Picture of a cow on Beijing billboard confuses a Hindu (Travel with MP Prabhakaran)

(This is Chapter 7 from Mr. Prabhakaran’s book, An Indian Goes Around the World – I: Capitalism Comes to Mao’s Mausoleum, which we have been serializing in this space. Chapter 8, “Capitalism Comes to Mao’s Mausoleum,” from which the book gets its title, will appear next week. Read the series every Monday. – Editor)

It was April 2002. I was on a 10-day tour of China, as part of a nine-member group from the United States.

As we came out of the Beijing airport terminal, I noisily inhaled the air, which invited the attention of others in the group. I told them, when they looked at me amusedly, that I was doing in style my first smelling of China. They laughed. I also told them that it was my way of proclaiming to the world that a dream I had been nurturing since childhood – the dream of being in the mythical land of China one day – had at long last materialized. The thrill I felt was oozing out of every pore in my body.

I continued to feel that thrill all through the bus ride from the airport to the hotel, where we would be staying the next two days. The pleasant disposition of the Chinese tour guide, who received us at the airport, made me forget the tedium of the 12-hour flight from Los Angeles to Beijing. She was pretty, in her twenties, and always had a winning smile. Before we reached the hotel, she let it be known to us that she was married.

“I get the message,” I told her. “But couldn't you have waited at least until this tour was over?” She blushed.

“Um, you are quite a player, eh,” Phoebe, another member of our team, who was sitting next to me on the bus, said, with a nudge.

(Correction: Actually, there were 10 members in the group. In hindsight, it is wrong for me to count Walter out, simply because he happened to stay behind in the hotel room most of the time. He used a walker to get around. The only reason why he decided to come on this tour was that his wife Dorothy, who was able to get around without a walker, wouldn't travel alone. Having satisfied their wanderlust together all their married life, they didn't want to make this trip an exception. Both were in their late seventies. Whenever I saw them together, they were holding hands. Walter also sang now and then. And he sang beautifully. “If they are this romantic at this stage in life, what a wonderful time they might have had in their courting days!” I remember telling others in my tour group.)

After a good night’s sleep, I woke up and looked out the window of my hotel room. The bright morning sun had already lit up the tree-lined street outside. “Ideal for a morning walk,” I said to myself and got out of the room.

Spring Flowers in Full Bloom

It was spring in Beijing and the air was crisp. Spring flowers were in full bloom all around. I once again saw the City Flowers and the City Trees of Beijing, which our tour guide had introduced us to during our bus ride from the airport. The Chinese rose and chrysanthemum are the declared City Flowers of Beijing and the City Trees are the Scholar Tree and pine.

A casual look at other morning strollers made me aware that I was the only Indian on the street. I became more conscious of it when some of the passersby, all of whom looked Chinese, stared at me. But the stares in no way diminished the joy and excitement I felt on what was my first morning, and the first morning walk, in China.

Suddenly, a huge billboard at a distance caught my attention. Embossed on it was the picture of a large cow. The cow aroused my curiosity. “Could it be a pointer to a Hindu temple below?” “Did Hare Krishna people come and set up a temple in Beijing also?” (Their temples are always dedicated to Lord Krishna and in their minds, and in Hindu mythology, Krishna and the cow are inseparable.) “Is the billboard an advertisement for a dairy farm?” Questions like these arose in my mind as I walked toward the billboard.

I was still at a distance, not in a position to determine what the building below the billboard housed. My curiosity gave way to confusion when I saw a group of men and women, who had just alighted from a tour bus that stopped near the building, walk toward it. From the way most of them dressed, one could tell they were Muslim: Women wore scarves and flowing outer garments. Most men wore tunic and some had long beard. It is unusual for Muslims to visit a Hindu temple, unless the temple is also a monument of world renown. The guidebook on Beijing that I was carrying had no mention of such a thing. So there was not even a remote possibility of the building’s being a Hindu temple.

Restaurants with Cow on the Menu

“In what way could these Muslim tourists be attracted to that beautiful cow on the billboard?” I asked myself. I didn’t have to wait for long to get the answer. In a minute or so, I found myself standing in front of a restaurant. The billboard with the picture of a cow on it was a display ad of the restaurant below it. The cow in the ad was supposed to mean that it was on the restaurant’s menu. The restaurant’s name was written, in glittering letters, just below the cow’s picture: Xin Jiang Muslim Restaurant. I felt disappointed, again, that I didn’t have my camera with me.

          Looking at the picture of the fat, beautiful cow, I couldn’t help asking myself: “Who in the world would think that a cow this beautiful would end up on a plate in a restaurant?” “But then,” I countered it with another question, “how on earth can a cow-eater like me say such a thing?”

The question and counter-question represent the rare moments of conflict in my life – between the Hindu that I was born and brought up as and the cow-eating Hindu that I later became. Every time the conflict arises, I resolve it this way: “A remarkable thing about Hinduism is that its tent is big enough to accommodate both cow-worshipers and cow-eaters.”

Photos caption:
The author, with his Chinese tour guide, at Beijing’s Temple of Heaven (seen in the background, and also reproduced below for better visual effect, courtesy chinadiscoverytours.com). The temple was founded in 1420, during the reign of Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty, for Chinese emperors to worship Heaven. The principal buildings in the 273-hectare complex include the Altar of Prayer for Good Harvests, Imperial Vault of Heaven and Circular Mound Altar. Until 1911, 22 emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties had worshipped Heaven and conducted ceremonial sacrifices at this temple. In 1911, the Republic of China banned all ceremonial sacrifices and it ceased to be a place of worship and sacrifices. In 1918, the sprawling complex, including well-maintained parks, was reopened, this time as a window to part of China’s past and a place of tourist

(To be continued)

(M.P. Prabhakaran can be reached at [email protected]

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