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Listen closely and you can hear the city’s special language

By David Alvarez Galvis | June 16, 2016, Thursday | Online Edition

THERE are two versions of this city. There is, of course, the Hangzhou of postcards and picture books: The city that never disappoints if what you are looking for is a gorgeous sunset at the lakeshore and the friendly smiles of its inhabitants. The one that never shies away from revealing its most apparent treasures: temples, bridges, pagodas, bustling alleys and imposing city gates that are always reliable, their presence a fixture, standing as if from time immemorial.

This, indeed, is Hangzhou. But there is also a hidden, secret side of the city that exists as if concealed under an otherworldly haze and which can only be described with a very special language. It is, nonetheless, a language that not everyone can easily recognize: It is not Chinese, of course, nor is it any of the dialects spoken in the many regions, provinces, counties and cities that compose the Chinese landscape. It is definitely not English, Korean or any other of the numerous foreign languages that can be heard in the busy streets of multicultural Hangzhou. It does not have an alphabet or a grammar. It cannot be taught or explained easily because it is something far less obvious than a set of characters and yet immensely more precise and full of meaning than any other form of speech or script could ever wish to be.

You can find it carved in the walls of the shrines, on the beautifully crafted tiles of the sidewalks and bridges that depict dragons, lions, pavilions and lotuses; on the golden leaves that fall over the sidewalks when the fall begins; you can see it scratched on the surfaces of the stalks in bamboo forests, on the movements of those who dance and sing in parks.

You can also see it on the foggy windows during the winter and on the whitened walls hit by the blazing sun during the hottest months of the long summer. If you pay attention, it is also visible on the steam that arises from the front of a tiny, friendly shop and on the miniscule lichens attached to a carved Chinese character on a gate column. It is a collectively sewn embroidery, multicolored and in constant change, spread all over, always weaving and unweaving itself.

But mainly you can see this language as it is sketched through the patterns of those who go from place to place to work, learn, imagine, love, dream and share, leaving short-lived footprints that are nonetheless deeper than it would seem. You can see it everywhere if you have also walked, dreamed and loved in this city because it is a language that can be recognized only by those who have again and again walked its streets, touched its walls and disclosed both their happiness and troubles to them. Because it is its citizens which have written it: their breath, their hopes, their collective dreams are what gave its shape to every single nook and cranny on the walls, they are what have made this a breathing city that whispers a secret language of its own to its dwellers.

Hangzhou


 

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