Every few feet in the Guilin airport, along the corridor as we deplaned, along the walls as we passed gate after gate, on every post in the baggage claim, was an ad, the same ad over and over: a disembodied face of a Chinese man beaming down on a box of throat lozenges, looking beneficent toward cough drops and all humankind.
We found our luggage and our guide Simon, who led us to a waiting van. As we headed down the highway, he told us that Guilin is a “small city” of 700,000, named after the short, leafy gui trees that line the road, known in English as osmanthus trees. Ahead of us rose what appeared to be enormous tree-covered mountains, some low and curved, others jutting up to points. I’d read about these limestone mountains, the inspiration for much Chinese poetry and scroll painting, when I first booked our apartment. Now, we followed the Li River, so high that it lapped against the bank, spilling over into puddles on a picnic area and playground.
We arrived at Ming Garden, a high rise apartment building in the downtown area, down a long alley of tall buildings and lots crowded with motorbikes. The apartment has wood floors and wood lattice decorations on the walls, screens, arch, and doors separating the bedroom from the dining area and living room from a small alcove along the window. Out the window we can look across at the mountains or down on the roof gardens and flapping laundry of other high rises, a stretch of field beyond, part of it wild and scrubby, part of it cultivated into gardens. We can also see a schoolyard with basketball courts and children jumping rope, and hear whistles and shouts and music during school hours.
But at first I was too preoccupied to appreciate the apartment and view. That morning in Shanghai, I’d plugged in a converter, which started smoking and emitting a foul odor, and my entire day had been overshadowed by anxiety about getting the computer hooked up so I could meet some impending deadlines. To my relief, we figured it out between us, Ms. Huang the housekeeper, Simon, Sophie, and me.
Then Simon led Sophie and me down a street of honking cars and barreling motorbikes, past noodle shops and fruit markets and China Mobile stores and banks and Wal-Mart, part of a five-story mall with a KFC downstairs. We arrived at a restaurant with white tablecloths and yellow-covered chairs with skirts, vines of red and pink roses rising to the ceiling behind glass, beads dripping down. We sat in the midst of a lively, loud party of young men in white shirts clanking bottles and glasses and smoking and eating and rushing back and forth between tables to toast each other.
Simon helped us order, then showed me from the window how to get back to our apartment: turn by the blue billboard, follow the street toward the radio tower. It seemed simple enough. We said goodbye to Simon.
But by the time we finished eating, the sun had set, and the blue sign was no longer visible, and the tower had been swallowed up by the darkness. We emerged from the restaurant onto angled streets and had no idea which way to go.
Sophie has a possessive attitude toward China and considers it incumbent on her to know things or to figure them out, to lead the way rather than to panic or melt down at being hopelessly lost on the busy streets of a city where we can’t ask even the most basic question. It’s like as soon as we land in China, she becomes the host and I’m the guest, and while she can be a little bossy, this quality of taking charge will someday serve her well. “I think it’s this way,” Sophie said, so we headed down a street, gradually realizing that we didn’t recognize a thing.
Simon had told us that if we got lost, we should just hail a taxi and show the driver the apartment address. But the only taxis we saw were plowing forward at high speeds. “Where is Wal-Mart?” I asked a man. I was clinging to a thin thread of hope that he knew a little bit of English, but he responded in Chinese, and we shook our heads.
The man kept following us and talking and gesturing. It occurred to me that in the U.S., this would not be a good thing, a strange man insistently following two lost females in the dark. I turned on the next street to shake him off, then realized that this street was far less populated. Sophie sent me a nervous glance as the man continued to follow. “Thank you,” I said to the man. “Xie xie.” But he wouldn’t go away.
It turned out that this stranger had shouldered the responsibility of making sure we got to where we needed to go, and he was not giving up. “Wal-Mart,” he said, gesturing in the other direction. “Wal-Mart.” He seemed relieved when we went back the other way, and sure enough, a block later, there was the blue sign Simon had pointed out. Maybe. Or maybe it was a different bluish sign. But the man seemed happy, so we headed hopefully down that street, and soon we stumbled across the big Wal-Mart sign.
Mesmerized by the sight of something vaguely familiar, we entered the stiflingly hot, humid mall, took an escalator up to the first floor of Wal-mart, found the crowds and packages labeled in Chinese overwhelming, had no idea where to find groceries or bottled water, and, on sensory overload combined with jet lag combined with stress over knowing that we were still lost, left rapidly.
But then we managed. Somehow we crossed an eight-lane street, which is a major feat in China where the traffic never comes to a standstill, and somehow we found our way back to our gate and our building and our apartment. I forgot all about the smoking converter and the freaky feeling of being totally lost, and started to feel like a competent world traveler who might figure everything out after all.
Note to readers: Thank you for reading my blog and for comments and messages on Facebook. I appreciate them very much but cannot access Facebook, which is blocked by the Chinese government, to send a reply. I do welcome (and can read and reply to) e-mail at ngm4@pitt.edu.