By the time he arrived at 12:30 AM this morning I was becoming genuinely worried; he hadn't given me the details of his flight, and I had expected him the previous afternoon sometime. I suppose at some point we'll have to give in and get cell phones, a step into the 21st century we have so far resisted.
Hold the presses! A few hours after I wrote that, I got the following message from Chris, Steve's wife:
Good to hear you arrived and you both made it to the hotel. Stephen, Matt and I have commute horror stories from Monday and Tuesday night. We are fine though. Poor Matt waited out in the cold tonight for 2 hours to catch a bus to Edmonds. Brrr....My claim to fame --- I was on the bus that went sideways on the freeway Monday night and STOPPED traffic on I-5. Sorry Larry!!! Stephen was on the bus behind me. Thank goodness we had cell phones. Stephen and I could not call each other directly as the sites along I-5 were so busy. We called my daughter Janice in Colorado and gave her messages to relay and then she called me or Stephen. Much easier to call out of state when there is an emergency of some kind. Everyone gets on their cell and jams the local site.
So much for cell phones. But back to the beginning. . . We left NY on October 22 for Seattle, where I spent a couple of weeks. Larry began those days here as well, participating in the first part of a long workshop held at U.W.'s Institute for Nuclear Theory this fall.
We had time during our days together for an excursion to Mt. Rainier on the weekend.
The drive up the mountain was lovely. The dark green of the tall trees lining the road (and hiding more clear-cutting behind them) was broken by splashes of brilliant yellow from the occasional deciduous trees and bushes, and the rays of sunlight coming through their branches turned to glowing shafts as they caught the faint mist in the air. Further up the mountain, the blueberry bushes had turned scarlet. Autumn is perhaps the loveliest season on Rainier. But our hopes for a little late-fall hiking was thwarted by the fact that the National Park seemed to have closed the roads to almost everywhere we planned to go. The one to Paradise was blocked off; they are remodeling the lodge there. We could only get to the lower parking lot, and early snows made the trail there too icy to ascend safely.
Still, I got a great shot of my mountain reflected in the lake later, a standard photo opportunity I had never exploited
before.
Happily, we found the gate to the road to the Ohanapecosh campground open, and went in to revisit the spot where THE
MOUNTAIN THAT LOVED A BIRD as born. It was a bit warmer in this lower area, and before setting out for the site we sat
down to eat the sandwiches we had brought for lunch at a bench overlooking the flowing river. (Okay, it's really a stream,
but it's called a river on the map.) Before we could unwrap them, a ranger arrived to tell us the gate we had entered was
supposed to be locked, and while it was fine for us to be in the area, it was not fine for our car to be there; we'd have
to leave it parked outside the gate. Larry did that, and made the hike back, while I enjoyed being in this mossy forest.
After he finally returned, we set out to find the exact spot where I had been sitting when the story first emerged from where my subconscious had been working it out. It wasn't far away – just up the trail on our side of the bridge, to the left of the road, and not that far from the road itself.
We clambered down the slope, and there next to the stream was the tree against which I was sitting, just as I remembered it:
We later followed the trail up to some hot springs. Everything was a pleasure to the eye, even the leaves covering the trail on which we walked.
But our time together in Seattle was limited. Larry soon left for another meeting in Puerto Vallarta followed by a brief visit to L.A. to give a talk there. I meanwhile enjoyed a visit with Steve and Chris, and then moved back Seattle: first to a hotel near the Capitol Hill school where I did an author visit arranged by friend Carla Lawrence, then to an airport motel for two nights where I worked on preparing for a full-day workshop sponsored by the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators that I was to offer in Manila on November 11. Larry and I thus arrived separately in Tokyo on November 9, converging at the comfortable Radisson Airport Hotel near Narita Airport. Larry left the next morning to talk physics with Japanese colleagues, and in the afternoon I returned by the hotel bus to the terminal, and set out for Manila on an evening plane. A driver met me at the airport and took me to an unexpectedly luxurious hotel in an extremely modern and impressive section of that city. I should say right away that I never saw a real cross-section even of the city itself during my brief visit, let alone any area outside it. I hope some day to return to see more!
