360 Degrees Longitude

by John Higham

  I couldn’t make my mouth form a meaningful answer and Katrina knew it. After a moment, she pointed out, “If you buy that DVD, you’re encouraging people to copy movies illegally.”

  As Katrina was dialing in the guilt, I was silently justifying making a quick purchase and then leaving. After all, what was the difference between buying the clothes and buying the DVD? At that moment, I just wanted to get outside as soon as possible. It seemed buying something was the path of least resistance.

  Jordan’s Journal, November 29

  Today we went to Tiananmen Square. Some people told us to go to the art museum and buy their paintings because it was the last day you could buy them. I said, “Hey Dad, if I put my toe in one more museum I’ll explode.” That made them go away. We bought a counterfeit copy of Harry Potter on DVD. When we went to the hostel to watch it, it was in Chinese but it had funny subtitles in English. Like when Mr. Malfoy said that Hermione’s parents were Muggles it said “Melons the dishonorable parents are?” And when Mr. Malfoy was saying “red hair” to Ron it said “stupid hair.”Katrina wouldn’t watch it with us.

  Hiking along the Great Wall near Beijing was Jordan’s wish for our trip. As we made our way toward Jinshanling it was clear that the affluence of the city didn’t extend to the countryside.

  “We’ve made a friend,” I said, after a few moments of hiking along the wall. Each of the Western tourists was being followed by a local villager.

  Our new friend followed us for the duration of our five-hour hike, every so often seeing if we might need a new bracelet or a bottle of water. We named her the Water-Bottle Lady. She didn’t speak a word of English. She seemed to be pointing out her village on the horizon of the barren December landscape.

  Late in our hike we stopped for lunch. The Water-Bottle Lady lingered a safe distance away. “We have an extra sandwich,” September said. “We should see if the Water-Bottle Lady wants it.”

  The Water-Bottle Lady was delighted at the prospect of such a treat. Derek, who was traveling in our group and could speak Chinese, told us she had never seen a sandwich before. She closely inspected the contents between the two slices of bread. When she discovered it had a bit of meat in it, she was astonished.

  After our brief lunch, we prepared to finish the last leg of our trek along the Great Wall. “Katrina, go throw away these water bottles,” I said. The Water-Bottle Lady reacted with a mixture of surprise and horror. She started speaking a mile a minute and took the water bottles and placed them in a bag.

  Derek interpreted for us: “She’s explaining that thirteen empty plastic bottles can be traded for one bowl of rice.”

  It’s hard not to feel guilty for the relative luxury of being able to eat at will.

  Katrina’s Journal, November 30

  Today we went to the Great Wall. We had to get up early to catch a bus that would take us there. After a couple of hours of reading our books on the bus, we arrived at the Great Wall. First you had to walk up to the top of a mountain to get to the wall. It was really cold.

  Mom thought hiking along the Great Wall would just be like walking down a cobblestone street, but it wasn’t. The wall stretched as far as you could see, on the ridge of a mountain, twisting and turning. And because it was along a mountain ridge, hiking along the wall was up, down, up, down, sometimes so steep it was like climbing a ladder. Sometimes there wasn’t much of a wall and while going up to the towers there weren’t steps. You had to pull yourself up, using one of the wobbly stones placed there. In other words, it was SO MUCH FUN. One time I was pulling myself up a steep section of stairs with my hands and I wasn’t watching where I was going and I almost fell over the edge.

  At the end of our hike there was a zip line over a river. Jordan and I did it. You were harnessed in, and then you went over a river, way high up, maybe a hundred feet or more. WHHEEE!!!

  Later that evening, safe in our hutong, we were looking at a menu posted in front of a small restaurant. English subtitles that accompanied the Chinese characters read “sweet meat,” but there was picture of a dog at the bottom of the Chinese side of the menu. Pointing at the picture, I remarked, “Almost every place we’ve visited since leaving Europe has had a dog problem. Have you noticed that there are no feral dogs here?”

  Katrina was horrified. “Ewwww!”

