Have Chocolate, Will Travel – Guilin, Guang Xi Autonomous Province, People’s Republic of China

Guilin, Guang Xi Autonomous Province, People’s Republic of China

The dragon backbone terraces of Long Sheng

After three years I’m finally going back to China. I always promised myself I would, as if by returning I can rearrange the dirty laundry of lost opportunities and embarrassments into post-operative triumph. This time I’m going to do it right. This time I’m going to be prepared. Secondary in importance only to my hard-earned plane tickets will be my safeguard against a disastrous trip – a few packets of hot chocolate.

In March of 2003 SARS was the trendiest reason for Westerners to be afraid of Asia, and it was during the height of this media frenzy that I embarked on a field study to Guangxi province to study the region’s traditional music. We made a kaleidoscopic assemblage of nine students and our faculty advisor, trudging down the dragon backbone terraces of Longsheng village to find our bus to Guilin.

Looking down the trail I could see Wanmei bickering with Seth, my exuberant boyfriend of more than two years. Wanmei had acted as our guide the day before, leading us quickly through the foothills of the Himalayas. Separated from the rest of the group and lost in the fog, this one-eyed spirit marched relentlessly across the wet rocks, only stopping to talk to a man casually carrying a felled tree trunk across his shoulder as if it were no heavier than a child. Once he left Seth teased her, “is he your boyfriend?”

“No!” She barked, and began marching again. We both laughed, surprised at the quickness of her retort. We had suspected that Wanmei understood us more than she let on, but when confronted with this she shouted again, “No! No understand!” and proceeded to prove her ignorance by counting loudly. “One, Two, Three, Nine. Eleventy-seven. Thirteeny-seventy-teen!”

Now Wanmei was blowing loudly on Seth’s harmonica while leading us out of the hills to our bus. Dianna, my roommate and best friend of years, was negotiating a trade with her – a mood ring for a few bracelets. I could see Triv, a socially awkward Indian fellow, being carried in a litter by several men. Triv was not in China to learn about traditional music. Triv was one of the charmers on board come to Asia to find a quiet, exotic wifey to bring home. Or there was Bert’s dark hair bobbing next to Dianna’s blonde; unfortunately, Dianna had involved herself with Bert immediately prior to departure. Bert was one of those lost chaps disillusioned with his middle-America identity, looking for answers in the exoticism of expensive meditation retreats and bargain-rate sex.

I chose a seat on the bus next to Lindsey, the country-and-western bass player, and the loquacious Raymond. A Broadway veteran and natural storyteller, Ray was soon telling us about his father’s business. In the small Texas town Raymond grew up in, his old man had managed to run the only porno shop without his wife and family finding out for years. On his eighteenth birthday Raymond and his friends ebulliently charged into the shop to be greeted by his father standing behind the counter.

Figuring it easier to ask forgiveness than permission, Seth had surreptitiously recorded Raymond’s story under the pretext of capturing his colorful invectives. Raymond pleaded with Seth to destroy the recording (for his poor mother’s sake), but this was only the beginning in what would eventually become, as Dianna might say, as comfortable as being sewn into a horsehair mattress.

Seth and I had been together through a hundred victories and a thousand failures, but there comes a time when a girl’s self-respect has to trump tradition. For some reason I had been patient enough to overlook his puerile flirtations with the Chinese girls, buying them flowers and soliciting phone numbers and photographs. Looking to write down a few characters, I asked around the bus for a sheet of blank paper. Seth obligingly flipped through his moleskin as if to find a few appropriately empty pages, but when he handed me his journal he crossed the line from adolescent prurience to mind-numbing stupidity. I found in my hands a confessional of fetishistic longings with anonymous Chinese women the inamorata.

“I have never been surrounded by so many beautiful women,” it began. Morbidly fascinated, I read on without understanding what I was reading. I shoved it back at him, disgusted with myself for dating a troglodyte completely uninterested in a relationship between equals, who preferred the fantasy of a subservient China-doll over a very real, beautiful, and vivacious Cubana. What angered me the most was not that he prattled on about my distasteful “whiteness,” but that he would be asinine enough to place this harangue directly into my hands. I had had enough. I broke it off with him then and there and moved back to sit with Lindsey.

Yet the day had only just begun.

