China Rising, Part III: The Six Trillion Dollar Rug

When I was 15 and had a paper route, every six months or so the folks who ran the circulation office would take us “canvassing,” forcing us to go door-to-door selling subscriptions to old ladies on welfare and dull-witted teenagers who’s parents weren’t around.

I was an unscrupulous salesman. If a babysitter opened the door, I would convince her that she should sign her employers up for a copy of the Milwaukee Journal. “Really,” I would say, “just fill out the form. Then if they come home and don’t want the subscription, all they have to do is call this number”—and I’d rattle off seven digits so quickly it sounded like I was speaking Russian.

“Even if they do cancel,” I’d say, “the newspaper usually doesn’t remember to cross off my sale, so I still get credit for it.”

More often than not, the kid would sign, pulling an awkward grin over her braces as I thanked her.

Then I’d move on to the next house, the next porch, the next doorbell, the next sucker waiting to be parted from his money.

I’ll be frank with you: I didn’t really like selling things. Despite an otherwise friendly relationship with the deadly sins, I’m just not the wheeling-dealing type. This is true of almost everyone in my extended family: most Hanstedts I know couldn’t sell ice cream in hell.

But the pitch? The patter? The telling jokes you’ve told a million times as you build a relationship, the—dare I say it—rhetoric?

Well, yeah. I kind of liked that. In case you hadn’t noticed.

Looking back now, I feel a little guilty about putting all of those babysitters and dope-smoking teenagers into such a bad position. At the time, though, I have to admit, my 15-year-old heart seemed maybe two sizes too small. “Geez,” I didn’t as much say as think to myself, “if someone’s dumb enough to subscribe to a newspaper for a house they don’t even live in, then there’s not a whole lot I can do to help them.”

I thought of this a few weeks back when we were in Beijing at a rug factory. I want to preface this part of the narrative by saying that I had no intention of buying a rug. Indeed, Ellen and I already have a number of very beautiful rugs in our house—two from Iran, one from China—purchased from a wholesale warehouse in Farmville, Virginia. In addition, of course, we also have some really lame, Walmarty-type rugs, including one really piece of crap rug—bought because it matched the Chinese rug—that started to grow threadbare the day we got it home.

But even so, I was not at this factory to buy I rug. Indeed, since our debacle in Vietnam wherein we purchased 6,245 souvenirs in 14 days (See, “In Which Ellen and I Compensate . . .” Jan. 2010), Ellen and I had begun to practice a bit more self-control when it came to the many many many beautiful things you can buy in Asia. Sure, we’d purchased the occasional Tibetan prayer bowl, captivated by its golden tone; and sure, we’d picked up an antique needlepoint wall hanging featuring a phoenix and dragon in intricate but faded detail. But we’d also walked away from some very lovely handmade copper bowls, and all sorts of painted carvings, paper cuttings, and calligraphies. We were behaving. Really we were.

Even so, the factory was awesome: we got to see silk worms and cocoons and the items that are used to dye the silk—tree bark, saffron, Sara Palin’s unused brain tissue. After that, our guide—a plain, slightly overwhelmed woman named Cindy, who talked as though having memorized a script—led us over to several huge looms where women were tying silk threads to the warp and slicing them with small razors. Their hands moved so quickly we could barely see them. Even so, we were told, an 8 x 6 rug could take up to 6 months to make, depending on the density of the weave. I loved the intricate detail, the complexity of the process, all those different colored threads hanging above, the blue-sheet patterns showing Xs and Os so small they looked like pin-holes.

Fascinating.

Wonderful.

Impressive.

But buy a rug? Not on my agenda.

The kids were invited to give the knotting a try, and all of them did. Will had a blast. He made half a dozen knots on one rug before moving to another and tying another 5 or 6 there. He even asked me to use his camera to videotape himself as he did it.

Cute.

Memorable.

Once in a lifetime, even.

But still: I was not there to buy a rug. The thought never entered my mind.

Ten minutes of that, though, and the show was over. We were escorted into a room roughly the size of the USS Nimitz, every wall of which was hung with the most beautiful oriental rugs I’d ever seen in my life.

Ever.

In.

My.

Life.

Ummmm . . .

But no, it didn’t matter. We already had rugs. We already had souvenirs. A rug souvenir? Out of the question.

Cindy led us to the middle of the room, where she finished her spiel, showing us three small rugs with different weave counts and explaining how you could tell by looking at the underside: the more detail you saw, the denser the weave, the more expensive the rug.

And then she held up the finest of the three rugs and said, “How much do you think this rug costs?”

I have to admit, I wasn’t really listening when she asked this. I’d been glancing toward the back door, wondering if the rumor about a mid-morning snack of popsicles was true, and if so, if it’d be possible to sneak out and get an early start on the action. Nonetheless, when Cindy spoke, I glanced down at the carpet she was holding, and, like an idiot, said, “20,000 RMB.” 3,000 dollars, US, more or less.

She stared at me. And then laughed. “I like your price.” Then she named a price one fifth of that.

My theory, of course, is that that’s why she honed in on me: I named a high price for a small rug, revealing that at least one of the following was true:

a) I was a very rich person for whom money was no object.

b) I was so stupid I thought almost 3,000 US was an appropriate asking price for a rug the size of a bathmat.

c) I was very rich and very stupid.

Regardless, hone in on me she did. Heading for the popsicles, I paused, my eye caught by one particular rug: at its center was a rose-colored cross, embroidered with intricate flowers. The bulk of the body was different shades of tans and whites and pale pale pinks woven into a delicate kaleidoscope of patterns. I’m not generally one for Valentine colors, but there was something about this that was engaging, understated but beautiful.

“This is my favorite one,” Cindy said.

I jumped. I hadn’t even noticed her coming. “It’s beautiful,” I said.

“And very reasonably priced.”

“Oh well,” I said. “It’s way too big for our house.”

“Oh,” she said, and before I knew it, she’d called two of her colleagues over and was having them roll back six or eight rugs from the top of a nearby pile. Nine down, and there it was: the same pattern as the rug on the wall, only 3 feet shorter and not quite as wide.

It was, in short, exactly the right size for replacing old baldy, the piece of crap rug in our foyer.

“Huh,” I said, my inner idiot rising to the surface.

Cindy gave me a sharp look. “Let me put it in the light.” Then her assistants dragged it out into the walkway that cut through the piles of rugs.

Ellen came over, Jamie on her hip sucking a cherry popsicle. “What’s going on?”

