Best Women's Travel Writing 2010

The disembodied chicken foot hovered before me, its caramelized claws hooked between a pair of ebony chopsticks. “Touched for the very first time?” Mr. Hu, the portly Chinese man on the other end of the chopsticks, shook with laughter as I squirmed in my seat and declined.

Undeterred, Mr. Hu turned to Stephen, the other American guest at the banquet. Stephen taught with me in Foshan, a grimy industrial city a few hours and a million amenities away from the Great Wall-Terracotta Soldiers-Yangtze River Cruise tourist route. Three months into our yearlong stint as high school ESL teachers, we had been invited on a weekend excursion to the only slightly less grimy countryside by Mr. Hu, a provincial Communist official.

Stephen reached across the table with his chopsticks. “Wo yao!” He finished off the chicken foot in two crunchy bites as Mr. Hu raised his glass of rice wine in a toast.

Like a Prayer, Madonna, 1988. After dinner had reached its second hour and we had only completed the third of ten courses, I began playing a mental game, pairing Mr. Hu’s toasts with the album and year of the song from which they derived. But Mr. Hu put my pop music knowledge to shame: as a result of what must have been years of intensive karaoke training, his entire English vocabulary consisted solely of Madonna lyrics. I had assumed he would run out of conversation-appropriate lyrics after a few hours. But I had underestimated both Madonna and Mr. Hu: one a prolific songwriter for over two decades, the other a Communist Party savant determined to impress the two foreign teachers in his district.

Being Mr. Hu’s guest was supposed to be an honor. Not all 1.3 billion people in China are members of the Communist Party. Only a select 70 million or so are invited to join. And only an even more select few thousand are nominated for official Party positions. To be invited to the home of a Party official, then, was an intimidating proposition. Before tonight, I had worried about my almost complete ignorance of Chinese history and about being drawn into debates on free speech and pollution and AIDS. But Mr. Hu was only interested in two things: converting me into a carnivore and convincing me to have sex with Stephen. And Madonna was his co-conspirator.

Early the next morning, Mei, the translator the Party had supplied to accompany us for the weekend, crept into my bedroom. Given the rain streaming down the windows, I had envisioned a day of bubble baths, microwave popcorn, and satellite television. I assumed my host would want me to enjoy these comforts of his Western-style home that were lacking in my dormitory cell at the government-run high school.

This wasn’t actually a question. In my three months in China, I’d learned guests were expected to accept every invitation. If Mr. Hu invited me to hike to a middling-sized waterfall sure to be obscured by the overcast weather and throngs of Chinese tourists in yellow ponchos, that’s what I was doing today.

When I emerged into the living room a few minutes later, Stephen was lounging on the faux-leather sofa, leafing through a contraband copy of Playboy. “Good morning, sleepy. You missed breakfast. Highly delicious pork and onion soup.”

“Don’t be so cheerful. Zuo shehui cha shi jin fangfa you dui xueshi.” He translated: “The only way to have correct knowledge is to make social investigations.” Stephen had also taken to memorizing sayings from Mao’s Little Red Book and reciting them in Chinese to impress people. And in English to remind me how little Chinese I had managed to learn so far.

Outside, the rain poured like dirty ink from the colorless sky. Perhaps, I suggested, we could wait until the weather cleared? Mei spoke quickly in Chinese to Mr. Hu, who shook his head and turned to me with a manic glimmer in his eyes. “Let your body go with the flow, you know you can do it.” He put his arms around Stephen and me and pushed us toward the door together.

Unfortunately, he was right. Stephen was the only male fluent in English and over 5’ 5” within a 100-mile radius of our school. However, since he was also a conceited, pretentious know-it-all, I’d resigned myself to a year of celibacy. Unperturbed by my lack of interest, Stephen basked in the constant attention of beautiful Chinese women. It was yet another benefit of being a male Caucasian: Stephen was an ersatz Brad Pitt, while I was a 5’ 9”, brown-haired, blue-eyed freak that Chinese people couldn’t stop staring at.

