Calling it “Operation Soccer Ball” this motivated group looks to raise a ton of money today and tomorrow through their bake sale. Kevin Ferguson, the Army soldier involved in this project, served as the inspiration for these seventh graders at his alma mater, St. Martin, back in the Bay Area. Currently stationed in Iraq, Ferguson thought he would just enlist family and friends to pony up for the soccer ball drive. Instead, he got the whole St. Martin seventh grade to get involved. Best of luck to team St. Martin!

I thought this was a timely story in light of the soccer World Cup tournament that will consume most of the globe for the next few weeks. Games begin this Friday (June 9). Team USA plays the Czech Republic on Monday, June 12; Italia on Saturday, June 17; and Ghana on Thursday, June 22. The World Cup is being hosted by Deutchland.

With the universal appeal of soccer / football, is it any wonder that groups have sprouted up touting the sport as a means toward achieving world peace? Makes complete sense to me.

Check out these groups kicking it for peace:

Play Soccer Make Peace!
This group organizes soccer tournaments around the world as a means to promote peace. This is a project of the World Association of Non-Gorvernmental Organizations (WANGO).

Soccer Moms for Peace
This is a small group of, well, soccer moms in Colorado who raises money to “support nonviolent, humanitarian solutions to global problems, provide peace education in the United States or elsewhere, or promote nonviolence as a means of social change.”

Soccer for Peace
“Soccer for Peace is a non-profit organization aiming to unite children of war-torn nations in their shared love of soccer. Based in New York City, the organization is entirely volunteer run with no affiliation; political, religious or otherwise.”

Some other stories about soccer balls for Iraqis:

America Supports You: KiXX Soccer Team Ensures Iraqi Children Have a Ball
A Day In Iraq (blog)
Soldiers Deliver Good Will

With its unusual and aerodynamic shape, the Flatiron, located at E. 23rd Street between where 5th Avenue and Broadway cross, is responsible for creating one of the windiest intersections in NYC. In the years following its 1902 completion, loiterers were famous at this intersection for trying to catch a glimpse of a windblown bare ankle or two of women pedestrians. Crazy, crazy New Yorkers.

A tourist couple, while having a great scuba diving trip to the Cayman Islands had one of their breakfasts paid by a local. A note accompanying the paid bill said, “Thank you, please accept this breakfast as a token of our appreciation for your choice of the Caymans, Sincerely a Native.”

Damn, that’s a whole country getting behind a cause.

Coincidentally, I just had a discussion with a housemate this weekend about how nice and pleasant the Cayman’s are for visiting. I’m going there as soon as humanly possible.

You can get some Panda wallpaper for your desktop here. Also check out the Panda Cam day and night to see what’s up in T-Shan’s world.

I was lucky enough to catch the little black and white fuzz ball over Easter weekend during a family trip. The picture for the May 10 – 17 masthead is of Tai Shan curling up into a ball to roll around and avoid the zookeeper trying to take him back into his hut. You really can’t believe these kinds of things happen until you see it in the flesh. Yes, I now know that Pandas are incredibly cute and little ones like Tai Shan are just beyond words. Go check out the National Zoo…tip: Tai Shan comes out around 4:00 p.m. for one last feeding before the park closes.

Locals like to lament the project because of its sky high price tag and frequent construction delays, but ever since its opening in the summer of 2004, the park has been everybody’s favorite destination.

The Park features a Frank Gehry-designed amphitheater (Jay Pritzker Pavillion), a magical light totem pole and interactive fountain, a garden, a slinking, snakelike overpass / walkway and the now famous reflective metal bean sculpture (Cloud Gate, by Anish Kapoor).

When the weather warms up this spring, get out to downtown Chicago, listen to some great music, layout along Lake Michigan and have a great time.

The early numbers seem to suggest that the levels of giving are low when compared to Western countries. But, we have to remember that a lot of this new found wealth is new for many Chinese and we need to give their new economy time before we form judegements about their philanthropic ways.