“I’ve been thinking,” I said, “that we should get rid of that cheap rug in our foyer.”

“Oh you have, have you?”

I knew that tone of voice. My hackles rose slightly. “But this is the factory,” I said. “They make the rugs here. They have to be cheap.”

Ellen gave something that was three-quarters groan, three-quarters grin. “You just run with that.”

So I did. Cindy was in full swing now. Her men had dragged three more rugs out into the walkway and were rolling them out so that the weave went the same direction for all of them. Because of the way they’re made, rugs of this sort look darker from one side than from the other.

“They’re very beautiful,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything better to say.

Cindy nodded, watching me carefully. She seemed different than she had in the other room: less mousy, more assured.

“How much are they?” I asked.

She told me.

I stared at her. “Get the &^%(& out!”

She didn’t even flinch. I’m sure this isn’t the first time she’d heard those words.

“For one lousy rug?” I said.

She nodded.

“Jesus Christ!”

She shrugged. “It is handmade. 100% silk. It will last forever.”

“So will my house,” I said, “but I’ll be damned if I paid that much for it!”

“Your house is made of silk?”

“You know what I’m saying.”

She gave a slightly wistful sigh, then glanced at the rug. “But it’s very beautiful.”

I followed her gaze and my heart sank. It was very beautiful. Very beautiful.

“Is that price the best you can do?” I asked.

She named a marginally lower figure. It wasn’t actually the price of a house. More like the price of a car—a used car, with rusty fenders and the smell of cat pee in the trunk—but an actual car nonetheless.

“Really?” I said. “That’s the best you can do?”

She gave an ambiguous shrug, then looked at the rug, sighing. “But it’s very beautiful.”

And I followed her gaze—again—and sighed as well. It was very—

Aww, to hell with it. I stalked off to find Ellen. She and the kids were in the other room, finishing off the last of the popsicles.

“She’s trying to sell me a rug,” I said.

“I’m sure she is,” Ellen replied.

“What do you think?”

“How much are they?”

I told her. She didn’t blink. “It’s up to you.”

Now I blinked. “What did you just say?”

Ellen looked at me. “It’s up to you.”

“’Up to me?’ Are you insane?”

She frowned.

I sputtered. “Since when have I had even an ounce of common sense?”

She shrugged. “The minute we walked in here, I knew you’d buy one.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

“It’s just the sort of thing you do.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s who you are. You’re a guy who buys overpriced rugs in a factory in Beijing.”

“Since when?”

“Since about two minutes from now.”

“Really?”

She nodded. I paused for a minute. I needed to take this all in. Glancing over at Cindy, I caught her looking my way. Very quickly, her eyes dropped to the rug. I saw her chest rise and fall with a sigh.

“It’s a beautiful rug,” Ellen said beside me.

I stared at her face, trying to see if she was winding me up. “You really think so?”

“Gorgeous.”

“But don’t you think it cost too much?”

“It’s up to you.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said, “what kind of a wife are you, saying a thing like that?”

But she just shrugged, and ran to pull Jamie off a stack of 6 billion dollar floor runners, over which he was running his popsicle-sticky hands.

I wandered back to Cindy.

“So?” she said.

I gazed at the rug, the kaleidoscope of grays and tans and browns and whites surrounding the rose-colored cross. “Apparently,” I said, “I was fated to buy this rug.”

Cindy sighed. “It’s very beauty—“

“Oh shut up,” I said. “Where do I pay?”

In the end, I got the rug for almost a third off. Shipping was included, as was insurance. What Cindy didn’t mention, or forgot to mention, or didn’t know, of course, was that once the rug got to the States, the US Customs Office would be all over it like lice at a survivalists’ convention. It took nearly a half-dozen calls via skype to clear up all the questions and fill out all the forms and make sure this particular hand-made mass of warp and weft didn’t end up back on poor Cindy’s doorstep, where I’m sure, when she saw it, she’d sigh and—well, laugh uproariously. I still don’t know how much I’m going to have to pay in taxes on the damn thing.

But lest you think I’m picking on the Chinese, or accusing them—or even just Cindy—of being scheming, manipulative, or otherwise unethical, let me just say that that’s not the case. I’m not some fifteen-year-old babysitter. I’m not a bong-hit saturated teenager. I’m a grown up who knew what he was doing when he was standing in that room talking a very experienced sales woman who was making her pitch. I am responsible for having spent most of my childrens’ college funds on a piece of fabric people will wipe their feet on when they enter my house. You want to know why China’s rising? Just go to Walmart, and look at all the stupid people buying crap that will fall apart in six days. You can’t sell unless some moron is buying.

And China is rising. In the last decade, its GDP has grown nearly 10% each year. Since 2008, while the financial crisis crippled most of Europe and the US, China has coasted along, relatively untouched. There’s a lot of talk about how the 21^st century will be China’s century, much as the 1900s belonged to the US, and the 1800s to the UK. I see no reason to doubt this. While China most certainly has issues it must address—a possible housing bubble; massive, endemic graft; a rising upper and upper-middle class who will soon test the idea that political repression is fine as long as it’s accompanied by nearly unlimited economic growth—while China needs to cope with these potential problems, its centralized government and draconian legal system make these tasks a bit easier. The US can’t, after all, just execute a business leader we don’t like (which is a good thing, I guess, or there’d be, like, 6 CEOs left in the country).

I was talking to a friend recently about how manufacturing seems to shift from country to country, lifting a region out of poverty. When we were kids, all of our toys came with “Made in Hong Kong,” stamped on the bottom. Now there’s nearly zero manufacturing in this city. After Hong Kong, it was “Made in Taiwan.” And then, “Made in China.”

But that’s shifting, too. More and more, businesses are moving to places like Vietnam and Malaysia, where labor is even cheaper, and a growing infrastructure is making shipping and managing goods that much easier. “Pretty soon,” I said to my friend, “manufacturing will leave China as well.”

“Never,” was his reply. “There’s just too many people here. Too much labor. China will always be the workshop for the world.”

And he’s probably right. Every time I’ve been there, I’ve been struck by the attitude of the Chinese: this country is full of people who are hardworking and smart and focused, and willing to make sacrifices to gain an edge in this new economy. While the US has bickered back and forth about global warming and whether it exists and what to do about it, China is building high-speed commuter rails and solar fields. And now they’re looking to sell their technology to us. They’re knocking on our door, just waiting for us to answer.

Which is fair enough, I guess. I can live with this. I might even sign up for a subscription to the Beijing Journal. Just as long as whoever’s selling it stays the hell off my new rug.

