Changzhou Mantra

8/12/2019 Changzhou Mantra

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A Travelogue

MuhammadJahangir [email protected]

Photo:Courtesy Mr. Revantino with many, many, and many thanks too, a sweet man with an impressive personality.

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The Tiannig Temple is a pennant of magnificence. Outside the Buddha dormitory, there were beautifulpendulous trees down which were the pendants of gently waving pulpits scribed in traditional Chineselanguage held by the red color strips of cloth. The beautiful magenta, oatmeal and lavender leaves were blownat gentle pace by the cashmere evening breeze, and as the sun was sinking in the west, it was becoming all tooromantically bemusing in the temple. There was an invisible sense of contentment prevailing and whirling upin the temple premises. The whole temple seemed to dance around the curly whirls of the same. There was asoft dulcet message whispering in the ears that the walk had come to an end and then the both of us had toseparate. There was no gloom, but joy. The sun was going down as we came out of the Tiannig Temple of

Changzhou China. The Man is the most beautiful creature of the multiverse.

The flight from Islamabad was smooth though delayed by a day perhaps due to bad weather over the northernheights, as it was reported and how much credible was the report, was best known to the reporters. The ChinaSouthern Airline flew us over the Hindukush and reached us Urumqi International Airport in a matter of threehours. It was an audacious and pleasant flight. Ops! Chill fried there! Urumqi was freezing in cold, but youwould not feel cold unless you would step outside the airport as the airport was centrally heated and was warmenough that you could go in knickers or half sleeves, no problem. Urumqi airport was a master piece ofmodern day engineering. It was Olympian in size, and an international alacrity. Before reaching Urumqi, mycrude idea about Urumqi was that it might have been a bantam town with little population and less aerialtraffic. Blimey! It was the other way round. To my chagrin, the airport went on unfinishing. The airport wasdecorated with Chinese letters-or rather, characters all around. The ticket counter, the shopping outlets, the

waiting area and the coffee shops were the places of attraction. Well the prices were phenomenally higher andmore different than the actual market prices, but this went for the entire international and at places evendomestic airports. Being a junction airport, the passengers had to take connecting flights, and they had to dishup for many hours. The seating arrangement therefore should have been good and ample. But strangely theseating arrangement or seating capacity was very poor at Urumqi. The people were strolling with their

baggage in the carts and pulling off wandering. Some were even asleep on their carts while had kept theluggage on the floor as they had Hobsons choice. They could not have any seats . Others were killing time bydrinking the hot green water or call it green tea, whatever, that they carried in their flasks. There were fewerchairs and those who had occupied them were blustering with their occupations of spoils, and seemed theywere never going to vacate those chairs; so, none was supposed to grind the feeling that they would occupythose seats once vacated. How come this could have happened remained a mystery for us and we could notfigure out how and why the seating arrangement for the passengers had not been made.

I and my dear tall friend Shakeel wandered here and there firstly blown out of water by the beauty and size ofthe airport and when the toxic effect diluted a bit, we found that we had walked a lot and we felt drying pain inour legs. In fact, we were ladling by design as our next flight was still four hours away. He was wise enough tosuggest going a coffee shop and resting a while. We had a coffee there. I had another coffee there. I was goingfor yet another coffee but was wisely stopped by my friend in face of th e coffeeseconomic aftermaths. Thecoffee was very good and the shop was managed by a little pretty typical Chinese girl with a young boy. We

paid the bill, tipped them off as our flight to Beijing was ready.

Oh lest I forgot it, it was necessary to be recorded. It was true at least as I saw it and I might be wrong. My tallskinny friend Mr. Shakeel was afraid of aerial journeys as I noted. He was sitting beside me and much beforethe plane could have been set to take off, he buzzed to me, my seat belt is not working. The buckle does notget fixed in. I got the idea and decided to fry it. I asked him, yar wait, there is still much time left to fly. He

passed me disgust. After some time when his uneasiness hyped, I helped him get his seat belt fastened. Well,now was the take off. I instructed him that when the plane was taking off, he should not look around andespecially at the windows. He listened to my advice very attentively! The plane somehow took off. I began totell him that the plane flew faster than the speed of sound then I told him the speed of sound. Having gatheredthe information and having applied it on an unseen calculator, as we were flying over the Hindukush snowcapped mountains; I sold him an ominous and very importunate idea when the plane produced some unusualsound. He was worried and I got the time perfect to hammer him. I told him look down. He did it. Then I toldhim, if the plane tumbles down, there are life saving jackets beneath the seat, do not forget these but we maynot get enough time to get them on as these are just for the plane crew. We just have to fall down in a free-sate. Well, down there are rocks and the chances of providence saving us are also zero to nothing! He got


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choleric and gave me a tempestuous look and after a while tweaking his eyes and flipping his twinkling facesaid, please yar do not speak like that. I repeated the same discourse when we reached the part of flying overthe Gobi. He gave the same remarks and looks. Another peculiar yet strange thing was his style of sleeping. Aswe flew from Urumqi to Beijing, it was almost mid night and having started our journey at eleven in themorning, we were so tired that we just needed a bed to stretch out on. In the airplane after having had the socalled completely Chinese dinner, and when the lights were turned off and Chipmunks animated movie was

being played, he informed me that he was going to sleep. I bade him good night. After some time when Ilooked at him, I found him in a very strange posture. He was six feet and an inch, this must not be forgotten.

He had stuffed and stocked together his hands between his knees and his knees he had bent full up and hishead with his long neck was hanging down in his lap. It was too eerie a posture. I rejoiced and slept over theidea as the plane went rushing to the Beijing International Airport scissoring through the winds.

Beijing was different. It was bolstering with all the international pre requisites and innings. It was also beyondan end-line in size, beauty and rush. It was bustling with people running here and there, some waiting downthe counters, others taking long yawns. In fact, the crowds had left such stressing imprints on us in Pakistanthat when we saw the crowd, we first thought we had to miss our flight. But, well, it was a calculated crowd, adisciplined and a behaved crowd. We went through smoothly by the custom lines. They looked at our

passports complementing us with their words Ni hau, and stamped them and handed us back smiling, shehsheh.Right there, came to us a redolent of a wraith encounter! Hmmmpausemany would have gotten theidea from the pause what I should betalking about. Well, less said when all understood.

of a globe sans frontier can be observed and felt. It is on airports that we experience the true worth of humanrelations. It is here where we find to see how political, social, religious and economic interests have divided usall.

Oh I missed Beijing due to my lanky young friend,Shakeel! We were to be there just for the night and thenight was so cold that we could not come out. Wecould have come out had we stayed in the city, but wewere in the official executive residence of theMinistry of Commerce China. And we could havecome out had Shakeel not delimited my courage. Itried to convince my friend to go out and see the greatwall but he first insisted saying it was very cold butlater on agreed. We talked to our guide who promisedto send someone in the morning to show us the Wall.Well, that morning never came! My friend was

pampering with joy and jumping off it that we hadmissed to see the Wall. Actually he was so cautious toget to Changzhou. He was afraid to have been left inBeijing had the weather turned bad. I missed Beijing,the Wall and the Forbidden City. He was over joyoussitting beside me in the Air China Boeing as we flewto Changzhou and now he was contended that yes wewere to reach Changzhou at last.

