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The China Road Motorcycle Diaries

Carla King
Excerpt: The Misbehaving Monk

The Misbehaving Monk

His name is Gyalsten and he’s lived in Inner Mongolia for a month. His home is in
the Qinghai region in eastern Tibet. “But I walk India,” he says. “Police catch.”
He was walking over the Himalayas to go see the Dalai Lama in Nepal and caught
before crossing the border. His passport was confiscated and he was exiled here.

©Carla King 2010 The China Road Motorcycle Diaries Page 1


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I accept his invitation to tea and follow him down three wide concrete steps running
the length of a large sunken courtyard at the back of the temple. He disappears through one
of the doorways past a pot of water boiling in the corner by the monks’ living quarters, and
reappears with two chipped mugs and bags of loose tea leaves and sugar.
We sit on the steps and talk. He will go back to Lhasa and then to Nepal. He will walk
for a month over the Tibetan mountains like he did last time with twenty other devotees to
see the Dalai Lama, even though he’s already been blessed by him seven times.
“How?” I ask. He has no money. The monastery gives him the equivalent of about
eight dollars a month. And his foot is still injured from his last trek over the Himalayas.
“I do,” he says, stubbornly.
“With no money? No motorcycle?”
He laughs and shrugs. “I do.”
We spend a long time sipping our tea in silence, then he shyly asks, “Motorcycle ride.
Me?”
He hadn’t seen much of Hohhot and he had never ridden on a motorcycle and so we
go. The road that skirts the city is newly paved and barely used and so we tear around on it
at 50 miles an hour. Gyalsten laughs like a child and I am happy, too. Then we crisscross the
whole town, whizzing by nightclubs and restaurants, department stores and hotels, through
crowded hutongs and backing out of dead ends. The streets are dark and bumpy, and there
are open fires here and there, and florescent lights here and there, and people pressing
themselves up against the wall when they hear us coming.
I drop him off at the monastery where, now, two other Tibetan monks stand outside
talking. Gyalsten hops off and tells them about his ride, laughing and making vrooming
noises. “Thank you,” he says. “Come back tomorrow?”

I wake at six the next morning to the bone-rattling sound of a jackhammer, check out
of the hotel, and stop by the old town for breakfast. My nose leads me to breakfast, shops
where I buy fat dumplings filled with vegetables and chopped mutton, and I pick up eggs
boiled in tea for later. Then I pick up Gyalsten to visit a temple ten miles away in the
mountains.

©Carla King 2010 The China Road Motorcycle Diaries Page 2


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The monastery is remote and nobody really knows where it is. Gyalsten, I figure out,
doesn’t really even know if it’s there. I don’t care, I’m used to wandering, so we wander
through a small village, along a meandering foot trail, through a sparse forest and a scattered
herd of sheep, then another small village and down through a rocky shallow creek and along
a dry riverbed. We stop for directions six times. Some people don’t talk to us at all because
apparently an American woman with blonde hair dressed in a leather jacket and a young
Tibetan on a motorcycle is just too overwhelming a spectacle. It’s a while, too, before I
realize that Gyalsten’s Chinese is maybe as bad as his English, and the peasants here speak a
confounding dialect of Mandarin that even a native speaker struggles with.
I’m exhausted from all the motocrossing, especially with the extra weight. Though
Gyalsten can’t weigh more than 100 pounds it’s still a lot of work. Another rocky creek
crossing and I have to stop. Water’s gotten into my boots so my socks are wet and I want to
take them off to dry and eat something because I’m not sure we’re really going to get
anywhere, much less to a mythical monastery. I motor uphill to a flat place where we can
rest. It’s a picturesque spot with the creek below and some sheep grazing beyond, and rocky
hills beckoning green against the blue sky.
Gyalsten, sitting some way away, lights a cigarette. He said it was is his only vice, and
with great disapproval went on about the Chinese monks who smoked and drank and had
wives. This, he feels, distracts much from their devotion. As he puffed away on a cigarette he
announced proudly that Tibetan monks don’t drink and they don’t have wives. Since he
smokes incessantly, I joked with him that smoking was going to lead to drinking, and
drinking would certainly lead to a wife. He laughed. When he laughed his face was wrinkled
like an old man, and his eyes disappeared into half moons like Santa Claus.
The river we crossed was shallow and filled with rocks and I can hear the water
gurgling through them like an attempt at language. Clouds move across the sky weaving
themselves among the branches of a sprangly spring green tree. There is finally, blissfully, no
noise at all except that of nature—the water, the soft rustle of leaves, and the clattering of a
few sheep wandering onto our side of the hill. Their white fluffy coats mimic the clouds.
Maybe now that I’ve left the eastern industrial areas behind, the rest of China will be this
peaceful. I haven’t felt this relaxed since I arrived. I close my eyes.
Something hits me in the face and wakes me up. My surprised mind figures it to be a
soccer ball or even a rock, but it is Gyalsten in an awkward and violent attempt to kiss me.