China Rising, Part II: Crush

I need to begin by saying that it’s always been more or less understood in mine and Ellen’s relationship that crushes happen, and that, as long as no action is taken, they’re not the end of the world.  This perhaps explains why Ellen insists we watch every movie in which David Straitharn appears, no matter how minor his role. It might also explain Ellen’s willingness to support my assertion that Jennifer Anniston is one of the greatest actresses of our age, a claim most of my friends fail to understand, and which I can only support with these five words:  “perfect comic timing,” and “perky butt.”

But the occasional crush on a real live person is acknowledged in a good-humored way as well, as long as it lasts no longer than, say, two hours—and again, as long as no action is taken.  So Ellen tolerates my kind words about a certain brilliantly geeky kindergarten teacher, and I don’t get stressed over Ellen’s affection for a particular local artisan with strong hands, a talent with tools, and horrifyingly thick hair.  We both understand, of course, that he is married, and Ellen is married, and that this is the way it will remain, barring a bizarre automobile accident involving me, the artist’s wife, butane torches, a tank full of gasoline, and a severed brake line—at which point I would except that said artist would be more likely to be invited to our house for lasagna than, say, Marvin, who lives across the street, mows his lawn twice a day, and regularly sends a portion of his social security check to an organization in Nigeria claiming to have found the original Noah’s Ark. 

All of which is simply a precursor to saying that when we were in China, I fell in love with and proposed marriage to all three of our Chinese guides. 

Now, I know this maybe sounds “kooky” or “weird,” a little “wrong,” or “sick,” or even just flat-out “inappropriate” and “immoral.” 

But it’s worth pointing out that we are in Asia, after all, and Asia is, as many people (some of them Asians) have noted, full of Asian people.  And Asian people are as a race--as many people (some of them Asians) have noted--not unattractive. 

Such a view is particularly common among people from Wisconsin, a state known for its cheese, its beer, and its big butts.  It’s also a place filled with people who are blonde-haired and blue-eyed, although I did once meet someone who claimed to be “Italian,” or some such thing, and who got rather angry when I laughed and said, “Oh sure, like those are real.  What next?  Your mother’s an elf?”

Actually, to be frank, I didn’t really propose to all three of our guides, though I did like them each a great deal.  Bing, our first guide, who met us in Beijing and stayed with us throughout the trip, was smart as hell, with a wonderfully dry sense of humor.  She was also perfectly calibrated to handle a bus full of children, joking with them and asking them questions that made them think, but also putting the hammer down and getting serious at the appropriate moments.  Jing, our guide in Xi’An, was statuesque and broad-faced, the daughter of a successful basketball player.  She wore cool glasses and could talk about Chinese pop culture for hours.  She too, was great with kids and great with adults, and didn’t take us to crappy souvenir shops where people tried to sell us polyester shadow puppets for 300 RMB. 

And then there was Ling. 

How can I describe Ling? 

Her hair was like clouds of coal dust, floating over a Dickensian city; her eyes were like two black gumdrops with all the sugar licked off; her lips were—

Well, okay, so I’m not Shakespeare.  Suffice to say that Ling was very pretty, yes, and very smart, indeed, and kind to all of us, even this one, dumb, white guy who kept following her around and asking her questions like, “Is the sky always blue in China?” just so he could be in her company. 

But the thing about Ling?  Really?  Besides the fact that that would make a great name for a musical?  The thing about Ling was that she was amazing with kids. 

And I don’t mean amazing, amazing:  I mean amazing.

Keep in mind that this is a woman who glows in any circumstance:  she has these dimples, see, and this broad smile, and these Kilroy/jack-o-lantern eyes (that’s a compliment, trust me) that seem to be lit under the worst of circumstances.  There’s just something about Ling that makes people want to be in her company. 

Around kids, all of this gains extra wattage:  her grin becomes ear to ear, her eyes become more animated, her hands dance.  She tells them jokes, she listens to their stories, she holds their hands while crossing the street, she peels their oranges.   The afternoon we went to the People’s Park in Cheng Du, she warned us there would be fortune tellers, then gave us a brief lesson on reading palms.  After that, of course, all of the children were checking out each others’ hands, discovering they would all live to 106 and become billionaires. Eventually, most of the them wandered to Bing for an expert reading.  There were 7 kids on the trip at the point, and my guess is she read at least 6 palms in the next hour, some of them twice. 

“Wow,” I said to Ellen, watching all of this.  “That woman needs to have some kids.”

Now I know this is a stupid thing to say—stupid, and sexist, and essentialist, and neandrathal-ish.  In my own defense, I’ll point out that I say this—that X or Y needs to have kids—about men as well as women, and that most of my male friends are the kinds of guys who, like me, couldn’t wait to be a dad.

Additionally I’ll point out that I don’t buy the idea—propagated by the religious right, Tea Partiers, and lobotomy victims everywhere—that a woman’s natural function in the world is to walk around sweaty, uncomfortable, and easily annoyed for nine months until going to the hospital, screaming for 16 hours, and having a baby that she can then carry on her hip for the next two years as she makes me lasagna. 

I know, of course, that there are plenty of people out there who don’t want kids.  I know that there are folks who come home at the end of the day, pour themselves a glass of wine, curl up on the couch with a novel by Dostoyevsky, and thank God almighty they don’t have to listen to some kid screaming, “But I don’t want to watch Bugs Bunny!” and “If you touch my airplane one more time, Pooh Bear’s going to lose a finger!”

I know there are people like this.  And I’m fine with this:  I love these people.  I admire these people.   I respect these people.

I’m just not one of these people. 

I’m the kind of guy who has to carry an oxygen tank at work, because I can’t breathe right until I’m home and lying on the living room floor, Lucy pretending she’s barfing every time she smells my breath and Will telling me about the submarine he wants to make out of a plastic bottle, two rubber bands, and three ounces of weapons-grade plutonium.  I’m the guy who actually enjoys telling his three-year-old son, for the fifty-second time this week, that you need to pull your underpants up first, then your jeans.  I’m the guy who thought that “love” was a myth created by Hallmark until the first time I had to change a diaper and said—out loud, to my friends—“It actually doesn’t smell that bad.”

Ling, in my mind, is one of the latter group of people.  I don’t doubt it for a minute.  Watching her reading Will’s palm that afternoon in the park, I leaned over to Ellen and said, “I’m going to take Ling home and marry her.”

Ellen nodded, giving me a pat on the shoulder.  “You do that.”