Airports have always been so quixotic places. You find people fromaround the world travelling outside sound barriers and waiting fortheir journeys to begin. There is an invisible sense of attraction in

being among the passengers. Being a traveler is an attribute theyshare, and sharing this they forget who they are, what their cultureis, what language they speak and which religion they profess. It ison the airports that the concept


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I may see the city under the glistering face of the sunpiercing through the eastern skies as I would wake up, Ithought. Tut tut There was smog floating above the beautiful city of Changzhou as usual, beauty -stigmatic.It was 0930 am when we had taken breakfast and the city of Changzhou was all-come alive. Traffic wasscampering on the road, all shops and markets teeming with people, and a hasty yet controlled hustle bustle. Iand my friend decided to go out for loitering in the city as it was the rest day, half of course, and we had toreturn for the lecture and more importantly for the lunch before 1300 hours. The city was magnificent.Spacious shopping malls, amazing structures of modern day engineering, the sub ways, the electric trainrunning overhead, the beauty and the cleanliness of the city was worth all appreciation. We walked for three

hours in the magnificent city of Changzhou in Jiangsu province. The first two hours we walked enjoying, butthe next one hour we locomoted searching for our lost Jinling Mingdu Hotel. The only thing we couldremember was the decent romantic-walk that we took by the silent river in Changzhou city. We tried toreclaim our hotel by strolling-decoding beside the river but we failed. I was happy to be lost as I was onweight reduction program, but the fellow who weighed 54 and was 6 feet and an inch seemed almostdehydrated. He was feeling depressed and was complaining indirectly that it was due to me that we were lost.Well, I just followed him silently as he gave an inadvertent inkling of chop-chop and I could easily see that hewas wearing a frown all over him. We were making hurry to find the hotel because if we could not reach thehotel by 1300 we would miss our lunch of which we had no intention at all due to two reasons First, we werehungry, and second, it was for-free as we were on training arranged and funded by the Ministry of CommercePeoples Republic of China. The Chinese had disciplined themselves by applying themselves the laws and ruleswhich were the regulators of behavior and attitude. All the billboards, the directional boards and the boards

which might have assisted us finding our hotel amid the sky scrapers were un-understandable because theywere written in Chinese. We asked a taxi driver to take us to our lost-destination but none would come becauseit was going to be the lunch time!Shakeel being an underweight guy was feeling tired and fatigued. As wewere walking on the pavement, he all of a sudden went inside a bank and the guard was looking at him withsuspicion. He scurried in to the bank like shrugging through the line, and found a guy sitting in the front desk.He first looked at him, twitched his eyebrows giving an impression as if he had lost something or had been at amistake and then looked around. I was very afraid because if it were somewhere else, the next thing couldhave been the collar and the gun. Well, he rushed towards a lady in the corner and started asking in the purePakistani tonic-English, Can you please tell me where Jingling Mingdu Hotel is? my tall, lanky andscrawnyfriend asked a banker. No English, no English was the reply. We somehow found the hotel in the next thirtyminutes at our own risk.

Changzhou has attained the extreme development at the cost of extreme environment. The Changzhou peoplehaving had all the desired and much craved for development they wished, had lost the sight of seeing the bluesky. The sky of Changzhou was always enveloped in smog. The Changzhou people now implored for the rainor strong winds so that they might find to see a glimpse of the sun with the blue sky. Sometimes we had to losesomething to have something. The Changzhou people had the development but they had lost the sight of the

blue sky. If Changzhou Development Model was taken as sample, Peoples Republic of China had a lot to do toprotect environment while keeping pace with the development. The Environment-Development equationneeded drastic balance to avoid polarization to any end. The people of China could not be ready for adevelopment bargain which would eclipse their shiny sun and would fade away their blue sky. Developmentis the contradiction of environment, remarked Mr. Robin Wei, Senior Economist and an ex-CIQ officerduring a lecture at Changzhou after having had a few sneezes. In his seventies, Mr. Robin had seen much ofthe China changing episode. He was impressed by the rapid success they had achieved but his tiltation wasmore humanistic, too.

The real beauty of Changzhou could only be measured once it was under the sun. The rains of Changzhouwere very romantic and poetical. Mind you, you would be left so lonely if you were not accompanied bysomeone you liked that you be would become either a rainy poet or a full scale idiot. As it once rained forthree consecutive nights, I experienced an utmost quantum of loneliness and yet it was so rejoicing that Iwished I could be descriptive enough to put that in words. To save myself from falling and becoming a fullscale idiot, I had an inspiration on the sixteenth floor and that came out to be the catharsis in homage to theexotic rain of Changzhou.

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Its all wet again

Its all wet again

Its rain, rain, rainDown the trees the drops dribble,

On the windows they bubble.Lo the cars on road slobber,

Like a tortoise does slabber.

Heart is pumping love again,Like sweet love does retain.

The clouds have come down the sky,

The weather toasted chill to fry.

My Umbrella, I had I forgot in my room,

Now am thickly wet, but without a gloom.The Fragrance of the wet soil

In my brains do make a coil.Its all so romantic down the town,

Gains washed interests all blown.

Its all human, and without a fare,Lesson us to do well and be fair.

Its all wet againIts rain, rain, rain

Chinese were still very original people intimately connected to their roots like many Asian countries do. Theywere loyal to their thoughts, to their apprehensions, to their culture, to their language and most importantly towhat their forefathers had done, said and left for them. Their exterior might very much seem to have beenwesternized, but from the inner sides they were still very much Chinese. They had faltered not an inch by thedictates and actions of the past which had decided their present destiny. You would see that on the airportsthat it was harder to find coca cola or Pepsi than finding water on the Saharan sands. Very difficult! Yes, youmight have green tea, boiled rice, noodles with chopsticks, salads and spices, burgers and etc. but all the foodthat you would find would be Chinese to the core and to the taste. From making to packing and packing toeating was all Chinese. But let me tell, their dishes were quite tasty provided that first one comprehendedtheir dishes! It was observed that for the whole past many decades, their economic closure and isolation fromthe world had affected their social lives too. They were really startled to look at the foreigners. Some of them

who knew little English would rush forth and try to speak and shake hands. This was very peculiar in the thirdworld countries but China which was becoming the global power and was an economic giant also presentedthis social outlook to a great extent. This meant that the link between the economics and Sociology was deepand meaningful and Changzhou which was compatible in its beauty, advancement and infrastructure with anyEuropean city lacked the attributes of foreign intervention and intermingling. China needed as much of thesocial opening as much as the economic one, I thought sitting in my room resting on couch having beenexhausted.

A motorbike or call it a scooty slouched just off an inch edging me. I was startled. I have never had such ataciturn encounter with a bike not at least from the country where I belong, Pakistan, where the louder the

Changzhou day time under blue sky. Changzhou similar time under smog. Changzhou in Rain


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Chinese and never calculate their age by their appearances. They never get old. He was seen as hiding behindthe formidable shield that Ashley was. She could be imagined as a Lady-warrior from the Chinese tales ofancient literature and riding on a white Horse with her hair blowing in the air and the shine of the swordstriking on the beholders riding to save the minor prince from the savage warriors of the North before theGreat Wall had been constructed. When questions would be asked Ashley would inject him with confidenceand he would reply. Alisha and Sara were innocent and very cooperative. But this never meant that Ashleywas not but the commanding take that Ashley took was different. Sara was poetic or at least had a poetic

person in balance. Looking at her was always like reading Keats or Wordsworth flowing soft and musical. One

day while performing the tasks of interpretation, as she began she went well but after elapsed three hours, shecould be seen wearing an about to weep posture on her face. She seemed dehydrated as her health was just asShakeels.She was a very positive, cooperative and innocent person and all these qualities were quite visibleat her face. She had a nice and kind personality. She was very caring always asking and solving all the

problems of the participants. She was never in a mode of self praise or playing such hidden or bypassingtricks. She was an open book that you could read all in a sitting. And she was kind hearted person. She wouldhave a wonderful and excellent life as the attributes and characteristics that she combined in herself were suchthat could never bring her failure. Actually their task of interpretation was so challenging that it was always anaberration springing activity. Firstly, they had to comprehend the variety of strange English language neverheard before spoken by the participants. After attempting to comprehend what the participants meant, the samewas to be transliterated into another version of Chinese and then the answers would be re translated intoEnglish and such cumbersome was the process. The communication gap was wide and it was the flaw of the

selection procedure by the training selection authorities who should have maintained a certain level of workingEnglish efficiency.

