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Note: While this will be posted November 15th, it actually concerns events that happened a few weeks ago.

After a long day of biking nearly 100km through the mountains, checking on the status of train tickets, and conducting an exhaustive luguan (cheap hotel) search, we gathered around the steps of the one we had selected in the small but dusty city of Jingdezhen. Our legs ached. Night had fallen half an hour earlier and the bustling streets filled with food vendors reminded us we had yet to eat. We all anticipated getting our equipment hauled up the narrow stairs, ourselves showered, and digging into a Chinese feast.

As usual a crowd of curious onlookers had gathered around where we were marshaling our material in front of the luguan in preparation for bringing it upstairs. People politely stood off to the side, looking and sometimes trying to speak to us in order to determine who these strange-looking folks with loads of odd equipment were and why they would ever choose to come to such a place as Jingdezhen. We answered questions as we unpacked, but suddenly one large, aggressive man in a nylon warm-up suit with buzzed hair broke through the crowd and confronted Drew. He stood close-by and bellowed“Where are you from, where are you from? What are you doing here? What are you doing?” so loudly that his voice resembled the horns of one of the many cars trying to get through the traffic jam we involuntarily cause every time we stop. He continued yelling when Drew, busy with un-attaching his bags, paid him no mind. I had half a mind to brusquely step in front of him and inquire if screaming was his idea of being polite. But no matter, he soon strode off, talking on his cell phone, and we managed to load up the rest of the luggage.

When I came down to pay for the room, I found the man in the warm-up suit and buzzed hair sitting with the boss. I gave the money we’d agree to pay to the boss, who gave it to the buzz cut, who gave it back to the boss, who gave it back to me. “Wait a moment,” said the boss, “you can pay after you register.” Great, I thought. Registering at hotels in China is required by law for every person each night they stay in a hotel, just like it’s required that every computer user at an internet bar register with their personal identification card number. Usually innkeepers don’t require foreigners to register, but sometimes it turns in to an exhaustive process where other parties are summoned to do the registering, multiple records are created for each person, and a copy of everyone’s documents are made. My worst fear (the cops themselves coming) evoked when the innkeeper told me to wait for someone else to come.

I sat down with the innkeeper and the buzzcut and waited. Soon a man with black slacks, a white button-down shirt, a high quality leather jacket, and the ubiquitous man purse toted by most Chinese middle-upper class men. He came in and sat down, and everyone else stood up. “Can I see your passport?” asked the man. “You are…” I prompted him, and he pulled out his police I.D. card. Outstanding. I produced my passport, and the man examined it. In the meantime the innkeeper whispered something to his 14 year old daughter, who rummaged through a box and brought out an unopened case of cigarettes. She opened them and handed one full pack towards the police officer, but her father snatched it away. He opened it up, knocked one cigarette half out of the pack, and offered it himself to the police officer, who accepted it.

“Why don’t we go to your room?” said the officer, to me. “This place is alright,” I said, indicating our current surroundings. “No, it’s ok,” said the officer, “it’s not a problem, let’s go to your room.” So we climbed the stairs and went to my room, where he told me I could sit down. “You sit down,” said I. He stood and examined my passport.

“Foreigners can’t stay here,” he said. The buzz cut entered our room, smoking a cigarette, and sat down on the bed. “What isn’t safe?” I inquired of the leather jacketed officer. “Your foreigners,” buzz cut broke in, “you’ll go out and people will know your not Chinese.” “So what?” asked I. “It’s not safe,” rejoined the officer, who was calling someone on his phone. He finished his call and pointed to place on my visa where it lists the date I obtained it. “This is the date you came into China,” he half-questioningly said. I started to lose my patience. “No,” I explained in a long sentence of quick elocution and no breaths, “that’s the date I got the visa, before I come to China I must have a visa so of course the date I got it will be earlier than the date I came to China.” “I know, I know,” said the officer. He sat down on the bed and contemplated the passport to see what else he knew.

