery and take a little longer to release their flavor. It is difficult to pour using the gaiwan. There is no handle and so with thumb and middle finger one holds the 100 degree Celsius container on its outermost and coolest extremity which is the rim, and with one’s index finger one pulls back the lid so that one may drain the tea and keep back the tea (much like how one holds the lid of a pot to drain the water left from boiling potatoes). This procedure is difficult, especially for one beginning to brew tea. The urge to dash the gaiwan to the floor is kept in check by the knowledge of the delicacy of the china you are using, so even when you feel the tips of your fingers burning you must still return the gaiwan carefully and slowly to its saucer. This process is further complicated and the finger tips are further scorched because sometimes the lid is held back too far and tea leaves begin to slide out along with excess water that further burns your fingers or else the lid is held too tightly and the tea drains away painfully slowly. Even more—unlike puerh where a little water left over in the pot is a good idea (it gentle brews while you prepare for the next round and makes the flavor even stronger)—any water left over in the fresher teas is not so good. It brews further while it sits and can become quite bitter and unpleasant.

Once you’ve poured your tea from the gaiwan (hopefully with seeming ease) you pick up the first cup, the sniffer which is tall and thin. Sometimes at this point the normal shaped teacup is placed on top upside down of the sniffer so that it looks like a mushroom. Then one takes the two cups, holding top and bottom securely together, and flips it upside down. One lifts the tall cup from the normal cup and, if the two are a set, the tea is now perfectly in the normal cup. Why do you do this? Well, the tall cup, the “sniffer,” is designed with its extended amount of surface area so the drinker may immediately place the rim to his or her nose to catch that first, intimate whiff, indicative of the caliber and personality of the tea. The whiff of oo-long tea is perhaps the most pleasant and important part of the journey. Of course, the taste is there, thick with tannin, and the color of the tea is often crystal clear and either a shocking green or yellow, but it is really the first contact with the tea, the whiff, that seems to be the very spirit of oo-long. At this tea shop, the proprietor merely lined three of these tall cups up between us (even though there were only two of us) and every time he brewed more tea, instead of having to wait, he simply refilled these shots and every time you needed more tea you simply took one of these and poured it into your own, the first time doing so, of course, also taking that first whiff of oo-long.

The quality of puerh that is so revered is its ability to age and grow better with time. How could teas that lose their freshness after a season compete? But now, on this side of the water, surrounded by this land and tea, I wonder if it is not the ephemeral quality of tea that is still more rare and sweet? When I return to America I will still have puerh that will continue to age and perfect. But it will be impossible to obtain the freshness of oo-long so far away.

Coffee and Sympathy

Begun in a note book July 23rd, Wednesday, 8 something o’clock, at Good Afternoon Cafe

I’m in a very nice coffee house that I’m in for the first time. I wasn’t interested in going here until tonight when I realized how close it was to my apartment and how nice it would be to have a calm place to do some of my work and to shed my thoughts, something I’ve been unable to do lately in my all too familiar apartment so close to the school and not on the hot night streets or crowded dusky parks, but I needed the sensation distance and coolness. And then, when I arrived, I almost turned around again. I was met at the door with a waiter with a red bow tie and a menu and a head of hair that was so excessive it should not have been allowed in this country or any country, and I looked down the long line of various glass contraptions that occupied the bar, no doubt for some exotic way of boiling water, and I thought, I hate excessive coffee places. And I saw all the tables filled with families and couples and all this told me that it was not somewhere for a long traveler to simply come and rest, certainly not one who would make the point of nursing one’s coffee for several hours simply for the excuse of a place to sit and think. In that kind of situation, it is such a bother to have someone wait on you. You feel rushed, and then before you know it you’re back out on the streets with your thoughts again and no relief. But I couldn’t turn around now and so I acquiesced to get one coffee and leave. That I was a foreigner that apparently didn’t know how to order coffee in such a strange place, the manager was beckoned who could speak English, and immediately it came out that I was a teacher (for the second time tonight someone had asked me, “what job do you have?” and it occurs to me now that the only foreigners that I’ve seen have been at work and probably most white people that are here have a job, like me, teaching English. And for the second time that night the person knew about Imagine Children’s School, this latter instance being less surprising as the school is right down the road.

