The roughly hewn walls are damp, with patches of mold and fungus growing in the crevices. Water stains streak down, and the air is heavy with the scent of mildew and decay. The bricks are discoloured, their edges slicked by humidity. The dank, musty atmosphere lurks in every corner of the cell, sprawling to the skin and weighing down the spirits of the people living within.
These walls bear witness to the despair and suffering of those who ever had been confined in them, generation after generation. They hold their memories; hope, fear, determination, and regret. Their fabric is so coarse and patchy, it seems to seep in each man’s unfortunate personal history.
The thirty-seventh month. Is it spring?
Tiny ferns break through and grow out of the crevices on the walls. Their delicate fronds, in vibrant green, fan out like miniature umbrellas, waving gently in the rare breeze blown from the high window. Their stems are slender and wiry, weaving in and out of the cracks in the walls.
I was a journalist, and I am a political prisoner, for my freedom-of-speech and anti-authoritarian-regime campaign*. I lost almost all contact with the outside world, and don’t know how much longer I will be here.
I imagine the ferns clinging tenaciously to the rough surface of my cell, their roots burrowing deep into the cracks, and eventually shattering down the walls.
These ferns are my will of survival, my prison break.
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*Author’s Note: According to the Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres, or RSF), as of 2022, there are 533 media professionals imprisoned all over the world. China remains the biggest jailer of journalists, followed by Myanmar and Iran.
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C. J. Anderson-Wu/吳介禎 is a Taiwanese writer, her short stories have been shortlisted for a number of international literary awards, including the Creative Award by the International Human Rights Art Festival. She also won the Strands Lit Flash Fiction Competition, and the Invisible City Literature Competition.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
When I was growing up, the radio was the musical score constantly playing in the background. Blaring between Tamil movie songs and radio dramas were news of the hour and current issue discussions. The things that got imprinted on my impressionable mind as I was transforming from a teenager to a young adult were about violence, wars and bombings. I remember about the war in Vietnam as it was close to home. For every peace talk and the end of war announcement, there would pop up another bombing and a barrage of casualties. My simple mind wondered when the war would end, but it never did. It went on for so long that they had a Tamil film in 1970 named Vietnam Veedu (House of Vietnam), referring to a household forever in family feuds and turmoil.
Along with the war in Vietnam, people came by boat to the shores of Malaysia. The then leaders, in the late 1970s, dealing with a poor economic climate as they were reeling from a devastating racial riot, were not so cordial with their arrival. Malaysia went into the bad books of the international arena when the Marines were issued a ‘shoot-at-sight’ order on Vietnamese boat people by the then Deputy Prime Minister, Mahathir Muhammad. The refugees were eventually placed in barb-wired concentration camps-like holding centres. The last of the boat people left Malaysia in 2005. Even today, many former refugees who had started life anew elsewhere return to Pulau Bidong to perform ancestral worship or to remind themselves and their descendants of the hell they escaped.
Just as I thought Malaysia had seen the last of the people displaced from their homes gracing their shores, Malaysia had to play host to economic refugees from Myanmar, the ethnic Myanmarese and the Rohingyas. And the cycle of not wanting to spend the country’s precious resources and accepting them on humanitarian grounds continues to date.
My ever optimist friend is dreaming of a utopia on Earth. Her idea of utopia is one where people are kind to each other, not hurling grenades or aiming intercontinental missiles at each other and accepting each other’s citizens with open arms. In fact, in her world, there would be borders. She dreams of a world where people are happy, able to enjoy the fruit of their existence, a world where there is no destruction of Mother Earth and none of the species of plants and animals go extinct. She envisages a space where everyone communicates with one another with kindness without hurting their psyche. The search is still on, where people do not look at each other with scorn and suspicion and are willing to accept another as a fellow sibling from a common mother. She dreams of a borderless world where heart, mind and territories are a continual flow of ideas and messages for the betterment of humankind. Unfortunately, despite all the strides the world has seemingly made, she remains unhappy and is getting more discontent by the day.
“Why is there so much hate? Why is there war after all the wisdom we have supposedly learnt as evidenced by our scientific advancements?” she asks. “Are we just developing creative ways to annihilate each other until the whole race reaches the point of no return?”
I see our newspapers and digital media. I became convinced that humans are evil and anthropocentric. They do not bother about other living beings. They are only interested in fending for themselves, fattening themselves, usurping treasures and fattening their coffers, and rapaciously wanting to leave a legacy for their descendants to savour to eternity. In typical situations, the world can accommodate all of Man’s needs, but not their greed.
Innately, I reminisce about the times when I was young, trees were tall, the air was clean, and adults were trustworthy. We long to go back to those innocent days.
Upon closer scrutiny, we realise we were presented with a false image of serenity. Beneath the surface of sobriety, even then, trenches were built to gun down brothers and chemical factories to neutralise them biologically. We think we are in the worst of times, but historians differ. Our current era is the most peaceful and safest throughout our existence. The chance of an average man in the current time, unlike his ancestors, to be directly involved or affected physically by wars is quite remote.
Our ancestors did not need the media to know the world’s plight because it often happened at their doorstep. The swords carved out people’s fate line, not consensus or democracy.
Life is cyclical. Peace and chaos have alternated all through our history. Like a phoenix, we keep rising from the rubble of destruction only to be broken to smithereens. Torrents of events around us bear testimony to this fact. It has been like this since time immemorial.
There was a time when Angkor Wat was the talk of travellers who could not stop praising man’s colossal achievement. With mind-binding engineering marvels, it testified to what the human mind could think next. Then, it got lost in the folly of human activities, only to be discovered as an ancient relic by passing foreigners.
Isfahan, an essential stop along the Silk Road, was once hailed as heaven on Earth with the highest level of culture. People with exquisite taste for art, literature, music and architecture made it their second home. Babur, who established the Mughal Dynasty, never synced with India as he felt the Indians were less cultured than the Persians because of what he was exposed to in the Safavid capital. Isfahan’s own glory brought its destruction.
All through Man’s sojourn on Earth, it has been anything but peaceful. The funny thing is that, amid all the destruction, we still managed to bring up our humanity and the science that would save us from extinction. In spite and amidst all the mayhem, we kept famine at bay, found cures for many infectious diseases and sent rockets to the moon and beyond. Paradoxically, the science that saved us becomes a thorn in our progress. From muskets to rifles to intercontinental missiles to the press of a red button, it is becoming easier to plan out our destruction.
So, the world has never been peaceful, and humans have not been kind. What can we do about it? Do you brood at our shortsightedness, or are we like Sisyphus? Knowing pretty well that, Sisyphus destined for life with the punishment of pushing a boulder up a hill only to see it roll down and for him to repeat the whole exercise again and again, he can take two paths. He can perform the task without thinking, like an automaton, go mad and die, or the alternative is finding simple pleasures in the seemingly mundane task. He could challenge himself to do it faster, explore newer routes to roll the boulder or experiment with various tools to aid in his task.
We continue doing our bit for humanity, knowing very well that it is just a drop in the ocean. Our efforts to promote peace and brotherhood will trigger small pockets of change and hopefully snowball into something earth-shattering for a good reason.
War, hardship and tragedy are bound to continue. It is too intertwined in our DNA. Many are even convinced that for seismic changes to occur, we need jolts and uncertainties. All these wars may be part of our search for a perfect system to pave Earth’s peace. A war to end all wars? Now, where have we heard that one before?
All through its existence, the Universe has seen it all before. If one were to believe Graham Hancock, the documentary maker or a pseudo-historian as some may call him, then one would be convinced that the world has experienced all these and even greater things before, only to lose everything because of human greed. Some other belief systems are confident that time does not go in a linear fashion but rather in a cyclical fashion. All that is happening today gives the Universe a deja vu.