Luckily, during our walk to the famous waterfall, no one could distinguish my freakishness thanks to the sheets of rain, which obscured both my face and the famous waterfall. For the next two hours, we sloshed through puddles and evaded vendors hawking dried fish to screaming schoolchildren. Even Stephen looked less cheerful than usual when we returned to Mr. Hu’s Mercedes.

As we waited in the car with the driver, Mr. Hu and Mei stood under an umbrella, presumably discussing what cultural activity to impose upon us next. After a few moments, Mei slid into the backseat, forcing me into the middle next to Stephen.

“When the clouds come in and try to darken our days, I’ll always want you to stay, stay darling.” Mr. Hu said something in Chinese to Mei, who blushed and giggled as Stephen pinched my thigh and winked at Mr. Hu.

As the driver navigated the potholes, rickshaws, and the assortment of pigs, goats, and elderly villagers that crowded the road, the Evita soundtrack, with Mr. Hu in the starring role, serenaded us.

“All through my wild days, my mad existence, I kept my promise, don’t keep your distance.” Mr. Hu reached into the back seat and pulled my hands together with Stephen’s as he improvised a crescendoing chorus. “Don’t cry for me, Steee-pheee-eeen, the truth is I never left you.”

When we finally arrived back at the house, I hurried toward my bedroom to take a hot shower and nap before what was likely to be a marathon dining experience. It was a national holiday and we’d been invited to a banquet honoring local Party leaders. But before I was halfway up the stairs, Mei stopped me.

“Mr. Hu has another distinguished guest tonight. This visitor needs to stay in your room.” Mei looked at me guiltily. “Stephen’s room has two beds. You can stay with him.”

My eyes almost rolled out of my head. “There’s no other room?” Mr. Hu’s McMansion dwarfed the two-room apartments most Chinese families shared. I couldn’t believe there was nowhere else in the house for me to sleep. Mei turned to Mr. Hu and asked him again. He brought his hands together and bowed, but when he raised his head, a not quite apologetic smile quivered on his lips. “Last night I dreamt of Reiming, where a girl loves a boy, and a boy loves a girl.”

I should have forgiven Mr. Hu for assuming that Stephen and I would shack up. After all, we were two foreigners who were the same age, spoke the same language, and were marooned in the same remote region of China. Like a meddling grandmother trying to fix up her granddaughter with the neighbor’s son, Mr. Hu was playing matchmaker. Except grandmothers don’t usually encourage their granddaughters with chants of “In the midnight hour, I can feel your power” and “Come on, shine your heavenly body tonight.”

“Mr. Hu apologizes for any inconvenience,” Mei shrugged. Inconvenience, my ass. Mr. Hu knew exactly what he was doing: stuck in this provincial backwoods, with no fun other than field trips to trickling waterfalls and late nights drinking rice wine with his comrades, he’d decided to use the foreign visitors to provide some much-needed entertainment.

Stephen reached over the side of the bed and kicked something with his foot. A less than twin-sized trundle bed fell out from under him. “I believe that dodgy contraption is what she was referring to.” He stretched his other arm across the remainder of the queen-size bed. “Although if you behave yourself, I could be convinced to share.”

Suddenly, I was in paradise: an enormous jacuzzi bathtub gleamed in one corner, while the other held a multi-head steam shower and sauna, and, most luxurious of all, a Western-style, glowingly clean toilet. If sharing a bed with Stephen was the price I had to pay for a night of sanitized bathroom facilities, it might be worth it. During my first few weeks in China, enraptured by living in a foreign culture, I forgave my dormitory’s “Western-style” bathroom, an all-in-one shower/sink/ toilet, which reeked of sewage whenever it rained (or I suffered from dysentery, which was about as often). I didn’t even mind the stall-less holes in the ground that passed as public toilets. But after three months, the novelty had worn off.

Ninety minutes later, I emerged to an empty bedroom; Stephen was probably scheming with Mr. Hu about how to incorporate pork lo mein into foreplay. I pulled on a once black, now gray, pair of underwear and a stretched-out bra. The school’s Soviet-era washing machines somehow washed away color and shape, while retaining all the dirt. As I rummaged in my bag for appropriate attire for a Communist banquet—Vogue has yet to publish an article on that fashion dilemma—the door edged open. Grabbing my yellow poncho, I clumsily attempted to cover up.

