China is full of surprises. Pulling into a passage control, which is like a time control only without any time requirement associated with it, we confirm our existence and then step inside a cafe serving huoguo (Mongolian hotpot). I’m immediately enveloped by clouds of fragrant steam, redolent of meat and spices. The cafe is overflowing with a lunchtime crowd busy conveying interesting-looking tidbits of flesh and greenery with fast-moving chopsticks from bowls of broth into their mouths. Every plastic table is packed. We shuffle and sidle among the chairs until we find two empty ones, nodding to our Chinese tablemates who are already fully involved in their meals.
By waving both arms I manage to hail a sweating waitress. When I point at what’s in front of our dining companions, she nods, sweeps her arm in a graceful arc, and departs. She’ll have no trouble finding us again. We’re two of the only whites in the place, the others being Rally crews who are already eating. When I turn around, I realize her arm sweep was not some local polite gesture. Behind me is a full wall of shelves and bins, stuffed with vegetables, fish, poultry, pork, lamb, and beef.
I count four sections, each easily five feet wide, divided by eight shelves reaching the ceiling. Every shelf is crammed with ingredient bins; there are another sixteen bins on the floor. I spy leafy greens, which I assume are bitter, plus orange and ivory chunks of various large gourds. There are, of course, the standard Chinese vegetables with which we’re familiar, such as mung sprouts and bok choy, next to a greater variety of cabbages and sprouts than I knew existed. There are root vegetables, vine beans, all sorts of seaweed and things I don’t have a clue about. There’s an entire section with variations on a theme of tofu, cozying up to a section of nothing but noodles. Then there’s the sea section, with basins of raw shelled mollusks; fish that’s filleted, whole or powdered, fresh and also dried; and of course prawns, all sizes. Squiggly fried things nestle next to a prickle of chicken’s feet. Coxcombs snuggle up to lamb kidneys.
While our waitress is in the kitchen extracting fresh pots of broth for us, I have a chance to observe how eating hotpot is done. People flock to the ingredients wall with empty plates, returning with those plates mounded high with choice bits. I watch as they place a variety of foodstuffs in their empty bowl, pour a ladle of hot broth over them, and wait a minute or two for the items to cook. Then they start slurping. When their plate has no more ingredients left to cook in the broth, they get up for more. It’s the Chinese equivalent of a salad bar, only, to my mind, infinitely more appetizing.
Our waitress returns bearing our personal steaming pots of clear soup, along with heavy white ceramic plates. This is our signal to get up, plates in hand. Like supplicants, we approach the wall. Bernard looks for things he’s familiar with, returning with a modestly filled plate of sprouts, greens, cabbages, and shrimp. I start out with an unsightly pile of everything I saw everyone else taking. I’m in a delirium of native cookery and I want to try it all, but I barely have time to refill my bowl with a new mound of ingredients and broth to cook it in, when Bernard’s looking at his watch. This being purely a Passage Control, we don’t have to clock out at a set time, but we do have to reach the day’s destination at the prescribed time. Yesterday we already had our first car problem; who knows what problem could confront Roxanne next. My brain agrees it’s sensible to get back on the road, but my stomach begs to stay. My stomach is outvoted.
Soon enough, mining towns fall away and we’re bumping along a narrow road through farming country. Light filters through a green curtain of weeping willow branches, which softly sweep our windshield. We progress slowly, stalled by endless short detours around the local water project. The chirping of crickets and occasional trilling of songbirds waft through my open window. We’re going slowly enough I can smell the warm air, redolent of old manure, pungent smoke, and drying grass. I love farmland. Getting to see how other people work the land in such a faraway place is a real pleasure for me. We pass close to houses, huts really, with walls made from unmilled branches and roofs of thatch. Pigs stop rooting in the yard, ears perked forward in curiosity, snouts following us as we drift by.
The culvert project has resulted in numerous cuts in the road. Every few minutes, we bounce off the pavement onto badly rutted dirt tracks that take us down and around the slice in the road where a new culvert will be inserted. Yellow dust blows into the car, Roxanne bucks about and then we’re back on the pavement. It’s tedious going. A dry riverbed on our left seems to have been used by other vehicles who also tired of the continuous jolting detours. “Let’s try that,” I suggest to Bernard. I’m the navigator and it’s up to me to dictate whether we can abandon the designated route or not. “It looks like it parallels our route for quite a while. I think we should be OK.”
This is planting season, and by all rights the riverbed should be flowing with water. Instead, the rocky ground looks parched and poor. A man plowing with a team of oxen looks up, startled. He rubs his eyes, perhaps wondering whether he’s hallucinating from the hot sun. (Or maybe he’s just clearing grit from his lids as we drive by). Other Rally cars see us taking off on this new route and elect to follow us. This is one of those aspects of group behavior that I find fascinating. The people behind have no idea whether the car in front is going the right way or not. They’re all just looking for relief from the responsibility of having to understand the route book correctly on their own. Merely by the fact that we’ve made a choice, any choice, they’re willing to go the way we go. Though I’m about to yell back at them, “We don’t know where we’re going,” I decide instead to let them come. Roxanne’s earned her chance to lead.
“You know, Bernard,” I say. “This sort of thing, this riverbed drive, is exactly what I had in mind when we signed up for this rally.”