Promising is the level of giving toward foreign relief projects. Last year the Chinese Red Cross collected 30 million pounds (approx. $50 million USD) for the Tsunami, Katrina and the earthquake. Not huge on scale with American donors, but perhaps a great start.

BY ADAM SKOLNICK
as published in Yoga International, March/April 2005

The journey was inspired by a life flood—a financial, emotional, and circumstantial torrent that destroyed everything stable in my world. My engagement was broken, the house I was renting sold and I had to move. Work dried up. I was irritable, reclusive, sad. Even my yoga practice, for seven years a daily antidote for existential malaise, had no effect. And it was my fault. I was the one who got the shakes anytime someone asked, “When are you two going to tie the knot?” I postponed the date then unconsciously pushed my fiance further and further away until she left, and I failed to save even a penny for the move I’d seen coming for months. But at the time it didn’t feel like my fault. In fact, it didn’t feel at all. There were moments when all this rubble seemed to belong to someone else. I was completely checked out.

Then at a Bat Mitzvah in Boulder, Colorado, I met a fellow who lived and worked in Bali, the only Hindu island in the world’s most populous Muslim nation and a growing Mecca for Western yogis. Yoga in paradise sounded like good medicine, so I ran a Google search and found 15 Bali yoga retreats and trainings in the months of June and July alone. Annually there are more than 50. Even as terror alerts threaten and bloody memories of the 2002 bombing linger, the yoga students come. The numbers contradict the condition of Bali ’s sluggish tourist industry and suggest that the island has something special that sparks revelation, realization, and connectedness in the Western seeker. I needed to find it. So I shoved my material possessions into a storage cave beneath a freeway overpass, and got out of town.

Bali wowed me in less than ten minutes. The taxi I hailed at the airport sped past fresh fruit stands, an old woman with an offering of flowers and incense on her head, a family of five crammed on a Yamaha motor scooter’s banana seat, a laughing saint immortalized in stone. There was The Hare Krishna Diner, The Maya Art Shop, and Bhakti Furniture. And there were wonderfully ornate and antiquated temples, scores of them. Bali was a different world.

Traditionally, Bali ’s surf and sun have lured the masses, but the inland is what makes the island really special. That’s where the culture still thrives, and that’s where the yogis bring their students. Ann Barros led the first Western yoga retreat on Bali in 1984, but yoga became a tourist-industry staple only recently. Seattle yoga instructor Bob Smith fell in love with the island on his first trip 20 years ago and has been teaching there since 1989. Today, he and Ki McGraw offer a 30-day yoga retreat followed by a 30-day teacher training annually in Bali ’s cultural heart, Ubud, a town that pulses with ritual, music, and spirit. Surrounded by terraced rice paddies and freckled with top-notch restaurants and art galleries, nature and humanity intermingle gorgeously here.

“Bali is outstanding for yoga” Bob said. “The astral energy is carefully tended to by ritual, so it is actually easier to meditate here. And the people are extraordinary.” After only a few days I had to agree that most Balinese are exceedingly charming, relaxed, and warm, and that the verdant island vibrates with a sweet, calm, open energy. Then one night I found the source of it all. The blissful something that fills Bali is harmony.

If Balinese days burst with life and color—which they do—then the nights simmer with a subtle and deep energy. The sounds alone transport you. Water flows over stone in irrigation canals, frogs croak, and children laugh in the distance. And there’s the traditional Balinese music, or gamelan, a tapestry of gongs, drums, and flute that always signal a nearby ceremony. No matter where you are on the island, you can hear the haunting syncopation rise from ancient stone temples that are literally everywhere (there are 4,800 temples on the small island), the harmonies echoing in the mind like a ripple in still water. The buzz of Bali nights is the subtly layered din of life. Everything is more vivid in these dark hours–it seems that even the moon glows a bit brighter, a shade deeper.

One misty night, I turned a corner on my motorbike in Penestanan, a village near Ubud, when a crowd of people in ceremonial dress materialized from the fog on the unlit streets and drifted into an open-air temple. Women were carrying offerings of fruit, flowers, and incense in baskets on their heads. Men lugged musical instruments and wooden masks. Within seconds gamelan music burst forth. I wandered up to the gate cautiously, and the gregarious crowd welcomed me inside.