Asking questions from the resource person was also one of the most comely fractions of the sessions. Somewould ask questions for the real objective sake and others would ask because they had to! A self imposeddebenture. A guy from Namibia, who later on became the question-man, though he seemed more like aquestion mark, one day asked when the lecture was about the way the Chinese government grantedaccreditation or permissive certificates to the production and producers, and the untimely question that camewas quote-to-quote, Sir, Can you telled me what good quality items found in China markets by energy

information label giving? the question was pragmatic and figurative. It was a sea of multiple questions thathad variegated interpretations, and sundry explanations. The resource person was to be transliterated thisquestion and then relayed. The interpreter first tried for ten minutes to decipher the question as it was notcomprehensible in the strange English that it was spelled out in. it seemed like a coded message from the ColdWar times. Well, having the question been translated the question did not die down. That day the Namibianguy went on explaining the same question which was truly replied again and again. Oh heavens, God knowswhat he meant and what in reality he was asking! There was another very nice Egyptian guy. He would ask thequestion for the sake of obligation. The question would not be heard by anyone because it was never aquestion in its compact form. Like the resource person would be lecturing on the airport clearance and theEgyptian guy would step in saying yeah, yeah the same. The resource person would re-iterate, yeah, the

Alisha was modern day rip-rap person and was cooperativeenough. She was haughty a bit as she would see you verywell but would behave as if had not seen you and would pass

by you fast and gave no chance to saying, ni hau. She waswearing a mask on her face and a cloak on her personality.The mask hid her true personality whereas she had a verygood and positive personality. Masks never could assistanyone go a long way. Well, ladies are ladies at last, the mostcomplicated creatures on earth to understand. Those whoeven attempt to understand them become like Mr. Chiawhose description shall ahead be rampant. The team wasvery nice and it assisted all the participants a great deal. Theywere very good at what they were to perform.

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same, very good. The Egyptian guy would look secretly behindand sneaking through the corners of his eyesto see whether all the heads were pointing at him or otherwise. Such was his joy and he rejoiced it a lot. Otherswould ask questions the answers of which would already be given. The question answer session was alwaysfilled with joy. For the trainers, it was the most important part through which they could assess the flow of thecandidates whether flowing in the right direction or otherwise and also assessing the success of the smoothlecture. The observations could have also helped the organizers to analyze the need assessment and focus theirtrainings in more directed and well calculated postures.

The communication skills of the majority of the resource persons were too weak. There once came anungainly gentleman named Shi Ya Shen along with an external interpreter. As he arrived I sensed there would

be problems because the new interpreters always had problems as they did not have much interaction with usand their interpretations were never too pellucid. So, as the uncouth lecture started off, Mr. Shi took the mikeand straight away went to the white board. He was wearing a pent which did not seem as his or perhaps hemight have been wearing it the time before he had grown in height a bit by inches. Well, as the blanch Mr. Shiwent to the white board, he was confronting Chia. He looked at the Chia and with mike in his hand, he least

bothered to use it for the constructive purpose of being audible, he began to ask Chia questions. Questionswere such that Chea could have never, in his life-replayed, answered as he slept for most of the part of thelectures and further his language machinations were not at home enough. The interpreter was hurtling afterMr. Shi from here and there as he wandered like loitering in the romantic park. Chea was just looking at himobviating all social norms and giving an impression as to do we know one another? Chia looked aside and

gnawed. The interpreter could not translate the matter nor could she know what the pattern for the lecturesused to be in our classes. Well, thanks to Ashley who came from the back benches and convinced Mr. Shi thathe should sit in the chair and began his presentation solemnly. After he began, the interpretation was not as itwas done by the three permanent translators-Ashley, Sara & Alisha-who did far better than was done by thecurrent one. She would speak on things the meaning of which we tried to muster but in vain and we could notas she was speaking abstractions. In the mean while an Egyptian guy started posing questions in his crude andcontinual English. Well, English when spoken in Arabic or French tone would always be something differentthan English. When words failed, and even the interpreter was looking askance at the guy, the Egyptian guywent to the white board and drew a mirage effect lined sketch translating his irreticulate question from wordsto characters. Well, as wisdom stays at dregs, so be it. The trainers needed to be trained first as communicationwas the most effective tool in transmitting the knowledge and sharing experiences and being irksome would beits death. This would not mean the resource persons had to speak fluent English but it did mean that at leasttheir presentations should have looked like presentation like those of Mr. Edward and Mr. Feng which had allthe effective communication layers. They would make eye contact with you; they would not loose you in theway; they would not bore you should the lectures be even drier; they would walk your pace and they wouldkeep up the elements of awe and interest all throughout their presentations. The language capacity would havenothing to do with the communications skills as the facial expressions speak no English, a little smile neededno English, a little intermingling with the listeners needed no English and etc. The speaking of good Englishhad to do nothing with good communication skills. The two are poles apart. There should also be kept a certainlanguage proficiency level for the internee-participants as was seen in the course of the training that manycould not express themselves and thus the whole group got divided into peaceful factions speaking their ownwhich hampered international sort of interaction. This was not meant to be stricture but creative analysis

because there is always room at the top. Next such day of terror was when Mr. Dr. Hu Quan came to lectureus. Firstly he refused to take an interpreter as he considered his quaffing English was communicable enough.Well, the English language proficiency being not the base and never the intention of this discourse and English

language skills all set aside, he started off his lecture with drawing something on the white board and doingsome arithmetic for a while. The next six hours, the white board rallied under the loads of mathematicalcalculations that went on unstopped and unprecedented. He could not maintain eye contact and seemed as if heshied. He looked at the white board with his back towards us and holding the mike in his hand and doingcalculations speaking. After a while when the lecture had begun, there were stretching and yawns in eachchair. Some were playing with the digital tools; some were trying safe positions of hide and seek to sleep andothers looking helplessly at the white board. Chia was emboldened enough to take a nap sitting in the very firstrow just a feet from the white board where Mr. Hu was conducting his statistical surgery. Revantino also sat

just under the nose of the resource person. He used to always sit at the back and there he would take enoughsleep and as the class would halt for a tea break one could easily see the blossoming face of Revantino who


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would have waken up by then. But the management was shrewd enough to have unseated him from there.Now he was the front liner and he was rubbing the wet towel that was kept before him against his face. Inthree hours, he was seen rubbing the towel on full scale on his face and getting relived off sleep. Well, in factthis was the most tiresome day that we relished in the august company of Hu.

