Third Generation Women

BEIJING - We were out of our element, three white guys in Wudaokou's Korean section. But here the people are friendly, so before long we were drinking with an oil magnate and toasting the beauty of Russia's Third Generation Beauties.

With Monday's closing of Zub, one of the area's two bars specializing in local language students and promiscuous Chinese, is gone. Wednesday is All-You-Drink-Night night at the other bar, Propaganda, and with Zub out of the picture, the line to get in reached from the plate glass door to the chau'r sellers on the street.

But if Zub closing means more time at the Korean bars on the other side of the district, it won't be missed. Here the bars are big and spacious with funny Chinglish names like Hump. The clientèle includes businessmen and career professionals, people who have spent decades in China and speak great Chinese. Zub, Lush and Propaganda are Wudaokou's Frat Row, and this is the East Village, where people come to play with a bit of cash and try to look sophisticated wasted.

The linchpin of the evening was Lao Mo, a friendly man with a beet-red round face. We met Lao Mo on the street, and he took us to a fancy bar with red fiber optic lighting and paid for all of our alcohol.

Lao Mo treated us. He said this over and over during the evening. Probably the English word Mo will take away from the evening is "treat," which he pronounced "tree."

He wanted to practice his English, but his oral skills were poor and not helped by his advanced level of inebriation. We tried a conversation, but couldn't make it past "How old are you?" To communicate I first had to speak in Chinese, then repeat what I said in English to keep up the ruse as this being an educational meeting, and not just drinking on a Wednesday.

Ever the reporter, I tried to solicit Mo's story. He worked in Urumqi, the capital of northwest China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region as an engineer looking for oil. Xinjiang is a huge desert area populated by Uighurs, a Turkish Muslim group, and Han Chinese migrants. Mo was the latter, living off China's unquenchable oil thirst.

Why he was in Beijing wasn't clear, he was too drunk to explain in either language. He's got a sick boss in a Beijing hospital, and the company wants him back. Whether Lao Mo is planning to kidnap his ailing superior or push him in a wheelchair the 4,000 kilometers back to Urumqi, I'm not sure. Lao Mo considered his trip "tourism."

As the bottles of Tiger beer emptied, Lao Mo kept returning to his favorite subject: the women of Xinjiang. Lao Mo is married, with a 13-year-old son that he wants to study abroad, but doesn't stop him from admiring the women of his hometown.

"The woman of Urumqi are so beautiful," he said. "We have so many Third Generation Russian Women." He said this over and over, in English and then in Chinese (俄国三代人). I had no idea, so proposed a toast.

"To the Third Generation Russian Women of Urumqi," I said. "They are very beautiful."

The second part of the toast I didn't say aloud: "To the Korean bars of Wudaokou. May I visit often."

Wang Bin's Long Day

BEIJING – Wang Bin and I are the same age. While I spend four hours a
day learning how to say "fan club" and "lazy as a pig," Wang Bin lives
a life where even his victories can be destroyed by petty despots.

Wing Bin sells chicken wings and roast lamb slices cooked on a
portable barbecue grills outside Wudaokou's small bar street. He cooks
every day of the week from 8 p.m. to 6 in the morning. Several vendors
sell the same product, but I think Wang's are the best: always plump
and sweet when they come off the grill.

I'm not alone, I've met many fellow Tsinghua students standing around
Wang Bin's booth at 3 or 4 in the morning, everyone praising the work
of the man we call "Three Thumbs" in English. Some people argue at
these alcohol fueled pit-side discussion that this genetic anomaly –
Wang's left thumb splits below the second knuckle – makes him
predisposed to make great wings.

His wings are so good that my friend Zach decided to make them the
centerpiece of his 23rd birthday celebration. He wanted to hire Wang
and the cart for a couple hours, invite friends and savor the
delicious food without having to worry about avoiding the vomit from
the Malaysian who drank too much on the sidewalk.

Zach broached the idea a couple weeks ago during a late-night session,
and Wang immediately said yes. A few days later I finalized the deal
with a sober, mid-afternoon phone call. For 400 RMB (about $50), Wang
would give us 200 chicken wings, 50 skewers of chopped chicken breast
and 50 pieces of marinated bread.

I wanted to give Wang Bin his deposit money on the rainy Wednesday
before the party, but when I arrived with my bicycle and 200 RMB, he
wasn't there. Another wing seller told me that Wang had come in a
couple hours later than usual the last two nights. With the party on
the books and the weather crummy, Wang decided to rest a bit.

I met Wang just before dusk at Tsinghua's northeast gate. He rode a
miniature bicycle with two grapefruit-sized wheels and a low seat – a
cross between a tricycle and scooter – that is popular in China.
Behind him a thin man struggled to keep up while pulling a large cart
behind his regular bike.

"This is my friend," Wang said.

The party was held near the library, at a place called Lover's Hill.
Here in the afternoon there are always young couples celebrating their
love by either staring into the sky with wonder or falling asleep.
Night activities at the hill were rumored to be more X-rated. Wang Bin
setup his barbecue in a walled picnic area, protected from Beijing's
howling night winds.

The party was a rousing success. More than 30 people came to enjoy the
food (which was excellent), drink cold beer from a nearby dining hall
and chat in a mixture of Chinese and English. Our international
friends, classmates and even our teachers showed up. Brown told an
amusing story about how other teachers thought we were an item earlier
in the semester. I met my roommate's partners in the biology lab, and
impressed them by talking a bit about Du Fu's poetry, which I studied
in college.

Three hours after he arrived, Wang Bin finished cooking and began to
mingle with his guests. He was the man of the hour; everybody wanted a
picture with this 22-year-old master chef. It's been three years since
Wang migrated to Beijing from the southwestern city of Chongqing, and
things were good. He wore new clothes to the barbecue, and probably
pocketed close to two week's wages in one part of the night.

After the last chicken wing was eaten, I led Wang and his colleague
out of the campus. He didn't take the night off, rather headed
straight to his stop on the Wudaokou sidewalk. Exiting the club
Propaganda in the early morning, Zach and I saw Wang Bin's setup in
its familiar place. Wang wasn't there, so Zach took a wing and
started grilling it.

"Chicken wings," he shouted to the passing revelers. "Hot
motherfucking chicken wings! Get them here!"

He didn't get any customers, but his wing finished cooking just as
Wang Bin returned to his booth and grinned at the birthday man. I
stepped inside 7-11 to buy a bottle of water.

When I returned five minutes later, Wang Bin's booth was in chaos.
Wang had a sour expression, and stared down at his chicken wings. A
crowd of people were gathered around, but none were buying wings. Zach
stood at Wang's side in a very paternal way.

"Did you see that," he said. Right after I left, the chicken wing
seller to Wang Bin's right came over, but him in a headlock and
punched him a couple times. These weren't joke punches, but Wang Bin
didn't try to fight back.

A Chinese-American who I didn't know chimed in with an explanation.

"That guy is older than him," he said, referring to the other seller.
"He was pissed that you [Zach] started selling wings at his booth. So
he decided to cut him down to size."

Wang Bin insisted he was fine, but clearly he wasn't. He may have made
a tidy sum by catering his foreign friend's party, but here on the
streets he was still just the Little Brother, someone who has to
respect his elders.

