Xiaoping Li

Since I came to live in Canada four years ago, I have become increasingly aware that the Canadian mainstream culture is descended from that of the United Kingdom, and this awareness draws me towards my first touring destination — the United Kingdom. 

The British atmosphere in Canada is phenomenal.  Canadian soldiers routinely perform the Changing of the Guards on Parliament Square, a copy of the Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace. Irish Canadians parade on St. Patrick’s Day annually.    On Christmas, in the Santa Clause parade, you can always see Scottish Canadians in kilts, proudly blowing their bag-pipes to celebrate the biggest festival in Canada. 

Under these phenomena lie the British characteristics that dictate the Canadian life.  First of all, the British Queen is still the Queen of Canada.  To become a citizen or to hold a high ranking government position, one has to swear allegiance to the Queen, first.  Even in some working places, a British accent is credited as an additional eloquence to the English language.  A few of those who knew that I was going to visit the U.K. expressed their admiration and envious feeling by simply saying,”You are so lucky!”  I became more determined to enter the U.K., not only to see the magnificent architecture and the gorgeous countryside, but also to understand, as much as I could, the British people and their culture, no matter how much effort I had to make.

My first effort was to obtain a visa to Britain.  Because I held a passport of the People’s Republic of China, the British Embassy demanded a list of submissions which included evidence of my flight bookings from my travel agent; evidence of my financial standing and the funds available for my visit; a letter from my employer giving details of my employment such as: the length of employment and salary, the length of my holiday, and that I would be re-employed on return; a list of the members of my family stating their relationship to me and indicating their normal place of residence; a note stating the purpose of my visit together with a letter of invitation if I had received one.  I submitted every item except the letter of invitation.  I stated in the application form that my purpose was sightseeing England, Scotland and Wales and visiting my friend David Hoult and his family.  I supplied the address of David Hoult but not his telephone number nor his professional position because I did not know then.  I thought that they were not crucial to my application after all, as a tourist, I should be admitted not on the base of whether or not I know someone in that country.  However, the British Embassy was impressively strict and returned the application form, demanding the telephone number and the position of my friend David Hoult.  Though surprised, I managed to find out David’s phone number and the title of his position.  Meantime, I luckily received a letter from David mentioning that his family was expecting my arrival.  Finally, the British Embassy granted me a visa.  On September 4th, I boarded a British Airway plane flying to London.

At Heathrow Airport, in London, I made my last effort to enter Britain.  The customs officer first asked me all the above questions that I had answered the British Embassy in my visa application.  Then she probed further into the “puzzle” how I had got to know my friend David Hoult. 
“I met David Hoult and his family when they came to Toronto for a summer vacation last year.” I answered.
“How did you meet them?”
“They stayed in the house where I lived.  My roommates were away that month.” I replied.
“Was it a boarding house?”
“No. It’s a house rented to a priest by his Anglican church.” my voice sounded a bit unhappy.
“Were you associated with the church?”
“No. I just lived in the house.  I got to know the priest through a friend of mine — she was my English teacher.  I paid my rent to the priest.” 
The customs officer looked satisfied eventually. But I felt an urge to return to the airplane and fly back to Canada right away.  However, I told myself, “It’s been a long journey to reach this step.  I have to make it.”
Eventually, I made it.

In the following two weeks, I visited London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Warrington, Chester, Wales along the coast, The Lake District and Oxford. 

I loved the historical buildings in London.  The Tower of London, a complex of stone buildings, was London’s oldest survivor.  Its past as a fortress, a royal palace and a prison was shown through a collection of armour and weapons, an exhibition of Crown Jewels and a display of prison cells and torturing tools.  The Queen surely was unmeasurably rich, just by looking at her splendid treasures.  I supposed that more than 99% of the people in the world had never seen such kind of dazzling stones ever in their lives.  In the prison section, an apparatus that disassembles men’s limbs reminded me of the ancient Chinese torture, wu ma fen si–using five horses to pull the punished into five directions, one head, two hands and two legs.  Obviously the British one was more mechanically advanced. 