 

And I would have, too.  Then the next morning, when we’re at the airport, about to fly back to Hong Kong, I asked Ling when she and her husband were going to start having kids of their own.

“Oh,” she said, glancing up at me, a little startled.  Her eyes had been following the random wanderings of the children, seven grounded flies buzzing around the airport.  “I don’t want any kids.”

The only thing that kept me from falling over was the fact that everyone else in the group looked just as stunned. 

“Really?” said one of the mothers, her jaw open.

Ling nodded, still glowing in that glowing way she had of glowing around children, particularly when she was glowing. 

“It’s because your husband is so ugly, right?” I asked hopefully.  “And short?”

Ling laughed (See?  She loves my quirky sense of humor!).  “He’s short,” she said, “but not ugly.”

“Still,” I said.  “Short is bad.  Very bad.”

“He agrees with me,” she said.  “We want to concentrate on our careers.  Children take too much time.”

“Your careers?” I echoed.

She looked up at me.  Her eyes were a bit more serious now.  “Yes.“

“But you love kids!” I said. 

She nodded. “Lots of young people in China are thinking like this.  We want to get ahead.  We want to make a life.” 

She turned, then, and led the group under an escalator and toward the ticket counters.  She was holding the red flag of our tour company, the one with the face of the little girl returning to China on it. The irony of all of this—here was a woman who was great with kids, but didn’t want any, leading a tour full of people who’d spent buckets of money to adopt kids because they really wanted them—flew right past me at the moment.  I was just that stunned.

When we got in line, I shoved a couple of old German ladies out of the way and squeezed up next to Ling.  Tapping her on the shoulder, I waited until she looked up at me. 

“But you love kids!” I said.

She smiled. “My generation, we want things to be perfect before we have children.  If we can’t have it be perfect, then we don’t want to do it.”

I shook my head.  “But you love kids!”

“But they’re very expensive,” she said.  “If you want a good school, you must pay for that, and if you need help, you must pay for that.”

I tried to think of something to do other than stare, but I have to admit I’m not sure I succeeded. 

She watched me, still smiling that glowing smile, still flashing those glowing dimples, still shining those glowing eyes.  Then she gave a small shrug.  “This is my generation.  This is how we think.” 

China Rising, Part 1: The Wild West

We’re sitting in a restaurant in a village outside of LiJiang.  It’s our second day in China.  The kids are eating chicken and pork, fighting over a can of Sprite, and playing mini-mysteries:  A man is sitting on a bed.  He makes a phone call, listens for a moment, then hangs up and goes to sleep.  Ellen is feeding Jamie.  And I am watching Haba.

Haba is our guide.  He’s maybe twenty-five, with a high, round nose and slightly spiky hair.   Right now, Haba has his head down.  He’s pulled something out of his pocket and is bent over it.  He’s not moving, which is weird, because Haba is wiry and active, tapping his foot, usually, or his fingers, or twisting in his seat to look around him. 

Now though, he’s simply looking at his hand, at the paper there. 

 

We love LiJiang.  Driving in from the airport the day before, we climb up the side of a long, green valley surrounded by brown sloping mountains.  It looks like the Shenandoah Valley, actually, but the quality of light is different, softer somehow, more defused with moisture, making the greens greener, the sky bluer, the browns more fecund. 

Haba is our local guide, and we like him almost as much as we like LiJiang.  We’re not in the van ten minutes and already he’s telling us about the various ethnic minorities in the region.  The Na’xi are the dominant group, he says, the oldest group, the ones with all the power, who own the restaurants and the buildings that store owners buy.  There are also the Bai, and the Yi.  The Bai are, according to Haba, “very elegant.”  They make silver and dress well, and are very beautiful.  The Yi are less clean, and have their own religion.  They keep to themselves, don’t marry other ethnic groups.

Haba is a Pumi.  The Pumi, he tells us, are descended from nomadic tribes, maybe even Genghis Kahn.  They came to the valley 800 years ago.  They are very strong, and ruled the region for a long time.  Now, though, they live in the forests, and are so impoverished that the government doesn’t hold them to the 1-child policy, fearing that to do so would mean eradication of the race.  Pumis, Haba tells us, eat mainly potatoes and corn. 

We’re enamored.  Ten minutes outside of LiJiang, the proud crest of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain appearing on the horizon, brushed by plumes of evening clouds, I lean over to Ellen and say, “Let’s cancel the rest of the trip and stay here for two weeks.”

She nods.  “No kidding.”

 

The next morning, Haba takes us into the “old town” portion of LiJiang.  This part of town is filled with attractive buildings made with dark wood.  Red lanterns hang from many of them, and on some are carved bright red characters.  There are canals in LiJiang, and flower boxes brimming with blossoms.  It’s early April, and we’re in the mountains, so the trees haven’t leaved yet, though you can see a light green tinge at the ends of branches. 

In other words, it’s a nice place.

We walk through the town, glancing at the souvenirs—Tibetan prayer bowls, painted wooden carvings, fans, kites, and hand-woven shawls—then watch some ethnic dancers for a while.  They’re mostly women wearing blue skirts over pants, maroon tops, and intricate patterned leather shawls over their shoulders.  If anyone’s every doubted Asia and North America used to be connected, watching these women dance would erase those thoughts:  the costumes, the shuffling steps, the low singing exactly resembles a pow-wow.  

Eventually talk turns to our itinerary.  Haba mentions that the music show we were supposed to see that night isn’t very good for kids.  “Too boring,” he says, waving a hand.  “Many people tell me this.”  There’s another show, he says, with dancing, much more colorful, much livelier, much better for children. 

This sounds great, of course.  The only thing worse than a show that starts after the kids’ bedtime, is a show that starts after the kids’ bedtime and bores the living crap out of them. 

“What about the cost?” I say.  “Is it the same price?”

No, Haba says.  Ninety more.  About 13 bucks, US. 

I glance at Ellen.  This isn’t much by US standards, but in China, it’s a ton.  Our meal the previous night—all eight courses of it—totaled 150 RMB, and we included Haba.

“90 each?” I say. 

He nods.

“Hmmm,” I say. 

“To tell the truth,” Haba says, “this whole trip, it’s not very good for children.  There are many better things to do.”

Like what? 

He lists a number of things:  horseback riding, boat rides, the dance concert, some big park that everyone likes to go to where there’s a really old fresco.

I look at Ellen again. The company we’re working with is family friendly, we know, but it makes sense that they might have missed something, that after they set up the tour, they went back to Beijing and missed a whole lot of things that came later. Horseback riding sounds like fun, especially if we can go into the mountains that surround the city.