I wonder which event dominated Wang Bin's mind that evening as he
pedaled his cart back to his tiny dwelling – the good or the bad?
Probably his scolding, reminding him of his lowly status after three
long years in the city. Wang Bin is bright and ambitious. Someday soon
I think he will be the Big Brother, or even better, life this winged
life for greener pastures.

Siberian Dreams

BEIJING - I have a friend who believes dreaming in a language is an important step toward fluency. Consider that barrier crossed.

Last night I returned from Propaganda feeling a little tipsy. I changed shirts and crashed into my bed, ignoring the toothbrush and soap on my night stand. The sticky May air wrapped around me as lie down.

I began chatting with my roommate, addressing a number of subjects.

"Drinking on a Monday is very bad," I said, several times. "Very bad."

"You're a good student. I don't think you would drink on a Monday."

"I study hard during the day, but still, drinking on a Monday isn't great."

"I usually don't drink on Mondays."

"Drinking on a Monday is bad."

Eventually I grew tired of this one-way conversation and drifted off to sleep. Here's where things get interesting: my roommate said I kept talking.

"不错， 不错. 哈尔滨， 不错. " I apparently said. "Harbin, it's not too bad."

Harbin is a city in northern China famous for its Russian architecture, heavy industry and annual ice sculpture festival, which each year tricks thousands of southern Chinese into voluntarily traveling to Siberian taiga in the middle of winter. Earlier in the day several of friends were offered jobs teaching English in Harbin by a random person on the street. I guess my dream consciousness is telling me that moving up north wouldn't be all that bad.

A Not-So-Happy Boy

BEIJING ― I haven't been watching enough television lately.

I set a goal of watching one hour a day, and that's proving tough. My
patience for cheaply produced but incredibly convoluted soap operas
set during the last years of the Qing Dynasty is limited. I typically
tune out after the third kung-fu fireball fight of the episode.

Television in some ways in a better language tool than actual
conversation, because while I can always steer the conversation to
topics that I'm familiar with (food, school), television is a passive
medium. If a documentary ventures into a discussion of China's
external trade relations, then I'll need to strain and try to
understand.

I'd consider dropping out of school, locking myself in my dorm room
and watching six hours a day as a way to master Mandarin. The
government �C which strictly regulates television �C requires
announcers, performers and those people who do natural documentary
voice-overs to speak in clear, standard Mandarin. Taiwanese and Hong
Kong slang is not allowed. Frequently subtitles are added, making it
easier to figure out if the two lovers on screen are talking about "to
comfort" kao (靠) or the kao that means barbecue (烤).

If only it wasn't so boring. Right now the most popular series is
"Happy Boy," a singing competition modeled on "American Idol" and its
British predecessor "Pop Idol." The singing �C much of it horrible �C is
pushed to the sidelines in favor of staggering amounts of tension.
"Happy Boy" doesn't just announce the worst performer, there's a
lengthy process to follow.

Three judges offer incredibly mild critiques of performances. A fourth
judge, a member of a tiny, matriarchal minority in Yunnan Province,
appears to be on the show only to flirt with the performers. She's a
minor celebrity in China after publishing a tell-all book chronicling
her sexploits with more than 80 lovers. Now she tries to bag a
contestant or two on their way back to a small town in Anhui Province.
After the scolding and canoodling, the judges decide to let some
candidates "Pass" to the next round while others must "Stay" and face
the possibility of elimination. Viewers then vote for their favorite
contestant (1 yuan a vote), and the lowest person goes home.

"Happy Boy" drags the results out the way a Chechnyan freedom fighter
would reveal the location of an arms depository. Each person's vote
totals appear one digit at a time, which means it can take 10 minutes
to reveal the result. When selected, the loser immediately begins
bawling as a "close friend" in the competition is seen talking in a
pre-recorded segment about how much fun they in the competition. The
loser hugs the remaining contestants and slowly leaves the stage.
Usually that's followed by a montage of highlight's from the show.
Sometimes two or three contestants are eliminated in a single episode
of "Happy Boy," which now airs three times a week.

This is television so emotional that I'm exhausted after a few
minutes. It's so turbulent that I read Russian novels to unwind the
program. Unless I'm lucky enough to catch the performances �C a recent
highlight was a Chinglish version of Madonna's "Music" �C I turn off
the set long before more daily quota. I could go on, but let's just us
say the rest of Chinese television isn't much better at keeping
melodrama in check.

So I'm sticking to learning Chinese in school and out on the streets
for now. Television, wonderful learning tool that it may be, is just
too stressful.

Celebrating Wonderful Hong Kong, Which of Course is Part of China

BEIJING – Celebrations for Hong Kong Culture Week just ended, and if
attendance at university is a valid indicator, the people on campus
are quite fond of China's richest city.

Students mobbed an outdoor rock concert, filling a third of the main
soccer field to see a four-piece band grind out energetic tunes
fleshed out with an occasional guitar solo. They crowded a small
wooden stage with a huge picture of Hong Kong's skyline in the
background. Friends were invited to take a group photo, and the campus
Hong Kong Cultural Association would give a prize to the "best" shot.
Scores of people clogged the street leading to the student center,
where there were a series of large posters discussing major political
and culture events of the past century or so. The campus went Hong
Kong crazy.

As a former Hong Kong resident, I watched the events with an
interesting eye, or at the least the few that I stumbled into on my
way around campus. While it was nice to see Tsinghua talking about a
city I admire, I found them largely disappointing. In many ways the
culture week missed the point, as the planned events rarely touched on
the things that make Hong Kong so special.

I'm sure the planners didn't have a free hand in planning the event,
so I can't entirely blame there. There were political considerations.
The fact that Hong Kong citizens are free from political censorship,
have a partially-elected democracy and have created a vibrant,
pluralist society wasn't discussed. It might not compare so well with
the government by one party system based here.

Slightly more surprising was the lack of Cantonese, the most important
of China's thousands of dialects. Cantonese is the only Chinese
dialect to have the status of an official language (if only Hong Kong
and Macau), and unlike Mandarin, is still written using traditional
characters. Add in a few decades of isolation from Mainland China
after the founding of the People's Republic of China and modern
Cantonese is quite different from the "people's language," Mandarin.

Cantonese movies and music continue to be popular throughout Asia –
and here on the Mainland. I hear Canto-pop and Canto-techno playing in
hutong back alleys, trendy barbershops and tiny portable MP3 players.
Yet all singing during Hong Kong Culture Week was Mandarin. (To the
credit of Tsinghua's Hong Kong contingent, they all appear to speak
excellent Mandarian. The incomprehensiblity of Hong Kongers' Mandarin
is known throughout the country.)

I suppose there were political undertones here as well. Hong Kong is a
part of China now – the culture week also served as an early
celebration for the 10th anniversary of the city's "Return to the
Motherland" – and China speaks Mandarin. But it's hard to celebrate
what's unique about a city without using the city's way of
transmitting that culture.

As I noted earlier this month in Qinghai, the same attitude infects
most government celebrations of minorities. I thought that Hong Kong's
guarantee of 40 more years of a "high degree of autonomy" from the
main Chinese government might allow a more liberal celebration. But
here in Beijing, that autonomy seems rather illusive.