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Farouk Gulsara is a daytime healer and a writer by night. After developing his left side of his brain almost half his lifetime, this johnny-come-lately decided to stimulate the non-dominant part of his remaining half. An author of two non-fiction books, Inside the twisted mind of Rifle Range Boy and Real Lessons from Reel Life, he writes regularly in his blog, Rifle Range Boy.
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It’s been five years since the American cyclist ‘Hutch’ died, yet his message of peace remains, as Keith Lyons remembers the global citizen who challenges us all to live life to its fullest
In early 2019, having not heard from an old friend ‘Hutch’ for a few weeks, I learnt that the American I’d first met in China has died of natural causes at his new humble home in the mountains of Greece. He was almost 80 years old.
There’s nothing extraordinary about living until your late 70s. Or relocating to live the last years of your life in a warmer place. But Hutch was not your ordinary septuagenarian retiree. Nor was he a typical American. Though when I first heard about him in 2009, it was when a German friend staying with me in southwest China had come across a sign on the wall of an Italian restaurant in Lijiang, Yunnan, seeking fellow cyclists for day trips around the area. The deal was, go on a ride with Hutch and other cyclists, and he would pay for lunch or dinner. “So how was he?” I asked my friend about the organiser, who had a website promoting world peace. “American, very American,” she replied. I was intrigued by this.
But it wasn’t till another month or so that our paths crossed, and I met him in a café with a gaggle of others: locals, Chinese youngsters who had moved to Yunnan province, and some foreigners.
Hutch was treating them all to drinks and pizza. I found out later, he bought bikes for some ride participants who became his friends. That’s the kind of person he was.
Hutch was not a tall man in stature, and the cycling obviously kept him very fit, I noted on first meeting him. He wore lycra cycling gear, a neck scarf and bandana, and had a gentle face, with a bright eyes and a benign smile. He was polite, and entertaining, and clearly enjoyed the carbo-loading pizza as much as the entourage, made up of English-speaking Chinese who ranged from their 20s to 40s.
He invited me to join them, as after pizza, there was going to be cake and dessert. He got up to shake my hand, and I noticed he was wearing cycling shorts, with spindly yet muscle-toned legs.
Having set up his new China base in the mountain town where I’d been living since the mid-200s, I got to know him over drinks, meals, outings and adventures. Mr F. A. Hutchinson (I never knew what those initials stood for) acquired names in each country where he stayed – Haqi in China, Nima (meaning ‘sun’) in Tibet, Hache in Bolivia. At one stage he was signing off his emails with ’The Magic Dragon’, his serpent name. ‘Or just call me a bum on a bike’, was tagged to the end of his signature. I just knew him as Hutch.
Generous and giving, sometimes overly generous, he also adopted adult children, accumulating a family of daughters and sons in China during his half decade living in Xining and Lijiang. While his trusted bike, Ms.Fetes, was loaded with pannier bags front and back, he didn’t carry much baggage from his past, which had seen him serve in Vietnam, work for decades in TV sports production in the US, and establish a talent development agency in China in 2007.
Over the couple of years I knew him in Lijiang I can only recall a few occasions when he was not sporting padded cycling shorts. More often than not he turned up to cafe, meeting and events on his bicycle, sometimes not bothering to take off his cycling helmet indoors.
That cycle helmet proved its value one day when we were out cycling in the hills to an alpine lake around 2,600 m above sea level not far from LIjiang. Hutch was a cyclist with remarkable stamina, and his slow and steady approach could burn off others 40 years his junior on hill climbs. While Hutch had cycled all over China for a number of years, without major incident or accident — a fact which impressed all who inquired about the safety and sanity of cycling in The Middle Kingdom — while out with me he broke that 100% safety record. Coming down a winding hill late one afternoon the wheels of his bike skidded on icy gravel and he ended up falling off his bike, a large truck behind him putting on its brakes just in time to avoid running him over. Worried he was requiring an ambulance or hospital treatment, I rushed over to Hutch to find him un-fazed by it all. He cycled back to where he was living, and tried to tend to his battered and bloody knees, elbows and hands himself, a wry smile over his beard-stubbled face.
One of Hutch’s most impressive achievements in China was to cycle from Lijiang across Tibet to Lhasa and onto Mt Kailas, a feat made more incredible by the challenges and dynamics of a group ride (participants from several countries included Elvis), and then the breakaway split by some cyclists which jeopardized the whole mission. I helped with some of the logistics during the year-long adventure, but am still in awe of anyone who can cycle for weeks at altitudes over 4,000 metres across the Tibetan plateau. The tale of the 70-year-old American who cycled across China to Tibet made newspaper headlines, and he featured on the front cover of cycling and outdoor magazines. We gave him a hero’s welcome when he returned to Lijiang, his story still told by expats and locals living in north-west Yunnan.
As well as his cycling pilgrimage to the holy mountain of Tibet, we worked on a housing project for small Tibetan-style eco-houses with wind and solar energy made for US$10,000. In Lijiang, he helped his friend Irlin set up a small eatery (possibly to ensure he had a reliable supply of Western food), and he was a regular visitor to my café, ‘Lijiang Millionaire’s Club’, and the crosstown cafe (and tango dance studio), ‘Over the Bridge’, run by fellow New Zealander, Stephen Dalley.
After Hutch’s years in China, he was ready for a change. Increasingly worried about the Chinese government’s clampdowns on freedom of speech, his frustrations spilled over from the anonymous government to the Chinese people. He often carried a green canvas shoulder bag with the words in Mandarin of Chairman Mao ‘Serve the People’ — and found occasion to show that to shopkeepers, bank clerks, ticket sellers or government officers — anyone who was stonewalling him or telling him ‘mei you’ (don’t have).
Perhaps inspired by the practical and easy-going nature of Kiwis, Hutch was looking forward to heading to New Zealand, where he already had a number of contacts. After Lijiang, he went to Australia, New Zealand, and then to South America, before moving to Europe a few years ago to live in Spain, Germany and Greece.
He was on a personal crusade, to promote peace and understanding, and wanted to get more people on bicycles, by holding inclusive, inexpensive cycle tours. “One of our slogans, Burn Fat, Not Oil,” he wrote.
One of Hutch’s key talents was to enlist others to join, and get them working together, even though he admitted he didn’t like groups. However, the laziness or greediness of others sometimes meant that his efforts floundered into anarchy and stagnation.
While often on the move, Hutch wasn’t a ‘rolling stone gathering no moss’ kind of person. Instead, he acquired more friends everywhere he went. I never saw him play the age card, but enjoyed hearing his wisdom acquired from a long and interesting life. He had some strong opinions on various subjects. Once you met Hutch and he got your contact details, it was like being on an email subscription list you could not get off. A few times I got fed up with the email exchanges, not so much from Hutch, but from some of his old American friends, and despite requests to opt out, found myself back on the list a few months later.
Taoist Hutch believed we needed to change the world, and to change ourselves. He quoted Mahatma Gandhi on his site: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
He rallied against capitalism, materialism, money and greed. He complained about how money was god, the world was going mad, and against the failures of democracy with widespread corruption of its leaders. One year his favourite slogan was, “We have met the enemy, and he/she is us.”
Hutch urged ‘women of the world to unite’. He was impressed by former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, often sending me links to news articles about her, but he was not so favourable about Myanmar’s leader Aung Sun Suu Kyi and her lack of response to ethnic cleansing, telling me, “I am starting to really dislike this woman.”
He called for urgent measures to address what he saw as the biggest and most unrecognised problem facing the human race: over-population. Each day he posted comments with news articles under the title ‘Pathology in America’, or with his take on issues, written in upper case: SLEAZE-BAG TRUMP’S AMERICA. He cursed wrongdoers, and hoped they would face the consequences. ‘WOE BE UNTO TRUMP FO ALL THIS! MAY ALL THE 7 DEPREDATIONS, FULL UPON HIM AND HIS CHILDREN’S CHILDREN, FOR 7 GENERATIONS’1, he penned recently after a second child died in government custody at the US border.
