So I set off again. My mind and body wanted to turn back each moment. I checked my watch over and over again realizing I had passed the one-hour mark and should turn back. It wasn’t much further though. An hour and five minutes. Almost there. An hour and ten minutes. Just a few more steps…and suddenly I was there.
I was at the top of the Great Wall looking down at the massiveness that is China. Wondering which side of the wall was meant to keep the Mongol hordes out and how many men had stood in this spot before me. From here I could see the dozen buses that now filled the parking lot and the hundreds of tourists who trudged up the mighty steps like ants far below me.
I was the first. I was the hero. And as such I felt magnanimous towards the Frenchman who had reached and passed the third tower and was midway to the fourth. I wanted to share this moment with someone who could understand. I wanted to keep it forever and I realized that by my being at the top when the Frenchman arrived, I would be keeping the feeling from the man who now carried his coat and had a scant thirty-five steps to go before reaching hero status. I decided to share and even though I would have liked to rest a moment more, I began to vault down the stairs two at a time so that the other man could enjoy the feeling I had just been reveling in.
“How was eet?” the Frenchman asked in English.
“C’est fantastique mon ami. C’est fantastique. Au revoir.” I leapt down the mountain hoping I would be in time to catch the bus. I passed the man’s wife who after a brief rest was continuing on. Not far behind her a Chinese man with a video camera nodded at me and said rather breathlessly “You very fast”
“Thanks…” I continued on. It only took me twenty minutes to reach the bottom. Fifteen minutes after that, the Europeans came down and wandered up to where I was smoking a cigarette.
They stood nearby drinking water and catching their breath as the man with the video camera reached the bottom of the steps. He came up to me and turned on the camera. “Why you climb so fast?” he asked in pretty good English.
I grinned. “Laowai fast. Laowai first.”
The man laughed and shut off the camera. “You know meaning of laowai? You speak Chinese?”
I shook my head no. “Just a little…what’s it mean? Laowai?”
“It mean like old white ghost. You say old white ghost first. Fast old ghost.” The man continued laughing as he walked to the placard describing how the Chinese government had invested such a large amount of money into rebuilding this section of the wall and filmed it so his friends could read it too.
As the rest of the Chinese from the bus reached the bottom, they would speak to each other and point at me. The words they were saying sounded complimentary. They pointed to me, smiled, and said serious sounding words. The way they looked at me, I felt a little like a hero.
The American
(This story had to be told from Genghis Kane’s perspective, he related the bulk of it to me over the several days I stayed in Xi’an)
Genghis Kane’s Café’ was small but clean. Kane himself was Mongolian and spoke English with a slight Chinese accent. He had put up pictures on the walls of all the places in the world he wanted to go. The walls were starting to run out of room. So many places, and Kane wanted to see them all.
He carried a couple of Singhas across the room to where the group of six travelers had pushed two of his small tables together. He put one beer in front of a blond girl and the other in front of a slightly fat man with sandy brown hair.
“Cheers,” the man said, giving himself away as an Englishman. “Cheers,” the girl was English too.
“You are all from England?” He asked, hoping that this wasn’t so boring a group as that.
“No,” this came from the short dark haired man at the end of the table. He was either American or Canadian.
“But most of us are from England,” from the second girl with the large breasts and straight black hair.
“So who is from where?” Kane asked with the engaging smile of the perfect host. He loved running a traveler café’. It was like going someplace new everyday, meeting the inhabitants of far off lands.
Becoming a bigger person as the world became more understandable.
“The four of us are from England,” the blond girl indicated herself, the girl with large breasts, the fat man, and a tall man who kept himself slightly separated from the rest of the group. “Chris is from America and Sasha is German.” Sasha had a slight frown on his effeminate face; he was distracted by his own thoughts and looked up at the mention of his name.
“And all of you are traveling together?” Kane knew it wasn’t true. It was rare that a group of more than one nationality went anyplace. “No, Kay and I are together. Chris is in the same dorm as us."
"Johnny,” she indicated the tall Englishman, “is traveling by himself and Keith and Sasha are also traveling together.”
It was about like he expected except for the fat man and the German being traveling companions. Maybe they were a homosexual couple. Kane looked at them with more interest, noting with disappointment that their chairs were further apart than intimacy would indicate.
“We met in Beijing and have been going the same direction. It’s convenient but I travel by myself,” Sasha explained.
“How long have you been on holiday?” He asked. He could almost guess. No more than two weeks except for Sasha who had a sort vacant look about him that those who are far from home for extended periods tend to share.
“Susan and I have been in China for a week and a half,” Kay said in a wonderfully deep voice.
“Just about 2 weeks,” from Chris, the American.
“The same,” from Johnny, the Englishman.
“Two months,” from the fat man, Keith.
“18 months,” Sasha said it in a burst, “18 fucking months. Hey can I get another beer?” He held up his empty bottle. “Wo xiang yao yi ge pieju.”
Kane was surprised. Sasha’s Mandarin was almost perfect. His accent betraying the fact that he had either spent a lot of time in the North or learned Chinese from a northerner.
“Sure. Be right back.” Kane always spoke English in his café regardless of the nationality or language of his patrons. Even if they spoke perfect Mandarin. He stepped through the swinging kitchen door and noticed he was out of Singha. No problem. He walked outside and across the narrow alley to a tiny store where he bought a dozen beers with the money he’d just collected for two.
A minute later when he brought Sasha’s beer from the kitchen, he was surprised to see another ten white people pulling tables together across the room from the first group. The new people were dressed very differently from the first. Their clothes were new, fashionable, and made with very bright colors whereas the first group wore sturdy, dull, utilitarian garments.
“Hey, you got a menu? You speak English? You got some menu’s for us?” He wore a dark blue fleece jacket, expensive looking eyeglasses, and a sneering expression.
“Sure, you want something to drink?” Kane hid his irritation.
“What we want is to look at your menu,” the other people with him seemed uncomfortable with his rudeness.
“Sure, I’ll be right back.” Kane wondered how the two groups would interact. He gathered up his menus and watched as everyone but the guy in the fleece sat down. The fleece man wanted to know the other people. “I’m American.” He said to them. “My name’s Carl. Where are you from?”
“What do you know Chris? It’s one of your countrymen,” Sasha’s tone was mocking.