I pass underneath a concrete archway and through a pair of open wooden gates into the compound where a low, cheaply built stucco building stands. It is L-shaped and there is a glassed-in hallway with motel-style doors in regular intervals, each painted bright red and illuminated with a bare bulb.
I pull up to a partially open doorway that I figure is the manager’s office and switch off the engine. It is difficult to unfasten my helmet strap with cold, stiff fingers. My back aches and my left ankle throbs from the constant shifting through gears. I toss my helmet, gloves, and scarf into the sidecar and dismount, only vaguely aware of the rush of people emerging from the door in front of me. I step away from the bike, allowing several people to push it closer to the building. My forehead itches, my hair is stuck to the skin.
Despite my aches, I feel a profound gratitude for having found this place, for the reward of having pressed on without panicking. It is dark and cold, but I’d soon be safe and warm. Finally my eyes adjust to the dim light and looking up, I meet the gaze of a dozen young ladies dressed in pajamas. When I smile they burst into giggles, covering their mouths with their hands.
So many maids! Why would there be so many maids for such a small country motel? I look at them more closely. Their black eyes flash. So much makeup! They giggle some more, then, suddenly shy, lower their eyes heavy with liner and false lashes. Their lips glow with thick red lipstick and their lurid peach-colored polyester uniforms shine. They aren’t maids at all, I finally realize. I’ll be spending the night in a brothel.
A man pushes his way through the girls and speaks in sharp tones that makes them stop giggling and stand aside. He is very young and so thin that his brown wool pinstriped suit hangs on him in folds as though on a coat hanger. His hair is carefully clipped and gelled into a stiff American fifties-style flat-top, with one lock left long to hang rakishly in his face. He tosses his head back to fling the lock out of his eye, and says something that makes the girls laugh nervously and flutter a little farther away.
I greet him with a Chinese hello and a look him straight in the eye, and the girls giggle again, their hands flying up to cover their mouths. Sighing, he beckons me to his office, a lit doorway just in front of us, and takes me by the arm to guide me inside. Surprisingly, he is a few inches taller than I, perhaps 5 feet 10 inches tall.
The girls follow us in but after few sharp words from the boss they recede into the darkness and we are left alone in the office: a square concrete box with a steel desk and a ratty Naugahyde couch bursting at the seams. I fish through the pockets of my black leather motorcycle jacket and hand him twenty yuan, the amount the woman at the gas station had quoted. He laughs and pushes it back to me. I am too tired to go through an extended haggling process, and too tired to remember that I am desperate for sleep. After riding all day in the heat, after the stress of being lost, the uncertainty of the motorcycle, finding gasoline, night falling unmercifully black and those tiny villages with fires and stray pigs and white-trunked trees, I am exhausted, and I could strangle him for what he is doing, opening drawers to find a pencil so that he can write the digits 200 on a piece of paper, ten times the price the woman at the gas station had quoted.
I hold the paper and we stand silently together on the stained burgundy carpet. It is as thin as denim, and glued badly onto the concrete floor. The walls are covered in crackling stucco, and the sagging ceiling is stained with water. The black and white television set is turned on full volume, the sound horribly distorted. Two attractive anchorpeople, a man and a woman, report the news. Their announcements are a combination of guttural and singsong nasal whining. Footage of a public execution flits across the screen: two kneeling men, blindfolded with hands bound behind their backs, a mass of enraged or excited people. Would they be shot or beheaded or hanged? Then they show blond Russian children digging through a vast garbage dump for scraps of food, followed by stills of President Clinton who is due to visit in a few months. I’d seen the same footage in Beijing, over and over and over again. It is 1998, the year that China would remove borders and other barriers to sharing in first world wealth.
