Journey to the West: Chapter 11 – Piecing Together Memory Fragments Amid Fear and Doubt, Letting Go as if Falling into Inception’s Dream

📍 Lhasa · 👁 1714 reads · ❤️ 1 likes

“Where is this… What time is it… Who are you… How did I get here…”

In a cramped room with only two single beds, I sat on the one further inside, staring at two faces that seemed vaguely familiar. They were two young Tibetan men, early twenties at a guess, dark-skinned, with boyish expressions. One had sorrowful eyes, as if troubled by something; the other wore a warm, sunny smile. Despite the messy, narrow room, the light was bright, and I could read concern and kindness in their faces. So even though everything around me was foreign, I felt a hint of warmth. I let my guard down and haltingly asked those questions.

How can I describe my state at that moment?

In the opening of the film *Memento*, the protagonist sprints down a street, and between rapid breaths he suddenly wonders: Why am I running? Puzzled, he spots a man running on the opposite side and suddenly realizes — I’m chasing him! He darts through traffic toward the stranger, but the man doesn’t flee; instead, he runs straight at the protagonist, draws a gun, and fires. The protagonist suddenly understands — it’s him chasing me… The man suffers from short-term memory loss, able to remember only the last few minutes. So he constantly falls into confusion or danger, asking “Where am I?” “What am I doing?” He can only locate his “coordinates” through tattoos covering his body and little notes in his pockets. Despite the hardship, he still manages to avenge his wife’s murder.

In the film *Inception*, the extractor assembles a team for an ambitious dream-planting scheme. The architect he recruits is a brilliant young female student with an extraordinary spatial imagination. During one “interview,” which takes place inside a dream the extractor has built for her, they sit chatting in a street-corner café. The buildings, pedestrians, streets, billboards, and sky all look like her everyday world, so she has no idea she’s in a dream. Mid-conversation, the extractor bluntly tells her they are dreaming. She looks shocked and refuses to believe it. He asks if she can remember how they arrived at the café; she ponders… Indeed, her consciousness that day begins right there at the café. What happened before? Her memory holds nothing! At that instant, the street outside warps, buildings begin to crumble — consciousness has burst the dream’s bubble…

(Still from *Inception*)

At that moment, I was like the protagonist in *Memento*, utterly without a clue of “where am I” or “what am I doing.”

At that moment, I was like the girl in *Inception* — beyond the room I was in now and those vaguely familiar faces, I had no memory of how I had ended up here.

For a split second, I thought I was in Chengdu; then for another second, I thought I was still in Qingdao… From the two young men’s halting Chinese, I gathered that I was already in Tibet. But why was I in Tibet? When did I come to Tibet? How did I get here? In an instant, shards of memory swept through my mind like sandstorm-driven grit, sharp enough to make my head ache, yet I couldn’t piece them into any meaningful picture.

(Still from *Memento*)

I was bewildered. With only a few words of Chinese, they couldn’t explain clearly either. The sad-eyed young man gestured for me to touch my head. I found a piece of gauze there. Then I noticed scrapes and blood on my hands, a big patch of dried blood on my clothes, and a dull ache in my chest. “Am I hurt?” I asked. He nodded, motioning for me to look at my phone, saying, “See the photos, then you’ll know.”

I pulled out my phone, opened the gallery. The date showed that the photos were from that very day. Dozens of shots from different angles captured a car crash scene, plus a few portraits and ID card photos. One of them was the sad-eyed young man — his name was Zhaxi.

Gradually, I pieced together the situation: I had been on a self-drive road trip, and before entering Basu County, I had collided with Zhaxi’s car. But after the crash — nothing. Not a single memory remained. It was a serious mess, but strangely, that night I was extraordinarily calm. I even chatted with Zhaxi and his friend about their life in Tibet, and then slept soundly…

That day was April 30, 2021. From half past noon, when I crashed at a mountain bend just beyond the Nujiang Bridge, until around ten at night, when I became aware I was in a small inn with two strangers — those nine-plus hours remain a blank to me. Though I later picked up a few fragments from talking with traffic police, the inn owner, and a doctor, and from the records of the emergency calls I made after the accident, aside from a handful of highly emotional points, the rest is like a story from a novel…

Later, a doctor at Basu County Hospital told me I’d had a mild concussion, not enough to cause organic amnesia. The short-term memory loss was due to extreme tension and fear. I don’t understand the physiology behind it, but from experience, losing memory — even losing consciousness — under extreme conditions, like feeling pain, is a protective mechanism evolved by living beings (or designed by nature), and it’s actually more merciful.