Sometimes his missives were written as poems or as cryptic riddles. Likewise, he was prepared to consider other views, new information or the different opinions of those better informed, and he would figuratively smoke the peace pipe.
Hutch did occasionally like to smoke a pipe, not with tobacco but with the ‘happy baccy’. (Indeed, today there’s an article in Scientific American suggesting THC in marijuana may boost rather than dull the elderly brain).
“As I get older, I seek peace and tranquillity,” he wrote in one of his emails to me. “What has been important to me is a different life, one seeking answers to the riddle of life.” In another he sent last year, he said he was getting closer. “Closer to what? The peace of mind of having overcome materialism.” In another email he wrote “at this age, we take life one day at a time”.
He wrote latterly that he had wanted to live in Meteora in Greece, having fantasised about it while in Germany, visiting his long-time friend and patron, Rucha. The rock formation in central Greece has a stunning hillside Eastern Orthodox monastery, second in importance only to Mount Athos. Almost prophetically, he said recently, “We never know when our time has come, so better to act Now!”
On Christmas Eve last year, after a good day out cycling around Meteora, the 78-year-old wrote a poem which started:
What a cycling day this has been, What a rare mood I’m in Being the Light Screaming Delight. . . .
It was in the small town of Kalampaka near Meteora where Hutch died, around 2 January 2019 — according to his close friend Xu Tan — after coming down with a bad cold a few days before. He was cremated at the base of the Meteora rocks.
“I’m not much big on ‘goodbyes’,” Hutch posted as he left Australia in late 2011 on his way to New Zealand. “I usually slip out the back, Jack . . . get a new plan, Stan — and basically get myself down the road.”
“There is no reason to be sad when someone dies and sheds their body,” he said. “In fact, we should celebrate such a transition.”
After learning of his death, many candles were lit in memory of Hutch, in China, Australia, New Zealand, South America, in Europe, in the USA — all around the world, a remembrance and celebration of that cranky, freewheeling legend, as he cycled over the hill into the sunset, and into a brand new dawn.
And five years later, we still remember the man and his message.
Photo provided by Keith Lyons
These are authorial comments retained for colour but do not reflect the stand of Borderless Journal ↩︎
Keith Lyons (keithlyons.net) is an award-winning writer and creative writing mentor originally from New Zealand who has spent a quarter of his existence living and working in Asia including southwest China, Myanmar and Bali. His Venn diagram of happiness features the aroma of freshly-roasted coffee, the negative ions of the natural world including moving water, and connecting with others in meaningful ways. A Contributing Editor on Borderless journal’sEditorial Board, his work has appeared in Borderless since its early days, and his writing featured in the anthology Monalisa No Longer Smiles.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.
How can anybody comprehend one of the largest and most ancient cities in the world? Keith Lyons goes up high, underground, underwater and down some dead-end alleyways as he tries to understand in just three days what took 3,000 years of history to create.
Day One*
My fascination with China started at an early age. I remember as a child leaving through the Time-Life World Library series volume for China (1965); its photographs grainy black and white, and tinted colour, only serving to increase the mystique about the nation then isolated behind the Bamboo Curtain at the height of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Back then, to be able to stand on the Great Wall of China, or to see the vastness Tiananmen Square seemed as probable as going on a school trip to the Moon.
I was in my late 20s when I first visited the Middle Kingdom, and through a series of events, choices, and decisions, later found myself living and working in the ethnic borderlands of southwest China for more than a dozen years from the mid-2000s. During that time in-country, as well as before and after during my various travels throughout China, how many times do you think I visited the capital, Beijing? Half-a-dozen times? Or at least 10 times? Sorry. I have to confess, even though I ‘knew’ Beijing through books and documentaries — and creating travel itineraries for tour groups — I never once visited in person the Chinese capital.
Yes, that’s right. I crafted detailed, tailor-made itineraries for first-time visitors to Beijing, to give them an insider’s experience of the capital, without getting within a thousand kilometres of the great city. My excuses include:
1 – China is vast, and almost the same size as Europe;
2 – It would take 3 days by train from my courtyard house in Yunnan’s Lijiang to the Forbidden City, and I wasn’t up for such a long journey
3 – To be honest, I wasn’t as enthralled about Beijing after hearing mixed reports from other travellers, so I decided I could live (and/or die) without casting my eyes upon the sights and wonders of Beijing.
A small window of opportunity opened to me recently when the stars aligned between jobs and other responsibilities. I had turned down the invitation to speak at a national tourism conference about the future of China’s tourism development post-pandemic, but I got to visit China for the first time since 2019, making an extended stopover in the capital. A visa-exemption initiative recently re-instated to encourage tourism without the need for pre-approved visas meant I could theoretically apply for a 144-hour transit stamp.
So, I touched down at Beijing’s Capital International Airport (IATA code PEK) early one morning after an overnight flight from the southern hemisphere. This being my first time without a pre-approved (and expensive) visa I was a little nervous, and my fears were not allayed when no one was staffing the 144-hour visa desk. Was this the first great wall I had to overcome? I got sent from one immigration queue to another, a couple of times having to go against the flow of newly-arriving passengers and slip upstream through security. When eventually an official arrived to process the paperwork and issue the transit stamp, I had to show all my flight and accommodation bookings; not an easy task when you can’t connect to the airport wi-fi.
I was sweating, not just because of the late summer heat, but also because I had booked a bus tour to the Great Wall that was leaving at 8 a.m. from central Beijing, a train and subway ride away. “Dear Sir, our assembly point is at Exit C of Dengshikou Subway Station on Line 5,” read my instructions. “You can see the guide wearing a blue vest. Please arrived at the assembly point 10 minutes early.”
Having a Chinese bank card, a map preloaded onto my phone, and some decent residual Mandarin skills, along with no reservations about queue-jumping as payback for being delayed, I found an ATM, and headed to the exit of the massive airport. There were only a few seconds to admire the impressive roof arching over Terminal 3, designed by Sir Norman Foster for the 2008 Beijing Olympics as I marched across the marble floors towards the Capital Airport Express. It was just after 7 a.m. but already I could see how Beijing Capital Airport is — or was — the second busiest airport in the world.
Transferring from the airport line train downtown to the metro, the time on my phone was counting down towards the departure time. I worried that if I missed my bus, my whole trip would be ruined; and that such an inauspicious start to my Beijing exploration would cause a chain reaction of delays, missed opportunities and regret. Maybe I’d never make it to the Wall. Then I thought: take it easy, it’s not the destination, it’s the journey. I studied the Chinese characters for Dengshikou, recognising the first Sinogram as meaning light or lantern.
Arriving at the subway station, I quickened my pace up the stairs and escalators to emerge into sunlight at Exit C. It was 7:59. Fortunately, a blue-vested person was standing in the middle of the carpark. “Do I have time to grab something to eat or drink?” I asked the ZANbus guide in my slightly rusty Mandarin. “No. We’re leaving right now,” she said, ushering me onto the bus.
“But we have bottles of water on sale onboard.”
My online booked tour, a bare basics budget-friendly US$25 including admission ticket, offered three advantages: visiting a less-visited section of the Great Wall a mere 70km from Beijing, arriving before the ‘other tourists’, and being a strictly ‘no shopping’ experience (many tours visit several stores where guides and drivers make huge commissions). As the only non-Chinese person on the coach, the guide (who was supposed to speak some English) gave me a special briefing (in Mandarin), explaining the options for going up and coming down from the Mutianyu section of the wall, as we sped out of the metropolis heading towards the green rolling hills in the hazy distance.
