Yuan Fen
Big world, opposite sides, but still we meet.
This time, the Biotruck broke down near Bidor—a small, dusty Malaysian settlement lined with unremarkable storefronts. As I kicked around the parking lot of the mechanic shop, I asked myself: Why can’t the truck spring an oil leak at the Taj Mahal or Angkor Wat?
The “Biotruck” was a twenty-two-year-old school bus my partner Andy salvaged from a scrapyard and converted into an RV. It ran on waste cooking oil. Everything in it—the lights, the sink, the countertop—was cobbled together from cast-offs. Our plan was to drive it around the world, but progress was slow. When you’re traveling in a bus made of garbage, things go wrong on a regular basis. Breakdowns become a way of life.
I surveyed the lay of the land around the auto shop: a fruit stand, a hardware store, a hair salon. For the next few days I’d be exiled from the truck as it filled with eager mechanics, oily rags, and expletives. The most helpful thing I could do was to keep out of the way.
Bidor appeared to be the Middle of Nowhere. Of course, the last time I’d thought that (during a breakdown in the Malaysian port town of Galang Patah), we ended up on a Dionysian jag with influential journalists and local politicians celebrating us—and the Biotruck—with champagne.
I needed to give Bidor a chance.
What’s interesting about breakdowns isn’t what goes wrong, but the question of how to get rolling again. A disintegrated fuel filter can throw you at the mercy of strangers. Who will help you? You invariably meet people you would never have met otherwise, and often walk away with the sorts of strong friendships that get forged under duress.
In this case, the truck had quit abruptly on the highway and Andy had to guide it onto the shoulder. While he poked around under the hood, I spread a blanket on the roadside grass and, setting up our laundry hamper as a backrest, resumed reading the literary megalith that is Shantaram. The day dimmed, the mosquitos bit, and I started to worry that we might have to spend the night right there. Thankfully, two laughing Chinese mechanics from Kim Lim’s Towing happened to drive by, and stopped to give us a hitch. That’s how we got to Bidor.
I am fairly useless in breakdown situations. It’s not that I lack the brain power to figure it out, or that I’m too girly to get my hands dirty. It’s just that I’m completely uninterested. Car parts, to me, are so boring. Thankfully, Andy feels otherwise. “It’s like having a conversation with the engine,” he explained.
Days passed while he carried on heated chats with the fuel filter and the injector pump. I filled the blank hours drinking tea and submitting myself to inane distractions—like having my hair flat-ironed—just so I could wait out the brutal Malaysian heat in the air-conditioned salon.
It felt wrong. While poor Andy was covered in grease, I was strolling around the parking lot all day with great hair. So I went over to a fruit shop, deciding that I would bring refreshment to the oily crew. I selected a few mangos, bananas, and a watermelon. I knew the counter space in the Biotruck would be covered in wrenches, so employing a clumsy mix of English and charades, I asked the owner for a knife and a cutting board. I sat down and chopped the fruit on a mat near the register, balancing a plate on my knees while runnels of watermelon juice ran down my arm. The owner’s son set a box by my feet to catch the peels, her husband came over to watch and soon, cutting up the fruit became a family effort.
Mr. and Mrs. Fatt owned the fruit shop. The morning after our collective fruit-slicing session, they idled their car up to our bus and asked us to breakfast. We sat at an open-air Chinese market, poked breakfast dumplings with chopsticks, and did our best to make conversation. We must have done well enough, because they took us out to dinner again that night.
We got on with them well. They were fun loving. Mr. Fatt liked to tease, and in return his wife delivered regular impish punches to his arm. During the next few days, while the Biotruck was in surgery at Kim Lim’s shop, we started hanging out at their house: watching TV, using their shower and internet connection. They showed us a nearby waterfall, and we waited out one long hot afternoon in its mist. Before long, Mr. and Mrs. Fatt began to feel like family, and that dusty block of Bidor storefronts started to feel like home.
At last the Biotruck was repaired. On our last night, they took us out to dinner. While we sipped from our beers, Mr. Fatt pulled out a pen and a napkin. He scribbled out a single Chinese character and drew a big circle.
“Yuan fen,” he said, pointing to the Chinese symbol. Then he retraced the circle. “Big world, opposite sides, but still we meet. This friendship is a special privilege.”
Much later, I would look up the meaning of yuan fen. I began to love the word for the way it filled a gap in the English language. It explained a phenomenon that I had often experienced, but lacked the verbal tools to articulate. I think “chemistry” might be the closest word we have.
Simply put, yuan fen is the binding force that brings people together in a relationship. The amount of yuan fen you share with someone determines the level of closeness you will achieve. It’s not just about proximity; you can live next door to someone all your life and never get to know them. This just means you have thin yuan fen. On the other hand, you can fall madly in love with someone, but just can’t stay together. “Have fate without destiny,” is the Chinese proverb used to describe this tragic condition.
The meaning can get more complicated. Some believe that yuan fen is tied to past lives and karma. As another Chinese proverb goes: It takes hundreds of reincarnations to bring two persons to ride in the same boat; it takes a thousand to bring two persons to share the same pillow.
But for me, it is enough that yuan fen explains how sometimes people who meet get along or don’t get along, why friends become friends, why lovers become lovers, and why relationships sometimes break apart. It puts a word to why there are people I’ve lived near for so long, yet consistently failed to maneuver the conversation past a “hello” and yet managed to make a heart connection halfway around the world.
Yuan fen explains how Andy and I should break down, find Kim Lim’s shop, and intersect with Mr. and Mrs. Fatt—people who don’t speak our language, live thousands of miles away, and run a fruit stand in a dusty little “nowhere” town called Bidor.
Christina Ammon has penned stories for Orion Magazine, Hemispheres, the San Francisco Chronicle, Condé Nast, and numerous travel anthologies. She is the recipient of an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship for nonfiction and organizes the Deep Travel writing tours in Morocco and Nepal. When not traveling, Christina Ammon lives in Ruch, Oregon where she writes, sips wine, and paraglides. For travel tales and workshop information, visit her blog at www.vanabonds.com.