Reflections on the Road: A Journey Begins (Part 2)

(Part 2 of 4 -- to read Part 1, click HERE)

The plane banked left to line up with the runway on the edge of hazy Minneapolis.  After a ninety-minute layover I was back in the air, this time on a Boeing 747.  The continental United States was soon behind me.  I sat beside an elderly gentleman named Kiyoshi, who for many years had worked for the U.S. military's Stars and Stripes newspaper in Japan.  He had been in the States to attend a reunion of co-workers in Nashville.  Now he was returning to Tokyo.

At 10:00 p.m. the wheels touched down in Beijing, and Northwest booted me out of their vessel and into my Asian journey.  Within half an hour of exiting the plane, I boarded a bus bound for the city center.  I sat in the back and gazed out the window at neon lights and Chinese characters, at Pizza Hut, McDonald's, and TGI Fridays.  The vehicle's sound system soothed the passengers with instrumental pieces such as the Titanic theme song and Michael Jackson's "Heal the World."

At 11:30 p.m. the bus unloaded its passengers at the Beijing International Hotel and I went into the lobby to ask directions to a nearby hostel, which my guidebook had praised as one of the best in the city.  Unfortunately, the receptionist broke the news that it had closed several months ago.  I pulled out my guidebook and located another hostel.  I set off on what I anticipated would be a half-hour walk.  Little did I know that the map wasn't quite to scale.

At 12:30 a.m. I reached Tiananmen Square.  Though this was one of the largest gathering places in the world and the geographic center of a city of 17 million people, only a dozen or so souls were milling about.  Passing through this eerily empty space, I remembered how, in 1989 at the age of 16, I listened to Voice of America broadcasts describing the demonstrations here and the brutal crackdown that followed.  I also remembered the mesmerizing photograph that was beamed around the world and came to symbolize the demonstrations.  The picture was of an anonymous man, standing in the way of a column of tanks.  As I crossed the Avenue of Eternal Peace-which is where this scene played out-I could scarcely imagine the will it must take to place one's frightfully fragile body into the path of tons of military steel.  Hence the chill down my spine:  to be human is to have a soul that, in the name of something greater than self, may call us to throw self-preservation to the wind.  That nameless man was all of us, at least all of who we are capable of being.

I thought about the events of 1989, but only with difficulty could I imagine that this was the spot where they had happened.  The night was too quiet and the streets too empty.  The only action in Tiananmen Square now was the movement of a blistering cold wind.

By 2:00 a.m., when I finally reached the Jinghua Youth Hostel, my backpack no longer felt like the steadying weight of commitment; it felt like a sack of bricks.  A guard woke the receptionist who, after I paid her the equivalent of $4.50, checked me in without saying a single word.  I followed her to a back building, where she opened a door and pointed to my bed.

The heavy blanket stretched two inches short of my chin.  I was wearing the same clothes I had traveled in from Atlanta, and my passport-the Chinese entry stamp only four hours old-was securely tucked into my shirt pocket.  Since I had found my bed in the dark and all my roommates were asleep, I couldn't know whether they were male or female, or what nations they called home.  All I knew was that the bowels of one was filled with gas.  It was to loud farts two beds down that I soon fell asleep.


To go to Part 3, click HERE

From Minneapolis to Beijing, the flight passed over Alaska


To go to Part 3, click HERE

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		Joel Carillet, Gather Travel Correspondent
	Joel's column, "Reflections on the Road," is published every other Thursday to Gather Essentials: Travel. His articles, based on extensive travels in Asia and the Middle East, seek to shed light on humanity, both our own and that of others.   They aim not merely to entertain and inform but also to develop a sense of connection between the reader and the world. Joel's writing and photography have appeared in several magazines and newspapers, including the Kansas City Star and Christian Science Monitor.  Currently he is seeking an agent for a book manuscript entitled Sixty-One Weeks: A Journey across Asia. When not on the road, he happily calls Tennessee home. Keep up with Joel's article series by joining his network, or subscribing to his content.