There is a tiny temple full of worshippers in the alleys of the Da Guan Yuan. They are dressed in black robes chanting from green paper books. The monks are in yellow robes and beat out the cadence of the mantra on a block amid clouds of sandalwood incense.

This temple is not like so many temples in China… a place to visit to pray for money… a son… or a new house. It is a place of devotion and prayer… a place I found just by accident… this place of Silk Road arrivals and departures at one dusty caravanserai after another as Buddhism made its way to China from the nomads of the grasslands… and before that India and the Ganges. It is a place of Guanyin, the Boddhisatva of Mercy… a place of time standing still and of time passing… the commonality of the human condition from then to now… a path through pain and sorrow, anguish and loss… a place of prayer that realizes that hope has little to do with the value of life. I can see this look on some who are chanting from the little green books. I know the same look is on my face in this China of diminishing days.

I have been drinking coffee in the common, Western fast food place on the street side of the Da Guan Yuan. Christmas carols play in the background. They are songs that neither belong West nor East any longer. They are just carols. They are just songs. They are sung just because it is December… a kind of suspension in winter when the gentle passing of one day into another is jolted into rush and panic… the celebration of religious fervor that can crash into days of material and gastronomic glut if one should not take care.

What can be said of this time except that it is the end of how we count years. It is cold this time of year. Sometimes there is snow. There are oranges. Patient farmers sell them out of carts. They breathe frozen clouds of misty breath and wear hand knit long johns under their clothes and hats with ear flaps lined with fake fur. I see the underwear poking out of pants tops and for sale in the markets. Sometimes they are green. Sometimes they are orange. It is December… the time that these songs are sung… the time of oranges… the time of rush and panic and the inherent possibility of stale habit. Maybe there will be snow.

I am drinking the coffee in the place where there are these songs that are played in December. I am looking out of the window. I see nothing in particular. You may find this moment sad. It is not a sad moment. It is a calm moment… another moment that expects nothing of me. I taste my coffee. It is not the best of quality, but it is hot, and it is coffee. It has that fresh coffee smell. I sink down into myself. Thoughts come… thoughts go like snow flakes that touch the ground and melt. People pass by. There are feelings deep inside of me, but there are no thoughts that stick or cling.

I’ve come to the Da Guan Yuan to buy a “Bai Jia Xing”… the One Hundred Old Names of China engraved on a jade scroll… those names of people who came from the tilled earth throughout the history of this country… those barely noticed or considered names of real people who still till the earth until their backs are bent and broken… their hands gnarled… fingernails and deep folds in their faces permanently etched with dust.

Those names: Zhang and Chen, Wang and Guo… Zhao and Xia. The heritage of those names seem so at odds with New China… yet an old China is there in all of them. Ask any of them. There will be old songs sung from the countryside… there will be folklore… there will be a tradition about what to eat for conditions that ail the body… the mind. There is something else about me, too. Scratch beneath the surface of my skin… there it will be… China… China… just China.

I visit with the shop owner who digs around in the dusty case for the scroll… tries to sell me a jade calligraphy brush as well. I am tempted, but I pass back into the temple instead with my delicate scroll tucked into a red silk bag with a colorful drawstring.  I float in the gentle abyss of the Da Guan Yuan as if it has no entrance, no exit… as people pray their prayers to Guanyin amid the clouds of sandalwood incense and the sound of the block. I pray my prayers of mercy for all those I love… mercy for those I do not know… and pray for mercy… mercy just for me.

I have returned to the Da Guan Yuan over and over this year. It is the kind of tattered, anonymous place I seek… the little alleys… the peeling paint… the careless shops selling incense and jade amulets. It is how I happened along the Bai Jia Xing… and then there were those cups of coffee in a place that doesn’t seem to fit if one would care to comment about the encroachment of the East upon the West and the West upon the East.

A Taoist monk in black clothing passes by. His look penetrates me. I am a little shy and lower my eyes. Later, I will regret that I haven’t stopped to return the look in his eyes to confirm the infinite in this passing moment of understanding between us. I want to buy the navel oranges from the farmer’s cart… but when I come out onto the street, he has moved on… and soon, instead, I am moving on, too, in a cab down a busy street… the driver singing an old folk melody under his breath. I have not yet left the monks in yellow… the clouds of sandalwood incense… the beating of the cadence… the sharp, hollow sound of the block… the green paper book of mantras… the Taoist monk… the coffee in that Western place with those December songs played in the background. They are all a swirling presence around me like fingers of the smoky incense that slowly dissipate into the air smelling of ever-present lignite…and, I’m conscious of the taxi driver’s song… as if mercy in some small, barely noticed way has already followed me.