Look Up

All across the United States, people looked through comically-shaped paper glasses to the skies, where the heavens were on display. My Facebook feed exploded with friends who had traveled all the way to Portland, Oregon to join the eclipse-watching party, as well as those who stayed closer to home and saw what they could. (And also pictures of overcast skies and comments like “So glad I could see the eclipse.”)

Here in Hangzhou, the skies have been a brilliant blue, with fluffy white clouds rarely seen this side of the Pearl Delta. Rainstorms have come and go, and in the evenings after the sun finally goes down (along with the temperature), the streets take on an orange-ish glow from the street lamps. There’s not much sky to be seen from the ground view, and much of the heavens get overtaken by the lights and buildings surrounding me like cornrows. Now that it’s extra hot outside, I stay in more.

Yet, I never fail to look up anyway.

Most of the time, I can only see a handful of stars, if even that. Sometimes I see silvered clouds and the moon dancing along them like a gypsy. On the rare occasion I see a full constellation, I usually message a friend and tell them to look outside before it goes away.

To some, this probably sounds sad. That’s just the way it is in urban China, and it makes us city-dwellers appreciate the skies all the more, and all-out rejoice when there are blue skies. And whenever I go back to the US, I’m always floored by the brilliant skies and colors that abound.

So now in the hazy summer days of Hangzhou, I instead look up from the reading nook in my bedroom. From this vantage point, I’m looking up through the Tibetan prayer flags I’ve put in the window, and into the sky beyond. Some nights, I see nothing but the faint press of stars behind haze. Others, a silent lightning storm stuck in the clouds, its white cracks splitting the sky in half.

Most of the time, I see a moment that hasn’t gotten devoured by other lights and other deadlines, and that in itself is worth looking up into.

Out of the smog

They took me to Mogan Mountain because the air in Hangzhou was like something out of an apocalypse.  The sun, which usually rises clean and white, trudged out of bed in an orange lump, oozing light into the air.  Air that was thick and coarse, and as dense as fog.  The latest fashion trend was all about face masks.  (In fact, I had half-decided to write an ode to smog, which would have gone something like “Breathe in, breathe out, and choke!”)

View from my apartment on a normal day in Xiasha

 

View from my apartment on drugs

And so we went away from all of this, even just for a little while, because the weekend was free and the road hadn’t been overtaken just yet.  We went, half-listening to the report of roads being shut down because of traffic, the airport being closed, and we decided to think of other things.  Of brighter and (dare I say) airier kinds of things.

“Wait, how do you say ‘prostitute’ again?” I asked. 

Well, almost brighter things.

Our aim was the top of the mountain, which I may call more of a hill after being out in western China.  We were to reach the top specifically to tank up on clean air and be in a place where other things weren’t.  And so we climbed the old stone steps, which looked like jagged teeth coming out of the earth.  We walked through thick bamboo forests and stepped over silent pine needles and I shivered as gradually the air got cooler and we could see where we were going without grimacing. 

She and I and her son were at a clearing.  She unpacked our assortment of bread and fruit for a picnic, and he raced for the trees, getting so happily entangled in the branches that he said he wouldn’t come down and would just stay there until the day was done.  The tree-branches curled as if hiding words in them, and bamboo roots curved out of the dirt like finger-bones. 

“The more we talk about the air, the worse it seems,” she said.  So I stopped thinking about numbers, for at least a couple moments, and tilted my head back to admire the sky.

Wouldn’t you know it?  We could actually see it.  And it was a stunning blue, set up behind the crackle of tree branches and the soft green haze of bamboo leaves fluttering in the light breeze. 

The sky…it’s alive!

We meandered over to a hotel patio, where Camellia flowers drifted lazily off of the branches and there was a circle to dance in, if in the right mood.  (And they were, whirling, but mostly laughing, which is what dance is about anyway).  And we finished off the fruit, tromping in leaf piles and then heading back down the path.

Yes, we had to go back down the hill, and as we did the air got thicker, as if the dream was coming to an end.  Once at the base, we drove with the windows closed and listened again as the traffic reports told us the worse.  I looked up at the sky, but this time I saw grey, with a hint of sky. 

The thing was, though, underneath all of that haze, it really was a beautiful day.