Sometimes the resource person would skip the questions the answers of which had a literal impression or

effect on their institute or governmental policies. The Chinese not only respected their organizations but alsodid fear them much or let it be put this way more properly that they first feared the state bodies and buddies inthe then transforming China, but had with the passage of time consequently established an invisible link oflove. They would regard and take quite literally their organizations sayings & doings unlike in our country.They were disciplined and followed the rules be them big or minute. Collectively, one would observe them asvery law abiding and disciplined chunk of global-people. When I asked a Chinese officer from the AQSIQ aquestion that effective August 1, 2013 the PRC had stopped all its activities regarding the exportationinspection, and since it stopped its inspection activities on the WTO notes of free trade and less Humanresource at the AQSIQ, so how would it ensure the quality of products not being compromised by using thesame limited human resource of the AQSIQ and Customs and added whether the scheme was seeing anysuccess. The gentleman smiled, paused for a moment, though a while and said shrugging his shoulders, well,I do not have the answer to that question. They would not cross their line and official limits by an inch even.Since he was the representative of the Government, so he could not be made to speak anything whichamounted as a piece or remark of critique on Government which further showed wide that still there was a lotof centralization in China, be that Politics or other affairs. The Chinese did not worship gods, but rather theyworshiped their State and they were justified to do that for the givings to them so many by the state. Thereseemed to be floating around a virtual and perpetual state of surveillance.

The Conference Halls were altissimo places worth seeing. The conference halls were presumptuous and highlypurple with decorative index. Mighty pillars raising high the building with an extraordinary front, the center,and the outer-space. The chairs were arranged in red color cloths. The color red was the most visible anddominant color around. The hall was well carpeted. The tables were kept for the participants and they werearranged from front to back. It seemed like a red- class. Well, carried away by the thoughts of the long Gone

by and shut down past, I began to recall the rhapsodic conferences of the ex- Communist Power USSRwhich arranged such meetings where the Comrades were given instructions under the communist

temperatures and colors. aye aye Comrades was still evocative in the mighty hall. The hall we were sitting inwas just or at least appeared so to be the continuation of the same picture quintessentially.It was as refreshingfor such little socialists brains as mine. The idea of communism was still resonant there and the Chinese hadnot let it die down. It was like a sonorous opera ending at the apex of tranquility. Mr. Chia was also takenaback by the beauty of the conference hall. He was sitting with me and Revantino came along. He looked inhis typical jolly style at Mr. Chia and murmured with himself. Mr. Chia thought it better let go and he did.Revantino next smiled a bit. This was unacceptable. Revantino was in hot waters now. Chia asked him whatthe matter was. Revantino said, do you have comb or not? In Indonesia the person who does not comb his hairor does not have a nice hairstyle, he is not considered as smart or gentle or handsome no matter what ever

Mr. Dong, The Best.


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costly things he may put on his body, and taking a puff of his cigarette further said, go and buy a comb an dcomb your hair. And please tell me what hair style

The Tiannig temple was an epitome of Buddha the great. The Tiannig Temple or pagoda is a super structure ofart, creativity and modern day engineering techniques. The wooden pagoda and the Buddhasfrom Korea andother Buddhasare gigantic and designed with most crystalline sophistication. The wooden Buddha which isthe biggest wooden Buddha worldwide also is the focus of attention for the visitors located on the Heping

Road. The temple is located beside a spacious park which has a beautiful artificial lake with boating availablein it. The pagoda rose to a height of 505 feet which made it the tallest pagoda in the world. It cost more than38 million USD for its construction to be completed. The entrance fee was 80 Yuan per ten people as we wentin group.

It was late afternoon then when we got to the pagoda so there was rush and people were visiting the sight ofhistory and religious center for the Buddhists. The atmosphere as usual was smoggy. We missed the crimsonand burgundy sun.The 13 stories building is a sky scrapper in the vicinity. It is well lifted up. There werelifters up to the 12th floor so to get to the top; therefore, to get to the floor numbering thirteenth one wasrequired to make a little trout walk if one was not bulky enough, and here was where the lankiness won overthe bulkies. The stairways were very narrow but then they could not be wider enough as they were to becompatible to the overall structure of the temple.

My Indonesian ebullientfriend Revantino was as usual very dulcet and with his professional camera we werecatching snaps. He would sit with the statues and make poses which might have been otherwise not

permissible had he been caught by the monks. Well, alive as he was, he was enrapturing in his full rhythm.Yeah, Mr. Chia was wandering with his maladroit steps careening here and there looking outside hisspectacles and speaking a language which was the strange blend of Cambodian and English. Some of it wasthe English and the remaining the Cambodian, so he was incomprehensible, even for the chief interpreterAshley! Whenever he would ask a question, the replier would wince and Mr. Chia could accept any answer

provided that it was in English! He said that evening as we walked through the silent Buddhas that he couldnot cross the road as there was a lot of traffic and further narrated that back in his Cambodia there was verylittle traffic on the roads. Very few cars could be seen but even then there were a lot many accidents! Our

Mr. Chia Savron to the right

your hairs fall in?Chia who was moments ago sailing in theromantic cruise of socialism with me, was now drowning in thedeep dark waters of Pacific. He looked around and said nothing.Mr. Chia had a very strange hair style. He was 45% bald fromthe front terrain. The upper terrain had some bushes which

would always be seen standing tight and erected in the air. Thelower terrain would again go as under as till where ears ended.This was a kind of a style which could not be clubbed into anyof the hairstyles. Well, it was called the Chia-Style! Chia couldnot wait longer as he was so eager to see the Tiannig Temple.He was buddhatist by religion.


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guide Ms. Sara gave a flicking smile and innocently asked, if there are so few cars, how come the accidentsTake place? Mr. Chia gave a look of grimace and looked away in the direction that no one was looking at! We thought we had to take care of him and I held him by hand and helped him cross the road. He never usedto go out of the hotel. The farthest he ever went alone was the front of the hotel where he used to enjoysmoking his cigarette in open air and come back, thanking God that he was back safe! And there was but thelast, our Nigerian friend. He lay in front of one statue and took snap. He sat in the Buddha mediation style infront of the Buddha Lion and took another snap. That day he took so many pictures that all of us collected didnot, and could not take. He was photogenic or not, but it was commonly agreed upon that he was at least

anatomically graphic.Whatever, he was a jolly young man. But yeah of all the pictures we took that day, wemissed one thing and one sight terribly. We missed the Monks whom we saw dressed in their typical attiresexpressing spiritual felicity, idyllic humility, incorporeal peace, lilt simplicity and myriad love. But we justmissed them.

The Tiannig temple seemed to be little maintained which was very strange given the meticulous sense ofcleanliness of the Chinese. You would never see any garbage on the footpath, in the market places oranywhere in Changzhou though Nanjing was somewhat different. The management of the pagoda premiseswas very strange to be noted for its incompatible cleanliness management with that of the city. As we wereentering, there was dust and swarf collected and sprinkled all around. The walls at the entrance were erodedoff paint which seemed to have been painted quite some time ago. The statues in front the tallest Tiannig

pagoda were not well taken care of. This was painful as the pagoda was the treasure in the world heritage and

it deserved treatment at par with its status which was not seen there. Well, it was a fine visit to the temple andthe interpretation of the pretty guide, Ms. Sara Yu helped a lot otherwise it was again, All Made in China!Sometimes I thought, with excuse and no religious prejudice, that perhaps the Buddhas also spoke fluentChinese and may be they did, who knows. History is just a chest of interpretive debatable secrets!

The socks of Mr. Chia were also as interesting and as unusual as his person. He used to wear very small sockswhich would just cover as long as till toe. The Union Jack printed on the socks was visible which was situatedon his toe. He used to keep the right leg on the left and rub his lower feet. The sock was an open secret! Theinterpreters used to face great difficulty in translating the variety of English which was spoken in thatclassroom. They had to do a dual job. First one was to correct the English already spoken and the second wasto convert it into Chinese. Very commendable.