I study the piece of paper. I could counter with thirty, and he would insist upon 100, and I would write down thirty-five, and he would then write fifty, and then I would hand him forty. He would take it, and I really should do all that except that the woman at the gas station already gave me the price of twenty yuan and in my exhausted state I’m not thinking about all the trouble I will cause here with paperwork and lack of language and writing skills and my need for hot water. I shove the paper back at him and explain in succinct English that the owner told me it was twenty yuan and twenty yuan was all I was damn well going to pay and hadn’t he heard that the days of Foreigner price were over. I wave the twenty toward the gas station and tell him that if he thinks I’m going to pay two hundred for a dump like this he is crazy and I push it into his hand. He takes it with a little shrug and a smile that means, “Well, I had to try,” and I stomp back to the motorcycle but it’s not there anymore. Stunned, I look around and see, with no little relief, that it has only been pushed away into the crook of the L-shaped compound near the wooden gates. I feel the manager watching me as I stomp across to it. I jerk my suitcase out of the sidecar, unlock and open the trunk to get my computer case and camera, and two of the girls suddenly appear to escort me to my room.
The hallway is glassed in, and we step up two shallow stairs onto the same thin, wrinkled burgundy carpet that was in the manager’s office, and even more blotched. Standing by each door is a little yellow pot decorated delicately with pink fleur-de-lis, a quarter full of water. As I puzzle over the purpose of these, moths bash themselves to death on the bare light bulbs in front of each door, falling in the collected heap in front of each threshold. Every tiny impact creates a tinging sound that is just audible over the sound of a river.
The room is a concrete box. One of the girls pushes by me to rush in and turn on the television at full volume. The other girl walks in behind me bearing a thermos of hot water and a small, thin towel. I walk into the bathroom—it was built into the corner of the room like an afterthought, with walls that fall short of the ceiling by a foot. The hot water tap runs cold, as does the cold water tap. I request more thermoses of hot water, and she returns shortly with three more.
I put my suitcase on the double bed and the girls come closer as I unzip it. I had packed very little but carefully; a Gortex rain suit, a fine-gauge, bicycle-weight wool sweater, long silk underwear, thick hiking socks and boots, sports-bras and tights, quick-dry shirts and a toiletries kit with neat little bottles of shampoo and conditioner, moisturizer and sunscreen and a clear plastic bag full of bottles of medicines I might need.
I wonder how to get the girls out of my room so I can have some privacy, and then the manager strides in, barking at the girls, who wander out reluctantly. Alone again, he looks at me and sighs, then hands me a form, knowing that this is going to be an ordeal for it’s in Chinese and I’m illiterate. We settle ourselves down at the fake walnut desk at the foot of the bed and study the form and my passport, attempting to figure out which information goes in which box. After studying each other’s documents, we look up at each other, shrug, and begin.
I ought to have asked a clerk in a Beijing tourist hotel to give me a form that was printed in both English and Chinese, as a reference, but I didn’t, and so with a combination of my phrasebook, sign-language, grimaces and some laughter, we manage to fill out about a third of the boxes when he abruptly pulls the paper away. Either that’s all that’s required or he’s fed up. I expect the latter.
Now that we’re done I realize how much trouble I am, and sympathize. He really is just a very young man and I create a lot of hassle because of the form and demands for many thermoses of hot water and the motorcycle parking and the uproar.
I put my passport away and we walk outside together. He returns to the office and I walk over to where they’ve moved the motorcycle. Suddenly, a large blu
e truck roars in at an alarming speed to screech to a stop exactly in the place I’d parked the bike. No wonder they’d moved it. Two girls in peach polyester pajamas run to the door as the truck door opens. One literally catches the driver as he falls from the cab. The moonlight illuminates the empty liquor bottle in his right hand. Even though it’s empty he struggles to keep it upright during his fall. The other girl knocks it to the ground where it lies, empty and unbroken in the dusty light, as they escort him, stumbling, to the room next to the manager’s office.
I’d been warned that these big blue trucks were piloted by drivers fuelled by amphetamines and alcohol. They’d be my most frequent companions on the road, but that’s changing, fast. Though private cars have been allowed for many years, most Chinese haven’t been able to afford them, and so trucks and official vehicles make up ninety percent of the traffic out here in the country.
