Face to Face

The soft 'hi' we exchange as we meet reminds me of something I can't quite place; only much later do I realize it's the greeting my parents give each other as they wake up in the morning.

There's a pause as we look at each other and smile, happy to have been able to make this work, and then she says, "Come on, let's go, let me show you the souk I talked about. It's in the Old City, in the Muslim quarter. Did you do your research?"

"Of course," I respond, smirking a bit. "Rabbi Silverstein says I'm a good student. Though as it happens, in our last conversation before I flew over, we were dicussing — or maybe it was arguing — the finer points of derech chiba. I think I won, actually."

She purses her lips, looking at me skeptically as she tries to figure out whether to take me at face value. I give her a few seconds before saying, with only the slightest bit of sarcasm, "So, are you just going to stare at me, or are we actually going to this market of markets?"

I get a snort from her — and perhaps a hint of a blush — before she sets off, confidently threading her way through the streets. I follow the best I can, trying not to look like a clueless foreigner, though even with as much international travel as there is today, a Chinese person in Jerusalem isn't quite a regular sight.

We pass through the Sha'ar Shechem and thread our way through alleys that can barely fit three people standing next to each other. On both sides, there are merchants plying their wares - silk scarves, jewelry, gilt vases, purses, rugs, even a few lutes hanging from a crossbar above our heads. Every few stores, though, the handmade wares are interrupted by tourist traps — a display of t-shirts, for example, that's simultaneously familiar and foreign, dispaying the Coca-Cola logo or the Chicago Bulls icon but with Hebrew text instead of English.

The souk is in full force all around us, and I don't think I've been anywhere more alive. The air is filled with the sounds of shopkeepers and bargain hunters, each forcefully trying to get the better of the other, treating every bargain as if it were a matter of life and death. The smells of various spices rise from large canvas bags where they sit, buyers taking pinches to judge the quality and then buying by the scoop; there is bread and honey rolls and fruit and everything anyone could ever want, fresh and ready. In the massive crush of bodies, it becomes impossible to get where we want to go without jostling someone; politeness as the West understands it would mean standing still for all eternity, here.

An hour later, she taps me on the shoulder as I'm 'negotiating' with one of the shopkeepers to lower his prices on a couple of the t-shirts for friends, a few postcards, and a particularly nice looking scarf. It's more akin to debate than any bargaining I'd ever done — I open by commenting how I'd like the things I picked out but they're just a bit too expensive, he counters by saying that he needs to feed his family, I respond with the idea of him offering a bulk discount because I'm buying multiple things from him. His rejoinder is that he's already offering cheaper prices than the others, which both of us already know is not true, but it's just an opening for the next round. And just then she comes back, which is a marvelous opportunity that I can't pass up. Sorry, I say to the shopkeeper, but these prices just won't do, and now I have to go. Checkmate, delivered perfectly, and it's no surprise when after I take a few steps away, he grumbles and then yells at me, "b'seder, b'seder, you can have them at that price."

"You," she says to me as we walk down the HaShalshelet towards the Western Wall, "didn't really want those, did you? You were just bargaining for the sake of bargaining."

"Weeeeell," I say, drawing the word out. "The sticker price was so absurd, and one of the others I was watching got the price down to, what, one-fifth of the original asking price? It was a challenge, and I do need to get some souvenirs for my friends and family, you know." It's undeniably truthful, even though both of us know that she was right, and her eyeroll confirms it.

And then we're at the Western Wall, and I hesitate for a second, looking at the penitent and wondering if I can really count myself as one of them. But faith is rarely black and white, I've come to learn, and I walk through the gate and take a few steps forward, careful to avoid those in prayer, and find a small empty section of the wall. I have a few prayers — some for others, just one for myself — and I press a hand against the wall, briefly, feeling a surge of empathy of being but a tiny particle in an amazing world, standing where millions of others have stood and will stand for as long as man exists in this world.

Later, we find our way to a cafe, each sipping at a limonana, and we make light conversation, cheerfully, by unspoken agreement, avoiding the topic that's been lurking since we first started talking to each other online, seven months ago. We talk about the Middle East, and the Far East, and science and technology and topics that flow and turn and we complete each others' sentences, or, more often, interrupt each other with the logical counter to what we're not done saying.

But there are topics that can't be avoided forever, no matter how hard we try. Eventually she asks, "How are your studies going?"

I know what she's asking, the real question hidden behind the one that she already knows the answer to, but I choose to answer only what she's asking. It's part of why we do this, I think, because it allows us to express intentions and feelings without saying them directly, without saying a truth that the devil might twist to his purposes, some might say. I don't know if I can take the final step, commit to a life that is nothing like I would have ever considered, and so I keep my response short, superficial.

