Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things by Gary Geddes

Author:Gary Geddes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Sterling
Published: 2011-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

After lunch, Liu Libo insisted on taking me on a tour of downtown Xian, now completely modernized, with enormous hotels surrounding the ancient Bell Tower. Liu was an undergraduate. However, as the only fully competent English-speaker, he had been drafted as official shepherd and guardian angel. I suggested I could manage on my own, but he seemed to welcome the chance to practice his English and show me the sights. Having twice seen the Big Goose Pagoda and the Forest of Stele, a library of 2,300 classical poems and drawings carved on massive slabs of stone, I encouraged Liu to show me other sights. The problem was that my feet, clad in undersized hiking boots, were screaming blue murder. We crossed over to Huajue Xiang, an ancient market area restored and full of artisans and shops, many of them selling etchings and personalized stone signature stamps known as “chops.” Under Liu’s watchful eye, the merchants followed me from table to table, hoping to interest me in carved ink trays, chiming steel balls, jade earrings, and delicate paper cutouts of figures and animals from Chinese history and mythology, a craft I was incapable of appreciating.

Liu Libo was a trooper. When I said I was tired and wanted to return to the hotel for a rest, he insisted on delivering me to my cheap digs by the train station in person. I suggested a bus rather than a taxi, which turned out to be a tactical error, as it dropped us many blocks from the hotel. By the time we reached the Street of Lost Souls near the train station, with its notorious “massage” parlors, I was limping badly and desperate to put my feet up but only after a good, long soak.

All my trips to Asia seemed to involve problems with shoes. In 1985 , when I traveled to Japan and China with my wife, Jan, and three daughters, I did not have proper footwear. I’d resurrected an ancient pair of sandals from the ’60 s and had them resoled, making them so stiff they would not bend. The noise they made on Tokyo streets and in the subway sounded like rifle shots. After a few days on the road the straps began to cut into my feet, which with the application of a couple dozen Band-Aids, were slowly being transformed into abstract works of art. My feet are large, size 12 —so big, in fact, that no store in Tokyo could help me. As it was rare for them to stock even size 9 , the diminutive clerks looked at my feet with astonishment and mild horror, as if I were the rough beast slouching toward Ginza to be born. One day, after another fruitless search for shoes, I awakened from a nap at the Kimi Ryokan—a quaint hotel in Tokyo with authentic bamboo mats, sliding doors, and movable partitions in the rooms—thinking I would go for a brief walk. As I descended the stairs, I heard giggling noises in the lobby.

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