  I learned on a previous visit to Hong Kong that the California variant of Chinese food I am so fond of is distinctly different from the real deal. It wasn’t therefore a complete surprise when crunchy bovine intestines, goat’s penis, and other fascinating entrees appeared on restaurant menus. The picture of Spot was unnerving, though.

  John’s Journal, December 3

  We have been taking turns reading some of Katrina’s books, which are fascinating. Red Scarf Girl is set in the Cultural Revolution that started in the late 1960s. I had heard about the Cultural Revolution, but never understood what it was. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was little more than Mao Zedong trying to retain power. What it meant to the guy on the street though, was that anyone with an education was persecuted and anyone who fancied Western goods was arrested.

  A stroll around Beijing in the early 21st century makes it clear that the Cultural Revolution failed. There was a Rolls-Royce dealer at the same shopping complex as the movie theater, for crying out loud!

  Another memorable book we’ve been reading is The Diary of Ma Yan, written by a young girl about Katrina’s age. How her diary came to be in the hands of a French journalist is remarkable. Her story is about the struggle of life in rural China and her resolution to rise above the poverty and chronic hunger she faces. Showing maturity well beyond her years, Ma Yan determines that she needs to continue her education, but her parents can’t afford it. It surprises me that people in rural China are hungry and can’t afford an education. Wasn’t the idea to spread the wealth?

  “I have an action item for you.”

  September was looking too relaxed in our hostel room. She looked up and responded dryly, “How can I serve you?”

  I tossed her our guidebook and said, “We have to be in Hong Kong in about three weeks. Find some place we can go that’s warmer.” Beijing was good to us and we stayed longer than intended, but even with the mittens, hats, and sweatshirts we had acquired it was just too darned cold.

  An hour later September said, “We should go on a cruise down the Yangtze River through the Three Gorges.”

  “I thought they built a dam and it was flooded.”

  “Almost. It goes up in stages, and isn’t quite completed yet.”

  “I’ll take it under advisement. It has got to be warmer than Beijing. That is my only requirement.”

  The idea of a “cruise” down the Yangtze River was highly appealing to the kids, who had learned about cruises from their friends. We overheard them talking about the prospect of our Yangtze cruise.

  “Jenny told me their cruise ship had, like, five different restaurants where you could just go eat as much as you want!” Katrina said.

  “Hunter told me their cruise ship had three different swimming pools, one just for kids!” Jordan responded.

  It didn’t take much research to learn that we could expect it to be 20 degrees warmer along the Yangtze River than in Beijing, so we caught a flight to Chongqing, a tiny city with a population of a mere four million.

  Since it would be almost midnight before we could get on our boat, we went to a restaurant to kill time as well as fed ourselves. After we ordered, we found ourselves briefly alone. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Jordan complained, trying to melt into the seat of his chair. He was objecting to my method of ordering chicken.

  “Our waitress will go home tonight and tell her parents that some American came in and ordered by clucking and flapping his arms,” I said. “Probably doesn’t happen very often.”

  Our waitress returned with our order as well as the entire kitchen staff. “Why are they all standing around our table, watching us?” Katrina asked.

  �
��We’re the evening’s entertainment,” September said. “As your father well pointed out, how often does someone order by flapping his arms?”

  “I was only trying to ensure that we wouldn’t dine on Spot!” I said in defense. No fewer than six staff members gathered around our table. I consider myself pretty expert with chopsticks, but I never before had to use them to retrieve noodles from a hot pot. Every time one of us fumbled with the choppers, it drew laughter from the sidelines.

  “I guess in a country of 1.3 billion people,” September mused, “there is no such thing as privacy.”

  To a Westerner it is rude beyond words to point, gawk, or otherwise observe strangers in their personal space. Such behavior is accepted, even expected, in China. As outsiders, we were fair game and it was open season. Everywhere we went it was as though the entire family was being patted on the head.

  After dinner we passed a grocery store on our way to the pier. “We don’t know what we’ll find on board,” September pointed out. “We should be ready with enough food for the entire four days.”