“If you want, I can do a package,” Haba says.  “I’ll set it all up.   Everything for 400.”

 

After we booked our tour, the company we were working with sent us a bunch of materials to read as we prepared for our trip.  We ignored most of it—we were seasoned Asia veterans after all, having had diarrhea in at least three different countries—but a section called “Safety Tips” caught our attention.  Among other things, it told us, “Passports should be kept with you daily.  Hotel safes are only as safe as the front desk clerk is honest.  That is, the access to the safes is greater than you may realize.  Hotel housekeeping and desk clerks usually have key-entry access.  Therefore, do not leave passports or valuables in the in-room safes unless you have no other options.”

Reading this, Ellen and I looked at each other.  We’d kept our passports in every safe in every room in every hotel we’d been in thus far in Asia.  In addition, we’d left huge wads of money, multiple books of traveler’s checks, three pounds of raw heroine Ellen had stolen from the bullet-riddled corpse of a nun working for a Hong Kong triad, and Ba-wa, Lucy’s stuffed puppy. 

But there was more.

“Pickpockets and slashers (slash your bag/purse) exist at most tourist attractions in Beijing and street markets.  Beware of this.  Carry money in private bag under clothing.  Carry backpacks in the front of you when at crowded markets.  Lock zippered compartments.  Beware of those who wish to have photos taken or sell you things in the Summer Palace as a diversion.  No harm will physically come to you, it just may be that money is stolen or a camera.”

“Wow,” I said, reading this.  “I’ll shave my body.  That way we can duct tape our passports to my chest.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Ellen.  “We’ll use staples.”

The literature went on:  “Watch for fake money at the Summer Palace and throughout China.  It is best not to buy things while at the Summer Palace—there is a switch of the money and your change could be fake.  They will tell you your money is bad and then give you a bad bill back!”

And:  “Be careful at restaurants.  Pay in cash only, as credit cards will be copied and sold to Malaysian drug syndicates.  Waitresses have also been known to follow small children into the bathroom, corner them, and demand candy.  Please remove all Reeses-Pieces from your kids before you come to China.”

And further:  “Wear metal underclothing.  Grandmothers in China tend to hate people like you, and will stick a shiv into your sternum first chance they get.”

“Damn,” I said to Ellen.  “Told you we should have booked those tickets for Iraq.” 

 

It doesn’t help, of course, that we live in Hong Kong.  Hong Kongers are so honest you can leave your baby holding the keys to your Rolls-Royce sitting in a $40,000 gold-plated stroller next to your laptop and new digital camera, and come back six hours later to find it all still there (except for the baby, who’s likely  crawled off for some curried fish balls). 

Seriously, you can be at an intersection where the sign is flashing “Don’t Walk.”  You look to the left.  No cars.  You look to the right.  No cars.  You look to the let again:  still no cars.  Indeed, now you notice tumbleweeds and a pair of squirrels playing Monopoly in the middle of the road.  You look at your fellow Hong Kongers.  They just stare straight ahead, watching the “Don’t Walk,” sign. 

They don’t walk. 

What’s more, Hong Kongers aren’t quite sure what to make of their cousins to the North. 

Actually, let me rephrase that:  Hong Kongers are afraid of the Mainlanders. 

“Been to Shenzhen yet?” a colleague asked me a few weeks ago.  He was referring to the busy metropolis of 20 million just across the HK border.  Shopping is plentiful and cheap in Shenzhen, and almost everyone we know goes up there regularly to load up on tailor-made suits, designer watches, and household furnishings.

No, I told my friend.  We haven’t had a chance to go there.

“Don’t take the kids,” he said. 

I looked at him. 

“It’s dangerous,” he said.  I raised my eyebrows, and he nodded.  “That’s right:  kidnappers.”

In a way, this made me want to go to Shenzhen all the more, if only to see some kidnapper trying to explain to a childless Chinese couple that, really, their neighbors wouldn’t notice if suddenly there appeared a blonde-haired, blue-eyed six-year-old in their yard. 

To an extent, Hong Kongers’ fear of Mainlanders seems entirely justified.  Mainland China has the feel of the wild west:  crime is higher there, and more violent.  Bing, our guide in Beijing, told us that almost every businessman who’d made a killing since economic reforms started has since been indicted for one thing or another.  Graft is everywhere:  in the government, in sports, even in academics.  Perhaps this is not surprising:  the average yearly income in China hovers around $1,000 US.  I know eighteen-year-olds who get better allowances.

Paradoxically, last year China gained more billionaires than any other nation in the world, and now has more of this breed than any country other than the US.  Ten years ago, when I first visited China, Beijing was thick with bicycles—hundreds would pour past as we strolled along the side-walk, wheels spinning, bells ringing, riders erect in the seat.  Now, almost everyone in the city owns a Volkswagon, a Ford, or an Audi.  You can encounter a traffic jam anywhere, at any time of day.  Bikes are non-existent. 

And then there’s the notice in the room guide at our hotel in Beijing.  Just after the list of phone numbers (Dial *12 for Room Service; Dial *7 for laundry; Dial *8 for the hookers in the barbershop) and just before the hours of the fitness center was a short statement: 

“Please note that guns should be secured in room safes at all times.  Firearms left unsecured will be confiscated by the cleaning service.”

Let me be frank about this:  I’ve been to the Soviet Union.  I’ve been to East Africa.  I’ve been to Texas.  And never—NEVER—have I seen a notice like this. 

 

Which brings us back to Haba, in that village outside of LiJiang, at the restaurant where we’re eating lunch.  Haba, who is bent over a packet of paper, staring at it silently as Jamie eats mushrooms and Lucy asks me if, maybe, the man on the phone in the room is calling his mother to find out if she can scratch his back. 

“No,” I say to Lucy, though I’m still watching Haba.  Why’s he just standing there? 

After some thought, Ellen and I had declined his offer to add on additional family-oriented pleasures in and around LiJiang.  It all sounded very fun—especially the paragliding with Tibetan monks—but we’d already spent a bucket-load on the trip, and $300 US more just seemed like a lot on top of it all.  This seems silly, I know—we’re from the West, after all, and we make more money than the Chinese—but we live in Hong Kong which isn’t the cheapest city in the world, and we have three kids, and it’s not like I’m a doctor or a lawyer or some rich Tea Party supporter. 

