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Zeynep
Oral's Books:

The dragon seemed to get angry at my last words and this did
not suit my interest. If it got angry and shook, it would be easy
for me to fall over my head and wake up from my dream. I changed
the conversation right away:
Think about tea! We produced tea first! You didn't forget that we
presented the pleasure of tea, the tea drinking habit to the world,
right? We were the ones who had this pleasure on the earth first,
remember?
Of course I do, muttered the dragon angrily and we continued on
our way.
I was in China in my dream last night. I was flying and flying on
the top of my dragon.
Nazim Hikmet* was whispering in my ear:
"If half of my heart is here, doctor, the other half is in
China,With the army flowing toward the Yellow River…
I am calling out continuously to Nazim to hold my hand so I can
reunite him with the other half of his heart; but Nazim doesn't
hear me.
I was about to say, "Here is my heart, a red apple...",
the apple falls from my hand, smashes into bits and spreads out
on a corner of China.
Desperately, I set out myself on the roads to pick up the pieces.
I traveled over hill and dale; I was going and going…
I traveled over the hill and dale, and came to an island.
I looked right, I looked left, on the island where I arrived, I
looked front and back, and I looked to the sky. What kind of China
was this?
I cried out that it did not look like China.
Apparently, this was Hong Kong. That is to say a little bit Great
Britain's and a little bit Great China Kingdom's colony… In the
beginning of the dream it was an English government; at the end
of the dream, it was Chinese. Nothing had changed in between.
Rough and tumble skyscrapers, blinking lights, neon lights, neon
lights, neon lights, umbrellas, fans, lanterns, ornaments, decorations,
red, yellow, green, red again, yellow again, purple blue, orange
lilac, red again, yellow again, markets, shops, super markets, shops,
supermarkets, joint stock companies, limited companies, banks, commercial
adds…
Come on to the night market, the people's market, the flea market…Consume,
consume, consume… Get on the train, get on the metro, get on the
cable car, and pass through the tube underneath the city. Look from
the mainland to the island, and then look from the island to the
mainland… Find the black card and get the money! Jump on a sampan
and go to the surrounding islands. Have a drink at the "Regent,"
have a cup of tea at the "Peninsula." (Especially if you
don't do the last one, you can't be a western aristocrat!)… And
also: Movie theaters, movie theaters and movie theaters! Long live
Hong Kong who invented Kung Fu! Bruce Lee, we love you!
Even if we live in the skyscrapers or in the boats that are sailing
or stuck in the swamps, whether we are rich or poor, we love you
Bruce Lee!
Oh nooo! Even if I said I was dreaming, I can't take this much.
I got on a train, and whether I went a short distance or not, I
arrived in Shenzen, the first Chinese "private economic region"
established with Hong Kong investment. I saw again the skyscrapers,
skyscrapers, skyscrapers, factories, factories and also, graveyards,
graveyards.
What was non-existence doing in all this existence?
The
dragon I abandoned on the road stretched its head through the train
window and explained:
Land
is limited in Hong Kong, and the population is very dense; land
is very very expensive in Hong Kong. There is not even an inch of
space where you can bury your dead. Even if you find one, for a
fortune, after five years, you have to get his/her bones out of
the graveyard in order to open up a place for another dead person.
For that reason, Hong Kong residents bury their dead either in Shenzen
or Guangzhou.
While
the black train continued on its way and the graveyards were left
behind, I saw that we were in Guangzhou… Guangzhou, that is to say,
by its well-known name, Canton… Once upon a time an important harbor,
the leading hero of the "Opium Wars" … "Stop,"
I told the train, and threw myself out. As soon as I got out an
army of bicycles, an army of motorcycles, passed in front and behind
me… While they were hovering around me, I was paralyzed in the bus
and truck traffic…
While
trying to run away from the traffic chaos, I found myself in another
chaos, in an architectural chaos. While trying to run away from
the spewing black smoke of the factories, I got stuck in the net
of skyscrapers. Trying to get away from the skyscrapers, I bumped
into one-story, curly edge-roofed, bulrush court yarded houses…
Houses,
factories, skyscrapers are full of people. People are full of hope.
The surroundings are full of anxiety. Who says that the population
of the city is six million! If you ask me, it is 606 million! Here
you go, that is another chaos!
I said
to myself, three scenes of chaos are too much for me; let me go
to a docile stream… I arrived at a river, named "Pearl River,"
that divides the city into two in the middle with a slight twist
and connects it with the South China Sea… As soon as I arrived,
I saw that there was no docility; the river bubbled up noisily.
It bubbled with small and big ships, with sampans, traditional red
sail boats, white sail boats, bubbled with engine boats, giant barges
and all kinds of boats. But most of all, it bubbled up with fish.
From
each boat a different sound, a different noise was heard.
I said
to myself, let me plug my ears, but I saw that my ears were going
away. They were going, caught in the flow of the Pearl River. Giddap!
My eyes, nose, mouth were following after my ears, too… There was
nothing to do but follow them.
I made
a soup of the sea, and ladled it out of the boat. I ate all the
fish I caught. Soups like rivers, pilafs like hills… I ate them,
too. Lobsters as big as my arms, octopuses as big as my hands… I
ate them too…
For good reason "Canton Cuisine" is world famous… I ate
and ate continuously.
After eating that much there was no way to feel sleepy. I woke up,
of course.
The natural environment has not changed all the way from Hong Kong
to Canton, infinite tea fields, olive trees have not changed, building
styles have not changed, people have not changed. What changed were
the writings. From then on you could not come across any English
or Latin letters at all. Known indicators had vanished.
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