Living beings must feel pain; otherwise, they can’t seek advantage and avoid harm. Humans have a condition called “congenital insensitivity to pain,” where the person feels no pain from cuts, burns, or fractures. Injured without knowing it — what could be more dangerous? But pain can’t be too overwhelming, either. When it surpasses a certain threshold, organisms likely have mechanisms to sever consciousness or block nerves; otherwise, the life might simply extinguish itself.

On the African savanna, when a lion hunts, it usually bites the prey’s throat to suffocate it before eating — easier for the lion, less agony for the prey. Notorious hyenas, on the other hand, will disembowel and flay their prey while it’s still alive. I once saw a poor fawn surrounded by a hyena pack, still twitching, its forelegs struggling, while its hindquarters and innards had already been mostly devoured! I believe the fawn’s movements were involuntary, unconsciously controlled by non-autonomic nerves; otherwise, heaven truly would be indifferent.

As a child, I suffered a freak accident: while playing in a stone-processing factory, I got my thumb crushed under a huge rock. You’d think having a bone flattened paper-thin would cause excruciating pain, but in fact I felt none at all — I shrieked with fear, not pain. It was only later, when the cast and stitches were removed, that I howled in agony… I was just six or seven then. Too young to handle pain at that threshold, and timid too: the sight of the massive rock and blood seeping from the crack was enough to scare me silly; my pain nerves were numbed before they could even fire. So sometimes, being a coward is a blessing.

The psychogenic amnesia after this crash was also a stress reaction.

From the call records and scene photos, my response immediately after the accident was still instinctive and rational — call the police, take scene photos, photograph the other driver’s license… But with the injury and the chaotic surroundings, I couldn’t process too much information at once. My brain felt as narrowed and one-track as my field of vision. I spoke in a measured tone as usual, but clearly my reception and expression were impaired. I reacted slowly, couldn’t remember the Nujiang Bridge I’d just passed, didn’t even know I was injured. It was only with passers-by’s help that I could pinpoint the accident site.

A passer-by told the police on the phone that I was badly hurt, blood all over my neck, but I was oblivious. I just felt the chaos around me and focused on what mattered most to me — at the traffic cop’s hint, taking out the dashcam memory card, and refusing an ambulance.

These are the few memories I retain of the scene. Later, the cop took me to the hospital to get bandaged. On the way, I asked whose fault it was every few minutes. I repeatedly booked a hotel room and was reminded by the landlady to cancel it. After reaching the hotel, I called the police again and again, repeating the same words. Eventually the cops stopped answering my calls. I also went to the front desk to ask the landlady where I was, over and over… When I replayed the calls later, I sensed that some staff were very patient, explaining the situation again and again. The landlady was also responsible; seeing my state, she sent me to the local police station, which then called Zhaxi and his friend to accompany me.

That night at the inn, when I needed to go to the bathroom, Zhaxi insisted on following, saying he was afraid I’d get lost. I said it wasn’t necessary but still photographed the door plate number on the way out. I was aware that my short-term memory was faulty: something I’d done just minutes ago would be instantly forgotten, so I didn’t take chances.

Amid the overall blank, two incidents stirred two distinct emotions; later, I retrieved some real-time feelings.

The first must have been after the hospital treatment, when Zhaxi’s group took me to an auto repair shop in Basu. With my memory failing, I didn’t know how I had suddenly shown up there, surrounded by two unfamiliar Tibetan youths — Zhaxi and his other friend, Jia Can. Jia Can was a bit older, with a harsh, cold, indifferent look. Not knowing what would happen next, entirely at their mercy, I felt a deep surge of fear and wariness. I’m naturally not very trusting, and in such a vulnerable, strange setting I was, of course, hyper-alert.

At that moment, the worst-case scenario I imagined was they would kill me (we had actually already been to the traffic police together, but I didn’t remember). After all, finding a desolate mountain ditch in Basu was all too easy — just beyond the repair shop was a sparsely visited gully. So I demanded Jia Can show his ID, photographed it, and then called the police again, stating my identity details and theirs. Only then did I feel a sliver of security.