The congregation, dressed in colorful sarongs and sashes, spanned four generations. Shrines to Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, Bali ’s holy trinity, were loaded with offerings of mangoes, bananas, pineapples, and papaya. A priest’s chant warbled over an antiquated PA system while a masked dancer slapped his feet, cocked his head, and twisted his arms to tell a story. Aromatic incense smoke wafted through the crowd. Children and dogs roamed the grounds. There was a strong sense of reverence—but also of freedom. Before long we all sat, knee-to-knee, in meditation and prayer together, and prayed for harmony—harmony with God, harmony with our community, and harmony with nature—as the priest doused us with holy water. Then as a symbol of prosperity we placed a fingernail of rice on our third eye and throat.

To say I was moved is an understatement. My third eye buzzed, my mind seemed to expand, and waves of calm washed over me. There were friendly faces in all directions, a glint of love in hospitable eyes. My months of struggle vanished, and for a few precious, fleeting moments I felt right again, in harmony with life.

Harmony is integral to the Balinese Hindu worldview. “There are three ways to happiness and prosperity,” said Darta, a lawyer and community leader who gave me a rice paddy tour outside Ubud. “We call this concept tri hita krana—harmony between individuals, harmony between the individual and the environment, and harmony between the individual and the Gods.”

To the Balinese, harmony in all its forms requires a sense of balance. In place of the stark thread of duality, (good or evil, heaven or hell, light or dark) that has been mainlined from the Bible into our Westernized brains, Balinese strive to find a third position—the center. They believe that the universe is forever a play of opposing forces of dark and light, and that creative tension is palpable in Balinese music and dance. Their culture teaches that the key to harmony, to feeling good and happy and peaceful, is to balance these forces within the self, the community, and the world at large—just as Vishnu maintains and protects the universe and buffers the creative power of Brahma and the death and rebirth of Shiva.

“Black and white, good and bad must be balanced. Balance brings harmony and harmony brings happiness,” Darta explained But he stressed that mankind’s job is not to destroy evil. “What is gold if there is no stone?” he asked. Raka Tjorda, a member of the Ubud royal family and head of the Bali Heritage Trust agrees. “You cannot eliminate the dark thing because it’s part of you, part of nature. Darkness is around every day, every moment. It is in your mind all the time.”

Most Balinese walk a bhakti or devotional path, and they achieve balance through highly detailed Hindu rituals. In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna says, “If one disciplined soul proffers to me with love a leaf, a flower, fruit, or water, I accept this offering of love from him.” This statement is the cornerstone of Bali ’s spiritual life.

“It’s fascinating how well the Balinese have preserved the Hindu rituals,” said Emil Wendel, a yoga philosophy teacher with Yoga Arts who has lived and studied in India and Nepal for 30 years and who teaches once a year in Bali. “In India, rituals are there, but they’re more haphazard. What is well preserved in India is the knowledge, usually handed down by gurus through lineages. Here the people are so deeply into ritual that knowledge is not necessary. They can eventually reach the same space that a wise yogi would reach—moksha or liberation—because they are doing deeply felt ritual meditations daily.” Tjorda is also learned, but less esoteric and analytical. He simply said, “When we do ritual we are transformed so we can feel and see the good.” This seems a basic concept, but it’s difficult to live.

Balinese put wellbeing above consumption, spirit over ego. “For me I must first make offerings, then eat,” said Nyoman Budi, a wife, mother, and business owner. Her commitment is echoed everywhere. Wayan Nuyadi, a former banjar or village chief in the Ubud area explained, “I must pray and go to temple, if not, my feelings not so good, my energy not so good. When you pray and meditate your energy is better. In my village all do that.” Wayan Astra, a Denpasar photographer and good friend said, “It’s a call. A connection.”

