On Visiting the Er Lake
Throughout my short stint as a concert emcee for my high school’s Chinese Orchestra, I have read many song names containing famous landmarks in China, followed by succinct but rich imageries of nature. Complete with faked gusto. There is one cello ensemble piece I remember for how its name is quite the tongue twister. C’ang Shan Er-hai Ch’ang Huai-nien. Loosely translated as The Eternal Remembrance of the Cang Mountain and Er Lake.
Inscribing nature into music immortalises the fleeting beauty that overcomes you when your heartbeat syncs itself to the rhythm of nature. Like a framed canvas hung on an expansive wall, except this is a fluid, moving image that whirs in complete stillness.
The problem with meeting Er Lake first in music composed in its image, is that my actual encounter with it in Yunnan half a decade later ended up being quite a lacklustre experience. For all that instrumental long strokes of the cello bow and whimsical reverberations sung in its image, all Er Lake — the actual geographical entity — garners is tepid applause from its patrons, having travelled from afar to catch a glimpse of its famed beauty touted for tourist dollars. I wonder if it was a failure on my part to imbue nature with my own emotions. Tourism in China has since not killed one but my general expectations of awe in Chinese landscapes.
The temperature has gone into the sub range after we left Dali city for the county. A lazy meandering boardwalk snakes across a barren swamp. We were quickly ushered onto a large vessel by people dressed in loud ethnic costumes in that grey muted winter and shipped off to ‘sea’. Were we, in our duffel jackets and scarfs, more oddly dressed or the local troupe in their silver headdress and michelin jackets thrown over white embroidered robes, cheerily clapping away? It seemed befitting to be sullen in that weather.
But Nature is stoic. Your feelings, grey or gay, does not change the essence of its being.
As the vessel picked up speed, our hair started flying in the direction of the wind. I pulled up my coat hood and walked towards the deck. Greeting us from the seaward view was an incomplete ring of mountain ridges. Taking in the view before me, I thought out loud — you mean this is it? The majestic Er-hai?
You see, the Chinese have taken liberty to name this water body the Er ‘Sea’ (hai being the Mandarin equivalent for sea). But Er Lake is technically a landlocked water body. Well, almost. Shaped like a human ear, legend has it that being the largest water body in the region, the Kingdom of Dali dubbed it the ocean. But for someone who grew up on an island, a lake is as good as a reservoir.
There was a short performance put up later in the main hall. We took many pictures that day but I can barely remember the story presented through song and dance. What I did remember though, was the three cups of tea at the end of the entertainment programme. The three cups of tea before us were served in disposable plastic cups. Which is ironic because the art of tea-drinking is about the form as much as it is about function. Or possibly, more the form than the function. Drinking water is purely functional. Likely why tea-drinking practice is so enduring in the long history of civilisation.
Tea, being one of the three bestselling beverages in the world, is everywhere in China. The Bai Tribe of Yunnan developed their own regional version for welcoming guests. The first cup of tea is ‘bitter tea’, the second cup ‘sweet tea’, the third and last cup ‘recollection tea’. Which also gives it a great marketing concept. You need one for ‘branding’ when tea is synonymous with every part of China. It worked. My parents bought a set of three home. Before tourism commodified culture, tea drinking was dignified, customary and rooted. Today culture is portable and affordable to the masses.
A picture of the four of us smiling against the backdrop of Er Lake hangs proudly next to the TV in the living room. Both a window to a world outside of our home. Er Lake is barely seen in the periphery of that photograph, with the silhouette of what could be the Cang Mountain distinguishable in the far distance. This could have been taken anywhere else in the world where it is grey and cold. But hidden away in my coat pocket is a tacky mass-produced heart-shaped memento with white lace for rims, and Chinese words saying ‘Er Lake’ and ‘peace wherever you go’ stitched on its velvety red cloth.