©Carla King 2010 The China Road Motorcycle Diaries Page 3


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Horrified, I wrestle him off. It is not difficult since I outweigh him by 25 pounds,. I
shove him to the ground, then step back in disbelief.
He stares back, his eyes wide and kind of wild.
“Kiss!” he says.
You have got to be kidding. I just don’t know what to say.
“Do that again and I am going to be very angry.” I finally say, firmly.
“Angry?”
“Very angry.”
He looks off into the mountains and sighs.
“Okay. I try.”
“No more kissing,” I say. “I will leave you here.”
“Okay. No kiss.”
“Promise me.”
“Okay.”
With a sudden pang of guilt I wonder if I encouraged this with my jokes and familiar
manner. After all, a lonely Tibetan monk would never, ever come into such intimate contact
with a woman. Tibetan women would never put themselves in a situation like this. Wouldn’t.
Couldn’t. My ignorance is astounding. I trusted him because he is a monk, and forgot that he
is also a man, a lonely man in exile suddenly thrown together with an exotic foreigner who
represents freedom in all forms—I have the freedom to travel where I want, how I want, so
why wouldn’t I exercise my sexual freedom as well? But a soft side just now is not
appropriate. Standing there, I try to look as tough and non-sympathetic as possible.
Gyalsten stands up and walks straight to his still-burning cigarette. For some reason
this really pisses me off, that he knows where his cigarette is, and that it’s still burning. I sit
down and try to calm my mind, but all I can dredge up is that this is my fault. I have
absolutely no intuition, common sense, and all this was amazingly stupid. Not just this, but
to go on this trip. I wasn’t very far along in it yet and, to put it mildly, there are problems.
The bike is wanky, Beijing Mandarin is no good outside of Beijing, I am riding roads that
hold no apparent relationship to the roads marked on maps of the area, and if I have an
accident I will die with a hundred people watching, a safe distance away.

©Carla King 2010 The China Road Motorcycle Diaries Page 4


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I think about leaving him here to get back to the monastery on his own, turning east
to Beijing and boarding a plane home to San Francisco. But then, life in San Francisco is not
ideal. My boyfriend, who had first been attracted to me because I was a free, wild woman
who motorcycled and bicycled and traveled the world, was now uncertain that he could
sustain a relationship with someone who took large chunks of time away from home, which
is too bad because I love traveling. And, I’ll admit it, I love that the motorcycle is unreliable,
that the maps are unreliable, that the monks and the truckers and everyone, everything about
the place is absolutely not penetrable by my western mind. If he can’t get that, well, then I’m
with the wrong man and with that the sheep who have crept quietly closer to us get spooked
and clatter down the hill sending rocks after themselves which scares them into a mini
stampede. I glance at Gyalsten, who has yet another cigarette in his hand.
The monastery is literally just over the next hill. It looks run down and abandoned to
me. We struggle to open the big wooden doors but they are locked. Gyalsten just stands on
the porch while I walk around trying to find a way in. There’s a cluttered little village at the
bottom of the slope above the swale of the creek.
Aside from trekking down to the village to ask—I wouldn’t hope for much luck with
our record so far—there’s nothing to do but admire the murals, one of which depicts a a
man wearing a traditional South Indian lunghi carrying a large bowl of fruits. His skin is very
black and his features decidedly African. It’s not impossible that Indian and African traders
came through here, the Silk Road isn’t so far away and I hope to ride along at least some of
it.
A very old man with a wispy white beard appears with a giant rusty key. When we pull
the doors open the cool darkness hits us in the face with a mixture of musty scents. Ash,
incense, old fabric, paper. We pass by the two demons who frighten evil spirits away. They’re
carved wooden statues with skin stained coal black and sharp fangs made of bone, their
mouths painted blood red and their eyes wild and blue. They stand ten feet tall and their
many arms are raised, their hands full of medieval weaponry to threaten any evil spirits who
might be trying to sneak in with us.