Haba took our rejection well, just shrugging and ambling on through the market.  At lunch, though, he comes over to tell us that, if it’s okay, he’s going to leave us with the driver for the afternoon.

“There’s another group that’s going up the mountain,” he says, referring to Jade Snow Dragon Mountain.  Then he gestures apologetically.  “It’s been slow for four months, and now, all of a sudden . . ..”  He lets it trail off.

No problem, we say.  We understand that he needs to make a living.  We’re just going to spend the afternoon wandering, anyway.  We don’t really need a guide. 

“But what about this park or whatever?” I say.  “The one you mentioned with the frescoes.  Is that worth seeing?”

“Oh yes,” he said.  “It’s beautiful.”

“So what if we wanted to see that?” I said.  “You know, as something extra? Would we be able to get tickets?”

“No problem,” Haba says.  “I can give you some.”

“But we’re not sure,” I tell him.  I’m thinking of the 400 RMB package he mentioned earlier.  This park, these frescoes were part of it.  “Can we just pay you if we use them?”

“No problem,” he says again.  “I’ll leave them with the driver.”

And then he unzips his fanny pack, reaches in, and begins to rummage around.  Eventually he pulls out a few strips of paper, connected at one end, and looks at them. 

And then he freezes. 

I watch him, trying to figure out what the heck is going on.  Lucy has abandoned the 21-questions game, now, is making better use of her time by poking her baby brother with a chopstick.  Ellen is trying to get Jamie to eat a piece of beef covered in tomato juice.  Will is ignoring his food, concentrating on a small brass contraption he bought that works as a crude lock. 

I take all of this in, then reach for a piece of deep-fried yak cheese dusted with sugar.  It tastes a little greasy, but sweet and okay, too, and I chew, glancing back at Haba.  He’s still staring at the packet of paper, the fresco tickets, I assume, the one’s he’s going to sell to us if we decide we want them. 

I stretch my neck, try to raise the angle a little, get a better look at what’s in his hand.  It works.  Up higher, I can tell they are tickets, five of them, stapled together.  Attached to the top, also by staple, is a piece of white paper containing two carefully printed words: 

Ellen Satrom.

I sit back down.  I look at my food.  I can feel my face turning red.  I glance at Ellen, trying to catch her eye, trying to see is she knows what’s going on, if she sees why Haba is standing there, staring at those tickets, frozen in mid-gesture.

They’re our tickets. 

They’ve always been our tickets, included in the price of the trip.

He’s been trying to sell us our own tickets.  

Chiang Kai-shek's Revenge, or: Hurling Ourselves Into China

(A note to the reader:  A few months ago I was at a lunch meeting when one of my colleagues, a smart, sophisticated woman who’s published a lot, arrived late.  “Are you okay?” one of the staff asked.  “Yes,” this woman said.  “Just a little diarrhea.”  I glanced down at what I’d been eating—chocolate mousse topped with whipped cream and rainbow sprinkles—then pushed it away.

It was one of those moments when I wasn’t sure if what I was facing was cultural discord or just a cultural anomaly.  Was it normal for Hongkongers to discuss the most graphic details of their bodily functions with professional colleagues—over lunch, no less?  If so, then, great, because I’ve got some wonderful toe-cheese stories I’ve been looking to try out for a while now.  Or was this just an individual thing—one woman, smart, polished, well-dressed—who had unusual boundaries?

I still don’t know the answer to this question—certainly, no one’s mentioned bodily fluids to my recollection, but then, most of the conversations I’m around are in Cantonese.  I mention this story only because the following post deals with a recent trip to Mainland China and some food-related—um—issues.  Some of you may not actually want to read the post.  Fair enough.  The rest of you, though?  Seriously?  Time to put away the chocolate pudding.)

It’s 11:30 at night, Thursday, April 1^st, 2010.  I’m lying in a shabby hotel in LiJiang China, in the Yunnan Provence.  Jamie is asleep in the bed beside me, and Will is sleeping on the floor on the other side of him.  I am lying in bed, doing my Lamaze breathing:  He he he he he, ha ha ha ha ha ha, he he he he he, ha ha ha ha.

I am doing this not because I am about to have a baby (appearances to the contrary) but because five hours earlier Lucy hurled her guts out all over the outside steps of a very nice restaurant. 

I have to say, she gave us fair warning:  when we sat down to dinner and spooned some rice, some chicken, some bacon, and some French fries on her plate, she just looked at it.  For a long time.  A really long time.  Then she said, “I have to go to the bathroom.”

We nodded and off she went.  We didn’t say anything because our mouths were too stuffed with food.  This was a fantastic meal, one of the best we’d ever had, Na’Xi food, from one of China’s 50+ ethnic minorities.  The starter was a soup with crunchy greens, noodles, egg, and lots of salt.  Next up was chicken, cooked in some sort of flavored oil and pasted with red hot chili peppers.  There were other dishes too, something with beef, something with pork, any one of which would have made itself a very satisfying entire meal back in the States, but which, now, two weeks later, I can barely recall.

The piece de resistance, though, was fermented greens stir-fried with dried bacon.  It was crunchy and salty, coated in a thin layer of oil.  The bacon was the most amazing thing I’d ever eaten:  maybe a centimeter thick and about three inches long, it looked like normal, uncooked bacon, except that it was crispy and flavorful, like eating monster bacon bits cooked in bacon grease, and dusted, ever so lightly, with teeny-tiny crumbs of crushed bacon. 

Sure, I ate some of the rice, and had some of the soup.  I tried the beef, avoided the pork, liked the chicken well enough.  But that bacon dish?  Man, I went to town on that ting:  I scooped up those greens and those dried strips and the occasional pepper and shoveled them into my mouth, taking a break only to sip the melon liqueur our guide, Habba, had ordered for Ellen and me.  Could life be any better? 

Now if this sounds greedy to you, well then, that’s probably because it was.  But keep in mind there was no resistance from Ellen to my gobbling down all that bacon:  she’s not a big fan of pork.  Will, meanwhile, won’t touch anything that isn’t white and the size of rice and that tastes exactly like rice.  And Jamie only has a stomach the size of a large grape, and was happily filling it with chicken.  Which meant, in effect, that the only person I had to share my favorite dish ever with was—

“Hey,” I said.  “Where’s Lucy?”

Ellen looked up from her soup.  “Still in the bathroom?”

I glanced around.  We were the only people in the restaurant except for a French couple.  Assuming they hadn’t eaten her—with the French, you never know—Lucy had to still be in the bathroom.  Her plate of fries and rice and everything else remained untouched.