Although it was after midnight by the time I was settled in that hotel, and I was still jetlagged, I started a very full day by meeting Beaulah Taguiwalo early the next morning. An unexpected glitch nudged my adrenaline up to useful levels as I left the hotel before 8am. The library that was to be the meeting's site, which had been described to me rather vaguely as “just across the street from the hotel,” proved to be nowhere in sight, and no one I could find at the hotel had ever heard of it! We got the phone number there through information and called it, but the directions being given the receptionist on how to find the building were obviously confusing her. She gratefully accepted my suggestion that we ask to have someone from the SBWI group holding the meeting to be put on the line. Beaulah's co-organizer Nikki immediately volunteered to come fetch me, and guided me through the park opposite the hotel to the library on its far side.
After that things went well. We had plenty of time to arrange the room for easy viewing of the PowerPoint and the discussion following that. I kept going on adrenaline through those, and then we broke for lunch (the room being quickly reconfigured to groups around table for that and for the session on group critiquing that followed). Since the writers in this chapter had no previous experience with critique groups, I had arranged to have a couple of handouts – one by the SCBWI, one designed by me – in the kits each of them were given at arrival, and we started with further discussion of what such groups could offer, and how to organize and run them productively. We then had one of the livelier manuscripts offered for critiquing read by its author and considered by the group as a whole, and then distributed the rest to the tables into which participants had been divided – which groups worked quite well, I found as I circulated among them.
The afternoon ended with a flourish: the launching of the new Philippine editions of THE MOUNTAIN THAT LOVED A BIRD, with
Beaulah's new art.
Since I had not earlier seen Beaulah's lovely new illustrations, nor had most of those attending the workshop read the
story in its U.S. edition, I began by reading the English version aloud, being able to admire the new art as I did so. The
story had been translated into five other languages as well, and at my request the three translators who were able to
attend the conferences read aloud a crucial paragraph of the story – Joy's promise – aloud in the languages to which each
had translated it. The translations will let the story reach many new readers throughout the Philippines. For me those
readings were a high point of the day.
Beaulah had put the translations into good hands.
One translator had done translations into two of the languages, and I was told by those familiar with the languages that both translations were beautiful ones.
The other two read with such emotion that it was clear even to me how much they cared about the story.
After a good deal of signing of books by all involved, the translators, Beaulah and her family, and I had dinner together at a restaurant I wish I had photographed: marble floors, an elaborate ceiling of marble high above us, incredible chandeliers, and a series of orchestras playing softly in an area nearby behind some marble columns. Conversations with the translators there supported my hunch that they might have managed to tell the story even more movingly than I had been able to do in English. It was a happy night.
The next morning I slept late, enjoyed a breakfast with the best papaya I've had since leaving Ecuador, packed in a leisurely way, and then was taken by Beaulah for a late lunch in yet another delightful setting, a café with tall glass windows looking out on enormous trees, still in this very elegant section of town. We lingered there through the afternoon, and then headed out for another great dinner. (Beaulah doesn't share my love of cooking, but she knows great restaurants!) While I had met her older son the day before (he took the photographs I'm showing of the workshop) and glimpsed the younger one at dinner the night before, this time I had a real chance to talk with them and also with Beaulah's husband. We made an early evening of it, though, as I had to catch an early flight back to Tokyo's airport the next day to converge with Larry at the gate of our flight to Shanghai. To my relief no glitch in the weather kept that rather finely-tuned convergence from taking place; late that afternoon we were on our way to China together.
