Saving Fish From Drowning

  When Miss Rong finally got on the bus, her glasses looked steamed. She sat in the front seat, visibly trembling. She did not count heads or speak into the microphone to explain what they would be doing next.

  On the bus ride back to the hotel, most of my friends were quiet, the only sound that of fingernails scratching skin. They had stopped at a roadside spot for the customary bathroom break, and a cloud of mosquitoes had descended on them, as if it were the Bai army chasing them away. Heidi passed out hydrocortisone cream. It was too late for the DEET.

  Bennie was exhausted. His shoulders sagged. Was this an omen of things to come? Did they think it was all his fault for picking the tour guide? He was trying so hard to be perfect, doing things they were not even aware of! And look, there were no thanks, just complaints and blame and anger.

  Dwight broke the silence. He remarked that Stone Bell Temple should have provided signs in other languages. How was he supposed to know it was a temple and not a chicken coop? Vera glared at him. “You still shouldn’t assume you can break into places.” She was angry with all the men except Bennie. They had exhibited the stupid male prerogative of ignoring the rules. Harry was beating himself up, feeling the fool, certain Marlena had a similar judgment of him. He had shouted at her, had accused her, when he had been the idiot who sent those TV folks into a tizzy. He sat at the back of the bus, having banished himself there. Marlena was also mulling over what Harry had said to her. She hated being yelled at by authority figures. Her father had done that, and it didn’t make her feel cowed anymore, just livid.

  Wendy was unabashed by what had happened. She leaned against Wyatt, giggling as she thought about being caught in flagrante. It was exciting, in a weird way. She told him so in a naughty voice. He nodded, keeping his eyes closed. What they had done was not cool in his mind. He had been on ecotours where he was the one who had to reel in tourists who stepped on native plants, or tried to sneak home a lizard to keep as a souvenir or to sell. It irked him when people didn’t give a shit about the rules. He hated being guilty of the same.

  Esmé sat with her mother, happily humming “Jingle Bells.” She hoped those Bai people would still use the part with her singing.

  When the bus arrived at the hotel, Miss Rong muttered a few terse words to the driver, who then went off, leaving her standing alone at the front of the passengers. She kept her eyes turned down. Slowly, haltingly, she told her charges she would not be with them tomorrow. The Bai chieftain had said he was going to report the trouble to the authorities at the head office of China Travel Services. Her local boss had already called her and said to report to him immediately. She would be fired, that was certain. But they should not feel sorry for her, no. This was her fault. She should have kept them together as a group, explained to them what they were allowed to see. That was her responsibility, her job. She was very sorry she did not understand how to work more effectively with such an “individualistic group with many opinions, all not agreeing.” Since they were “so disagreeable,” she should have made stronger decisions to prevent them from committing the “danger of broken rule.” Her glasses were now spattered with tears, but she did not wipe them. She held her body rigid to keep from weeping aloud.

  Though Miss Rong was incompetent, my friends were sad to think she might lose her job. That would be terrible. They looked at one another out of the corners of their eyes, unsure of what to say.

  Before they could decide, Miss Rong took a deep, quavering breath to steady herself, picked up her plastic briefcase, and stepped off the bus.

  My friends burst into talk.

  “What a mess,” Moff said.

  “We ought to give her a nice farewell tip,” Harry suggested. “Why don’t we collect some money now?”

  “How much?” Roxanne asked. “Two hundred renminbi?”

  “Four,” said Vera.

  Harry raised his brows. “Four hundred? That’s almost five thousand for all of us. Maybe it’s too much. She’ll think we’re pitying her.”

  “But we do pity her,” Vera said. “God knows they don’t give people unemployment in China when they’ve been fired.”

  “I’ll give more,” Bennie said.

  Everyone protested that offer.

  Bennie added humbly, “Well, it was my fault for picking her.” And no one made any noises in denying that, he noticed, and then felt humiliated and rejected, which launched him into anxiety.

  “If she gets fired, why don’t we sign a petition of protest?” Wendy said.

  Dwight sniffed. “Come on, this isn’t Berkeley. Besides, she really is a pretty bad tour guide. . . .”