They worked it out that I just wanted a coffee (perhaps you couldn’t just order a coffee) and I requested it to be with ice, which is what I’m so used to ordering in second and third rate joints where they basically load the coffee up with sweet and condensed milk and it transforms into a real cooling treat. But, as soon as I saw him grinding the coffee right in front of me, I thought what nonsense that was. I decided that to ice the coffee (and thus diminish the taste and delicacy of freshness) would be a travesty and that no matter how hot I was, I would drink my coffee hot anyway. And so we had another exchange, first with the waiter, and then with the manager to make sure that indeed I did want hot coffee, and then we talked a little bit of how to say, hot and cold, in Chinese. I put my stuff at the bar so that they wouldn’t have to worry about finding a table for me, and so I sat down my shoulder bag and a 5800 ml jug of water that I had just bought for drinking purposes in my apartment. With shorts and socks and slippers I felt just a little bit silly and out of place, sitting on the high stool at the bar, especially when he began brewing the coffee in the beautiful glass instruments that employed sophisticated and balanced laws of heat and pressure to produce a truly fascinating show of coffee being infused with and then strained of coffee—all this with his excessive hair and bar suit I felt a little bit awkward and hung out to dry for everyone to see. The coffee was then placed in a truly delicate set of china with a mixing instrument of a sort of gold and silver that I have never seen before and when he sat it by me he also said, “and here is some cake.” Something in the way he said it made me not refuse it, as if one always got cake with coffee. Perhaps, the order of coffee (I saw on the menu it looked like all orders were around 150 NT—which is 5 dollars) always came with cake, but it also seems like they could have simply given me my coffee and taken off part of the price of the thing. Surely they did not think I expected cake? But, anyway, I was in mood for cake too, and so I accepted it.

Something that I still don’t understand are the ebbs and flows of the after work hours of Taiwan. Restaurants fill and empty very quickly, as if everyone were going to the same event, so eating in a crowded restaurant, you’ll look around to suddenly find you’re alone. And walking passed an empty restaurant on the way in to town, on the out of town, will be way packed. This penchant for fluctuation of moons and pulls invisible to me occurred while I was drinking that coffee, and before I had finished my cake and coffee (I was very nearly done, actually) and having not bothered to even pull out my lesson planning, I was suddenly ushered to a small comfortable table and chair where no body was sitting. In fact, nobody was sitting anywhere in the vicinity and half the place was now empty. And then everything suddenly seemed to get twice as good. By some secret—are they being nice to teachers? are they trying to win over a foreigner?—a waitress after sometime brought me another cake, this one a Taiwanese pudding, with milk and bean on it and she explained, in broken English, what it was and that it was very good and then she asked me more questions about how long I had been here, if I knew Chinese, and so on. And then after more time had passed and I thought (gosh, it better look like I’m working) they brought me another coffee, and when I had finished that, they brought me some water, and I sat in the chair for, oh, I don’t know how long. And I kept thinking how free that had all been. What would happen when I returned to the restaurant? When do I become a customer and not an object of interest and generosity? And I sat there and thought up ridiculous lesson plans for me six year olds, mostly involving various doodles of frowning stick figures about to be swallowed by monsters or sliced in two by pirates or another stick figure representing “the boy who cried wolf” (we had read the book the day before) who I put surrounded by savage forest beasts and I gave him a little voice shouting, “help, help, help, please help me!” And I wandered in that abstract sense wherein it is impossible to ascertain the truth whether my six year olds would help the boy with the game I had thought up or if these plans were nothing but wasted paper, broken wind, and one more progressive mistake.

Chaiyi

July 20th Sunday, Imagine Chilren's School Office

I came into Taipei in a cloud of white that I could not penetrate, then ocean, then a coast. The ocean looked like it was five feet below me but it most have been hundreds or thousands. After the twelve hour, overnight bus ride from Penang Malaysia to Singapore, and after wandering about that city with my eight pounds of traveling stuff looking for the MRT station, and after finally arriving at the Changi airport, and after the flight which had taken an hour longer than usual (due to typoon, I learned later), I was finally arriving in Taipei. Of course, after arriving at Taipei at six o'clock, I was found and pushed into a van that took me one and a half hours away ot Taichung where I was put into a yellow taxi and taken to my hotel for that night. Much had lost power in Taichung so I could neither call or e-mail to confirm my arrival. It was still pouring here, where the typhoon had struck hardest (something like 600mm of rain, the news said) but the peculiar thing was that there hadn't been any wind at all as is usual with typhoon. That next morning, Adrian Wu picked me up (the man who had been my coorespondant and had lined me up with the job I finally took in Chaiyi). He lives in Taichung but drove me the next two hours to Chaiyi. Already, three and some hours south of Taipei, that sits upon the northern nose of Taiwan, I am in the south of the island, an hour or two away from Khaosiung, the southern most end of the island.

