Baoding

Today was much more upbeat and peaceful. After breakfast, we checked out of our hotel in Langfang and waited for a driver to the bus station. It now appeared that there were actually some other people staying at the hotel. The first couple nights there, it seemed like there would only be lights on in one or two rooms in the whole building (which is 7 or 8 stories) when we got back at night. Gave things a weird sort of kung-fu Shining vibe.

At the bus station, we caught a bus to Baoding. It is about a two to two-and-a-half hour ride. S and I sat in the back. When we departed, the bus was about a third full. But it continued to pick up passengers along the way. At one stop, S got out to use the restroom and several men boarded. A couple took seats in the back. S was not happy when she returned and shooed one of them to a seat a couple rows forward and bullied the other into the corner. She chastised me for not keeping them out of the back seat, but then what was I supposed to say to them? (And I mean that literally.)

In Baoding, we were picked up by a family friend (and a fellow retired tax ministry officer) who now operates a small dairy. He took us to the local tax ministry headquarters, where we checked into the attached hotel. (I get the impression that each ministry has its own chain of office complexes throughout the country that serve as combination workplace, local assembly hall, and hotel.) From there, we went to lunch where we were joined by two men who S introduced as her godbrothers. They were quite friendly and there was much laughter, feasting, smoking, and slurping. After lunch, we returned to the hotel. Brother and mom gathered their things and headed back to Beijing. S’s friend, the dairy director, Zhou, came by not too long after and took us to a local internet café. It was about everything you’d expect – a rundown storefront half-filled with teenage boys playing games and teenage girls checking email at wheezing yellowed computers. I didn’t notice any master hackers, but then I was preoccupied with just trying to log on to my machine.

The machines were running Win98 and while I could get into my Gmail account, I could not view any of my messages, which was rather maddening. We spent about a half-hour at the café (costing us about ¥2 total.) It was around 4:30pm when we left. Zhou’s car picked us up and we headed for his dairy, about 15 minutes outside the city. There we received a tour of the facilities and Zhou took photos of S and me for some promotions he's planning. It was nothing too professional and I assumed he was joking when he asked S what I’d like in the way of compensation. I said the publicity would be enough. He threw in a year’s supply of dairy products.

After the dairy, we made a surprise call on another old family friend – a very sweet old man who must have once worked for the revenue ministry, too. Zhou insisted that he and his wife join us for dinner and we headed for the finest donkey restaurant in town where we got a private room upstairs and lived it up. Donkey... it's what for dinner.

After dinner, S, Zhou, and I headed back to the ministry building where we were staying and called upon the director in his office in the 7th floor of the main high rise. He accompanied us back to our room where the three of them talked for two hours. S told me to lay down on one of the beds and nap while they talked. After they left, S woke me up. She decided that the director with whom they had been speaking wasn’t the one she thought it was. She laughed.