Larry had first been to Shanghai some 23 years before, but this was my first glimpse of it. What had been a 2-lane road on his first visit had been replaced by a truly impressive elevated expressway, beautifully lit, that led into the now-huge city. Manhattan is a small town compared to today's Shanghai. Yes, there are areas that are far from luxurious, but I'm not sure I have actually never seen so many acres of handsome new urban architecture anywhere. The comfortable car that met us at the airport (we were very well taken care of on this visit!) took us not to one of the handsome new hotels, however, but to something much more memorable: to the Ruijin Hotel, set in what was the French quarter during colonial days. The hotel as been created from what was the Morriss estate, and includes a number of historical villas and some more modern buildings arranged in 7 hectares of gardens behind high walls. It's an oasis in the middle of the bustling city. When we had a bite of lunch at the café that opened on another side of our building, it was easy to forget were in that city if we kept our eyes from looking up beyond the walls.
But if we glanced a bit higher, we knew we were indeed within the huge and mainly very modern city of Shanghai, which was
continuing to expand upward before our eyes.
I didn't take as many photos there as I now wish I had, but you can read more on the web about this establishment. Try this web site; other sites offer some additional photos.
I had researched the complex before coming, and had requested that we be given a room in one of the older buildings that
had traditional furnishings.
Our wish was granted. Our room was reached by a wide curving staircase lit by a huge round window, and was that favored by a number of notables listed on a sign outside its door.
Inside, the furnishings were indeed not those of a standard motel. I loved the way the sun glittered on the gold thread and sequins on the bed-hangings.
I wish I could have spent more time socializing at the meeting Larry was attending in Shanghai (there were a number of old
friends there I should have liked to spend more time with) but after little more than a day there I left on the second of
my side trips: this to Changsha, to meet with my new Chinese publisher, Hunan Juvenile and Children's Publishing House.
My trip there even prevented me from joining the day's excursion planned for the participants at scenic Suzhou, but had a
glimpse of Larry's enjoyment of that day through a photo taken there by one of his colleagues.
(We love the gentle signage in China!)
The experienced travel agent in the U.S. from whom I had bought my tickets had advised me that I might need to allow at least two hours at the airport for check-in, and warned that as a woman I might find myself ignored if I had problems there of any kind. Such advice might have been needed a few years ago, but China is clearly making massive strides forward to prepare for the 2008 Olympics, and no airport experiences could have been more efficient and courteous than those at the two airports I used for this trip. I was checked in and through passport control in minutes, there was no line at the security checkpoint. My only problem was that the announcements, always translated into English, were so clear and frequent that I could not really concentrate on the book I had brought to pass the time.
My seatmate on the plane was a businesswoman who spoke excellent English. She was concerned when she found that no one was going to be meeting me at the airport. I explained I was getting there at an hour when people would want to be home for dinner, and that I had the name of my hotel clearly written in Chinese to show the taxi driver. But when she could not persuade her own driver that my hotel was on the way to wherever he was to take her (the nature of the conversation, although in Chinese, was obvious), this friendly seatmate insisted that she could not leave me until she had seen me safely inside a taxi that would use its meter and give me a fair price. She warned that there was a problem with “gypsy” cab drivers that specialized in overcharging tourists. A lovely woman.
I ended up being more than happy to pay my meter-using taxi-driver a fee that included a hefty tip; he earned it. I had apparently arrived at the worst possible time for rush-hour traffic, and the traffic patterns of Changsha are similar to those I have seen in both India and Casablanca – marked by a fluid disregard of lane markings, and not much noticeable regard for personal safety. The challenges of moving forward without accident (indeed of moving forward at all) were magnified by the density of motor vehicles. The roads were packed with cars and trucks and vans, all jockeying for position with an aggressiveness beyond even that of Boston drivers, with numerous motorbikes and even bicycles managing to dart between and around them without fatal results. It was a long and amazing ride, but we made it safely at last to the surprisingly affordable four-star hotel in which I had reserved my room. The hotel proved to be a favorite of adoptive parents coming to China to bring home their new daughters; Changsha is the city through which such adoptions are arranged, and in the elevator and dining room I observed many happy new families.