At the airport in Singapore, at a bookstore, I looked at the lonely planet entry for Chaiyi, and it basically said that Chaiyi wasn't the worst waste of time, that it could be seen in one day or two. It also said something like, "you can walk across the city in thirty minutes, but it's not something you would want to do because of all the smog." But the qualities that attract the tourist are not necessarily the same qualities that attrance a potential resident. This is what I hoped. More to come later.

Drinking Golden Dust

July Tenth, Starbucks, Queensbay Mall, Penang, Malaysia

I’ve deduced that I’m “over” my Delhi belly because here I am in Starsbucks and have just finished drinking hot chocolate and eating a coconut-flaked, green tea treat and I’m not squirting, to put it crudely. It was raining all this morning , making a racket in my room, and so, as it is with rain, I slept with it until noon. I’m staying on the 12th floor of an apartment complex with Hun’s family—his parents live on the 12th floor, his brother’s family on the 10th--and so I heard the rain against the aluminum awning or perhaps an a/c unit.

For those few people who have not wandered through Malaysia, it is actually quite an interesting place. I don’t know too much about it, so I’ll butcher this. Basically, it’s a Muslim country but very diverse. Beside the native population of ethnic Malaysians, there are a good number of Chinese and Indian citizens who have a long culture here. Malaysia was one of the British territories and gained independence in 1957 and from then on has been doing alright by the looks of it. Probably as a result of these cultures, and that the country is situated around water (Penang where I'm staying is an island), food is very important here. As they say here, “some people eat to live, but we live to eat!”

As a result of the British imperialism, English is a common accessory on television, radio, and basically every counter involving cash exchanges. If you're living here to learn another language, you won't. You don't ever need anything else but English. However, English isn't the preferred language and it is by far not the easiest way to express yourself here day to day . For that, people seem to use a mixture of the languages available. Hun's family, for example, speaks fairly interchangeably, English, Hokkien, and Cantonese. Malay itself has inherited and bastardized English words, making it nearly comprehensible at times in certain contexts. The signs for example in a grocery store exhibiting both Malay and English translations for products show the similarity. “Sos” is “sauce” “telefone” is “telephone” “kek” is “cake” “mesin” is “machine;” the list goes on. Walking around the market and downtown here, is like taking a stroll down a chapter of George Orwell's 1984 with the Malay language's eerie resemblance to new speak.

Tea Shop:
Yesterday, we went over bridge to the mainland to a fairly interesting tea shop . Even though most Puerh (black, compressed and aged, tea) is grown and made in Yunnan, China, the climate suitable for aging Puerh is found in Southeast Asian areas like Malaysia and not in Yunnan. For this reason, and others, Puerh is found in its greatest, rarest, and oldest forms here. As the interest in Puerh has spiked in recent years, connoisseurs in Taiwan and mainland China have turned their eyes and taste buds to places like Malaysia.

Once Puerh is an exceptional tea among teas. Out of the various teas and producing methods, Puerh tea, grown and prepared specifically in the Yunnan region, has the lovely and unique quality of maturing and aging, much like wine. Unlike oolong, green, and white teas that lose their freshness in a season after packaging, in the compressed and packaged puerh tea a bacteria persists and continues to ferment the leaves, creating a smoother, a clearer, and over all more potent tea as time goes on. As a result, Puerh can also make a investment. At the tea shop that we went to, the owner kept giving examples of how he had sold a certain block of tea for 30,000 RM (10,000 USD) and which was immediately turned over to be should for 125,000 RM. So, very quickly, certain rare and desirable teas can become very expensive.

Luckily, this man was more interesting in brewing and serving us tea than trying to sell it to us. Even before I could start looking at the different cakes upon the back wall, he had sat us down to start brewing us tea. It is customary, even in the tea shops in the malls, for a brewer to always be on duty to entice costumers with their tea. The whole shop smelled like that delicate flavor when you unfurl the light-weight paper that conceals the tea brick. It was different here in the case that he owned the store and was brewing his tea and that he had an assistant and she too was serving tea and that the four or five other people besides us who wandered through did not buy tea either but only seemed interested in drinking the tea that the owner brewed. He used a teak serving tray that was slightly excessive and several washed out tea pourers sat on it useless and used. Another eight or so very tiny tea pots sat on the counter having at one point, perhaps all that day, served their purpose. By his side was a large water dispenser with which he occasionally refilled his glass kettle that he sat on a blue flame to keep continually boiling.

