zimatravels

I really had no idea what to expect when I visited Vietnam in 1998.   The palpable energy I found in the streets of Saigon was only one of several surprises.

Feb. 14, 1998

Thinking ahead when I was teaching English to Vietnamese students in Dallas, I kept the name of someone to contact in Saigon.  He and a friend wanted to show me Saturday night in Saigon.  It is a riotous affair.  The usual chaotic traffic patterns around the rotary intersections swell to bursting with the New York Rockette style of bikes, etc. slipping through the ever-moving line of traffic with an amazing and perplexing confidence.

“Vietnam — wonderful,” said my young Vietnamese companions with a look of joy on their faces.  There is a hope, optimism, high-spirited, and fun-loving nature to these people who have gone through so much pain.  Perhaps the insecurity of their lives makes them willingly, and even joyously “careless” as one of my new friends noted.  They drive themselves into a good-natured frenzy of motorbikes, bicycles, and motorcycles.  While old people were not too visible, children were everywhere, lining the sidewalks, parks, and islands in the middle of highways.  Couples sat along curbsides looking for all the world like they were in privacy and solitude.  I enjoyed the buoyancy and energy of it all from the seatbelt of my taxi.

I wasn’t at all sure what I’d find in Vietnam when I visited in 1998.   The following is an excerpt from my book, Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird, published in 2006.

Feb. 13, 1998

What can I see perched comfortably six stories above Ho Chi Minh City, more popularly called Saigon?

I can see an abnormally high number of Vietnamese flags — red cloth with one large yellow five-pointed star.  I can also see a bright blue sky that belies the pollution of thousands of motorbikes on the streets below.  The modern cranes that don’t fly are busy, but the overall impression is of a low city rather than the crowded skyscrapers I have come to expect in Asia.  Satellite dishes on the room of the Rex Hotel adjoining the swimming pool insure the most up to date modern technology.

I’m allowed to swim here for a fee even though I’m not staying at this hotel.  The swimmers are an odd assortment of foreigners from many countries.  But the beauty of Saigon, besides the gingerbread leftovers from the French colonial time which are sometimes freshly painted and sometimes dilapidated and decaying quietly, are the people below who exhibit a fresh and innocent friendliness I didn’t expect given their painful long term and short term history.  Yes, there are those who want your money, those who will beg for it, and those who will outright steal it.  But, compared to the cautiousness of Chinese and the Korean dislike and/or fear of foreigners, the Vietnamese are warm, sweet, gentle, and helpful.

At least, these have been my early impressions over the last three days.  I have been “adopted” by a cyclo driver/guide (the bike is in the back instead of China’s front pedicab).  Once he “claimed” me, the other cyclo drivers don’t try for my business.  I have even left a message for him with the other drivers, which he received quickly and reliably.

He maneuvers this contraption with great skill through the chaotic masses of bikes, motorbikes, buses, and cars.  The bikes and motorbikes convey a bride and groom on their way to a new life, trussed ducks hanging over a passenger seat, a woman passenger holding a live pig, boxes piled up even taller than the driver, and dainty young ladies holding one end of their attractive ao dai dresses with one hand on the handlebar.  Equally elegant are the many ladies in shoulder-length silk gloves with frilly handkerchiefs covering their mouths.

The food is wonderful — fresh and fruity and tropical and French and Chinese and Vietnamese — and not too expensive.  There are inexpensive hotels and an incredible tourism infrastructure designed for the poorer, independent tourists like me.  I haven’t traveled in any third-world countries that make it so easy and reasonably priced.

I finished off my lucky Friday the 13th with a French duck dinner for $4, lovely tropical fruits brought up to my room by the friendly family that runs the small hotel where I’m staying, an International Herald Tribune to scan from front to back, and a good feeling about being here.  However, it’s already clear I wouldn’t be able to teach in Saigon because it’s too hot for me here.

