The waves roll in
nicely. I should savor this view. Wave after wave crashing and receding. Shore birds racing along, pausing, digging. The Pacific Ocean in malted blue, hints of
yellow, depth of green. This is not far
from where perennial oceanic mirages have been sighted, up near Penglai, which
we may not get to see today. You just
have to keep looking, long, broadly, 海阔天空[1]. Was
there really a sea serpent seen off Gloucester that stayed for
days? Was the sea serpent real in Iris
Murdoch’s “The Sea, the Sea?” Keep
looking and eventually the motion can mesmerize you into seeing anything you
like or need.
We’ll be repulsed back to drier ground soon. No crashing or rolling or much of any moving water
at all, there. Just a choice, to live
where, despite whatever other benefits there may be, it is dry. In New York, where I’m from, one can live a
two-hour’s drive from the sea but it never feels this far. Beijing’s aridity, the absence of any
estuary, it is a completely different climate.
So many simultaneous expressions of movement out there in
the sea. It almost tempts you and your
field of vision to take in as much of it as you can at any one moment. Where does your brain stop? With the crest of this wave, the roll of that
new one forming? Broader still white
caps further out and crests further in, together for a single vertical line to
the horizon. Then gaze more broadly to
try to render the breadth of your vision’s capacity and hold it all in at once,
just for a moment. Beguiling. More so than watching all the people on a
crowded street, or all the cars speed around from the top of a building. The sea coordinates many, many more
unfathomable discrete notes into a recondite musical expression.
Wonderfully, one can never focus on all of the sea. But it’s fun to try. Invariably your eyes it seems must train in
on something and then the rest is background. Perhaps the exercise is to see two lines of
activity at the two extreme goal posts of your visions breadth and try to hold
those two pieces at once, and then feel the center move in spite of your trying
not to let it pull you in by command.
But it doesn’t really work. The
oculus it seems, needs to zero in and identify something. A small, new wave breaks in the middle and,
in noticing, you are drawn to it, from the peripheries you’d set yourself to
hold on. How much motion can the brain
conceive, at once? I just tried it now with
my younger daughter. She’s not sure if
it’s possible. I’m not either.
I just went out from
this sixth floor window on to the beach itself.
What to listen to? Of course,
Claude Debussy, “Le Mer.” But is it on
my iPod? ‘tis. I always think of porpoises when and the
Mediterranean when I hear this elsewhere.
However, I just looked on line and Claude apparently wrote this when he
was crossing the English Channel, which evokes more the evacuation of Dunkirk
more than it does a dolphin dance. But
no matter, a sea’s a sea. Azure, cobalt,
turquoise, chalk, the vast watery brine circulates everywhere. All the great oceans are connected. All colors are possible.
Listening on the beach, the symphony, alas it began to
sputter. I thought, perhaps the data
was damaged? On to the symphony’s next
movement. Again? Ahh.
The batteries in my noise-cancellation headsets are on the brink. So much for the beachfront soundtrack.
Later in the car, I played it for my gals. Thrilled, they were, I assure you. But this was the theme, how do you manage to
have the whole sea rendered in music? Everyone
agreed, it is impossible. But what could
you do, what sounds could you make, if you had fifty or more instruments to
command. Imagine looking out broadly at
the orchestra, one eyes edge to the others, and coordinating their sound. I warned my little one that there would be a
section soon, where sharks come.
Now, we are back in the car after seeing the famed “Penglai
Pavilion.” We made it after all. It was cold.
It was rather expensive at a cool $60.00 for the family. And, having entered it became clear that it
was quite far off. Still, no
matter. Baxian guohai, gexian shentong.
八仙过海，个仙神通。(Eight immortals cross the sea, each one has
a magic power.) The grounds are
probably stuffed to the gills in the summer.
We plodded along for a kilometer essentially by ourselves. Up ahead, the famed outcropping of temple towers set against the cliff bluff
that had been imprinted in my mind when I’d done a Google Images search for
“Penglai.” The character “peng” 蓬
in Penglai has quite few brush strokes for the assignation “simplified.” I’ll have to look it up later, but it will be
revealed to you in seconds. [2] "fleabane?" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penglai_Pavilion
At one plateau, my wife is, fortunately, prompted to enter a
temple’s base building and view a movie about the mysterious, sporadic mirages
that periodically appear out at the horizon and which I mentioned at this
posting’s outset. A film begins, showing
their appearance from the prophetic year of 1988. The mirages appear again in 2005. I’m now resigned to seeing this, hokey though
it may be. I would have absolutely blown
off the gruff tout, if I’d bumped into him first. But my wife had already struck a deal. I coughed up thirty yuan and we entered. At
least we were out of the wind. And,
there it was. The mirage of 1988, from
the time, when my wife carried my stepson in gestation, not far from here. I enjoyed looking at the crowds of local
people from that time, and seeing their cherubic faces and simple clothes, and
remembering a China just emerging just about to test the limits. http://paranormalportal.wordpress.com/2011/07/30/the-mirage-cities-of-penglai/
Finally, I passed through a door that said, “do not enter”
and went up a flight of steps to a peak from which one could see the sea. It was cold, fresh and stunning. The tops of the temples and what I later
learned was a lightening tower, all stood out before me on the corner. And everywhere was the sea. Rolling in, crashing. I’m a simpleton perhaps, but I loved to stand
there and imagine Qin Shi Huang occupying the same ground. Reckoning with something he couldn’t master,
perhaps for the first time in his life.
I found Penglai somehow and extreme manifestation of oceanic
China. The sea dominates. It’s the end of an enormous continental
protrusion and thrusts out ot the sea. The
lore exclusively concerns engagement with the sea: immortals who set out, pirates who landed and
rulers who sought to bend it to his will. The sea, the sea.
And then my kids were very, very cold. And it was a race back to the car. My younger
one and I chatted long the way about cold.
Thoughts turned to Jack London and the short story from the Klondike
where the hapless, frozen trekker tries to light a fire with his last match
sitting beneath a pine tree. The fire
lights. He carefully tends it. It grows.
He is saved. Then, the snow above,
from the pine branches melts and falls down into his fire with a clump, dousing
it. And listening to the hiss of the
fire gone, it dawns on him, that he is doomed.
I was glad to say that my younger daughter wouldn’t leave it
at that. “Just rub some sticks.” “He should just keep walking.” “Look for another match.” I reckoned that this quality, this “there
must be a way” would probably stay her well, and encouraged it. She’s related to my daddy, I believe.
Now it’s the G18, back to Weifang, back to The
Farrington. It’s pleasant countryside,
yellow, dry winter mostly, but vineyards and apple orchards and mountains and,
well, yes, quite a few towns. Let me ask
you something: Have you ever heard of
Laizhou? Well, with a gun pointed to my
head our ago I would have absolutely come up short. But have a look at the map, on the road, the
G18, between Penglai and Weifang. It’s a
secondary town, along the coast. There
must be nearly 1M people. Town after
town, after town with incredibly dense packing of humanity. People, everywhere. Traditional villages, that extend on and on
and on, after every kilometer. Every
person, waiting for their ticket to a high rise. Every town, waiting to be destroyed. This endless roadside density explains how this
peninsula can have more people than Germany.
One more night and day left on our journey through my wife’s
home province, which should really be understood as a country. Shandong.
Mighty, mighty, Shandong Province.
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