At twenty, he told us he came down with severe liver problems from drinking alcohol from since he was fifteen. As part of his medication, the doctor suggested Puerh tea, which wasn’t at all a “thing” back then . This was in the eighties and so he began buying lots of old Puerh tea. He told us growths had been growing all over his face and neck but went away when he began drinking tea. He told us that his piss, as dark has the tea he was serving us (like coffee), turned soon to the color of the water that we could see boiling in his crystal clear kettle.

As a consequence, he seems now happy and eager to drink tea with costumers all day. He showed us a two 3 kg cakes that he recently purchased (about as large as lazy suzannes). Since he was only able to acquire two bricks, he told us that he promptly broke into both cakes diminishing greatly their desirability and therefore value because he didn't want to be tempted to sell them. He has many old and rare cakes in his collection that he will not sell (as we found out), but which he would also share with anyone who wanted to drink them (as we found out). Even so, one cake he bought for 1,000 RM, he sold again, a quarter it’s original size, for 5,000 RM.

Brewing Methods:
If you are familiar with the Chinese method of brewing tea (old man style), you know that it involves a little teapot that in itself fills a little more or a little less than one western restaurant-issue tea cup. The corresponding teacups, consequently, are tiny, too, giving the drinker a sniff and a swig at the very most. The great pleasure of this type of tea is the various rounds that are brewed, each varying in taste, and each participating to create a dramatic and sequential experience. The chemicals in the tea relax one, as do the chemicals in wine, but unlike alcohol, the tea's euphoria does not seem to impair one's judgment, rather making it clearer and more alert. The "caffeine high" of excessive coffee is not experienced here.

However, as we found out, the more expensive and rare teas (the teas we were drinker were all older than myself, one from the eighties, another from 1971, and a third approximately a hundred years old) are served with even smaller teapots and even smaller tea cups. The teapot, without handle or spout, would be able to sit under a turned-over western teacup easily. And the tea cups themselves would need to be filled twenty times for the volume of one western teacup. As a result of their smallness, both the cups and pot lose heat quickly and so are dashed with hot water between each tasting. And, because the old teas are more potent, one can drink them for up to 20 brews.

Delhi

World Buddhist Center Hotel, July the 6th, H.H. the Dalai Lama's Birthday

I guess I should write a note sort of off the cuff because it seems right. Sometimes what I come up with on my journal or on my laptop doesn't seem so direct or personal once I move it to whatever computer is hooked up to internet. I left Delhi I guess two days ago after being a little sick all day. This had to do with diarrhea let's say and involved (actually) going to a Tibetan doctor (amchi). All of us are a little fascinated with Tibetan medicine and so most of us have had check-ups at some point in our trip, but this seemed real because I actually had some sort of immediate symptoms, which actually, in the end, turned out for worse because I think I sort of got the short term treatment whereas other people got a general diagnoses of, say, a "wind" imbalance and then were given pills and instructions like, "don't eat rice and potatoes or drink tea," which is a fairly common instruction because EVERYONE in Ladakh and Tibet eats tons of rice, potatoes, and tea. Anyway, I took one set of pills one time and haven't had them since. It's sort of like chewing incense and anyway I can't really stomach it still. And I think I'm mostly just sick of the heat and Delhi now.

So now I look forward to Malaysia and Taiwan. Hopefully, Taiwan is really good. It was really hard saying goodbye to my mom today and the people who were leaving to go home. Ryan--boy--if you're reading this, and you probably aren't, even though you have nothing better to do, I wish I was there to look at Duncan with you, watch great/bad movies, or whatever it is that you occupy yourself with these days.

And Pennsylvania!--what I wouldn't do for some cool, cool creeks. I feel like those roaming Irishmen, always singing of the highlands and the valleys that they never again will know. Well, I think I will pack now. We leave tomorrow morning.

Lamayuru Dances

World Buddhist Center Hotel, Somewhere in Delhi, July 6th


Again, I’m in Delhi. It must have been nice weather when I stayed here for a day and a half a night when I arrived or perhaps the summer has just progressed two weeks further, but the weather, as they say, is unbearable. I sit here in my room, which is air-conditioned, typing on my computer to later take a file to a computer with internet to send. Last night my mother woke me up because the air-conditioning in her room had shut off, making it impossible to sleep. I had been in very deep sleep, dreaming I had been in some dark green ocean, talking to strange creatures. And so I wandered about dog-breath halls, searching for empty rooms with a/c, moving mattresses, and so on.


