Monkey bars

Monkey bars: You let go of the last bar before reaching out and grabbing the next one. That's what C. S. Lewis has to say about "endings and beginnings."

I'm indeed letting go of a lot as I end my two year Peace Corps stint in China. That includes this blog, so let me pause and thank all of you who have taken a little time to read some of Jing's Journey. I can't see individual's names, but I can see countries, and your tuning in has meant a great deal to me. I'm posting for the last time something from China, and I've seen for the last time many a Chinese face and place--and will continue to say goodbye to others before boarding a plane in Shanghai in July. Monkey bars. Yes. I'm indeed uncurling my fingers here and reaching out to something else, something over there.

"Monkey bars" works on lots of levels--but figuring out the boundaries of any analogy is half the fun. All transitions--all beginnings and endings--involve letting go in some ways, or should, as part of moving on. But have I really let anything go? Could all those faces and places, experiences and feelings, still live inside this little brain, a brain that, like all of ours, is still wider than the sky? Or have I let it all go--and am I already mentally and emotionally far away?

You see, in my mind's eye, I'm bursting through the gates at San Francisco International Airport, now catching sight of Mary, Tony, and Jim--and, who knows, maybe Paul and Jade. Now I'm opening the doors to the oak book case in the Gans homestead in Missouri. Ben and I are sizing things up as we get ready for an estate sale. Ann, too. I find myself squinting up the olive tree alley with Jim, trying to decide how much to cut back those branches-on-steroids so that a furniture truck can make its way down the lane. Now I'm in Michigan, waiting for my mama's head to turn when she hears my voice--and Sally's and Ted's. Will she know me? Us? I find myself trolling the pages of the CU website for the Writing and Rhetoric program, trying to familiarize myself with who is doing what. And then I find myself halfway up Boulder Canyon, high in the Rocky Mountains, at Pat's place where I'll be living for a while. Jane's there. Most of all, I find myself going back to Chris and Ana's north shore rooftop in Pittsburgh, witnessing three brothers laughing, Nick the hardest. Seeing Ana's growing belly.

And then I come to. Actually, I'm in China. I'm here. Hunched over my laptop. Maybe mentally I'm holding the next monkey bar (for those images are real enough, or will be), but at least physically I'm still gripping the last monkey bar. Here in Beibei. The dancers' music from the garden way below drifts in on a still-soft breeze. A motorcycle revs up and I hear the chop-chop-chopping of cabbage in several nearby kitchens. My own kitchen counter is laden with bounty bought dirt cheap from the vegetable man. A critter scurries through the walls. My eyes fall on my Chinese book--a book that felt like my best friend for over a year--but a friend I jilted. A month ago I had to admit--wo meiyou shijian--I didn't have enough time to keep up with my class and still make progress on a book project with Professor Liu and honor my other Peace Corps priorities before leaving. I was surprised just how heavy that loss felt--almost like a break up that was long in coming but not desired. A letting go I wasn't ready for. Yesterday I sat at the banquet table, a farewell luncheon the waiban hosted, trying to figure out which pieces in the dish before me were pig's ear and which were mushroom. It was hard to tell.  I'm here in China, alive, but with hand outreached for the next monkey bar.

Later in July, the situation likely will be reversed: I may find myself mentally back in this kitchen chair in Beibei, mentally picturing ferns sprouting everywhere, even out of stone walls, mentally strolling through the lush campus landscape, under the magnolia and fig trees, mentally appreciating my hard-working students. And yet physically I may be somewhere else, maybe on a dry mountain trail in the Flatirons of Colorado.

The lane a half mile behind my apartment in Ban Zhu Cun

Endings and beginnings, letting go and reaching forward, of course, are not simple. Multiple, overlapping, varied. Identities are stretched, expanded, altered. What is it that we release and what stays with us? With identity? With experience? Awareness?

I'm sort of leaving China and my Chinese students, but not all of China, not everything Chinese.  I'll be bringing some of China home with me, wherever home is. And just what do my students want me to bring home?

Invitations to come visit China!

A desire for peaceful relations.

Hope that people will be curious about China's delicious cuisines--maybe enough to view the documentary "A Bite of China."

Students from Xinjiang, Tibet, and other autonomous regions want people to know that everything isn't Han and their cultures have just as much to offer.

Some students express hope that Americans may take an interest in China's emerging film industry, just as China has long been devoted to Hollywood. Others want to introduce their mythologies, their ancient Chinese stories. Dragon stories.

Over and over I hear variations of this "If you come, you will be welcome! We want to meet you!"

Most of all, I hear my Chinese students wanting to be understood. One student says "Perhaps in most people's minds our thoughts and ideas are limited or somewhat closed. However, even though we have little limited ways to get information, the fact is we are interested in getting new knowledge, in accepting different views. We are open, too!"