Fucking great.
I drop my duffel. I can’t stand up with the weight of it on my shoulder. I push myself to my feet, slowly, with my Yangshuo walking stick. Try to blink the pain away. Adjust my daypack and grab the duffel strap.
The beggar woman scrambles to her feet. Then she does this totally weird thing-she puts her hands under the duffel and boosts it up, so that I can easily adjust the strap pad on my shoulder.
The baby has stopped crying. Its face is smeared with dirt, I notice. I wonder, did Mom put the dirt there before they came out of whatever hole they’re living in, so the kid would look more pathetic?
The baby stares at me, dark eyes the color of coffee beans.
I reach into my jeans pocket and pull out a couple of wadded-up twenty-yuan notes and give them to the woman, because I’m such a fucking idiot.
And of course I miss the fucking 11:20 A.M. train to Dali.
SO. I BUY A ticket for the next available train, which doesn’t leave until 11:30 P.M. I score a bottom bunk on a hard sleeper-it’s a seven hour trip, and even if I can’t sleep, I figure it’s better I should be able to stretch out my leg. I check my duffel bag at a locker, and I hobble back outside, to the chaos of the station and of Kunming in general, and somewhere past the giant black plastic policeman robot-I’m not sure what it does, but it looks like some pervy child of Robocop and a Legos man-I catch a taxi.
“Where do foreigners like to go in Kunming?” I ask the driver.
He starts going on about the Stone Forest and then some other theme park an hour or two outside of town that, if I understand him correctly, involves dwarves, which is kind of tempting, but I shake my head and lift up my hand. “Just want to go someplace close by. I have a train to catch later.”
“Maybe Wenlin Jie.”
It’s a street near the university. There’s a lake not too far from here, he tells me, “Very beautiful. Very peaceful. You can go there and drink tea if you like.”
On the ride from the train station, Kunming looks like the other second-tier cities I’ve seen: too much traffic, the same banks and shopping malls, and big glass and plastic fronted buildings. More trees, maybe. The weather’s not bad for this time of year-shirtsleeve appropriate-and the air smells pretty much like air, as opposed to soot and chemicals.
I lean back against the bench seat, my leg and wrist throbbing.
By the time we get to the university district, to Cuihu, Green Lake Park, everything seems to slow down. The buildings are smaller. There are more trees. People stroll, like they’re not in a hurry to get anywhere.
Wenlin Jie is a little street lined with small businesses, including a place called Teabucks. If I didn’t so need coffee, I’d stop there. The taxi driver takes me a few blocks farther, and I can tell that we’ve entered a laowai ghetto. I see an ice-cream parlor, a pizza place, a wine store, and a head shop. Most of the people on the sidewalk are Chinese, but there are plenty of foreigners around, too-students and backpacker types mostly, plus a few older Westerners who give off that long-term-expat vibe.
There’s a place on the corner called Salvador’s advertising coffee. “You can stop here,” I tell the driver.
Inside, it’s dark wood. Nice music. Two levels, with computer terminals and a makeshift travel library, a glass case displaying their T-shirts, coffee, juices and all kinds of other organic products. Vegetables. Meats. Cheese, even. There’s an explanation on the menu about how all the employees get health care and free English lessons and actual paid vacations. It’s like I’ve suddenly been transported to Berkeley or something.
I order a cup of “fresh-brewed coffee” with an espresso shot, plus a breakfast quesadilla. Boot up my laptop. Since I’ve had my phone off all this time, I figure I’d better at least check my email.
The coffee is good. The quesadilla is excellent. This isn’t a bad place, I’m thinking. Maybe I should move here. Set up shop. It’s cheaper than Beijing, and I’ve heard that a lot of artists are buying second homes around Kunming.
I’m thinking this when I hear the Skype orchestra hit signaling a contact request.
It’s Vicky Huang. That’s the name that comes up, anyway, in a little box requesting that I add her as a contact. No photo, just a blank icon.
I mean, this behavior really is reaching stalker level.
I think about ignoring it. But there’s that whole, not wanting to piss off a Chinese billionaire factor.
I make sure the video camera on my laptop is off, and I accept.
Thirty seconds later, the Skype phone rings.
“Wei?”
“Ellie McEnroe?”
Her camera is off too. But I recognize that voice.
“Yes, this is Ellie.”
“Vicky Huang.” She says it like she’s Bond. James Bond. “I cannot reach you by phone.”
“Yeah, sorry. I, uh, dead battery.”
“Are you in Yangshuo?”
“I…” I’m trying to think fast, and it’s hard. I’m only on my first cup of coffee, and thinking fast is not something I do well anyway.
“No,” I say. “I’m really sorry. I had… a family emergency, and I had to leave suddenly.”
Silence on the other end.
“I see,” she finally says.
“Look, I really do want to meet with you.” I really do, because blowing off Chinese billionaires is really not a good idea. “I just have some personal business I need to deal with.”
“For how long?”
Like I have a clue.
“Around a week,” I say.
Another pause. “All right,” she says. “Then we will speak next week.”
JUST MY LUCK: MY sleeper car is filled with fucking hipsters.
Chinese artsy types. Western backpackers. A whole carload of ironic T-shirts and soul patches. It’s a big rolling party the minute the train pulls out of Kunming at 11:40 P.M.
I got a little bit of sleep while I hung out in Kunming, at a bathhouse mostly, where I also splurged on a massage and spent some time in the steam room. You can hang out for hours in these places. There are separate sides for men and women, and then meeting rooms for both; you can wrap up in a bathhouse robe and fall asleep in the lounger chairs if you want to, so that’s what I did.
“Just leave the leg alone,” I told the masseuse. It doesn’t look as swollen, I told myself. The bruises are dark purple, but greening around the edges.
“We have acupuncture clinic, you can go have treatment,” the masseuse said, and I had the time. When I finally come out of there, I’m feeling pretty good. Better anyway.
Not good enough to party all night on the train to Dali, though.
I apologize to the goateed Chinese guy in the porkpie hat and his girlfriend wearing the cat’s-eye glasses and a LEI FENG FOREVER T-shirt that I can’t share my bottom bunk with them because I need to stretch out my leg. They offer me some baijiu and the backpacker couple across from me ask if I’d like a beer, so I have a little baijiu and a beer to be polite, and then I try to sleep, in spite of the noise and the lights. At about 3:30 A.M., it finally quiets down, and I doze a bit, just enough to feel really out of it when the train pulls in to Dali at 7:30 A.M.
I GO TO THE old town. There’s a new city, which is where the train station is, but, you know, it’s a typical Chinese city, where you can only tell where you are by the street signs. It’s not where the tourists go, and it’s not where “Dali Scene” was shot. I can tell that as soon as I get off the train. What people think of as Dali is actually a half hour’s drive north. I found that out from the hipsters on the train.
Modern Scientific Seed Company is in Xiaguan, the new city. But there’s no way I’m ready to tackle that right now.
Instead I share a taxi with the couple from the train and head to Dali proper, to my room at the Dali Perfect Inn, which, according to the booking website, “features a traditional Bai Minority architectural style while applying modern management methods. It is a glamorous and attractive place to rest!”