Early the next morning I finally met “Galen,” my English-speaking contact at the house. She's really Zhou Xia (what we
think of as last names go first in Chinese) but those dealing with English speakers seem set on using names we can remember
more easily, and I've given up protesting. She came to my hotel to take me to the publishing house; we had exchanged so
many e-mails over the previous months that we were hardly strangers. As I expected I would, I liked Galen great deal
from the very start. I didn't get many shots of her alone, but this one of her showing the Indian edition of my book to
another photographer later that afternoon is a favorite.
My new publisher understands the value of publicity, and I had lots of TV and press coverage throughout the visit.
We started with my introduction to the publishing house and its staff. HCP (as illustrator Stephen Aitken and I call it in
our e-mails to each other) has quite large, obviously new, and very nicely designed offices. The house is headed by a Ms
Peng (I learn from the contract that her first name is Zhaoping, but she has such dignity that I'm going to wait until
invited to do so to use it) and staffed by mainly quite young employees, the majority of them women. Galen is 25, I
learned, and a lot of her colleagues look about that age.
Here you see Galen and Ms Peng heading down the hall showing me around. I was at Galen's right, but I've cropped myself out.
Next to these svelte women I look clunky, and you'll see other shots of me. Note the clean, modern look of
the hall! This particular shot was taken by one of the staff who was acting as photographer pretty much all day, even when
the professional photographers were there. Galen has been emailing me some of his shots, which I appreciate.
Below are some core staff of the department for young children's books. On the left is Chen “Shanshan” (nickname), the art director, and Liu Shaping (text director); on the right is Tan “Jingjing”, the department head.
The others you know already.
After I had been introduced to everyone, we returned to Ms Peng's office, where the contracts were waiting for signature – as were various media people. We signed before all sorts of cameras, and posed for photos. Afterwards, I did a couple of short interviews with Galen's help in translating. All this media attention was very heady.
Ms Peng proved to be most impressive. She has warmth as well as dignity, and I could feel her intelligence. It's a pity that I speak no Chinese and she is not fluent in English; I know we'd have a good deal to say to one another.
She has developed a remarkable staff. The feeling of enormous esprit de corps at HCP hit me from the beginning. It feels as though everyone involved understands that they are doing something truly important for the children of China and has a clear sense of how to go about doing it. It's obvious that they intend not just to publish the best picture books in the country, but also to work on educating parents and teachers how to make good use of them. The visit we made to a kindergarten that afternoon showed me how actively they are prepared to meet that challenge.
First, though, we had an excellent lunch at a restaurant just across the street. Crossing that street was a memorable moment. The intersection involved two major streets, and the traffic was a noon version of the rush hour patterns that had so boggled my mind the previous evening – yet there was no traffic light. Drivers intent on acing each other out did not seem likely to pay any attention to pedestrians. Sensing my hesitation, Ms Peng quietly and firmly took my hand in hers and led me across. This woman inspires confidence! Her grasp was gentle yet secure, and I felt an irrational, exhilarating certainty that we would arrive safely on the opposite curb. Once we did so arrive, she explained to me that the streets were new ones, and that the traffic lights needed will soon be installed. Surely a woman who can cross a street like that with such serenity can guide this innovative publishing house to success.
After lunch we headed for the kindergarten with which HCP has been working. The teacher there, earlier loaned a copy of the Indian edition of THE MOUNTAIN THAT LOVED A BIRD and the Chinese translation of the text that will soon use the same illustrations, had made all the children familiar with the story. They had discussed it together, and in preparation for my visit the children had drawn their own illustrations for it and prepared a play from it. Their parents were coming to share the visit with them, and to see the play. The building was attractive, with a nicely equipped outdoor play area. We met a huge room with movable tables and small chairs, and a stage area at one end. A banner stretched across the stage welcomed me and our new book!