The following excerpts come from my travel journal to New Zealand in 1995.  They are included in my book, Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird, published in 2006.

New Zealand is an incredible place!  Distances are not great, and the Magic Bus is an excellent and relatively inexpensive way of getting around from one extraordinary sight to another.  Being let off and picked up right at the Youth Hostels means I don’t have to lug my luggage very far.  Many of the travelers are Japanese or Koreans who are studying English here.  The Youth Hostel system in New Zealand has been voted the best in the world, and it’s easy to see why.  I wish I could take the Youth Hostels and the Magic Bus with me everywhere in the world.

No matter the weather, the Magic Bus drivers are typical New Zealand “blokes” who wear shorts and a t-shirt.  Their New Zealand accents can be a bit difficult to understand, like “rise” for “rose,” “sex” for “six.”  They aren’t really tour guides, but offer good information for the asking.

New Zealand offers precious gifts every day.  One day shows me dolphins leaping for joy as they follow our boat.  Another day offers a palette of colors and smells and boiling rivers that only a volcanic area like Rotorua can offer.  Yet, another day shows me “adventure travelers” who leap and dangle on bungey cords suspended over gorgeous canyon rivers, raft their way down raging rivers,  tear around the rivers in boats at breakneck speed, or parachute out of planes attached to an instructor.

The bungey jumpers are the most entertaining.  Age is not a factor since I was told 80 year olds take the plunge.  Those who are practiced jumpers jump quickly and do fancy acrobatics as they bob up and down on the cord.  The first timers stand out because they sometimes have elaborate rituals they devise to mark their act of courage, often involving yelling out something meaningful to them before going over the edge.  Then, there are a few who freeze and never jump.  While I enjoy taking pictures of their bravery, it’s clear I have none of what pushes them to test their courage in this way.

I met an Israeli young man at a real castle above the sea while we were climbing up a curving stairway made of the once-abundant kauri wood.  That day at the castle, it rained and snowed and hailed and was sunny and warm, all just about simultaneously.  I asked him if he had come for the daring adventures New Zealand offers in abundance.  He laughed and said he was a paratrooper in the Israeli army and had no need of any more adrenalin rushes.

Born in 1943, war has always stayed on my mind.  I just took a tour of Camp Pendleton Marine Base in southern California and was reminded of how many military bases and soldiers have been in my life.

In the beginning, I was conceived, born, and spent the first 2 years of my life on an army base in Tampa, Florida.  My mother had gone there to marry my father after he was drafted into World War II.  Of course, I have no personal memories of those first two years, but I have the photos of me being publicly bathed in a big washtub outside base housing.  And my mother told me how often she had hidden in the closet with me when I cried at night so the soldiers could get some sleep.

I attribute a lifelong love of Nature to the Air Force base we lived next to during my active elementary school years.  Unlike today’s children, we kids were free to fearlessly explore our environment as long as we came home at dark.

The Air Force base that bordered our small attached housing units was off limits to non-military.  But, being kids, we used a convenient hole made under the fence to climb through and explore.  I don’t remember ever getting close to the actual working part of the base, but my playground was the land left wild on the fringes of the base.

I attempted ice skating in the swampy areas that turned to ice in winter.  I remember once having a leg fall into the wet swamp and I had to pull out that whole leg covered in mud and muck.  A hill which no doubt would look like a pimple to me today was where I skied down in the snow, and courageously rolled down the rest of the year.  Best of all was the wildness and the solitude it offered me in my most formative years.

It surprised me when my grandmother would come to visit and complained about the noise of the planes flying so close to us.  They never bothered me at that age.

When we were a young married couple, my husband and I drove around Europe for 12 weeks.  I don’t remember at all the couple we went to visit on an army base in Germany, but I can remember the base they lived on.  I was used to preceding every question with, “Do you speak English?”  I quickly found out how silly that question was on an American army base.