Where's Taiwan?

BEIJING – My reading class took a break from our current lesson, "The
Great Hall of the People," to learn about Chinese cartographic
terminology.

Most of China is in a province, the bland country sub-unit found
around the world. China also granted four cities independence from
provincial bureaucracies – Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing and Tianjin.
Four provinces with high minority populars are known as Autonomous
Regions – Tibet for Tibetans, Xinjiang for the Uighurs, Ningxia for
the Hui and Guangxi for the Zhuang. There's very little actually
autonomous about these regions, but that's a discussion for another
day.

The final geographic word Brown on the board was Special Autonomous
Region. She said there were three: Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

The last word attracted the attention of the class. Brown looked out
to see 12 young adults, from Korea, Japan, the United States,
Kazakhstan and Columbia, giving her a series of mocking facial
expressions. The Koreans turned their lips up ever so slightly toward
a smile. The Americans, being a bit more gregarious by nature, started
giggling. Most expressive of all was the Columbian, who arched his
eyebrows in way that said he smelled bull shit.

Brown attempted an explanation. "Taiwan has a different government,"
she said, "but it's still a special autonomous region."

Oh Brown. Ever the optimist. No one seemed even remotely convinced at
her explanation.

I find it interesting she even bothered to raise the issue. Taiwan's
an extremely sensitive issue here, and Brown must know that we
foreigners would have different views than someone brought up under
the People's Republic of China's education system. Special Autonomous
Regions were not discussed in our textbooks, and we would have been
able to talk about The Great Hall of the People without knowing how to
say it. Even if she wanted to teach the word, there was no reason to
bring up Taiwan.

But she stubbornly placed the white elephant in the center of our
classroom. In America I imagine most teachers, especially those in the
language department, would avoid confrontation. Instead Brown subtly
brought out her perspective. She didn't hammer on the subject, but it
wasn't presented as an opinion either.

For Brown, Taiwan's a Special Autonomous Region and that's that. Any
question, please talk with her after class.

We Can Do Better

BEIJING — I'll never know why she did it. Why a brilliant student, who
beat out thousands of fellow Chinese to a secure a spot in the
country's top university, jumped off Building 36 to her death.

I know little of the incident, only what I reported in the paragraph
above. The same goes with my classmates, both at the language school
and those matriculated and taking regular university courses. Yet the
student community here has been talking about the incident for the
past week.

These conversations start with the terrible news, but soon move on.
Someone says that it's a terrible thing, everyone quickly agrees, and
then segues into speculation as to what caused the death. Stress from
school work is by far the most popular answer. We foreign students
can't quite grasp how the regular Tsinghua students can keep such
punishing schedules – we've heard about their all-night study sessions
and weeks at a time on two hours of sleep at night – while living four
to a room in buildings with no showers and intermittent electricity.
Perhaps it was something else – something back at home with the
family, relationship woes – that caused the terrible events of last
week. We'll never know.

The university has nothing about the incident. There's been no e-mail,
posters or attempts to distribute materials during class. No public
memorial or guest-book to sign. Nothing – just endless rumors flying
around the corridors. This is, of course, an extremely sensitive
matter, and I respect the privacy of the person's family and friends,
but the lack of any notification makes things worse. Instead of
releasing a simple statement clarifying what happened, the school
leaves it up to the rumor mill. A simple notice would end most of this
talk, and allow people to move on to a more productive state of
mourning – remembering, or perhaps hearing for the first time, about
the good this person did, and discussing how to prevent future
suicides.

My senior year at Tufts one of my class' brightest students, a young
woman from Bulgaria, was killed in a traffic accident during
Thanksgiving Break. I didn't know her, but I still vividly remember
the school paper's 2,500 word obituary (written by a friend) that
traced her incredible origins in Sofia to her works of charity and
activism on campus. There was a large, well-attended public memorial
later in the term. The campus came together in the days after this
tragedy, and it felt as if the community grew because of it.

A few days after the death of a woman, another person committed
suicide at People's University on the other side of the city. Again I
heard scattered comments, most lamenting how terrible it was that
another young person would die so soon. And being sad was about the
only thing there was to do, because the silent administration let the
bulletin board comments stand as the only voice about the tragedy. I
hope in the future they can do better.

Let Me Off This Bus

BEIJING – The following takes place between 6:01 and 7:49 p.m.

After 20 minutes waiting for Bus 731 to arrive, I stuck out my elbow
and didn't feel bad taking the second to last seat.

I boarded the bus to save time and money. I did neither.

As preparation for the Olympics, the city has replaced thousands of
rusty diesel models with green-and-yellow models that run on natural
gas. They are painted to match the city's taxi fleet, also replaced
around the same time.

The new buses are nice, but there's a serious overcrowding problem.
Eighty people boarded with me at the first stop, and a couple dozen
piled on the next one. Two or three people got off at each stop, but
they were always replaced with twice as many new passengers. We were
packed in real tight, so tight that I couldn't stand up to pay my
ticket; I had to pass my one-yuan coin down to the ticket lady, who in
turn sent back a small piece of colored tissue paper.

I might have been six inches from four Chinese people, but I didn't
say a word. I kept my iPod earbuds on, listening to Slate's series of
"24 Podcasts, totally engrossed in an extremely complicated plot to
start a nuclear war between Russia and the United States coupled with
a hunt for five missing suitcase nukes, a treacherous vice-president
and a kiss that may or may not have been sexual harassment. "24" is so
addicting that even a podcast that merely discusses plots from the
previous week is incredibly addicting.

For my eyes there were two options: the shoulder of a man in a
yellow-and-blue striped Polo shirt, or craning my neck to see a small
patch of window behind me. I sometimes choose the latter, only to be
constantly reminded of how same-y Beijing can be. For nearly two hours
we went round and round slightly curved ten-lane roads, stopping and
inching forwarded endlessly. On the sides of the roads were mostly
medium-sized, concrete office buildings about a dozen stories tall.
Occasionally a modern glass skyscraper would poke out, sometimes a
one-story store selling "Famous Tabacco and Famous Liquor." It all
looked the same, and I couldn't tell if I was getting any closer to my
final destination.

Finally I saw the Lufthansa Center, my destination, only it was on the
other side of the road and we were already passed it. On the 20 minute
walk through the rain back to the Center, I thought about the millions
of Chinese people forced to rely on the bus system every day. My
journey from Wudaokou had only taken in half of the bus route, but yet
it was nearly two hours long. That means it takes nearly eight hours
to make one circuit on Bus 731. These people all get to their
destinations - eventually. It's hard to believe I used to complain
about a 15 minute commute I had in Albany. Many Beijingers are
spending weeks of their lives on those crowded, humid buses.

The bus ride out wasted so much time that I wound up having to taxi
back to Wudaokou, thus negating any savings of taking the bus out
there to begin with. A subway ride plus a couple short cabs to the
destination would have saved hours and money. At least I learned that
Jack Bauer manages to save the day once again.

Haircuts: His First Time

BEIJING — I waited until the barber finished cutting my friend Zach's hair to ask the question.