He talked on the phone. The buzz cut watched TV. My stomach growled. “Foreigners cannot stay at this place,” said the cop again, “You should stay at a bigger, nicer hotel.” “We won’t stay at a nicer hotel,” I said, “so you’re going to throw us out on the street and make us sleep out there?” “No, no no,” said the cop, slowly shaking his head with the frustration of speaking to someone who doesn’t understand, “it’s not safe here.” “What isn’t safe?” I demanded. “This is just a private operation,” cut in the buzz cut, “they don’t have guards here like they do at bigger hotels.” “Well,” said Drew in English, “did you tell them we brought a lot of guns for our own protection?” I laughed. Possessing firearms in China carries a minimum sentence of fifteen years, or so I’ve been told.

“We’re calling the police commander,” says the buzz cut. “He’ll tell you about some safe things,” says the officer. Perfect. So we sit and wait. “You don’t understand, this area isnt really safe,” claims the police officer again. I’m getting fed up. “So there have been a lot of other foreigners who’ve been murdered here, then?” I ask, unleashing the worst of my sarcasm. “No, no no, it’s not like that,” says the cop, it’s just not safe. In the meantime I’ve gotten all the passports from everybody and the cop is slowly going through each one, stumbling between expired visas and English words he doesn’t understand. He asks me the same questions, over and over again. Where are you going? When did you enter China? Where did you stay last night? Buzz cut sits on the bed watching TV and smoking.

Footsteps sound on the stair and a new man with short hair, expensive clothes, and the arrogant air of the accidentally wealthy enters the room. Ah yes, the police commander. “Where you doing,” he greets me with appalling English. I look at the other cop, “What’s he talking about?” I ask in Chinese, volubly aware that not addressing the commander insults him. The commander takes the passports and looks at them as he smokes, one by one. We converse briefly in Chinese, with the newest arrival asking the same questions as his lower ranking counterpart, but in a more intolerable manner. “You, how many,” he breaks into English again. Both Adam and I answer at the same time in Chinese, Adam answering the question “How many people are you?” and me answering “How many nights are you staying here?”. Adam laughs. “Speak Chinese,” he tells our would-be English speaker. The man does, and we find out the question he was trying to ask was actually “How much money do you usually spend on a hotel room?” We tell him, and he looks through the passports again. He and the other two men converse in intelligible dialect. Obviously they are all locals.

Finally the lower cop draws some forms out of his man purse and starts to slowly, slowly fill them out. At this point we’ve all showered and are just waiting, our stomachs growling and a distaste for bureaucracy palpable on our sadly otherwise unoccupied palates. First the commander takes his stately leave of us. Then the cop finally manages to stumble through filling out the forms. Then it’s just us and buzz cut.

He tells us he’ll help us find a restaurant, a proposition to which we are not at all keen to accept. However, it doesn’t seem like we have much choice. As we walk around the streets, he tells us he has the mysterious job of “being responsible for this area”. He keeps his distance and doesn’t force a restaurant choice on us. Finally we find one and he ensures that the boss won’t overcharge us, and takes off, having made a somewhat graceful exit to perhaps the two most frustrating hours of the trip so far.

For us, Hunan was a mostly cop-free experience. We saw traffic officers at checkpoints who returned our waves with smiles, we asked street cops for directions who always helpfully obliged. I would like to emphasize that Chinese policemen usually make for pleasant interactions. But we found a slightly different situation in the hinterlands of Anhui and Jiangxi provinces. Quite often we were not allowed to stay at otherwise suitable luguans. Other times we had to spend the evening with the cops, filling out paperwork. Other times the innkeepers themselves had to go to some expense and trouble to copy or scan our documents.

The reason for these proceedings remains unclear. Cheaper luguans used to be completely unavailable to foreigners in China. Presumably the thinking was that foreigners should stay at more expensive places so they only see the best side of China, and so they leave more money behind. Now that it’s legal for foreigners to stay at most of these places, it’s unclear why some police departments demand that the otherwise silly paperwork be filled out. Perhaps they are really concerned about being responsible for foreigners staying at hotels without guards. Perhaps it’s simply left over thinking from the bad old days.