Not only did everyone speak English, but the base was a little duplicate of America in every way.  To those Americans living on the base, few were aware, or cared about, the German culture that lived around them.  Years later, when I lived in South Korea, I was told the same thing about the American soldiers based there.

When in Israel, it’s impossible to miss the soldiers coming and going in the streets.  It was disconcerting in the beginning to see the rifles they always carried with them.  These soldiers were not on patrol; just going about daily life.  With a mandatory 3 year stint in the army for young men and women, and the men being called up in the reserves until the age of 52, soldiers were everywhere.

I most remember them as always sleepy.  They’d get on a public bus, for that is how most of them traveled, prop their gun up next to them with one hand, and fall immediately to sleep.  But they would always magically awaken just before the stop where they needed to get off.

Although we think of soldiers as dressed in impressive uniforms with everything just so,  Israeli soldiers were often unkempt.  The older ones were sometimes out of shape, with pot bellies bulging their uniforms.  It was difficult indeed to put them together with an army known throughout the world for its commitment and masterful skills as an effective army.

Once, I spent a few days at an army base in Israel.  I was then the housemother for Ethiopian teenage boys in an Israeli boarding school.  Regular pre-army training on a base was mandatory.

The impressions that remain with me from those days  were how very fast they gulped down their food at the mess hall, and how little sleep the women soldiers I bunked with got.  An experience I never expected to have was firing a rifle at an army firing range.  I’d never shot even a rifle at a carnival shooting gallery.  But, that, my first and last time ever shooting a rifle, resulted in hitting the target.  I even saved the paper target all these years.  It’s sitting in a box alongside a piece of wood I broke with a karate chop in a women’s self-defense course.

There are two other guns in Israel I specifically remember.  One was the gun casually laid under my dining room table when one of my young Ethiopian friends who was then a soldier came to visit me.  Perhaps the most poignant mental picture I’ve carried with me for years was a rifle laying next to a violin at a concert on a kibbutz where I was volunteering.

When I was buying my home in the retirement community of Leisure World in southern California, there was an ominous sentence in something they gave me to read explaining that the Marine Corps Air Station at El Toro about 3 miles away would soon be closed and that it may possibly be developed into an international airport.  The first volunteer job I signed up for after moving in was fighting against having an international airport there which could only mean unbearable noise, pollution,  and traffic congestion for us.

The fight spanned years, and became very intense at times.  On the one hand, big money was at stake.  On the other hand, our quality of life was at stake.  It was basically a big mountain behind the base that saved us.   Although fighter planes can take off and climb quickly, commercial planes can’t.  That, plus the many planes already flying to and from neighboring airports in that same air space, made an international airport unsafe.  I treasure an ugly piece of the old runway that was torn up to remind me of the battle we had won.

At Camp Pendleton, one initial impression during my visit was how different a place it was even though it was only 45 minutes from my retirement community.  Instead of old and over-the-hill people, these were young and in the prime of their lives.  Instead of mainly females, these were by far mostly male.  Instead of plump to obese, these were trim and fit young men.  From my senior vantage point, they looked like children.  But, they were young soldiers living in dangerous times of possible deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan.  I wondered how many really wanted to be there compared to those who, like our guide, were trying to find a possible way to finance going to college.  Or, were just trying to find a paying job with benefits in today’s skimpy job market.

We saw an exhibition of training for hand to hand combat.  It struck me as ironic to be training for nuclear weapons as well as a somewhat more sophisticated form of the old cowboy fist fighting.  Having only had dogs who barely mastered commands to “sit,” and “come,” I was amazed at the highly trained K-9 Corps.  Fortunately, the trainers are abandoning the previous harsh training with choke collars in favor of inducement training with toys, which the trainer I talked to said was proving to be a much more effective method.  I had already seen the toy training technique with rescue dogs.  Man’s best friend is often the soldier’s best friend too.

I left the spacious rolling hills of Camp Pendleton with a deep sigh for those soldiers, and a vague wondering of when and where there might be another military base and soldiers in my life.