"Is this first time you've ever cut a foreign person's hair?"

"Yes."

It wasn't surprising. This tiny salon occupies a few square meters next to the eight-lane Fifth Ring Road. If, as some say, the road marks the end of "real Beijing," then the barber shop lies right on the boundary. Thousands of cars speed over the shop, rushing somewhere else.

The store doesn't seem to mind. When we stopped in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, two women watched a variety show on CCTV-3, a national television station. Two others snacked an early supper – fried rice and a bowl of sliced cucumbers. There were no other customers.

A man with dyed auburn hair greeted us through the door. He directed Zach toward a middle-aged woman, in charge of giving the pre-cut wash. She was careless, allowing water spill out of the snack and onto our clothes. She made Zach and, later, me dry our own heads with a green towel.

The barber worked quickly. He didn't try to solicit information about our favorite styles, he just grabbed a pair of scissors and a comb and started cutting. The strokes were short and quick, each one taking a small bit of hair as the two blades snapped together. He started on the left side, went around to back and on to the right. The top was next, sideburns saved for last.

He blew my hair dry and handed my glasses back for an inspection of the haircut. No complaints; this is my best haircut in months. I had one more question for the barber.

"Is cutting foreign people's hair different than cutting Chinese people's hair?"

He thought about it for a second. "No, not really," he said. "Foreign people's hair has more oil. Other than that, it's the same."

—

These "Haircuts" articles are designed to offer a peak into the Chinese barbershop, but since I use a different shop each time and only get my haircut every month or so, it's really just a furtive glance. Another American, Benjamin Ross, may soon know more than any other Western about the workings of a hair salon over here. He's working as a trainee in Fuzhou, a city in Western China, all this month. His blog entries on the experience, available at http://www.benross.net/wordpress, are fascinating.

"Haircuts" is an infrequent series about haircuts, the people who give them and the styles they dish out.

Brown Bagging It

BEIJING — Oh, 差不多！

This phrase — in letters "chabuduo" —  "means almost the same as," and it's used liberally here in Beijing. Five minutes late to class? 差不多. Screw up someone's name? 差不多. Get drunk and pass out in your neighbor's dorm room?差不多.

This week I discovered what can happen when what you is say is 差不多 from what you mean.

It was Tuesday, and I was hanging out in the hallway with Brown and a couple friends after class, aimlessly talking after four hours in the classroom.

"I'm so hungry."

"Me too."

"We should get some food now."

"Yeah."

"Like right now."

At least that what I thought we were saying. We spoke in Chinese, more out of habit than wanting to practice the language. Brown entered the conversation.

"Sure," she said. "I'd love to eat. Let me go get my bag out of the office and then I'll be right back."

I turned to my friends, and they turned to me. We'd accidentally invited Brown, our squarest teacher, out to lunch.

We decided to take Brown to Qing Qing Ecstasy, the best of Tsinghua's three "western" eateries. Qing Qing actually serves mostly Taiwanese and Thai dishes, but the food is a notch up from the greasy cafeteria fare served elsewhere. We took a table for four near the back corner of the restaurant, next to a two-foot plastic version of Michelangelo's David.

I handled most of the conversation with Brown, treating our forced lunch as an interview. I'd been seeing Brown two hours a day, three days a week for three weeks now, and I knew next to nothing about her. It seem appropriate to found out the basics.

Brown, actual name Lin is from Tianjin, a large city a couple hour's east of Beijing. She's 25, with a master's degree in teaching Chinese at a foreign language from Beijing Language and Culture University. She lives well to the east of Tsinghua, and she commutes 25 minutes every day by electric bicycle. In the winter it's pretty cold, but this time of year things are pretty good. Someday she wants to own a car.

She surprised me with her knowledge of our lives out of class. She knew that a couple of Korean students were now dating, and claimed that she thought they'd been admirers for some time. She wanted to know if my college was near Cornell (no) and Boston University (yes).

The lunch humanized Brown. She became more of a person, less of a robot who dictated when to use 就 or what medication I should take during my next bout of diarrhea. I'd consider doing it again sometime.

(This is going to be the last entry to mention Brown for a while. I don't want this to turn into a blog chronicling every move of my reading teacher, no matter how interesting she may be.)

A Model Textbook

BEIJING — Updated teaching materials is important, especially when
learning the language of a country that is changing as fast as China.

How much things have changed is apparent when you have a course that
uses "Elementary Chinese Course: Part 3" as a textbook. The book –
copyright 1993 – runs through a ridiculous series of lessons focusing
on revolutionary spirit, superior Chinese culture and Marxism
philosophy. There's even a couple lessons about colorful minorities
singing and dancing.

My favorite lesson so far has been the story of Zhao Ping's father
being named a Model Worker by his work unit. While I doubt I'll be
using "model worker" or the rest of this lesson's vocabulary on the
streets of Beijing, it might be useful for reading a history book.

Here's a translated version of the text:

This year Zhao Ping's father is a little older than 50 years. He works
in a factory. When he was small, his family was very poor. They
couldn't send him to school. Instead when he was 12 years old his
parents found him a job in a store. After Liberation, he entered
school and learned about machines. He learned very fast in school,
studying hard in each class, and was the best student in his class.
His often said, "Studying machines in class isn't easy, so I must
study very hard, then I will learn."

After graduation, he was assigned a job in a factory. He was
determined to use all of the knowledge he learned in school. He loved
his job, and finished whatever task was assigned to him quickly and
well. He cared for other people, and often helped them finish their
tasks, made sure they weren't afraid. Other people would ask him
questions, and they'd always be satisfied with the answer. Last year
he invented a new production method, which improved the factory's
production quite a bit.

The nearest city held a Model Worker Convention, and Zhao Ping's
father was selected by his colleagues to attend. But he didn't tell
his family members. After the Model Worker Convention ended, Zhao Ping
brought his Model Worker certificate and Model Worker materials home.
His wife was making dinner, but as soon as she discovered he brought
she was very happy.

"Why didn't you tell us earlier? I'm so happy!" she said.

Then Zhao Ping's wife turned to their son. "Son! You must learn from
the good actions of your father!"

Brown's Rx

BEIJING �C I stumbled into class on Wednesday two hours late, looking
and feeling rather yellow. I wanted to catch speaking class and stay
in the good graces of my professors.

Outside my classroom I ran into Brown, whose class I had just missed.

"Su Bin!" she said. "I heard you're sick. Have you taken any medicine?"

I had taken some medicine, and this seemed to disappoint Brown. You
see, Brown is an amateur phramacist.

Our class first discovered this on a windy day in March, when half the
class reguarlly interupted a lesson set at a bank with loud trumpet
noises emenating from their noses. After a particularly loud blow,
Brown went to the blackboard and wrote a few Chinese characters. "If
you have a cold, take some of these Chinese medicines," she said,
totally unsolicited. Then she returned to a discussion of interest and
exchange rates.

Brown comes from an earlier era of teacher-student relations. Students
are to remain quiet as she works through the textbook excercises,
dialogue and grammar in a logical order. Questions are welcomed, but
they must be on target and asked only to the teacher.

