Rebecca Henderson

Once again I’ve entered into a new phase on my current work-in-progress, West Texas Interlude. Last week I made a firm step out of the research phase and into the draft writing season of the project.

It was almost two years ago that I began this phase on my first book, a middle grade novel based on the experiences of my friend Lydia in Yunnan. I’m finding, though, that this time around the writing phase is different. For one thing, I’ve been working full-time as a writer for two years now, and the day-in-day-out diligence of a writing schedule is perfectly normal to me now. When I first started writing the novel, I was staying with good friends who I would just as soon have sat around drinking coffee with all morning than hole up in their basement to type on my laptop. It was hard making myself work. Somehow, I don’t know how, that book was eventually written.

The other major difference I’ve noticed so far in writing West Texas Interlude is that the words come much easier because they are in my own voice. The novel was written from the perspective of a 13-year-old Bulang girl. I, as you might be aware, am not a 13-year-old Bulang girl. West Texas Interlude is a non-fiction project based on my own experiences and my family’s stories. It’s just me, writing, talking to my readers (whoever they may end up being). Kind of the same way I write these blog posts. I’ve been developing my voice and style long enough now that I don’t have to work to conjure them up. It’s a wonderfully refreshing feeling, fingertips to the keyboard, words popping up on the screen.

Just as I had the hospitality of several friends in Alaska and Fort Worth to give me living and office space while writing the novel, I have friends here in the Tri-Cities who have opened their homes to me to use while they are at their day jobs. I leave my apartment by 8am each day and head over to my friends’ house to set up my mobile writing office. It’s a great set-up. More so than when I’m working on freelance projects and magazine articles, I need that separation of space from my living quarters to help me feel like, ok, I’m at work now, time to get busy.

In addition to writing West Texas Interlude in the mornings, I’m also working on a new project in the afternoons. I won’t divulge all the details about it yet, but I’ll give you a photo hint from a previous post — way previous, like May 2009 previous.

Giving up my little red truck and changing my car personality was hard, and now I’m dealing with switching to a new passport.  More literally than with my truck, that passport defines my identity, at least in the computers of national governments around the globe.

In early April 2001, a pickpocket took my wallet while I was waiting for a city bus in Kunming, China.  I lost my passport, two U.S. bank cards, my Bank of China deposit book, a full card worth of pre-paid milk cartons from my corner store, and about $7 worth of Chinese currency.  One very disappointed petty thief went home that evening to find such a small amount of cash in my wallet, I’m sure.  The cards were useless to him, and I quickly notified the Chinese bank to put a hold on my local account.

The greatest trouble, of course, came from the stolen passport.  I had to file numerous police reports in Kunming, post a notice in the local paper (I love Chinese bureaucracy, where I have to pay for a public announcement that I’m the victim of a crime), fly to Sichuan to the American consulate, and apply for a new passport.  This was five months before U.S. travel security was forever tightened, and I was given a very unofficial looking passport with handwritten information in the front and my oh-so-very-not-digital photo glued to the third page.  It was valid for ten years, though, so I continued to travel with it as long as I could, to save myself the time, energy, and money of getting a new digital passport book. Passports are expensive, darn it—I paid for ten years, I want my ten years.

The layout of the pages in that special passport of mine is unlike the standard issue and caused wrinkled brows and phone calls to supervisors just about every time I went through immigration at an airport or border crossing (and if you’ve read my blogs from China, you’ll know this was often).  Towards the end of my time in Asia, the official seal on the front cover was completely worn off, and I’d have to announce my U.S. citizenship to the officers as I went through the line, rather than just hand them an easily identifiable blue passport with gold embossed eagle.  Officials in Asia would repeatedly tell me, “You should get a new passport, this one’s too old.”  But no U.S. official ever said a word about it, so I figured that if my own country doesn’t have a problem with it, I’m not going to worry about the guy sitting in a hut on the border of Thailand and Laos.

But when I came back home this spring, I had no excuse for not sending it in.  I had plenty of time to wait the four to six weeks for it to be processed and returned, and I wouldn’t lose a current Chinese visa by getting a new book.  It was time to advance to the digital passport age.