“I know. It’s way more interesting than those main roads we’ve been on. I don’t even understand why they’ve put us on those boring roads. ”
“Why don’t we do more of this? You know, pulling off on side roads, checking out what’s around the bend. Maybe we’d meet the local people. We could just stop in front of someone’s house, and when they see Roxanne, they’d come talk to us.” I’m a little wary of pushing this idea. As far as I know, Bernard’s still bent on Gold. Going rogue could put the kibosh on that forever.
“With all these other cars, too?”
“No. We’ll let them pass us. I’d rather go on our own.” We’re only one day into the Rally, and already I’m abandoning my mission of becoming at ease with crowds of people. Bernard’s not quite ready to buy it.
“But we still have to check in at each time control,” he says, as if I could have forgotten.
He has a point. We are in this to do the Rally thing, whatever that might be. I bid good-bye to my momentary hope that we were done with competition. “Of course. Sure. We’ll only take detours if we think we have enough time.”I finished with,“And I’ll make sure we can get back on the main route before a Control,” though I have no idea how I’ll be able to do this.
Our plan in place, we stop, thinking the other cars will pass us. They stop, too, apparently thinking we are discussing a strategy which they can again follow. After a few minutes of no one budging, I wave my arm out the window in that classic signal that says,“Go on around us.”Once they’re all safely ahead, I start looking for an opportunity for us to sneak away and explore.
Approaching a town, I spy a side road on the left, a small lane really, that looks perfect. It’s so tightly bounded by tall bulrushes and reeds that I can only see a short distance. That alone is seductive. We have plenty of time to wander, because the route book says there’s only 60 miles more to our hotel and that’s on a highway. “This looks like a good one, Bernard. Let’s turn here and see what we find.”
Bernard’s about to follow my instruction when we notice a policeman standing in the middle of the lane. He’s in a white uniform with gold braid and wears a white peaked cap with a red ribbon. Despite the odd picture our Roxanne must make, he stares straight ahead, his face impassive. “That’s odd,” Bernard says. “He seems to be blocking the road. Maybe there’s an official convoy coming this way and they want to keep all traffic moving.” We continue on, looking for another opportunity. The next side road, too, is blocked by a policeman, his white-gloved hands rigid at his side. At a roundabout, there’s another one. Policemen everywhere, shoulders back, feet planted, blocking any possibility of leaving the main route; at traffic circles there’s a policeman at each possible exit, plus one in the middle, one arm out, white-gloved finger pointing at the exit we’re permitted to take. It seems that Chinese bureaucracy has withdrawn its earlier commitment to let us be. Perhaps bribes were expected and not forthcoming. Whatever the reason, every few miles there’s a guard, arm extended at right angles, pointing the way, the only way, we’re allowed to go.
There’s an upside to their assistance. For the past two days, I’ve queued up with the rest of the navigators each morning, eager to grab a copy of the change notes that amend our route for the day. Just knowing where I need to be at the start of the morning has given me a sense of achievement. Each time I tick off a waypoint or instruction, it’s one more direction finished, one more instruction that I didn’t botch, one more page of the four-inchthick route book I can turn. I can’t say that I’ve gotten cocky about being a navigatrix, but I am a step above totally unsure. Still, thanks to those white gloves pointing us in the right direction, I now have absolutely no worries. Any time I’m remotely hesitant I need only look for the finger and I’m back on track.
The presence of the guards announces our coming to every town. It seems we’re celebrities, the cause for festivities. As we drive down these main streets, welcoming crowds line the roadside and laborers lift hands blackened with dirt. Mothers gaze proudly at the toddlers they hold aloft, as if to say, “You have the fancy car. But look at this baby I made.” Their smiles and waves remind me of exactly how I felt when the Colorado Grand Car Tour came through my village: proud to live in a place such cars would drive through. Here, though, we’re not allowed to stop, so all I can do is wave back.
The Chinese countryside, with its small farms, primitive houses, and ancient trees, is much like what I’d imagined. The towns and villages are not. From the little I can see as we drive along, there’s nothing either prosperous or individual about them. In one town after another, the highway simply expires into litter on either edge. Soot from the surrounding coal mines covers everything, leaving doors and windows streaked with gluey grime and turning even the litter underfoot to black. This blackened layer, made up of food peels, strips from plastic bags, glass bottle shards, newspaper pages, and whatever someone didn’t need or couldn’t reuse, is the defacto safe zone for those not moving at high speed. It’s crammed with pedestrians, motorcycles, men wheeling carts, and women pedaling bicycles. They bustle in and out of the single row of shops that parallels the highway on either side. All the shops are identical in size, about twelve feet square, no matter whether a hairdresser, grocer, restaurant, or furniture emporium. Perhaps this egalitarian assignment of space is a vestige of Mao. It seems stifling to me. After all, what would spur someone to build their business if it’s impossible to get a larger space once it started to grow? The riot of prosperity and relentless march forward I saw in Beijing hasn’t reached here. Though everyone has a cell phone, everything else about their lives seems stuck in a time warp.
We figure the Beijing officials who sanctioned the Rally were caught by a fit of remorse at letting so many foreigners see just how backward the countryside was. To placate any grumblers, perhaps to save entire careers, they posted police to keep us moving. I can’t tell whether it’s the coal smoke or this squeezing out of any individuality that makes me feel like I’m choking.