That’s why Balinese make simple ritual offerings every day—in family shrines, at village temples, and on the streets. Canangs, an arrangement of flowers, fruit, and rice placed in a delicate banana leaf tray, are the most common and are seen everywhere. The women make these offerings, and thus facilitate the flow of spiritual energy.

Sacred days are honored in temple. Holy water, an agent of purification believed to drive negative thoughts away, is an ever-present element in Balinese ceremony. Collected from a sacred spring, it is charged with energy by a Hindu priest, or mangku, who chants over it then briefly steeps flowers in it. Priests then splash the sweet, aromatic water on revelers who drink from their outstretched palms.

Dark and full moon ceremonies, a nod toward Bali ’s animist tradition, are also conducted every moon cycle in village temples. On the eve of July’s full moon, Budi planned a 24-hour pilgrimage for the whole family, by car and on foot, to two ancient temples in North Bali. In preparation, she turned her kitchen into a ritual workshop. Baskets were piled on the stove and filled with flowers and fruit. “There is good feeling in my family if we do offerings at Pulaki Temple,” she said. “It’s nice for meditation because it’s so quiet, and when I come back I’m very, very happy and have good spirit.”

In addition to daily and monthly ritual, Balinese experience 14 rites of passage from birth to death; all include ceremonial dress, abundant offerings, contributions from the village community, and specific mantras. Usually dances are performed and a gamelan orchestra is summoned. These rites can take all day, and don’t feel rote or tired though they’re centuries old.

Perhaps the most colorful rite of passage is the cremation ceremony—an ode to impermanence. Villagers build beautiful, intricately designed floats, then parade them through the streets, serenaded by the lively gamelan orchestra, and when they reach the cemetery they put the body of their loved one, that has been temporarily buried or otherwise preserved in the family compound until cremation day, in the float and burn it. The ashes are then carefully placed in a bamboo tray, covered in flowers, and released into the ocean.

Unlike Indian Hindus, Balinese also have animist, shamanic roots. They believe spirits lurk everywhere and must be acknowledged lest they grow wicked. That’s why so many offerings are left in odd places—on automobiles, musical instruments, or a street corner, and it’s why ceremonies are held to open a new office or even to build a toilet. On Balinese New Year’s Eve, known as Ogho Ogho, villages erupt in raucous celebration that includes, food, music, fireworks, and archetypal paper machie floats. Parades of youth take to the street and let loose to rouse the dark spirits from their slumber. New Year’s Day, or Nyepi, is a day of silence and fasting so the newly-awakened dark forces pass by and leave the villagers in peace.

The Balinese culture is boundless. There is no separation between the secular, religious, and supernatural. That’s why noted Balinese scholar, and longtime Bali resident Fred Eismen, writes in Sekala Niskala, “There are no distinctions between self and other or self and object, and no clear distinction between what has happened, what is happening right now and what will happen.” Such a fluid culture provides the individual with the spiritual energy she needs to live and die peacefully, productively, and healthfully in a dangerous world.

In 2002, a van wired with c4 exploded outside the Sari Club, a popular nightspot, destroying two city blocks in Kuta, Bali ’s trashy, surf-party magnet. It incinerated the tourist economy overnight and ripped a gaping hole in Bali ’s open heart. As the weeks passed there were tears of anger and sadness, and the people were eager for justice—but there was no “us against them” war cry. Many Balinese actually believed that their karma caused this incident, and felt their people had become too greedy and lost touch with spirit. There were public apologies to the families of foreigners who perished, an island-wide resolve to look inward, and purification ceremonies at the blast site and in nearly every temple. Without work, cabbies, restaurant, and hotel employees returned to their villages where there is always abundant food. They spent time with their families, worked the fields, and prayed every day.

“In our culture we contemplate ourselves,” said Made Surya co-owner of Danu Tours, one of Bali ’s leading yoga retreat operators. “This bomb happened and it has pushed us further. There is an expression, ‘Balinese are like fish,’ and we scaled ourselves to try and understand why this happened. Then we could act more rationally, become more aware, and not be dragged down by this evil and our own anger.”