St. Paul’s Cathedral was magnificent with its Baroque architectural style, its Dome and the High Altar, its exterior stone gallery from where the whole of London was visible, its inspirational craftsmanship, fine paintings, sculptures, monuments and rich gold decorations.  I sat in the nave and listened to a priest’s prayer.  His voice was enchanting under the tremendous high ceilings and the dome.  I imagined that in ancient times the cathedral must have been an extraordinarily holy place which held unchallenged authority over the English people. 

There in a corner was the photo exhibition of “The Wedding of the Century”, the wedding of the Prince of Wales to the Lady Diana Spencer.  St. Paul’s Cathedral proudly considered it a land mark event in its history.  Outside, I saw a group of ladies and gentlemen in their best formal dresses posed in front of a camera for a historical moment for a bride and groom.  Taking a wedding picture in front of St. Paul Cathedral seemed to be the fashion.

Two friends of mine in Toronto suggested that I must see the British Museum,”There you will see many treasures and unique items looted from other countries.”  There — I did see these items: they came from Greece, Egypt and China; they carried unmeasurable cultural and historical values for those countries.  One tourist questioned if it was illegal for Britain to possess them. The touring guide answered that there was not such an international law at the time when they were taken back to Britain.  He further explained that these items could easily be damaged in those uncaring hands and that it’s good that they were shifted back here, and here they have been better protected.  The touring guide was emphasizing the word, back.  No one questioned him any more. 

At the end of the tour, he showed us some of the earliest silver plates made by the ancient Anglo-Saxons.  There was a big symbol of a cross on every silver plate.  This cross symbol looked very similar to official Canadian symbols.  There’s such a cross on my degree certificate. 

He told us that the English people were really a mix, which mainly consisted of the Anglos, the Germanic Saxons and the Romans who once invaded and conquered the country. 

In the British Museum, I also saw Newton’s original manuscript on Gravity Law.  I stared at it for a long time, recalling the time when in high school I studied very hard to try to understand it.

In London, I met Sandy from Hong Kong.  Having quit her secretarial job, she was spending some time in several European countries, before going back to Hong Kong to find a new career in sales.  Together we took a train to Glasgow in Scotland.  I liked Glasgow Cathedral very much.  In contrast to St. Paul’s Cathedral’s golden richness and colour, Glasgow Cathedral was plain and simple.  The construction material was almost exclusively stone.  The internal architecture was almost exclusively arched.  The ceiling looked very high because of its arch shape.  All the stone columns seemed within arm’s length and touchable.  This produced a feeling of closeness to nature.  At one moment, I even felt that I was in an ancient building in an ancient forest.  It was a typical Scottish cathedral, reflecting some characteristics of the Scottish people: simple and plain but tough like stone.
 
In the evening, I arrived in Edinburgh and found myself in the self-claimed finest pub in Edinburgh.  I ordered a pint of Bitter at the counter and paid the bartender girl a decent tip, the amount that I had usually paid in Toronto.  She was a bit surprised and became quite friendly to me (usually British people don’t leave the tip and if they do, it’s always a very small amount.)  Several seats away sat a handsome young man, drinking whisky.  We exchanged glances, smiling greetings and eventually started to talk to each other.  He was an Englishman from Cheshire, England, coming to Edinburgh to repair stones in those ancient buildings along the Royal Mile.  Partly because I was the first Chinese to speak to him in his life, we decided to continue our conversation when the pub closed at 9pm.  We talked and wandered to Princes Street Gardens below Edinburgh Castle. 
He asked, “Would you like to have a smoke?”. 
“Not really,” I replied,”I don’t smoke.  My Mom had forbidden me to smoke when I was in high school.  But”, I changed my mind, “I don’t mind having a cigarette just for now.”
So he sat down on a chair on the side walk, took out a cigarette and started peeling off its paper skin.  Then he took out a small chunk of grey stuff, squeezed it into powder and mixed it with the tobacco.  Next he rolled this mixture inside the paper skin, back to the shape of a cigarette.
“What is this grey stuff?” I asked.
“Hashish.” He became rather surprised,”Come on, you Chinese must be familiar with this.”
“Oh..No!  Chinese people in my generation grow up in a socialist society.  We don’t do drugs.  The communist party gradually wiped out opium and prostitution since 1949 when it took over power.  You must be thinking that the present China is still that one in the late 19th century.”  I felt a bit bitter, not because of his ignorance, but because of the educational system in the western countries that had misinformed their young peoples. 