The new passport is just one more tangible way that my identity is being redefined at this point in my life—and not just because in the new photo I have long curly hair instead of the short spiky cut I wore during my student days in Kunming.  A well-used, nine-year-old passport carries with it documentation of nine years of trips.  Nine years of memories.  Nine years of experience.  Twice I had a new set of pages added to that passport because I’d run out of space for visas—I have to admit, my pride is just the tiniest bit pricked by trading in that thick book for a thin one.  When you’re standing in an immigration line in Asia with a passport as worn and fat as mine, everyone around you knows that you’re no inexperienced traveler.  You’ve been around a while.  You’ve been in and out of this country and others, who knows how many all together.  Now I’ll be back to that same flimsy, empty document I had when I started.

When that first passport was stolen in 2001, I only lost a couple of Chinese and Indian visas.  This time I’m losing fourteen Chinese student, tourist, and employment visas.  Seven entries to Laos for visa runs and vacation.  Innumerable stamps into Thailand, from four ports of entry.  Stamps for Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, South Korea.  Full pages for Vietnam and Myanmar. Getting this new one could easily seem like trading in my old life of travel for a blank one of no stamps, no history, no stories of hassles and hang-ups represented by the document that I carry.  I’m trying to choose instead to look at the possibilities, the newness and cleanness of this passport, and the future journey its stamps will record.

Around this time last year, I read Twilight, partly because it was recommended by a couple of friends, partly because I wanted to know what all the hoopla was about back in the States. In about 36 hours of a mind-numbing reading binge, I finished it. I skimmed parts of it, I must admit. And I also must admit, I long to have those 36 hours of my life back. But what was done, was done.

The one redeeming thing I took away from that reading experience was the thought, “I could have written something better than that when I was about 14.” I don’t want to get into Stephenie Meyer’s writing abilities or the content of her stories in this blog, but I can’t help but think, surely there are young adult readers in America who are hungry for something better than this.

Two days later, a sage friend of mine who has encouraged me as a closet writer, unaware of my Twilight experience, told me that he thought I should write a book for young girls about Lydia’s life. That’s nice, I thought. If I had an advance check for every time someone told me, “You oughtta write a book,” well, then I’d write a book.

But this time, the idea wouldn’t let me go. For days I was consumed with the nagging question, “If you’re so arrogant as to say you could do a better job than someone who’s a best-selling author, then why don’t you? Why haven’t you?”

Combine this with a promise I made to myself in early 2005. I longed to take the time to develop as a writer, to explore experiences and ideas and stories that were being stockpiled inside me. But I also knew that right then wasn’t the time. I had a different task at hand, one to which I was sure God had led me. I felt deep within me that some time in the next five to ten years, I would take a year off to write, but I needed to be fully focused on working among the B people in the meantime. So, I committed my desire to write into the hands of God, asking Him to make it happen when it was right.

Stay with me here…early 2009, Twilight experience, the idea of writing Lydia’s story for young readers. And I’m four years into a promise to myself that “five to ten years from now I’ll take a year off to write.” Isn’t it clear what’s shaping up here?

I have a one-way ticket to DFW on March 29. After about three months visiting family and friends, I’m starting that year of writing full-time—in a location still being finalized, though I can almost guarantee it will be colder than south Yunnan or Fort Worth.

The counter on my computer tells me that’s only 63 days from now. 63 days to wrap up the past decade of my life, since I first visited China and knew that I would move here within a few months’ time. I’m both excited and apprehensive about what lies ahead (though, honestly, I’m more excited than apprehensive right now). I’m trying to rightly handle the emotions of bringing this chapter of my life to a close, and one way I’m doing that is by compiling a list of ways I’ve seen growth and change in myself over the past few years. Not all of those ways are things that I would care to share through this outlet, but many of them are. As I work through these ideas, I’ll be posting them here. Expect entries ranging from “living as an introvert in a country of 1.3 billion people who are all staring at me right now” to “balancing work and rest” to “learning to cook from scratch.”

I don’t know how often I’ll post—I’m posting this particular entry now to force myself to be accountable to write with some form of regularity over the next several weeks. Though, in reality, saying “force myself” to write makes it sound unenjoyable, and I’m actually quite looking forward to working out these entries.

Next in the “Finishing Well” series:  ”Out of the Limelight“

In the past few weeks my blog has taken the back burner, and without any explanations on my part. I don’t pretend to myself at all that there are great numbers of people anxiously awaiting my next entry—but I do want to acknowledge the four of you reading this right now, to thank you for checking in, and give a bit of an update on where I’ve been and where I’m going.