In any case, the effect for us is the same. We spend more time filling paperwork that will never serve a purpose. In the meantime we’re glad that the cops we deal with are polite, not brutal. We can also be thankful that it is only when staying in luguans where cops have sway over us, and that we can return to countries where our speech and family planning are not also managed by the government.

We roll into another town in Southern Hunan late one afternoon. We bike around looking for a luguan (cheap hotel) and finally find a nicer hotel willing to put five of us in a 3-bed room for slightly more than we’re used to paying. Pete bargains hard and the boss, or the man who seems to be the boss, comes down to the price we normally
pay for five beds. The room is large and has clean linen and its own bathroom with, most amazing of all, hot water. We clean up, plan to put two people on the floor, and consider ourselves lucky.

Later I’m taking my bags off my bike. The man with whom Pete negotiated, the maid, the housekeeper, and another young, stylishly attired man approach me and question me about our journey and its purpose. I give them the run through with our route and our efforts to advocate biking. The would-be owner asks most of the questions,
while the younger man hangs in the background, listening but remaining silent.

When I finally step in the shower I hear someone come into the room and converse with Adam, telling him that he is the boss, supports our effort to protect the environment through use of bikes, and tells us that he’s planning on giving us a free dinner in his hotel. Hey, I think, go environmental protection! Usually, environmentalists must wait for years to reap the benefits of their advocacy, if at all. But in this case, our advocacy paid off immediately. Of course, a full belly satisfies not nearly as well as reduced global CO2 emissions, but I am happy to cash in on the benefits of environmentalism whenever they present themselves.

Mr. Liu, as our tall, sartorially savvy host turned out to be named was the young man who had exercised such verbal restraint when I was speaking with the other hotel employees. He soon returned to our room to tell us that dinner was on the table. We slowly trickled down to find a feast of high quality and a host of an incredibly relaxed
demeanor. Mr. Liu’s sympathy with our group stems largely from his own experience as a bike tourist. He is part of a local bike club and has previously biked to Guangzhou (along the same route we will travel) and to several other smaller cities and sites around Hunan.

In the West, and certainly in China, one expects business people to be middle-aged and formally attired. We were all rather surprised to find that Mr. Liu’s actual age was younger than his young looks. At 23, he’s one of the youngest successful entrepreneurs I’ve ever met. Yet, unlike many of the young men I find hovering around my computer in the net bar or buzzing my bike on mopeds, he has a dignified,
reserved, self-contained manner that puts everyone at ease.

“I like the idea of biking, and I like what you’re trying to do,” Mr. Liu told us over deep fried toufu skin, “more and more people in China are driving, but it causes a lot of pollution.” We commiserated about the traffic situation excess driving has caused in major cities like Shanghai and Beijing. I asked Mr. Liu if he had any ideas about how
to convince more people to bike. “There’s only one way,” he said, “and that’s to do what you’re doing, to demonstrate that it can be done. And also the internet.” We gave him our website, and the conversation switched to the local area.

Like most of rural Hunan, the town of Matian has been slow to develop. This changed in the ’90s when a coal mine was opened nearby. “Things are developing quickly now,” said Mr. Liu, “but there is a Chinese saying: ‘Depend on the mountain, consume the mountain; depend on the water, consume the water’.” Suffice it to say, Matian was quickly exhausting it’s resources. By depending so heavily on coal for it’s
economy, it was leaving itself without an alternative. “After the coal is used up,” pronounced Mr. Liu, “there will be no more development.”

For himself, Mr. Liu plans to leave Matian for a bigger city after perfecting his management style. Hopefully for Matian, and indeed, the rest of us, Matian and the rest of the world will manage to diversify its energy sources and continue the prosperity that have marked the last 30 years in China.

