#2 The Early Interest – China

I can vividly remember being fascinated by China, or the idea of China, from an early age. Perhaps age 6 or so. I can remember seeing images of the Terracotta warriors, perhaps in an edition of the National Geographic that my parents subscribed to. I was drawn to China. As early as 10 I went to the library and got out books about the Chinese language. Or the I Ching.

I don’t have any explanation for this. I now tend to think that it was the remnants of a past life, holding over into this one. What other reason for a white, Canadian child to be so drawn to images and ideas from pre-revolutionary China?

I was also deeply attracted to Asian women. This also was a theme that started early – even as early as 9 or 10. I remember seeing images of Asian women in magazines. I can vividly recall these images, even 40 years later (and never having seen some of them again). When I first found some adult magazines – perhaps I was 11 at the time – the only images I ripped out and secreted away in my room were those of Asian women.

Again, what reasoning behind this?

I cannot say that I studied the Chinese language, or the I Ching, at that early age. But I still have pages of a notebook from that time where I make furtive attempts to drawn Kanji characters. Or I have a small set of coins that I would use to toss the I Ching.

One thing that was impressed on me was that I shouldn’t seek help for things like this. I remember wanting to learn Chinese but my parents telling me not to ask at the library because they might think it strange. It was around this China-obsession of mine that I first had this concept of ‘don’t talk about yourself or your feelings to strangers’ drilled into me by my parents. Everyone likes to blame their parents for something, and as I said before I had a pretty idyllic childhood. If there is something I can try to lay at the feet of my parents it is this fear – there can be no other word for it – of exposing your true self to others. Or for asking for help, because isn’t that also exposing yourself – your inadequacy – to others?

Having now read some about past lives I have seen that past lives do manifest themselves in children, before this current incarnation has been fully stamped onto their personality.

Also, as with other past life ‘echoes’ that I hope I will remember to talk about in these pages, I feel that my incarnation in China was as a woman, or a female. I can picture myself as a Chinese girl. Is that why I felt such an attraction – before the hormones of adolescence kicked in – to Chinese women? Did I identify with them? In some sense yes, I think I did. Thinking back to that time it wasn’t a sexual attraction it was almost a feeling of comfort that I got from those images.

I grew up in a very white city and went to a very white school. For a couple of years there were 2 Asian girls in my elementary school year. I had no personal exposure to other races, cultures or ideas. My parents were very isolationist, so we rarely had visitors to our home and if we did I cannot remember a single person of color coming into our house (until my Chinese girlfriend arrived on the scene a decade later).

Oh for the things we wish we could have done differently. I could have started on this path back then. I wish I had pursued learning more about Chinese or Asian culture. I now live in Japan…but I have never been someone attracted to modern Asian cultures. I don’t read manga or watch Anime. But nor am I a fetishist for ancient Japanese ways. What I am desperately curious about is the daily life of Japanese people over 100 years ago. Again I feel a strong connection. Now is not the time to try to explore those ideas about China for sure, but I feel a similar (though admittedly not as strong) pull to that time here in Japan.

Over 40 years on I am once again pursuing that first interest in Asian writing, daily life and women! I am now in a post-sexual phase, so it is somewhat ironic! I was not here during the active years…but still I am drawn.

Ok, a little rambling here. These are stream of consciousness entries…I just start with a vague idea and certainly without a plan.

This post was to be about my time at age 10. Next I will move forwards a little!