  All of a sudden, Miss Rong was again standing before them. My friends hoped she had not heard their exchange. “I forgot tell you one more thing,” she began.

  Her former charges listened politely.

  “One extra thing Bai minority chief tell me. Important I tell you.”

  Oh, shit. The chief probably wanted more money, Bennie thought. Twenty dollars each was too good to be true. They were going to be shaken down for thousands.

  This time Miss Rong did not look down. Her hair now looked wild, a statically charged crown. She kept her gaze straight ahead, as if she could see the future through the back window of the bus. “Chief, he telling other tourist authorities don’t letting you in . . . no cable car ride to Yak Meadow, no ancient music concert, no tourist traps. Because therefore you cannot enjoying no more beautiful things in Lijiang or in all Yunnan Province and China. . . .” Bennie had a sinking feeling. He saw the tour schedule crumbling, total chaos.

  “He say for you bringing shame to Grotto of Female Things, everybody here you never have no more babies, no descendants, no future. . . .”

  Dwight glanced at the mother-to-be of his children-to-be. Roxanne stared back.

  Miss Rong’s voice rose higher and sang out louder: “He say even you pay one million dollar, still not enough keep trouble awa. . . . He say he tell all gods give these foreigners bad curse, bad karma, following them forever this life and next, this country, that country, never can stop.”

  Heidi’s anxiety bells were ringing.

  Miss Rong took a deep breath, and right before she left the bus, she said in a voice that sounded clearly victorious. “This I thought you must know.”

  At that moment, all twelve of my friends saw in their minds the water buffalo, knee deep in mud.

  4

  HOW HAPPINESS FOUND THEM

  At dinner, my twelve friends walked a few blocks into the old historic part of town, to Bountiful Valley Restaurant, which they had rejected only that morning. Now they were resigned to the menu I had called “A Taste of Winter Delicacies.” No one was in the mood to search for alternatives that were either more “spontaneous” or more “authentic.” They were just glad that their ill-omened trip to Stone Bell Temple had not yet infiltrated the word-of-mouth network of Lijiang. Not only did the restaurant send a message to the hotel that they could enjoy the same menu that evening, the owner had offered a bonus, “free surprises,” he called them.

  The first surprise was the restaurant itself. It was enchanting, not touristy at all. I knew this all along, of course. That was why I had chosen it. The building was charmingly cramped, a former dwelling whose outer courtyard had been converted into dining rooms facing the narrow canal, one of a watery lacework that ran through the streets of Lijiang. If you were to sit on the sill, you could have dipped your toes in the tranquil flow. The tables and chairs were old, marked with character in the way that has become popular with antiques in America nowadays, nothing refinished, no scratches or cigarette marks buffed out, the century-old bits of food now serving as grout in the cracks.

  The beers arrived, somber toasts were called out:

  “To better times ahead.”

  “Much better.”

  Dwight immediately suggested they vote in democratic fashion whether to leave Lijiang the next day so they might get an earlier start on Burma. When he called for the yea votes, the
only holdouts were Bennie, Vera, and Esmé.

  Bennie was understandably concerned about an early departure. If they left early, he would be the one scrambling to patch in a new itinerary. A day in the border town of Ruili and then three extra days in Burma—what would they do? But he said nothing in casting his nay, not wishing to come across as inadequate. He should have realized that the democratic process has no place on travel tours. Once you are a tour leader, absolute rule is the only way to go.

  Vera tried to exercise her executive veto. She was used to working in an organization in which she was the top boss. As a born leader, she demanded consensus, and through her unilateral decisions, and her famous eye-locking gaze, she attained it. But here in China she was one of the masses. When the votes were called for, she appealed to the group’s rationality. “Fiddle-dee-dee. I don’t believe for a second that the chief has the clout to bar us from other places. Think about it. Is he able to get on the Internet and e-mail his cronies in a hundred places? Of course not.”

  “He had a cell phone,” Moff reminded her.

  “I doubt he’s going to waste his precious cell phone minutes to complain about us. He was just spouting off—not that he didn’t have every right to be infuriated.” She cocked one eye and looked toward Harry, Dwight, Moff, and Rupert.