Adam and I sit outside of a road-side restaurant perched on top of a mountain pass, waiting for the food to be made so we can take it back to the hungry campers waiting in the rice paddy. An older, spry man clad in an old olive drab military coat with big brass buttons, well-patched trousers, and dollar shoes wanders past us. “Ahh,” he says to himself as he walks by and glances at us, “foreigners, they don’t understand what I’m saying.” “But we do understand,” I contradict him. “Aha! You do understand,” he says, “What country are you from?” I tell him we’re from the U.S. “That’s great! You’re studying abroad here?” I tell him we’re just biking, and then one of our dishes comes out. He wanders on to the truck drivers, who are also waiting for their dinner, and tells them there are some foreigners who can understand Chinese eating at this restaurant, but they don’t really care.

One great aspect of living in China is the ease with which you can start conversations. Tension between the U.S. and China sometimes infiltrates my efforts to get to know locals better. Chinese people often express concerns about U.S. policy in Iraq or U.S. support for Taiwan. However, they are quick to acknowledge that matters of state are not my responsibility and return the conversation to one of mutual respect and curiosity, which I think is a great way to build connections between countries on a people-to-people basis, rather than through high-arching diplomatic channels, which few of us are able to understand, let alone control.

Later I talk with the man again. He’s a relatively recent immigrant to these parts. He moved here eight years ago to help build the now-complete reservoir, and now stays on as a worker at this restaurant, doing whatever manual labor they require of him. I ask him where he used to live and he gestures to the northwest, “20 km that way,” he says. Based on his clothing and his job as an uneducated laborer, I worry about his future. China lacks a great social security system, and I often see people who look like they’re too feeble to golf shoveling dirt all day to make a buck. Older workers are no rarity in the U.S., but at least there the nature of work tends to be less brutally manual.

But this man with the salt and pepper hair doesn’t seem to think about that. Nor does he care about international relations. He has at least a few more years of hard work built into his legs, and will do whatever he has to get by, when the time comes. “Old hundred names” is how most Chinese refer to the common or lower class people on the mainland. Everyone claims to be from this class, but really my friend with the faded clothing is the only authentic specimen in the restaurant. He arises each day, not worrying, not questioning, but simply willing to put his back into hefting the hoe in preparation for the next harvest or the next bucket of bricks.

“Where did you get this Arab from?” asked the bemoled man with the fierce eye brows of a Buddhist demon sitting behind a desk.  “What are you talking about?” exasperatedly questioned Ms. Wang, who had brought me into the realm of this man in search of the bike mechanic.  “It’s their religion,” argued the man behind the fierce eye brows, “they grow the beards in accordance with their faith.  Just look at Bin Laden.”  “Bin Laden is dead,” Ms. Wang tried to kill this strain of the conversation.  “He’s from the U.S.,” she continued.  “Well, I don’t know about Bin Laden,” said the man, who’s name was Yu, and he stood up from behind his desk.

Ms. Wang was the serious, thoughtful woman I’d encountered in the adjacent bike shop while shopping for a top front rack.  She had asked about our journey so far.  I explained our purpose, our route, and inquired if she or her associates ever went bike touring.  “To go bike touring you need time,” she said, “we just never have a chance.”  I concurred.

“This area is quite poor,” she continued, reflecting the sentiment many Chinese have towards any town that is not Shenzhen, Shanghai, or Beijing.  But Ms. Wang said more.  She talked about how Chinese people liked peace,  and that even if people were poor, at least they had enough to eat.  “All we want is a peaceful society,” she said.  “Peace is everything.”  She continued in this vein for some time.  I occasionally tried to clarify, but eventually the only thing to do was to curse my lack of Chinese proficiency.   Her conversation style was remarkable for it’s openness and seriousness, and for the fact that she did not repeat often touted sentiments with the same phrases I’ve come used to hearing.

