The Taj Mahal
When you first set eyes on the Taj Mahal the sensation is absolute awe. As the sun sets and again rises, you have the privilege of exploring this marvelous behemoth, meditating on its splendor from multiple perspectives and heights. After your time is done, that precious moment fills you when you realize you must cast a parting gaze. This knowledge is joined by mixed feelings of nostalgia coupled with inexplicable swells of sadness. But those final seconds are also accompanied by a serene lightness before you inevitably journey on. To experience the stillness of the ages you must confront how your own days are so surely waning.
Two Fags
In China, smoking cigarettes is as common as in the US inhaling Doritos. And like the culture of gluttony in the States, the Chinese can proudly claim to be the world’s biggest smokers.
Cigarettes are major status symbols in China, no different from the cache that luxury cars or designer clothing carry in the West. Unlike in the West, however, where most brands of cigarettes are similarly priced, in China a packet of fags ranges from a few pennies to over a hundred dollars. And soft packs are priced higher than hard packs, a justification for which I have yet heard explained. Cartons of cigarettes are also gifted in exchange for favors, serving as unofficial currency.
Even when the Chinese currency was valued at 25 percent more than today, and not taking into account inflation and salary increases, cigarette prices have always had a huge range from the dirt cheap to the dizzyingly absurd. To put this in perspective, imagine stepping into a 7-Eleven where the cigarette display contained packs from 50 cents to a thousand dollars.
There’s also the starry-eyed, circa 1950’s notion that cigarettes are still somehow beneficial. Even in today’s purportedly developed Chinese society, the common thought is that cigarettes are relaxing and social. Naturally, none of the hundreds of brands sold in China contain a warning label. And at all major functions, like government banquets, wedding receptions, and ironically funerals, high-end brands of cigarettes will be piled around the table on saucers or left in their sealed boxes for guests to enjoy and smuggle into their pockets. At the entranceway to a wedding reception it is likely to be greeted with a cigarette by the bride and groom or child of the family. Everyone gets one, as if a party favor or lollipop after a visit to the doctor’s. People smoke in hospitals, classrooms, elevators, buses, nowhere is sacred.
I remember one brief hospital visit I had in the City of Changchun. I was hooked up to an intravenous drip and laid out on a gurney and left in a bare room that could have doubled for the set of the Saw movies. A well-dressed doctor eventually came to visit and as there were no chairs he propped himself on the edge of my wheeled cot and proceeded to hand me a cigarette. The two of us then shared a smoke and chatted about my medical condition while I laid on my back and watched the IV drizzle into my arm.
One justification I have heard for the prevalence of smoking is that cigarettes represent wealth. They are a throwback to a time not so long ago when smoking was equated with the status of having disposal income. So, sticking a cigarette in your face is literally a way of giving yourself face. And this antiquated “tradition” marches on through modern-day China. Cigarettes are also huge revenue streams for the government, accounting for a reported 7% of taxes and 1% of China’s GPD. These are the “official” numbers so they are probably higher. There’s no question that China’s cigarette industry keeps millions employed. However smoking related diseases also kill over 1% of the population each year, so like the one-child policy smoking also plays a less-than-bragged-about role in population control.
China even has a national cigarette, like the panda is their national animal. The brand is called “Chunghwa,” the very same famed cancer sticks that Mao choked until he expired. And successor Deng Xiaoping’s choice oral fixation was none other than a brand called “Panda.” You can’t make this shit up.
When I used to smoke cigarettes I remember buying a different brand with every purchase. There are literally hundreds of choices available and each box is designed with unique flare. Kid in a cancer store. One night at dinner I was with two well-to-do, loyal Chunghwa smokers. They noticed me toting a camouflage box of cigarettes and proceeded to mock me saying that I didn’t know anything about good cigarettes. I submitted to them that there was actually little discernible difference between most Chinese brands. Apart from there being strong cigarettes and light ones, price was the only noticeable divide. This remark drew only further derision, and with it the taste challenge was on.
