Serenity Springs a Leak

Like the urban gardens in China, the Chinese garden in Portland is surrounded by a white wall. The exterior wall around a Chinese garden blocks the views and noises of the busy city, allowing the naturalistic landscape in the garden to magically lull the visitor into believing he's in the midst of nature. Serenity follows. Any glimpse or hint of the unnatural will spoil this mood, which is why the wall is traditionally solid and its top edge is higher than a person's head.

The wall around Portland's Chinese garden, however, is perforated by openings called leak windows. City code dictated that pedestrians could not be subjected to the sight of a block-long blank wall. Thus, if you are a pedestrian you can look into a leak window and see a bit of nature. But if you paid money to experience nature, you would look out of a leak window and see the street, parking meters, street lights, cars, and learn that you can have monthly parking in the garage across the street for only $144. You might wonder why you paid money to see this while the pedestrian gets it for free.

Lest you think that the Chinese designer was an idiot for agreeing to install these leak windows, keep in mind that the designer planted trees, vines, and bamboos in front of and behind these windows to keep the city from intruding. Using plants as a screen was an elegant and effective solution that worked until the present gardeners started beavering away, "tidying up" and "opening up" the "plant material", especially those pesky plants blocking the exterior leak windows.

It is now almost impossible to find a place in the garden that does not offer at least a glimpse of old town/Chinatown, its grimy streets, and the buses, cars, and denizens that ply them. With the waterfall not working, the city noises add to the atmosphere of nature under siege. How ironic that the marketing materials enticing people into the garden promise to deliver on that wistful observation by an ancient Chinese poet that "most cherished in this mundane world is a place free from traffic."

Volunteers Get a Dose of Safeness

It costs money to enter the Chinese Garden. Eight dollars and fifty cents, to be exact, if you're not in a special category allowing you to mooch off of the hale, hearty, and productive. For your money you get a ticket that's potent until the greeter at the entrance castrates it by ripping off its stub. Neutered, it's just a bookmark, for anyone who still reads books.

But as you should know by now, nothing's quite normal at the Chinese Garden. If you were to present your ticket to the greeter today, it would be looked at hungrily but would be allowed to pass without castration. The greeters have been instructed to not rip the stub or even touch the ticket. Instead of ending up with a bookmark, you now have a ticket that is good for another day! And another day. And another, etc. Not that management is worried about anyone taking advantage of that fact. Any rumpled tickets will naturally be rejected by the greeter.

The official reason for management's strange directive is ... swine flu! The greeter won't get the flu from the ticket holder if the greeter doesn't touch the ticket . . . unless he touches the recycled visitor's guides, or the railings, or the faucets in the bathroom, or any number of surfaces found in the real world, which management doesn't seem to inhabit.

So what's the real reason? It's to strenuously impress upon the volunteer corp that management CARES about their health. REALLY, they do!

Fooey on Foo Dogs

The entrance to a Chinese dwelling is a special place. As the gateway to the outside, an entrance must serve two functions - to attract and retain good fortune, and to keep out bad fortune.

To attract good fortune, an entrance should be clean and free of trash and clutter. To scare away bad fortune, a foo dog should be posted on both sides of an entrance. A foo dog is a dog/lion hybrid made of stone or metal, that bad fortune cannot tell is fake, like those plastic owls found in pigeon infested areas. Luckily for humans, bad fortune is not as smart as a pigeon.

Like bouncers in front of a nightclub, foo dogs let in the good, beautiful, and profitable, but intimidate the bad, ugly, and destitute. Each foo dog has a job - the male protects the house and the female protects the family.

Seeing two fierce foo dogs at the door, visitors and guests to the dwelling know that they will be entering a space filled with good fortune and comfort. Maybe they'll make a profit to boot. Any evil spirits tagging along will be left behind.

Visitors to the Chinese Garden in Portland are greeted by two large metal trash cans, squatting where the foo dogs should be. Ignorant of the evil spirits rooting around in the alluring trash cans, visitors blithely step through the garden's entrance, bad fortune drafting in their wake. Just so the evil spirits don't starve, there are two more trash cans by the back door.

Fruits of the Fall

One of the joys of the holiday season is seeing the ripening fruits of fall. The Chinese Garden, as a participant in this natural cycle, is displaying several fruits. There's the fairy swarms of crab apples dangling from slender stalks. The pomegranates with their blotchy leathery skins. And who could miss the massive triple D persimmons, bursting like supernovas?

But the fruit that only the Chinese Garden can boast of having is not to be found on the branches of a tree or a bush but on the trunks of people. Indeed, the process of pollination and maturation requires special conditions.

The flower appears only in years of declining revenue and increasing costs. The pollinator is a certain hyperactive species of marketer. Maturation occurs when the desperation level is high enough to saturate the atmosphere.

And then like scarlet mushroom buttons after a rain, the fruits appear full blown on the chests of volunteers and staff, bearing a message for its target animal species, Homo Seekus Dealus. The message is seductive and bypasses the reasoning faculties of its prey - "Visit Free All Year. Ask me how!" Free, free, free! The call draws them in.

But the stars in their eyes turn to cinders as the bargain hunters learn that it's free only after they buy a membership. Alas, they have tasted of the fruit of knowledge: tis useful, but so bitter.

Safeness Blocks the Way

How do you know it's flu season? Is it the sniffling people weaving through your space like a horde of zombies? The dreaded call from the school nurse that explodes your well laid plans? The feeling when walking into an elevator that you're being swallowed by a pulsing amoeba of viral contagion? Those are all indicators, but the sure sign of flu season is the proliferating presence of Purell squirt bottles. Even the Chinese Garden is not immune to this harbinger of mucus and paranoia.

Like a gnome perched on a giant porcini mushroom, the Garden's Purell sits on a brown cabinet hulking in the garden's entrance. Sphinx-like, it dares you with its deadly riddle: "Do you feel lucky ... punk? Well if you do, then walk on by without a squirt."

Most people do walk on by, and they, along with their germs, survive.

Colors of the Fall

Autumn has come to the Portland Classical Chinese Garden and the maples aren't the only things turning red. Welcoming you into the entrance courtyard are two signs, blood red with white letters, hanging like slabs of new butchered meat. The "Garden Shop" sign is new and the "Ticket Booth" sign replaces a sign that was tastefully subdued, like the Garden itself.

Seems that "tastefully subdued" wasn't jazzy enough to make people notice. Seemingly taking a cue from Target, Coca Cola, and the Dept. of Transportation, management decided red and white would do the trick, like the rouged lips of a lady of the street.

Too bad the insensitive people that the new color scheme was supposed to hit over the head have harder heads than expected and continue to actually trouble the staff to enquire about where to buy tickets and knick knacks for the folks back on the farm. As for those sensitive people who schlep to the garden to meditate, unblock their chi, and smell the flowers, the effect of the new signs is galvanizing. Mouths open, eyes wide, toes rigid in their Birks, they can only stare and wonder.