YUJIA WEN

I have came back. To typing on a bed that I’ve fallen akin to for a little more than a month.

To home.

And I’ve learnt more about life, love, and beauty than I initially planned to have.

I’ve also learnt that home, doesn’t have to be where your furnitures sleep.

I just know that I have to go back – I have to, I have to. Its people are my people. Its land and water bore my airs. Its skies looked out for me. Its animals showered its stunning landscapes. It’s everything that completes the incompletes parts of mine. I’ve thought for a long time of writing an astronomically long entry on this adventure (because it deserves the time and craft) and I’ve always wanted to only write it when I felt soul-ful (because it deserves all the soul I could feel in the body). I imagined completing this post on a toilet at 4am because that’s the only place I could escape to without disruption. I imagined editing this at an airport gate with a battery bar that is a little more pressing and unignorable than an auburn there’s-only-3-minutes-left icon. I imagined frantically polluting restaurant napkins with scribbled flashbacks, to be stored, deciphered, and recorded on a journal at a later time.  

I need the most inspiration to describe this adventure and I wait for those magical moments because when they happen, they feel beautiful.

I couldn’t sleep for 3 whole days, the night in Chengdu before the big trip, the first day in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, and the last night of the 6 day tour, again, in Lhasa. Was it more excitement than the unfamarilarity of the high elevation, the automatic response of every tourist? I couldn’t tell, it was a fine mix of both. I just never wanted to sleep or waste a minute with my eyes closed, I wanted to run on the open plains with the yaks and sheeps and talk with the red-beaded guys and girls about their perspectives and my perspectives. I wanted to ask questions that came less than ten syllables, capture portraits that you can smell the film grains to, and feel some kind of spiritual uplift – religion is ubiquitous. It defines this place.

I did everything I wanted to. I opened my eyes and hearts like never before.

On the last day, I had my alarm set at 6AM, however, an unexplained uneasiness awoke me at 3. I was alone in a room with three beds – two have flown home due to their fevers. I packed all my goods and left the hotel at 7 to arrive on the square of the most holy Jokhang Temple. I sat on the steps of Jokhang and just allowed the sun and the incensed smoke to bathe my presence. I didn’t feel foreign at all, before lines of faithful disciples grasping onto their spots of getting inside the monastery. Nor did I feel any uneasy from observing a land of people doing the grand kneel. Around me were faithful disciples carrying litres of buttered tea, buckets of flowers, to devote themselves to the holy spirits inside.  

People were coming to Lhasa from all over Tibet. Even as we drove on highways, we would be accompanied by disciples on the side doing the Grande Kneel. On the right, there could be a few wandering yaks unworried by the polite traffic this place has been known for towards its holy members.  

We would drive by large Haiger tour buses filled with yellowed-faced sleepers, with expensive oxygen bottles in front of their seats, just in case they run out of oxygen, as likely their cameras would be out of batteries. Like us, they were new to this place.

Not very often would we feel taller by getting past mini vans that carry the dark-shaded Tibetans. I remembered one in particular. They were a mid-aged crowd, probably in the 40’s. The one guy just looked up – it was an engagement of a mere second, but I could not forget how natural and welcoming his eyes looked.

I want to come back really soon.

I want to understand its religion and I want to embrace its people the same way they have done to me – like family. I want to be without any complaints and I want to be immersed in their perspectives and culture.  I want to capture more smiles than I can offer myself.

It’s daunting how quickly you can fall in love with something that you knew would take you away from the very beginning.

Or even before the beginning.

Received a sudden call from the aunt’s family on the weekend while eating with another relative that I’ve met only once.

She asked if I wanted to travel, away from Beijing, for a bit.

A tinge of excitement was the only thing I could experience in my already dry throat, the same throat thas has been consuming the hottest air this city has experienced in the past 10 years.

“Where”, I asked, with bigger curiousity than ever. I’ve been extended numerous offers by them this past summer, but none of my adventurous requests went through. Last year was a bad one to pick. Everywhere I wanted to go either held an earthquake, flood, or some political disruption.

“We were thinking of Tibet, you wanna come?”

And for those who know me should understand the unhealthy obsession I have with lama attires, hobo bags, mosque shoes, free prairies, horses, cows, sheeps, and the real beauty that exists in only the most genuine and raw conversations between people – not behind screens pressing “like” or “view”, but the kind that chases the sunset like restless children with rural elegance. If you know what I mean. You should.

A copy of my passport was sent to the traveller’s agency for an expedite Tibet Traveller’s Permit application that very afternoon. It would shorten the norm-rate of 7 business days to only three. 24 hours later, I booked my flight. And within 24 hours, my flight will leave. Packing is left unchecked. That will be done first thing in the morning tomorrow (today?).

I think this is going to change my life, like everything that has already happened in this two short months.

But I think this will change me. And I’m not quite sure If i’m ready for all the bombardments yet. I’d have to run to the pharmacy tomorrow morning and grab some medicine to prepare for the high elevations of Tibet (nosebleeds and pounding headaches are common if precautions aren’t taken)

There’s also a smaller assignment I’m about to take-on, along with my cousin, in the next couple of weeks. The relative that took us out for dinner, as a habitual thing, gave us 500RMB each to spend on whatever. We just couldn’t take it. So I wrote a heartfelt letter to her and we folded the bills into hearts and stuffed everything in an envelope and gave it back to her. What we’re going to do is something more meaningful. We’re each taking only 100 RMB and spliting that into 20 pieces of 5 RMB, and we’re going to pay it forward.

I grow sick of the widening gap between the rich and poor in this country. I struggle to understand why there are a billion luxury shopping malls when most people probably don’t even shop there. Because they can’t afford to.

There is still the lady without the leg playing er-hu in front of the empty Burberry, the lost 7-year-old who’s been forced to give out flyers that his parents wouldn’t even care to comprehend, the middle-aged man with an accidental burn on his cheek coupled with simple chalk-words on the sidewalk that explains how he survived the lost hopes.

So instead of spending the money on probably end up being 3.5 cocktails inside Nan Luo Gu Xiang (南锣鼓巷) – my second-home and backyard – we’re trying something else. In the next few weeks, we’ll be travelling to different cities (my cousin’s leaving Beijing to Guangzhou, and I, to Chengdu then Tibet) and we’re going to spread our help across the map into the hands of those who would knock their heads out for that light bill.  We’ll mark each of our 5 RMB with a special symbol so it stays differentiated from all the other bills (if we have anything else) in our wallets. For each person we extend our help to, we’ll photograph them and also write a little note on the who, where, and how’s.

I feel that this will be the best gift we could give, and I can’t wait to take this on in Tibet. I’ll keep all posted.

I’m going to the office in the morning to organize some files and in the afternoon, I’m spending it with my cousin, as it will be my last day with her, to probably a canoe-trip inside Beihai Park, an imperial garden north of the Forbidden City, famous for its river (Beihai).

Stay well, everyone. Get excited for Jia in Tibet. Seriously.

Saatchi & Saatchi Beijing. Landscape shots. Enjoy.