Phil's Peace Corps "Readjustment" Road Trip, USA, 2010

你们好:
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Why? And why now?

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While in China, probably 18 months deep into my 2-year Peace Corps service, I walked by a street merchant on the campus of Southwest University in Chongqing Province, where I was teaching English language and literature. This man was selling jiade, or counterfeit, books and magazines to passing students, trying his best make a few extra yuan or, more likely, earn a living photocopying and rebinding great works of Chinese and English literature and selling them for a quarter of the retail price. There were enough English-language learners at Southwest University to sell these books, and with weak enforcement of copyright laws, passing police didn’t take a second look. Many of the books were entirely in English without Mandarin translations, and many from the selection the books at this specific stand, based on my assessment of students’ reading levels, were beyond most (if not all) of Chinese university students’ comprehensions; when learning to read English, it’s much more feasible to begin with, let’s say, Dr. Seuss, than Brontë’s Jane Eyre or Dickens’ Hard Times. Yet, I learned, Chinese actually bought and read these great works…with their English-Chinese dictionary within reach of course. Imagine that: reading Austin’s Pride and Prejudice, translating it line-by-line, all for an understanding of life, albeit a fictional portrayal of life over hundred years ago, outside of their China.

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So I stopped and sorted through the books. There was Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat (incredibly popular in China), Joyce’s Ulysses (a book I still have trouble understanding), and a handful of Shakespearean tragedies. But there was also Thoreau’s Walden. While in graduate school, a highly respected professor at SUNY Fredonia told me that Walden wasn’t on par with the other works of its time, and maybe, for that reason, I had never encountered it in all my education. I kept putting it lower and lower on my “to read” list. The cover was stylish – circling lines wrapped around the title in both English and Chinese – and for 10 yuan ($1.25) it was mine.

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When it wasn’t too cold or raining, I read Walden as I walked to and from my classrooms, about 20 minutes each way. In retrospect, I laugh. There was the most functioning chaos (which I now, 6 months deep into my Peace Corps “readjustment,” identify as being synonymous with “adventure”) occurring all around me – motorcycles whizzing inches away from me at 40mph, students laughing in a language I was falling in love with but barely understood, the smell of the lunch hours filling the air with chili peppers, trucks full of concrete spewing exhaust into the air with every tap of the gas pedal – and there I was, buried in a book written over 150 years ago:

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I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes,

and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

- Walden’s “Economy”

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Walden’s sidekick was Kerouac’s On The Road. I found an old edition of the Beat Generation’s masterpiece on the Peace Corps Office’s “Free” shelf, mangled and yellowing. I studied On The Road in graduate school, and frankly, didn’t remember a thing about it except reading it felt like driving through sand: wheels ferociously spinning without getting anywhere. But in China, it was completely different. I finished reading On the Road during my Peace Corps “Summer Project” in Fengjie, Chongqing Province, a city partly flooded for the construction of the infamous Three Gorges Dam, requiring the relocation of millions of Chinese from family homes lived in for generations. This setting and book helped me successfully identify and remove (and possibly smash) the rose-colored glasses worn by many PCVs and myself during their first year of service, and, possibly for the first time, see the country I presently called “home” in its true colors. China, though littered with beautiful diamonds, was predominately an endless, polluted diamond mine with billions (billions!) of people scrapping and clawing for wealth. On the contrary, Kerouac’s America, projected by his characters’ wild-eyed, oblivious meanderings, seemed like a land where diamonds could be found in your morning cereal box. This was the curious moment when I stopped remembering America, and began dreaming about it.
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These two books, stacked among many others read during my two years in China, fueled my desire to not only see America, but experience it, drive down its highways, feel its size, weigh its short but concentrated history against my 27 years. Everyday was an adventure in China. Imagine 750 straight days and nights of exhilarating adventure that thickens your skin, churns your insides, and accents your perceptions of everything. I thought, “Why can’t I keep this adventure rolling? Does it have to stop when I huijia, or return home?” I needed to see the country that I taught about, dreamed about, and at one point of my life, despised and only wanted to leave. But upon return from China, I couldn’t identify my feelings towards America as “nationalistic” or “patriotic” like I felt it necessary to cover my rear bumper with “Freedom isn’t free!” stickers, but more like the feeling of pulling one’s head out of a bucket of water. I felt for the first time America’s real, tangible “freedom” like the that first deep breath of oxygen. It gave me a high that many around me couldn’t feel or understand when I tried to explain it. It’s still unexplainable. I had learned what America isn’t while in China, and now, it was time to learn what America is before the memory of that oxygen depravation wore off. Thomas Wolfe said it best: “You can’t go home again.” I was coming home, and I wanted to make my one shot count!
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But there is another reason why I did it. America is a real place. It is not Neverland, or Atlantis, or Tolkien’s Middle Earth. It is real. But for so many around the world, America is almost mythical – a place that exists through blockbuster Hollywood movies and heavily armed soldiers fighting for the preservation of a statue of a green woman holding a forever-burning torch. This is all America is (and will be) to billions of world citizens. For all those faces I saw in the Chinese classroom who watched and laughed at episodes of Friends and Gossip Girl, dreamed of graduating from an American university, and desperately wanted to scream at the top of their lungs for all the grievances they had with those in power but couldn’t in fear of the consequences, I saw America. My trip was proof, adding to the evidence of America’s existence. We are so fortunate. I am so fortunate. We are so fortunate to know America is real.
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4 weeks, 8197 miles, 27 states, condensed to 3 minutes and 18 seconds:
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Thank you,
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Phil
蓝麦飞
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P.s. Thanks:

Adam, Katie, Margo, Scott, Megan, Scotty D, Erin, Eric and family, Ryan, Cherry, Kara and Mom, Kris, Ashley and Mom, Jeff E., Tricia B., Pat D., the 235 friends who provided moral support on my the trip’s official Facebook page, my Mom and Dad, Corinne, all of Peace Corps China “12-14” and staff, all the great travelers I met in hostels in New Orleans, Albuquerque, Flagstaff, and Salt Lake City, the Teach NOLA program, and finally Tootsie, my family’s 14 y/o Dachshund, who passed away during this adventure at her home in Ontario, Canada. Tootsie, sick for the last few years, waited for me to return from China before peacefully checking out to her heaven, which is most certainly a land of table scraps and comfortable pillows for sleeping. Thanks to everyone I forgot to acknowledge here, as well. I am truly blessed to have so many people on this planet who love and care for me. I love you. 我爱你们.