The first air-conditioned luxury bus arrives at eight o’clock in the morning from the main highway, and then the buses pull in and pull in and pull in, one after the other, without stopping, they begin to stream outward as if from some bottomless sack, and tourists begin to flood in, inundate, fight their way inside, as hundreds and hundreds of newer groups, arriving relentlessly like an attacking army, in an unbelievably short amount of time they occupy the end of the Ming era, or the beginning of the Qing, and the tour guides begin to yell, they begin to yell in that loathsome, thin voice into their megaphones and, by the time the two visitors realize what has happened, Zhou-zhuang is already full, so full that by eight-thirty it is impossible to move in the narrow streets, they are terrified, they don’t know what is going on, they’ve hardly woken up, they are sitting in the same teahouse as last evening and suddenly they are struck by a hideous clamour: the tourists are cheerful, they are yelling and screaming and making a rush at whatever they can, descending upon the marvellous little houses, completely denuded now of last night’s tranquillity, and it seems that they are happy to see daytime arrive, inside there are shelves and countless goods: food, sweets, souvenirs, genuine pearls, dried fish, folksong cds, hundreds and hundreds of trinkets: What has happened here? — the two visitors look at each other, and then say goodbye to the elderly teashop owner who urges them not to miss out on the Zhen, Zhang and Shen residences, they will be open very soon, he says, but they are trying to struggle through the dense crowds to somewhere outside, they haven’t the slightest idea exactly where this outside is, in any event, they try and push themselves forward against the crowd, because they have deduced from the crowds’ movements that they must go to wherever they, the crowds, have come from; Zhouzhuang is small, so they reach the highway in a relatively short time, they stop at one point and, as they have seen the Chinese do, they wait there, they wait patiently for something to arrive, a bus which they can wave down and which will then take them onward, even if they are not able to say right now when a bus will come or where this onward is; the interpreter is asked: Where are you going, and he has to say something, so he looks at Stein — where? — and Stein pronounces the single place name he can recall from Yang Lian’s account, Zhujiajiao, at which the bus driver shakes his head, he doesn’t go there, that’s not in this direction, but if they want he can take them to Tongli. Tongli? — the interpreter looks at Stein unhappily, and he says fine, let’s go to Tongli, so that after half an hour they’re in Tongli, the bus lets them out again by the side of the highway, and for the time being everything is quiet, the region seems relatively uninhabited, this is a good sign, they reassure each other, Zhouzhuang is like a prison, it opens at eight in the morning and closes at six in the evening — they had gleaned this from a sign as they were fleeing — and maybe, the interpreter adds, that woman who led us into the village last night was trying to explain to us that we had come at a good time, because it was after six o’clock, and Zhouzhuang is completely different then, maybe that’s what she was trying to say, the interpreter suddenly realized, but maybe Tongli is different, he says, maybe Tongli is just a simple village and we won’t have to encounter any kind of barbarian attack as in Zhouzhuang — Stein is silent; 200 metres away from the road a few tile-ridged roofs can be seen, so they set off in that direction, and they are not mistaken as far as the direction is concerned because it immediately emerges that Tongli is indeed that way; the direction, however, is the only thing in which they have not made a mistake; as for their own selves, they are very mistaken because, after 200 metres, the brutal truth swoops down upon them that here too there is nothing for them to seek, once again they have miscalculated, once again they have rushed into something, because if they would have to state that Zhouzhuang — left in peace only at night — was firmly in the hands of the tourist industry, then Tongli — this little water-town, just as enchanting — is manifestly the general headquarters of every tourist office for all of Jiangsu as well as the centre of touristic dreams of the province and half of China, once again a wondrous settlement from the past, the same narrow streets, the same narrow canals with the same black, slowly drifting boats, the same saltpetre walls and the same gateways and teahouses and the same enthrallingly carved crimson-brown lacquered pavilions, facing the water, but the swarming hordes seeking entertainment, the sheer havoc-wreaking number of tourists surpasses every conceivable measurement here, surpasses even the ruinous crowds of Zhouzhuang, and what they at least did not have to perceive while escaping from that latter place here surrounds them: that everything here is for sale, and this everything must be sold, this can be seen on the hunted expressions of the locals, or whoever they are, as at the same time from the other side comes the response that everything must be bought, that we will buy everything, this is what radiates from the expressions of the tourists, what is taking place here is unspeakably repugnant, so they decide to take a look at the three residences mentioned in the tourist guide vitrines, which they had failed to do in Zhouzhuang, so they pick themselves up and conclude their excursion. What they see is exquisitely beautiful again, the wondrous Tuisi Garden, the wondrous Jicheng and Feigong residences, the wondrous canal banks, the houses, the bridges, everything is just as dazzling as it could possibly be, but they must escape because they cannot bear what is happening here, they cannot bear the unspeakably repugnant merchandising of these wondrous enclosed strata of ancient times; once again they stand by the highway, once again they don’t move from that spot, and then they begin to think a little bit, and then they both reach the same conclusion: that there is no mercy; if this is how it is in Zhouzhuang, if this is how it is in Tongli, then this is how that will be in Wuchen, in Lili, in Xinshi, in Linghu, in Doumen, in Nanxun, in Xitang, in Dongyang and in Wujian and everywhere in this formerly enchanting landscape, so then they slowly trudge across to the other side of the highway, they begin to watch the buses going back, then they get on to the first vehicle returning to Shanghai, and in the days to follow they do nothing but gape at the ultra-modern buildings of Pudong from the railing of River Huangpu, and they try to remain awake, to clutch at reality, and to forget, forget — to forget what they saw, to beat out of their heads the fact that they saw anything at all.