And yeah, it’s gorgeous. I can’t really take it in, it’s so beautiful. All the alien mountains, swaddled in fog. Water buffalo and pebbled beaches. Tropical palms and every manner of green. “Those mountains, you see them?” Andy points. “They are on back of the twenty-yuan bill.”
I look to where he points: a mountain range that looks like someone went nuts with a soft-ice-cream dispenser, depositing row upon row of these crazy shapes, the greens and browns muting into blues and greys as the ranks recede.
“You see?” Andy says. He’s taken a bill out of his wallet. Holds it up in front of my face. “Twenty-yuan bill.”
I think, Get that fucking money out of my face so I can see the actual mountains, Andy, because I can look at a twenty-yuan bill anytime.
“Yeah, I see,” I say, and take a slug of my Liquan beer. Breathe in the river’s mossy scent and tell myself to calm down.
“So what do you think about the show?” my mom asks.
“Why don’t you guys go? I have some work I should do.”
She pouts. “Ellie, I thought this was supposed to be a vacation.”
And I thought the two of us were supposed to go alone, I want to say. But I don’t. Because it’s not really a vacation for me anyway.
“Stuff happens,” I say with a shrug. “I made a promise to… you know, to do a good job.”
AFTER MOM AND ANDY leave for the light show, I put on my jacket and knit hat, grab my color copy of Jason’s photograph, and set out.
The main tourist drag in Yangshuo is called Xi Jie-West Street. It’s filled with bars and discos and coffee places with names like Minnie Mao’s and the People’s Commune Café, complete with Santa Claus in a PLA uniform. There’s a Venice Hotel, a Stone Rose Bar. The street is narrow, most of the buildings two or three stories, a lot of traditional architecture, whitewashed, red-stained wood shutters. Uneven granite paving stones. No cars. By now it’s just past 7:00 P.M. The music is already pounding from the discos, the streets thronged with tourists, vendors calling out to “look, come buy!” and holding up their scarves and hats and carved wooden frogs.
The weird thing is, for a street called West Street, there are way more Chinese tourists than Westerners here. Young people, mostly, wearing broad grins. Couples holding hands, cruising the strip. I guess West Street to these kids means it’s something sort of forbidden, a little dangerous.
I hate it already. The crowds, the music, the pulsing strobe lights from the discos, the constant come-ons to buy something or drink something or fuck something.
You made a promise, I tell myself. You have to at least try.
I hesitate, then go into the first coffee place I see, show the girl greeter Jason’s photo. “Sorry to bother you. Have you seen this young man? I’m a friend of his family. They are worried about him.”
The girl, a tiny thing who looks like she’s maybe twelve, wearing a sort of sailor suit with very short shorts over tights, makes a show of studying the photo, scrunches up her face and shakes her head. “Haven’t seen him. But wait a moment. I can ask my manager.”
She retreats into the coffee house, a wood-lined space that reminds me of the inside of a cigar box.
“No, sorry,” she says when she comes back. “My manager doesn’t recognize him either.”
“Thanks for asking,” I say, folding the page and putting it back in my canvas bag.
As I turn to go, she puts her hand on my arm for a moment. “I hope you find him!” she says. “It’s terrible for his family to worry.”
I wonder where she’s from. Where her family is. What they know about her situation. What her situation even is.
If she’s lucky, she’s from the area. Has a home to go to. A bed of her own. Or works for an employer who provides a dorm room somewhere close by.
Or she sleeps here, in the coffeehouse, after it closes. Wraps herself in a blanket and sleeps on a straw mat, on the floor, beneath the tables.
“Thanks,” I say. “I hope I find him, too.”
I stop at every open business along Xi Jie. Show people the photo. Watch them shake their heads. If Jason had been here, he was just another foreigner. One who didn’t do anything particularly memorable.
I limp down the street. By now I’ve got a throbbing headache and my leg feels like it’s on fire. Percocet, I think. I’m going to sit down and have a beer and a Percocet.
Not on Xi Jie, though. Some quiet side street. At least there’s plenty of those here in Yangshuo.
I’ll try one last club and call it a night.
Up ahead is a place called the Last Emperor. Lots of red and gold. The same pounding music as everyplace else, Lady Gaga at the moment. Outside, there’s a guy dressed in a costume doing his come-ons, a slouched, shuffling sort of dance combined with waving people in. He’s wearing a Qing-dynasty-style beanie, a fake pigtail, and a long embroidered robe over counterfeit Levi’s and Nikes.
“Come inside! Ladies’ night!” he says to me, in English. He’s young, with a cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth, an attempt at a goatee.
“Maybe. But first can I ask you, this man, have you seen him?”
He stops his shuffle. Takes a look at Jason’s photo. “Why you want to know?”
“His family misses him.”
He lifts the other corner of his mouth in half a grin. “Really?” He hands me back the sheet. “You can ask over there.” He points with his cigarette down the side street that empties into Xi Jie across from us. “Place called Gecko. Lots of foreigners like it.”
“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”
He takes a puff from his cigarette. Grins from both sides. “Then maybe come back here later. For a drink.”
“Maybe,” I say, and smile back, because he helped me and he’s sort of cute, in a slouchy, borderline-delinquent kind of way.
I’m sure not coming back for a drink, though.
I find Gecko easily enough. It’s a narrow place sandwiched between a coffeehouse and a pizza restaurant, advertising imported beer, free Wi-Fi, and rock-climbing expeditions. Well, okay. The front is dark wood, with a hanging sign depicting a bright yellow lizard, which I guess is a gecko.
Inside are wooden tables, potted and hanging plants. Photos of mountains and rock climbers. One wall has a rack of equipment-packs, shoes, clothing, metal spikes, a bunch of coiled ropes. The music is groovy Brazilian jazz. And yeah, a lot of foreigners, most with that rangy, “We like fresh air, nuts, and leafy greens!” look.
The waitstaff is Chinese, though. Typical. You don’t have to pay them as much.
I sit at an empty table and order an overpriced Sierra Nevada. They don’t even offer Liquan here.
The waitress who brings me my beer is young, short-haired, wearing a long-sleeved Gecko T-shirt and a fleece vest.
“Thanks,” I say. “Can I ask you a question?”
She nods, smiling, expecting, I’d bet, that I want to know about rock climbing, or river rafting, or some other healthy outdoor shit they go for around here.
“This man, have you seen him?” I hold out Jason’s photo.
She takes it, curious. Crouches down a little so she can scrutinize it under the table lamp. And something in her expression shifts. I’m sure of it. Her eyes dart sideways, like she’s looking over her shoulder.
“Deng yixia,” she says, springing up. Wait a moment. She leaves the photo on the table.
I have a big swallow of Sierra Nevada, feeling this slow burn of excitement. It’s something I’m not used to: the sense that I might actually be getting somewhere.
Maybe I’ll find out where he is, I think. Or at least that he’s okay. Something I can tell Dog, something to make him feel a little better.
The guy who comes over to my table is tall. Blond. Older than me by a decade at least, but built like a basketball player, tall and muscular. Like the waitress, he’s wearing a fleece vest, but his is Patagonia, and his T-shirt doesn’t have a logo.