I didn’t make any posts in December because I spent most of the month away from my computer. A wonderful way to spend a month, I must say. After a few days of meetings (the best I’ve ever attended, I should point out), I traveled in Laos for a couple of weeks with a friend. It was one of those memorable trips in life with one experience after another that I will cherish for years to come—Taking a slow boat down the Mekong for two days and arriving by glorious sunset in Luang Prabang on Christmas Eve (see photo above). Having a Buddhist monk ask us on Christmas about the meaning of the day. Hiking in the jungle for three days, staying in an Akha village that doesn’t have electricity or running water, being given the best food our host family had on such short notice. Touring the countryside by motorbike on a sun-soaked afternoon.

I have these memories, along with some that I will think on and laugh about in years to come even though they weren’t exactly funny at the time. Being ripped off by a tour company with false information on visas and hidden hotel fees. Having our guesthouse owner unexpectedly pack up and go on vacation for a week—with my friend’s laptop locked in storage in the room behind her restaurant. Sitting on the roadside in numerous buses with broken gear shifts, flat tires, and other unexplainable ailments. Awaking in the night in the village because an old man pulled back the covers from my face, just to see what the white lady looks like.

I could easily write full blog entries about each of the memories. But time is short, and ideas for writing abound. One day I’ll flesh out these stories into a book, along with others from the past few years of living and traveling in Asia. One day, when I have the time and an advance check from my (imaginary) publisher.

But that won’t be the first book I write. The first one will be about Lydia, and she and I are working on the research for it now. Think the Little House series meets girl growing up in a village in Yunnan.

So, while we focus on this research, the time I can dedicate to writing for my blog will be limited. I don’t want to give it up completely, but I’m trying to be realistic about what is possible in the time I have.

I recently had a conversation with a supervisor about the peculiarities of interviewing villagers for ethnographic studies. So often the questions that we’re asking people are about things in their culture or religion or even their daily life that they have never really consciously thought about and aren’t quite sure how to express. Sometimes the areas that we as outsiders view as important in the culture aren’t a big deal to those who live it every day, and sometimes there are things going on beneath the surface that just might be the key to our understanding this group of people—if only we knew the right questions to ask to draw that information out.

Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself: I need to find the right questions to ask, and then I’ll start getting all these really informative answers. “Tell me about your culture” isn’t going to cut it. If someone said that to me, where on earth would I begin? And how vastly different would my answer be from that of my sister or my neighbor or anyone else in America?

So I keep asking questions and making notes and trying to put the pieces together into something that makes sense. In that conversation with the supervisor, he warned me about getting answers that just make too much sense, when one person suddenly has the mysterious answer to what has been puzzling you and every other person who has ever tried to learn about this culture.

Basically, people can make stuff up. Sometimes it’s because they are too embarrassed to admit that they don’t know what you’re talking about—seeing your zeal for the research, they figure (wrongly) that an invented answer is more helpful than no answer. There’s always the possibility, too, that you’ve stumbled across an informant who sees this interview as their chance to shine in the realm of fiction. Or, all too often in Yunnan, the suddenly pat answer is a result of Communist redefinition of a minority group, learned by the interviewee in school or while working for a government tourism bureau.

Not a week after I received that warning, I found out that a story a lady had told us about the use of flowers in young girls’ hats at festival time was fabricated. I had really loved that story, and I enjoyed sharing it here on my blog—I was so proud of my Poe allusion in the title, too. But alas, good story that it is, it’s not truly representative of the village culture we’re trying to understand. It doesn’t make the story less entertaining. It just moves it out of the category of ethnographic description.

When I’m back in my own apartment after a trip like this one through Burma, when I’ve rinsed the dust out of my hair and the laundry is out of my backpack and in piles by the porch, ready to be washed, I begin sorting my thoughts and impressions into piles, too. Those that I will share with others through these stories, through online photo albums, through conversations in the days ahead. And those that I will keep and ponder and mull over on my own, letting them soak into the depths of me and become part of how I view and interact with and face the world.

My understanding of myself becomes much clearer when I’m away from my everyday surroundings. The nature of my job for the past few years has involved projects that require intense focus and discipline for a set period of time—usually in the form of compiling, writing, designing, revising, editing. A girl can only take so much sitting behind a computer before her thoughts begin to carry her away. Better to get away of my own accord than to be carried away. By spending time away from home (wherever home is at that moment) I regain clarity of thinking, refocus, and am refreshed to the very core of who Rebecca is.