This is an excerpt from my book, Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird, published in 2006.  The journal entry is dated April 20, 1993.

Even though I’ve been to China so many times, there are always unexpected adventures.  This time, a group of us went together to some beautiful mountains.  All Chinese seem to love standing in front of a stone marked often in red Chinese characters with the name of the scenic spot we are standing on.  I have zillions of pictures of people taking pictures of other people.  No one can understand why I like to take pictures of the scenic spot itself, without anyone in it.

As we were walking down a particularly steep hill, I began to wonder if my middle-aged body could make the climb back up.  Curiously, at the same time I was having my doubts, a young man carrying a rope started to accompany us.  I didn’t  know why he kept following us, but his mission soon became clear.  These are young mountain dwellers who sell their services to carry people back up the mountain.  Other helpers and sedan chairs await down below while he tries to “rope in” riders.  The rope becomes useful when you agree to hire his muscles.

I was somewhat dubious that they could carry me up the mountain since I probably outweighed two of them together.  However, I also knew I’d have quite a time walking back up.  So, I hired sedan chairs and carriers for each of us.  We must have made quite a sight indeed snaking back up the path.  To my relief, their wiry legs were capable of carrying even my weight, and they slid into an easy swaying rhythm that felt like I was softly flying slightly above the mountain trail.  I gasped a bit when I saw we were about to cross a stream, but they didn’t even break their stride on conveniently-placed stones.

I was both relieved and sad when my first, and perhaps only, ride in a sedan chair up a mountain came to an end.

This is the conclusion of the previous post, The Pinniped Affair.

The very first release I saw was the incarnation of pure joy.  Three sea lions that had been together for a few months were brought “home” together.  When their kennel doors  were opened, they literally raced for the sea and kept going and going and going — out and out and out — and, most amazingly, porpoising in absolute synchrony all the way.

On reflection, our joy at seeing them reunited with their wild home was tempered by the thought of the dangers we had sent them out into.  Not only could they be killed by storms, sharks, toothed whales, and El Nino changes in the sea, but also by the intentional and unintentional  cruelty of humans.  Humans have been known to club, gaff, or shoot sea lions that are competing for the same fish.  Such was the fate of two magnificent adult male sea lions that were shot in the shoulder, rendering them unable to swim.  I watched helplessly as they died from man’s inhumanity to animals.

Unintentionally, fishing nets and plastics have become a significant killer of pinnipeds.  While fishing nets are spread out over miles and inadvertently drown pinnipeds that get caught in them, tons of plastics drift in our oceans innocently looking like food to the pinnipeds.  When enough sandwich bags, trash bags, and balloons are ingested, the stomach can no longer function properly and these pinnipeds starve to death.

It is not only Walt Disney who anthropomorphizes animals into characters we can understand.  And yet, watching the seals and sea lions, I can really see many of the same characteristics of humans.  Some adjust easily to the unfamiliar surroundings and human caretakers.  Some are playful, curious, and cute.  Others behave much like brats and bullies who gang up on weaker members of their own species.

Is it only my imagination when I see dignity and stoicism in the face of a dying animal?  Their pain and suffering is universal.  Do some know they are dying?  Ask the caretaker who had a young sea lion crawl into her lap, put its head on her shoulder, sigh, and die.  One might expect this of a trained animal that had bonded to a human trainer, but our animals are wild and unbonded.  We are brought together by their medical needs.  While there is no encouragement of bonding, there is definitely communication.

Humans agonize endlessly, politically and morally, about euthanasia, but there is no need for Kevorkians to champion the cause in the veterinary world.  It has long been believed that putting animals to “sleep” is humane.  At our center, after a sedative is administered, I have watched our staff of caretakers stand protectively around the animal, much like a deathbed vigil, while the solution that will stop its heart is given.