Eventually she convinced me to allow one of her employees take a look at my bike.  We went to find the bike mechanics, who were repairing bikes in front of Mr. Yu’s desk.  She had one of them fix my bike while Mr. Yu, having established that I was not Bin Laden, explained the various types of pottery available for my viewing and purchase in the “World Famous Pottery City” of Jingdezhen.  “Pottery isn’t easily transportable by bike,” advised Ms. Wang, “but you could look at it.”  “Yes,” agreed Mr. Yu, and after I’d explained that I’d looked at many pottery pictures, he assured me the pictures weren’t nearly as pretty as the real thing.

“She’s the big boss,” said the well-groomed Mr. Yu, gesturing at the informally but stylish Ms. Wang.  “Because she had the money to start the business, just like it is overseas,” he informed me.  Ms. Wang stiffened and her tone sharpened.  “Not necessarily,” she snapped, “In other countries employees can sometimes work to become the boss, too”, she concluded, leaving her slightly ambiguous statement open for interpretation.  Mr. Yu retreated behind his desk.

The mechanic finished tuning up my bike, but Ms. Wang refused to accept any money.  “We enjoy having you here,” she said, “and if you go to other bike shops during your journey across China, you’ll find the situation is the same, other shops  will give you free service too.”  And indeed she’s been correct.

We stopped by a supermarket to buy some ice cream.  They didn’t have any, so we looked for milk.  We found a stack of milk containers strapped together with large basins.  “Why are they selling milk with a wash basin?” I asked of the two recent high school grads who had accompanied us into the store.  “Ah,” began the young man with neatly trimmed hair, “to drink out of,” and demonstrated drinking milk out of a huge basin.  “What?!” exclaimed the young woman at his side while hitting him a smacking blow to the shoulder, “No it’s not!”  “Oh, right, right, right” continued the young man, “you use it to wash yourself,” here he mimed dumping a pale full of milk over his head.  “Ai ya!” said the girl, precluding further verbal remonstrance by increasing the ferocity of her previously described methods of physical dissuasion.

Later we went to their house.  It was probably the nicest house in town.  We learned they were siblings, the children of rich merchants.  Both of them worked in the police station.  They were both police officers.  We sat on the boy’s bed.  For the benefit of his guests, he turned on the TV, the computer, and the stereo.

“Do you eat fruit?” asked the girl in her inexplicably raspy voice.  I thought she had some in the next room.  Sure, I said.  In the meantime the boy had started chatting online with one of the officers at the police station.  As I looked into the web cam on the boy’s computer and in turn examined the grainy, almost real-time image of what I would expect a middle-age Chinese cop to look like, I wondered what he would think about the foreigners in his town.  As previously noted, when it comes to staying in small towns for the night, the local cops have been less than helpful.  This was a new situation.  Our hosts practically embodied hospitality, but would their boss be as welcoming and blase about our presence?

Soon the chat ended and our friend went on to another chat.  We eventually managed to turn off the TV, then the stereo.  We played some music, the purpose for which we had ostensibly been invited in the first place.  Our host demonstrated his well-practiced dance technique and Kung-Fu.  The girl came back loaded down with bags of recently purchased apples, persimmons, and bananas.

We talked about their jobs.  They both worked in the police office.  The girl was a receptionist, the guy had some sort of other desk job, though he was apparently in training to become a real police officer.  We tried to get the girl to sing a song.  “I can’t,” she explained, pointing to her throat.  “Every day she talks with old people,” said her brother.  “They can’t hear well,” said the girl, in her shouted out voice, “and I have to shout at them.”  “Are all the old people here criminals?” I asked, thinking I’d made a great joke.  “No, no, no, they always lose their identity cards,” said the girl, taking her card out to demonstrate, “I’m in charge of getting people new cards, and the old people are always losing them.”

They told us how important the cards were for Chinese people.  The cards are a national phenomenon, but specific to a certain town or district.  To look for a job, to live anywhere, the card is very important, they told me.  I’ve read in the news that not having a card makes migrant workers easier to exploit, or any sort of migration or movement by normal people difficult.  It’s an important mode of control for the government, and one reason that Chinese cities, unlike cities in other developing countries are not surrounded by slums.