Before I left for Britain, I took an English Effective Writing course in the University of Toronto.  In this course, I was assigned to study Mr. Maugham’s essay, The Opium Den, from his book On a Chinese Screen.  I questioned the appropriateness of employing The Opium Den in the text book.  I presented my opinion: a. The ugly opium dens in China were the products of British imperialists’ invasion into China;  b. there were too many articles, movies and plays describing the inscrutable Chinese opium addicts, but few mentioning the disgusting greediness of those imperialists who, used guns and canons to force China’s door open to opium; (let alone mentioning that East Indian Company, the opium manufacturer, was really a Crown property.) c. Growing up in this kind of education, the young people were therefore misinformed or deceived — they subsequently formed a stereotype against the Chinese people.  My teacher disagreed with me.  Here, in Scotland, I found another supporting example for my argument.

It was a beautiful evening: Prices Street was the most beautiful street in Edinburgh; Edinburgh Castle was the grandest castle in Scotland.  In addition, the sky was clear and the temperature was slightly cool and the breeze carried aromatic fragrance from the garden.  Two girls walked to us, asked if we could take them to a place to smoke together.  My company said: No, I can’t.  I have no place, sorry.

My next stop was Warrington, England, where my friend David Hoult and his family resided.  Heading south on the train, I was amazed by the passing by scenery: the hilly landscape was smoothly covered with endless fresh meadows.  On top of the green, there were relaxed and undisturbed white lambs here and there to be seen.  I expected that the scenery would be different once the train reached England.  So I asked a passenger when we would be in England.  He said that we were already in England.  So it seemed to me that the two countries at least had two things in common: the meadow and the lamb.  The passenger’s name was Malcolm, the same as that of a character in Kingsley Amis’ book, The Old Devil.  Malcolm almost jumped out off his seat when he knew that I was from Toronto, “I’m flying over there tomorrow, for a three-month medical training in St. Joseph’s Hospital!”  He wanted to meet me in Toronto, “I know nobody there,” he said.  I gave him my telephone number and asked him to phone me once I got back to Toronto.

On that Friday evening of September the 11th, the train took me to Warrington station.  I phoned David.  He drove his car to pick me up.  Having become acquainted in Canada, sharing Dim Sum and Barbecue in Toronto last year, and writing to each other in the last 14 months, We were glad to see each other again, now in England. 

He said that his son Michael had waited for me for several hours at the bus station for when I was in London I had told them that I was going to travel by bus.  Unfortunately I changed my mind after I met Sandy.  David told me that he phoned me back to the public telephone which I used to phone him.  But I had already left to see the musical play, Miss Saigon.  Nevertheless, he asked someone to write down a message and tape it on the telephone.  However, I never came back to that phone booth again.  Well, a time-consuming wait and a costly long distance message explicitly exhibited the warmness of this English family.  Their friendship warmed my heart instantly.
“Have you had a good journey so far?  Everything went well?”
“Yes.”  I paused, “Except at Heathrow Airport.  The customs officer questioned me too much.”
“What happened?”
I recounted the story.
“You probably thought that you were entering a police state.  It’s not a pleasant start for a holiday, is it?”
“No, It’s not.  I was almost depressed…but I gradually became happier.  People were nice.  Sometimes they would walk me a short distance to make sure that I got the correct direction.”  I told him that in Glasgow when Sandy and I were looking at our map on the pavement, a gentlemen walked over to help us.  He bowed, “Excuse me.  May I be of any help?”  After he told us the direction and we gratefully thanked him, he solemnly bowed again, “You are welcome.”
He must have thought that we were Japanese!