Ellen and I looked at each other.  Huh.  Then we lowered our heads and dove back into the food. 

When Lucy eventually emerged she crept over to Ellen and whispered in her ear.  She didn’t feel well.  Ellen looked her over carefully.  Her face was pale, with olive green highlights around the jaw.  “Do you want to sit outside?”  Lucy nodded. 

“Don’t you want some french fries?” I asked.  She shook her head.  My heart dropped.  Lucy saying no to french fries is like Sarah Palin saying no to a lobotomy.  It just doesn’t happen.

But there it was, happening.  She sat in a courtyard just outside our window, laying her head on a wrought-iron table and closing her eyes.  

Almost everyone I’ve know who’s traveled in China has a story about getting sick.  China has some potent bugs:  hotels have signs in the bathrooms stating, “Water not for drinking!  Water poison!  Don’t drink the water!”  Our tour company went even further:  “When showering, be sure to turn your back to the spray, and to keep your mouth shut.  Should you ingest any water—even a drop—gargle immediately with battery acid in order to increase your chances of living.” 

We worried, now, with Lucy, but not overmuch:  we’d been in Asia for almost eight months, after all.  This was our third trip to the mainland, and none of us had ever been sick before.  Hell, we’d spent two weeks in Vietnam, and had come through unscathed.

By the time we finished dinner, Lucy had a little bit more color in her face and we figured she was fine.  Which she was, until we stepped out of the restaurant and she plopped down on the steps, spread her knees, and vomited between her feet. 

“Oh,” I said, ever the helpful parent.  Ellen, of course, pulled her hair out of the way, wiped her mouth with a tissue, and dabbed the sweat off her forehead. 

Lucy recovered quickly, at least until we got back to the hotel, where she threw up three more times in fairly rapid succession.  The last time, she was in the bath, splashing around.  I’d just moved Will’s stuff across the hall to my room, and was coming back to get his PJs, when Lucy said, “Daddy!  I threw up in my hair!”

“Really?” I said, keeping my voice light because I’d read once that it’s important to encourage your children when they discover new talents.  “That’s wonderful, honey.”

“Yeah,” she said, sitting up.  “It got—“ and then she paused, got on her knees in the tub, leaned over the toilet, and heaved again.

Never having toured with the Rolling Stones, this is the first time I’d seen someone sit in the bathtub and vomit into the toilet. I fled immediately, figuring if whatever she had was contagious, Ellen probably already had it, and I needed to get away so that we had at least one functioning adult the next day.

Except she didn’t.  Get it, that is.   Ellen.  Whatever it was making Lucy sick.

I did. 

I knew this almost already before Jamie and Will had gone to bed.  Every time I stood up or sat down or blinked, the room seemed to tilt precariously, swashing back and forth like an over-sized aquarium on a teeter-totter.  So I didn’t kiss them goodnight, and I didn’t linger in the hallway outside the room, reading a book by the dim lights.  No, I brushed my teeth, went to the bathroom, washed my hands, and put an empty garbage bin next to my bed.  And then I crawled between the sheets. 

I don’t think I slept at all.  Whatever it was came with a fever, so by 9:15 I was mentally arguing about the color of Lucy’s socks with my provost who was also Santa Claus and that dwarf from Fantasy Island.  Which wouldn’t have been so bad except that he kept shaking a shark in my face and saying, “Just say no to torpedoes son; nothing less ethical than a pair of 90^th-ranked denim trousers.”

Even worse were the lucid moments, when I’d lie there, holding my stomach, shivering, trying hard not to think about scrambled eggs, or Tibeten yack cheese, or fermented greens with bacon, or any of the other things I’d eaten in the last 24 hours.  And trying hard not to think about Ellen across the hall, Ellen who’d handled Lucy’s vomit-sodden clothes and wiped her vomit-shmeared mouth and caressed her vomit-dripping hair.  Because if I was sick and Ellen was sick, then—damn, we were screwed.

Which lead me into even darker territory:  we were in LiJiang, after all, in Yunnan province, a hell of a long way from Hong Kong.  We had no insurance, as far as I knew, and even if we did, what good would it do in China?  Christ, we couldn’t even talk to the doctors, assuming we could find a hospital, which was doubtful, since no one in this damn place spoke English except for our guide, Habba, whom we were pretty sure was trying to rip us off by selling us a bunch of tickets we’d already paid for.   In short, if whatever we had was bad, we were screwed.

Twenty-five years ago, when I was traveling and working in Tanzania with my friend Peter, who has an annoyingly iron stomach, I picked up some sort of bug that had me lying in bed with a high fever for two days, sweating my way through dreams about tri-planes doing loop-de-loops and a British woman driving me around Milwaukee in a cream-colored Rolls Royce made out of Twizzlers.  Weeks later, when I went to the US Embassy (the one that was eventually bombed by Osama Bin Laden) to see the doctor, he took one look at my long hair, my scrappy beard, and my protruding ribcage and said, “Now I know what Jesus looked like when he was crucified.”

I laughed.  “Before or after?”

He just shook his head.  “Good question.”

That was scary.  I was halfway around the world, in a third-world country, unable to keep down food or water. 

But I was twenty, stupid, and not really aware of what was at stake. 

In LiJiang, on the other hand, I am 44, a parent, and bone-numbingly terrified that we have gotten ourselves into a situation where one of our kids could end up in a nasty hospital where whatever she had would pale in comparison to whatever she might catch.

It would have been better had I been able to go to sleep, but in my fevered stupor I wouldn’t allow myself to do that, because I knew the minute I did, I’d wake up again, vomiting. 

And let’s face it, folks:  vomiting sucks.  I don’t know anybody who likes to lean over a bucket or toilet and hack and gag until they can feel their esophagus rubbing against the roof of their mouth, all for the pleasure of having something that tastes like battery acid mixed with prune juice and chicken broth churn its way up your throat and into your mouth.

That said, we all know the upside of puking.  Even Will, who’s only 9, said to Lucy—after her first hurl outside the restaurant—“Bet you feel better, now, right?”  Because it’s true:  if pre-puking is horrible, and puking is truth that God hates us, then post-puking is kind of—well—peaceful.  Our stomachs are calm for the moment, the sweat on our skin starts to cool us, and we suddenly feel our bodies drawn blissfully toward sleep.  Sure, we know there’s a good chance we’ll be heaving again in an hour or two—but for the time being, post-puking almost makes pre- and mid-puking seem kind of worth it. 

Kind of.

