Our hotel is near the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, an imposing tribute to Buddhism in China. As our taxi passes by, we see the site’s fifty yard-wide entrance plaza, adorned by a statue of the monk Xuanzang (I learn later), considered to have made the greatest contribution to Buddhism’s expansion from India to China. We notice a collection of tour buses, mainly delivering Chinese tourists; an assortment of post card hawkers; and a handful of kites extending high above the plaza.
“Dad, let’s fly my kite,” pleaded Marshall shortly after we settled in. Several minutes later, father and son walked the long block to the pagoda. “How classic is this, my boy?” I stated as we walked along the noisy street. What more genuine of an activity, I asked him, might we pursue than flying a kite in China? I suppose that blowing up fire crackers or hocking loogies on the sidewalk might also have ranked as “classics” by Marshall, but, for the moment, flying a kite had captured his interest the most.
We needed some elbow-room to assemble Marshall’s jumbo dragon kite that he had purchased in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The plaza’s southwest corner had the fewest bodies and made for an out-of-the-way staging ground. We knelt on the plaza tiles and laid out the kite’s nylon, poles, and connectors.
The kite seemed simple enough, yet we began to question whether we were assembling it correctly. Over the course of five quick minutes of our fiddling, we became completely encircled by thirty curious Chinese. “Marsh,” I croaked without looking up, “we’ve got company.” Two Caucasians in Xi’an don’t blend in as well as they might hope.
Try as we did, the kite lacked that sense of harmony and natural order I would have hoped our spiritual surroundings to have bestowed upon it. Connectors were too loose, the support rods weren’t sized properly for their sleeves, and poor stitching threatened the kite’s overall integrity.
But, we persisted. We took turns working on the various components. We whispered criticisms of each other’s approaches. We cooperated. We argued tactics. We quietly groaned.
Nervously smiling, and avoiding eye contact with as much of our ring of observers as I could, I searched for a sympathetic assistant. Twice I solicited help: finger point at solo guy; finger point at kite; finger point at guy again. Their cold expressions mirrored that of the sculpted monk looming over us. I concluded that no one wanted to share in our loss of face; it was ours to keep.
The awkwardness of the situation weighed on me. While I can be gregarious at times, I do embarrass easily, particularly in front of strangers. But Marshall wasn’t going to give up, and I had to join in his persistence. Despite this anxiety, my thoughts quickly turned to my pride in Marshall. I knew that he wanted to fly his new kite. I knew that he wanted to show our audience that we were worth a shit. And I also knew that he was realizing as quickly as I was that we were in real trouble. Yet he persisted, in a proud, deliberate way. He was the high school basketball captain determined to give it his all in front of a packed auditorium despite being out-gunned by a bigger team.
We continued with our attempted assembly, periodically looking at the growing crowd out of the corner of our eyes. “Marsh, this isn’t going to happen,” I dejectedly pronounced. It wasn’t to be, and Marshall knew it as well as I did. He solemnly concurred, “Yeah, let’s head back.”
We rolled up the pieces and put them in their cheap plastic case. The crowd slowly disbursed. Surely there’s something better to watch than this, they must have collectively thought. And off they went to snap photos of the temple and eat sweet popcorn.
In September, Marshall and I had learned the “Walk of Shame” on the beaches of Maui, the carrying of a windsurfing board up the beach because of an inability to navigate upwind. This day we did “the Walk” Xi’an style. It was a sweeter dejection, though. The kind where one realizes that a defeat can at times bring more than can a victory. It’s all a matter of what one’s measuring. Today was the day that Marshall’s poise came through. He was comfortable with himself, and he was determined. I was proud of Marshall. And he knows that, because I told him so.