Do you agree with the cards?  I asked, trying to draw some opinions out of our hosts.  Are their any problems because of the cards.  The boy answered.  It’s what the government does, he said.  It’s a way to keep track of the people.  A perfectly reasonable and useless answer.  It was late.  I opted for not pursuing a more vigorous line of questioning for advising him not to fall out of the window, out of which he had been precariously leaning for some time. “It’s OK,” he said, “there’s a thing here.”  We looked.  Sure enough, there was a deck.

Later we walked back to our motel with a big bag of persimmons, which was sadly to rank low on our fruit travelability ranking.  The people who gave it to us, on the other hand, will always hold a uniquely positive place among the Chinese police I will remember.

When I first walked into the Giant bike shop in Shanghai’s Min Hang district a Specialized custom frame mountain bike outside the door caught my attention.  This bike belonged to the clean-cut, well-built shop mechanic, a man by the name of Zhang Xing. He wore the clean but plain clothes of a man who worked for his living.

Due to a paucity of bike terms in my Chinese dictionary, I came into his shop not knowing how to say the names for the parts for which I was searching.  “Do you have a thing…I mean a thing, I don’t know how to say, if you want to put something on your bike, one of those things,” I said, leaving room for interpretation.  Mr. Zhang patiently narrowed down my description to what I wanted, a front rack, and later helped me find a few other hard to describe parts.

The shop wasn’t busy.  As he showed me various parts and described the wheels he was and was not able to build, I told him about the trip and found out a bit about him as well.

“I’m glad you speak Chinese,” he told me, “my education level isn’t beyond junior middle school, so my English isn’t so good.”  Despite the “egalitarian” reputation of communism, many folks here express a hesitancy or lack of confidence when associating people who are more “educated” than themselves. I tried to reassure Mr. Zhang that my college degree was well worth the effort, but not much more than that.

He told me that he, just like almost everyone else I talked to in Shanghai, was not from Shanghai, but was actually from one of the surrounding areas; in his case Anhui. The poverty and lack of jobs in his hometown first sent Mr. Zhang into the military after he no longer attended school, and he spent several years in Xinjiang, a time which he found interesting but cold.

Giant is a quality bike brand, ranking right up there with Trek, Specialized, and Cannondale. However, most Chinese people who ride bikes use non-name brand bikes.  The classic bikes work well, but the newer style non-name brand bikes are infamous for their low quality components and tendency to break down.

Giant is actually a Taiwanese company.  Not knowing this, I told Zhang that I thought it unfortunate that there wasn’t a quality Chinese bike company.  Taking my ignorance or possible hint at Taiwan’s independence in stride, Mr. Zhang explained that Giant was a good company, and that Taiwan “is part of China, right”.  I agreed with his first point and let the latter pass by.

After the military he came to Shanghai looking for work, and found a job at the Giant store. He enjoys life in Shanghai, or at least finds it preferable to the countryside.  From the apartment he describes as tiny and poor quality, Mr. Zhang commutes fifteen minutes to work every day by bike.

I told Mr. Zhang how by doing our trip, we were hoping to convince more people in the U.S. and China to bike instead of drive, yet I wasn’t sure how best to communicate this message, or indeed how the current situation would be best changed.  “More and more Chinese people are driving cars,” he said.  Then he paused thoughtfully.  “I don’t think this is a problem that can be solved immediately, nor one that can be solved by one person,” he told me.  Then a person came in with a poorly adjusted derailleur, and it was back to work.  Mr. Zhang back to his tool kit and grease smeared gloves, keeping people biking by fixing their bikes.  Me back to my trip preparations, hoping to inspire biking by relatively extreme example.

Biking around in Shanghai, one thing became apparent: biking in Shanghai is not as easy as it used to be. Any route remotely straight or large or convenient inevitably eventually forbade bike traffic. The best roads and all the new construction centered around cars.

Adam and I rode twenty kilometers across the city to the one bike shop in town that had a trailer. We tried taking one road after another, but always ran into the universal biking forbidden sign. The side streets were often slow and clogged.

