EVERYTHING in Beijing is huge and grand.  So naturally if I wanted to make a big deal out of my 40th birthday, I should do it here.  And I did, thanks to my generous Mom who shared some of her retirement savings to give Neil and me a birthday made in China.
Neil was born on July 20, 1969, that is why he was named after the first man on the moon.  I was born a year after on July 19, 1970 and nothing as remarkable and historic as the giant leap for mankind happened at that time.  My mother was watching the movie “Patton” when her water broke that is why I was named Patmei.  In Chinese, Mei is a term of endearment so I guess you can say that my name is my mother’s (who was born just before the Second World War) tribute to General Patton.
Although I look Chinese, I do not know of any ancestor from my mother’s or my father’s side that came from China. My mother was born in Davao City of Ilocano parents (my maternal grandfather was from Santa, Ilocos Sur and my maternal grandmother was from Bangued, Abra) who migrated to Davao before the Second World War.  My father is a Bicolano from Ligao, Albay and his parents were of Spanish descent (my paternal grandmother was a Salazar who spoke only Spanish and English and my paternal grandfather was related to the famous Ruivivars of the Society of Seven band who were all Spanish mestizos whose roots can be traced to the Basque region of Spain).
But, Jose Maria Sison (founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines), my grand uncle on my mother’s side, told me when I visited him in Utrecht in 1995, that we have Chinese blood.  I dont know if he was just saying that to convert me to the Maoist ideology but we both have chinito eyes, making it a more convincing theory to me, at least, than the communists taking over the Philippines in my lifetime.

So when my mother announced that she will treat me to a destination birthday this year and the choices are Ilocos or Beijing, it was a no brainer. Why go only as far back as the Spanish colonization of the Philippines in Vigan’s cobbled streets when you can relive the Ming Dynasty in the Forbidden City and climb the Great Wall and be transported to the war of the kingdoms before Christ?  I can see the dead body of Ferdinand Marcos in Ilocos Norte anytime I want without need of a visa, but Chairman Mao’s mausoleum is not accessible to everyone. Besides, China is rapidly changing these days I might not see any hutongs (old courtyard communities) left soon but Ilocos will probably stay the same for some time.
Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” is one of my favourite movies of all time; Mulan is my favourite Disney heroine; and I think Kung Fu Panda rocks.  So if I must have a theme birthday for my big four-zero, Chinese is it (and Neils, too, because, after all, isn’t there a myth that says you can see the Great Wall from the moon?).
If life begins at 40, then I want mine to start from the Great Wall of China.
In preparation for my big birthday, I read Donald Miller’s “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life” and he wrote that a story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it and he added that the point of life is the same as the point of a story, which is character transformation. So if story is just a condensed version of life, then life itself may be designed to change us so that we evolve from one kind of person to another.
Essentially, Donald Miller theorized that humans are alive for the purpose of journey, a kind of three-act structure.  Humans are born and spend several years discovering themselves and the world, then plod through a long middle in which they are compelled to search for a mate and reproduce and also to create stability out of natural instability, and then find themselves at an ending that seems to be designed for reflection.
In short, we are designed to search for and find something.  The point wasn’t the search but the transformation the search creates. We are meant to live through something rather than to attain something, and the thing we were meant to live through was designed to change us.
That kind of Zen-inspired reflection can only happen here in Beijing, where journeys date back several thousand years and where transformations of the physical place and of the heroes’ spiritual character occur as often as seasons change through centuries.
I look forward to a better story of my life in the next 40 years as I take more transformative journeys, hopefully with Neil and Mommy as my fellow travellers.