  We ducked inside and found a very modern store that in many regards wouldn’t look out of place as your corner supermarket, except it was packed cheek to jowl with about ten employees for every seven or eight customers. Noting the staff-to-customer ratio, I commented, “This must be a curse of overpopulation and cheap labor.”

  “Perhaps,” September replied. “It surely doesn’t seem to be driven by any economic principle I studied in school.”

  We made the acquaintance of the Cruise Ship of Pain just before midnight. We had splurged for the deluxe cabin with the ensuite bathroom.

  Opening the door to our cabin, September stood still in silent disbelief. Being a bona fide guy I usually don’t notice the décor of my surroundings, but I couldn’t help it in this case. The water-stained walls and ground-up chips of paint in the carpet gave it that homey lived-in feel, as did the half-consumed cups of tea left from the previous occupants. I broke the silence. “I’m glad we got the deluxe cabin!”

  “We’ve slept in worse,” September replied. “We’ll survive.” Then after a pause she seemed to change her mind about surviving. “I can see my breath in here! Can you please find the heat?”

  We had, of course, escaped Beijing to get out of the cold. I walked over to the heater and switched on the fan; it dutifully blew cold air. “It’ll probably take a minute or so to warm up.”

  Twenty minutes later I removed the cowling so I could attempt to coerce some heat from it. “It’s no use,” I said. “The fan works fine, drawing in air through a radiator. Problem is, the radiator is completely disconnected from any hot water source. Or any source at all. The pipe is just dangling.” Over the next four days we took turns blow drying our feet with September’s hair dryer to remove the blue tinge. It was our only source of warmth.

  Even though it was after midnight, Katrina and Jordan were happily making tents out of moldy blankets in the top bunks. It gave them something to do while I was dismantling the heater. I admitted defeat with the heater and said, “Okay, guys. Bed.”

  Jordan had the misfortune of being the first to use the ensuite bathroom. “AAAGGGGHHH!”

  “Jordan, keep it down! You don’t want to wake up our neighbors!”

  “All I did was flush the toilet and this ice cold water squirted me all over!”

  The next morning at 6:00 a.m. we were all sleeping deeply, only to be awakened by the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard with violin accompaniment. The PA speaker, right in our room, was pumping out Chinese Muzak.

  “It can’t be Ramadan or time to pray!” September cried out. “Make it stop!”

  Later that morning we were in the dining room eating Cheerios with the boxed UHT milk sludge that is ubiquitous in the developing world. The kids were doing their morning homework and in came an American couple, one in a wheelchair.

  “Name is Jeff. Where’d you get Cheerios in the PRC?” the man asked.

  “John,” I said, shaking his hand. “We got them in Chongqing at a grocery store, before we got on the boat. How did you enjoy the wake-up service?”

  “Jeff practically exploded out of bed,” the woman in the wheelchair explained. “I thought I was going to have to peel him off the ceiling.”

  “I can help you there,” I said. “Remove the molding off the speaker and you can unplug it.” I figured we couldn’t understand the announcement to abandon ship anyway. It worked so well that I did the same thing to the two speakers in the hall outside our room. Of course the staff didn’t look too thrilled with what I was doing, but they didn’t stop me.

  Jeff and Muffy were from Utah. Muffy had been on the U.S. Ski Team until a misguided tree ended her career. Now she skis with the Paralympic Team.

  “So, do you have any heat in your room or hot water in your shower?” Jeff asked.

  “Zip. But we did pay extra for the ensuite bathroom.”

  “Don’t feel too bad,” Jeff replied. “We paid extra for an English-speaking guide.”

  “Yes,” September said, “it’s not worth getting hung up over. You don’t know what you really agreed to anyway. A lot could be lost in translation. The important thing is to roll with it and enjoy the spectacular scenery.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Muffy agreed. “But with no hot water, only the strong of constitution will be showering during the next four days.”

  About that time a nice grandmotherly woman came in and sat next to us. She smiled broadly and I returned the smile. She then pulled a garbage can close to her and proceeded to hack into it for a good minute or two. We had been exposed to this in Beijing, as the Chinese are infamous for their hacking and spitting. When she stopped, I started to feel the knot in my stomach relax. She then proceeded to blow her nose, sans tissue, into the trash can as well.