This is not our class. We are children of the 1990s, university
graduates with the attention span of a text message and several
thousand comebacks in our brains. This frustrates Brown, who is too
nice to yell to but not flexible enough to yield to our pleas to play
a game instead of recite passages or tendency to chant "加油!加油!加油!"
when someone is having trouble reading. "Quiet, quiet," she will say,
to little success. On my midterm ― which I got an A on ― Brown wrote
the following comment, "Good job, but don't talk so much during
class."

I think Brown's affinity for hierarchry drives her toward dispensing
medical advice. The pharmacist recommends a medicine and the patient
takes it. What do I know about Chinese medicine? I take Brown's word
that she's not suggesting I ingest rabbit pellets to cure a sore
throat, or that if she is, it's a traditional Chinese remedy.

Since her motives are pure and this appears to be something she's been
doing for a while, I'm inclined to take the medical advice of my
reading teacher. So when I told her this week that I'd already taking
some medicine for my upset stomach, I was telling the truth.

"Well, if you're still sick later, give me a call," she said. "I'll
tell you some medicine to take."

"I will," I said. And I meant it.

Brown's Long Distance Nagging

BEIJING -- Newton postulated that an object in motion stays in motion. I'd like to build on his work and state that a language student on spring break stays on spring break, unless his teacher calls and asks why the hell he's absent.

 

It happened on Wednesday. I was in a tiny Tibetan market down a dirt alley not far from my guesthouse in Xining. I bought a Pepsi, two apples and a pack of gum. I'd just given the man my money when my phone rang. It was my reading teacher, Brown.

 

"Su Bin," she said, "Why aren't you in class?"

 

It was 8:55 a.m. Language students were in a small break between the first and second parts of the day's first class. My teacher used her break time to give me a ring on my cell.

 

School found me, hundreds of miles from the classroom I decided to miss. Vacation was over. I thanked Brown for her call, finished buying the supplies and an hour later got on the Lhasa Express back to Beijing.

 

I've been back here for nearly a week now, but I'm been focusing on finishing loose ends that I started writing in the backwaters of Qinghai and Gansu. With my Gmail Drafts folder finally clear, I'll again start writing about my life in Beijing. As you'll see, things have changed in the past couple weeks. It's fucking hot now, and there's plenty of news on the chicken wing front. More soon.

Friendship is Radioactive

XIHAI, China - I'm warming up to this industrial outpost on the far end of China. My first impressions, that this might be a sneak peek at the world during a nuclear winter, are slowly changing, and it's not because of a sudden love for Soviet block-housing. A Mongolian, Tibetan and Muslim changed my mind.

The Mongolian prefers to be called Xiao Tian. He lives in a guesthouse near Xihai's main outdoor market, an works as an independent truck driver. Because he's self employed he works everyday, hauling supplies and food around town. He started talking to me as I was registering at the hotel, and looked at my Tsinghua student card with interest.

"You're from Tsinghua?" he said. "Then I'll have to take you out to a bar tonight, my treat."

We left the guesthouse around 9:30. Xiao Tian wore a crisp button down shirt with brown vertical stripes. His shoulder length hair was freshly comed. We walked through the center of the market, now deserted.

"Don't worry," he said. "Xihai is a safe place." This made me more nervous, as I was trying to forget that I was in the middle of the Tibetan Plateau, 100 miles from the nearest foreigner in a strange town. The only people who knew I'd come here were Rebecca, now back in Changsha, and my father back in New York. I hoped Xiao Tian was right, and this was a safe town.

We went to a small club, a multi-purpose place setup to handle all of the town's entertainment needs. On the back wall was a small bar, covered in Christmas lights. At the front was a stage and a microphone for crooning karaoke songs. The middle served as a dancefloor, and it was ringed by tables and chairs.

"There's not too many people here!" my host said, apologetically. It didn't matter, I wanted to watch the town have fun, and there were enough people to do that. The DJ played mostly slow Chinese pop songs, occasionally letting a person in the bar sing the vocals live. At a song's beginning, the dancefloor would be clear. Slowly four or five couples would come dance, each holding hands and doing some that resembled a waltz. Many of the couples were single sex, men who I had seen carrying wood through the market were now dancing with a colleague, slowly moving to the beat.

A Tibetan woman came over to our table, a high school student celebrating the final night of her May Break. Tomorrow she'd go back to school, and there could be no more trip to the bar for some time. Her friend went to the stage and sung a song in Tibetan. People seemed excited, and Chinese and Tibetan couples took the dancefloor.

The Tibetan girl wasn't terribly happy about living in Xihai, things were boring here, she said, but it seemed like not a bad place to be. The different ethnic groups seemed to mix relatively well, sharing public spaces and enjoying songs of different cultures.

Toward the end of the evening, after several bottles of Yellow River Beer, the DJ switched the hard Chinese trance music. The couples on the dance floor broke up, and finally Xiao Tian, the Tibetan and I stood up and started handbanging.

The next morning I took my still ringing head to a small Muslim restaurant several blocks from the hotel. The restaurant occupied an enclosed patio off a four-story block-house, and was run by a young Muslim man with a small son, who watched him make my noodles and fried dough. When serving the meal, the Muslim brought over a small bowl with a thick white liquid in it. He told me to try some of his yogurt, which I did, at first with small spoonfuls but then with bigger bites.

"It's horse milk," he said, and I had fight not to spit out the piece in mouth.

"What?" I said.

"This yogurt. It's made from yak milk."

I'd heard incorrectly.

When I finished, the owner refused payment.

It was a great final meal in Nuclear City. While the physical city remained ugly, my encounters with the town's people meant it's a place I might come back to even before the next nuclear holocaust.

A Twisted History

TONGREN, China -- Tibet, if you listen to the Chinese government, has long been a part of China. Just as much a part of China, as say, Beijing.

That's true. The relationship between Tibet and China is an extremely old one. One memorable event occurred during the Tang Dyansty, when the Tibetan army sacked the Chinese capital at Chang'an. Beijing, meanwhile, wouldn't be built for another 600 years.

The history between China and Tibet is long, complicated and rather ambiguous. Tibetan and Western advocate argue that China never actually exercised political control, but rather occasionally was involved in the affairs of an independent Tibetan state.

The current government of China, of course, takes a different position, and travelling around Tibetan lands I've found it interesting how the government likes to cherry-pick information to support its case. Here's a short description of Tongren from a government travel agency, a small town with two important Tibetan monasteries:

"Tongren was a place for nomadic ethnic minorities in history. As early as in the Later Han Dynasty (947-951), the place had been a battlefield. In the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD), the north of Tongren became the place that had garrison troops or peasants open up wasteland and grow grains. In the reign of Emperor Zhongzong in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), it was a state of Princess Jincheng conferred to Tubo. In the Yuan (1271-1368) and Ming (1368-1644) dynasties, the garrison troops from the central government were stationed here, forming the ruling system that combined Tibetan Buddhism and politics with the Longwu Temple as the center. Tongren was established as a county in 1992."

Every sentence might technically be true, but it adds up to a deliberately misleading summary.

Also, if the troops stationed during the Yuan and Ming dynasties formed a ruling system that combined the lamas and the Chinese government, where were they for the Qing Dyansty (1644-1911)? The answer is not found in the text. This town and most others in Tibetan lands were not ruled by China for most of the past 2,000 years.

