China, 1982 Our genial conspiracy needed no words. The sleeping tangle of boys was as funny to their companions as it was to me. In 1982, I traveled to China—then, officially open only to government-sanctioned group tours. I had bought a black market visa at a grimy office on an upper floor in Chungking Mansions, a crumbling Hong Kong fire-hazard warren of restaurants, travel agencies, rooming houses; massage parlors, and bizarrely, an outpost of China’s Department of Agriculture.
Then, with an officially stamped passport in hand, Jay and I spent three months wandering, mostly by train, in a large ambling circle that included Guangzhou, Guilin, Kunming, Xian, Wuhan, Mongolia, Shanghai, Beijing, and myriad tiny towns between. We occasionally gathered crowds, still in Mao green and blue, who gawked unabashedly. Without language, we were constantly bewildered, but people, like these cheerful guys, found ways to communicate and make human contact.
India, 1986 India's colors and smells, exuberant celebrations, its in-your-face misery and pain hit with raw emotional force. I had boarded a plane in 20th century New York City to land in another time. It was night in the small southern Indian city, and as I rode a bicycle cab from the airport down streets lined with kerosene-lit night stalls, centuries fell away.
Amid the spectacles of vibrant life, sick and dying people populated the streets. The scent of jasmine garlands overlay the pungency of excrement. The difference between my wealth and their poverty, my privilege and their paucity of choices was appalling, unforgivable, shameful. Still, I took pictures.
In Mexico, I once haggled with an impoverished child over pennies for the small crafts she made—because I did not want to seem a sucker. I still have the little clay figures and can’t bear to look at them. Another time in India, I slipped $20 worth of rupees into the hand of a man seemingly near death and moved on.
If I have learned anything, it is that the words “quaint” and “exotic” are laced with poison.