Yong Kang Clinic has changed hands and become Ageless Acupuncture. My address again is Beijing. There is a new chapter as I again dive deeper into language, and work to bring more of the medicine written in Chinese into English. This particular chapter draws to an end. But, the journey that began eight years ago on Yong Kang Street in Taiwan where I first began my study of Chinese and learned to drink Pu-er tea continues.

It can be followed……HERE

Unlike Taiwan’s damp wind that blows like a smothering grandmother’s kiss; Beijing’s wall of dry sand filled bluster is like the smack of a binge economy gone on the rocks. Startling in its invisible blinding strength; sheets of dust, sand, now falling leaves, and a confetti of litter all take to the sky and shimmer like a 3rd world aurora borealis.

Wind in Chinese medicine is both a pathogen, and the result of illness. But, it shows up too in human relationships. Usually as anger and a blindsided confusion. A relationship dance where after a few seemingly routine steps there is suddenly a gaping void of misunderstanding. Such has been my dance with the publishing house in Beijing where I erroneously thought a job awaited.

Actually, there is a job here. There are two of them in fact. But, just because a need is waiting to be filled, and I have the qualifications to fill it, does not mean that job is mine. There is navigating “human resources,” which has very little to do with qualifications, and everything to do with neither agreeing or disagreeing to disagreeable terms. Us Americans like the terms of a deal clean and clear; upfront and agreeable. The Chinese? It is more like get on the boat and let’s see how your weight and momentum jibe with our flow and direction.

My Chinese is not great, but I do get by. The black box of culture though, that is a completely different story. It is oh so easy to seduce oneself into thinking you actually understand, when in fact the wind blown sand has distorted your vision.

This comes from the smoky lobby of a Beijing hotel. Perhaps it will take more than patriotism to advance the cause of public health.

Xinzuobiao is a vertical community just out past the Fang Zhuang exquisite food street; where the towering new China bumps up against city peasant markets, broken pavement, dust and Soviet era utilitarian boxes of concrete. The subway with its new Olympic induced lines flow new underground rivers of people as the roadways triple park themselves into an endless traffic jam of new car prestige. Xinzuobiao is where I’ve found a short term apartment while the publishing company here in Beijing and I decide if we want play together for the next 6-12 months

Traffic through out China flows according to the rules of mass and momentum where the bigger vehicle has right of way, and streams of turning cars will not be deterred by the color of the traffic light. There is,however, a curious phenomenon where the gathering mass of pedestrians will overtake that of the cars. It takes just one person, like feeling into the right location of an acupuncture point, to walk into the space of traffic that tips the balance and turns lose the human tide.

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The lingering slow autumn blew away overnight into a clear skied chill that by evening had the piecing reminder that Beijing winters are cold to the bone. Sudden and abrupt as a stubbed toe, the season turns now turns cold.

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On the fast train headed to Nanjing. Across the aisle happen to be a couple guys from Seattle. They are here with a team of Chinese and Germans working on green environmentally sustainable communities of 250,000 to one million. Stuff we talk about as being economically “unfeasible” have ALREADY been done here. Communities that are built to be BOTH environmentally green and economically sustainable; they are actually doing it here. Oh, and by the way, China is the world’s leader in manufacturing wind turbines for generating electricity. There might be a day soon, very soon, when we are buying the world’s next major energy source that is not dependent on oil. We will be buying it from the Chinese. It is a sobering thought that the inventiveness that has for so long been associated with America, is now being cultivated in the East.

They litter the corners of intersections like giant green boxy roaches; gather in clusters at the exits of subways and massive shopping malls. In Chinese they are joking referred to as “electric donkeys.” They serve as three wheels of cheap convenience. For half the price of a taxi, two people can turn a half hour walk into a five minute ride.
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But, generally only after an iron test of wills.

As a foreigner, one often has the privilege of paying an extra fee for a life lived in the middle kingdom. White skin and a big nose means there are a few extra RMB that may be lifted from the pocket. The usual five kuai fare becomes six or seven to wheel a foreigner to their destination. It is not a lot of money, perhaps 15-30 cents, but like the constant drip of a water torture it has a way of generating an increasingly painful irritation. Like every moment in China, it is a negotiation.

It is not personal; it is the simply the prejudice that foreigners should pay more. These drivers have their own vision of the American dream, which entitles them to a slice of that glorious pie. But, still there are days I’d rather walk than give them that satisfaction.

Fall blue skies with avenues of wind ruffled willows play hide and seek with the grey coal acrid pollution that stomps down like a leather jackboot. Side by side are yesterday’s failed business that leave a vacancy of broken fixtures and ever grey dust and the new businesses that saw and paint their way into existence with a speed we would not recognize in the west. To say that change happens fast in the Middle Kingdom would be an understatement at best.

Gratitude is the first thing that comes to mind.
The splash of summer flowers spilling out into a sidewalk draped in September blue sky.
The smell of vegetables off gassing fecund fields.
Travelers and locals allowing life, for a moment, to unwind outside the their usually consensual reality.
Seasons of salmon gray rain that warp time with its incessant fall, fall, falling. And storms that blow up from the Sound with an impersonal vendetta.

