Travel Book Review ~ Traveler's Tales China edited by Sean O'Reilly, James O'Reilly and Larry Habegger

Traveler's Tales China edited by Sean O'Reilly, James O'Reilly and Larry Habegger - published  2004 by Traveler's Tales Inc, USA.  358 pages. ISBN 1932361073. Click here to see if we currently have a copy in stock...

Traveler's Tales China is a collection of excerpts from China travel books, an excellent starting point for a journey to the Middle Kingdom. We read this before our trip to China and both picked the same story as our favourite: Waltz at End of Earth by Paula McDonald. The story includes two things closest to our hearts: tops old Chinese ladies and Chinese food. We also each picked out the same favourite line from the story, one that reminded us of so many little side-of-the-road restaurants we have visited across Asia: "one of those one-room shacks that serve as home, restaurant and mini-zoo." Here's the story...

Two of us were on our way to "End of the Earth", the most remote beach on remote Hainan Island, the farthest south in a string of Chinese islands in the South China Sea. A ridiculousl place to want to go; there's nothing there. But the ancient Chinese believed the earth ended at the southern tip of this largest of China's islands. Thus, to journey to the "End of Earth" was to show great "strength and courage", qualities of utmost importance to the Chinese. To journey to "End of Earth" was to bring great good fortune to yourself. In such a strange way, my journey did.

Getting to Hainan Island from Guangzhou isn't easy. Eighteen-hour village bus rides through mountains with the inevitable breakdowns in the middle of the night are followed by tedious ferries, incomprehensible transfers, and more tedious ferries.

But, we found our way to "End of Earth" eventually, a peaceful, serene place with an aura of great continuity. Beyond, with quiet waves lapping at our feet, the sea seemed to stretch forever. Like the ancient Chinese, who could know what was out there? Or what would come next?

In a villag enearby we stopped for lunch at a roadside house, a hovel actually, one of those one-room shacks that serve as home, restaurant and mini-zoo, a combination so common in rural China.

Joanne Turner, my fellow traveler, and I had eaten in many similar places in the few weeks since we'd met and completed a stint together as volunteers on a scientific project meant to catalog China's southern rainforests. We'd camped on remote mountain-tops, sea kayaked the uninhabited Outer Islands, trekked through leech-filled jungles, and eaten, standing up, in every street market in Southern China it seemed.

Along the way, we'd become expert pantomimists, ready smilers, and absolute gourmands on the street-food scene. The shabbiness of the shack didn't bother us. The luxury of eating from an actual table instead of a rock seemed rather civilized, in fact.

This particular shack was poor even by Chinese standards though. It held only the bare wooden table, a rope bed, and several cages full of eigh- and ten-foot snakes. The dirt floor was swept clean, and an old bicycle hung on the wall. Nothing more adorned the place. Cooking, as is customary in the countryside, was done out back on an empty oil drum with a wood fire below.

The eighty year-old owner and her granddaughter imediately began to display their snakes. Out they came from their cages and were handed to us one by one. Which did we want for lunch? We tried to pantomime that it was very hot and that we weren't very hungry after all and that the snakes were very large. There would be so much waste.

Perhaps rabbit would be better, suggested our hosts. Or so we assumed as they took us to a shed in back where three rabbits were caged. Unable to look any bunny in they eye and then eat it, we politely tried to say that the rabbits were also too big. The only other choice seemed to be an old chicken pecking at the edge of the dirt lane, so we opted for him. Least of all possible sins, or so we thought.

Twenty minutes later, the food began arriving: the usual Chinese mystery soup, followed by several courses of vegetables, rice, and endless pots of steaming tea in the 100-degree heat. Finally the meat arrived.

It was unmistakingly rabbit! Oh, lordy, where had we gone wrong? Perhaps we should have drawn pictures instead of doing charades. We at it, of course. With grace and a good deal of hard swallowing. Not to would have caused a loss of face for the two gracious women whose humble hospitality we shared.