To them at the time, and to my later self, this seemed superfluous. But for the me of that moment, it was absolutely necessary. After my memory returned, I met Jia Can several more times. He still had that harsh, cold look, but I no longer felt fear — only aversion and resistance.

I wasn’t afraid of him, because at some point of painful clarity, I had realized this principle: treat gentleness with gentleness, and cruelty with the devil. If an evil person bullies and wants to harm me, then you’d better hurt me thoroughly — kill me before I decide to strike. Otherwise, I will definitely kill you!

People often say, “Don’t judge by appearances.” That’s right, but “appearance” here means superficial looks; one shouldn’t judge good or evil by physical beauty or ugliness. There’s another kind of “spiritual appearance,” which not only can be judged but can even yield accurate information. Sartre said, “Existence precedes essence,” meaning that for humans, you aren’t born with a fixed character that defines you for life; rather, your past existence accumulates into your current human essence. In other words, the main things you’ve thought and done in the past define who you are in the present: a habitually violent person will have a fierce glint in their eyes; a habitually shifty person will carry a sneaky look; a habitually kind person will exude gentleness; a habitually disciplined person will have a resolute gaze…

Existence is fluid, moving through each present moment, so essence is changeable.

What I hated about Jia Can wasn’t his face, but his past experiences. But surely he can grow, too — through every small action, every thought, accumulating change. And thus his “appearance,” his eyes, his very essence can all change.

The second incident must have been after the innkeeper sent me to the police station. Seeing my poor state, the officers insisted I call my family. I was so desperate I nearly burst into tears. My reasons for not wanting to contact them were complicated, but mainly two — I didn’t want them to worry, and I didn’t want to become a laughingstock. The thing I dreaded hearing most was: “If you can’t drive properly, just stay home! What’s the point of some self-driving trip? Get home right now!”

So I pleaded with the police, asking if I couldn’t just skip the call. But they were adamant: if I didn’t make the call right in front of them, they’d be failing in their duty, and neither of us could go back and rest!

With no choice, I dialed… In the end, my fears were exaggerated. My family didn’t persuade me to go home, and I became even more determined to complete the journey on my own, though it meant I’d be stuck in Lhasa for two months dealing with lawsuits, car repairs, and all sorts of bothersome chores I hadn’t anticipated at all.

These were my experiences on the day of the accident. As described, I underwent so much emotional, psychological, and physical stress that my consciousness couldn’t hold, so it chose to forget.

I mentioned earlier that after the crash my two main concerns were determining liability and not calling an ambulance. Some readers might find that odd: “You were so dazed you barely knew your own name, and you still worried about money?”

Well, yes — I really did worry about money.

I’ve always been a penny-pincher. First, I’m not rich; second, even when I occasionally have a bit more, I stick to the principle: “If it can be done for 8 yuan, never spend 10.” I don’t know when this habit took root, or why it’s survived mockery and criticism — it only grew stronger. Some say I have a “small vision.” I never took that to heart. The idea that you have to spend money to make money is a fallacy peddled by success “gurus.”

For this road trip, I had a relatively strict economic plan: every leg of the journey had a budget, with some margin for error, of course. But I couldn’t afford the cost of a car crash — before departure, I’d only bought compulsory traffic insurance and a small amount of third-party liability insurance, no collision coverage for my own car. That meant if I was at fault, once I paid the compensation, my road trip would be over.

The next day at the traffic police station, I saw the dashcam footage: Zhaxi’s car came out of a bend, crossed the center line, and collided with my car. The police determined Zhaxi was fully at fault and issued an accident liability ruling.

I breathed a sigh of relief. With the police coordinating, Zhaxi and I signed a compensation agreement: he would cover the cost of towing and repairing my car at the Lhasa 4S shop, plus my medical expenses. So I thought this little episode was soon over, and before long I’d be back behind the wheel heading west… Full of hope, I took public transport from Basu to Lhasa.

But after having the car towed to Lhasa and learning the repair costs, Zhaxi said he couldn’t pay. It turned out he had bought a cheap used car without a driver’s license, without insurance (not even compulsory traffic coverage), driving “bare” on the road. He could only pay out of his own pocket, and the several tens of thousands of yuan was clearly beyond his expectation.