As it stands, our accommodations are very nice, and, yesterday, when we went to the main market and Tibetan refugee town, we were taken by a large air-conditioned bus that Peter, someone who is taking care of us, got for us. It is a luxury in this way to travel with a group that, collectively, can afford such a venture. And as we have two days here, it is possible to fight the natural state of Delhi that a longer stay would make inevitable. And so we flit from air-conditioned room, to American chain restaurants, or anywhere else that will provide momentary refuge of the hot and expending atmosphere. In this way, we are travelers passing through Delhi with no keen interest to know it better in its—what I said before—natural state. Every time you walk out of your room it’s really like stepping into a very hot bathroom where someone just took a shower. And every time you walk into a nicely air-conditioned room, it’s like stepping into a cool forest stream in the very heat of the day, where you could wander and float for hours.


We are no longer exhausted by walking up a set of stairs because of high altitude—yet sweat will come to your body simply by walking to the bathroom. One is fatigued sitting down to dinner.


Many Tibetan things you can find in Delhi for a lot cheaper than Tibet or Ladakh. There are also many Tibetan bookstores selling texts or religious works in Tibetan and so it seems directed more toward Tibetans and their practical religious needs. On the Indian streets, we went shopping as well, developing our bargaining skills slowly or quickly, as each is to his or her own. I bought some little things my self, some offering bowls, some incense, some Amar Chitra Katha comic books, and I also helped my mom bargain for some shawls and other odds and ends for meager prices. It was my first experience where some venders would beg to see to you for lower and lower prices. My mother was considering buying some fancy designed Indian pillowcases that the lady initially priced at 80 rupees (2 USD). The role of thumb is to re-offering something the third of that price and then come to the conclusion at half price. I offered 25 rupees (63? US cents), and then she counter-offered 50 rupees. I think maybe at that point I suggested 30, or perhaps we decided to look elsewhere. There is no polite way to do this except to simply leave the vender with all his or her attempt to entice you with pillowcases spread out before them. But we were followed with hysterical shouts, first with 40 rupees, then “30!,” then “25!” 25 rupees and I guess they are still making some kind of a deal, but to drop this low to a foreigner who could easily afford a good compromise at 30 or 40 felt pretty low, especially when you can walk several yards to the next vender who is selling the exact same thing (sometimes, three blocks is not far enough away to shake a persistent shop keeper as one of us experienced). I don’t know how different the economic situation has to be to make something so desperate here when at other places I’ve been, the local business has been secure enough to reliably get very consistent and reasonable prices from tourists.


The last thing in Ladakh that we did was go to Lamayuru to see the lama dances, a two day festival that happens every year, where many of the wrathful-enlightened deities on the temple walls are brought to life by dancers wearing particular masks and garments and holding characteristic implements in their hands. The accumulation of the affair is the very simple and stylized destruction of an effigy made out of barley flour and butter by a ring of dancers. The fight doesn’t seem quite fair, the effigy being prostrate on the ground, and the dancers with great faces in a large ring with weapons, each taking their turn to impel the effigy with a sword or an arrow. However—who said it needs to be fair? These are, after all, enlightened beings who easily clear the mundane obstructions of this world. For the local population, the dance is an exorcism of all the demons that haunt whatever turbulence is in their lives. For the monks, it is also a ritual enactment of what they do must of the rest of the year within their minds. These cross-purposes make an interesting spectacle. The locals don’t really feel like they need to see the spectacle (must of the time they are circumambulating the space or, if they are too old for this, sitting in a pack of peers and spinning prayer-wheels), and the dancers don’t necessarily need to know someone is watching, either. Oftentimes, they are dancing in a corner where nobody is sitting, and the temper of the dance is too slow to make very much dramatic sense to anyone very intent upon the entire affair.


The dances are haunted by two “clowns” (“goons” I would say, rather) who bother people asking for money. They get young monks to dress up and wear faces of old whispy-haired old men with long leather faces barely stitched together. They bring about a kata with them and throw it over unsuspecting spectators who for a moment are embarrassed as the two clowns beat a wooden penis against a hollow metal tube in your direction. One is only released by this embarrassment by the trifling embarrassment of having to pay them to make them leave, which is part of the whole game I guess. The Ladakhis seemed to authentically enjoy these antics but I think a lot of westerners were simply confused or displeased by it.