©Carla King 2010 The China Road Motorcycle Diaries Page 5


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Hundreds of strips of multi-colored silk cloth hang from roof to floor in the high-
ceilinged room in rows about a meter apart. Gyalsten walks through them, making a beeline
to the altar at the far wall to offer money and to light incense. I leave him to his series of
prostrations and his belief in karmic justice. Pray baby pray. I’d read that every two weeks
monks assemble and read from the Buddhist texts where there are written 250 monastic
rules and punishments. After each one is read aloud there is a pause so that any who have
broken the rule may confess and receive punishment. Sexual intercourse leads to expulsion
but I’m guessing an attempt to kiss a foreign biker chick is up to interpretation.
Statues of nine bodhisattvas stand at regular intervals along three walls. Bodhisattvas,
humans who remain on the verge of enlightenment instead of teetering over to
Buddhahood, forgo the final entrance into nirvana in favor of becoming spiritual teachers or
to do some other compassionate work. Like martyrs, this career path is open to anyone.
Bodhisattvas don’t have to be monks, but they are usually men, though a popular Chinese
bodhisattva is Quan-Yin, the Goddess of Compassion. Her counterpart in Tibetan
Buddhism is the goddess Tara, and in Hinduism the god Avalokitesvara. This evolution of
deities to suit each culture is not surprising since Buddhism originated in India around the
fifth century, making its way slowly overland to Tibet and China, Burma, Thailand, and other
Asian countries. Like Christianity, Buddhism comes in many flavors, and each culture creates
its own versions of the standard deities to represent the different aspects of God.
By the thirteenth century Hinduism had usurped Buddhism as India’s religion of the
masses, but Buddhism continues to flourish elsewhere in Asia. Except China, that is. In
China the outward admiration of gods, teachers, and even parents came to an abrupt halt in
1966 by Mao’s Cultural Revolution and the subsequent ten-year mission to break every Ming
vase, to burn every book, to destroy every musical instrument, and to deface every
monastery. Though a certain amount of cultural pride has re-emerged, China, one of the
most ancient cultures in the world, remains in a deep spiritual funk.

©Carla King 2010 The China Road Motorcycle Diaries Page 6


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There are hundreds of pillows in the room and after a moment wondering if I’d be
breaking any rules I sink into them for a rest to wait in the semi-darkness for Gyalsten to
finish his prostrations for my turn. I hadn’t thought to bring incense but I push paper bills
into the folds of the silk cloths, wondering what to wish for. Everything I wish for seems to
be a “not.” To not have an accident, to not insult people, to not be insensitive to cultural
differences, to not have to ride in the dark, to not lose another relationship over my
traveling. Maybe I should wish for other people. Maybe that Gyalsten will get to trek over
the Himalayas again to be blessed by the Dalai Lama. It will make him happy. I figure that
for people who have nothing it’s a way to spend their time, a way to give meaning to their
lives. Do rich people walk over the Himalayas in sandals and no change of clothes? No. We
take a tour. Arrange an audience. Donate to the cause. It’s the least we can do.
The incense becomes almost choking, sweet and spicy at the same time, it makes my
nose tingle and my throat dry. The light is golden, streaming from what must be a window
somewhere above, and the altar is strewn with offerings of money, silk prayer cloths,
flowers, fruits and breads. The money will be used to maintain the building and to pay the
old man waiting patiently at the door. He must have heard the motorcycle engine and walked
up here especially to let us in. I hand him a ten yuan note and follow Gyalsten up the hill to
the cairn that marks the place as a sacred site. Like most cairns it’s topped with a trident lots
of tattered fabric and other stuff that looks like trash is strewn about—meant as offerings,
I’m sure. From here I’m surprised to see Hohhot in the near distance. The ride back takes us
only half an hour.

©Carla King 2010 The China Road Motorcycle Diaries Page 7


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