methinks

Surviving LPS

Every evening a tourist-class train filled with tired shoppers and exhausted businessmen leaves Guiyang, the provincial capitol, and returns six hours west to the coal mining mecca called Liupanshui (LPS). Allegedly, this tourist-class train offers several advantages over the standard train, most notably air-conditioning. Another convenient amenity is that the windows are sealed shut, presumably to prevent the fickle tourists from wasting the air-conditioning. This seems like a useful feature until the train staff mysteriously decides to not actually use the AC. When that happens, cigarette smoke quickly gathers into carcinogenic clouds, and you curse the antiquated travel policy that restricts foreigners to riding only these "superior" tourist trains. This is how David and I began our journey to LPS, trapped inside an ashtray on wheels.

Click here to see photos from LPS.

Ten minutes underway, finishing my fourth second-hand cigarette, the woman across the isle asked her husband, "Where do you think the foreigners are going?" (There are several stops before LPS.) "Liupanshui," David replied. More alarmed by our destination than his Chinese she blurted out, "Why would you ever want to go there?" "Travel," he answered. She protested, "No, there's nothing beautiful to see there. You shouldn't go there for travel. That's stupid."

This brusque attitude was nothing new for David. He'd been hearing that sentiment from Chinese people since he first moved there as a Peace Corps Volunteer last September. This year when he moved here to Duyun (which I should add is a nationally designated tourist destination, so people here tend to be a bit snobby about these kinds of things) I got to hear first hand what people in Guizhou thought of LPS. It's a dirty, polluted, poor, backwards, coal-mining mess of an urban sprawl. A little harsh, but yeah...that about sums it up. But we weren't going there for its greenery. We were going for what David had left behind when he was evacuated last April, friends and belongings.

We arrived Friday evening. Eagerly awaiting us were several of David's old Chinese friends. Whatever LPS lacks in urban aesthetics it makes up for in genuine people. Li Ping, a twenty-something hairdresser, greeted us with an honest smile, deep eyes, and a trendy red ponytail to make sure she looked her age. Another hairdresser friend, Xiao Hui, was there with her boyfriend. David and I were to stay with Xiao Hui and her boyfriend at his brother's apartment for that weekend. There were empty beds and it was a lot cheaper than a hotel. David began his reunion, while I began my introductions.

I learned that the boyfriend had recently purchased a shiny new three-wheeled motor-taxi which was to be our primary transportation for that weekend. It was red and roomy enough (by Chinese standards) for our luggage and us five people. His last venture, a small restaurant, ended in failure, so he was eager to prove his mettle as a driver. I think a little too eager.

If he was as cautious a cook as he was a driver, I can only imagine the conflagration that ended his business. Three times we nearly died on the way to their apartment. The final time he swerved so abruptly, my shoulder knocked the side window clear out of the vehicle onto the road behind us. It happened so quickly I didn't even know the window was gone until a hundred feet later. Of course plastic windows are more valuable than five lives so we pulled our three-wheeled go-cart to the side of the road and let Li Ping dodge oncoming traffic to fetch it. She made it back and we continued on to the apartment.

During the next couple of days we visited what few sights LPS could offer. We climbed the mountain. (In case you don't know, that's Chinglish for, "We hiked up a big hill.") We saw the lake. We visited the shops. We endured ceaseless shouts of "laowai (foreigner). And I came to see that LPS's reputation was not undeserved. But not everywhere can be a nationally designated tourist destination, right? More importantly, however, the company was pleasurable and the hospitality abundant, so the days seemed happy and well spent. Before it seemed possible, the last night had come. But, oh, what a night it was.

One of David's former colleagues (Shannon is her English name) invited us out to a farewell dinner. She knew of a particularly tasty hot pot place. (Hot pot is like a big bowl of boiling, communal soup.) And judging by the crowd of people at the restaurant, she wasn't the only person who thought so. Now, I've had my fair share of hot pot and am more or less unflappable when it comes to possible ingredients, but this particular evening required me to tap latent pools of will power heretofore unknown.

As is Chinese custom, Shannon reached over and dropped a piece of "meat" in my bowl. She was the host and wanted to make certain I got a generous portion of the most succulent pieces. I rolled it around in my spice dish, seasoning it and cooling it at the same time. I picked it up between the chopsticks and dropped it in my mouth. I'd done this drill ten thousand times, so I was completely unprepared for my gag reflex to engage and my brain to scream, "This taste like shit!" And I don't mean that in a figurative, spice-up-my-writing sense. It tasted like rubbery feces. Somehow I pawned the gag off as a cough. Maybe I said it was too spicy. I was stumbling in the fog of war then, so my memory is not so clear. I quickly reverted to the awkward but necessary 'chew-chew-swallow' technique, emptied my glass of tea, dried the tears from my eyes and hoped I'd never have to endure that again. Right on cue, Shannon asks, "Did you think it was delicious?" Like a soulless automaton I replied, "Oh yes. I thought it was very delicious." What can I say, I've been brainwashed by Chinese culture. She dropped another, larger, juicier piece in my bowl. I ate that one, too. The more pieces I ate, the more numb I became to the pain and the less worried I was about my getting the few "bad" pieces in the bunch. They all tasted the same. With that worry aside, two things still plagued my mind. One, why did everyone else seem to enjoy it? And two, what in the world was I eating?

After swapping horror stores later that night, David and I decided it must have been rectum. Several weeks later David worked up the courage to ask Shannon over the phone. It turns out it was large intestine. She answered him, "It is supposed to taste like that. Don't you think it is delicious?" No, dear, I don't.

As if choking down cow colon wasn't enough of a parting gift, LPS had one more goodbye surprise in store for us. The police.

We were walking home from dinner in a nagging drizzle when about 50 yards from our building two men stepped from the shadow and began to trail us. In general, I am suspicious of people on the street so when I see something like this I go on red alert. They saw my fists of seasoned oak and decided to call out before getting any nearer. It turns out that we were not allowed to stay in a local resident's apartment. There are special hotels for us foreigners. We didn't register. We broke the law. The short of it is six officers came to the apartment (all but one happy to meet the foreigners) to register us. One person asked the questions. One person filled in the form. The other four thumbed through our passports for a while then started in with the usual line of English Corner questions. "Do you like China? Do you like Chinese food? Do you like Chinese women? (snicker snicker)." They permitted us to stay one more night at the apartment (since it was like 11 p.m.) and the owner had to write a self-criticism. If we were going to stay longer, we'd have to check into a hotel room. We weren't.

Back on the cloudy tourist-class train, ten minutes underway, a woman across the isle asked her friend. "Why would foreigners ever come to Liupanshui? There is nothing beautiful to see here." For the experience, I thought. I came to say I'd survived LPS.