Along with prayer and hard work there was justice. It took just seven months to capture and convict all 32 terrorists, and four now await death. Two years later life has moved on in Bali. Even the tourists have slowly returned (the economy is back to 50 percent capacity), and there is little or no residual anger, fear or conflict.

Dr. LK Suryani, a psychiatrist, television personality, and meditation teacher treated and taught over 100 grief-stricken survivors and rescue workers for free in 2002. She exudes strength and wisdom, and was outspoken in local media about the karmic implications of the bomb. “If you do not accept your karma,” she said, “you will always have conflict and remain suspicious. This is not a healthy way to be.” Surya agrees. “If you fight terrorism with terrorizing people you’re not going to solve it.”

Lance Schuller, a Yoga Arts instructor from Byron Bay, Australia, has visited Bali more than 20 times and co-leads a month-long teacher training annually in Bali. He and 60 of his students were there when the bomb went off, and he lost two new surf buddies in the blast. “There was a mass exodus at the airport,” he said. “It was total panic.” The next year Bali was a tourist ghost town, but Yoga Arts, like so many Western yoga instructors and students, returned anyway. In July 2004, Schuller taught an eclectic mix of Europeans, Asians, North Americans, and Australians in Ubud. Like his Seattle counterparts, he sees Bali as a perfect place to train teachers.

“ Bali catalyzes the whole teacher training process,” Schuller says. “The students live in the village and walk to class through paddies where they see village life and can feel the spiritual commitment of the people who are in harmony with nature and themselves. And yoga helps us get rid of our layers created by outside influences, so we can discover who we really are—a continuum of opposites—ha-tha, yin-yang, sun-moon, light-dark. Many of our students have a personal transformation in Bali.”

Bob Smith and Ki McGraw’s teacher trainees were also touched deeply. Rob Hansen, an ER doc from British Columbia, said, “It’s so completely different here. Wherever you come from recedes into the distant mind, and you are pulled into the present. The people greet you with an open heart and without boundaries, and that allows you to drop your own boundaries. And if you’re going on a journey of self discovery–like yoga training–that’s going to be useful.” McGraw adds, “Yoga has a goal of oneness, and Balinese people seem to be living that more than anyone on the planet.”

I spent six potent weeks in Bali. I took yoga classes, meditated with Hindu priests, sipped tea with a Buddhist monk, traveled by motorbike in thick, treacherous Denpasar traffic, dove into pristine coral reefs, joined boisterous cremation parades, heard Hindu chants for the dead, and participated in several temple rituals. Over time I came to understand that the Balinese live life in little moments of surrender and praise that add up to one contagious life statement. They may not do much asana, but they live yoga.

If you are open to it, you can’t miss the harmony of this land, this culture–these incredibly warm people. It’s around every wrong turn, tucked into each dusty sculpture shop and art gallery. It bobs on every fishing boat, and fills every temple. It courses through the air like a pranic superhighway. When you breathe, it encompasses you, and it is a foundation from which you can dive deep, develop your yoga practice, and realize your own connection to all life.

Just before I left, my friend, Wayan, and I did a pilgrimage. We climbed Mt. Agung, a 10,000-foot volcano and Bali ’s most sacred geographic point. Legend has it that if you ascend the mountain you will realize your true self. The trail begins at Bali ’s mother temple complex, Pura Besakih, where hoards come daily to make offerings and pray in the dozens of ancient temples scattered in the shadow of the jungled volcano. A few decades back they made the journey on foot, and the intrepid ones climbed the peak in sandals and sarong. Today they arrive by public bus, chartered mini vans, motorbike and commercial trucks where it is standing room only in the open beds. Wayan and I made our offerings in the temple then hit the trail.

We summited the next day as the first red rays of the sun spread from the Bali Sea. The crater rim’s volcanic sand was strewn with banana leaf prayer baskets, withering flowers, and coins. More offerings. We barely shared a word, but were united and charged with energy. In the thin, pink atmosphere I bowed my head and finally fully surrendered to the love profusion, that changeless aspect of self, God, and the universe that saturates Bali. It was pure harmony.