Sharing another secret would be proper at this juncture. One of the biggest factors of strength of the Chineseeconomy from the eras of reformation to the so called opening up to the world had been the domestic

production and its maxima domestic utilization. Everything was produced in China except human beingsverywisely remarked by Mr. Shakeel. They produce domestic and this was circulated in all over the China. This

being the domestic edge, they had also controlled the biggest world markets. But there still persisted a threat tothe economic sustainability and continuity, and perhaps due to the same phobia, China was not completelyopening up to the world. In China, there were two economic and social classes only: the rich and the poor. Themiddle class which decided the destiny of the state had not been produced. Pondering back a bit in sandytimes, it would be learnt that it had always been the middle class from where the ideas, thoughts, theories andcriticism were filtered out. The middle class always generated a bridge between the success and sustainabilityequation. Now, should the multinationals step in mushroom, there would be to the threats to the Chineseuntested machinations as these international entrepreneurs would capture both the groups: the rich in a way offriendship as they would like to prefer buying the international brands such as Levis (as the common and

basic richness characteristic) than locals and the poor in the way of exploitation which had been the trademarkof the multinationals. This fear still lingered on in the Chinese plants of decision making and policy sizing.Another factor would be whether the domestic products of China would be able to compete to that of themultinationals or other global bodies-corporate, a big question mark. The domestic skills or ways and meansof production which had sustained the Chinese economic growth would then be questioned and perhapsdoubted as whether the same would be able to stand the test of international economic games. Much in Chinathat had been done till now had been state run and state owned. The state factor might be a success but limitedonly to closed economies where economic planning and management felt not challenged by such groups and

parties which had their own interests. Similarly, the traders, the trade and the producers in China had alwaysbeen pampered, directed and guided by the state rather than their intellect, confidence and self


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entrepreneurship. They had been treated and guided by the state like did a Madam in a school classroom orlike the interpreter Ms. Ashley did with/to us! The question then would be whether the business humanity ofChina could employ their genius once the economy was fully opened up? Whether they would be able andhonest enough to produce and maintain the quality of their products as the Government instructions andquarantine under the dragon AQSIQ would no more be effective? Whether they would be able to sustain and

balance the gain and loss equation which hither to now has been unknown? Whether the government would beable to stop the production of quake items like Apple iPhone being sold out for just 150 Yuan in the Nanjingstreets? Whether AQSIQ would still remain to ensure quality or had it been able to ensure quality so far? The

economic opening up of China stood as a challenge at a maze for the Chinese as encountering the globalmoney makers were always a formidable task. It was never easy to control them by strict laws, strictures andregulations as free trade in a free world is above law.

Away from the plethora of economics, Mr. Chia was sitting in front my desk and I asked him about his healthand the night. How much time you slept last night, said he looking through his spectacles? I understood thecrux of the question and replied, last night I slept at 2am. Oh, I sleep 3am. No sleep coming. I tell my eyes,shut, sleep. Not listening to me, said he. I passed a look of common good. His interest further immersedinand turning his neck much around then said, I run, run, run in my room night time. No sleep coming. Now Ihad got the idea of his perpetual absence of mind, insomnia and continuous presence of wander wall effect. A

person who would run in his room at the night trying to catch in sleep was supposed to fall asleep very soon!The same night after dinnerthe Chinese dine after the sun setas I and Shakeel were walking out of hotelfor a gentle digestive toxin walk, we happened to cross by Mr. Chia who was holding an ipad and talking to it.I just called at him, Hey Chia, and he cried out, my wife, my wife, I am talking to my wife . Very strangeman and yet so magnetic and so appealing he was. He was simple, pure and unaffected by the worldly sins,such a contended soul as he was.

It was pretty fine morning. The sky was cleared off all the smog. The bus was packed with the participants andthe lady hawk sat in the front of the bus like the does the captain in a ship. The bus went through the wideavenues of Jingming Road and passed through the beautiful buildings it reached at the JISQ-Jiangsu Inspectionand Quarantine-office building. The JISQ was one of the most powerful departments that had been in tradeand inspection in China since the economic reform and until now. It was like one of those Mighty Dragonsfrom the Chinese folklores keeping watch on each movement of the economic mortals. It was the solecontroller of inspecting the items for production, assessing their quality and certifying the same. The

laboratories were highly equipped. The institute had been responsible for some outsourced tasks too includingthe management of foreign aided programs such as trainings, and other ventures. It was a nineteen storey

building and of all the stories we liked the nineteenth floor the most. It was the rest resort of the JISQ officersand officials.

The posh rest storey had many rest rooms and sports desks. There was a hall which seemed more like a ballroom as the multimedia spread out the front wall and beautiful Chinese music was being played on. Revantinoswitched us from China to USA when he played on the American rocks. Mr. Chia was as usual standing withhis hands in his pants pockets. He was an uneasy creature. Revantino sang some songs with the videos thatwere played. No sooner had we begun enjoying the songs, there came Mr. Sunny of the sunny Nigeria. He

Inspection and Quarantine office Wuxi City


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took charge on the microphone and began to molest music with his thundering warrior like voice. It seemed, ashe sang, as if he was calling on the archers to form in a line and get their bows in position for the strike. Howmuch music was molested and how much trouble our ears had to hear that day could not be put in words. Wewere also taken to the conference room of the building where the JISQ held their meeting and videoconferencing. As Mr. Chia entered the hall he cried out in his shriek-some voice, oh, is it cinema? Everyonelooked at him in a strange way, but Mr. Chia paid very little heed to all such looks. He was an IndependentMan, a king within himself!

The Changzhou museum is also a place of great allurement. It just stands in opposite to the official building ofJISQ-Jiangsu Institute of Inspection & Quarantine. The museum had many sections which presented theChinese and explicitly the history of the Changzhou city. The museum also contained the past, present andfuture sections of the Changzhou city where we were shown and described the future development plan of

Changzhou. It was going to be a world within itself. Changzhou at times appeared as if the whole city hadbeen demolished and was constructed anew. It was so perfect.

The Chia factor was further puffed up by the Namibian guy who once again asked a question and this time itwas completely out of this world. We could here just some strange sounds of alphabets collapsing into oneanother in a clumsy way. My tall friend Mr. Shakeel came to recourse this time as not only the prettyinterpreters but each one of us too could not make anything out of the collapsing alphabets. Shakeel was kindenough to narrate and paraphrase the question and asked, Madam he wants to know what to do if there isnegligence in the wires? whether this negligence was criminal or normal was not defined. A wire andnegligence, in fact the word he was looking for to throw in was Resistance. Well it happens, sometimes weslip our tongues. Like one day the resource person said that after the police caught the defaulters or criminalssuspected in a case, the police kidnapped them where in fact he wanted to say that the police arrested them! However, the word Police and Kidnapping are compatible in Pakistan. Area to area varies the meaning ofwords.

Well, it was the breakfast lobby of Jingling Mingdu International Hotel Heping Road Changzhou again. We

were sitting there having done our breakfast and, some of us were having juices and the others the good-morning cigarettes. Mr. Revantino had caught cold a night ago. He had taken some medicine and was prettycarefree and composed then. Mr. Chia was smoking cigarette standing. He used to do most of things that wesaw standing and his was the rationale that he did not like sitting because it would bulge out the belly and hewas so cautious about his personality. Mr. Chia came with his back lowered a bit and with his thumb, theindex and the middle finger pressed the throat of Mr. Revantino slightly and he did that like a professional

physician. Having done that, he moved back in a backward direction and said, oh, bad. Too bad. Have youcall your home? No, what for, said Revantino and before he could figure in the answer, Mr. Chia said,Oh, it may be cancer. You call your home. Quickly, and hearing this, next was a jocular burst. In themornings usually there are no laughter packages, but wherever Mr. Chia used to be, there was comedy and


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humor, unaffected and unseen before! He was a very humble guy. He said one day that his hotel room was toolarge and he did not need that because back in Cambodia they have very small home and small rooms. Hissmall room and small home is a paradise for him as it had his kids and the wife. This was very scholarly ofhim and he was a man of roots. In his inarticulate and tough to follow talks there was always a sequencehidden which needed to be decoded. Beneath the crazy and miss-jotted words, sometimes used to burst out thereal laughter and the big truth.

