Forbidden and Great

Not every time, but most times, phone conversations with my father are an epic ride. We share teaching woes (we both started teaching college at the same time, he just after retirement from the foreign service, and me, during my MFA), and always get to American politics (which never fails to get him riled), about novels I’ve suggested he read (based not on the fact that I’ve read them but because I think they sound complex and strange enough for his taste), stocks (with the vague idea I might start paying attention), family gossip (rarely but significantly), travel plans (often it has been the two of us together but now me on a China trip with Lee and he and my mother on a vacation in Italy), and, basically, the philosophical/historical/social underpinnings of LIFE. Over the years, our conversation has developed a rhythm of banter and disagreement, a sort of play despite our deep father-daughter dynamic, and yet, when we get to this metaphysical place, that’s when we begin to differ in a substantial way where it feels like we have moved beyond ourselves and are having a conversation that might matter to others. A recent example of this, on China:

Me: “[After talking about paying for stuff on my phone and visiting the newly developed part of Suzhou and how the trains in Shanghai run on time] It’s just so future-y and intense. Like they are on this wave of the future, where they get something about where we are going to be in a few years…” Dad: “It’s always been that way.” Me: “No, Dad, that’s not what I mean. I mean, this is new, this is what I’m witnessing happening, right now.” Dad: “Uhmmm…okayyy. Why are you so obsessed with the future?” Me: “Why are you so obsessed with the past?” Ahhhh, maybe you don’t get it, but my blood starts boiling even rewriting some approximation of this conversation. It is one of our fundamental disagreements. And we let it go.

Me: “Ok, let’s agree to disagree.” Dad: “Ok?”

Eventually, the conversation has to end because there are dinners to read and emails to write and sleeps to be had, but there is the promise that it will continue… // In the heart of Beijing, the Forbidden City is a 720,000 m.sq. rectangular complex of 980 buildings and numerous courtyards and alleyways and gardens, constructed in 1420 by the Ming Dynasty that housed Chinese emperors until the early 1900’s, sometimes including their 9,000 concubines, according to some historians. Currently, it houses the Palace Museum, a collection of art works from across China, and is open to the public daily, seeing 16.7 million visitors per year.

The Great Wall stretches across China for 13,171 miles and roughly traces the edge of the Mongolian Steppe. Construction of some of its multiple courses began as early as the 7th century BC and continued all the way through the 1600’s, when the most wellknown stretches were built by the Ming Dynasty. Historians estimate that some 400,000 died in building it. Portions of it are continually preserved and visited daily by tourists (and in some parts bricks have been stolen and sold, used to build houses, and, contrary to what you may have heard, it is not, in fact, visible from space). I visited both recently, and I was prepared to be underwhelmed. I went with the attitude that I was in China so I had to; just some tourist stuff I was checking off a bucket list. But: I have to say, the Great Wall and Forbidden City are not sites you “do” in a half-day visit, they are jaw-dropping happenings that steal your breath from a distance and in their tiniest-up-close parts, places that we are fortunate still exist in this fickle world, sites of human innovation and history and longing, a density of collective past and present materials and emotions which I could barely float on the edges of I felt so full of all of it…long story short: my dad was right.