Adam Skolnick is a freelance journalist and screenwriter based in LA. His work has appeared in Wired, Spa, and Islands and his website is www.adamskolnick.com.

Correspondent Kevin Foster provides a Londoner’s viewpoint of China. Kevin was recently travelling through China on his way to Singapore where he will be living for the next two years as a business editor and writer.

Guangzhou, southern China

In the five minutes it took me to check in to my hotel and get up to my room I’d seen three western couples with Chinese babies. Over the next five days I saw perhaps 40 or 50 in total. All the couples were American, most seemingly in their late 30s; the babies looked no older than six months at the most.

Guangzhou is the transit point for orphans from across China to be adopted out of the country. Later a woman told me the whole adoption procedure takes about six months of checks and paperwork in the U.S., after which the applications are processed through Beijing, after which the babies are processed through Guangzhou. I don’t know whether the parents have a choice of child, or what kind of checks they have to go through, or how much they have to pay. Whatever, it must be far easier than adopting in the U.S.

I didn’t know how to feel about it. The parents were obviously in a state of long repressed ecstasy, and the genuine adoration they had for their new babies was touching. Most of them seemed to be lost in their own worlds; the mothers would aimlessly circle the hotel lobby, crooning to the babies, patting them, or making up for two unequal lifetimes of absent affection by endlessly kissing their unprotesting faces. The babies themselves seemed unusually well-behaved, almost shell-shocked, readjusting perhaps to the unaccustomed attention; but they were unarguably going to have a better life in the U.S. than they could ever have expected growing up orphaned in China.

Most of the babies were extremely cute in that way Asian babies always are, but one I saw had a hare-lip, for which she’d probably get far better medical care outside China (or if not, would she feel more like a freak in America than she ever would here?).

But there was something about it I couldn’t accept. The babies, supposedly nameless until they were collected, all seemed to have been re-christened Jonathan or Jane or Mary-Elizabeth, as if their new life was going to wipe away any trace of the culture they’d been born into. On a deeper level it was obvious that an industry was growing up around the adoption process. I overheard a Chinese woman telling an American man that she’d just returned from Shenzhen, on the coast.

“Did you get the babies?” he asked.

“Yeah, we came back with nine,” she said, casually, as if it was no more than an average crop, or a fair return for a day’s work. I wondered how much money she was making, whether she got commission for each baby delivered.

It seemed like a last vestige of colonialism, aptly set amidst the decaying Republican-era banks and embassies of Shamian Island. If a developed country runs short of resources at home, there’s sure to be plenty available to exploit (in every sense of the word) in other, poorer parts of the world.

How China’s one-child policy fits into it I don’t know.

The 45-minute flight from Guangzhou to Hong Kong was filled with parents on the first leg of a flight back to Newark or San Francisco or Atlanta, all to the accompaniment of a caterwauling howl from the babies. In the seat next to me an Asian girl, perhaps ten at the oldest, spent the first few minutes of the journey rearranging the in-flight magazines in the seat pocket, and the next half an hour staring at me with huge, expressionless eyes. She didn’t react when I smiled back. Across the aisle from the mother, the father sat between two other Chinese girls of about the same age, who fought and cried with obvious American accents.

“It’s her first flight,” the woman told a couple in front of her, stroking the head of the reactionless child. And later, “We think she’s about nine, but we’re not sure.”

Something about the unknowability of those about-nine years, how they’d shape whatever identity she’d end up with, stuck in my head and wouldn’t get out.

–

It’s kind of childish to laugh at other country’s mistranslations into English, but these are too good (or confusing) to resist:

‘Please do not spit everywhere and litter up. Violators will be amerced (sic) with in a range of 20 to 50 yuan.’

- a notice in Shamian Park

‘Fried pork with mincing rice’ – on the menu.