Lamayuru, the monastery, is not somewhere you would want to wander about on a late night drun, because with so many dead ends and drop offs, melting away into the night, it would be your last amble. The situation would not occur, fortunately, of wandering around drunk at Lamayuru because it is a monastery and respectfully kept so, but it is tragic situation that I kept on thinking about when I, one night, was trying to make my way back. Lamayuru is built upon many pre-existing monasteries that themselves are crumbling away just like the rock is that it is built on. The rock, a sort of layered sediment, flakes away with a brush of the hand. Walking about Lamayuru plainly tells and story of unforeseen conclusions. Buildings built with doors can now no longer be opened, half buried with sand and rubble, or perhaps the doors lead nowhere. A door I saw could no longer be opened for another building had been built too close to it. As you make your way up to the monastery, you either have to make your hunched way in passageways under buildings or ascend stairs with no sides. Birds live here and in abundance, securing their brood in the crevices of the tower-like rock structures that have been made by time and making continual gyre about the highest rooms of the monastery, where the head lama lives.

Here is a history of Ladakh related to us by some monks we had the good fortune to meet:


Directly after the time of the Buddha, an Arhat came to Lamayuru which was then nothing but a lake. He flew to one side of the lake to sat on a mountain, and he saw from that vantage in the middle of the lake a peak of sandstone, and he foresaw that a monastery would be built there one day. He gave offerings to the Nagas—elemental water spirits—which involved throwing barely seeds into the water because then with his staff he drained the entire lake. Now they call this place “the moon” because of the unearthly pale color of the sand that rings the valley, making a clear indication where the water used to stand. The peak of the sandstone that the Arhat saw now sits right below the highest building of the monastery where the head lama lives. The barely seeds that the Arhat threw grew into fields in the valleys about the destined spot for the monastery swirled in the shape of a swastika (an auspicious sign in this part of the world). Accordingly, the place was called “turquoise swastika.” Tuquoise, in Tibetan, because of the lake and pronounced “yuru” (“lama” being a later addition). In the eleventh century, the famous Indian scholar Naropa meditated in the caves at Lamayuru. His cave particularly can still be seen in one spot of the main shrine that is built just below the lama’s residence. Naropa and the also famous Lotsawa (translator) Rinchen Zangpo were probably in the Lamayuru caves at the same time and when Naropa moved on, Zangpo built five monasteries in the shape of a Mandala about Lamayuru, 5 of the 108 monasteries that he is said to have built in the Ladakh region. For those just a bit shaky on their Ladakh history, Zangpo was very important in the second diffusion of Buddhism into the Tibet and Ladakh region after the three hundred years or so of “darkness.” After the assassination of Long-dar-ma by a hermit, Tibet suffered a setback in its advance toward civilization and Buddhism, which had not quite taken hold, was lost for those years. Therefore at this time, when texts were not to be found, translators were highly revered, thus “lotsawa” is used as an honorific title and thus, Zanpo, who was highly influential at this time, held a very important position of spreading the Dharma in Tibet. The second diffusion, it is interesting to note, came from the prompting of one Ladakh king who sent Atisa to spread the esoteric teachings back into central Tibet, where the center has been ever since. Shortly after the second diffusion, the Buddhism that came from India, through Ladakh, mostly dried up as Buddhism was expiring in India. From that point on, Ladakh, the trading center, relied upon central Tibet for its revered colleges and monasteries to train their monks, never building any of their own. The tradition of sending monks to be educated in the higher practices to Tibet continued until the middle of this last century.


However, the monasteries that Zangpo built at this spot never did so well so that in the seventeenth century the Ladakh king Jamyang Namgyal was building a type water system there and inadvertently offended the Nagas. As an immediate consequence, the king became ill with leprosy and no doctor could cure him. Finally, he went to an oracle who told him to send for a certain monk in the Mt. Kailash region from the Drigung Kagyu sect. The monk was sent for and he healed the king’s sickness in gratitude for this service. He told the monk that he would be the royal family’s guru from then on.


The monk said no, that their connection was not of this kind, that the kind would have a son Sengge, who in his life, would meet the family’s guru. So the king gave the monk Phiyang and Lamayuru, both of which are now Drigung-kagyu monasteries.