Three years ago I returned to a Seattle that seemed quieter and more empty than my Asian addled senses remembered it. Pike Place Market was the only part of town that reminded me of the electric vitality that is any street in Asia. I was missing it before I even got on that plane which brought me back here. The experience of Asia has been like the fish sauce of a Malaysian curry. You don’t taste the fish sauce itself, but without it the flavors of curry don’t expand to their full dimension.

Gratitude is what I notice as books that have traveled more borders than most Americans make their way back into boxes. As a younger man, departures called forth fear and hopeful excitement. At this stage of life, it is more like admiring the  texture of a well worn shirt made of quality cloth. Its history worn into the weave. There is sadness, but more there is appreciation. These past three years in Seattle, creating a gem of green quiet in the bustle of Seattle, has been a blessing to me, and hopefully for my community as well.

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Yong Kang Clinic will disappear. We all disappear. Disappear into something else. Water to vapor, wood to fire, heat and back to earth. All things cycle the wheel of being. Yong Kang Clinic at the beginning of Oct will become Ageless Acupuncture.

I will again fly west until it becomes east. Trusting the tide that pulls me back to the middle kingdom.

Travel can easily be broken into two general categories. The time you are in places and the time you are between them. One is about settling, the other, movement. The Chinese would just say it’s Yin and Yang.
I see it more as Doing, and being Done To.

“Brakes bu ling” 刹車不靈

This is NOT what you want to be hearing from your driver as you are heading down a winding mountain road. I thought the driver was just paying more attention to his cigarette than his steering as we rounded a bend, skittered past a pile of road work gravel and smacked a dent into the back of the big bus in front of us, thus slowing us down and preventing a careen over the edge.

Driver, what the hell are you doing?
“The brakes aren’t very lively.”

They don’t work?
“Don’t worry, it’s not my truck!”

Oh, I feel much better now, that is certainly going to help us get down the mountain in one piece.

“The truck belongs to Xiao Chen.”
Somehow dis-owership is going to save us.

Dissociate, and crank up the electronic Nan Wu Ah Mi Tou Fo box.

Call on Jesus, Buddha, Moses or your favorite saint, as if their dusty bones will make a difference. I suspect that should they really have god status, they’ve got bigger fish to fry.

I notice that the trees are all perfectly summertime green, and hoping that those “ping an“ amulets stashed in my luggage riding in the back with the bags of fish and chickens, are doing their thing.

Best of all, I don’t have to go through the extended process of making beef noodle soup, I just lay down 5 RMB (that’s about 75 cents American), and get breakfast. What a delight!

But, as winter comes breathing down our necks, I do find I crave a nice hot morning soupy breakfast, so I turn to another delight that I discovered one February day on wind-swept Shanghai street.

Black rice and red bean congee.

It is nourishing, easy to make (especially if you have a rice cooker with a double boiler), and with the addition of a few Chinese herbs, it becomes quite nourishing as well. If you have a bit of a sweet tooth, this will certainly be something you will enjoy.

Here is what it takes:

1½ cups of black rice
½ cup of brown rice
½ cup of red adzuki beans
½ cup oatmeal

3 small slices of Huang Qi
4 small slices of Ginseng
1 tablespoon of Gou Qi Zi
4 tablespoons of black sesame powder
6 red Chinese dates, or 4 American prunes (sliced)
1-2 tablespoons of brown sugar (to taste)
½ teaspoon powdered cinnamon

6 cups of water

First mix together the rice and beans, then rinse 3 times with cold water.

Add the other dry ingredients, then add the six cups of water.

Fill the bottom of the double boiler portion of the rice cooker with the appropriate amount of water. Turn it on, and let it cook through the night.

It is just that simple, and delicious as well!

It finally rained after an accumulated humidity, like the slow build up to a good cry, there was a feeling of relief in hearing the rain fall into my last night of this journey to China.

Arriving early for the Guangzhou to Kowloon train, riding up several levels of escalators, and then through a giant expanse of triangular glass folded into a massive dome I managed to instantly change my ticket to the train due to leave in 15 minutes. There are times when the gods of travel smile.

The train is full of the sound of Cantonese, and as much as I’m on-guard for the pick pockets, the clack and rattle soon enough lulls me into unconsciousness. Already on this trip in China, I’ve woken on a bus with a thief’s hand in my pocket, and had a bag razored while filling out shipping forms in the Yangshuo post office. Somehow the sixth sense has clicked in just in time to keep what is mine, but the vigilance required is a constant drain, the hypnotic click and roll of the train is inescapable, and the eyes of the old man sitting next me carry nothing of the snaky thief glint. I sleep.

I wake to the slowing of the train as we ease through a corridor of cement grey partitions, the colorless stiff line that separates countries, even as the government considers there to be no divide. Soon after the cell phone goes dead, the written script changes to the eye pleasing full form characters, and strangely, suddenly there are palm trees.

Hong Kong truly an international hub of trade with its extensive harbor and soaring monuments to commerce. The buildings tower up up up like thin elegant sails. They are the kind of structures that could easily inspire a young man to dream up a life of architecture. The airport is a collage of noodle soups, Ben and Jerry’s, neck hung roasted duck and Starbucks. The lines of East and West now blurred into a global culture as distances are shrunk by jet transport, fiber optic, and instant communication. What a privilege it is to see this larger world beyond the borders of American life, to see how the world revolves on multiple axis.

In a few hours, I’ll be back in Taiwan. The feeling in my belly is like that of going home, of going to a place where the smells and movement of life are of a comforting familiarity.