  “I’m glad I don’t have to empty the trash,” Jordan remarked.

  We spent the next two days floating through the Yangtze River Gorge. The river was calm, betraying the rugged terrain that rose high above us on either side. Floating through the gorges should be a “must do” for any visit to China—even after the dam is finished. During our cruise we noted markers on the cliffs and mountains clearly showing the expected water level upon completion of the dam. There will be plenty of stunning scenery after the dam is finished. Just be smarter than we were, because there are other boats marketed to Westerners!

  Our “cruise” reminded us of how miserable travel can be. Typical of the kids, they forgot to notice. They were even disappointed when our boat broke down and we were rescued by another boat, because the new boat didn’t have a toilet that shot jets of water when you flushed it.

  Wuhan was where we had expected to disembark. Several hours before Mr. Singy-Person would have been trying to test my reflexes mid-REM, a loud banging came on our door. Mr. Grumpy opened it and shouted at us in Chinese. I did what any other sleep-deprived consumer would do. I yelled back and put a pillow over my head and went back to sleep.

  Mr. Grumpy didn’t give up so easily. Twenty minutes later, he was banging on the door again, only this time he came prepared with someone who could speak English. “You have to get off the boat now.”

  “I usually like my boats to be at the dock first. That’s supposed to be after 7:00 a.m. A full night’s sleep is a plus, too,” I said.

  “We are approaching Wuhan now. Everyone must be off the boat in twenty minutes!” Then Mr. Grumpy and his English-speaking assistant left to bang on more doors.

  “Hmphf!” I grunted, as they slammed the door shut. “They’ll have to throw me off. I paid for a full night’s sleep.”

  They called my bluff. Twenty minutes later the boat had docked and Mr. Grumpy was taking our luggage down the ramp to shore. If we wanted to see it again, we were obliged to follow. Before I could say, “Gee, this doesn’t look like a big city,” our luggage was being loaded onto a bus. Mr. Grumpy’s sidekick announced, “This bus will take you to Wuhan.”

  “You sa
id we were in Wuhan!” I countered, but they simply walked away. That was the last I saw of Mr. Grumpy and his sidekick. We sat on the bus a long time, and that was before it ever started moving. The seconds seemed like hours in the predawn fog. Finally, off in the distance, we understood why we were waiting when we saw Jeff pushing Muffy in her wheelchair.

  Jeff poked his head in the door. A few moments later someone was shouting at him in Chinese. September said to no one in particular, “Gee, what is that all about?” A moment or two later, Jeff was carrying Muffy on his back down the aisle of the bus. I noted that Muffy’s knees were clipping people in the head as he carried her to the back of the bus; it didn’t look as though he was trying to prevent it.

  “What was that about?” September asked Muffy when they got settled near us.

  “There was one empty seat up front,” Muffy replied. “Jeff asked the man sitting next to it if he would move so we could have two seats together up front. They guy wouldn’t budge and the only other seats were in the back of the bus.”

  September thought for a moment and then said, “I guess in a place with 1.3 billion people, you stake your claim and don’t budge for anything.”

  Four hours later we watched the sun rise above Wuhan as we drove into the city.

  Independent travel in China means getting on a bus or a train and hoping that it takes you where you want to go. You just wait until you are told (or forced) to disembark, and are left scratching your head while you watch the dust settle from the departing bus (or train). We felt gratitude to a higher power when we found ourselves deposited in the correct time zone.

  We said good-bye to Jeff and Muffy in Wuhan and spent the next several hours at a bustling train station. Dazed and confused from lack of sleep and communication skills, we were hoping to beat the odds and actually make the correct connection to yet another unfamiliar place. After some head scratching, we boarded an overnight train to the southern city of Guilin and arrived before sunrise. It was colder than it had a right to be, being a scant three degrees above the Tropic of Cancer. It was time to flex our economic muscle and get a real hotel with central heating. A short walk from Guilin’s train station was a hotel that looked like any other business-class hotel I had stayed in when someone else was paying the bills.