The children's drawings seemed in general quite mature for kindergarteners, with interesting detail. Some of the children knew how to draw musical notes; I could see that Joy was singing as she flew. Some showed her carrying a seed in her mouth. As parents admired their children's drawings, I moved informally among them (followed by photographers), admiring them too. Soon I found myself seated on one of the tiny chairs, with children bringing me their drawings to look at.
Before I knew it, one tiny child in orange (just visible on the right) was in my lap. I put an arm around him, and to my delight he kissed me on the cheek!
About then I was drawn off to do a television interview, and by the time I was finished with that it was time for the play.
After that, I was scheduled to meet with the parents. The children were taken out to play outside, but not before they came trouping up to give me their drawings to take with me. (I couldn't guess whether this was planned earlier or simply decided as things developed.) I hope I managed to communicate even without Galen's help how grateful I was, and how I would cherish their art.
The time with the parents was productive. We moved the chairs into a suitable formation, and Galen and I were given a mike, which we passed back and forth as she interpreted for me. (She did a marvelous job at that throughout my visit.)
I made some initial remarks about how popular picture books are in many countries of the world (they are of course brand new to mainland China), how American families used picture books, how the evidence that reading aloud to children from a young age was more than an enjoyable bonding experience, it had a clear relationship to later success in school, etc. I then encouraged questions, wondering if the parents would be shy about asking even one. The first question came slowly, but after that there was no stopping them! They had useful questions, allowing me to know what more to say that could be most helpful. The session had to be halted when it was time for the children to go home. Even then one parent who spoke English followed me as we all left, voicing his concern that his daughter, aged 4½, did not seem able to re-tell all the details of stories he read her. (A friend's daughter, the same age, could do so!) I had only a moment to try to communicate both that memorizing the details so as to recite them back was not the main point of listening to stories, and reassure him that different children developed at different rates, and he need not worry about trivial variations along the way. The tradition of reading as rote learning is going to take a lot of work on the part of HCP to replace with something more child-centered, an approach that encourages digestion and reflection rather than unthinking recitation.
Still, the parents' questions and their eagerness to talk with me indicated that most of them were getting the idea of what picture books were about – and realizing that making reading an enjoyable experience rather than something like preparation for an oral exam might be a good thing for them and their child.
The next morning started with a high-spirited table tennis tournament between teams of work-mates. Galen, her hair tied back to keep it out of her face, was scheduled for the first match, and was very nervous about how she'd do. She had reason to be. It would have taken a miracle for any normal player to beat the determined woman who could put a spin on the ball so expertly that it seemed to move sideways after hitting the table. Galen lost cheerfully, and was comforted by her teammates. I watched more matches, and learned to say “GOOD SHOT!” in Chinese.
But this was our last morning together, so Galen and I eventually retired to her office to go over some of the new
acquisitions on which she wanted my opinion. I gave it, and hoped it was useful. A couple of her choices seemed
wonderful. I was able to articulate my doubts about a couple of others in a way I knew she digested well; talking
together was easy. I found myself growing sadder and sadder that this might be our only encounter. Yes, I hoped to return,
but how many times could I do so? When the time came to say goodbye to the faces that now felt familiar to me, it was like
saying goodbye to my own grandchildren. But than I reminded myself that Galen and I had first become friends by e-mail and
still had that medium to connect us, and that my discussions through her with Ms Peng had suggested new ways I might be
helpful to this innovative publishing house as they find their way into the future. In any case one does have to goodbye to
grandchildren too, without worrying that it may be final.
All in all, this visit was a much more important one than I expected it to be. I feel connected to HCP now in ways that go
far beyond the terms of the contracts we signed, and am grateful that the timing of our trip to Asia let this happen.
I returned to Shanghai in time for the banquet that ended the conference there, and found the airport connection the other way to be just as efficient. Now alerted to avoid anything but legitimate cab drivers, I did out of curiosity ask one of those approaching me as I headed for the line for authorized taxis what he'd charge to take me to my hotel. (It would have been more than three times what the meter eventually asked, justifying the wait in line.)
