Train to Xi’an

Yesterday afternoon we went to the Baoding train station where Zhou had arranged tickets for the three of us on an overnight train to Xian. This is not as easy as it sounds as tickets are hard to come by at the last minute. So Zhou called in a few favors with a couple directors working at the station and we were given three sleeping cots.

It was not the best night’s sleep as the cots were hard and whenever the train passed another train going in the opposite direction, both blasted their horns. For some reason, I was in constant dread of derailing. I must have been confusing the Chinese train system with the English.

It felt like I slept five minutes at a time the whole night. Five minutes on my left side – five minutes on my back – five minutes on my right side. Repeat. Otherwise, I felt fine and I have had worse nights.

In the morning, I had to use the bathroom, a harrowing experience. It was a floor toilet and either the car had exhausted its water supply or service had been discontinued as we approached our destination. I was sufficiently traumatized but I have lived to tell the tale. I believe it is another one of Mao’s famous sayings: “A man is not a man until he has used a floor toilet that will not flush.”

We arrived at the station at about 6:30am. As soon as we got on the platform, we were approached by a fast-talking young man. He handed Zhou his card and made his pitch. It must have been pretty good because Zhou hired him as our local guide. The scene just outside the station was a madhouse, the kind of chaotic press of people that I instinctively associated with China but hadn’t really encountered before now.

Our guide obtained a little taxi-van for us and we were driven to a high rise on the other side of the city center where Zhou and S spent several minutes negotiating with staff at the front desk...

Back at the Internet Cafe in Baoding

Just return from Gaodong (very sticks.) Very happy to be back in Baoding. Had a marvelous lunch. We're off to Xian this evening by train for the Terra Cotta warriors. Much to relate but short of time at the present. Still can't check my Gmail -- bloody hell. Try again next time.

A Note on Driving in China

The freedom and creativity with which the Chinese interpret the rules of the road makes the American highways look like the height of totalitarianism. With the variety of vehicles on the road, ranging from bicycle to tractors, donkey carts to full-sized buses, some flexibility is required. That a pedestrian isn’t killed every two minutes on a street corner in Beijing is a miracle of modern life.

Turning left at a signal generally involves driving straight into oncoming traffic and veering off toward the cross-street at the last possible moment. If one is experience at doing this – or lucky – he will end up going in the right direction.

In America, honking your horn is no less than a declaration of war. In China, it is as common as saying, “excuse me” though it might be more accurately translated as “pardon me, six inches to the left and you’ll be as flat as a noodle.”

Oncoming traffic is otherwise known as the passing lane.

Remarkably, this seems to be an efficient system. And while traffic is almost always heavy, gridlock is rare. One traffic citation would probably bring the whole system to a grinding halt.

Dirty Dancing in Gaodong

The ballroom was a bar/club on the second floor of the other wing of our hotel. Disco balls, dance floor, television monitors for karoake, Chinese pop music blasting. The room was empty when we arrived except for the bartender, who was over in the karoake control room fiddling with the sound system, and four or five young women in make up and tacky clothing sitting in a clutch over by the door. S referred to them as "dancing girls." Apparently, they were staff members.

A dancing girl was distributed to each of the males in our party (Uncle Bobo, myself, the mayor and his assistant) as we sat down. Uncle Bobo took to his girl, the tall one, immediately and when he was not dancing with her, he avuncularly ran his hands up and down her legs. I felt awkward dancing with my girl, but Uncle Bobo encouraged me and S acted like it was the most natural thing in the world. I couldn't say anything to my girl except "thank you," but I tried to be a gentleman. She kept me well supplied in bottled water and insisted on shelling my pinenuts, despite my gestures not to trouble herself. I shelled some pinenuts for her. To my knowledge, it is the first time I have danced with a, ahem, professional. A rite of manhood, I suppose, right up there with walking on the Great Wall.

Later another group of Chinese businessmen entered the club and was seated at a little table on the other side of the dance floor. Instantly, more young women appeared wearing too much cosmetic. The men looked like they were already flowing with rice wine and, while on the dancefloor, I noticed a couple girls having to practically resort to martial arts to extricate themselves from the aggressive embrace of their partners.

S had a grand time singing karoake and dancing with the mayor and his assistant. There was one page of Western song titles that ran about halfway through the letter A. S cajoled me into singing one song. I gave a rather mournful, off-key rendition of "All You Need Is Love." I'm no Bill Murray.

I think Uncle Bobo ended up taking one or two girls back with him to his room across the hall. As we left the club, he pulled the mayor and his assistant aside for some kind of intense, private negotiation. And though he was alone when we got back to our rooms, I've heard the door to his room slam twice since then.

