February 21: Shaoshan and Hengshan

What a remarkable day.  I write this nine miles from Hengdong County at night upstairs in a strange sort of Internet cafe in an ancient building in an alley in Hengshan, some 100 miles south of Changsha.   I suppose it's not really a cafe since they don't serve anything here except Internet access to young locals, male and female, ranging in age from about 15 to 25.  There are no lights in the place other than the glow of the old but functional computers that line each wall, and the walls are so old they look like the walls of a cave.  The rates are cheap at 4 yuan an hour, which is about 48 cents.

Leon, Chen (or Chenge for "Brother Chen"), and I have just finished a dinner of hotpot nearby, sitting around a battered wooden table in the center of which was a boiling pot of broth with a fire underneath.  Into this contraption we dipped sliced mutton, tofu, pork blood tofu, spinach, and potatoes, then dipped them into the spiciest sauces imaginable.  This washed down with Chinese beer.

We left Changsha this morning after picking up an official letter at the downtown office of the Hunan Provincial Social Welfare Department.  The letter will permit us to visit the Hengdong SWI.   

There as we started out, Leon and I were fumbling around in the van trying to find a good secure place to stash this important document when Chen whistled and drew our attention to what seemed like a huge group of people that slowly had begun to file out of the same government building and into a very large bus we had parked next to, and that loomed like a mountain over our tiny van.   This turned out to be a Scandinavian adoption group with perhaps 40 or more people who had just completed their adoption paperwork.

Deciding we had better get out of the way of this oncoming crowd, we stuffed our letter into Leon's knapsack and then we were off toward Shaoshan.  Outside Changsha the city is surrounded by an astounding number of new construction projects: industrial parks, residential areas, etc.  But not far past the outer edge is rural China, which is a far different place from new urban China.

The area is hilly with steep valleys, at the bottom of which are usually ponds, rice paddies, or ancient terraced plots of land for growing grain or vegetables.  Square two- and occasionally three-story, tile-fronted houses are perched in small villages on the hillsides or beside the road, and are almost universally the same except for the occasional mud brick variety that are generally in poorer condition.  Overall the homes in this region are solid structures and large in comparison to the tiny apartment-style units packed into the high-rise residential buildings that are the norm in cities and towns.

Here each rural house may serve as home to three or four generations of one family, and sometimes their animals on the ground floor although this seems to be a tradition that is becoming less common.  With roadside dwellings the ground floor is usually converted to a garage housing a shop or some other type of business.

Gazing out the window of our little van, most of the countryside flew by in timeless scenes that would have looked pretty much the same 100 or 500 years ago.  Then we would careen around a corner and suddenly come upon a modern-era factory, a small government complex of indeterminate use, or a roadside village filled with tiny shops bustling with commercial activity.  Every small roadside village seemed to have at least one outlet for the company China Mobile, whose ubiquitous white and blue signs announce cell phones for sale.

The winding road was filled with cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, carts, and pedestrians.  All of them seemed to compete for the center.

Once in Shaoshan our first stop was for lunch at an old mountain restaurant owned by relatives of Mao Zedong.  Actually, more than half the residents of Shaoshan are said to have the name Mao.  There was no heat in the restaurant and a kerosene burner was placed under our table to keep us warm, plus a thick tablecloth (blanket) draped across our laps.  There was snow on the mountains above us, and it was about 30 degrees inside and outside the building.  Chen knows the owners and he got to sit at their table, and toss spicy bits from his plate to two friendly restaurant dogs. 

Although the restaurant has several dining rooms today we appeared to be its only paying customers so we were seated in the entrance room and our table was near a small bar with a television set hanging above it.  From their table nearby the Mao family was watching the NBA All Star basketball game. 

After lunch a large procession of townspeople came marching up the road, women wearing red and black uniforms and waving bright yellow scarves.  They had come to perform a drum dance.  Today was apparently the first day the restaurant had opened after a winter break and the drum dance will ensure good fortune during the season ahead.   

Eventually we headed down the road a short distance to what is now the shrine.  Shaoshan is more accurately the name of the mountain on the side of which sits the small village of Shaoshanchong, where on December 26, 1893, a bouncing little Mao Zedong was born to a relatively well to do peasant couple.  But the birthplace has popularly become known throughout China as just Shaoshan.

Mao grew up in this picturesque Shaoshanchong village, attended school there, and helped his father in the fields until he moved to Changsha in 1911.  There he briefly served as a soldier in the Republican army that overthrew the Qing Dynasty and, once settled in the big city, started to read works of western philosophy as well as the progressive newspapers and revolutionary journals that were then becoming available in Changsha.  In 1918, after graduating from the Hunan Teachers College, Mao traveled to Beijing and worked in the Beijing University library under its head librarian Li Dazhao.  Mao joined Li’s Marxist study group and the rest is history.  Mao's "mistakes" cost China as many as 30 million lives in his ironically named Great Leap Forward campaign alone, but he bonded the people of China together to a degree that no other leader had or has since, and he made them proud to be Chinese.

During the Cult of Mao, at the height of Mao's reign, the government carved the aforementioned winding roadway and also built a special passenger railway both leading from Changsha to Shaoshan for party faithful to make the pilgrimage to his birthplace.  In 1966 more than 3 million Chinese put down their shovels or factory tools to make the trip, with permission from their supervisors of course.  Today the area is far less popular, and the small gravel parking lots there were mostly empty.  The highlight of this relatively modest historical communist theme park is the Mao family residence, which was dubbed for a while the Ancestral Temple of the Mao Family and is now just called Comrade Mao's Museum.  There are stone markers etched with Mao's poems along the walkways surrounding the residence and nearby at an adjacent site is a very tall and famous statue of Mao, with mountain peaks as a backdrop.