Finding a place in Changzhou was a hard nut to crack. It was just as performing a Hercules task. Our two

friends from Pakistan, namely Zafar and Kareem Memon, who were attending another workshop, had been inChangzhou for over a month by the time we arrived. They were very well aware of the Chinese psyche. Theygave us strict and all aloud instructions the very first night as how to make purchases or shopping. They taughtus the golden principles of bargaining. We spent a little time with them but it was so absorbing a time that itseemed we had been together for quite some time. They knew the city well. When we expressed our interest in

buying an iPod, they instructed us to get it from the Computer City which was on Heping Road. Well, theytold us the direction and we decided to get there and make the purchase. They could have accompanied us butthen they were leaving in the early morning for Shanghai and it was therefore not convenient to have askedthem for the same. I was sitting beside Shakeel in the class room. He threw an idea of bunking the class as theshop would close down early and we were to be free in evening and the same was followed by the typical earlyChinese dinner! I convinced Shakeel of not leaving off the class as it was the matter of national respect. I wishour leaders before selling out our national image could think for a while on the same. Shakeel agreed and we

went after the class was dismissed. We walked the direction we were told. And we walked for one completehour without finding any computer city in the Changzhou City. There were directional and sign boards but asusual all of them were written in Chinese. This was very stressing in Changzhou, Urumqi and Beijing as wenoticed. There may be foreign tourists visiting, it would be too difficult for them to get to any place. Not asingle board could be find which might have helped us get to somewhere. What was the factor involved behindit would be again a conspiracy theory to establish negative-conservatism. It was never difficult to attachEnglish words made of simple alphabets to the Chinese boards but it was not done. So before one visits any

part of china, one has to master the Google map of that place.

There were many parks one might visit in Changzhou City. The city had been planned for development inquite a calculated method not doing away with the resorts for public recreation. The park beside the PagodaTemple on Heping Road was one of its kinds. It was spacious and green orchestrated. There was an artificiallake. As I separated from my friends, and a little bit tempted to fall in the habit of loneliness which Isometimes admire more than anything, I caught sight of a white swan. It was a scene that I wish I coulddescribe in words. It was filled with chastity of thought and was indeed, really a thing ofbeauty is a joy forever. A spontaneous overflow came all over which I recollected in tranquility and thus: -

THE WHITE SWAN!Beauty is not reciprocity.

Beauty is not seasonably. But,Beauty is immortal!

Beauty if self existent; Beauty is infinity!Beauty never dies,

Beauty is never forgotten, andBeauty is never forbidden. To fall in love with Beauty,Needs no permissive license, no nays no ayes because,Can someone command the cashmere evening breeze?

Never, any can.Beauty is a moment:

A moment of chastity,A moment of festivity,

A moment of absorption,A moment of inspiration,A moment of infinity, and

A moment of eternity.Beauty is non-corporal,

Beauty is not a touch, but a bliss,Beauty is not physique but a psyche.Beauty is a time machine that can:


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Take you back in time,Relay the played ones,

Transform both time and space,Anytime, anywhere,

Refresh the thoughts and rekindle the temple,Inspire each moment and each moment equates a life.

That which does above,That is Beauty, that is Beauty.

Beauty is immortal!

Before I could travel more in the sweet world, I was held back in the real world by the innocuous voice of Mr.Chia Savron which had its own type of pitch and its own kind of beat. As soon as it fell on my eardrums andwas converted into an understandable message by the nerves, I found Mr. Chia complaining about a diseasethat he had been infected with. Like his queer some personality, his disease was also questionably interesting.He had scrubs on his body. He was always saying he felt itchy and he had the same disease which required alot of rubbing and non among us was ready to perform such task of degradation and moral turpitude! Well,Ashley managed to arrange the Rubbing Tube for the gentleman Mr. Chia, the itchiest. He showed me thetube. On inspection of the tube and the body of the person on which it was to be applied, I was disappointed.The Chia body might not have been lubricated for more than a decade. Such thirsty a body and so full ofscrubs and the little Chinese Tube for itchiness, it was proverbially paradoxical. I surrendered and left Chia tomingle with the tube. Chia was overjoyed not because he had got the medicine for treatment of his problem

but because he had got that free of cost without wasting any of his precious Yuan.

Changzhou traffic was very well managed. It was very huge in size and quite intensive in pressure but the citywas so planned that despite all the rush, it never disturbed one. The roads and the express ways very wide andwell maintained. There was a network of subways, underpasses and flyovers. The white train used to pass eachmorning and I could see it from my hotel room sitting by the glass table with my darling laptop. The trafficwas also decorated by the traffic lights and the pedestrian lights and they were duly followed except for thecyclists who did not abide by the law and the traffic police was never seen to have caught any one of them.This was serious and dangerous given the heavy traffic there were chances of fatal accidents. At night the citywould burst into illumination. The roads and the highways were very much illuminated. The side lights besidethe roads would run all the way along the road which further beatified the city at night. The level at which theenergy or electricity was consumed was indicative of the level at which it was produced. The roads were neverabandoned off traffic scampering and running on the roads. This traffic fear was the reason why Chia always

feared going out.

Chia often used to say that he could not sleep well at night. Sleep came to him but quite in the deep last part ofthe nights. He was talking about this all over again in the coffee lobby encircled by the Pakistanis, Srilankans,an Indonesian, Kenyans, a Namibian and a Nepalese. He said that in the first session of the class lecture, whichused to start at 9am and lasted as long as until 12pm, he used to sleep with his right eye closed. In the sessionafter lunch, he slept with his left eye closed. A Srilankan said if both the eyes had slept already in the day, howcome they could sleep at night with ease! His misfortune was that he used to sit just in front of the resource

person in the very first row where his heartbeat could be heard by the resource person. One day being verytired, he decided to sleep in the class with both eyes shut down. I was sitting right behind him and alwaysnoticing his each movement. He put the palms against his cheeks and the structure was assisted by the ankleswhich held it up. The fingers went over the ears too so that having slept if someone had called out for him; his

sleep was not perturbed as he would not hear anything. He went to sleep. The first slumber jolt came. Hemanaged and survived. The second, more frequent, jerk came and this time the head was lowered a little morethan previous but he survived. He intended that by this pose the resource person would assume that he waslooking at the lecture notes: Self deception is the worst of all kinds of deception. Well, there came the third

jolt, and this time the structure tumbled to the ground. The Chia structure of slumber tossed apart, fragmentedand put into ashes. It knelt over. It collapsed into pieces. However, Chia was all-safe-awake-again.

The express way that took us from Changzhou to Wuxi was seen never anywhere deserted of plants and trees.You would never feel alone even if travelling alone as the greenery would accompany you inch by inch. Wewere not alone and we were more than lucky as we had Chia with his notorious disease with us. Themomentum of development archived would not make you feel as going out of a city or you could not feel as


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entering into another city. The twin cities are so developed that one facsimile fell into the other. The drive inthe bus was almost for an hour. I wished we could wander around in Wuxi, but the Lady hawk was watchingus all never getting loose of sight any one.