“Did she go down on you?” Lindsey was asking Bert as I settled into my new seat, hoping nobody would notice the tears I was fervently trying to roll back into my eyes.

“No,” he said defiantly. “She gave me a massage. It was a massage parlor.” Dianna’s face stretched thinner and her eyes turned to bullets ready to lodge themselves into Bert’s fragile flesh.

“Did she screw you?” Lindsey continued.

“It was part of the package.” Bert squirmed and glanced at Dianna, perhaps remembering recent snowy afternoons wiled away strolling hand-in-hand.

The Dong tribe performs traditional songs and dances

Lindsey sighed and turned away. “Bert, sweetie, if you went to her place of employment, ordered her off a menu, and paid her to screw you then yes, she was a prostitute.”

“Look guys, we’re here!” I called desperately, trying to avert the second mauling of the day.

As we began our ascent into the mountains we heard strains of singing buoyed by clusters of sweet, organ-like tones. Hurrying to the zenith, we burst onto a scene of young men in traditional Dong tribal dress serenading their embarrassed cousins. The Yinshui, or Silver Thread, Dong village is so named because of the shining waterfall that pours down the mountain like a radiant thread. After a concert of traditional singing and dancing, Chief Wu Jin Min invited us to have lunch with him to further discuss the music of his tribe. Platters of food turned into a blur as cups were filled again and again with the local wine and toasts of “gam bei!” rang out. At intervals each of the girls of the tribe came out with thimbles of potent liquor to line up beside Raymond. As Wu Jin Min launched into his favorite dialectical drinking songs the girls poured the liquor into Ray’s mouth. Our collective sobriety slipped away as surely as the morning turned to afternoon and soon we were all joining in as the chief taught us a song of natural beauty and companionship.

“Mun lai mun lai!” The chief bellowed.

“Mun lai mun lai!” We drunkenly sang back. A toast of “dry cup!” followed each verse until Lindsey jumped up to deliver Belafonte’s Banana Boat Song. As the afternoon wore on time compelled us to get back on the bus and continue our journey to Guilin. After many fond farewells I joined arms with Dianna and Raymond. Leaning on each other for support, stopping to take drunken group photos, we began a mad stumble for the bottom.

“It’s a good thing I’ve got three kidneys,” Raymond said as he helped Dianna and I down the remaining steps. Shocking, but true, I realized – even after the alcoholic ministrations from the serving maids, Raymond was steadier on his feet than any of us.

It was almost immediately after the bus rumbled to a start that I realized my quandary. Coasting on the euphoria of liquor-lunching with the charismatic Wu Jin Min, bladder full of rice wine, each rattle and bump made me more certain that if we didn’t stop the bus soon I would very probably pee on myself. I lunged to Dianna’s seat, trying to time my landing between potholes.

“We have to stop the bus.” She said resolutely, before I could speak. A dozen pairs of glazed over eyes swiveled towards Dianna, gleaming with unfocused hope.

“But Dr. Cho said there’s nowhere to stop for hours.” The words leaked from Triv’s mouth, covering every surface inside the bus with a desolate veneer of helplessness the likes of which have not been seen since potty training.

“For hours,” the word hung in the air, a fragile, solemn promise. We all knew that this could only result in sticky tragedy.

“Don’t worry. I’m going to go stop the bus.” With this, Dianna strode to the front. Wide eyes followed each step, conferring the aisle with a melancholy dignity. The minutes passed. Strained chatter began to punctuate the silences between particularly rough spots in the road. Dianna was still jawing with the bus driver, and I started to look through my bag for an empty water bottle. As I was holding the plastic bottle in my hand, wondering among other things what would happen if sixteen ounces weren’t enough, the bus slowed to a stop. I threw down the bottle and leaped out of the bus in one surprisingly agile movement, eager to be first in line.

The bathroom was in fact a ditch behind a construction site. Two sets of worn planks ran across the ditch, suspending you above the filth running down the hill. Tarps were thrown between the pairs of planks to almost provide privacy from the road and the opposite set of planks. “Ni hao,” I slurred to the construction workers.

