Below Belief

Rise to more Western food and feel ever so slightly ashamed at pampering ourselves. We head out to enjoy the sun and blue sky which has graced us for almost the first time on our trip. In the streets, I select and then fail to enjoy a rather novel Chinese ice-cream: corn-on-the-cob flavour with real bits of corn. Mmm. But the afternoon is successful, if a little expensive, with plane tickets to Hong Kong for our final departure in nine days time, bus tickets to Dali for tonight and at last, a successful phone call home. For dinner we celebrate by eating a local speciality ‘Across-the-bridge-noodles’ a famous kind of boiling soup in which you cook your own meat, vegetables and chillies. A thin layer of oil on the surface keeps the soup hot and the name comes from a wife who learned how to keep her hermit-husband’s food hot when she carried it over the bridge to the island where he preferred to live in isolation. Millions of restaurants worldwide serving up cold soup could benefit from the technique.
In the cramped sleeper bus where we have a 5’10″ long single bed-sized bunk to share between us, it is 8.30pm and we are still in the bus station. We thought the bus left at 6.40pm and we’ve been sat here with our fellow travellers since then. Perhaps Kunming’s grown-up tendencies and semblance of order has given us higher expectations than we should have had. This is still China, these are still Chinese people and this is Chinese time. There are two middle-aged American travellers with us. One a ruddy loner in a red T-shirt, the other a journalist, a thin and weedy Woody Allen with bushy hair and an haiwaiian shirt. In them I see travelling spirits gone cold. They moan at the delays, raise their voices at the driver who doesn’t speak English and let the situation get to them more than they realise. This is how age takes you unawares. This is the ugly vulgarity of boys grown old, trying to enjoy what they perhaps wanted and should have done twenty years ago, their tolerance and patience turned to stone along with their free spirit.
Llew and I lie back on the bunk, relax and go with the flow. Who cares if this journey gives us some hardship or takes two more hours than the twelve it should: the other Chinese passengers are not complaining. They are lucky to be on a bus at all. We use the two angry souls as fuel for our own amusement and we know by watching them handle this, we can handle it better. We’ve done it before and we’ll do it again.
I smile out of the window at a young girl with solemn eyes and a bright smile in the bus next to ours. Even in the smelly, noisy, frustrating bus station, human moments like this are special. And then we are gone. Swept into the night like a box full of voluntary battery chickens, the bus takes its slumbering cargo down its own bumpy and tortuous route. The road to Dali is not built yet, so we’re driving over the sand foundations. Chinese driver. Chinese time.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 1997 at 1:57 pm and is filed under China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.