Mechanical and Electrical Products Testing Center of the Jiangsu Entry-Exit Inspection and QuarantineBureau-JISQ-Wuxi City is the most sophisticated laboratory center for certification of the products viabilityand quality. This lab is mandated with the responsibility of ensuring that the mechanical and electric productsare duly checked before they are provided as certificates such as CCC-Compulsory China Certificate and CE

and others. The lab gives the glimpse of like a space station where all the equipment and personnel are seen inuniforms and busy in performing strange experiments. Dr. Yu the Director of the Lab gave us the presentationwhich was followed by thorough visit of the lab. The Chinese model of inspection and quarantine is idealwhen taken in the conceptual meanings but there are some questions which have not been answered yet. Is thelab sufficient enough to look into all the electrical and mechanical, produced in Jiangsu because the provinceadds more than half to the national GDP which means its production levels are quite high? This could not beascertained as to whether the lab was performing a satisfactory task or otherwise in terms of how many caseshad been reported to it, how many it discharged and how many it gave passage to. The mechanism has nothingwrong within itself but given the fast expanding size of the economy, are the Chinese government thinking ofsome other faster and more convenient settlement as the present state-of-operation is rife with complicationsand time-consuming. This would stand in contradiction to the ever expanding style of the Chinese economywhere time would matter a lot. With the present status in place, the lab of Wuxi would not do sufficient job

which is putting on a huge bureaucratic size and pressure. This would be more than just admissible that thetask which is being performed by the Wuxi Lab merits all considerations, and is a model of modern daycertification-standards.

Watch Man in Black, MIB-1&2. Watch their final scenes. What would you see? The door is opened into aworld of robotics; robots all around performing task in huge numbers. Such would be the scene when youwould happen to enter in the Little Swan-Midea factory of Washing Machine and other household appliancesin Wuxi City. The factory is a modern day magic and awe for the spectators. The factory has been workingsince 1980s. it has gathered numerous international and national awards and certificates for its quality

products. The Chinese Government due to its repute and recognition has relived it off the inspection andquarantine as the provision of the same is present in the relevant laws. But this immunity reached after the

putting together of struggle for 25 years. The Little Swan factory is the Chinese most valuable goods companytoo. Its household appliances are present all over the global markets. The factory has many units and one unitwould take hours and hours if one would want to visit it thoroughly. A birds eyes view of the factory wouldeven consume two to three hours. The Chinese interpreter was guiding us on the performance and processingof goods at the factory and we were given headphone as there was noise. Mr. Chia came close to me and said,you look American FBI, as I pinned the headset on my coats upper pocket. Well, I looked at him and smiled.MR. Chias knowledge about the female gender was seen unleashing as the number of days for going homewas drawing closer. Having taken the lunch and standing in the open square of the JISQ, Mr. Chia began totell his horrible truth, the China developed. Chinese woman no developed. No beautiful. I no found. No seen.We were shocked as the ladies who passed y us could have heard all that and must have been hurt could theyunderstand English and especially the Chia-type-English. Well, as we looked at one another, Chia said further,they all alike. Looking same. There was a roar of laughter. Chias heart has been aching due to the fac tor thatall the ladies looked alike and thus he was not to see any variations. Actually Chia was counting days at hisfinger tips. He was homesick!

THE CITY AT SLEEPDown on the earthen couch

Lies the beauty of east,In slumber so sweet,

In innocence of beats.The silk is shaken on her face,

The hair blown in midst of grace,So terrific an attire,So sweet a satire!

Rising like the neck of perfection,There is so much of the affection,

A little smile at a little pace,


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Where is my time, where is my space?Some call her illusion,

A matter purely delusion,But she is so well sedate,

Yeah true, she is but a maze.And beauty sleeps on the couch so soft,The air, the sky and the space around,All still, all void of motion, thus halt,Is she real or just mine a mental fault?

Chia was a man who could not be controlled by the use of words. Expressions control was useless as whenwords could not work, how come the expressions could. His was a discreet personality which would

sometimes precipitate and other times sublimate and at times crystallize. He had a chemistry of his own. Well,we had no option but to run for recourse to Digits which have been always powerful, more powerful thanwords. Indeed digits existed when words were not born even. So taking Chia to mathematics was a good idea.The variations found in his personality when gauged in the simplest arithmetic terms came out to make suchcombinations:-

Ch=S/InAc+ {(C-So) + (Wn+Ab)2}

Where;1. Ch definite stands for Mr. Chia,2. S stands for seriousness in thought,3. InAc stands for innocence in action,4. C stands for care freeness,5. So stands for sobriety,6. Wn stands for wander wall effect, and7. Ab stands for above average Normalcy.8.

The equation was named as Chia equation of Personality Discontinuity. We cou ld never get the guts to fill inthe numbers and further end the mathematics. It fell beyond our sphere of power. It was impossible then as itis impossible now. Actually the above equation could not be done mathematics with also due to the fact thatwe never got to know which of the above symbols were to be how many numbered? It might have been theshort time we had with Mr. Chia. He was a person with such a versatile personality dimensions thatcomprehending him in totality was a hard nut to crack especially when your teeth were your own!

Being international citizens requires its own norms, conditions and pre requisites. In fact to be an internationalcitizen in this globalised world needs some pains and some sacrifices. If one remains within the whims anddesigns of ones own much owned world, he cannot be said to qualify for being an international citizen. The

world has shrunken into a household where interactions are so rapid and so frequent that it is all the same ifbeing in your country this night and tomorrow staying elsewhere. The broad mindedness is one of the basicand fundemtal features of being an internationalist. For instance you are visiting the Pagoda in Changzhou andas you are standing by the great bell in its head tower, and your soft phone begins to play Azaan and you allowit to be played, this would be embarrassing. Actually the matter is not objectionable but it has its ownimpressions and impressions are stronger than realities. Playing Azaan in the Pagoda full of Buddha statueswould give a very awkward state and a mirage impression. The problem with us all is that we do not walk the

pace of time. What we need to do at some point of time we do not do it, and at other improper times, we do itvehemently which is not only wrong but by all means unjustifiable. Respect is always two way traffic, andthanks to Shakeel who agreed with at least one of my proposals. I recalled the tale of Hazrat Omar RA whowhen entered Palestine as a conqueror and it was the time of prayer so he decided to go for it and began

Wuxi City Lab & Little Swan Factory Wuxi City Jiangsu Province


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coming out of the Church. The clergy threw an ironic proposal that since the Muslims believed each land ifclean was okay for prayer so why Omar RA was going out. And the great caliph of Allah replied, if I offeredprayer today in your Church, my followers tomorrow would convert this Church into a Masjid and your Church wouldbe a tale of antiquity and I verily do not want that to happen.

As said earlier, our friends Memon and Zafar were masters with the Chinese then. They had been in the cityfor longer than a month and they were quite good at ditching the Chinese bargainers. We had a venture withthem as one day they threw an idea of visiting a mall. We were in the Creefree Mall on Heping road. It was a

two storey mall and had all the necessities of life from edibles to garments and from toys to crockery. We wereblessed to have the company of Zafar and Memon. As we were making purchases in the mall and checking forthings, Zafar did one drawing there with a saleswoman. Zafar made her a painting. The drawing was such thatI wished I could have had reasonable aesthetic number of words to describe it. It was more elevated than MonaLisa and was drawn on such a fabric or canvass that even Picasso would fail to do. It was a drawing showingthe utmost natural needs of a man. A man when pushed to the very ultimate end of survival generated suchimpressions. There were no colors used in the painting yet it was so absorbing that the watcher would paint itwith his colors and it was therefore too colorful. It was an open drawing which needed no explanations

because it reflected the human need and the need was shared by the entire human all alike. The painting wasabove all sketch rules of design, lines and space. It could go out of the frame and yet it could be wellunderstood. Another most critical point of centerpiece interest in the painting was that it was drawn within avery short period of time and just as it was drawn it was displayed for public eyes. The saleswoman had never

seen such a painting before. She ran before us and was showing the painting to other girls and guys in the mall.Actually, Memon sahib was the cause and reason of this painting as it was drawn by an impression that wasgathered from him but once drawn it became to represent each one of the six billion people of the world. Atthat evening we discovered how great an asset in form of Zafar we had. Other than that, the language of lineswas also discovered. Painting is the language which is commonly spoken and understood by the six billion

people of the world and by that qualification it is the largest language spoken in the entire history of mankind.We really appreciated the rich painting talents that Zafar mastered all the way from the mall to the hotel wherewe separated and went to our rooms. The night went toxic under the loads of his sketch-art.

