Lost on Planet China: One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation (30 page)

It is true: There are Death Vans in China. And lest you think that mobile execution trucks are just a trifle barbaric, the roving Death Vans are, in the words of its manufacturer, a sign that China “promotes human rights now.” Until 2004, all prisoners sentenced to death were shot, which can be messy and inefficient if the prisoner requires a coup de grâce. Now, for the lucky few, there are Death Vans that roam the country, going from town to town, efficiently and
humanely
—the Chinese really stress this—executing prisoners by lethal injection. No one knows for certain how many people are executed each year in China. Some say 2,000, others 15,000; the exact figure is a state secret. And the offenses can be something as simple as tax fraud. But the Chinese are also moving toward Death Vans because the government is involved in a profitable enterprise harvesting human organs from condemned prisoners, which is frankly much easier when the bodies aren’t splattered with bullets. Members of Falun Gong, in particular, are said to be the go-to prisoners for organ transplants, and apparently the Japanese are big customers. So while back in the day I might have had a
smokee
here and there, if there was one criminal justice system in the world I wanted nothing to do with, it was China’s.

That night after dinner, we passed a bar with a big dog slumbering at the entrance. “Tell me that doesn’t look just like Osso,” Jack said.

Osso was Jack’s dog, his very big dog, the sort of dog who greets guests by barreling at them, chest level, to see whether the guest is to be played with. But the guest, of course, doesn’t know this dog is being playful. All the guest knows is that there is a very large dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, about to knock him over.

“Have you ever seen a Rhodesian Ridgeback in China?”

“It’s probably the local delicacy.”

“Let’s go in.”

I looked up at the sign. The Elephant Bar. Inside, the air was redolent with a smoky haze familiar to anyone who’d attended a Berkeley sit-in in the summer of 1969. We took a seat at the bar and spoke to James, one of the dreadlocked owners, who explained that they’d rescued the dog from dog fighting. As we talked, a couple of Colombians walked in. “Shots?” they offered. It was a little early to set such a blistering pace. “It’s on us.”

Okay, then.

Soon the bar began to fill up. There was an Englishman in a straw hat who had spent the previous night sleeping there. Two brothers. Australians. Dutch. For a time, this was the crossroads of the world. The bar began to fill up with a crowd of convivial, determined drinkers. There were beers, shots. And then joints were lit up, and while we declined a proffered toke, it wasn’t because we were trying to maintain a pretense of sobriety. No, with the first shots it was established that tonight we would get cheerfully hammered. But there was no need to actually smoke weed. In the sweet, fragrant haze, my eyes watered, I had a curious case of the munchies, and I couldn’t stop laughing.

I turned to James, who was English. “So can I ask you something?” I said between chuckles. “How long have you guys been here?”

“We opened about three years ago. We had a place in Thailand, but Thailand became just…” He waved his hand languorously.

“And business is good?”

“Business is good.”

“Has it always been like this?” I went on. “I mean, there’s tons of Westerners here. Why are we here? What is drawing us to this town in Yunnan Province?”

“It’s because of Lonely Planet, man. A couple of years ago, they made a reference to the local herb. You’ve probably noticed the friendly locals selling weed. It grows wild up in the hills. So the writer mentioned it and voilà.”

It is astonishing, the power of Lonely Planet. One offhand comment by a freelance writer and suddenly a small town in Yunnan Province had become the Mecca of the hippie trail.

Just then James’s attention was diverted by the arrival of a fierce-looking Chinese man in a suit. It is, of course, very difficult for a stoned man in long dreads to convey tension, but that is exactly what he exuded. They conversed with the aid of a waitress translating, and pointed frequently to the dog, which slumbered happily on a couch.

Afterward, I asked what that was about.

“He’s one of the local mobsters. His boss’s dog is missing, and since it looked a lot like ours, he came over to take a closer look.”

“Is the mafia powerful here?”

“They control everything, man.” He shook his head.

“Don’t mess with the mobsters in Dali.”

We were not in Dali to mess with mobsters. We were here, it now seemed clear, to get positively
lit.
Not for a moment was there an empty glass before us. Not in this bar. This was a place for drinking, where the moment a glass was drained, another was placed before us. I was liking it here, this merry place where everyone was funny and quick-witted and where you could settle back and enjoy the secondhand cannabis.
No, Officer,
I’d say should I encounter one.
I didn’t inhale,
I’d assert as he stared into my glassy eyes.

I soon found myself next to a young Chinese woman from Shanghai. Her Western name was Judy and she’d settled in Dali three months earlier but would join her boyfriend in Dalian, a city in northern China, when he returned from the United States.

“I want to be a housewife,” she said.

This was a surprisingly popular ambition among young women in China. But then, I reflected, it sure beat working in a factory twelve hours a day.

“And where’s your boyfriend from?” I asked.

“He’s from North Carolina. He was my English teacher.”

“And a fine job he did too. Have you been to North Carolina?”