I'm not asking for a nuanced description from a travel agency blurb, but perhaps pointing out that the place has traditionally been outside the Chinese dynastic system would be prudent. Just because the place is currently controlled by the Communists doesn't mean they have a monopoly on the region's history, too.

Et Tu?

JIJIAWAN, China -- One of the first I will need to do back in Beijing is send out pictures. One to the group of monks we met in Xiahe, another to the Tibetan painting agent who accompayned us through a snow storm near Tongren, and now several to a group of old women who live in this tiny village.

This morning I went to Xining's bus station without a plan. I had one more day left, no desire to check out the remaining tourist attractions in town (The Qinghai Provincal Museum?) The bus station displays a giant map of Qinghai province, with Xining in the center and different routes streaming out towards remote areas. Having already travelled west, south and east of the city, I picked a path that headed north and read the destination: Huzhu.

An hour later I was in downtown Huzhu, which resembled downtown Xining and every other moderately sized Chinese city: a collection of hairdressers, Muslim restaurants, tiny clothing shops and traditional medicine stores along a few wide avenues, occasionally interupted by an open air market. I wanted to explore the countryside, so I started walking away from the center of town. Thankfully Huzhu isn't a big place, and within 20 minutes the stores ended and the road narrowed to two lanes.

I passed trees, dialpated houses and idenitically named gas staions. Then on the southern side of the road appeared a confabulation of cureved Chinese roofs, red lanterns and neon flags. At the compoaund's gate stood four women in elborate costumes. They said that this was the Tu Minority Exhibition Center, and that for 40 RMB I could see the Tu sing and dance.

During the Cultural Revolution, China tried to eliminate the traditional culture of its minorities, labeling them "feudal." Economically liberal China is trying a different approach: the song and dance method.

Minorities are "mysterious," "wonderful," and "unique," exotic creatures that should be viewed from a distance of ten meters or more. Travel agencies are in on the act, flying in millions of tourists to country's fridges, plopping them in a bus and dropping them off at a minority entertainment center. Here dozens of people in dazzling customes will feed them, dance and even sing (in Mandarian!). Three hours later, the stuffed, drunk and tired tourists will be head back to their hotel, with a new "understanding" of minority culture.

Under the pretext of looking for a bathroom, I poked around the entertainment center. Down a long hallway, tucked away from the freshly painted dance stage, I saw a row of tiny rooms. Inside were four bunk beds, the place where the performers and cooks lived. They were dark, dank and in poor condition. Where would my 40 RMB go? I suspect mostly into the hands of a local government official or tax agency, not the people in the show.

I would feel guilty visiting a stage-managed version of Tu life when a real-life village was right across the street. I crossed the street and went down a dirt path into the village proper.

At first the road was lined with Tu dancing places, many with two or three women standing out in front looking bored. The Tu obviously have thrown their lot behind entertainment tourism, but I'm not sure if the northern Qinghai tourist circuit is busy enough accomadate them. I ignored their "hollos" and pleas to see them dance and purchase trinklets that were probably mass produced in Guangdong. At the end of the street were four old men, sitting in front of a small convience store. They appeared to be the town's senitels, historians and gossips.
"Don't climb that mountain," one said to me, pointing to a terraced hill right behind the store. "It belongs to someone else."

I thanked them for their advice and head perpendicular to the mountain. The tourist part of the village ended, and there were only small homes with mud-concrete walls. In between were small fields, many with an old woman or two planting this spring's crops. Agriculture is traditionally a man's job; the Chinese character for man 男 contains a field pictograph, but today the man have headed to the city and left the work for the women.

A group of old women were sitting in the shade of one mud-brick house and invited me to sit on a tiny stool. They were taking a planting, and were more than happy to chat with the village's first foreign guest in quite some time. One lady with six remaining teeth said her husband was a teacher in Huzhu. A couple others were widows, all continued to work in the field despite their advanced age.

They pointed to the warm Qinghai sun. "It's been a good year for farming," they said. One lady brought her 10-month-old grandchild, who saw my white face and started to cry. The women laughed, and then tried to comfort the child.

A spent nearly an hour with the women, and hour where I learned about how a Tu person might actually spend the day. I couldn't hum its tune, or take home a DVD copy of the occasion, but I think witnessed something a little closer to have these people live their lives.

To the Heart of the Empire

SHIJIAZHUANG, China -- Long train rides are always indeterminable; epic journeys of boredom punctuated by significant changes that only appear important in hindsight.

 

But the tediousness of travel is exactly what makes train rides so useful, because the surplus time means there's time to investigate minuate the usually would be ignored in favor of more pressing matters.

 

I'm heading back to being on the T28, better known as the Lhasa Express. Perhaps the most controversial train in the world, the opening of this line last October meant three times a day, the capital of Tibet will receive Chinese merchandise, tourists and migrants year round. Tibet can no longer be seen as an isolated outpost, this steel artery connects the autonomous region to the rest of China.

 

Tibet in reality has been solidly connected to China for quite some time, but the railroad is an important symbol of their united future. A funny thing about this train, though, is that for all its symbolic value, there's a sloppiness of display in the final product.

 

The English signage is atrocious. "Please Use Dust bi" read signs in every single bathroom, even the one in first-class with a Western-style toilet. "The temperature out of the car is 14 degree," scrolls by on a monitor every few minutes, occasionally replaced by "Welcome to take this train!" and "The originating station is Lasa."

 

This train can't even spell it's destination correctly. It's L-H-A-S-A, not lasa. "Lasa" is a transliteration of the Chinese characters for the city. The government thoughtfully included signs in Tibetan throughout the car, but went against its own policy by not using the minority spelling of the city in its English translation.

 

These are tiny mistakes, but they count. The Chinese government should be working overtime to dispel the impression of Western visitors to Tibet, most of whom are convinced the country is occupying a sacred and people land headed by a Nobel Peace Prize winner. They should appear sensitive to the wishes of the Tibetan people: This 48-hour train journey will be the first and last thing thousands of visitors will remember about their Tibetan trip. When they notice the Tibetan passengers can't read the dining car's menu (it's only in sloppily handwritten Chinese), it's not helping.

 

My train ride, from Xining onto Beijing (about half of the total trip), is also long enough to realize that hating the Chinese for building the railroad isn't the answer. Average Chinese citizens have the right to convenient and affordable transportation around the country. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese are currently working in Tibet, enticed by the government with tax breaks and good salaries, and serving out of a sense of patroic duty to develop the country's poor areas. These people usually sign long-term work contracts, and can't afford to fly home. Without the railroad, they might have gone three or four years with seeing loved ones. Now the trip can be made more often.

 

Around 4:30 in the morning, I started talking with a woman in line for the bathroom. We were both in hard sleeper, the class of cheap language students and working Chinese. A Tibetan monk stood behind us in line, the woman, like most people in the car, wore cheap, functional clothes. She was going to Beijing, it was her first time.

 

"My child is sick," she said. "We're going to the hospital in Beijing."