If I had collision coverage, I could have invoked subrogation, letting the insurance company advance the repair costs and then recover from Zhaxi. But, to save money, I’d skipped exactly that coverage.

Now I was stuck: either sue, or compromise and negotiate again with Zhaxi.

The trouble with suing was the long trial period, plus the risk that even after a court ruling, compensation might not be fully recovered — if the other party genuinely had no money, or hid assets and played the deadbeat, there was little you could do. People I knew with similar family experiences told me the probability of that happening was quite high.

If I didn’t sue, I’d eat a loss. We’d try to reach a mutually acceptable outcome based on Zhaxi’s capacity and our bottom line.

We decided to negotiate with Zhaxi first. This time, he brought a friend with better Chinese to act as his representative. After the first call, we agreed on a suitable amount. Although I was somewhat unwilling, my family advised that it was already a good outcome to get the money on time. So I agreed to the reduced compensation.

What really bothered me was whether Zhaxi was playing games or genuinely facing hardship. If his family really couldn’t afford it, I’d chalk it up to bad luck, tighten my belt a bit more. But if it was the former, I was ready to spend the time in court and pursue every last cent of damages and losses. I’d heard that some Tibetan herders are “invisible tycoons,” with many yaks and no problem pulling out tens or even hundreds of thousands of yuan.

Later, a phone call with Zhaxi’s representative infuriated me. He said even the previously agreed reduced amount couldn’t be paid, and they wanted to cut it further! At that point, the situation was clear: they figured I’m an outsider in a Tibetan area, unfamiliar with the place, afraid of legal hassle, and they could test my bottom line again and again!

That move instantly cleared up my hesitation — no more talk. See you in court!

The distance from Basu to Lhasa is 835 kilometers. Over ten days had passed from the accident to the day I decided to sue. My car had been collecting dust at the 4S shop. I took a bus back to Basu, submitted evidence and the complaint, then returned to Lhasa. I paid the repair costs out of pocket. A few weeks later, I received a hearing notice — online trial wasn’t possible, so I had to go back to Basu once more. The effect was immediate: the day the hearing ended, I received the compensation, higher than what Zhaxi’s representative had first agreed to, though still not the full amount. After the hearing, Zhaxi, his uncle, and I negotiated, with the judge and court officer facilitating bilingually. We came to an agreement. In the process, I learned that Zhaxi had also been suspicious of me — he thought I was in cahoots with the 4S shop to cheat him of money.

Zhaxi’s parents are divorced; he and his mother live in a rented place and had no money to pay me. His uncle covered it. The car was sold as scrap, and Zhaxi had to work to pay off debts…

It turned out we both thought the worst of each other, while both of us simply had our own difficulties…

And so, back and forth, two months passed.

A lot happened in those two months:

I met Zongji, a Tibetan girl I’d encountered two years earlier on the train from Lhasa to Xining. Back then, she was wearing ripped jeans and a tight leather jacket, looking fashionable and edgy among a carriage of Tibetan travelers. She sat diagonally across from me, and I noticed her the moment I got on — deep eyes, cool and striking. After the train started moving, she unexpectedly came over and struck up a conversation. Later, we both got sleeper berths. Before getting off, she gave me a box of Tibetan incense. She owns a small teahouse in Tibet. I had imagined some romantic adventure, but she was already married with a child, so I kept it at polite boundaries.

At a hostel in Lhasa, I met all kinds of interesting people and heard all kinds of fascinating stories, some of which I touched on in the article “Relativity.”

I took the very first train after the Lhasa–Nyingchi railway opened, from Nyingchi to Lhasa, and saw landscapes quite different from those along the bus route.

I made time to visit Ranwu Lake in Basu, the Lhasa Museum, Sera Monastery, and Nanshan Park. I photographed the Potala Palace from different angles and watched Tibetan opera in Zongjiao Lukang Park. I’ll share those in Chapter 12.