Soon we arrived at David’s home.  It’s a neatly decorated house situated between the well-kept front yard and the perfectly arranged back yard.  David’s wife Beryl and their children Michael, Rachael and Kay were expecting my arrival.  They told me that Kay was leaving For France in a couple of days; Rachael was working in a kindergarten which was part of her school assignment for the summer;  Michael was working in a bowling club and would enrol in a university in the fall.  Beryl still worked in the house but might look for a part-time job.  David continued to be hard working in his company.  They were a family of perfect harmony and great hospitality.  We planned that in the next two days we would drive to Chester, Wales and The Lake District, to see the parts that required a car to tour efficiently.

On the main street of Chester, we saw groups of women in clogs dancing with a company of country music, very traditional.  David pointed out to me one unique thing about the shops on the first floor (I mean the second floor).  There was a side walk in front of them.  We walked along the side walk, looking to one side we saw shops like Jacob and Chanel, looking to the other side, we saw the traffic down below on the street.  Another specialty of the city was its surrounding city wall.  It was originally built by the Romans.  We strolled on top of the wall, spotted a few other vestiges of Roman stone constructions.  Chester offered me some insight to its culture and history.

After the tour of Chester we drove to Wales.  As we approached it, we saw the road directions starting to appear in two languages: English on top and Welsh at the bottom.  The further we went in, the more Welsh started to appear on top of English.  It seemed to us that these two languages were so different that there was no similarity between them. 

Welsh people had always struggled hard to preserve their language and culture.  They didn’t like to be influenced by the English.  I recalled a scene in Kingsley Amis’ book, The Old Devils, when a couple of English youths walked into a Welsh club, the whole club became silent instantly.  They were not welcomed and were made to leave by the old Welsh folks there.  This kind of enmity fascinated me.  Now I was in Wales.  In the parking lots, in the streets and in the shops I heard people talking to each other in Welsh in a remarkable natural manner.  The signs for the street, the shops and even the toilets were all Welsh.  My friends and I did not venture into a Welsh pub.  So I didn’t know how they would treat us.  At Caernarfon Castle, where the Investiture of HRH Prince Charles as Prince of Wales took place, I bought myself a souvenir, a T-shirt with the print of the longest word in the world: LLANFAIRPWLLGWYNGYLLGOGERYCHWYRNCROBWLLLLANDYSLLIOGOGOGOGH.  It’s the name of a village’s train station.  Upon my request, the friendly sales-girl read it aloud for me.  It took so long that I was amazed that she didn’t take a breath in between.

We drove along the coast of North and Mid Wales.  The scenery was extraordinary.  On our right hand side were the infinite sea and sky.  On our left hand side were hills and cliffs.  In one section of the cliffs, we saw many young people practising cliff-climbing.  Their sweaty muscles were shinning with reflected sun rays.  Their wet hair was dancing amid the ocean wind.  What a composition of nature and human strength.
We stopped at Llandudno and had a picnic at a vantage point above the beach.  Beryl brought us very good sandwiches.  The tea and coffee were still hot.  It was an English tradition to have a picnic on an outing.  I also enjoyed the picnic because it created a family atmosphere.

The next day, Sunday, we drove to the Lake District.  This countryside, with its pristine valleys and lakes, was probably the most charming one I had ever seen.  We drove from one village to another.  And as usual, we stopped over for the morning tea and the afternoon tea — an English tradition.  That day, David spotted a restaurant which displayed a Chinese character “tea” in front of the house.  We went in but found out from the caterer that it was meant to be in Japanese only to attract the Japanese tourists.  Beatrix Potter had this village featured in her famous tales such as “Tale of Tom Kitten”.  Since these tales were popular in Japan, Japanese tourists flocked over here in bus loads every year. 

I bought a postcard of the restaurant.  Its cover picture was the outlook of the restaurant.  Later, I found almost every restaurant and every gift shop had its own postcard.  The villages constituted touring sites, museums, restaurants, gift shops, bed & breakfast cottages.  I didn’t see any real villagers or farmers there.  Where had they gone?  They had disappeared.  So had the farming production.  The new villagers made their livings not through cultivating the land, but by serving the tourists, many of them coming from overseas.