Chinese were very mountebank business men. They were profit oriented. Of the loss, they had never imaginedand could never bear and this fell to stand as the flaw as it reduced their entrepreneurship spirit and also setaside the sense for competitiveness. Much pampered, controlled, dictated and guided by the Government in allthroughout the reformative economic era, never cognizant of the loss they were. Dealing with them would be

just as dealing with the traditional and tricky Pathan business man. We found the reason as to why the Pathanswere such formidable business men and the reason discovered was that they were having the imprints of theChinese. Much affected by them, the relation had been fortified by other allied agents such as wisdom,

prudence and above all profit! To quote just an incident, there was a computer shop that we visited one day asShakeel was interested in buying a laptop. We, just for the sake of convenience, noted the price of a laptop thatwas Dell Corei3. We went there again to revisit the shop on December 15, 2013. It was all different. It would

be in notice of many who might have happened to visit England or any European country and the USA that asand when the Christmas arrived, the prices of the things would begin to reduce. The prices of the things would

be lowered to as much as 90% of the original prices on different commodities in the last week before theChristmas. It was usually called the Christmas austerity. The Chinese had also decorated their shops with allthe sales women and men wearing the Santa Claus dress. I was happy as I thought it was hot time to shop butall the hopes were washed away by the economic steel wits of the Chinese. The laptop that we had checked on

the other day cost and labeled as Yuan 3200, and as we checked it the next time, the Christmas proximity timezone, it was raised up to Yuan 3999. Very clever! But was it clever enough to satisfy the inquisitive brainssuch as ours or of other foreigners? No, it failed to get that end. And cleverer was their label which they hadthen, from nowhere, pasted at the very top of the laptop readable clearly as 20% OFF. It was too clever but itwas not digestible. Christmas was celebrated in the west the same way as in China but in the west the priceswould lower down and in China they skyrocketed! Much expensive a Christmas shopping it were, we droppedthe idea of buying the laptop as we thought it would be better to buy the same once the Christmas was over!

The Chea equation of personality discontinuity was fully operational as days went by and as we stepped closerto the closure. Sometimes he would talk childish and at times he would go so abysmal in thoughts of


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was sleeping badly and the other was half awake. In China such irresponsible officials at duty are very rare tobe seen but we saw them that day.

Beside the grand Buddha as we came down, there was a theatrical performance on the ancient Chinese culturaltraits and folklores. The doom in which we were to be shown the movie or performance as it was live was amega structure. It was illuminating with different lights. There were hundreds of chairs and perhaps thousandscould be fit into the hall. The screen went throughout the hall. The performance was superb. At times as themusic would go wild and the up beats would create a heart thrill, I really craved to stand up and lead the show.

But I had a friend like Shakeel who was always present with his nice and timely pieces of advice like the travelguide who accompanied us today. She was very friendly and cooperative though our Egyptian friend was veryinterested in establishing peaceful and coexistent relationship everywhere as he was quite cool-a-guy, friendlyindeed. He was so found of creating and establishing relations whether he was ever welcomed or not. Well, hiswas the concept that it was never important to have been invited to a dine or not, but rather important thingwas the dine itself. He began to ask very strange questions of opening-up like asking how to get married with aChinese girl etc. There was a syndrome! The guide was good enough to reply all his questions though the PRChad not yet begun the social-opening like the economic-opening. The thing I liked about her the most were herexpressions. These were not just expressions mastered by practice but these were too real as these were utteredas and when the English would fall into a difficult situation. She would suck together her teeth giving animpression of cold. She would talk in different voices and different tones when narrating a story that involveda conversation between various characters. Her language was full of expressions and perhaps this was the need

and demand of her job, too, as travel agent. Her expressions were created out of art on one side and thedeficiency of proper English vocabulary at the other. But like all the travel agencies, her agency was also waysand ways after lucrative profits and savings.

The Mickeys show of words decorated in expressions was really seen the day we visited Shanghai. She wasphenomenal in terms of her expressions. She was very expressive and making faces with actions of body andwords and then she was not fake enough not to smile and laugh at what was perceived as comic. She laughedand enjoyed it as much as did we. In shanghai we took the night ferry cruise. Oh, it was filled withwhimsicalities. The wind was blowing bitterly on the deck. All our dear collogues just went and sit in a wellheated hall as we strolled and enjoyed the shanghai night with all its glamour and pomp. I wish I could havestayed and overstayed in shanghai. It was New York by all means. Revantino was well enough to suggest itwas the city if lights. The return to Changzhou took place in the heart of night and the night journeys havealways been so fascinating for me, so much full of romance and truth. Sometimes like an aberration, I thought

she looked back, and she looked back just to look at me! She looked back in fast and she looked back inaction. But that was just for a moment, but it is as true as death that happiness is the creation of the shortestMoment. Shanghai was joy.

The Changzhou mantra went sweet and lyrical. The management Sam, Ashley, Sarah and Alicia all offered thetraditional assistance that China is well known for. Shakeel, my accompanier, I wish to have more journeyswith him again. Abdullah from Sudan a smiling young man with lots of charismatic qualities. And of course


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how can I drop mentioning the Beautiful Sri Lankans, our dear, youthful friends, the loving Palestinians andthe dear Egyptians and all other friends. The only lady Rachel and Mikey, oh yeah, they were too social. AndFelix, Namibian, who most of the times rallied under the terror of Mr. Chea was also a friendly guy. In the last

but none the least, a million praises toguess who?...yeah, right,the twin stars, the binary-system-the lovelybaby like stuffy, softy, and fluffy REVANTINO and the ever mercurial and the heart full of love, my dearChea Savron! It was very well spent a time at Changzhou with all its beauties and memories. Life at the end is

but a collection of memories and memories may excite just as they may haunt. Memories are the bits that formup the world of a man, they are the beads of wreathe. Life being like a tree, it gets its autumn and the autumnal

leaves are scattered broking from the branches having seen the tides of all seasons. The life and time are soperpendicular to one another that the one lives on the other and other sustains on the former, and thus the cartis pushed forth, the clock is ticking and life moves ahead. We are unknown to one another, and then withoutour notice, we become so intimately close, and then again without our notice, we separate, and then again weremain connected till death in terms of beautiful memories devoid of hidden interests and bad opinions. Bettermemories are priority number first in ones life as at the end life is but a collection of these memories and

better memories are the causes and effects of better acts, so life demands nice, kind and pleasant actions all thetime as each elapsing moment of life is converting into a bit of memory. The Changzhou love affair was filledwith love, glamour, romance, lessons and excitement-a nice memory bit to the mega thread-pile.

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Life is a making of memories, and Memories are the offsprings of life-actions.

Dr. J. S. Brown

Changzhou Mantra

Documents

Transcript of Changzhou Mantra