–

The hotel where I stayed is on Shamian Island, a small area of reclaimed land jutting out into the Pearl River. Shamian was the old foreign concession, and is full of decrepit colonial buildings which once housed various banks and trading houses that had now given over their ground floors to shops selling tourist tat. It seemed aged, genteel, totally out of place and time compared to the rest of the city.

Across the river is the Qingping market, which apparently was one of the first markets to reopen when the Communists began to loosen their control of the economy. It used to be a center for trade in exotic creatures, and although that’s now been stopped there’s still plenty of more familiar animals for sale. The streets are narrow and broken, thick with people dodging bikes and motorcycles; filled with hawkers selling birds in cages, puppies surrounded by wide-eyed children, cats – including a couple of kittens crammed into cages barely six inches square – turtles, fish, and hundreds of tiny, inch-long gray scorpions heaped in plastic buckets.

Men pulled carts along behind them, holding onto two long poles. An old woman carried two baskets on either end of a pole slung across her shoulders; she wore one of those wide-brimmed straw hats that rise lazily into a sharp peak. In back alleys no more than ten feet wide houses opened out on to the street, children played football with screwed-up pieces of paper.

Inside the houses, families were eating, often in dark rooms lit only by the television. An old man, maybe 70 years old, stood behind a barred gate, smoking and watching the street. An unending hubbub of voices seemed to my ears to merge into a continuous, clattering, clamorous sound. The streets smelled wet, occasionally acrid and then sharp and searing as I walked past baskets of spices. Older people, mainly women, played Mahjong, while younger men played cards. Sometimes people would stare at me for a couple of seconds, then look away. Only once did a man call out hello, and then burst into laughter when I answered him with a nod.

–

I climbed to the top of the pagoda in the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees.

The pagoda is eight-sided; in the center of each level is a small room, no more than six or seven feet wide. The entrances into the central rooms are no more than four or five feet high, and I have to crouch as I pass through in an enforced act of submission. Six golden statues of the Buddha sit in alcoves in the walls; the Buddha holds up his hand in different poses – index-finger crooked, middle-finger and thumb forming a circle, flat-handed.

On the top level, the ninth, the central room is locked behind a grille; one-yuan notes litter the floor around an embossed gold pillar. The pagoda is perhaps 40 metres high; I walked around the narrow balcony, holding on to the waist-high barrier for reassurance. At some point I lost count of the number of sides, and kept expecting the entrance to the stairway to be around the next corner; for a few seconds I think stupidly but scarily that I will be stuck here forever, circling above the city, always keeping the figures of the Buddha on my right and never finding the way down.

The temple complex is made up of five or six buildings, all of which have sloping, wooden rooves with upturned corners and Chinese characters engraved in gold below the eaves. In the building directly to the west of the pagoda are three huge golden statues of Bodhisattvas, each about 25 feet high.

On the walls are paintings of monks, some of whom have grotesque, elongated faces; one reaches up to grasp what looks like a basket hanging from a ceiling and his arm stretches slim and elastic until it is 30 feet in length, like some ancient superhero.

Devotees buy packets of incense and light them from open flames, hold them in clasped hands as they pray.

The banyan trees are nowhere to be seen.

Outside the gates Guangzhou is noisy, crammed, urgent, full of shove and intent; here it is open and peaceful and not trying to become anything it isn’t already.

Shanghai

Somebody once compared the changes taking place in today’s China to New York in the 1890s. Shanghai seems to have the same brash, unbounded optimism that I imagine must have fuelled the rise of Wall Street a hundred years ago. The place is a swamp of money and it’s impossible to move through the streets without being overwhelmed by it – the malls, full of western and Japanese stores; the half-built skyscrapers and office towers; and most of all the people, Shanghai’s nouveau riche strolling along Huaihai Road on a Sunday afternoon, trailing shopping bags and label-laden children. The women seem on a mission to dress more fashionably than anywhere in the world, although in their rush to display status something of the up-market call girl has crept into the look – knee-high leather boots with stiletto heels and leopard skin shoes are everywhere. There’s something eager and fragile and self-conscious about it all, as if everyone’s been hit by a great wave of consumption and isn’t yet sure that they’ve found their footing again.