The excitement over, I finish locking the bike up, covering it to keep the dust out and to hide the attention-getting black Beijing plates. Back in my room I notice that the door doesn’t have a lock. But I’d brought a solution for that—an alarm that slides into the doorjamb. It works on a circuit breaker—if the door opens the device also springs open, activating a piercing alarm.
I pour the hot water from the thermoses into a red plastic basin on the bathroom floor and take a sponge bath. Brushing my teeth, I peer out from between the tattered curtains to catch the action in the compound. Apparently I have arrived just ahead of rush hour. Blue truck after blue truck roars in, their drivers and passengers falling out of their cabs, spilling empty bottles of high-octane liquor. I am forgotten.
This is my first night on the road, and my mind busies itself on the problems of my trip. I am traveling without a license, nor permissions of any sort from the Chinese or American government, and risk arrest at any moment. Just a few hours into my trip I discovered that I couldn’t rely on road signs or local people to tell me the way. Since I just generally want to head west, that doesn’t matter so much. I have no particular place to be at any certain time. But it is also now obvious that hotels are difficult to find. Is this at all dangerous, or simply inconvenient? Since I feel perfectly safe—even in this brothel—I don’t feel it’s too risky. But tomorrow would be the time to turn back if I’m going to, only one day’s ride from Beijing.
I miss Beijing. In Beijing people interacted with me. Foreigners are not rare, and they laugh good-naturedly when I practice my Mandarin. They willingly look at maps and point me in the right direction. I miss hanging out with Teresa, the agricultural attaché at the U.S. Embassy. We rode together through the countryside once before I left, and the farmers were astonished at us, the motorcycles, and at her fluent Mandarin. She talked endlessly with them about the state of the crops, the weather, and whether the government had paid them in cash or pink IOU slips. Tonight, at the brothel, I long for Beijing.
In the morning it is eerily quiet, which makes me nervous until I remember that, of course, a brothel operates at night.
In the bright morning light I see that the short red carpet is a puzzle of dark splotchy stains. The walls are stained with moisture and the bathroom tiles are caked with mold. The tiles themselves have been shattered with a hammer to let the plumbing in. Caulking does not seem to be a talent the local handymen possess. Neither do they seem to have a grasp of the force of gravity—the bathroom drain is located at the highest end of the room so that a puddle of stagnant water sits in a corner with drowned bugs floating at the edges.
I half-fill the red basin with cold water from the dripping sink faucet, and uncork one of the green plastic thermoses of hot water they gave me the previous night. Amazingly, it is still piping hot, hot enough for a cup of instant coffee. I check my skin for bedbugs. None. I hope that this will be the rattiest place I ever have to stay in.
Seeing my face in the mirror, I’m shocked at my puffy eyes and pallid skin. Riding a motorcycle for so many hours at one stretch is never healthy, and I am still also recovering from the effects of Beijing pollution.
In Beijing my expat friends were still sleeping in their luxurious, American-style homes and apartments with filtered water and filtered air before a day of work in offices with filtered water and filtered air. Maybe they will think of me this weekend when they ride out to the Ming Tombs on one of their forays into the countryside. Last week the little trips seemed the height of adventure.
I take my cup of coffee outside, passing the other rooms where pairs of male shoes sit neatly outside each door. These black shoes made of leather and so carefully polished cannot be truckers shoes. The little yellow pots of water had been moved to the other side of the hallway. I peer in cautiously. They don’t look like chamber pots but there is something in them. What can it be? I look closer to see globs floating on top of the water. Gross. They are spittoons.
Suppressing a gag, I hurry outside. The courtyard is empty except for a small Chinese motorcycle leaning on its side against the opposite wall: there are no trucks in sight. I surmise that the drivers pumped themselves back up with amphetamines and continued on their route.
Now to see where I am. I hear the river and try to find a way out of the compound to take a look at it. Tiptoeing down the hallways I find an unlocked door that leads outside onto a natural terrace overlooking a beautiful river cutting deeply into a stone canyon with a deeply striated stone cliff rising to the mountain behind.