The former residence seemed surprisingly large and sturdy.  The house is tan colored, with mud brick walls, and nicely tiled and thatched roofs.  It's on a wooded hillside, above some ponds.  One can tour all of the dozen or so rooms inside, including a kitchen, a dining room, three family bedrooms, a guest room and a common room at the entrance.  Within the rooms are various personal effects of Mao and his family, as well as a few family photos—Maomerabilia if you will. 

Is there significance to my daughter's birthplace being so close to Mao's? 

Not very much, I easily decided.  The history of revolutionary China has too broad a base.  Still, in my travels I have noticed some truth to the saying that Hunan produces people as spicy as its famous cuisine, laced as it is with those fiery chili peppers.  Even at 24 months, my Hunan daughter has a way of letting us know what she wants and doesn't want that is surprisingly emphatic.

But she is a sweetie and we have a special bond.  On our Gotcha Day in Changsha, I was handed Clara-Li amidst the shuffle of families in the crowded reception room on the second floor of the Hunan Provincial Social Welfare Department.  She melted into my arms then quickly looked me straight in the eye as if to say, simply, where have you been and what took you so long.  Then she nestled back into my shoulder. Around us the other Hengdong babies were freaking out. Clara-Li had one brief episode later that day back at the hotel room where I think she got a little scared by her new surroundings.   Eventually, with a little help from her new big sister, we were able to distract her and later she was fine.  Sort of.  Children who spend their first 17 months in a beleaguered orphanage generally have some issues and Clara-Li is no exception, but she is a very special child, which I knew from the start.

This, I realized today, is why I now found myself standing alone 10,000 miles from home, in central China, unable to speak or understand Chinese, at one of the world's most presupposedly unappealing tourist sites, the birthplace of Mao Zedong.  It's because I love my daughters, both of them, that much.  The thought had never entered my mind that I wouldn't try to make this trip that somehow brought me here.  It was like comforting a night terror in the wee hours or smiling through endless videotapes of Barney or, more surprising, My Little Pony.  It's just what I do. 

Of course I'm really only alone for brief periods, as Leon and Chen have turned out to be excellent travel companions.   Chen has been having stomach issues, due to his penchant for eating the spiciest foods he can find, and so he sometimes discreetly disappears.

Neither is well versed in the general facts surrounding the object of our mission, but I am beginning to understand that Leon and Chen were each subtly intrigued to discover how I came to be father to two Chinese daughters, and why I am traveling to Hengdong of all places.  In fact, they no longer seem like guide and driver since both often appear to be preoccupied, very much like I am, with the unusual tasks in our plan.  It's all for one and one for all.

Next stop Hengshan.  To be a driver in Hunan is to be a race driver, I've discovered.  Chen is a madman at the wheel of our little van but very good.  There are very few road rules in China and a lane is a loose concept.  To be a driver is also to be engaged in a constant game of chicken with your oncoming opponents and once the roadway opens up one must drive one's vehicle as fast as it will possibly go. 

The countryside between Shaoshan and Hengshan is fascinating.  I know I cannot adequately describe it tonight.  It is very poor, but this is an ancient subsistence poverty under which the people in the area have been living for thousands of years.  Many homes are as well kept as the small plots of land in front of them that families rely on for most of their income and livelihood.  Success seems to be a tenuous matter and other homes barely seem to provide their inhabitants with decent shelter.

The small city of Hengshan is also very poor, at its outskirts.  But the old part of the downtown where we are at the foot of the mountain is in much better shape and makes its livelihood off the Buddhist and Taoist travelers to the area, Chinese travelers.  Foreigners are extremely rare.

Hengshan the mountain is also known as Southern Heights Mountain (Nanyue Shan) and is one of the five sacred Buddhist mountains in China.  It has more than a dozen temples.  Although only about 4,000 feet at its highest peak, Nanyue Shan extends more than 30 miles in width and its spine includes a total of 72 peaks, the highest of which is the Wishing for Harmony Peak.  At the foot of the mountain stands the biggest temple in southern China, the Grand Southern Heights Temple (Nanyue Damiao).

The original temple there is said to have been built as early as the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), although it has been damaged by fire and rebuilt several times.  The present temple dates back to the middle of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911 AD) and its design is patterned after the Imperial Palace in the Forbidden City in Beijing.  It has nine courtyards and its main hall is 66 feet high, floor to ceiling, and supported by 72 giant stone pillars.  The main building, painted with red and yellow, is connected to a maze of other buildings in a very large temple complex. 

Along the streets surrounding the complex are hundreds of small open-front shops selling a huge variety of incense, prayer objects, and firecrackers.  In this region of China, temple incense is tossed, often by the armload, into ovens large enough to be free standing buildings and it is believed that the rising smoke from these ovens carries prayers, wishes, and messages to the heavens.  During Spring Festival, many worshippers also lob big strings of firecrackers into these ovens, perhaps as an exclamation point. 

Leon and I hiked around the Grand Southern Heights Temple today, explored its maze of temple buildings within, and in the main temple shook sticks in front of the large Buddha for our fortunes. 

Mine looks good.

Tomorrow morning we go to Hengdong where I've a full day planned.  On the next day we plan to go to the orphanage.  Leon just spoke with the director on his cell phone.  We're set.

Tonight I hope to finally get some sleep.