Here I found a successful tourist industry.  Here, one could enjoy the stunning nature in peace, and appreciate its richness of culture, for this was the place where Beatrix Potter and William Wordsworth had lived.  I had read the literary allusion of “lonely as a cloud” before.  Now here I could be persuaded that at the very spot where I was standing underneath this very tree and beside this lake, was the very place a century before when William Wordsworth wrote his poem:
I wondered lonely as a cloud.
That floats on high o’er vales and hills.
When all at once I saw a cloud.
A host, of golden daffodils:
Beside the lake, beneath the trees.
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

My tour of The Lake District was just like a beautiful poetic experience.

Monday I bowled and played a space war game with Michael and two of his friends.  The space war game was quite exiting. We were equipped with laser guns, running around the walls and castles, searching for each other to shoot.  On our way home, we passed by a mine site.  It was already closed, Michael told me.  Although I only had a glimpse of the silent steel girders, I had some deep thoughts about them afterwards.

The next day, I bade farewell to the Holts.  We were travellers who met and parted and our friendship grew from these kinds of joyful moments.  In the English tradition, Beryl packed a bag of sandwiches and fruits for my lunch on the train, heading to Oxford.

When I was in high school in China, I heard of Oxford University.  To me, academically, it was a prestigious holy place.  Here as I saw it myself, overall, the campus was extremely beautiful: exquisite arrangement of lawns, gardens, pavements and historical buildings with elegant architecture.  Among all its colleges, I was deeply impressed by the most majestic one — Christ Church.

In its splendid college chapel, which was also the only college chapel in the world designated as a Cathedral, I met an enthusiastic lady who told me the following interesting information about Christ Church.  Christ Church was founded in 1525 as a conservative college.  Later in 1546 it was refunded by Henry VIII as a college of liberal colour, where literature and science, as well as Biblical studies, were also emphasized.  (Henry VIII also founded the Protestant Church, deviating from the traditional value of the Roman Catholic Church, so that he could justifiably divorce and remarry.)  Christ Church still kept its famous tutoring educational method: a teacher lectured only to one or two students at a time.  This kind of education ensures high quality and high cost too.  Fortunately, nowadays a poor student could also enter Oxford University upon academic excellence, for the tuition fee could be subsidized by the county where the student resided.  Things had been changing in the world.  The educational systems had become more fair and more accessible to ordinary people: and this kind of change must have helped Oxford University to continue to produce many prominent figures, including more than a dozen Prime Ministers, with the latest one being Prime Minister Thatcher.

Leaving Oxford, I went to London to finish up my trip.  Now I wasn’t going to visit the historic sites any more.  Instead, I went to the east end and the west end of London, searching for the life of some ordinary Londoners.  I saw the poor area where grass grew high to the waist in front of shabby houses.  I saw some comparatively affluent neighbourhoods but their lawns were not bigger nor nicer than those on the ordinary streets in Toronto.  It was around noon on a working weekday.  Yet there were so many cars parked in front of those closely aligned houses.  On one street, I found that one fifth of the cars had spider webs hanging between the front mirrors and the front doors, revealing that they hadn’t been driven for a long time.  I supposed some of the cars’ owners were unemployed.  I also found that the price for a McDonald’s hamburger was nearly double the price of that in Toronto.  I thought of the deserted coal mines, the non-farming villages and the most recently devalued British currency after it was forced out of the European Monetary System.  Depressingly, I saw a gloomy economic future for the British people.
 