S just backed up the toilet. Unable to flush it clear, and the phone out of order, she sent me down to the front desk with a note. The girl there read it and said something to me in Chinese, at which point I realized that I don't even know how to say, "I don't speak Chinese" in Chinese. (And, stupidly, it's not in my phrase book.) One of the busboys followed me back to the room, retrieving a plunger along the way. Once back here, I asked S how to say, "I don't speak Chinese":

Wo bu hoy shwa zhong-wan. (phonetically)

"Does anyone here speak English?"

Shway hway jong ing-wan?

We offered the busboy ¥5 for his trouble. But he steadfastly refused, saying it was against hotel policy to take tips. (I just read in my phrase book that tips are illegal in China.) So S decided to write a letter of compliment to the hotel manager -- or she decided to have me write one which she would translate into Chinese. She says it will be a big lift for his career.

Another Day, Another Hotel

Another rock hard bed. Today started out in Baoding, but Uncle Bobo (S's old family friend) met us with his car and driver and we drove out to Gaodong, a small town about a half-hour outside Baoding, to meet the local officials and tour the environs. Best weather since I arrived in China. A stiff breeze blowing. Still warm but not quite as humid. Blue skies with wispy high clouds (white clouds!) -- the haze cleared away by the wind. Reminded me of Santa Anas back home.

In Gaodong, we were received at the restaurant of our hotel (perhaps, the hotel) by the mayor, his assistant, and a couple other officials, for lunch. The mayor was earnest young up-and-comer within the party -- in his late 30s, but looked ten years younger. During lunch, he reminisced about his youth and how the saying of Mao had inspired him during the coldest, darkest winter nights. The sort of claptrap that back home comes in the form of boyhood paper routes and seeing Kennedy (or Reagan) speak. His assistant was even younger, looked like he was about 18, and was referred to as Chairman. (I gather everyone in the party is a chairman. Then you are promoted to director.) The mayor's driver was 18 but looked 12.

At lunch, we were joined by the local senator, a big wall-eye old man with liver spots and hands all a-tremble. S told me was 70, but he looked at least 80. He wore a gold set of dentures in the bottom of his mouth which made him look a lot like a James Bond villain. He had 9 sons, each a successful monopolist in some local enterprise. Everyone was very deferential to him and throughout lunch various sons and sycophants peeked in to toast him, and perhaps steal a glance at the strange company he was entertaining. Happily, I couldn't understand a word they said.

Later in the afternoon, we were taken on a tour of some of the local factories. The first produced a beverage called Yam Dew. They gave me a promotional flyer in English. If it's at all characteristic of the genre, there's unlimited opportunities in English copy-editing in China. [Note: I was going to quote the brochure, but I've misplaced it since my return home. I think it's in a pocket of my other suitcase. Will try to locate later.]

The second factory, from what I could understand of the synopsis I was given, was a pharmaceutical company producing some kind of low-cost alternative to dialysis. We talked with a couple of the scientists, a young man and young woman, working there. They said most people in the US and Japan can afford dialysis, but it's too expensive for most Chinese.

The last factory we visited was immediately distinguished by two brick smoke stacks belching thick black smoke. The air was acrid and heaps of slag were deposited around the grounds. The company produced cloth dye. As with the other two factories, we were received in a large delapidated, dimly lit office. The company's president boasted that his plant was the second largest operation of its kind in China. Most of the production, he noted, used to be done in Russia and India, but had ceased due to the environmental regulations. Now China was the leading producer.

From there, we headed to a run down little shop further down the dusty road. This was a bank. Although it was now almost 6pm, the door was still open (shielded by the familiar hanging curtain of heavy plastic strips) and we were greeted by the bank's manager, a deferential but hard-working middle-aged man, and two pretty young clerks. The 6 or 7 of us in our party wee shown to a cramped room in back furnished with three cots lining the wall. We took a seat, the senator rolled up his pants legs (as was his habit) and described the operations of the bank. It turned out that it was his bank -- his own private branch. This was, needless for S to tell me, a rather unusual arrangement and one for which he had needed to obtain a special dispensation from the state. There were no computers, no security cameras, not even a printing adding machine. Rather, each clerk had an abacus on her desk. Honest to god, an abacus! Suffice it to say, I wasn't able to use my ATM card.

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at the Senator's compound to pay our respects to his wife and slurp on melon. As we drove through the dusty streets of the neighborhood, the Senator pointed out the gas station he own, the theater he owned, the local school named after him, the park he had had built. Everything, with the exception perhaps of the local Communist assembly hall, looked worn and crumbling. At the school, a couple kids played basketball on a rocky field. S was impressed with the senator's generosity and influence. It struck me as the epitome of the Old China.

I thought we were done for the day, but I just learned that we have a ball to attend. I am sure it will be enchanting.