I removed one of their soft-pack Chunghwas fags and then one of my own. Simultaneously lighting both, I told one of the guys to close his eyes. The mocking grew more acute and their laughter tightened. This was far too easy a game, it was just childish. And so Mr. Tang obligatorily shut his eyes while I delivered to his lips the first cigarette. It was his own. Following a pensive drag and exhale he nodded in wait for the second. And after a quick draw on my own inferior brand, he then boldly extolled that that was of course his treasured Chunghwa. I said nothing when he opened his eyes to have the embarrassing truth revealed, his friend aghast with hysteria and himself quick to take up the test.
And so we again commenced, again with eyes wide shut but now with cigarettes coyly switched in their order of delivery. I figured that even with a guess one of these two ninnies should toss the 50:50 odds. Add to their chances the strong likelihood that a devotee of one brand of cigarette should be able to perceive even the slightest difference in taste, if even in the feel of the filter. Something! I would have even bet against me. But as events would prove, the second contestant also guessed wrong.
It was a rare moment in my many years in China, a rare one indeed, when proof was served up and force-fed with absolute silence. No excuses were made. Everyone was quiet. It was really something to see. Nothing more of it was said. And I didn’t need to gloat. The cigarettes—as they usually do—got the last laugh.
Yehuda the Juggler (a parable)
We live in an age abound with mesmerizing performers, whether of musical prodigy, the physically daring or bizarrely inventive. There was a busker I once saw, for instance, who composed impromptu symphonies with only the use of his voice. It was indeed a marvel to behold. I also once had the fortune to be riveted by a third-generation daredevil who walked the high wire between two water towers. And then there were the four contortionist sisters from the Far East who intertwined into never-before-seen shapes, a geometric choreography both freakish and delightful. From lands far and wide such talent ceaselessly bedazzles. But there is one who stands alone. Yehuda the Juggler is the most fantastic performer of them all.
While it is true he is a juggler, he does not belong to any order or guild, nor is he well known amongst his peers. In fact, he would not even call himself a performer. But make no mistake, his skills–and indeed they are skills–are unparalleled by the even the most renowned within the craft.
Unlike other practitioners of the art, whose performances spellbind by increasing the number of objects thrown or who toss death-defying items like torches and swords, Yehuda only juggles three common balls. And Yehuda doesn’t perform for an audience either. Rather, individual passersby might choose to pause just long enough–though few do–to be captivated by his unorthodox style. Unorthodox, so it seems to the untrained eye, but nothing short of physical genius is his juggling in fact.
Lacking all grace and showmanship, Yehuda crudely propels the three balls one after the next to oft dizzying heights and at haphazard distances from his center of gravity–for he has none–the balls flung far from one other in all directions. It looks as if a child merely hurled the spheres in the air without the slightest precision or care. But with desperation and acute intent, Yehuda races back and forth along the ground, his neck bent skyward, panting and sweating as the falling objects accelerate on their descent back to earth. And while appearing totally out of control, lunging and stumbling this way and that, at the final split second he incredibly saves each of the of the balls before they crash down. And then just as hurriedly, he chucks each ball wildly aloft again.
It is the most dizzying and nerve-racking dance. Yet to most of those walking by they take no notice. Yehuda does not feign a street player’s charm or prop a collection tin by his feet. For the fortunately curious eye, however, one has the privilege of bearing witness to one mini-miracle performed upon the next.
Yehuda is always there, day or night it seems, at the same intersection of paths in the city park. I once watched him for 40 minutes during a midday reprieve, and he did not stop to take a drink or rest for breath. He has become a fixture in my life. And in all these years I have never seen him drop a ball.
Once I asked him why he juggles the way he does, for surely it would be easier to employ a more conventional technique. “I do not do this,” he annoyingly barked at me, “to keep, as you say, the balls in the air.” Rushing to and fro and without pause he continued. “I do this, you see, to keep myself from falling down.” And with that not another word.
Trip Slag 