Stephen stood frozen in the doorway. “Sorry. Completely unintentional.” He gave me a quick once-over as I pulled the yellow plastic around my butt. “Though Mr. Hu might be right—not a bad little body.”

Fully clothed, I reluctantly joined the others in the living room a few minutes later. Mr. Hu eyed me and pointed at Stephen. “Open your heart to he, baby, he hold the lock and you hold the key.”

A middle-aged Chinese man in a slate gray Mao suit joined us, presumably the distinguished guest who’d usurped my bedroom. Mei introduced him as General Lizong and informed me that I would also be bumped from the Mercedes so that the men could talk business. Despite his lack of knowledge of the “business” at hand, Stephen’s penis apparently qualified him for a seat in the Mercedes. Mei and I were demoted to a 1985 Toyota taxi smelling not so faintly of fish sauce and rotting vegetables.

The banquet hall was a squat, gray, and properly Communist structure imposed on an otherwise timeless landscape of rice paddies and fields of palms. Inside, giant banners emblazoned with gold and black Chinese letters hung from the stage. Mr. Hu look-alikes filled the room, milling about and shaking hands with each other. Peppered amongst them, a handful of young, beautiful Chinese women tottered around in four-inch heels and low-cut cocktail dresses.

Mr. Hu, General Lizong, and one of the escorts, a barely legal woman wearing a skin-tight green dress and a push-up bra corralling up and out what little flesh hung on her emaciated frame, waited for us at our table. Mr. Hu pulled out a chair next to Stephen and indicated I should sit there.

“Cherish the thought of always having her here by your side,” Mr. Hu winked at Stephen, then sat across the table from us for an optimal view of the amusement he had planned for the night.

I’d already attended one Chinese banquet and knew that I’d likely emerge four hours later famished. Banquets were an opportunity to offer guests high-priced meat dishes; vegetables were considered the food of the poor. Since only an insane person would want to eat like a peasant, most Chinese understood “vegetarian” to mean not “without meat,” but “with vegetables.” So I poked suspiciously at the “eggplant specialty” that the waiter brought me, and after a bite, realized that the “specialty” was the unidentifiable chunks of meat dumped into the mix. I made a few polite stabs with my chopsticks and let Stephen eat the rest.

When he saw us sharing food, Mr. Hu cackled and made an obscene gesture with his chopsticks. “So if you want it right now, make him show you how.”

It’s just a few hours, I told myself. The jacuzzi will be worth it. I summoned a serene smile for Mr. Hu and resumed drinking my beer. Another mysterious meat dish was brought to the table as a parade of men in ill-fitting suits stood at the podium and spoke about other men in ill-fitting suits.

By the time the last speaker finished, we were on the fifth course. Mr. Hu raised his glass for a toast as Stephen replenished my supply of watery Chinese beer. “Let your body take a ride, feel the beat and step inside.” Mr. Hu winked at me as he drained his glass.

“You say that now. There’s still three courses to go, which means three more meals you won’t eat and three more drinks that will go straight to your head.”

Stephen was right. For self-protection reasons, I needed to eat. So when a bowl of congee was brought out as the next course, I gave a silent prayer of thanks. Congee is a kind of watery oatmeal, bland and harmless. I eagerly started lapping up giant spoonfuls. Halfway through my bowl, I paused: a glistening gray chunk of something hovered ominously on the surface of the white, viscous paste.

The beer and the snake soup washed all lingering traces of politeness away. I shrieked as my spoon and the chunk of snake splattered onto the table. Mumbling a garbled “Excuse me” in Mandarin, I stood up and ran out of the room, past red-faced Party officials and their giggling escorts. Hoping the dim hallway would lead to a bathroom, I kept walking until I eventually stumbled through a door leading outside.