As we passed orchards, with growers selling freshly-picked fruits and nuts, I secretly wished we could stop for some shopping, not just to support the locals, but to ease my rumbling empty stomach. A nearby passenger, a man in his 20s visiting from a central province, whom I later dubbed ‘Running Man’, live-streamed the succession of farmer’s markets we zoomed past, in between video-chatting to his girlfriend. “There’s apples, pears, apricots, plums, grapes, persimmon, walnuts and huge peaches,” I heard him say. Since the bus driver didn’t once slow down, I justified to myself that, even though probably quite delicious, that produce would probably be exorbitantly over-priced for day-tripping Great Wallers like myself.
By 9.30am I was striding along an arcade of mainly unopened shops past the visitor centre, stopping to buy more water, and some snacks. “How about an ice cream?”one vendor asked me after I looked into his glass-top freezer. “Later, OK?” A cafe offered a latte coffee, but the US$8.25 price tag reminded me that China gives too much status to the beverage, which is sometimes just instant coffee and creamer. A Chinese family, long-resident in the UK, gave me a fuller rundown on the logistics for sightseeing, where to meet the guide for the trip back to Beijing (the waiting hall just near Burger King), and most importantly, when the bus driver would be leaving (4pm sharp). “Also, if you tell them you are with this bus company, there’s a discount at Subway,” the teenage son chimed in as we boarded an electric vehicle for a short ride to the base station for the ascent of the crestline high above us. Looking along the line of the hills, I could just make out the crenellated up-and-down patterns of the walls, stretching off into the far distance.
Now you’ve probably heard it many times, but let’s dispel the myth: the Great Wall of China is not visible from space. It is not visible from the Moon. It isn’t even visible to the naked eye from the low-orbit International Space Station. The popular myth goes back centuries, and more recently has been part of the propaganda of modern China to state that the wall was the only human-made structure that could be seen from space. The myth was challenged when Apollo 12 lunar module pilot Alan Bean said, “The only thing you can see from the Moon is a beautiful sphere, mostly white, some blue and patches of yellow, and every once in a while, some green vegetation. . . No man-made object is visible at this scale.”
Some artificial structures such as cities, highways and dams are visible from space, but the Great Wall is only visible from low Earth orbit with magnification or high-powered camera lenses. This was confirmed by China’s own first astronaut who went around planet Earth 14 times in 2003 on Shenzhou 5. “The Earth looked very beautiful from space, but I did not see our Great Wall.”
Photographs provided by Keith Lyons
To get personal and up-close with the Great Wall, other passengers decided to get a chairlift up and traipse further along between watchtowers and then take a toboggan (“speed slide”) down for 5 minutes of excitement. Rather than hike up (crazy in the heat), I opted to take the same cable car up and down (less than US$20 return).
Within minutes we could look down on the graceful, curved line of each section of the wall as it gently arched from one watchtower to the next. Wow! As the cable car reached its terminus near watchtower 14, the extent of the Great Wall to the north was revealed, fading to the horizon as vegetation and battlement became indistinguishable.
The Mutianyu section extends some 5.4km, and though work began in the 6th century, much of it was rebuilt or renovated in the 15th and 16th centuries. In the 1980s about 2.3 km of that section was restored, so over the last three decades, more and more people have been able to visit the less crowded and commercialised alternative to the more famous, most-restored, scenically magnificent Badaling section.
At Mutianyu, constructed of granite blocks, the wall has been made pedestrian-friendly and smooth, though there were steps, some steep in parts as they climb to the series of watchtowers. My fellow passenger Running Man darted around taking selfies and videos, as if he had only 24-hours left to live. Couples set off to the best spots to take photos, while a group of three university students set their sights on the highest watchtower, No.20, which could take one or two hours return depending on speed, stops and stamina. The path climbs from the low of watchtower 17, with the steepest leg between 19 and 20.
Being something of a mountain goat myself, you might expect me to join them purposefully climbing towards the much-talked-about ’20’, but this goat was tired, jet-lagged, and hungry. Instead, I wandered along to the next abutments and decided to just sit in the shade admiring the view. This is just what I had envisioned, I wrote in my journal. And it was. Just like in the photos. Actually, I had expected the Great Wall might be more crowded with jostling visitors, but less than half those getting off the cable car ventured beyond watchtower 16 — and it wasn’t a weekend or holiday.
At watchtower 17, it was so quiet and still that I could hear cicadas in the pine and chestnut trees flanking the wall. A pair of sparrows darted around, a plane flew overhead, and I watched the slow progress of a centipede across the path from the inner parapet to the invader-facing crenelation, a distance of four or five metres. Surely, the centipede hadn’t climbed all the way up the seven or eight metres of the Wall’s walls, five times the height of an adult? During its construction, which went until the mid-1600s, parts of the wall were made with bricks, held together by a durable glutinous rice mortar — arsenic was used to prevent insects from eroding away the wall.
An old man, who has been sitting nearby in the shade while his adult son and grandchildren went on further, finishes drinking from a plastic water bottle and discards it over the side. I feel like saying something, but stop myself, realising that some attitudes and behaviours are slow to change. He probably thinks the Great Wall was visible from space, I confide to myself.
The Wall’s modest width, no bigger than a road, was probably why it couldn’t be easily spotted from above. However, it did provide a fast means of travel and transportation for troops. Officially, the Great Wall was some 21,198 km long – that’s equivalent to half the equator – but up to a third of the structure has disappeared over time. It’s not just one continuous wall either, with sidewalls, parallel walls, enclosing walls, and even sections where there are no walls, just high mountain ridges, rivers, ditches or moats as the barriers. The Wall can lay claim to being the longest man-made structure as well as the largest building construction project ever undertaken. On a blank page I start a rough sketch of the section in front of me, trying to get my head around how this is just a tiny fraction of the longer, greater wall.
As well as being for border defence, the Great Wall also served to transmit messages, using watchtowers and beacon towers. From the next watchtower, the grandson of the bottle-litter-man waves but failing to catch the attention of the old man, he runs back along the wall path yelling, “Yéye – Granddad! Did you see me waving to you at the next castle?”
There is a certain irony about this extensive bulwark constructed across northern China and southern Mongolia up to two millennia ago to keep out invaders which now every day is climbed over by tourists from Mongolia, Russia, Eurasia and beyond. This is supposed to keep us out. But here we are, on the top of the wall and fortifications, having invaded, not from beyond, but from the downtown of the capital of the nation. So much for the upright projections, resembling teeth bared at the enemies.
Other travel experts and expats living in Beijing tell me if I visited Mutianyu a month later, I would see the surrounding maple, oak and chestnut trees in their autumn splendour. In winter, snow transforms the scene. But on this day, I am just happy to be present, to take on the literal meaning of Mutianyu — Admire Fields Valley — as I take the cable car down to the bountiful valley, snack on a corn cob sprinkled with chilli, and some fresh walnuts. As the clouds turn to a sudden rainstorm, in the comfort of the waiting hall, after savouring an ice cream, I let the day catch up on me.
Photo provided by Keith Lyons
Back on the bus at 4pm, Running Man is sunburnt red and sweaty — but still grinning as he sorts through his photos and videos. The mother hen guide gives us all a small memento of the day, a fridge magnet of the Great Wall, as a reward for all making it back on time.
The next thing I recall is being woken by the guide. I must have drifted off to sleep. “We’ve arrived,” she says, pointing towards an entrance to the Beijing metro which seems different from the starting point. For a moment, I wonder if I have been dreaming it all: the Great Wall, the perfect day, how everything worked out in the end. Then I realised it was all true: I’ve just seen and been on the Great Wall. And I have the fridge magnet in my pocket to prove it. I turn to say goodbye to Running Man, but he’s already exited the bus, and is making for the escalator down.
Keith Lyons (keithlyons.net) is an award-winning writer and creative writing mentor originally from New Zealand who has spent a quarter of his existence living and working in Asia including southwest China, Myanmar and Bali. His Venn diagram of happiness features the aroma of freshly-roasted coffee, the negative ions of the natural world including moving water, and connecting with others in meaningful ways. A Contributing Editor on Borderless journal’s Editorial Board, his work has appeared in Borderless since its early days, and his writing featured in the anthology Monalisa No Longer Smiles.