"Good," I say, and then turn the tables. "But not ready to be quizzed by your dad, I think. How is your family?" In this too, there is another line of questioning, and I wonder at how we speak so freely otherwise, and yet when we return to this seemingly impenetrable wall that divides us, we fall upon half-truths and misdirections to communicate.

"They're good as well," she responds, but it's the look in her eyes that's the real answer. And then, like moths that realize their danger right before they go up in flames, we backpedal and drift away again to topics of no importance, enjoying each other's company and wiling the time away. It's so easy to drift from exhilaration to despair, and back.

"When will I see you again?" I ask, at the end of the day. I can see her hesitate, perhaps to give the not-quite-the-truth, not-a-lie answers that we're so good at. But this is something I'm unwilling to fish the truth out of, and so I stop her, shaking my head. "No, please. Not for this question."

She pauses again, and I crash from exhilaration to despair. But then she speaks, and the recovery is just as swift.

"Soon."

Open Topic (China)

 The first time someone asked me the question, it was an old man with a long white beard, his hand folded in his sleeves, and he was one of my grandfather's mahjong partners. He stopped me as I was on the way to the market and asked me, “小孩， 你觉着中国怎么样?” Little child, what do you think of China?

And I was ten, I think, and definitely not the most polite kid.

"Grandpa (because that's how the honorific for an elder translates), I think that China is very dirty and boring and I would rather be back in America right now, playing with my friends."

The old man looked at me for a second and then slowly shuffled away, and thinking back on it, I was kind of a dick.

-

The second time someone asked me the question, it was my grandpa directly, and I was fourteen; I had gained some wisdom into the world by that time and I knew my grandpa, a Chinese Communist Party hardliner, would not take well to me dissing his (and my) homeland. “晟然， 你喜欢中国吗？” Sean, do you like China?

And I tried to be fairly diplomatic and responded, "Well, Grandpa (my actual one, this time), although it is in some aspects not as advanced as America, it does have a unique culture that America could never hope to attain."

I think what I actually said was, "Well, you don't have a computer that can play Starcraft, but I've seen some pretty fun things, like the Terra Cotta Army, and those old towers, and stuff. Oh, and I love the food. Can we get 小笼包 now?" But really, it equates to about the same thing, and my grandpa was pleased enough and started rambling on about how America was a bully and China was good because it was only concerned about itself and I just sat there and nodded.

-

The third time someone asked me the question, it was the summer of 2006, and it was posed by my students during the communal dinners we had. I was teaching a 'total immersion' summer camp of students between the ages of twelve and twenty, which was a bit awkward because I myself was only eighteen. Thankfully, the older students seemed to like me, or enjoyed the fact that I wasn't as uptight, I suppose, as the other teachers they had.

Anyway, I had sort of been waiting for the question because we had been discussing America and lifestyles and music and whatnot, and finally it came:

"So, how do you like China?" It was from one of the younger children, demonstrating his proud grasp of about forty percent of his total vocabulary.

"Uh," I think I got out, before realizing all other conversation at the table had died and fourteen pairs of eyes and ears were focused on me, including the camp counselor's.

Diplomacy, I told myself, diplomacy.

"The one thing I really like about China is that it's changing to become modern while still maintaining the proud heritage that it's come from. It's really stepping up and flexing its weight as a powerhouse both economically and politically, but you can still visit temples and palaces that are thousands of years old. Beijing is this weird mishmosh of ancient structure and modern bureaucracy — a bit like Washington D.C., I suppose, except with a couple thousand more years of history behind it. And Shanghai — analogous to New York — is so modern that it doesn't really taste like China anymore, from what I know. A city closer to the center, like Zhengzhou, gives this mix of modern lifestyles and millennia old family culture."

...And then, looking around the table and nodding at my excellent speech, I realized that I lost them all somewhere around 'maintaining the proud heritage'.

So I tried to express most of what I said in Chinese, and it seemed to satisfy most of them, and that was that.

-

In retrospect, I think all of the opinions I've expressed are true, whether or not they're politically correct. The cities are still incredibly dirty and polluted where skies are rarely, if ever blue — but that's at least partially because of the population pressure, with more than four times as many people per square mile. It's certainly not as advanced as the United States, but it does have a hell of a longer history — and a most excellent cuisine. And it is modernizing amazingly fast, but still retaining much of its cultures and traditions, and the fusion that has resulted is really interesting.

Take my cousin's wedding last September for example, which was a fusion of a traditional Chinese wedding and a Western style church one. It is impossible to describe, and probably not as fluid as either one by itself would have been. But it was a lot of fun, and that's what's important. Every time I go back, I learn a bit more about this old civilization coming into a modern age, and each time I'm asked the question of how I feel about China, I think I can answer it a bit more fully. Eventually, I feel, I might actually understand it as well as my grandparents do.