Death is an inescapable consequence of life, whether for a plant, an animal, or a human.  This is a reality no one can change.  When an animal dies in our care, either naturally or by euthanasia, our veterinarian performs a necropsy.  I find it interesting that some of the animal care workers will do anything to keep an animal alive, but once it’s dead, they don’t watch the necropsy.  I feel sad the animal has died, but I am keenly interested in watching the necropsy and learning how much our bodies have in common.

“Just like us,” the vet often comments as he cuts, slices, and probes.  It is during a necropsy that we can see all too clearly the cancer, the stomachs and intestines clogged with indigestible plastic bags and balloons, fishhooks and lines, and other indications of how humans are destructively changing the environment for all living creatures.

Getting to know the animals and their caretakers has enriched my life in many ways.  The pinnipeds led me to study oceanography at our community college.  During the oceanography course, I heard some enticing information about nature in Iceland.  I chose going to Iceland as my celebration for my 60th birthday.  My desire to see whales in the wild strengthened and, in February of 2005, I spent an absolutely incredible afternoon surrounded by gray whales in Baja California, Mexico.

Now that I have mentally entered a watery world more complex than I ever imagined, I envy my pinniped friends who can close their nostrils, hold their breath and dive deep for long periods of time.  I envy their grace in the water and their comfort in a world that is so foreign, fascinating, and frightening to me.

It’s hard to believe there was a time I couldn’t have even guessed the meaning of the word, “pinniped.”  Since 2001, I have spent most of my Sunday afternoons in the company of the creatures with that lofty appellation.  I know I’m in love.

Although I can’t claim it was love at first sight, there was a definite attraction I felt when I wandered into a marine mammal rescue center on my way to somewhere else.  As the docent on duty explained facts about the animals I saw that day, she mentioned she was a volunteer.  I actually felt a thrill run through me when she said that.  And I signed up.  The duties of an animal care volunteer seemed just too energetic and risky given my slow reaction time and no health insurance.  I thought I could perhaps handle a docent’s job of greeting visitors, explaining about the animals, and doing presentations for groups such as scouts and school children.

Given the natural patterns of seal and sea lion rescue, the center’s busiest time is usually in the spring and early summer.  Slower months allow more time to read up on pinnipeds, ask questions of the staff, and just enjoy being in the sun and company of whichever patients we have at the time.  Gracie, a beautiful, large, misnamed male Great Egret, usually hangs out nearby waiting opportunistically for fish at feeding time.

I have gone from not having a clue as to the differences between seals and sea lions to telling people how to distinguish our three main groups of patients — sea lions, harbor seals, and elephant seals.  I have become acquainted with some of the staff, who are also mainly volunteers, and have come to understand why they choose to spend their leisure hours cleaning out pens and risking being bitten by ungrateful patients.  I have discovered a different group of people than I had  known before.

The patients are named by the rescuers according to the seasons, holidays, where they were rescued, movie heroes, current events, size, and personalities.  Sometimes we go through periods of naming them according to themes such as different types of cheese or fashion designers.

The names are not given to them so we can “talk” to the animals.  These are wild creatures, and they will be returned to the wild when healthy again.  Bonding to humans is not a goal and definitely not preferable for these animals to whom people usually mean trouble, pain, pollution, and even death.  Although some pinnipeds are attacked by sharks and killer whales, their most fearsome enemies, both directly and indirectly, are humans.

There have been a handful of exceptions to the “no touching, talking, cuddling” rule.  These have been sea lion infants whose mothers died from domoic acid poisoning.  Following the food chain, algae (small marine plants) are eaten by fish like sardines and anchovies and then in turn are ingested by pregnant sea lions who eat voraciously in the springtime before giving birth in the summer.  Why certain types of algae sometimes produce this poisonous domoic acid is still being studied, but there is research and evidence of the human factor that contributes to nitrates and phosphates ending up in the sea.   Sadly, the domoic acid toxin accumulates as it moves up the food chain and often these pregnant females suffer permanent brain damage and death as a result.