Eventually we wound our way through back roads and reached the river, only to find that there was no bridge. Shanghai has chosen to construct tunnels instead of bridges, but none of these tunnels are passable by bike; cars or trucks only. The only way a biker can get across the river is to use one of several ferry crossings, which means waiting in line to buy a ticket, walking the bike onto the ferry, and waiting for it to fill in order to cross. Only some run all night and then only with large gaps in between service, so if you bike, you’d better be sure to stay on your own side of the river in the evening, or be prepared to bike out of your way and wait.

While Shanghai has good public transit, Shanghai’s rush to modernize by making it more convenient for cars has negatively impacted the mobility of bicyclists. This pattern reoccurs all over China. Public transit aside, cars thrust bikes into the sidelines, and city planning unquestioningly builds infrastructure for more drivers.

It is unfortunate that the new-found wealth of China contributes to its congestion. Public transit does one little good when the buses commuters use are bogged down in traffic caused by excessive car use. If China chose to control it’s car population as strictly as its human population, surely the streets would be more pleasant for all users.

For the third time in as many days, we failed to pay for dinner. As we picked out the dishes we wanted, a casually well-dressed man shadowed us and entered the room we planned to eat in. No big deal. Such is the celebrity status afforded many foreigners in China. People follow you around and linger during otherwise uninteresting interactions. We thought nothing of him, until he intruded upon our conversation. Later he brought his 10 year old daughter into the room, and forced out of her improbably properly pronounced English. Despite ourselves, we were impressed.

Half-way through dinner, after he had made it clear he would by us dinner and we had invited he and his family to join us, dishes vied for space on the table. The sickening smell of baijiu lingered over the cigarette smoke and uncomfortable silences. The man, a Mr. Chen, boss of the karaoke bar opposite and owner of various other establishments, explained the excessive ordering. “There is a Chinese saying,” he noted, “‘Anyone with a full stomach cannot be homesick’”. The piles of food before us represented his small effort at assuaging in us whatever homesickness might remain there, despite our feeling quite at home wherever we were.

Mr. Chen’s 10 year old daughter rolled her eyes, heaved a huge sigh, and sank her head down on the table. I couldn’t blame her. For the whole evening she had been explaining in perfect Mandarin what her father and her father’s friend and their Southern, baijiu-affected accents had failed to get across to us. And now he entreated her to yet another irksome task: singing. In lieu of trekking across the street to her father’s place of business, for what would surely extend to hours of singing Chinese songs (difficult for the two of us who can’t read characters) and probably more drinking, we had compromised by trading a few songs around the dinner table. After a rousing performance of “10 Little Indians”, FBR followed with a slightly more complex if not earnest rendition of “Out of the Woods”.

After that we called it a night, only to find our hotel crawling with policemen. We spent a not interminably long but tense hour filling out the official but hardly ever conformed to paperwork to register foreigners every night they stay anywhere in China. Even though everything was in order, they asked us where we worked in Beijing, where were we going, claimed we couldn’t bike all the way to Hong Kong by the time our visas expired.

I in turn asked them why they checked the passports for all the foreigners, suggesting that perhaps in a few years, what with the inevitable increase in foreigner traffic, they would soon tire themselves out with such activities. The nicer, older officer got quiet and nervous, and looked down, but the younger more truculent officer forged ahead with his paperwork, glancing, annoyed, at his watch throughout the evening. Though I felt like pointing out a that an excellent way to avoid waste time collecting information on foreigners was to not collect it in the first place, I held my tongue.

After the departure of the police, Mr. Chen dropped by the hotel. Though his pronunciation had not improved during the evening, he made me to understand he was none-to-impressed with the local authorities. I must admit that earlier we were all slightly annoyed at Mr. Chen’s generosity. We wanted a quiet dinner, by ourselves, without the pressure (almost constant in the past two days) to speak to and entertain large crowds of people. Thanks, however, to the meddlesome nature of the local law enforcement officials, I think we were all reminded of the value of positive interaction. Interaction with people who like you and don’t want you to do paperwork will always be superior to those who don’t like you and do have papers needful of filling out. Thanks, Mr. Chen.

