Sacred space
On my last trip to Saipan, I embarked from Dalian and returned the
same way. Dalian is a metropolis of
Manchuria by virtue of history and design, location and history. On the southern tip of the Liaoning
peninsula, it was priced by the Russian navy for its year-round warm water,
compared to Vladivostok’s that freezes in winter. As a cosmopolitan center, it is referred to
as the Hong Kong of the northeast. After
viewing at the turn of the year what HK had done with Victoria Island, the appellation
is not an upgrade.
The Tsar encountered Japan’s modernized navy built in the Meiji
Restoration that was a product of Nippon's industrialization mid-1800. The event was remarkable in that it was the
first time a non-western navy defeated a prominent western one, resulting in
the humiliation of Russia for which Stalin kept a grudge in WWII; it also
stoked Nippon’s pride in the rise of Japanese nationalism that occupied
Manchuria, led to Nanjing in the infamous rape of the city and extended into Indochina.
When I left Shenyang for Saipan in March, the ponds, streams and even
rivers all the way south to Dalian were still frozen. It was no longer the case when I
returned. Bereft of not too much
foliage, the commercial farms were mostly colored tan with a lot of plastic canopied
farm structures to trap humidity and heat to sustain cultivated plants.
The train I took was the electric CHR bound for Harbin of
Heilongjiang that flew off the ground at a speed of 250kms/hr. and higher. To Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping’s credit, the expenditure
for rapid transit accelerated in their watch while superhighway construction egged
by car dealers had gone the way of the tortoise.
Change has come to Manchuria in the three years I’ve lived here. Cement, iron, concrete blocks and steel,
sprouted all over as domestic consumption rather than export became the engine
of its economy. SMEs in free market ambience
broadened the economic base. State owned
industries are rapidly built, good for labor with an eye against corruption
but they are hard on the terrain as
hills and mountains are bulldozed for gravel and sand.
The west celebrates chronology. Preferred times are civilization’s Golden Age.
The Parthenon stands for the glory that
was Greece and the Coliseum echoes the grandeur that was Rome, exploited for their
commercial value in tourism. We treat
the museum grounds, the Japanese jail and the Sugar King Park at Gualo Rai, the
AMP and the Suicide and Banzai cliffs similarly. Old Man by the Sea and the Grotto are turned
into the specter of where the unwary, the reckless, the careless, and the
inebriated tourists drown. We add gruesome
value to fate.
Not the khronos but the locus is China’s forte. Communal spaces get varnished so its glitter
attracts notice. Tomb sites as revered
and the ordinary is made holy. Places of adorations are protected and
sanctified. In many homes and
establishments around the world, corner altars are built so individuals and
families remember either ancestors, traditions, or home beyond the current
front doors. Others in their homes tend
gardens indoors and out as powerful reminders of life’s infinitesimal aesthetic
value even as existentially, daily living is experienced in its chaos and
turmoil.
The closest thing to a “sacred” space in my home is the sunroom where
fast growing spider plants are tended, then I put them in my tenements’
staircase windows and landings as décor to discourage indiscriminate throwing
of trash on the floor and warns wall stickers of ads and notices to stick with
the bulletin board. The plants also
indirectly encourage my neighbors to attend to common space with the same
fastidiousness that they give their dwellings’ interior.
China is aware of the carbon it emits into its northern skies as
abundant mei (coal) is used to heat
homes and to power factories. A Canada
colleague watched a TV program on the polluted skies of China, familiar to us
in Manchuria where coal is dynastic monarch.
In the open grasslands of Inner Mongolia were structures generating
electricity for use elsewhere. The
hovering tan clouds in the distant foothills at dawn and dusk indicated that
more than hot air was emitted from the plant towers.
China, like other developing economies, often finds itself defensive
on carbon emissions, treating it as a logistical issue rather than the
moral-bashing it gets from the western press, as if the United States never had
its Cleveland and Pittsburg, and England, its Manchester and London. I lived in North Carolina and Washington DC,
Chicago and Kentucky, and have traveled through all the contiguous States save
Vermont. Smog in the 60s to the 90s was
not uncommon in all of them. The
experience was like what I had driving behind a smoke-belching bus on Isa Drive
in Saipan early part of this millennium.
Passing on that road was not an option.
Sacred space in our time is now one, coughing and belching itself as its
climate gets adjusted to a change in temperature, and the air/ocean currents
gets realigned for mother Gaia to fix her bearings. Earth.
That’s my sacred space. What’s
yours?
j'aime la vie
pinoypanda2031@aol.com
yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!