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Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri in conversation with M.S. Viraraghavan and Girija Viraraghavan
M.S. Viraraghavan and Girija Viraraghavan
In their new book Roses in the Fire of Spring: Better Roses for a Warming World and Other Garden Adventures (Running Head, 2023), world-renowned rose hybridisers, M.S. Viraraghavan and Girija Viraraghavan, record their journey of over fifty years, creating more than a hundred new rose varieties, in a range of colours, shapes and types. The authors spoke to Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri on their lifelong passion for the rose.
The passion for roses goes back a long way – can you recall the first moments when you realised that this was a ‘calling’ you had to follow? Any epiphanic moment that leaps to the mind?
From quite a young age, Viraraghavan was fascinated with roses, but the epiphanic moment was really when his family spent summer vacations in Coonoor, staying at the government guesthouse within Sim’s Park, which overlooked a rose garden. Every morning, he would wander about this garden which was a blaze of colour of the new roses created from the golden rose of Persia, R. foetida by Pernet Ducher, a great French rose breeder. The brilliant, never-before-seen colours of these roses amazed him – from bright gold and apricot to dazzling oranges and reds. In particular, one of the golden roses took his breath away – ‘Julien Potin’, aptly named for a jeweller – its vivid colour was quite overwhelming for the boy of thirteen, already thrilled with roses. From this came the intoxicating thought: ‘If Pernet Ducher could do it, why not I?’
There’s a delightful little bit about Viraraghavan sir’s viva-voce for the IAS and how his knowledge of roses played an important part in him getting through that. Would you like to share that with our readers?
A difficult part of the IAS examination is the viva-voce, where a panel of senior administrators question the aspirant about various aspects of his or her life and ambitions. Viraraghavan was in the middle of this interview when the Chairman, by chance a learned rose grower, asked him what his hobbies were. ‘Growing roses,’ was the response. The next question was meant to be a googly to confuse a nervous candidate. ‘What roses can you grow in Madras City?’ But Viraraghavan had read the CompleteGardening in India by K.S. Gopalaswamiengar, well-known horticulturist of Bangalore, many times, so my answer was nearly verbatim from the chapter on various kinds of roses which do well in low-to-medium elevations, i.e., warm climates, so he reeled off the different rose classifications: Teas, Noisettes, Bourbons, Chinas, Hybrid Teas, Hybrid Perpetuals. The interview committee then decided it was prudent to go on to other questions rather than get a lecture from a young and seemingly unflurried candidate! But his capacity to master detailed information on various subjects had been noted, and he came through with flying colours (pun intended).
You mention making your presence on the world stage as late as 2000. Please give us a brief account of your work on roses before and after – a potted highlights package, if one can call it.
From the start, our rose breeding focused on creating better roses for warm climates based on the dictum of India’s pioneer rose breeder, B.S. Bhatcharji of Bengal and Bihar, who had stressed the need for a separate breeding line for warm climates as distinct from the Western focus on creating cold-hardy roses suitable for them. Thus, in the early years, our work was with those roses which, though Western, performed well in hot climates, and we had bred many which did well in Hyderabad where we lived. Then, after perusal of many books on roses, we realised the potential in two Indian rose species Rosa gigantea (from northeast India) and Rosa clinophylla (perhaps the world’s only tropical rose species). After getting them with great effort, we began to work with them. At every annual national rose convention in India we would present updates of our work. In 1999, at what happened to be a World Regional Rose Convention, in Jaipur, Viraraghavan’s talk, as always, focused on the breeding with the two rose species mentioned. After the talk, the World Federation of Rose Societies President, Helga Brichet, and Vice-President (South America), Mercedes Villar, came up to him and said they had never before heard of this kind of rose work or of these rose species and invited him to be a speaker at the next World Rose Convention to be held in May 2000 in Houston, Texas.
That was the start of a further phase of rose breeding with the realisation that other than India, several warm parts of the world were also looking for roses that would do well there. These two rose species had been personally collected by us from their native habitat. At Houston, and in other places, people were fascinated by this aspect, which no earlier breeder had undertaken, that is, personally collecting rose species in the wild, at great risk, growing them and using them in creating new roses; starting from scratch as it were. It made sense to them when Viraraghavan explained the dictum of that great German breeder Wilhelm Kordes I who said –‘The soup ladle will only bring out what is already in the tureen’, meaning that fresh genetic input was required if new and different roses are to be created. The enthusiastic response to his ideas strengthened his determination to go ahead with this new rose breeding line. There is nothing as intoxicating as the realisation that the rose world is watching our work with great interest.
One of the most fascinating sections of the book is the one titled ‘The Ones Who Came Before’. Please provide readers with a short account of these legendary influences.
Karrie’s Rose. Photo courtesy: M.S. Viraraghavan and Girija Viraraghavan
We had noticed that invariably roses were named for famous people with often no connection to the world of roses. This made us think: why not name our roses for the intrepid plant-hunters who had discovered roses in the wild, on mountains and in forests, and botanists who had contributed to the knowledge on plants.
One wild Indian rose is R. gigantea, from our north-east, and Myanmar. Three great plant hunters were responsible for collecting this species in the wild – Sir George Watt, General Sir Henry Collett and Frank Kingdon Ward. We decided to name our rose hybrids for all three. Sir George was a medical doctor with an interest in botany, and worked as a surveyor with the British India government. During the course of his work, in the 1880s, he found Rosa gigantea growing on the slopes of Mt Sirohi, now in Manipur, and collected specimens. Almost simultaneously, so did Sir Henry Collett, except in the Shan Hills in what is now Myanmar. Both specimens were identified as being the same and named by the great Belgian taxonomist of the time, François Crepin. Climbing Mt Sirohi in 1990, we came across and collected plants from perhaps the precise location that Sir George had found Rosa gigantea. We named our first hybrid, a creamy yellow climbing rose, for him. We then felt it should be planted near his ancestral home in Scotland. With the help of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, we managed to get this new rose planted in the Logan Botanic Garden, very near Sir George’s birthplace. Some years later we embarked on a sentimental journey, along with his descendants and his associates’ descendants, visiting his grave and the hospital he had worked in after retiring from India, to see the rose blooming in Logan.
We named a second seedling we had bred from R. gigantea for General Sir Henry Collett, a rose with big creamy white blooms that has been planted in suitable areas in Britain as well, and, gratifyingly, being grown by some of his descendants. A third rose, a climber with blooms of yellow-suffused pink, was named for Frank Kingdon Ward, the legendary and intrepid plant hunter who collected innumerable new and wild Himalayan plants despite his surprising acrophobia! We then came across a piece by the then BBC 4 gardening anchor, Matthew Biggs, who had visited Kingdon Ward’s grave in Grantchester near Cambridge. He wrote about the neglected condition of the grave of one of the world’s greatest plant explorers. So we decided to make amends by planting ‘Frank Kingdon Ward’ by the wall nearest his grave in the churchyard in a moving ceremony organised by Matthew Biggs, and attended by a number of well-known British horticulturists, as also the family. An urn with the ashes of Sheila Macklin, Kingdon Ward’s wife, for whom he had named a Himalayan lily, and who had died just the previous year, was interred near his grave, and close to where the rose was planted.
We have also named a rose for Leschenault de la Tour, the great French plant explorer who found a beautiful new rose species, called Rosa leschenaultiana after him, in the Western Ghats in the early 1800s; our rose named for him is a climber with pure white blooms.