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.

First Chinese Internet Cafe

I'm in an internet cafe in the city of Baoding right now trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to check my email and pay this month's housing bill. Naturally, the housing billing system is down from midnight to 7am PST (it's just after midnight now PST -- local time 4 in the afternoon.)

It's been a remarkable journey thus far. Forbidden city day before yesterday. Great Wall yesterday. Been keeping up with my notebook.

Just read in friend's email that Francis Crick died. First news from America since I arrived. Tragic. (Why couldn't it have been Watson!?)

Ok. Try to get to my Gmail again.

The Great Wall

We just returned from the Great Wall. Mao said, “You are not a man until you have visited the Great Wall.” You are not a man until you have visited the Great Wall with S’s family yelling at each other all day. They have gone to dinner to yell at each other some more. I feigned a headache and excused myself. That I had to feign the headache is somewhat remarkable – by all right, I should have splitting migraine by now.

S’s brother and I climbed two stages of the Great Wall. S felt dizzy about half-way there and turned around. It is remarkably steep. Must have been a bitch to build. It requires a ¥35 ticket to walk on the wall.

After brother and I returned, S wanted to take some photos of us on a cannon just inside the admission turnstile. We had all exited already. We had out tickets, but a thin, young security guard at the exit refused to let us pass. S showed him our tickets but he still refused. This set S off. She was like a baseball manager ejected from a game. Her brother and I had to finally restrain her. It was a scene. I sympathized with the guard – he was only doing his job – something security guards the world around take very seriously. S should have known better. Although there is a CircleVision theater at the Wall, China is not Disneyland. Order trumps all, even customer satisfaction.

Incidentally, I learned the source of the conflict between S and mom. It’s not quite as I supposed. S I mad at everyone. At me for booking a roundtrip ticket. At her mother for treating her like a little girl. And at her brother for being her brother. Last night, S told me her mother stayed up washing S’s clothes and then this morning she ordered a full breakfast. This enraged S, who wanted to pack apples and get on the road to the Great Wall. The rest of the day was endless yelling and bickering, with brief interludes of relative civility getting in and out of the car.

Also saw Ming Tombs and a riverbed near the Ming Tombs.

Breakfast

Strong words and unhappy looks between S and her mom at breakfast this morning. Mom’s friend appeared to be trying to mediate. My name coming up more often than made me comfortable. Brother was absent. Mom was cold. Not sure what’s going on, but S is over there now in her mom’s room yelling.

Her brother just brought the box of chocolates I had given to mom back to our room – not a good sign. (Life is like a box of chocolates, all melted and gooey.)

Beginning to study my Chinese phrasebook more intensively as in case I have to go it alone.

Shit, they’re yelling again. And now S’s mom is weeping. Audibly weeping. What drama! This is awful. Calgon take me way. Back to America. The good news: only 23 more days to go.

The Center of the Universe

Sight-seeing in Beijing today. We hired a taxi to get there and set out after breakfast. Our driver skipped the toll road and took the scenic route through the countryside. It looked like business as usual this Sunday morning among the peasants. I asked S if her brother and mom were familiar with the common Sunday morning ritual of attending church in America and, if so, what they thought of it. She said that not that many Americans really went to church and those that did, like one of her close friends, were just trying to find a wife or girlfriend and get laid. I begged to differ and told her that most Americans, by all appearances, really do hold a sincere belief in the spiritual importance of attending church and worshipping Jesus. She insisted that this was not the case and that my view had simply been distorted by my grandparents’ habits.

Our first stop, fittingly enough, was the Temple of Heaven. On one of the terraces there, there is a little smoothed hump in the pavement that is supposed to represent the center of the universe or something. All the Chinese visitors would stand on it and have their photo taken. S hopped on it and started voguing big-time. I finally had to tell her to stop hogging the center of the universe.

There is a Starbucks inside the Forbidden City. Several buildings are beings refurbished. Signs and sounds of constructions are everywhere. This annoyed S highly, who felt that the historical integrity of the place was under assault. I tried to make the case that the historical integrity of a site was only as good as its structural integrity, but S was dismissive.

We started at the entrance of the Forbidden City, at the end opposite the Tiananmen Gate, and worked out way toward the gate, grabbing lunch at a little Chinese diner inside the city along the way. We also stopped to see a well-known well where a famous concubine had been dropped during the Ming or Qing Dynasty. I don’t think a melon would have fit down the opening, but perhaps her executioners had had the decency to chop her into little bits first.

In one of the large courtyards, S’s brother pointed out a particular set of rooms to her. S explained that the name of one of their ancestors, a provincial governor or something, was listed on a roll preserved there. She asked if I had any notable ancestors. I told her that one of relatives (an aunt once or twice removed) had traced our ancestry back to the Mayflower, but then I had Filipino friends who could trace their ancestry back to the Mayflower. More likely, I told her, my ancestors were the ones you called when you wanted a royal concubine dropped down a well.