“Yes.” She scrunched her nose. “I don’t like it there.”

“Why not?”

She struggled to convey her thoughts. “People are very fat there.”

“Well, that’s not a good reason to not like North Carolina. It just means the barbecue is pretty good.”

“There is no culture there.”

“No culture? Have you ever been to a basketball game between Duke and the University of North Carolina? It’s a tribal conflict that has its roots in the dim mists of time.”

“I still don’t like North Carolina. I just want to be a housewife.”

“But what if your boyfriend wants to return to North Carolina? What if he becomes homesick? As an American, he can never truly become Chinese, can he?”

She nodded her head slowly, as if she’d never considered the possibility.

“But if you come to America, you can become an American,” Jack chimed in. “It’s what makes America great. Anyone can become an American.”

“But I don’t want to go to America.”

“I know,” I told her. “But I’ve seen this many times before. Your boyfriend will always be a
laowai
here. Maybe he doesn’t want to be an outsider his entire life. Maybe, one day, he will want to return to North Carolina because he wants to be someplace that feels like home.”

She began to quiver. “But I don’t want to live in North Carolina. I want to be a housewife in Dalian.”

“Dude,” Jack interjected. “You’re going to make her cry.” He turned to her. “Don’t listen to him. He’s a bad man.”

“I don’t think he’s a bad man.”

“I’m not a bad man, but him?” I said, pointing to Jack.

“He’s a bad man. Do you like George Bush?”

She shook her head emphatically.

“He likes George Bush.”

And just like that, all the goodwill toward us evaporated. Our barmates ignored us. Our glasses remained unfilled. The owners wouldn’t even look at us.

I knew, of course, that George Bush wasn’t the most popular of presidents. But still, simply because Americans had elected a psychopath didn’t strike me as a sufficient reason for this denial of alcohol. True, we did it twice, but I think that would elicit the need for more drink, not less. And so here we were. We’d been 86’d? Cut off from ale. Cruel indeed.

“You don’t think it’s because we’re completely drunk?” Jack asked.

“I don’t think you get 86’d for that around here.”

Jack tried hard to regain their good graces. He served up witty banter, to no avail. His attempts to rejoin the conversation around us fell flat.

“So, James, can I ask you something?” Jack finally asked, raising his voice so that James, who had slinked far, far away from the Republican and his guilty-by-association friend, could hear. Cautiously, he moved toward us. “So, James.” Jack searched his mind for something that would alleviate this wall of bitterness. And this is what he came up with:

“Do you like the Grateful Dead?”

I snorted so hard I damaged my sinuses. But it was enough. James did indeed like the Grateful Dead. People were talking to us again. Soon, Jack was no longer regarded as a dangerous madman but as a peculiar alien, one called to explain his world. It helped that Jack had always thought that invading Iraq was a bad idea, and that his conservatism was of the old school, Reagan kind.

“No, I respectfully disagree,” he said to the Englishman. “Gun control is bad. See, the reason we don’t have soccer hooligans like you do in England is because we’re all armed.”

Soon, another group of foreigners arrived. Jack, eager to reclaim the warmth so recently lost, asked them where they were from.

“Israel,” one offered cautiously.

“Israel! I’ve been hoping all night for a group of Israelis to walk in.
Mazel tov,
my friends. This round is on me.”

And the night went on, leading inexorably to flaming shots sucked through straws and a long, endless stumble in the dark—
Which way? I don’t know. Fuck. I’m drunk
—until finally we found the heavy wooden door of our guesthouse, and we pounded—so much pounding, had they never before had drunken guests needing an open door at 2
A.M.
?—until, at last, a young boy undid the lock and wordlessly, loudly, we tottered in.

A knock on the door. Groan. I opened the latch. Jack stood in the darkness. “You’re not going to church with me, are you?”

I was in that grim place halfway between gross inebriation and a head-shattering hangover. It was not a moment I wanted to be conscious for. And I certainly wasn’t going to drag my sorry ass out of bed for predawn mass, though I did resolve to never, ever drink again if God would please, please spare me the hangover on the horizon. I had a dim recollection of a shot glass on fire. This was going to hurt. Please, Lord. I’ll never touch a drop again.

“No. I’m not going to church. But pray for me. I am not well.”

It was as if my head had been invaded by little men with jackhammers. They pounded. They drilled. And my mouth felt as if I’d swallowed a wad of cotton. My body felt as if it had been poisoned, which of course it had been. It’s the first sign of aging, the crippling hangover. True, I’d had hangovers before. More than a few. But once, not so long ago, I could simply guzzle a couple of Gatorades, go for a run, sweat it out, and move on. Not so now. After thirty-five, hangovers
hurt.
Jesus, they hurt. Flammable shots? Good God, what was I thinking.

Some hours later, I stumbled downstairs to find Jack on a chair outside, smoking a cigarette.

“Tell me that you’re as hungover as I am,” I said to him.

“I am hungover,” he said. “But I’m not the wreck that you are right now.”