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Stepping forward in time... 6 hours ahead of our usual time zone, into the unknown with a head full of stories of Ninjas and Dragons, rigid customs of an unspoken cast system, silk garments and carefully crafted gardens.
What I found was a different world, where ancient wisdom and modern living are intertwined in a magical way. I got a sense of a very different way of interacting. A hive like society where everything functions in harmony, but as a hive, the individual is perhaps somewhat lost. These people are deeply respectful to one another and there seems to be a clear hierarchy dictated by age. Elders are respected and cared for and the young are caring and respectful. In general people are kind and gentle, but, as an outsider I can't help wondering if this is just a superficial perception. I can't help wondering if beneath all that 'Zen' there is perhaps a great repression of feelings, a great fear of being an individual, of being left out of the hive.
For such a big country, I had a surprising sense of lack of space. Of course we did not travel around much beyond the Shanghai area, a 6 day workshop in Hangzhou was as far as we got from the city. But still, I did get that sense of overcrowding so often associated with China. On the flip side, I also got a sense of spaciousness. All the buildings are so big, in every direction, across the land and up to the sky.
And the polarity of existence in this realm is also visible there. From tiny alleyways filled with life, shops, street food, electric cables hanging on the outside of the buildings, to vast modern open air shopping centers with spaces like bridges connecting neon light buildings and lit up designer stores with underground networks of neon lit streets lined with restaurants and bars, connecting theaters and auditoriums. In some ways it was like stepping into a sci-fi movie.... but it is real, it is how some people live on this planet. Afraid of untamed nature and oblivious to its beauty and power. Or perhaps they are not, perhaps the subject simply did not come up in conversation.
But certainly for me there were moments of complete sensory overload. The artificial lights, the sound of millions of voices all at once, the subtle buzzing of electric impulses, the scents of flowers and garlic and cooking spices, the warm humid air. And then sitting in cars for hours slowly crawling through what seemed like tangled threads of a tapestry of road networks. Surprisingly it was there, in that space, that wild nature suddenly showed her face in the form of Ivy slowly taking over the vast concrete structures of the intermingling, intertwining multi leveled highways. Nectar for my eyes, this beautiful green tapestry which could not have been better placed by the most talented landscape artist. Here, nature took chage and in those moments I could feel deep gratitude in my heart for the Great Mother.
It was hard to distinguish in our time there, the divine feminine. It seems she works in more subtle ways than that which I could perceive in the city. Perhaps I was not looking in the right places or perhaps I need more time for her subtle presence to distill into my being. Yet something began to stir on our last day when we visited a water town called Zhujiajiao. Over 1700 years ago, this village was built on the waterways outside of Shanghai. A bit like Venice, but in China. Apparently there are many of these villages in this area, at the end of the great Yangtze river. For centuries people have used these waterways to trade and transport goods from one part of the country to another. It was here, on our last day, that I felt a connection to the ‘real’ China.
As we walked through those narrow streets, crossing bridges one way then another, through alleyways of tiny stalls, craft shops, restaurants and street food, we suddenly came to a temple. It seemed like it was at the center of that bustling village. A buddhist temple with giant bells and drums, red lanterns, statues of monks, moksa and inscience burning in the courtyard… and there she was. Guanyin. I shouldn’t really say she, as in the Taoist tradition Guanyin is neither male nor female, but I like to think that associated with the sacred feminine in all of us. A symbol of compassion, Guanyin is “The one who perceives the Sound of the World”.
Such a beautiful farewell to have come to this place. And what a special seedwe take home with us. All these days wondering about the sacred feminine essence of this land, and here she is. It is now up to me to distill this gift of compassion and find that part of ourselves that can “perceive the sound of the world”
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