And of course we have a rose to celebrate the remarkable life and career of the great Indian botanist and cytogeneticist, E.K. Janaki Ammal, who co-wrote the Chromosome Atlas of All Cultivated Plants in 1945. She studied botany at Michigan State University in the 1920s on a full scholarship, later receiving a PhD and DSc honoris causa. Back in India, she played a vital role in creating the ‘Noble’ strain of sugarcane – an extraordinary hybrid of sugarcane and bamboo leading to varieties thick as a man’s arm in contrast to the pencil-thin traditional varieties. But credit was stolen by seniors at the research station, and so she went off to Britain. There she worked at famous institutes, including John Innes, Kew and the Royal Horticultural Society. Later, she met the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on a plane, and he put her in charge of reforming the Botanical Survey of India in Calcutta. But sadly she was a forgotten figure by the time of her death in 1984. Our rose named for her has the same colour hues as the saris she wore – orange yellow and saffron. A plant of this rose was planted in 2020 at the World Regional Rose Conference Kolkata, at the Botanical Survey of India garden. The rose has also been planted in the John Innes Institute, in Kew and the Royal Horticultural Society’s garden in Wisley in the UK.
If one were to ask you of one moment each – one particular achievement in the journey and one abiding regret – what would these be and why?
There can be no doubt that the moment which was special in our rose breeding career was the moment described above, when Helga Brichet and Mercedes Villar came up to us in Jaipur in 1999, and said they had never heard such a new approach to breeding roses, pioneered by us, of using two Indian rose species to create a new line of warm-climate roses. It was their invitation to speak in Texas launched us on to the world stage of roses.
As for an abiding regret, that’s all too easy to answer. It’s the systematic neglect of Indian-bred roses by the rose-growing public of India, who remain fascinated by roses raised in Europe and the U.S. though they are utterly unsuited for Indian climates. This unreasonable preference for foreign rose varieties is part of the general craze for all things foreign. Fortunately, more recently, there has been a change, and young rose breeders and growers are realising that Indian bred roses do better in the heat and are slowly beginning to grow these.
Give us an insight into the challenges and pitfalls of growing and creating roses in India, as informed by your journey. Interesting story that highlighted these.
The main challenge was getting Indian roses accepted by the Indian rose growing public, as highlighted above. Indeed, now our roses are being grown in India, perhaps because they are being grown around the world! Another thing is one must learn patience. It takes us about eight to nine years to name and release a new rose. It is a long process, of the actual crossing of two roses, waiting for the fruit to ripen, then harvesting the fruit (rose hips), collecting the seeds, stratifying them in the refrigerator (if one lives on the hot plains), sowing the seed, waiting for the seedlings to sprout, growing the plant for a number of years to test its potential, and suitability, and only then finding a name and releasing it, by sending to a rose nursery to make more plants.
Our long career in rose breeding and our connected travels around the world has provided us with many interesting, even hilarious experiences. We were in Japan, at the Sakura Rose Garden. With us was a group of people including our friend, the well-known Japanese plant scientist, Dr Yuki Mikanagi. We were looking at a rose plant, with dark pinkish-red blooms with white on the reverse, bred by us and as yet unnamed. Yuki said she liked this rose very much. We immediately told her that we would name it for her. She said: ‘But this rose is red and white, whereas my name means “snow” in Japanese. Viru’s instant response was, ‘Then we will it name it Blushing Yuki,’ much to the delight of Yuki and everyone.
In his government service days, when we lived in Hyderabad, Viru would tend to his roses, watering and spraying them with fertilizers before leaving for office. There would be a number of telephone calls for him about some official matter. Girija would answer the phone (landline in those days), and when she told the callers he was busy spraying, they would hear it as ‘praying’ and immediately apologise: ‘Please do not disturb him when he is at his prayers’.
Both of us were hands-on gardeners, doing most of the work ourselves and you cannot garden without muddy hands and clothes. Very often visitors would mistake us for the garden help and request us to take them to the master or the mistress of the house. The looks on their faces when they realised who we were would make us laugh.
On one occasion, we were in California to receive the ‘Great Rosarians of the World’ Award. At the ceremony, we both first gave a talk on ‘Roses in India, Past Present and Future’. At the end of the ceremony, an earnest old lady came up to us and asked, in all seriousness, ‘Do roses grow in India?’
For most of us, roses are red and a Valentine’s Day Gift. Appendix 1 of your roses runs to 50 pages! Tell us briefly of some of the interesting ones, in particular the very evocative names you have, for example, Kindly Light, Meghamala/Wine-dark Sea, Twilight Secret. What goes into giving a name to a rose?
Apart from the roses we have named for friends, for other roses we like to give evocative names.
KINDLY LIGHT: we named this lovely white shading to soft pink rose after the hymn ‘Lead, Kindly Light’, a favourite of Mahatma Gandhi’s. We have the practice of giving two names to some of our roses, one better understood in India, if it is a Sanskrit word, and one for the West. This rose is named ‘Swami Vinayananda’ in India, for a monk of the Ramakrishna Mission order. He was great plantsman, his book on dahlias is a definitive work on all aspects of dahlia growing and he was very good rose grower.
MEGHAMALA/WINE-DARK SEA: One more example of two names for a rose. Meghamala translates as ‘garland of clouds’. The name for our rose was inspired by the purple garland-like pattern, reminiscent of clouds, on the petals of this rose, which otherwise are dark orange-red in colour. ‘Meghamala’ is from a line by Devulapalli Krishna Sastri, beloved modern poet of the Telugu language, to whom the rose is a tribute. ‘Wine-Dark Sea’ derives from Homer’s epithet, in both the Iliad and Odyssey, of the purple shadows of approaching night on the orange-red waters reflecting the rays of a setting sun on the Aegean Sea.
ALLEGORY OF SPRING: We named a very special light-pink rose with intriguing pointed petals after the famous Botticelli painting La Primavera, also called ‘Allegory of Spring’.
INCENSE INDIGO: An indigo purple rose with an enticing fragrance was the inspiration for this name.
TWILIGHT SECRET and TWILIGHT TRYST: Two purple-hued roses that remind one of the late evening, shadowy light, romantic secrets and trysts.
AHIMSA: We gave this name to a golden yellow rose borne on a plant without any thorns (prickles), thinking of the Mahatma’s philosophy of non-violence.
KUSABUE’S GUARDIAN ANGELS: Kusabue is the name of a rose garden in Sakura City, Japan, entirely looked after by volunteers, all very senior citizens. This is our tribute to them.
Golden ThresholdKanyakumariPhoto Courtesy: M.S. Viraraghavan and Girija Viraraghavan
Shantanu Ray Chaudhuriis a film buff, editor, publisher, film critic and writer. Books commissioned and edited by him have won the National Award for Best Book on Cinema twice and the inaugural MAMI (Mumbai Academy of Moving Images) Award for Best Writing on Cinema. In 2017, he was named Editor of the Year by the apex publishing body, Publishing Next. He has contributed to a number of magazines and websites like The Daily Eye, Cinemaazi, Film Companion, The Wire, Outlook, The Taj, and others. He is the author of two books: Whims – A Book of Poems(published by Writers Workshop) and Icons from Bollywood (published by Penguin/Puffin).
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Atom Nuclear Bomb Explosion- Illustration “Atomic Landscape” Nagasaki, Japan 1946 Art by Robert Graham Courtesy: Creative Commons
When in 1945, the Allied forces dropped atom bombs on August 6th in Hiroshima and on August 9th in Nagasaki, the Second World War drew Japanese aggression to a halt. But what was the impact on the lives of those innocents whose home, family and future changed forever? Their lives were wrecked — within a few seconds for no fault of their own. The impact clearly continues to ravage the second generation, as can be seen from the narrative of a hibakusha’s daughter who shares her travails while expressing her candid views on the recent movie, Oppenheimer, and the sale of ‘Boppenheimer’ products. She writes: “I live with it1 now having a chronic progressive nerve pain disease. My damaged immune system is attributed to my mother’s exposure to radiation from the atomic bombing.”