Once the conference was over, Larry had arranged for us to spend time in the Yellow Mountains, a favorite landscape for classical Chinese art. We had as a companion a pleasant young physicist, Qun Wong. The three of us were met at the airport by a driver and “Helen” Ding (her real name is Ding Qiang, but I will refer to her Helen since that is what we called her throughout our time together), a young woman who was both an ideal guide and an interesting young woman. We chatted on the ride to the base of the mountains. Her father, she told us, was a farmer. She smiled, and added softly that one might say he was a peasant. She herself had managed to get an associate's degree in college, no trivial accomplishment, and hoped to go further. Although she had had studied in English, Qun (who had a conversation with her in Chinese) told us that her fluent English, which is actually largely self-taught – using television and conversations with those she guides to improve her fluency. Her excellent vocabulary hints at a lot of reading as well.
We had a forgettable dinner but first night in a hotel near the mountains and left early the next morning for the mountains themselves, leaving our main luggage stored at the hotel near their base.
Some twenty-three years ago, when Larry first visited the Yellow Mountains, he hiked up them from the bottom. This year we were spoiled many hours of hiking: there is now a cable car. Facing its lower terminal, there is a screen showing images of the peaks to which it leads, offering a preview of what is to come.
As you can see, the mist that often swathes the peaks of these lovely mountains was heavy at their base as we arrived. Helen took care of all the details as we (all with backpacks carrying what we'd need for the night) went into the big gondola and up the slopes.
We hiked from the upper terminal to our hotel, already enjoying the views. Here, you see our two companions en route to
the hotel.
Helen suggested we rest a little and have lunch before major exploration of the trails (a system of stone paths and steps
that has been expanded since Larry was first here) but Larry and I were too excited to wait; we simply started out
immediately on our own. We were lucky in the weather. No sun, but the mist (which when we came down from the cable car
was a bit too heavy, hiding major parts of the profiles of the peaks) was dissolving just enough for maximum beauty.
There are lots of azaleas and rhododendrons growing wild in these mountains, and near the hotel there was a veritable sea of them that may have been encouraged by planting. They must be a marvel in the spring. We loved the sign nearby.
In case it's hard to make out the lettering, it says: “Bright mountain flowers in full blossom arouse visitors' inspiration and interest in sightseeing. Please view and admire with cherishes.”
So much friendlier than “Don't pick the flowers!”
From here on there is almost no point in saying very much. The pictures say it all. Some of them were taken on our first solo hike; most of them were taken as all four of us explored the highly vertical stone trails. In many cases the slope was so steep that the steps had to be very shallow, shorter then the length of my foot, and I needed to walk with toes pointed out to get a sure grip on the damp steps. The mist came and went, and a peak swathed in cloud one moment might show its profile the next. I've never taken so many pictures so rapidly.
Here are some of my favorites ...
Always trying to find the perfect angle, the perfect moment ...
The one above is maybe my favorite; I now have it as the wallpaper on my desktop. Yet in just the time it takes to
reorient the camera and refocus, the clouds shift, and there is yet another lovely view!
It was hard to return to the hotel, but we hoped to have a new sort of photo opportunity the next morning – sunrise. We returned to a surprisingly chilly room, and realized the central heat in our room wasn't working. Did we misunderstand the controls? We went to the desk. The clerk shrugged. “There is no heat,” she said. We realized the lobby was as cold as our room. We checked with Qun, in the room next to ours – he was as chilled as we were, and he was fighting a cold! Freezing temperatures were predicted that night, but there seemed nothing we could do. We went back to our own room; I pulled the extra blankets out of the closet, and put them both on Larry's bed and huddled together under that and his comforter until dinnertime. When we met Helen and told her of the hotel's indifference to the situation, she was horrified, and told us to wait a minute. She headed for the desk, and before we headed into the frigid dining room both we and Qun had small electric heaters beginning to take the chill off the air in our rooms. We urged Helen to get one for herself, but she insisted she'd be fine. We felt guilty, but not enough to refuse to use the heaters that she had miraculously made the hotel staff produce! We ate together, and had a dinner that seemed much like our lunch, none of it very appealing (Qun remarked thoughtfully that it was even worse than the food at the hotel in the town at the base of the mountain) and parted afterwards to retire to our beds, hoping for more beauty to view at sunrise.