  She then switched to sentimentality. “As you all recall, this tour was lovingly designed by my dear friend Bibi Chen, carefully put together as an educational and inspirational journey. If we leave now like scared little mice, we will miss out on some of the greatest adventures of our lives. We wouldn’t get to feel the spray of the magnificent waterfalls at the bottom of Tiger Leaping Gorge. . . .”

  Esmé’s mouth rounded. They were supposed to go there?

  “We would be forgoing a ride on a horse with Tibetan nationals in Yak Meadow. . . .”

  That caught Roxanne’s and Heidi’s attention; they had each owned a pony when they were little girls.

  Vera went on: “When in this lifetime will you have another chance to see an alpine meadow at seventeen thousand feet? Extremely rare.” She nodded solemnly in agreement with herself. “As are those murals of Guan Yin in the sixteenth-century temple . . .”

  Poor Vera, she almost had them convinced, until she mentioned the murals. Goddesses may have been Vera’s niche in art history, but the mention of Guan Yin made others twitch with anxiety. Another temple? No, no more temples, please. Vera poked at the schedule, which she held up as if it were the Declaration of Independence. “This is what I signed up for. This is what I paid for. This is what I intend to do. I vote nay and I urge the rest of you to reconsider.” She sat down.

  Esmé also voted nay, with a slightly lifted hand.

  Vera gestured to Esmé to get everybody’s attention. “Another nay.”

  When asked to explain her vote, Esmé shrugged. She couldn’t say. The truth was, she had fallen tragically in love. The Shih Tzu puppy had grown weak. When it tried to walk, it stumbled and fell. It would not eat the offerings of Chinese food given by the beauties. Esmé had also noted a lump protruding from its belly. The pup’s caretakers seemed unconcerned by its worsening condition. The lump, they said, was nothing, and one of them pointed to her own chin to suggest that the problem was no more serious than a pimple. “No worries,” they assured Esmé, thinking she was bargaining them down. “You pay less money. One hundred kwai okay.”

  “You don’t understand. I can’t take the puppy. I’m traveling.”

  “Take, take,” they countered. “Eighty kwai.”

  Now, during the vote, Esmé could only sit grimly, chest tight to keep from crying. She could not explain any of this, especially not in front of Rupert, who rolled his eyes and groaned whenever someone referred to them collectively as “the two kids.” He never said anything to her, even when forced to sit next to her, just kept his nose buried in his paperback. Besides, who among these grown-ups cared if a puppy died? “It’s only a dog,” they would say. “Some people have it even worse.” She had heard that excuse so many times it made her puke. They weren’t really concerned about people, just their stupid trip, whether they would get their money’s worth in this dumb country or that dumb country. She couldn’t talk to her mother about any of this. Her mother still called her “Wawa,” a Chinese nickname for “baby.” Wawa, the sound of a crying doll. She hated being called that. “Wawa, what color scarf should I wear?” her mother had said in a girly voice that morning. “Wawa, does my tummy stick out?” “Do you think I look better, Wawa, with my hair up or down?” She was the wawa, so goo-goo stupid over that hairy-armed Hahr-ry Bailley. Couldn’t she see what a big phony he was?

  Dwight asked if anyone had anything to add before they officially closed the vote. I was yelling as loudly as I could. Stop! Stop! How can you possibly leave China early? It was utterly mad. Had they known I was there, I could have shown them why it was ridiculous to even think of leaving. I had planned the itinerary carefully, explicitly, so that they might have a taste of the finest, so they could be like “dragonflies skimming the waters.” Now they wouldn’t even touch the surface.

  The gnarled pine, I would have said, touch it. That is China. Horticulturalists from around the world have come to study it. Yet no one has ever been able to explain why it grows like a corkscrew, just as no one can adequately explain China. But like that tree, there it is, old, resilient, and oddly magnificent. Within that tree are the elements in nature that have inspired Chinese artists for centuries: gesture over geometry, subtlety over symmetry, constant flow over static form.