I’m sure at the back of everyone’s mind is a memory of how different things were only ten years ago, and the fear that it could be all taken away – and so, grab everything now while the going’s good. There’s none of the assurance of New York, the decades of earned and inherited wealth that has seeped below the skin of the city. No-one in this generation is going to sit back and enjoy what they have.

The more I travel, the more I realize that England is an excessively polite nation. I long ago gave up expecting anyone to react to an ‘excuse me’, but I’m used to people actually moving when you push past them on the street. In Shanghai people seem perpetually braced against one another. The idea of personal space also seems alien here (Mao, are you laughing or crying?), as does the distinction between the sidewalk and the road – pedestrians seem inexplicably unconcerned by oncoming traffic as they stroll across the street, while mopeds apparently prefer to weave their way through the crowds on the sidewalk when it would be far quicker for them if they were to get back on the road. And the taxi drivers make New York cabbies seem laid-back.

Unlike in Guangzhou, I didn’t see a single poster of Mao or any of the other Communist leaders. Sometimes it felt as if you could be in any capital city in any developed country in the world, until a glimpse down a narrow side alley revealed houses sloping into one another, laundry filling up the sky and old men and women standing in doorways, looking out, perhaps feeling more like a stranger here than I did. Every so often, a troop of 20 or 30 soldiers would monopolise the sidewalk, either marching stiffly in step or sauntering along, talking on cell phones and smiling at the girls cycling past. No-one paid them much attention.

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I’ve come across Manchester United themed bars in Singapore, Hong Kong and Guangzhou, so it was a nice change to see a Man Utd massage parlour in Shanghai. I considered it for a moment, but the thought of Gary Neville giving me a rubdown put paid to any temptation I might have had. (For those in the States, substitute Man Utd for the Yankees and Gary Neville for Jason Giambi – you get the picture…)

Notice the honest nature of the message: “This club will stick together while it can.” I wish more of us could have such modest ambitions. We as a society may not push forward quite as quickly, but I think we’d all be more in-tuned with our surroundings and be happier as a result. What do you all think?

D. Robert — New York, NY

Photo: D. Robert

My friend Eliza grew up in a town on O’ahu called Manoa, where the state’s main university campus is located. Her family’s house is perched atop a little hill nearer to the mouth of Manoa Valley. The valley is known for its daily drizzles as it serves as a catch basin for many of the tradewind generated rain clouds that breath over the razor sharp spin of the Ko’olau Mountain range to the west. At the mouth of the valley, where Eliza’s house stands, the light tropical clouds tend to disperse, opening the skies up to the famously lush Hawai’ian sun.

The house was built in the early 1900s in a classic bungalow style with a hearty front porch framed in stone with a simple pitched wood-framed awning. After entering the welcome room in the house’s mid-section you find sliding doors and windows lining an enclosed patio to the left. In fact, there is a slew of casement and double-hung windows throughout the first floor. The house was designed to take advantage of the natural ventilation provided by the tradewinds that come from deep within the valley. You stand in the entrance way and immediately begin to feel the cool and inviting flow of valley breeze wisp around you. Immediately, Eliza, her father or mother is giving you a big, warm hug and asking if you need anything to drink. Kirin Ichiban please.

It’s this feeling of ease and hospitality that you anticipate as you walk up the hill toward the house and that wonderful front porch. Even the worst day could not ruin your time here. I have spent many nights siting on that front porch with friends and Eliza’s family, talking story and enjoying the cool breezes and warm companionship. From the porch, looking over the rooftops and over toward the silhouette of Diamond Head and the bustle of Waikiki in the distance, you forget about commitments and obligations and begin to remember what it is like to live completely in the moment, in the now.

Sitting on a wicker rocking chair, sipping Kirin, chatting it up with friends and family on the greatest front porch of all time and looking over a dot of an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean you make a note to yourself to never ever forget the moment. You know that safe warm place that people euphemistically suggest that you go to in times of duress? Well, I know where mine is.