Are we forgetting that past, where two whole towns were decimated by atomic bombings with uncountable numbers of deaths and suffering handed down generations? Will we repeat the horrific story again to resolve issues as conflicts continue to ravage the planet with weapons, without considering their impact on the already felt climate crises? Will there be a replay of the bombing of 1945 to annihilate a people, their way of life and create suffering among all humanity? We may not be around to comment on the outcome!
Way back in 2017, climate experts contended that in case of another such bomb blast, “The effect would be similar to that of the giant meteor believed to be responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. This time, we would be the dinosaurs.”
With that in mind, we hope for a world without wars. In this special edition, writings look for peace by creating awareness and suggesting alternatives. Kathleen Burkinshaw writes about the 1945 bombings and her perspectives on media packaging of mushroom clouds. We have a story from a soldier’s perspective during the First World War by the eminent Bengali poet, Nazrul, who fought in it as a soldier for the British army. Current conflicts show up in the writing of Ramy-Al-Asheq, who was born in a refugee camp in the Middle East. They move to Ukraine with voices of Lesya Bakun, a refugee on the run, and Ron Pickett, a US army veteran. Poetry on Myanmar in the past by Sister Lou Ella Hickman and a story of the Rohingya’s plight by Shaheen Akhtar brings the focus into civil wars within Asia. More poems by Don Webb and Michael Burch urge for peace through poetry. Awareness about conflicts that nonetheless impact an interconnected world are brought in with interviews with journalists who were in Afghanistan (Andrew Quilty) and Myanmar (Jessica Muddit) when the takeovers by the current regimes started. We conclude with a discussion for alternatives towards a better future with Anthony Sattin.
Non-Fiction
Mushroom Clouds and Movies: Response from a Hibakusha’s Daughter:Kathleen Burkinshaw, a second generation victim who suffers nerve disorders from the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, where her mother watched her own father perish, responds to the recent media packaging of the event. Click here to read.
The Refugee and the Other, an excerpt from Ever Since I Did Not Die by Ramy Al-Asheq, translated by Isis Nusair. Click here to read.
Poetry
I am Ukraine by Lesya Bakun, a refugee from Ukraine. Click here to read.
Wars and Rumours of War, a response on the war in Ukraine by Ron Picket, a a retired naval aviator with over 250 combat missions and 500 carrier landings. Click here to read.
My Visit to Myanmar in 1997, a poem about peace in the land where Buddha flourished by Sister Lou Ella Hickman. Click here to read.
Henais a short story by Nazrul from the perspective of a soldier during the first world war, translated from Bengali by Sohana Manzoor. Click here to read.
The Magic Staff is a poignant short story about a Rohingya child seeking refuge by Shaheen Akhtar, translated from Bengali by Arifa Ghani Rahman. Click here to read.
Interviews
A discussion about Afghanistan, with journalist Quilty who went back to Kabul as Taliban entered the city. Click here to read.
Keith Lyons talks to Jessica Mudditt, who watched from within the country as the Myanmar Junta took over. Click here to read.
Could there be a way out of this world wide unrest? A discussion with Anthony Sattinas he explores concept of brotherhood unique to earlier times, when borders were not this well defined. Click here to read.
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Hiroshima after August 6th, 1945Hiroshima after bombingCourtesy: Creative Commons
Does having a to-do list help or hinder your journey, whether it be exploring the world or having a sense of achievement in your life? Keith Lyons ponders on the pointlessness and purpose of such lists.
In an article I recently came across on how to live with no regrets, it started out with the words ‘Make a bucket list’.
I admit, I didn’t read further. I dislike the term ‘bucket list’. Whether it is a list of random destinations you want to visit before you die, or some vague wish list of goals and accomplishments, there is something fundamentally flawed about creating ‘The List’.
So what’s so bad about coming up with a list of goals and experiences you’d like to complete in your lifetime? I have several qualms about this approach to life.
Firstly, bucket lists imply that you have to be close to actually ‘kicking the bucket’ before you start working on that list. That means they can be put off until there is time. Wait til you’ve raised your family. Defer til you’ve retired from work. Pull out the list when your doctor gives you half a year to live.
The second issue I have about bucket lists is we never know when we are doing to die. The assumption of a bucket list is often that we will live well into old age. Perhaps even make it to 100. But as Allen Saunders pointed out in 1957 Reader’s Digest (and John Lennon later echoed), ‘Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans’. The upshot is that by ‘kicking the can down the road’ , we end up putting off what we desire the most.
Thirdly, often the formation of these lists comes from fantasy, illusion and magical thinking. We add sights or experiences to the list not from our own innermost selves, but to conform to the aspirations, social norms, and dreams of others. We might hear about a friend’s amazing holiday experiences, be inspired by a travel documentary, or adopt someone’s wish list items, without having compelling reasons or an authentic ownership of the list.
I’ve seen how this plays out in my previous roles as a professional tour guide and travel writer. Some readers have admitted to me that after coming across an article I’ve written about a remote island eco-resort in the Andaman Sea or a Buddhist temple on the hill flanks of a bamboo forest where monks serve green tea to pilgrims that they’ve added the location to their bucket list. But given that we all experience places differently, how can they hope to replicate my (peak) experience? The other problem with having a bucket list is that it creates great expectations, and those perfect ideals might not match the harsh realities.
I believe we shouldn’t focus so much on external achievements and tick-box experiences because often the joy and satisfaction they possibly offer can sometimes be fleeting, ephemeral or non-existent. I’ll give you three examples from my own life of some bucket list goals and how their attainment wasn’t all it was made out to be. Maybe you have the same three on your list: running a marathon, seeing the Taj Mahal, and having a story published in a major newspaper.
Crossing the finish line after 42.195km is a wonderful feeling of completion and exhaustion, and while I still look back on that marathon and marvel at how I managed to sustain my effort over three plus hours, I gained greater satisfaction in training for the run on the coastal hills near my hometown. Perhaps it was the ‘runners high’ and the feelings of agency, freedom and bodily locomotion. I do know the day after the marathon I couldn’t walk up any stairs.
Not all bucket list endeavours are over-hyped. When I finally made it to Agra to witness for myself the immense white marble mausoleum of the Taj Mahal, I got the standard photo sitting on a bench in front of the reflected structure. But just as memorable were the hours I spent on-site before the tourist throngs packed the grounds, meditatively wandering and pausing to observe and appreciate the monument as the sun rose over the Yamuna River. For me, my time and experience there exceeded my expectations. But other visitors I met during my travels reported vastly different perceptions of the heritage ‘Wonder of the World’.
When I was studying post-graduate journalism at university, I had a bet with a colleague about paying our fees by selling articles to newspapers. The first story I had published took up the front page of the features section of the newspaper, and I got two copies of the newspaper to keep for posterity’s sake. So, imagine how I felt the next day seeing a discarded newspaper floating in the lake beside the university library. Working on bigger projects such as books can also be a roller coaster of emotions varying from elation and excitement to anxiety and relief. Still harbour the deep desire to turn your life story into a book? If so, what have you done lately to put your pen to paper?
As you can see from my examples — and from your lived experience — there is often a gap between how we reckon things will be and how they pan out in the end. There are also another couple of issues with having bucket lists. What we want and truly desire can change over time. What’s important in our 20s or what we are expected to do by our peers and communities can evolve over the decades. Swimming with dolphins might drop from the list if you learn about the treatment of marine mammals. Driving on Route 66 might not have that allure and mystique when you look at the practicalities. Crashing a stranger’s wedding to object to the coupling might have other consequences. As we mature, we might find that our achievement orientation and ambition for success wanes, and that being becomes more important than doing.
I suspect that many people who do have bucket lists don’t actually do many of the things they have declared will signal they have accomplished something in their lives. They might talk about the things they want to have and exotic places they wish to see, but it is easy to have those items on the list unfulfilled. Not today. Maybe later.