I woke up in Guilin feeling as if grasshoppers had spent the last few hours packing wet sand into my skull. After unloading our bags into dorm rooms at the Guilin Normal University, we set off to have dinner with the professors from various universities in the province. Head throbbing, feet dragging, I settled into a chair around a lazy susan. Mirrors reflected chandeliers reflected more mirrors, all searing small pinpricks of light deeply into my eyes. Squinting, I swiveled to the selection of pig intestine and cow stomach sitting in front of me, and began the arduous process of chewing. As a large plate of sauce-drenched dark meat was set in front of us, a girl introduced herself as Delicious and sat down between Bert and Seth.

“In Guilin, dog is a very special food. We call our friends dog meat to show our enjoyment.” She took a helping of the newest plate and continued. “When dog meat meets dog meat for dog meat, they become better dog meat.” Delicious leaned in closer to Bert and giggled, covering her crooked teeth with her hands.

“Beer?” I asked Dianna, as a round-cheeked, snaggletoothed girl called DingDing stroked Seth’s arm and crooned “Oh, you are truly crackerjack! Mr. Right!”

“Gam bei,” she toasted dryly, and we sucked down the pale beer like the hair from the dog that it was. Reeling, I watched the waitress refill my glass.

“Well dog meat,” I looked around the table grandly, “I must say that’s it has just been a lovely day and- ”

Dr. Cho stopped me in my tracks. “Our magnanimous hosts have offered you this exceptional delicacy of China.” One by one, he placed a small fried morsel directly into our mouths as if fulfilling a prescribed ritual. Mouth hanging open ungainly, I received the proffered bite. At first warm and delicious, it provided a taut resistance to the teeth. I bit into it, spilling a warm, thick secretion into my mouth. I nearly choked – it tasted exactly as I imagine the fatty mucus spilling from a smashed cockroach would. Desperate, I downed another beer and plastered a smile on my face.

Jumping puddles on the banks of the Li river outside Guilin

“This is young adult honeybee larvae. The larvae are taken just before they are matured and the wings begin to grow. This is a very special luxury.” I declined seconds and filled my plate with organ linings, praying for the meal’s end.

Later that night I met the other students downstairs for a game of Frisbee. One by one we gave in and dropped to the cool grass, until only Seth and Lindsey were still playing. Suddenly, Seth ran behind the dorm, soon followed by the sound of retching echoing off the concrete walls.

Dianna and I gave up on the evening and headed to our room to commiserate. Feverish and hungover, we watched a storm roll in with swollen eyes. Soon sheets of water were pouring from the sky and a bitterly cold wind was blowing daggers through the gauzy curtains. I rushed to help Dianna close the windows. Drenched hair whipped through the air unnoticed as we stared into the bowl of the storm. Strike after strike of green-tinted lightning shook Guilin and we stood there, rejected, exhausted, drunk.

We only had a few days until we left China to play catch-up with neglected classes back in Texas. Dianna shivered and started coughing, a gift from the streptococcus fairy. It was beginning to look grim.

Dianna and I had always prided ourselves on our resilience to the inconveniences and inevitable let-downs of travel. From the untamed cloud forests of Venezuela to the frantic streets of Taipei, allowing petty traumas to mar a trip was just not on the agenda. What were we doing feeling so miserable when we were in China, I wondered. Stolen wallets, manic-depressive Parisians, haunted hotel rooms, and plagues of bugs that burrow under your skin had never ruined a trip before. I was determined to save this night.

At a loss, I started to search the room for comforts and distractions. The wind shifted and set a tree branch to persistently scratching against the window. Dianna scribbled furiously in her journal.
The room had dismal prospects. One-size-fits-all slippers, a malfunctioning shower, and then I found our saving grace in a hot water bottle. I scrambled through my pack for chocolate-chip granola bars. Laughing maniacally, desperately, I broke the granola bars into two mugs of steaming water. I watched the granola dissolve away from the chocolate chips. Scooping the granola off the top, I stirred the remaining melted chocolate until it transformed into the happy uniform of water dressed in chocolate.

“Hot chocolate!” I proudly proclaimed, delivering Dianna’s cup as the steaming trophy it was. She peered into the murk.

“Where did you find this?” She asked, screwing her face into an apprehensive smile. “Oh, who cares. Gam bei!” Laughing and grimacing with happy abandon, we watched the storm rip through the trees.

I leave for an indefinite stay in China in less than a week, but I have learned – this time I will have with me a happy talisman of resilience. I will have my perfect protector of sugary goodness, I will have my hot chocolate.

And with it, I shall be invincible.