The blackness of the rural night enveloped me, and for a moment, it was as if everything—the banquet, the weekend trip, the very idea of me living in China—was a murky dream. But my overflowing bladder was a painful reminder of reality. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw a small shed with two adjoining doors and realized that I had found the bathroom after all. I eased open the outhouse door and was instantly struck by an olfactory tsunami: wave after noxious wave poured forth from a hole in the ground overflowing with human excrement. Slamming the door shut, I threw up the liquid and reptilian contents of my dinner.

Then I started crying, with complete and unrestrained self-pity. Why was China like this? Where were the elegant palaces and Buddhist tea ceremonies? Why didn’t I live in Beijing where expats could get The New York Times and frozen yogurt? Why did I have to ride everyday on a minibus overstuffed with undiapered babies, spitting old men, and chickens exploding out of their cages? How did I get stuck in a jail-like dormitory infested with cockroaches the size of hamsters and shrieking Cantonese neighbors? Why was I living in a place so polluted that I couldn’t run outside, so crowded that I couldn’t have a square foot to myself in the street, so different that I had nothing in common with anyone?

As I sat in the barnyard outside the banquet hall, wallowing in self-pity and vomit, Stephen appeared from around the corner. He handed me a bottle of water. “Here. You’re a mess.”

Wiping my eyes, I tried to stop sobbing, but the tears kept coming: three months of loneliness, frustration, and confusion streamed down my cheeks.

An hour and another taxi ride later, I lay in the pink tiled bathtub, trying to soak the vomit and manure and self-pity away. When I returned to the bedroom, the lights were off and all of Stephen’s six feet four inches were mashed into an unnatural-looking fetal position on the trundle bed.

So I did. And in the morning, I awoke, unmolested and completely embarrassed. Embarrassed that Stephen saw me behave so poorly, embarrassed that I’d disrupted the banquet, embarrassed that I hadn’t been appreciative of Mr. Hu’s generosity. More than anything, embarrassed that I wasn’t the brave foreign traveler I thought.

“It could have happened to anyone. That is, anyone who is a non-Chinese speaking, vegetarian, attractive female.” He sat on the edge of the bed.

“There is a little thing you could do.” He stood up and fidgeted with the door handle. “Mr. Hu saw me this morning, and, of course, he wanted to know how our evening went last night. And I didn’t want to disappoint him. He seems to have his heart set on, you know, the whole Madonna thing and all.”

“Afraid I did. What would he think, me having you in here all night, and not even making out? Not even sleeping in the same bed? No, I couldn’t do that to him.”

He took the bag out of my hands and put his hands on my shoulders. “Stay just like that. You look nice and rumpled. Convenient that a hangover and sex have the same effect.”

And so, a few minutes later, after making sure my hair was appropriately tousled and my bra straps misaligned, I walked into the living room where Mei, Stephen, and Mr. Hu awaited.

“Yes, thank you. Please tell Mr. Hu I am very sorry for being rude and leaving the banquet early. I didn’t feel well and wasn’t thinking clearly.”

Mei translated and Mr. Hu nodded. “Mr. Hu says he understands, you needed Stephen to take you to bed.” Mr. Hu’s gold molars glimmered from the depths of his mouth as his grin stretched to his earlobes.

“Mr. Hu wants to know if you enjoyed your weekend in Reiming?” Mei translated for Mr. Hu, who lingered by the side of the driveway to see us off.

I gazed out my window. The compound of sherbet-colored McMansions with BMWs and Cadillacs lining the driveways loomed on one side of the road. On the other side, a farmer covered in mud and sweat pushed an oxcart through an overgrown field. He stopped every few minutes to dislodge a wheel from a rut or to wait for his animal to graze in the weedy marsh. This was the China I lived in. Not the romanticized China of colonial England or the sanitized China of expat diplomats in Beijing and Shanghai. I lived in the China of snake soup, the China of barefoot men selling live chickens and dead dogs, the China of all-night karaoke sessions with drunken Communists.

I leaned forward and slid my arms around Stephen’s neck as I locked eyes with Mr. Hu. “Wanting, needing, waiting. For him to justify my love.” If this was my China, I might as well speak the local language.

Kellen Zale is a freelance writer and editor who is currently working on a collection of short stories based on her unintentionally intrepid travels on six continents. She lives in Los Angeles, California.