 

Then she opened the sliding bathroom door to check on her son. I see on the other side of the door a young boy of around 10, struggling to turn on the faucet to wash his hands. He had severe deformities, probably the result of a neurlogical condition. He walked out of the bathroom with difficulty, his mother helping him take small steps.

 

Yes, it's O.K. to hate the train and the destruction it symbolizes for Tibetan culture. But I can't hate the people who travel on the train, be they Tibetan, American or Chinese, because they deserve every chance to get where they need to be.

Notably Serving Even the Most Idiotic Travelers

XINING, China -- One unfortunate legacy of China's decades under a Communist government is service. It's terrible.

 

This afternoon Rebecca and I took a local bus town August One Avenue to Xining's central square. On this, the fourth day of the May Holiday, the square and the surrounding shops were swarming with people, and we eventually moved from the large public space to smaller spaces. Each time I would pop into a store, I would be mobbed by workers. "I'm just looking," doesn't help, attractive young women would continue to point out bright yellow shirts, push 28" blue jeans in my face and pick out clothes that I wouldn't and couldn't wear.

 

I quickly gave up and left, but I know from experience in Beijing if I actually found something I wanted to try on, it would take several minutes to locate an associate and there would inevitably be problems on the way to the fitting room. Service in China usually goes from cloying to nonexistent.

 

Thankfully I have found a model worker in the service industries. I'm not sure of her name, but she works days at the Xining Long Distance Bus Station. The last time I saw her, she was wearing a dark green uniform and was wearing lip gloss.

 

We met in the bus station's parking lot. I was frantic, having just unpacked at a guesthouse across the street to find my camera missing. I ran back to the parking lot, finding the bus from Tongren gone. In its place was a taxi shark, who moments earlier asked me if I wanted to go straight from a three hour bus ride through mountains to a five hour ride in the back of his cab to Qinghai Lake. Frantic, I asked him where my bus went.

 

"Qinghai Lake?" he said. I resisted the very strong temptation to smack this diminutive man in the back of his face, instead scanning the parking lot for someone who might help. That's where I saw the woman, standing a couple feet away looking official.

 

"I just came on the bus from Tongren," I said to her. "We got here at 1 p.m. I left a very important thing on the bus."

 

She sprung into action, not pausing to laugh, point, stare or do any of the other things that frequently happen when people realize they are talking with a six-foot redhead. She led the way back into the station, where she unsuccessfully tried to find the licence plate number of my bus. When that failed, we went to the information booth, where she called the Tongren bus station and got the information. Within two minutes we were back in the parking lot, looking for a blue vehicle with the correct digits.

 

It was locked. The woman looked around, trying to find the driver. He wasn't there, but she had a plan. This bus would go back to Tongren at nine tomorrow morning. At eight she would search the bus, and give me a call if she found my camera.

 

I returned to the guesthouse feeling strangely satisfied. Even though my camera wasn't lost, I felt that I had an advocate in the station, a woman who would do anything possible to find it. As I entered the branch of the guesthouse, I saw Rebecca waiting in the hallway.

 

Dangling from her left wrist was my camera. It was in her backpack.

Sweet Smelling Conversation

XINING, China — The knock on thin wooden door diverted my attention from a Chinese marital cartoon. I opened the door to find my guesthouse's laoban with three insence sticks in his hand.

 

"The air in here is bad. I brought you these," he said, and stuck two in a tiny receptacle near the window. He then sat down on one of the beds. The laoban had a pretty lame excuse for coming in the room — the incense would be much more appreciated in the bathroom — but he followed it with some interesting conversation.

 

I first answered his inquires into my nationality, age, residence and current education process. We laughed because I attended Tsinghua University and was vacationing in Qinghai province ("ts" is an old romanization of the Chinese consonant "q."). Then I asked a few questions.

 

The laoban isn't young, deep creases formed around his cheeks and on his forehead, the sign of a lifetime of work. It is a face that must carry many stories inside it, tales of the perilous decades before economic liberalization. Unfortunately I do not yet have the vocabulary to ask and more importantly understand these stories. For now, I have to contend myself this man's present, running a guesthouse for a family the lives in another town. He is in charge of the first, second and third floors, and sleeps in a tiny cube right next to the street. He proudly mentions that this property is now worth 500,000 RMB  — a tidy sum for a place that charges $4 a night to travelers who want to stay near Xining's busy train station.

 

Another knock on the door. This time it was the laoban's friend. They are both Hui, Chinese Muslims who wear white prayer hats known as kufie. The man sat down next to the laoban on my bed.

 

"Have you been to Lhasa?" the laoban said. "My friend is going to meet tonight's train from Lhasa in an hour. He's going to get some roast lamb meat from the train. Tibetan lamb is very good! He is going to take the meat and cook it. One skewer, one renminbi!"

 

I didn't know how to respond to that. As the sweet smell of the incense permeated the stale guesthouse air, I looked over at my two conversation companions. Two Chinese Muslims, both triple my age, excitedly talking about a shipment of raw meat. This is why I travel.

Two Bombs, One Song

XIHAI, China — The 1st Nuclear Weapons Research Center in China Exhibition Hall is not an obvious target for an energy conservation campaign, but the half a dozen employees at one of Qinghai Province's newest museums have decided to do what they can.

 

Whenever the museum is without patrons, something I figure that happens quite frequently, the electricity in the building is turned off. When a tour bus, or in my case, a language student on an extended May Break arrives, the Tibetan man selling traditional medicine on the bottom floor stops sleeping and flips on a light switch. That's a queue for the two museums on the next floor to do the same.

 

I suspect the museum spends the vast majority of its day in the darkness. The few tourists to Qinghai Province can choose to visit a 500-year old Tibetan Monastery, the source of the Yellow River, China's largest lake, or a haze-filled industrial town responsible for bringing the world one step closer to a Nuclear Winter.

 

The nuclear weapons exhibition tells the history of Xihai, which 60 years ago was pastureland for local Tibetans. Then America detonated two atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and all big countries, China included, felt they needed to develop nuclear weapons. Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and other senior officials ordered work to commence on a top-secret program, centered in Qinghai. Scientists, workers, and even local lamas and herders joined the Motherland's march toward an atomic future. Twenty years later, in a field not far from town, they succeeded and China became the world's fifth nuclear power.

 

It's hard to rectify the excitement of the People's Daily headline from the day of the explosion: "Our China Detonates First Nuclear Weapon!" and the crumbling buildings around Xihai. Most research ended in the late 1980s, when China trimmed military spending and shifted toward a market economy. Nuclear and coal plants, throwing black smoke into the mountain plateau, still operate, but the town is in delcine. People live in decaying Soviet block-style housing, wandering around the small street grid in a daze. This town is a monument to a failing regime, not a triumph of science.

 

Reflecting on the consequences of building a nuclear weapon at the same time millions of people in the countryside were starving to death is not the exhibition's priority. As far as I could tell, the exhibit's only concession to peace was a People Daily's editorial from 1967, which hopes that the country will never have to use its new super-weapon. Instead Xihai is presented as just another place to pop in, snap a few photographs and then hit up Sichuan restaurant for lunch. The crassest place in town, and one that I think sums up the place, is a propaganda banner near a large Socialist statue to the detonation: "Two Bombs, One Song Came From This Place." Nuclear explosions, Qing Dynasty folk songs, it's all the same here.