Alas, our luck in the weather had ended. When the alarm went off it was pouring rain outside, and there was nothing to do but eat an early breakfast and head up through the downpour to the cable car. As we ascended, we passed groups of tourists heading down, and could only hope that the rain would cease before their own time on the mountain was over. We had been rarely fortunate. It was time to head for Larry and me to head to Beijing.
By this time I too was suffering from a painful sore throat, similar to the one that Qun had picked up in Shanghai. (I had felt my throat begin to go scratchy there, but thought it the result of the air pollution in that city.) I was torn between wanting to participate in the program of activities that had been arranged for us, and wanting to take care of myself so as to be well enough to enjoy the climax of our trip, the celebration of the 80th birthday of T.D. Lee, an incomparable physicist, an important mentor to Larry, and a human being we both respect and love.
The first morning I decided to risk the planned excursion, to the Temple of Heaven. The park area leading to the Temple
was for me almost the most interesting part, and I wished we could have lingered there. There were groups of people of
various ages practicing dance-like exercises of various sorts.
The one that particularly caught my eye involved using a paddle much the shape of a ping-pong paddle, with a yin/yang symbol painted in its center.
The point of the exercise seemed to be making the transition between a series of body
positions rapidly and gracefully in such a way that a small orange ball would always be resting in the center of the
paddle, even when the paddle was moving through the air rapidly in such a way that the paddle would be following the ball
rather than lifting it.
There was a related activity in which the skillful manipulation of a sort of baton, using two sticks, was the focus.
But we were led on past these interesting scenes to enter the gates of the Temple of Heaven itself. Unfortunately, our
guide was suddenly distracted by the need to straighten out some airline reservations -- I gathered those of one of our
party. We waited as she dealt with this by cellphone, admiring the elaborately- painted arcades near us. Finally I wandered
away to explore, and encountered a marvelous chorus, male and female voices, singing quite lovely music together. I
listened as long as I dared, then found my way back. Soon the guide's call could be ended, and we went through the entrance
of the area where the Temple of Heaven stood.
It was an impressive building. I have a special interest in dragons, and was intrigued by their depictions above the doorways.
It was a bit disappointing to find that we could not actually go inside the magnificent building, but enough sunlight was
coming in through the doorway so that I could snap an image of the interior, where offerings and prayers were once made for
a bountiful harvest.
I liked the carved stone posts that punctuated the stairs and terraces leading to the temple.
I was feeling the development of my respiratory virus and hesitated to spend the time out in the cold that that the next
expedition would entail – but it was a visit to the Forbidden City, and I couldn't resist. Unfortunately, much of the most
attractive architecture of that massive complex was under wraps and covered with scaffolding: there was a major re-gilding
and renovation project going on, surely in conjunction with preparations for the 2008 Olympics. China plans to present
itself as a country to which those from other countries who may be seeing it for the first time will want to return! There
was much to see in spite of this ongoing work, and I lingered as long as my condition permitted in the museums that had
been developed in some of the buildings. I managed to take a few photos. One was of one of those stone columns similar to
those I had admired at the Temple of Heaven.
But the cold and wind, and the slowness with which our party was moving through the complex, finally became too much. My real goal in Beijing was not really sightseeing, but being able to participate in the birthday celebration for our beloved friend and colleague. I wanted to be well enough to enjoy that. Larry and I finally made our excuses and caught a taxi back to the Friendship Hotel, to let me rest until that event.