Every time any of us want to post something on the internet, we must wade through clouds of smoke, dank corridors, and zombie-like hordes of other internet users. Computer ownership is rare enough in China that providing what we know of as internet cafes is a very profitable business. But to call these places cafes is requires a stretch of the imagination likely to result in physical therapy. In China they are known as net bars, and the name translates literally into English and retains the dual meaning of net as short for internet and fishing device.

Net bars are very bar-like. Dark, dank, sometimes incredible noisy with chatter or blasting music or cell phone rings and incredibly smoke-filled. Young people crouch in front of their computers, often for hours and even days on end, pursuing relationships, blasting out their frustrations with computer generated hand guns, or just chatting online with friends who could be in the next room or the next province. Often people watch movies or even download images of the sort unlikely to arouse Focus on the Family to an approval rating.

As I was writing this little bit, the eighth grader looking over and almost touching my shoulder is discussing what words I’m typing and what they mean with his friends. The gentleman next to me lights a cigarette and smoke follows the breeze out the window and past my face.

I don’t think any of us mean to spend much time in the net bar, but uploading photos takes time, as does writing blogs, to say nothing of keeping in touch with friends and family back home. Sometimes we find ourselves spending hours here at a time, and still not accomplishing everything we mean to. The only solution, it seems, is to come back more often. Thus we join the hordes of Chinese young people manacled to the machines supposedly so helpful in modern life.

I tell the eighth grader about this website and he and it distracts he and his friends for a while. The man smoking offers me one, and after I tell him I don’t smoke, he extinguishes his own. I’ve written this quickly and am about to escape. Who says you can’t talk your way out of a net?

At least let’s call him Mr. Zhang. The fact is I made the regrettable mistake of failing to inquire as to his name. But since ten percent of all Chinese people are surnamed Zhang, I have a one in ten chance of being correct. This Mr. Zhang, typically enough, wore the clean and dressy clothes the rest of his lower-middle-class Chinese peers wore. His hair glistened with a modest amount of hair product and revealed a combed over thinning spot when viewed from the correct angle.

As I strode about purposefully after dinner, my mind full of things to do and accomplishments to accomplish, Mr. Zhang motioned me over to his table in the courtyard of the hotel. He bade me sit down and we were soon chatting away, him with a cup of baijiu and me, thankfully, with a nice cup of tea.

It turns out Mr. Zhang had never spoken with a foreigner before. “I’ve seen them on the street, but we do not speak the same language, communication is impossible, and we simply passed by. I had no idea even what country they came from,” he told me. “But now here I am, speaking with a foreigner, and I am very happy,” he said, expressing an emotion he would heavily emphasize throughout the evening.

Shortly we were joined by Adam and Pete. Drew walked by, also hoping to get something done before going to bed, but he was snagged like me and wound up having to explain in elegant Chinese that he was shopping for bungee cords. “Ah ha!” cried Mr. Zhang, “Do you know how much a bungee cord costs? Three yuan?” Drew, who’s knowledge of bungee cords is anything if not impressive, replied, “No, two yuan.” “Yes,” affirmed the impressed Mr. Zhang. He asked Drew where the bungee cord store was. He told Drew where he could buy some bungee cords. He intimated he himself possessed bungee cords. What was going on? Mr. Zhang called his wife (?) over and commanded “Go get some bungee cords!” “What?” chuckled his wife, “I don’t know where your bungee cords are. You go get them!” Then proceeded a long discussion of parts of a room and locations wherein one might expect to find bungee cords. After Mr. Zhang’s wife returned with three, Mr. Zhang inspected them carefully. “This one’s broken!” he stormed upon finding a perceived error. “Broken?!” his wife rejoined, “You’re the broken one!” After Mr. Zhang’s wife had returned with the bungee cords, he presented them to Drew, and spare no ceremony in so doing.