  And the temples, walk in and touch them. That is China. Don’t merely stare at those murals and statues. Fly up to the crossbeams, get down on your hands and knees, and press your head to the floor tiles. Hide behind that pillar and come eye to eye with its flecks of paint. Imagine that you are an interior decorator who is a thousand years in age. Start with a bit of Tibetan Buddhism, add a smidgen of Indian Buddhism, a dab of Han Buddhism, plus a dash each of animism and Taoism. A hodgepodge, you say? No, what is in those temples is an amalgam that is pure Chinese, a lovely shabby elegance, a glorious messy motley that makes China infinitely intriguing. Nothing is ever completely thrown away and replaced. If one period of influence falls out of favor, it is patched over. The old views still exist, one chipped layer beneath, ready to pop through with the slightest abrasion.

  That is the Chinese aesthetic and also its spirit. Those are the traces that have affected all who have traveled along China’s roads. But if you leave too soon, those subtleties will be lost on you. You will see only what the brochures promise you will see, the newly painted palaces. You will enter Burma thinking that when you cross the border, you leave China behind. And you could not be more wrong. You will still see the traces of tribal tenacity, the contradictory streaks of obedience and rebellion, not to mention the curses and charms.

  But it was decided. “Nine votes yea, three votes nay,” Dwight announced. “Let’s raise another toast: To Burma!”

  DINNER WAS SERVED, “A Taste of Winter Delicacies,” with dishes I had sampled on a previous tour and selected as a sensual experience for the palate. Unfortunately, the restaurant owner made a few substitutions, since I was not there to make any objections.

  Wendy was the first to admit that the roadside eatery that afternoon had been “kind of a mistake.” If only she knew how huge. Nonetheless, I was greatly pleased to hear this admission come from her lips. A chastened group was a more honest one. And they raved about the fare I had chosen, or did until they encountered what the cook called “surprises” he had thrown in for free.

  One was a roasted root with a crunchiness that the chef claimed the tourists would find as tasty and addictive as their American chips and English crisps. The roasted roots, however, had the unappetizing appearance of large fried larvae, also a regional favorite. But once the travelers were persuaded to try one, they devoured the snappy little appetizer with gusto, as they did a later dish, presented as the second surprise, which
also resembled larva, and was. Then came another crunchy appetizer called “dragonfly,” which they took to be poetic license and was not. “This one has more of a buttery flavor,” Bennie said.

  The third surprise was a spicy bean curd.

  “I’ve eaten ma-po tofu all my life,” Marlena said. “But this one tastes strange. I’m not quite sure I like it.”

  “It’s almost lemony, and with a strong bite,” Harry said.

  “I don’t care for it.” Vera pushed her portion off to the side.

  “It’s not bad,” Dwight said. “Grows on you, actually.” He took seconds.

  What they tasted was not the chili substitute often found in American-made Sichuan tofu. The Lijiang version was made of the berrylike pods of the prickly ash. The zing in the mouth derives from the numbing quality that the berries have on the mucosa. And the particular variety of the genus Zanthoxylum that my friends were eating was not only from Sichuan but also of the Himalayan region, where people eat it like jelly beans. It tends to have more heat factor, ma-ness, and also to cause an almost anesthesia-like paralysis of the gut, especially in those who are delicately inclined. That would be Dwight, I might add.

  THE NEXT DAY, when the group assembled for breakfast, Bennie had an announcement: “By nothing short of a miracle, Miss Rong, as a final courtesy, was able to book flights for us today so that we can leave as soon as possible.” In a few hours, they would leave for Lijiang airport and fly to Mangshi, which was only a couple of hours’ drive from the Burma border. As Bennie knew, palm-greasing helps to speed things along. The night before, after the group had voted to leave Lijiang, he rang up Miss Rong and said he would give her two hundred U.S. dollars of his own money to use as she saw fit, no questions asked, if only she could help him out of this predicament. She in turn gave away a portion of that to the various expediters connected with hotels, airlines, and the office of tourism, who, in the age-old custom of guanxi-giving, showed their appreciation by granting almost a full refund on the much-shortened visit to Lijiang.