Since the sea lion mother normally has a close, intimate relationship with her baby for eight to twelve months, the infants simply die without deep bonding.  And so we have hand-raised, cuddled, bottle-fed, and played with these infants.  But, since we are not able to teach them how to survive in the wild, we raise them for about six months and then find a permanent zoo or wildlife park for the rest of their lives.

Over the years, I remember several animals as individual personalities.  Summer was brought in looking exactly like the starving sea lion in one of our posters.  Every rib poked out of her pathetic body.  Parasites and worms had robbed her body of nutrition.  Slowly she came back to life again and was returned to the wild looking like a poster sea lion for “happy and healthy.”

Barry proved to be a very unusual adolescent male sea lion.  Cruelly injured by being caught in fish nets, he needed time to heal.  Usually, male sea lions pay no attention to playful young sea lions.  But Barry was different.  He became a big brother to a rather rowdy group of young sea lions who liked nothing better than climbing all over Barry.  We could observe the involved, joyful way he communicated with the young ones.  At some point, the caretakers knew he had had enough playtime for the afternoon, and would put him in a pen of his own to rest.

Little Tyke was a harbor seal that lost her mom before she learned how to fish.  After being force-fed, she didn’t seem interested in learning how to fish for herself.  Patiently probing the child psychology of a pinniped’s mind, our staff tried various ways of giving fishing lessons to Little Tyke.  Eventually, Little Tyke got the hang of swallowing a fish (pinnipeds don’t chew their food), but had no interest in “catching” it.  Since we feed them dead fish that can’t move, the staff tied a string to the fish to make it wiggle in the water.  Little Tyke became more interested, but was frightened to put her head deep into the water in the big pool.

What to try next?  A kiddie wading pool was the answer because Little Tyke eventually dared to put her head into the shallow water to scoop up the fish.

Because Little Tyke was so young when she came to us, she stayed a couple of months beyond the usual two or three.  After five months, she was released with another harbor seal who had become her friend.  Her recollections of the open sea were few and long ago because she had only spent about two weeks in the wild.  When she was brought close to the sea, and her kennel door was opened, she only tentatively came out.  Overwhelmed, she stuck like glue to her buddy.  With several looks back at us with confusion — and did I detect excitement? — she followed her bigger adopted brother.  We hoped she’d be as happy, healthy, and well fed as she had been with us.  I can’t deny a lump in my throat.

To be continued……

This is an excerpt from my book, Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird, published in 2006.

It looked quite ordinary from the outside, standing under a tree along the roadside in Hokianga, New Zealand.  Stepping inside, I pressed a button and the door closed.  Classical music drifted into the immaculate little room with the very clean toilet.  I pressed another button and the toilet paper rolled down.  After washing at the perfectly clean sink, I reluctantly pressed another button that made the concert conclude and the door open.  As I stepped outside, the door closed again and a loud, very unmusical noise commenced as the toilet dutifully scrubbed and sanitized itself.

The vast majority of toilets I have used around the world were definitely not as pleasant.  Several in China might have been called downright traumatic because of the unsanitary conditions, lack of privacy, and the rather delicate balance required to squat.  Chinese learn how to squat firmly from childhood, not only for elimination, but also for sitting comfortably anywhere they are without a chair.  Anatomically, squatting over a toilet hole facilitates proper elimination.  Chinese do it so naturally that I have seen shoeprints on western-style toilet seats in airplanes while traveling between Asia and the U.S.

The most unusual toilet I used in China was a wooden barrel placed in a small shed outside the countryside home of one of my student’s families I visited.   Curious pigs also shared this shed.

Flushing has as many variations as the style of toilet– from none as in the trains in China where it all disappears down onto the tracks left behind, to the occasional sweep of water down a long trough in a public toilet, to the gentle but not always effective American swirl, and the New Zealand gush of water like a waterfall cleansing the bowl.

