Only while sorting my archive did I realize I never wrote Part 2.
A sketching practicum. A trip to Chengkan.
Bus rides are boring, but luckily I'd come prepared — I made a special trip to the library the day before and borrowed a few books. The classmates around me had all fallen asleep, but I wasn't drowsy. I rummaged through my backpack and settled on old Mr. Chen Congzhou's book, "The Eye That Sees Gardens."
The sunlight was gentle, falling across my legs and canceling out the small chill of the air conditioning. Shifting from one reading position to another, I kept marveling to myself at Chen's prose — truly a cut above, and my admiration grew as I read. Some forty-odd pages in, drowsiness arrived. Every time I yawned, the right side of my jaw felt like it had popped out of joint — genuinely painful. The sun streamed in, warm; sleep pulled harder. I carefully tucked the book's flap into the page I'd reached, and drifted off.
When I woke, the bus was inside a tunnel. A moment later we were out, and everything opened up: lush green on every side, body and mind swallowed whole by the mountains. All my tiredness vanished at once. I wanted to kick open the bus door, get out, and treat my lungs to a helping of fresh air.
Along the way I studied the scenery carefully. I noticed a kind of tall, slender plant growing in loose scatters but in huge numbers, forming a dense, seamless sweep across the high slopes — small yellowish leaves that turned to a blaze of gold in the sun. I puzzled over what it could be, and only when the bus drew closer did I see the cylindrical stems with their distinct joints: bamboo, of some kind. But its branching was oddly regular, quite unlike any bamboo I knew — very strange. As the bus rolled on, my attention shifted to the low shrubs planted in neat patterns over the hills, forming a landscape all their own. The words "tea garden" surfaced in my mind, and when I peered into the distance, the busy figures of tea pickers confirmed my guess.
Not long after, we left the highway. Through the window: a concrete road, scorching hot, and the trees and shrubs along it carrying a few threads of coolness. The bus wound along mountain roads, following the signs that said Chengkan. With a little anticipation, a small flutter of restlessness, and an enormous hunger, I badly wanted off that bus.
12:25. The bus stopped. The doors opened; the luggage hold opened. We all understood: we had arrived at our lodgings.
The dorm the school arranged for us was decidedly average. Metal bunk beds, upper and lower berths, dressed in gaudy flowered bedding. My friends had no complaints, though — the space enclosed by the ring of bunks was big enough for seven or eight people to play games in.
Lunch wasn't until one, and by then I was too hungry to care how bad the food might be. The advertised "eight dishes and a soup" could be revised, with one sweep of the brush, to "eight vegetable dishes and one meat soup" — that would be the accurate wording. Fortunately our class had plenty of girls with small appetites, or we'd never have filled our stomachs.
After the midday nap, the whole company set out to sketch and gather impressions in the old town. A few guides led our landscape-architecture battalion around — the details have gone fuzzy on me. What I do remember is disliking their pace: rushing in, rushing out, never slowing their stride, a disservice to the scenery. I learned very little about the old town from their commentary. Fine, I thought — we'd be here for days yet. I would come to know it slowly, through sketching.
Once the guides left, we scattered, each to our own wandering. I wound my way back into this bagua village — a lane here, an alley there, walking and stopping as I pleased. The lanes are many and meandering, which makes the place feel larger than it is; it's easy to lose your way. Small as the village is, what meets the eye is abundant: whitewashed walls and dark tiles, stone-paved ground, murmuring water, the slanted light of late afternoon — a scene layered with feeling. On the way back I made a detour to see a little cascade where the village stream drops in elevation. Water striking stone, ringing off it — and the summer heat dissolved with the sound. I was hungry. I checked the time: still early, but I felt worn out, probably from the long ride. Heading back early seemed fine too.
After dinner I meant to continue with Chen's book, but it was not to be. A pack of "gamblers" had already assembled in the dorm, raucous beyond belief. I was in despair, truly.
The next morning we set out to draw. I picked a spot I'd judged full of charm the day before, set down my sketching stool, and began. As for our teacher — vanished. The mountains being high and the emperor far away, he offered us not one word of guidance and went off sightseeing on his own.
I had no real concept of what sketching was supposed to be, so I just scribbled in whatever direction felt right. At first I'd rough in the outlines with pencil before going over them in pen; later that felt like a hassle, and I started attacking the scenery in pen directly. It turned out to be fast. The classmates around me managed one drawing in a whole morning; I had two and a half. My apologies to that third one — partway through, I felt rain beginning to fall, and fearing a downpour, I photographed the view with my phone and hurried away.
The rain came down hard in the afternoon, so the four-drawings-a-day quota had to continue from the dorm. After a nap I finished the third. Checking the time: less than an hour to dinner, no way to pull off a fourth. So what to do with this idle stretch? Right — go see the village in the rain, and on the way, pay a visit to the roommate who was sheltering somewhere, working on his sketch.
In the rain, under an umbrella, I wandered without aim. The rain was light, and the sights were really no different from daytime — except the streets were nearly empty, and my pace was entirely my own, which let me look far more closely at the buildings and their ornament. However white these walls once were, a few hundred years on, their surfaces are well and truly mottled. The herringbone gable walls the guide had mentioned — a signature of early-Ming Huizhou architecture — I couldn't pick out at the time; now I saw them everywhere.
I left the village by a different exit, and looking back, saw it ringed by mountains on every side, the stream wading through — closer to an ink-wash painting than a place, like something out of a poem.
I checked my phone — oh, nearly dinnertime. We mortals had best get moving and head back to eat. Time to give my trouser cuffs a shake, and take away not a single clod of mud.
I'll stop here for now — there's still a mountain of homework to hammer through. See! You! Next! Time!