At the Travelers’ Base Camp in Basu, I met a warmhearted landlady from Sichuan who told me that after self-driving the Sichuan-Tibet Highway, you can claim a commemorative medal and certificate in Lhasa. That place is a kind of “alliance store” for Sichuan-Tibet self-drivers (including cyclists and hikers). Such base camps exist in towns all along the route: if you stay at three or four of them, you can get a free souvenir medal at the finish line in Lhasa. When she learned my car was being repaired in Lhasa, she proactively arranged a ride-share for me, getting me there much cheaper than the bus. If you self-drive the Sichuan-Tibet route, you can try this spot in Basu — not fancy, but clean, with free breakfast.

Even with lovely people and scenery, those two months were torment. The back-and-forth travel, the repeated negotiations, wore me out mentally and physically. Dealing with people is just like that: there’s no swift, clean break, no charging forward according to your own will — it’s a constant tug-of-war, constant probing, constant game-playing. You can’t set a rigid standard and cling to it; you can only rise and fall like a wave. You can’t always hold an exalted posture; you have to seek a dynamic balance among disappointment, hope, frustration, and satisfaction. You can’t have a way to counterbalance every person in every situation; you can only anchor yourself to an inner value to keep from being shattered…

The final mediation at Basu County Court left a deep impression on me. Besides the judge and the court officer, an elderly Tibetan gentleman presided. It looked like a showdown between Zhaxi and me, but in fact, these staff members put their hearts into it, using a variety of negotiation techniques to reach an agreement both sides could accept. I have my likes, dislikes, values, and fears — and so does Zhaxi. Without knowing our individual psychologies, they deployed three different discourse models: the judge provided authority; the court officer, eloquent, wielded threat and inducement; the kindly, respected Tibetan elder offered patient, down-to-earth persuasion. By reading our expressions and words, they quickly gauged which model each of us responded to best — and which we disliked (the disliked model was meant to make us more willing to accept the preferred one by contrast). Then they used the favored approaches to persuade. I have to say, it was masterful!

Looking at it now, those hermits who escape the world may have chosen the easier path. Lu Xun said, “True warriors dare to face the bleakness of life and the dripping blood.” I would add: they also dare to step into the game of scheming and negotiation.

Finally, I want to reflect on life and death, inspired by this accident.

One evening, while drinking at the Lhasa hostel, the owner suddenly asked me if I’d ever had a near-death experience. Already tipsy, I didn’t hesitate — I grabbed his hand and poured out the amnesia story with extra color. A car crash and memory loss don’t qualify as a near-death experience, but I felt that when my vision and concentration narrowed so drastically that I could only see one thing or focus on one task, I couldn’t hear any surrounding noise no matter how loud — that might be akin to a near-death experience.

In fact, on several nights before the accident, lying in bed, I had been gripped with dread, involuntarily imagining car crash scenes, even thinking I might die on the road — I had no self-driving experience, and little confidence in my skills. Those disturbing thoughts would vanish the moment I stepped out in the morning. After the accident, they never plagued me again. Maybe it was the confidence from hard-won experience, or maybe having had something like a near-death moment made me less fearful of death.

When is a person not afraid of death?

The depressed may not fear death. When I was in my twenties, I suffered from depression. One foggy night, driving along a coastal road, I could see nothing beyond five meters. I was aware of the danger of oncoming traffic, yet I deliberately drove into the opposite lane, as if taunting Death: “You — come at me!”

Those who have nothing may not fear death. People entangled in money, love, or family are bound to fear death. When you’re immersed in wealth, domestic bliss, or the arms of a beautiful partner, where’s the room to think of death?

Those with a spiritual anchor may not fear death. Missionaries traveling to foreign lands, soldiers awakened on the battlefield, fanatical cult devotees… Whether righteous or evil, they put life and death out of mind.

Then there’s the philosopher Zhuangzi, who saw through life’s bleakness and grasped the meaning of death, sighing: “What joy is there in life? What bitterness in death?”

What kind of heart, as dry as dead wood, could utter “What joy is there in life?”

What kind of extreme grief could say “What bitterness in death?”

Strange: Zhuangzi was neither numb nor sorrowful. He idly debated the joy of fish, roamed free in dreams as the North Sea bird — truly at ease and joyful.

If you see through everything, you won’t love it. How could Zhuangzi see through and still love?

On the road, on this journey of life, I’ve been chasing that answer, because I know there’s a treasure hidden there called “Free and Easy Wandering.”