In China of the late 1980’s and 1990’s, I had many opportunities to observe that, while western toilets had arrived in some places in China, western toilet technology hadn’t.  In some cases, the pumps that brought water into the building didn’t do their job.  What always amazed me was how a ubiquitously available pink string was utilized to fix just about everything in China — including inside the toilet tanks.

Toilet paper can be brown and rough in the Chinese countryside, or in tiny little packets of inefficient tissues that girls carry everywhere with them in China and Taiwan.  Toilets, toilet accessories, and toilet culture are just another aspect of the fascinating and sometimes unpredictable similarities and differences found around the world.

There are many journeys in addition to geographical ones.  Such was the unexpected journey a Los Angeles reporter took into the world of mental illness and homelessness.  For a year, he wrote occasional articles about his relationship with Nathaniel, a gifted musician who played beautiful music and slept on the streets and under freeway bridges in Los Angeles.

He wrote a book about his relationship with Nathaniel and it became the movie now out called “The Soloist.”  I haven’t read the book, but the movie examines the mind of the reporter even more than that of the mentally ill Nathaniel who was tormented by angry voices that came and went.

The actor who plays Nathaniel, Jamie Foxx, said in an interview that he came dangerously close to falling into the abyss portraying the tortured soul of Nathaniel.  But I related more to the reporter, Steve Lopez, because I once had an artist/poet boyfriend whom I tried to “help.”

The most meaningful sentence in the movie to me was when Steve admitted very clearly that, in spite of good intentions and great effort, he had not really succeeded in helping Nathaniel, but that knowing Nathaniel had helped him far more.

I could say the same about my artist/poet boyfriend.  He would most likely even say that I had damaged him over the intense years of our relationship.  Although our boyfriend/girlfriend relationship ended, we continued in close friendship.  Finally, 22 years later, I received a last “Dear John” letter from him.

I have always regretted that I hadn’t really been able to keep him far from the edge of mental illness.  But I have been grateful for the ways he which he encouraged me to take inner journeys.

Like Nathaniel and the reporter, my artist boyfriend saw me more clearly than I saw myself.  Although I was more functional in the “normal” world,  he was more proficient in inner journeys.  These inner journeys became a vital added dimension to my life and my nomadic traveling years.  He also helped me to see the world through an artist and poet’s vision and creativity.  Like the reporter, I also met others in the chaos of mental illness and homelessness through knowing him.

Similar to the reporter who worried over Nathaniel’s safety, I worried for my friend’s safety as he wandered nightly, and sometimes slept, on the streets of New Orleans, miraculously managing to only get mugged a few times and was never shot.  Although he was shy on some social levels, he had a way of connecting to strangers that seemed magical to me.  Paper placemats in restaurants always turned into quickly drawn portraits that were received warmly by a waitress or a passerby he chatted with.  Like Nathaniel, my friend could not hold a regular job or make money by his talent, but he could reach people through his art like Nathaniel could through making beautiful music.

The reporter is grateful to Nathaniel, and I am grateful to my artist friend.  They helped us more than we helped them.

I first went to China in 1988 and was there during the turbulent student demonstrations that led up to June 4, 1989.  On that exact date, I was in Hong Kong and so had the opportunity to see Hong Kong’s reaction to the events in China.  This is what I saw and wrote on that day of fear, disbelief, and mourning.

June 4, 1989

One month ago, I was walking alongside the May 4th Youth Day parade of college students of Hangzhou, China.  On June 4th, I again walked in a demonstration with Chinese people.  But these were Hong Kong Chinese, and we were all in mourning for the many students killed in the Beijing nighttime massacre the night before.

As I walked alongside, a marcher called to me, “Join us,” and held out his hand.  I immediately thought of that other young man in Hangzhou who had said those same words to me on May 4th.