Inside the Tiananmen Gate, there is a hall featuring a large oil painting of Mao, at some founding ceremony, looking over crowds assembled in the street from the Gate. It looked like a GOP photo op -- S pointed out all the different ethnic groups represented in the background.

From Tiananmen Gate, we proceeded to Tiananmen Square, across the street, by means of an underground crosswalk. We paused along the way for photos of the famous Mao portrait. I told S that I wanted a shirt like his. She said I could get it when we visited the silk market back in her mom’s city in a couple weeks. I later asked S how much longer she thought the Mao portrait would be hanging there. She didn’t see it coming down in her lifetime. She said was a symbol of the independence and stability of China. This might be a good wager for longbets.org.

There were a few guards standing on duty in the square. They all looked about 16 years old. S had me pose next to one of them for a photo. I was worried that this might be a capital offence, but the guard simply ignored me in the style of a Buckingham Palace guard. (The get-up is not quite so ridiculous.) I was of a mind to protest the unlawful imprisonment of the feudal lord’s wife on the soap opera we watched the night before, but I had forgotten my picket signs. S and I renewed our debate from the night before with S insisting that the woman was evil anyway and that her imprisonment and the black eye she had received were really too lenient. Despite his unconstitutional methods (the show was a historical drama), she found the feudal lord, her husband, rather soft on crime. I found it interesting that the lord who imprisoned her was the protagonist. You'd never see a sympathetic character do something like that on American television, no matter how venal his wife.

From Tiananmen Square, we phoned our taxi driver to pick us up and we continued on to the Summer Palace. It was now late afternoon and it was pleasant to relax in the pavilions next to the lake and watch the sun sink into the grey film rising above the hills on the horizon. I was impressed by the number of lotus flowers growing in the coves of the lake. Our attention was diverted by an old man line-fishing from a bridge. The poetry of the scene was somewhat spoiled when it became apparent that what he was fishing for was discarded bottles and cans.

All the public restrooms in Beijing are rated on a 4-star scale by some kind of tourist council and the results are displayed on a plaque attached to the front of the restroom. The restroom we visited at the Summer Palace, like the restroom we visited at the Temple of Heaven was 3-star, but I told S I could only allow it 2. There was a strong odor and too much liquid on the floor.

We had dinner in the red lamp district (not to be confused with the red light district – red lamps, I learned, signify restaurants) not far from the Summer Palace. Dinner was delicious. It included a dish much like hashbrowns, her brother’s favorite. Not quite as crispy, more oily. I really liked it, but S sent it back for being too salty and was satisfied when it returned too vinegary. There was also beefsteak, a dish that reminded me of camper’s stew, and a special thin garlic bread, a house specialty that is prepared at a stand in a corner of the large central dining area that looked like a plaza and had a pavilion with a table in it in the middle. S ordered a bottle of 112-proof rice wine, the local favorite, but then refused to let me drink it. Just as well. It smelled like nail-polish remover and the two sips I did take left my guts burning for the rest of the night.

Langfang

We are staying at a hotel in a city outside of Beijing, Langfang. Last night after dinner, as I was falling asleep in the car, we drove out here. It’s a half-hour or so by freeway from Beijing.

There’s a toll road at the highway off-ramp. From there, we traveled along several long, broad boulevards. Back home, we would call them parkways. Even here, there was a steady trickle of bicyclists and pedestrians, though it was already around 10pm and there didn’t seem to be much commercial or residential development along long stretches of road. It feels a bit strange, this constant presence of people going from one place to another, no matter where you are and at seemingly all hours of the day. It makes regret not getting the ant farm for S’s young cousin, as I think the social implications would be all the clearer for someone growing up here in China.

A Note on Our Driver

Our driver, despite his apparent youth, was a master of his trade. Trade? Call it an art. There was passion in his dedication to forward motion and genius in his ability to get around jams.

All drivers have to assume a certain willful disregard in racing through a crosswalk teaming with bicyclists and pedestrians. Our driver was positively nonchalant. With a disinterest that was almost philosophical, he found gaps between cars where they did not exist and made lane changes that transcended any consideration for the consequences on traffic behind him. What I found most remarkable was that he absolutely refused to extend the courtesy to any other driver, as if it would be an insult to their honor as students of this highest of modern arts.

S did not know his name. He had been serving as her driver since the day before. I told her to tell him that I was giving him the English name, Dale Jr., instructing her to explain to him that it was the name of a famous American racecar driver. He received his new title in the spirit of the honor with which it was intended.