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.