In new surroundings I am more able to recognize what it is that I value in life, and I can point a finger more definitely to the places inside me that need to change or mature. Sometimes I can do this in a two hour bike ride out to some nearby villages; other times it takes two weeks of busing across Laos. It was by staring at a glacier for several days in Alaska that I was able to comprehend how truly joyful I am to be in my 30s now, something that had escaped me for the entire previous year in Yunnan. And it was sitting under a palm tree in Vietnam, watching a young boy drive a herd of cows across the beach, that I knew the focus of my job needed to change, to become more village-centered, more language-centered. Though I had fretted for months over making this decision, I left Vietnam and returned to work with a sense of both assurance and determination.

I know God hears my prayers from my own couch just as clearly as He does when I’m traveling along the Mekong or looking out a bus window at flooded rice fields. And He does speak to me in the mundanity of answering e-mails and cooking dinner and paying bills. Yet, in the interlude of being somewhere new, somewhere different, even somewhere difficult and unsettling, I have a deeper grasp of who I am and who God is and how it all works in this life that He gives.

In that way, this trip to Burma was no different from others. I had just finished up one major project and need to hunker down and get a couple more wrapped up in the next few months. Being in a new country, talking to folks along the way, helped me think through some ideas that have been on my mind and in my heart for quite some time, and though I didn’t make any life-changing decisions on this trip, the impressions I’ve brought back will simmer and stew and blend themselves into the rest of me in a way that is just as life-changing.

My current Chinese visa requires that I leave the country every 60 days.  No one cares how long I’m out of the country, as long as I leave.  Holders of this type of visa who live in central parts of the country have to make regular trips to Hong Kong.  Living as I do in the most southern reaches of Yunnan, I’m a quick three hour drive from a very open border crossing into Laos.  So, once every two months, I hop in the truck with a fully charged iPod and head down the highway to spend an hour or two eating lunch across the border.

This past spring, a teammate and I were questioned by Chinese immigration officials, both entering and leaving the country, setting our nerves on edge for future visa runs.  On my most recent trip to Laos, I was particularly anxious to avoid a certain official who, in the midst of asking, “Are you working in China?” and “How long do you plan to stay in the country?”—kept sneaking in, “Can I call you in town?  What is your phone number?”  Nowhere on the entry form does it ask for a contact number, and the last thing I need is a border agent calling me at all hours of the night to go karaoke on his weekend off.  I persisted in not telling him by smiling and shaking my head each time he asked, hoping he would assume that meant I didn’t have a phone, praying my phone didn’t ring in my purse while I was standing there.

But I didn’t encounter that official this time around.  Or anyone else who asked me anything.  No buses of tourists from Thailand were crossing at the same time, nor Chinese merchants who run stalls in Lao markets.  The immigration buildings on both sides of the border were oddly silent, and the officials were agreeably sleepy.  Not a single question asked coming or going.  Relief.

Another difference between this trip and earlier ones is the precautions both countries are now taking against swine flu.  A Lao official took my temperature before allowing me to apply to enter his country.  I passed.  Re-entering China, I had to fill out a form declaring myself symptom-free.  The official at that counter became impatient with how long I was taking to check “yes” or “no”—even though I was the only person in the building who wasn’t an employee of the immigration department, and I’m not sure what his rush was to get me through the non-existent line.  While I was trying to figure out if the question was “Do you have these flu symptoms?” (no) or “Are you free of these symptoms?” (yes), he took the pen out of my hand and checked “no” on my behalf.  I’m glad he thought I looked healthy.

The bowl of pho for lunch on the Lao side of the border made the six hours of driving all the more enjoyable.  I go to the same stand every time—where the owners speak to me in Lao, not Chinese.  We can communicate enough for me to order lunch (with beef, not pork) and for them to tell me the price.  I savored my noodles and soup to the background noise of a Thai soap opera on the TV, lingering in this place more foreign to me than China has become.  Afterwards, I walked the 2km back through no-man’s-land to the Chinese side of the border, back to the country that has been my temporary home for the past several years.  Knowing I only have 60 days before needing to leave again increases the sense of temporariness.

After several days on the road, Mom and I enjoyed the near luxury of the lodge where we stayed in the Old Town area of Zhongdian.  Carved wood furnishings, three blankets on my bed at night, stone walkways between buildings with ancient tile roofs—hard to believe I’m in the same province as my town with palm trees where I eat pineapples and mangos for breakfast.  At an altitude of over 10,000 feet, I found myself winded after just one flight of stairs.