All this hidden behind a crappy stucco compound, valueless in contrast to the income-generating brothel. In the West this place would have been the site of a luxurious resort with a terrace overlooking the river where one could sip coffee in the morning and beer in the evening, enjoying the spectacle of nature. It would have at least been a campground. But who wants to visit such a place here, in Northern China? Heibi Province is the poorest of the northern provinces, the mountains offer no weird and spectacular rock formations like those in Gualin and Yunnan, so tourists don’t come. This is merely a relaxing, beautiful, natural place, only a day’s journey from a major city. But in the United States it would be swarming with backpackers, kayakers, and mountain climbers.
Back in Beijing, an American friend, Rick, had told me a story about camping that illustrated the Chinese attitude toward nature. Jiangshan, the leader of my send-off party and the owner of a camping supply shop, had led the group on an overnight outing. Jiangshan had described beautiful mountains and clean air and a perfect riverside campsite. The group had been thrilled with the ride but the “perfect place to camp” was an asphalt parking lot with bright streetlights standing sentry all around. Rick had difficulty explaining diplomatically why their faces had all fallen flat. Jiangshan was quite taxed to understand why they’d rather pitch their tents on uneven ground in the messy, dark woods.
Jiangshan’s adventure shop is stocked with a few tents and sleeping bags but only Western visitors buy these things—the students, teachers, and expats who discover that China has amazing and beautiful countryside. They camp, and inevitably a group of locals comes and stares at them as they cook their meals and fish and put up the tents and bed down. It is a concept absolutely and completely foreign to Chinese villagers, and when I look at their lives I see why. Most of them are already camping, with their coal stoves and hand-carried water. They see the forest as a source for wood to burn and food to forage. It’s easy to understand how they would wonder why wealthy people would make themselves so deliberately uncomfortable.
Back in Beijing most of Jiangshan’s customers are nouveaux riche who buy Patagonia jackets and Swiss army watches as status symbols to wear on the streets of Beijing, or on touring vacations to Guilin or Yunnan where they tiptoe along the trails in designer shoes.
After the stress of the past twenty-four hours I welcome the surprise of vast nature. There are probably some pretty little villages in the hills here. What if I left the motorcycle behind for a few days, put on my hiking boots and tried to find them?
Not on my first day out.
&
nbsp; Or can I?
I’m lost already, much too early in the trip. And my plans are vague. The general idea to cross China from east to west, heading south through Sichuan and Yunnan is just a sketch. I now realize the roads are not as mapped, and that I have some hardcore dirt riding ahead of me. If the bike holds up, and I can get to the south, how will I get back? That’s the part I can never figure out when I look at the maps. The coasts are too crowded and the interior impossibly mountainous.
Sitting by the rushing river against the high coppery cliffs provides an anchor. There will always be the force of nature. If the human face of China is impermeable, threatening, nature renews and relaxes. Confronting foreign nature has always been more comfortable to me than confronting foreign cities, and today’s ride promises spectacular scenery.
Suddenly I can’t wait to get back on the road. Who cares which road? I need only head generally west. And when I hit a barrier, south, then when I reach my destination, north.
But first is a ritual that will be repeated each morning.
Back in the parking lot I unlock the motorcycle cover and fold it up into a big red duffel bag. Nothing had been touched. I’d been told that the Chinese are scrupulously honest. The more generous claimed it was an innate trait; the less generous claim it’s because there are so many tattletales around and the penalties are so harsh.
I try to open the trunk with as little noise as possible but every creak and bang echoes from the walls of the enclosed compound. I stand still in the stark yellow sunlight on the stark yellow dirt, and listen, but no one stirs.
First, the spokes. Sure enough, a lot are already broken from the deep potholes I’d hit the night before. The asphalt had ended abruptly several times and I’d ridden miles of dirt before the road was paved again. No road hazards were marked so I’d gone careening off the edges a few times.
The Best Travel Writing 2011 Page 22