The problem is, I can’t get myself past the pre-puking stage.  Which means I’m trapped forever in the purgatory of anticipatory fear regarding the aforementioned heaving, esophagal-mouthtop rubbing, etc. etc.  It doesn’t help that, over the years, I’ve somehow learned how to breathe my way through the waves of nausea that would--in a less-control-driven human being—result in the inevitable upsurge and post-partum bliss. 

It also doesn’t help, of course, that I’m not just a writer, but a writer who thinks too much.  As a result, in addition to lying in bed, feeling like my lower intestines are about to hurdle out of my body through my mouth, and like the world is going to end in a my-family-will-be-die-by-the-plague kind of way, I’m also thinking about how I’m going to narrate all of this later, when we get back to Hong Kong, for the blog.

You heard me. 

This is the problem, of course, with being a blogger, or any kind of non-fiction writer, or for that sake, one of those people who spends too much time on Face Book, updating their every move—“Had cheese sandwich for lunch again!  OMG!!  Will it never end????  LOL!!!  ; ).  And I, of course, am all three of these things. 

So in addition to lying in bed, trying hard not to hack a liver out of my nose, I’m worrying about Ellen and tomorrow and our 3-hour flight to Beijing, and next week and our tour and six days worth of Chinese food—and wondering if I know enough synonyms for vomit to get through a post on this subject alone. 

So there I am, curled up in bed, going, “He he he he he heave, hurl, gag, ha ha ha ha ha upchuck, throw up, regurgitate, he he he he,” wondering just how the hell long this can go on, when suddenly I realize that things are about to take a turn.  Not necessarily a turn for the worse, mind you.  Just a turn.  In the other direction.  So, down, not up.

I could, of course, wax poetic for another page or two on all of this, um, end of things, but to be honest, I don’t have the stomach or the patience for it.  So let me just point out a few things about diarrhea: 

1)      It smells. 

2)      Bad.

3)      When you’re already sick, smelling bad things is about the last thing you want to do. 

4)      I’m never going to eat eggs again.

 

Finally, of course, I gave in, and let things reach their natural conclusion.  I heaved several large, bacon-flavored, water balloons worth of vomit into the bathroom garbage can.  Then, fastidious Lutheran that I am, I dumped the can into the toilet, rinsed it in the tub a few times, and flushed.  Then I washed my face, gargled, and crawled back to bed, where I collapsed into a sweaty but relieved sleep.

The rest of the night passed uneventfully.  I wasn’t sick again, though when the boys and I woke up, I still felt as though Muhammad Ali had been using my abdomen for a warm-up.  Across the hall, I could see light streaming beneath Lucy and Ellen’s door, and when I tapped, Lucy opened, her face pink, her eyes bright, her hair free of half-digested corn on the cob.  Ellen took one look at me, then put me into Lucy’s bed and took the two of them across the hall to get dressed.  I slept through breakfast and woke about mid-morning to find a Sprite beside my bed.  A few sips made me feel better, so I showered and dressed, and the five of us went out into the cool morning to walk along one of the canals to the Black Dragon Pool. 

LiJiang, for the record, is an amazingly beautiful place.  It rests just below Jade Snow Dragon Mountain, in a lush valley at the eastern-most end of the Himalayas.  The mountains are astounding:  sharp and black, with snow clinging to the cloud-dusted slopes.

The town itself feels a little bit like Disneyland.  Until the late 90s, no one in China gave LiJiang a second thought, not even the people who lived there.  But then there was an earthquake in 1996, measuring a devastating 7.0 on the Richter scale, and when the rescue teams showed up, they were shocked to find so much natural beauty.  Since then LiJiang has been rebuilt, and wandering around in the “Old Town,” center, you’re simultaneously struck by how it seems impossible that so many people in one town could sell so much overpriced crap, and by how really beautiful the canals and the flowering trees and the buildings with their red walls and black-tiled roofs are. 

The Black Dragon Pool is surrounded by a classical garden:  stone walkways lined with shade trees, orchids and song birds, an old temple where thousands of people have bought “prayer locks” and clasped them to a fence, where they’ll remain forever, devoid of key-holes. 

On the far side of the lake is a small pagoda and a decorative building or two.  All of it is very pretty, particularly when the sky is clear and you can see Jade Snow Dragon Mountain off in the distance, looking both forbidding and hopelessly beautiful. 

We moved slowly, both Lucy and I feeling a little tender.  Settling on a bench on one side of the lake, we soaked up the morning sun until a huge group of Chinese game over and shouted “Hello!  Hello!” at us until our heads ached. 

We drifted on, pausing at an ornate building with a high roof supported by tall red pillars and decorative blue and yellow trim.  We stared at it for a while, trying to figure out what it was, then Ellen pointed to a carefully lettered sign:  “Smoking Area.”

After that, we crossed an arched bridge.  The water below was greenish-rgay, even with the sun on it.  Even so, we could see the curving shadows of decorative carp.  Once or twice a big one would drift to the surface, mouth gaping, eye peering at us as if to say, “Where the hell’s the popcorn?” 

I love these fish.  I’ve come to believe that someone who has fish like this probably will live a long time, that watching something this beautiful glide and turn so peacefully is a sort of meditation, slowing the heart, deepening the breath.

Watching them now, on that sunny April morning when it was still cool and damp and you could smell the decaying leaves and fecund soil, I tried to tell myself that if pre-puking sucks and post-puking is bliss, then post-post puking is almost heaven.  Certainly, I remember this from my hard-partying college days (all three of them), when I would emerge from a night of debauchery of one form or another (thank you, Jessica Lindus, from the bottom of my heart) to a clear October morning, the leaves turning on the hillsides, the sky a porcelain blue, the chill air making you feel that much more alive.  Moments like that, everything that happened the night before just enhanced the beauty of being alive, made you almost glad for the nightmarish darkness.

Standing there, Lucy beside me, I watched the fish, trying to feel moved by their beauty, trying to feel appreciation for the fact that I was alive, that none of us were too sick, that Sprite was plentiful and cheap.  Surely, I thought to myself, life is good?  Surely, I’m grateful for the opportunity to be in this amazing country, to see this amazing natural beauty—the giant mountains, the small but graceful fish?

But no.  If being sick is bad—and it is—then being sick on vacation, when you’re in a foreign country, when you’re away from the comforts of home and a doctor you know will take care of you, and food that’s not floating in grease and laced with spices that seem dark and dry on your tongue—if being sick is bad, then being sick under these circumstances just plain sucks.