By the same token, there are many, many people who aspire to better themselves by getting their dream job, migrating to a faraway country, or winning the lottery who never succeed. Having a bucket list is a First World problem. Going through a divorce, developing an addiction, and clocking up debt might be other life experiences we didn’t think we’d signed up for.
The term bucket list comes from the Justin Zackham’s screenplay which was made into the 2007 film featuring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman as two terminally ill guys making a list of things to do before they die. In another (better-known) movie, The Shawshank Redemption, Freeman as Red is told by Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins) the sage advice ‘Get busy living or get busy dying’. Perhaps that is the answer to living in the now without regret, rather than having a list of unobtainable items. What’s the best motivation for you?
Palliative nurse Bronnie Ware compiled a list, but it wasn’t a bucket list. Instead, through her work with the ill and dying, she put together their top five regrets. Number one was ‘I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me’. The second was ‘I wish I hadn’t worked so hard’ — every male patient said this, missing their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship.
Third on the list was ‘I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings’. Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never become who they were truly capable of becoming. According to Ware, many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.
Number four on the list of regrets was ‘I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends’, while the fifth regret was ‘I wish I’d let myself be happier’. “Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. Fear of change had them pretending to others and their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.”
How about you? Anything on this list that resonates with you? Carpe the hell out of this Diem (Don’t let life pass you by!)
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Keith Lyons (keithlyons.net) is an award-winning writer and creative writing mentor originally from New Zealand who has spent a quarter of his existence living and working in Asia including southwest China, Myanmar and Bali. His Venn diagram of happiness features the aroma of freshly-roasted coffee, the negative ions of the natural world including moving water, and connecting with others in meaningful ways. A Contributing Editor on Borderless Journal’s Editorial Board, his work has appeared in Borderless since its early days, and his writing featured in the anthology Monalisa No Longer Smiles.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
To care,
Nurture and
Cherish till
Death do us part —
A day to celebrate the
Fecundity
Fertility and the
Rites of the passage of
Time.
-- Earth Day, Countercurrents,org
Earth Day is a celebration of our planet that has been our cradle and our home for the last 200,000 years, though the Earth itself is much, much older. It is more 4.5 billion years in age…Perhaps a number unimaginable in the small speck of our existence…
Our oeuvre for this occasion starts with non-fiction that celebrates the beauty, the fecundity of the planet along with its colours — travel stories from Himalayas to Antarctica. We meet whales and sail or climb mountains to see what we have done to Earth and its other residents. Through poetry and fiction, including translations of greats like Tagore, Jibanananda Das and Nazrul, we quest to understand the needs of our planet better… Do join us in celebrating our home — yours and mine…
Non-Fiction
In A view of Mt Everest, Ravi Shankar travels in the freezing cold of Himalayan splendour and shares magnificent photographs of Mt Everest. Click here to read.
In Sails, Whales, and Whimsical Winds, Meredith Stephens writes of her sailing adventures in New South Wales and spots some sporting whales. Click here to read.
In Climbing Sri Pada, Rhys Hughes takes us on a trek to the hilltop with unusual perceptive remarks which could evoke laughter. Click here to read.
“Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse -- and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness --
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.”
― Omar Khayyám (1048-1131); translation from Persian by Edward Fitzgerald (Rubaiyat, 1859)
I wonder why Khayyam wrote these lines — was it to redefine paradise or just to woo his beloved? I like to imagine it was a bit of both. The need not to look for a paradise after death but to create one on Earth might well make an impact on humankind. Maybe, they would stop warring over an invisible force that they call God or by some other given name, some ‘ism’. Other than tens of thousands dying in natural disasters like the recent earthquake at the border of Turkiye and Syria, many have been killed by wars that continue to perpetrate divides created by human constructs. This month houses the second anniversary of the military junta rule in Myanmar and the first anniversary of the Ukrainian-Russian war that continues to decimate people, towns, natural reserves, humanity, economics relentlessly, polluting the environment with weapons of mass destruction, be it bombs or missiles. The more weapons we use, the more we destroy the environment of our own home planet.
Sometimes, the world cries for a change. It asks to be upended.
We rethink, reinvent to move forward as a species or a single race. We relook at concepts like life and death and the way we run our lives. Redefining paradise or finding paradise on Earth, redefining ‘isms’ we have been living with for the past few hundred years — ‘isms’ that are being used to hurt others of our own species, to create exclusivity and divisions where none should exist — might well be a requisite for the continuance of our race.
Voices of change-pleaders rang out in the last century with visionaries like Tagore, Gandhi, Nazrul, Satyajit Ray urging for a more accepting and less war-bound world. This month, Ratnottama Sengupta has written on Ray’s legendary 1969 film, Goopy Gyne, Bagha Byne: “The message he sent out loud and with laughter: ‘When people have palatable food to fill their belly and music to fill their soul, the world will bid goodbye to wars.’” Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri has given an essay on one of the greatest pacifists, Gandhi, and his attitudes to films as well as his depiction in movies. What was amazing is Gandhi condemned films and never saw their worth as a mass media influencer! The other interesting thing is his repeated depiction as an ethereal spirit in recent movies which ask for changes in modern day perceptions and reforms. In fact, both these essays deal with ghosts who come back from the past to urge for changes towards a better future.
Delving deeper into the supernatural is our interviewee, Abhirup Dhar, an upcoming writer whose ghost stories are being adapted by Bollywood. While he does investigative stories linked to supernatural lore, our other interviewee, Andrew Quilty, a renowned journalist who has won encomiums for his coverage on Afghanistan where he spent eight years, shows in his book, August in Kabul:America’s Last Days in Afghanistan and the Return of the Taliban, what clinging to past lores can do to a people, especially women. Where does one strike the balance? We also have an excerpt from his book to give a flavour of his exclusive journalistic coverage on the plight of Afghans as an eyewitness who flew back to the country not only to report but to be with his friends — Afghans and foreigners — as others fled out of Kabul on August 14 th 2021. While culturally, Afghans should have been closer to Khayyam, does their repressive outlook really embrace the past, especially with the Taliban dating back to about only three decades?
This intermingling of life and death and the past is brought to life in our fiction section by Sreelekha Chatterjee and Anjana Krishnan. Aditi Yadav creates a link between the past and our need to travel in her musing, which is reminiscent of Anthony Sattin’s description of asabiyya, a concept of brotherhood that thrived in medieval times. In consonance with wanderlust expressed in Yadav’s essay, we have a number of stories that explore travel highlighting various issues. Meredith Stephens travels to explore the need to have nature undisturbed by external interferences in pockets like Kangaroo Island in a semi-humorous undertone. While Ravi Shankar travels to the land’s end of India to voice candid concerns on conditions within Kerala, a place that both Keith Lyons and Rhys Hughes had written on with love and a sense of fun. It is interesting to see the contrasting perspectives on Southern India.
Professor Fakrul Alam has also translated poetry where a contemporary Bengali writer, Masud Khan, cogitates on history while Ihlwha Choi has translated his own poem from Korean. A translation of Tagore’s poem on the ocean tries to capture the vastness and the eternal restlessness that can be interpreted as whispers carried through eons of history. Fazal Baloch has also shared a poem by one of the most revered modern Balochi voices, that of Atta Shad. Our pièce de resistance is a translation of Premchand’s Balak or the Child by Anurag Sharma.
This vibrant edition would not have been possible without all the wonderful translators, writers, photographers and artists who trust us with their work. My heartfelt thanks to all of you, especially, Srijani Dutta for her beautiful painting, ‘Hope in Winter’, and Sohana for her amazing artwork. My heartfelt thanks to the team at Borderless Journal, to our loyal readers some of whom have evolved into fabulous contributors. Thank you.
Do write in telling us what you think of the journal. We look forward to feedback from all of you as we head for the completion of our third year this March.
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