The heat was oppressive that day, as it is all over southern China in May, and even to sit still was to sit and drip. "I forgive you for sweating in my house. There is no loss of face in this," and fanning with a marvelously ingenious fan made completely of feathers. I had never seen anything like it.

Since there was literally nothing else in the one-room house, not even a change of clothes, and the fan seemed to be her only possession besides an old watch, I was careful not to admire it openly. Chinese custom demands the giving of guests of whatever they admire. But despite my intentional disregard of the fan, I was immensely grateful for the momentary illusion of coolness each whoosh brought.

Perhaps because I was trying so hard to ignore the feather fan, what happend next caught me completely by surprise.

Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the old woman broke into a great grin, hugged me hard, handed me the fan, and then hugged me again. I was stunned,. It was obviously a gift, but her generousity under the circumstances, was astonishing. What had prompted the act? What could I, a lanky, perspiring stranger with a sunburned nose, in her life for so short a time, have possibly done to deserve the gift of one of her few possessions? Nothing that I could conceive of, but something had changed dramatically in the little room. The old woman now sat smiling beautifically as though I had pleased her more than I could ever imaging. But I couldn't for the life of me figure out how.

Despite the baking heat inside the home, we lingered awhile after lunch and drank more tea just to stay and not seem to rush away. And then, to our amusement, when her grandmother finally left to take care of other chores, the old woman began to speak in halting English, obviously a language she had not used for decades. Bit by bit, straining to understand the stumbling words, we learned her story.

Her husband had been imprisoned under Mao for being a follower of Chiang Kai-Shek and had died a prisoner. She had watched as he was led away. She never saw him again.

Before the Cultural Revolution the woman had been a teacher, the daughter of educated diplomats, one of the new regime's despised intellectuals. After the Communist victory in China. she had been exiled from Shanghai to the remote island village for the double sins of being educated and being the wife of a political enemy. She had lived on the isolated village for decades surviving as best she could by cooking and selling the snakes and rabbits she and her grandmother we able to trap.

Her story, told with no rancor, capture our hearts, and despite the need to get on, we stayed. The long-forgotten English words seemed to get easier for her so we asked questions about her life and encouraged her to reminisce. She told us of her childhood, of traveling and learning English at embassies as a youngster. Memoires of another, so very different life. Yet for all her losses, she truly seemed to have no bitterness. With one strange exception. When I asked her directly if she had any regrets, she could think of only one; that she had never learned to waltz.

One of her most vivid childhood memories was of being taken, as a young girl, to a grand ball in Hong Kong where there were many English guests in attendance. The music was international that night, the first time she had heard anything besides the harsh, sharp cacophony of China's music, and suddently the ballroom was filled with swirling skirts and the sweetest sounds she had ever heard. Couples were waltzling, and, to the young Chinese girl, it was the most beautiful sight in the world. Someday she would grow up to become one of those graceful waltzing women.

She grew up but China changed. There were no more waltzes. And now there were no more illusions in her life.

In the silence that followed the story, I took her hand across the table. Then I quietly asked if she would still like to learn to waltz. Here. Now.

The slow smile that spread across her face was my answer. We stood and moved together toward our ballroom floor, an open space of five feet of hard-packed dirt between the table and the bed. "Please God" I prayed, "let me remember a waltz. Any waltz. And let me remember how to lead."

We started shakily, me humming Strauss, stepping on her toes. But soon we got smoother, bolder, louder. "The Blue Danube" swelled and filled the room. Her baggy Mao pajama pants became a swirling skirt, she became young and beautiful again, and I became a handsome foreigner, tall, sure, strong... perhaps a prince who carried her away. Away from her destiny at "End of Earth."

The feather an hangs on my office wall today, next to her picture. The two of us, hands clasped, smiling strangers from such different worlds, waltzing around a steaming hut in a forsaken spot I visited by chance that day. That day I met strength and courage at "End of Earth.