I joined the black-clad Hong Kong mourners.  Young and old, children and even babies were there.  We sweated together in the heat of the June sun.  We passed the thousands of shops and skyscrapers that line Hong Kong with armbands, headbands, holding banners, chanting, or simply walking.  On the roads not closed to traffic, cars and taxis honked continually and flew black flags from their antennas.  People on the sidelines clapped, or made “v” signs with their fingers, or joined the marchers.  One tiny, wizened Chinese woman waved a black flag angrily with tears in her eyes.

Most everything was in Chinese, but then I heard the familiar song in English, “We Shall Overcome.”  That brought me back to the other demonstrations and movements I had witnessed — the Civil Rights movement, and the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of the 1960’s.

I had left China a few days earlier.  I had been missing my China life, and my diligent, sincere students.  They had been excited about the demonstrations, about some action at last in their rather monotonous and hopeless existence.  There had been speculation that the movement for freedom and democracy was growing, dying, or going underground.  Even the peasants in the remote countryside had heard about the hunger strikes and sit-ins in Beijing and other cities.

In Hangzhou, my Chinese friends had innocently assured me that the government would never dare to hurt the students if the students remained non-violent.  I had not wanted to intrude upon their trusting innocence at that time.  The massacre horrified me, but did not really surprise me.

As I stood on a Hong Kong street watching the news on a small television set placed by a local vendor above his shop, I watched the faces around me register stunned disbelief as they saw film clips of the tanks rolling down Beijing streets.  With horrified fascination and disgust, they listened to gunshots and saw wounded, dying, and dead people.

I have lived in Israel where burning buses, tanks in the streets, and people being shot are often daily news there.  But Hong Kong Chinese have relegated such sights to exciting crime movies.  As my Hong Kong friend said to me, “Even demonstrations and protests are new to Hong Kong.”

These Hong Kong Chinese are indeed a strange counterpart to their mainland Chinese brothers and sisters.  They will unite politically in 1997.  In contrast to my students, these well-fed, very westernized Hong Kong Chinese marched in Reebok sneakers and designer jeans with Gucci belts.  They munched McDonald’s hamburgers, and many carried radio-tape recorders plugged into their ears.  The Hong Kong police looked authoritative in snappy uniforms adorned with a gun, nightstick, and walkie-talkie.  I thought of the contrast they made to the nervous, baggy-uniformed drab Chinese police who look like little boys dressed up in their father’s clothes.

The Hong Kong Chinese care about the mainland Chinese, and genuinely want to help them, but the gap is so very wide from so many aspects.  I thought how hard it would be for my students from the countryside — thin, poorly-fed and poorly-clothed — to imagine decorating a car with banners and driving down the street honking and waving as a show of solidarity with Chinese students in China in their struggle for freedom and democracy.

The Hong Kong Chinese, already worried about the unification in 1997, are now understandably terrified of what 1997 might mean to the freedom they now take for granted.  I, myself, had come to value my American freedom and choice much more since my students had expressed their envy of it openly and longingly.

I doubted that my Chinese students themselves knew the magnitude of what had happened in Beijing, or that the world was in outrage and mourning.  I wanted them to know, and yet I wanted to shelter them from the full impact of the cruelty.  I bought some newspapers to send them, and then was afraid they might get in trouble for having them.  I wished they were safely home instead of still in school.

I thought of my first visit to Tiananmen Square in October.  I remembered the monstrous proportions of the square, and behind Mao’s huge picture, the gate of the Forbidden City, the palace for the Emperors of China.  I thought cynically that the Emperors would have approved the action of the Chinese government.

I cried for the students I knew in Hangzhou, and for those I hadn’t known in Beijing.

Starting in August of 2008, I posted several blogs about my personal friends in China, and how their lives had changed since I first knew them.  These postings are listed under The Tiananmen Generation.  I thought it was important, as well as fascinating, to follow their lives from 1988 through the last 20 tumultuous years of change in China.