When the evening came, I found myself at a corner outside Harrods, a shopping mecca of the world.  I was looking at the map to identify a bus route.  A middle aged Englishman in suit and tie approached me.  He claimed to be from Hampshire and had a beautiful house only for himself and he was a medical doctor and he had just come back to England after attending a professional conference in Europe.
“I lost my luggage, briefcase, wallet and everything else at Heathrow Airport.  Now I need some money to buy a ticket to go home.  Unfortunately the banks are closed now.  If you can tell me your credit card number, I assure you that you will get your money back tomorrow from my bank account.”  He spoke in an elegant southern accent. 
I almost believed him immediately.  But I lied, ” I’m sorry for your situation.  However, I don’t have a credit card.  I can only lend you a few pounds for you to stay in a youth hustle tonight.  Then tomorrow you can get your money from your bank.”  I did have a credit card.
“I really have to go home tonight, you see.  I have such a nice house there.  I am afraid that someone would take this opportunity to break in.”  He still spoke in a charming tone.
That’s bull shit, I told myself.  If he was so much afraid of his house being broken into, he should have never went to Europe.  “I can’t help,” I determined.
“Thanks anyway,” he waved a goodbye to me.
I just stood there, perplexed, recalling a scene in a Mcdonald’s Restaurant the second day I arrived in London.  There I saw a handsome young man, in clean suit and tie, carring a coat on his right arm.  The coat, looked very tourist and not quite clean, it really didn’t match his appearance.  He sat at a table alone and started to empty the pockets of the coat.  Cards and money were transferred to his briefcase which matched his attire fine.  When his hand pulled out off the last pocket, he mischievously grinned; he found coins in his palm.  He seemed to be saying to himself,”Oh, what a surprise.  Some coins!”  He then put them into his own pocket.  There were many people sitting around, but no one seemed to have noticed his strange behaviour.  They all appeared undisturbed.

This was recession time.  Although there were fewer beggars on the streets in London than in Toronto, there were fewer swindlers in Toronto than in London.  Torontonian beggars, by and large, tried to make honest money and not hurt other innocent people.

I discovered that Britain was a country full of ethnic conflicts.  On the train from Glasgow to Edinburgh, a Scottish lady told me that she was a member of a new fast growing organization, which sought an independent Scottish Parliament.  Later in Edinburgh Castle, I talked with a touring guide about this issue.  He admitted that he too was a member of this organization.  He believed that most of the Scottish people wanted to govern their own country.  It’s a movement.  In Wales, the determination of Welsh people to preserve their language and culture was apparent.  In terms of bilingualism, there was an analogy between Wales in Britain and Quebec in Canada.  The Irish people rebelling against the English rule had been long and known.  IRA’s bomb scare was just a daily experience in London.  Signs like these were seen everywhere: Do not leave your parcel unattended;  If you see an unattended parcel, don’t touch it;  Report to police when you see a suspicious parcel left in a place for a long time.  I did experience a real bomb scare.  One afternoon, I was heading to Covent Garden.  Suddenly the traffic was blocked.  I dared to walk forward to find out what was going on.  I found a whole block was emptied and sealed by the police.  On the street, several police men were confining a suspect on the ground and a tiny white dog was sniffing around to detect the bomb.  The word of IRA was whispered around.   It seemed to me that the Scottish, Welsh and Irish people all resented the English ruling their countries.  British people: they probably disliked each other.

On the evening before my returning to Canada, I wandered on the Westminster Bridge crossing River Thames, looking at the beautiful architecture of the Houses of Parliament which lie along the river bank, and the famous Big Ben which stands besides the Houses of Parliament: their glowing lights were reflected on the water surface, transferred into millions of glittering stars, which were carried by the floating waves along the River Thames.  I was rejuvenated and felt the reward of all the efforts that I had made for this trip.

On the morning of September 18, at Heathrow Airport, I queued for boarding the plane.  When I handed in my passport, I thought this time it would be easy, for I was not entering but leaving.  No way.  I was asked to step aside to wait until my passport was carefully examined and most of the passengers had walked by me and boarded the plane.  Some of them casted curious looks at me. 

Several hours later, I was queuing to get through the customs at Pearson International Airport in Toronto.  This time I was really nervous, for no logical reason.  The Canadian customs officer, only had a quick look at my passport and my permanent residence certificate, and he let me through without any question.  Instantly, I felt the warmness that Canada had delivered to me.

I felt home.

 

Xiaoping Li
75 Salem Ave.
Toronto, Ont.
Canada M6H 3C2

July 4, 1993