 

After spending a few hours in town, I'm dumbfounded that this is Qinghai's great new tourist hope. I can't see why people would leave China's smog-clogged cities to drive hours and hours into the wilderness, only to stop at a polluted, depressed valley in the middle of nowhere, especially a place which glorifies weapons of mass destruction.

 

But then again, here I am.

Roommate Wanted, Foreigners Need Not Apply

XINING, China - Rebecca's leaving today, catching a late train to Lanzhou and then flying back to her teaching job in Changsha. My vacation is going to linger on for a little longer, as a student isn't under the same stress as a teacher to make it back for the first class. I wanted to stay in my two-bed guestroom room with a view over the city's Tibetan market, and that was looking likely until a knock on my door around 8 p.m. this evening.

"Hello, do you know where your friends are?"

It was the guesthouse's laoban, the manager who figured place people in rooms, collected money and dealt with problems. My "friends" were a Danish English teacher from Xi'an and his Italian girlfriend, on vacation from development work in Cambodia. We met on the bus from Tongren and they spoke little Chinese, so they decided to come along with us on the hotel hunt. We lived in side-by-side rooms, but generally kept apart during the day.

The laoban, a trim Chinese-Muslim with a large mole on his chin, wanted to know if the next room had a free bed. He was a little mixed up - my room had the free bed. Who was leaving and who was staying didn't seem to be his main concern. Standing in the hallway were a haggard looking group of Tibetans, having just arrived from some far-flung corner of Qinghai Province. Clearly the man needed to find spaces for these pilgrims, who despite behind devout Buddhists looked rather annoyed.

"Can you move to a single room?" he said, making it sound as if the question mark was unintentional.

I didn't want to. Single rooms cost an additional 8 RMB a night, which isn't much but I'm on a budget. The last thing I want to spend money on was moving from a room that earlier in the day I was told was mine.

"But it isn't safe. If you stay in the room, someone might take your stuff," the laoban said. "For your own safety, you should move to a single room."

I relented. The real problem with keeping me in the double room is that it would mean placing with me a Chinese roommate. What wasn't safe was the possibility that something might happen to me, and the laoban would be serious trouble with the local government. It's reverse discrimination, keeping the foreign guest out of the normal rooms, afraid what might happen if he was allowed to mix in with the local population. Well, I've got news: the last nine days, I've rode on smelly buses, eaten dodgy food and used innumerable grotty toilets. A Chinese roommate? Bring it on.

Anywhere, Qinghai

TONGREN, China - You expect a place like Tongren, four hours on a narrow road from the nearest city, to be hopelessly remote, to have an end of the earth feeling. But Tongren isn't a place that feels forlorn. On the town's wide streets, Tibetans, Han and the Tu, distant relatives of the Mongolians go about daily life in surprisingly mundane ways.

 

Here people buy apples, bananas and oranges in open-air markets, buy pirated copies of American action movies and waste time in the town's admirably art-deco main square. It's hard to rectify the scene with legends about Qinghai Province, a desolate stretch of territory associated with the Chinese gulags (laogai) and nuclear testing sites.

 

The surprises in Tongren come in unexpected cosmopolitan touches. On one side of the food market, a Tibetan operates a small clothes shop called "Your Style." Outside is a large picture of Michael Jackson from the "Thriller" video, with half of his face replaced with a skelton.

 

"I made it right here," the owner says in clear English, the best I've heard spoken all trip.

 

We switch back to Mandarin, and he asks me if I've ever been to India. I haven't, been am planning a trip for the summer. The man studied there for five years, learning English. Why he came back to his hometown in Qinghai province to sell clothes that are more fashionable that what most people wear back in Beijing, I'm not sure. I felt strange questioning his life path, although I flirted with buying a red and white spring coat for 85 RMB.

 

I opted instead for a green jacket from the army surplus store down the street. It cost just 30 RMB. The owner of that shop asked me how long I had been in the American military. I smiled, and joked that I wouldn't be fit for either the American or the People's Liberation Army.

 

The one place in town where it does seem as if I've travelled to the end of the Earth is our hotel room. I have again checked into a Chinese guesthouse, this time paying just 10 RMB for a bed run by a local Muslim woman and her extreme old mother. The room has just small dim light bulb, and the bed frame appears to be from the Qing Dyansty. But even here, the modern world intervenes. The guestroom's ancient squatter toilet right above the town's abortion clinic.

The Morning Express to Xiahe

XIAHE, China – The loud knocks on the door woke me. I opened my eyes to see the $5 hotel room was still pitch black.

"Xiahe! Xiahe!" A man screamed as he continued to knock on the door. "Six o'clock, Xiahe!"

"What time is it?" I said to Rebecca, my travelling companion. Her stiff Chinese mattress was a couple inches closer to the nightstand and a cellphone.

It was ten to six. Last night the hotel manager told us the bus to Xiahe would leave at 7:00 a.m. Our dingy accommodations overlooked the bus station, and there wasn't any hot water for a shower, so we set our alarms for 6:40. All we had to was throw on a pair of pants, put our packs on our backs and pile into the bus.

The man's calls became more intense. He tried English. "Six..." He fumbled for the right word, and not finding it, went back to Chinese. "Six-thirty! The bus is leaving at six-thirty!"

Thirty minutes later, Rebecca and I were the second and third passengers on an old Chinese bus bound for Xiahe. The town's dusty south bus station, had several other vehicles waiting to depart. These buses showed "Hezuo" as their destination, and were filled with Chinese Muslims with neat skull caps and head scarves.

The bus started trolling the streets of Linxia, looking for more passengars by inching along and having someone shout "Xiahe!" out the window. Linxia is a mostly Muslim town. The largest buildings are the town's grand mosques, which combine modern Chinese white tile with the curved domes and minarets of Islam.

We left the station as three, but slowly the bus began to fill up. A Tibetan woman her small child got on the near the market, two old men waved the bus down on the side of the street. Rebecca and I got out and bought steamed buns, a Pepsi and a local fruit that resembles large, brown grapes.

A kung-fu movie started playing on the bus' lone television. There were English subtitles, but I couldn't read them from the my seat at the back. The bus driver used the horn not only into indicate imminent danger, but also to point out all passing cars, motorcycles, pedestrians and domestic animals. This is to say that he honked constantly, blocking the movie. I put on my iPod, cranked up some repetitive techno, and looked at the changing landscape.

The boundary between the Muslim lands to the north and east and the Tibetan ones south and west are clearly marked. There's a toll booth and a giant rectangular written in the white-and-gold Tibetan style. From here the road signs are marked in Chinese and Tibetan. Out the window I see farmers with round faces and rosy cheeks, some leading their tiny cows to grasslands away from the villages. The mountains on each side of the road are higher and more brown, at points they seem to rise thousands of feet above the dusty road.

The begins stopping at villages, and slowly the bus begins to empty. By the time we pull off the highway there are only a dozen people abroad. We enter Xiahe by driving down the town's main street, a wide and dusty lane the recalls the boom towns of the Wild West.

We got off the bus, and I looked down at my cell phone. 10:30. We still had the whole day to explore.