I took no photographs at the celebration the next afternoon at the Great Hall of the People, although many professional photographers did. I had already known that the fact that Larry and I were invited to the celebration here in Beijing was a great honor. I now realized the full magnitude of that honor. There were about 500 people in the auditorium there, almost all of them Chinese or Chinese-American physicists. I had not realized that in fact only five non-chinese physicists and their spouses had been invited to this, the largest and most important celebration of the birthday of our eminent friend. Other celebrations had drawn scientists from all over the world. Larry and I had attended that at Columbia University; I had missed the one at Shanghai because it taken place during my side trip to Changsha; there was one more elsewhere.
We were ushered to a row near the front of the giant auditorium, immediately behind those rows reserved for dignitaries and members of T.D.'s family. On the stage before us was a long table decorated with low arrangements of flowers, with several chairs behind it. Above and behind that table was a gigantic screen for projection of the PowerPoint presentations to be presented at the meeting; two somewhat smaller screens, set at a slight angle so as to face the audience, were placed at the right and left ends of the stage.
When the time came, those who were to be seated at that table on the stage filed in from the wings, to great applause and the flash of lights from multiple cameras. Those seating themselves included the premier of China and a physicist we learned had been a fellow-student of T.D.'s – perhaps older than he, and certainly not in as robust health as is our friend.
Most of the addresses were delivered in Chinese – the exceptions being those delivered by Nick Samios, a colleague of T.D.'s (and Larry's) from Brookhaven Lab, and one by another colleague from Columbia University. I could not pretend to understand their content, so managed to read as discreetly as possible the materials in a small portfolio I had been given. I was moved by a remarkable and simple “book” created by T.D. himself – with a text as simple as that of a picture book, offered both in Chinese characters and in English. It related several short passages written centuries ago by Chinese philosophers and poets to the life of a modern physicist. There was also a packet offering an unexpected souvenir of the occasion: a series of Chinese postal stamps created from art by T.D. – who is an artist and a poet as well as a physicist. There were some materials comprehensible only to physicists. But most moving was a description of T.D.'s accomplishments over the years – not just as brilliant theoretician, but as a re-builder of the science in China following what was done to it by the Cultural Revolution, and an architect of international cooperation in research ever since. I had earlier known the general outlines of his career, but the details showing the depth and range of his accomplishments were overwhelming. After digesting what I had read, I simply sat through the talks in something like a state of joy. I didn't need to understand what was being said onstage. I was totally happy simply to be there, included in this event honoring the friend that Larry and I believe to be the greatest physicist in the world, and for whom we have unlimited affection as well as esteem.
The banquet following was a delight, and I was glad to be seated next to our old friend Gao (Larry's office-mate at SLAC in 1978), who had been made a janitor during the cultural revolution but afterwards returned to the University of Peking. I was also glad to have a chance to meet one of T.D.'s sons, there with the grandson who had come from Yale as his sister had from New York to be there for this celebration.
But what I will always remember most vividly is simply sitting in the audience gazing at our friend's face, and feeling my good fortune that I could be there in that place, at that moment in time.
One of the PowerPoint slides Nick used in his presentation was a poem Larry and I wrote for T.D. together, a metaphor for his brilliant research as a young man and his role in physics since then. It was illustrated by two photographs. One is a shot of KhanTengri (Lord of the Spirits) that Larry found on the web. The other is one taken by our grandson Ken. I'll end this travel account with that slide.
KHAN-TENGRI
A young man scaled the mountain Khan-Tengri;
Some say he talked with spirits in that night,
He taught to all his love of mountain heights --
Faces turn skyward, children dream of peaks.
-- Larry and Alice McLerran
For T.D. Lee
the sun wove rainbows in the blowing snow.
Entranced, he stayed there as the colors changed
until the stars became his only light.
while others thought him crazed by lack of air.
Still, in the morning he strode from the fog,
the Tien-Shan spires rising at his back.
the source of streams that flow from glacial walls
past creatures crossing meadows crisp with frost
down to the slopes where lofty cedars rise.
New climbers go in search of routes that mount
through thinning air and wind that pierces bone
to reach the views no other eye has seen.