The Chinese government has decided to claim that Zhongdian is the fabled location of Shangri-la and officially changed the name of the town to Xiang Ge Li La a few years back for tourism purposes.  It’s the closest Mom or I either one have been to Tibet, and it was fun to experience the differences in food and culture here to other parts of Yunnan.  We enjoyed shopping for scarves, fabric, and coral and turquoise jewelry as gifts.  We visited a nearby temple with a massive prayer wheel, and I pointed out to Mom the major differences I could notice between the Buddhism here and the Theravada Buddhism where I live in the far south.

Next in the “Shangri-La” series:  ”Zhongdian (part 2)“

Sandy left for the States a week earlier than my mother, so we decided to take a trip to the northwest part of the province.  Mom had quite a trip to China this time around—she got to see the Thai and the Tibetan areas of Yunnan and a little in between.

A friend of mine took her parents to hike through Tiger Leaping Gorge a few years back, and after grilling her on the details of their trip and asking bunches of questions about the area on an online travel forum, I asked Mom what she thought about trekking for a couple of days.  My friend assured us Mom would be able to do the hike—if her mother could, so could mine.  I don’t know if my mom took that as a challenge or what, but she told me she was up for it.

Traveling by bus in Yunnan with my mom, I suddenly became aware of how different and how difficult it is to get from place to place.  You buy a ticket for one kind of bus, but end up on another.  You get on a bus for a three hour ride, but there’s nowhere to stow your bags.  You show up in a town you’ve never been to before and just walk around until you find a semi-decent guesthouse.  The sheets on the bed are sketchy, and the pipe under the sink is broken, so water just runs on the floor.  I’m used to all these things and have developed coping mechanisms through the years—but watching my mom try to figure out how to handle each new inconvenience, I was reminded just how much I’ve changed and adapted through my years of living here.

After two long bus rides, we started out walking on the trail through the gorge, along the Yangtze River.  I had convinced Mom of the necessity of packing light, and we each had one backpack, mine bigger and heavier than hers.  The path started out wide and only gently sloping upwards, but within a couple of hours it was too rocky, too steep, and too hot for Mom to continue on.  The Naxi people from the nearby villages capitalize on this as part of their income, and we had men with ponies offering us a ride every few hundred feet.  Mom soldiered on until I finally insisted that she get on a horse; I was imagining how horrible the phone call home to my dad would be if my exhausted and overheated mom stumbled off the trail and into the gorge.

Next in the “Shangri-La” series:  ”Tiger Leaping Gorge (part 2)“

Day two of driving started out much the same way—two hours of DY driving on wide highway, with me taking over as the roads became progressively narrow and tortuous.  None of us had been on the road beyond LC and didn’t know quite what to expect.  I will post DM’s description of the roads to give his perspective of the dangers we faced.  After all my years of traveling Yunnan back roads, I’ve become a bit immune to the perils of the blind curves and unprotected drop-offs—day three was quite a wake-up call for me, but day two was still a sunny, pleasurable drive with an abundance of scenic overlooks as we drove up to the top of a ridge and then followed it for the next couple of hours.  I’m sure I missed some of the best views as I focused on the road, but more than once I found myself looking out the driver’s side window and over the edge of the road, no guard rail, straight down an almost vertical incline for hundreds of feet.  The driver’s seat is not the best vantage point for taking in the surrounding magnificence, but it was breathtaking for me, nonetheless.

Adam described the experience with his typical reticence:  “The mountains are very tall.”  Yes, they are.  I would try from time to time to get him to expound on his feelings and observations on his first long distance road trip, but without much luck.  He did become rather animated, though, when DM asked him to tell some stories in B language (a language DM doesn’t yet understand).  For the next half hour, Adam practiced telling stories while DM nodded and mm-hmmed and encouraged him to continue.  I’m sure it was a nice break for Adam, who spent much of the trip listening to me and the others rattle on in English (a language he doesn’t yet understand) about things like the modern history of Burma.

After several hours of driving up and down, up and down through the mountains, we came to a large river valley, where the road became somewhat flatter, though no less serpentine.  We pulled into town in time for dinner at a decent hour, after breezing through two police checkpoints.  I was slightly disappointed that the police didn’t care to ask what we were doing in the area—I was ready to proudly explain our journey to pick up coffee seedlings to be planted back in Adam’s village.  But the police didn’t even return my smiling “ni hao” through my rolled down window, waving me on without a word.

Next in the “A Different Trip” series:  ”Excerpt from DM”