Portrait of an LBX

By Evan

NOTE: This is about a stretch of a few days I had after Hainan and before Guangxi, where we are now. It’s a new style of writing for me. Hope you like it.

We just finished riding like hell through the inner mountains of Hainan, a gravelly, steep, sweltering experience that forced Andy onto a bus on a mountaintop. It was beautiful but gruesome, the biggest physical challenge so far (to be chronicled in a post). After the hardest bits, Andy’s axle snapped unfixably, and so he bused ahead while Alexis and I took a day and a half to finish the 150 km into Haikou, giving us a long time together to discuss out personal issues on the trip, resolving many interpersonal conflicts that had arisen, discussing revolutions we would or would not like to incite, and just generally enjoying the ease with which our giant legs carry us over vast distances.

We find Andy in a hotel in Haikou at 6pm nursing a bottle of whisky. No surprises there. I know that Pete is in Hong Kong enjoying the Rugby 7s with thousands of drunk white people who speak in funny accents. Andy’s mishap is going to allow me to make my necessary visa run two days earlier than anticipated, which means I can be a drunk idiot again for a day too. Great. I make plans on the spot to leave Haikou as early as possible, be in Zhanjiang before noon, then Hong Kong before nightfall on Saturday.

I wake up in the pitch dark room. It’s 8am. Crap, I overslept. I pack the bike quietly, but Andy and Alexis wake up anyway. They want to come with me. We eat at the giant outdoor dim-sumery downstairs and race across the city as fast as Andy’s broken bike will roll. We decide at the ferry terminal to take a bus the whole way. It’s now 11, and the bus takes 5 hours. My plans for debauchery are disintegrating. We barely get our bikes on the bus in time. The bus takes us to the a ferry terminal where truckloads of pigs and busloads of LBXes are loaded. We fight through throngs of drably attired Chinese to the heart of the big ship that carried us to the island in the first place when we were on a train in the hold. A short old woman wearing a matching brown long sleeves and pants peasant outfit sits next to us holding a baby to whom she speaks in unintelligible dialect. She, like nearly everybody else, eats a bowl of instant noodles. Minutes later, she spends about five minutes undoing all that chewing as she fills a red plastic bag with vomit that undulates up in evenly spaced waves. When she stands up, the bag breaks, and her vomit spills all over her baby and her pants and the floor. She walks away. Nobody is phased but us. Pete sends me a text from Hong Kong. He’s stumbly drunk at 1pm — in a different world. Jealousy ensues.

Thankfully the boat ride ends fast. We get back on the bus and roll slowly. Next to me sit an old peasant man, wearing dark black suede shoes and postured timidly. He’s lived through the worst years of this country, and he’s learned that being timid is the way to survive. Next to him a young man sleeps in the most aggressive posture I can imagine one can manage while sleeping. He’s got spiked hair and a bright blue nylon jacket that reads, “Fashion.” His clean white athletic shoes contrast sharply with those of the man next to him. I hope his future will be better than the old man’s.

We arrive in Zhanjiang at 6. My dream of attending Saturday night’s festivities fades. I pack up my necessities and make a list of what to do in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. First on the list: get a new visa. I leave Andy and Alexis for what will be at least five days, the longest anybody’s been marooned on this trip.

I take the 8:30pm bus to Shenzhen after a dinner of Muslim noodles. The young, all-male bus crew all speak Cantonese, the Italian of Chinese dialects, and they refer to me as “Langzhai (handsome fellow)” and speak Mandarin with a rolling accent. This reassures me for reasons I can’t put my finger on. I send Pete a message promising him I’ll get drunk with him on Sunday morning. He responds incoherently. Nobody is near me in the back row of bunks. This will be a good night of sleep. I read a chapter of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and pass out, mind easy.

I wake up suddenly at 2:30am. I touch my pocket and realize my wallet is making me uncomfortable. I put it in my bag. I realize I should do the same with my passport. My passport. My passport. No, not possible… where is it? I search my thoughts. We’ve been too many places, and everything is blurring together. No, it’s in the inner pocket of my handlebar bag, where I put it two days ago in Hainan, the place I can never be without it, unless I leave the bike. I panic. The bus ride is 7 hours, and I’m over halfway through it. I can’t make another round trip and still turn my visa in by Sunday night. I can’t see the 7’s. All is lost. No! I can have it couriered. No, it’s a weekend, and I have no address. I can make Alexis bring it. No, I don’t hate him that much. Wait, buses come all the time. A driver can bring the passport. Yes, that will work. It has to work. I tremble a while by myself at the back of the bus, seeing doomsday images pass before my eyes. Suddenly I remember something! Yes, that’s right! Andy brought me the passport before the bus left. Of course, Andy knew — he saved the day! I fall asleep reassured.

It’s 5am, and the bus isn’t moving. “Sleep until the sun comes up, Langzhai,” says the fat member of the crew, “we’re not in a rush.” It occurs to me immediately that Andy didn’t brought me the passport, and that my psyche invented that vision to keep me from going insane. I ask the five Cantonese men if they know other bus drivers who make the route, and if a driver would be willing to carry documents. “No problem at all, Langzhai,” says the tall, skinny one as he fetches out his company’s card with the number of the morning shift driver.

I skulk into a 24 hour Hong Kong style diner across the street and order a milk tea. I read two more chapters of Three Kingdoms while checking the time every five minutes. At 7, I call Alexis. He’s cold as a cucumber, calm as a killer, takes my instructions, and moves quickly to package the passport so it looks like just some documents, no anger at all, no questions, just doing what needs to be done. This is why I count him among my best friends. At 8, I call the driver. All is arranged. I move to a Starbucks next to the border at Luohu, text Pete with the news, and settle. The last text runs my phone out of money, and I freak out assuming Alexis might need more information. I run to three stores before I find a recharge card. I call him, but his phone is out of money too. Evil forces are operating against me. Thirty minutes later Andy calls me, and everything worked out. Alexis borrowed the phone of the old woman who drove motorcycle taxi to find the driver. “It’s on a blue bus,” he tells me.

Thankfully Lily has sent me a long translation to do about corruption in the steel industry and how politics will ruin the lives of four businessmen. I decide that maybe fate is helping me despite my wishes, since it’s better to make the money to pay for my expensive visa while drinking coffee than spend money to destroy my liver. At lunch, I walk to the Indian restaurant across the street. Two different haggard old women crawl out of alleys imploring, “Massagie massagie!” I wonder who follows these women into dark alleys at noon for depraved acts with what must certainly be scaggly, hideous prostitutes?

Pete texts me at 1pm. He’s already tipsy. I remember the letter I asked Justin send to me from my old company last week and that I need to find Marissa, my host here and the girl I had him send it to. Crap, why so many complications? I call Marissa, and she’s coming back soon. Too much rugby for her, and she has to work tomorrow anyway. It’s Sunday? People working… schedules? It’s been ten months since I had a job, and I’ve forgotten all that.

I finish the translation right at 4, hands jittering from my third Venti Americano since 7am. I call the bus driver, who tells me, “I’m here!” He’s ahead of schedule. I run like hell to the corner, where an orange bus is parked in front of the diner. What the hell? I walk calmly up to the door and ask for the documents for Mr. Wei. The young man in his twenties smiles wide, “I thought you were Chinese,” and hands me the brown envelope, in which my passport is wrapped in the map of Hainan. Thank God for friends, I think. I give him 20 more kuai than he asked for to try to reverse my karma, don’t ask why the bus isn’t blue, and call Marissa. She tells me she just walked across the border, four hours later than she said she would, but whatever. I jump in a cab to cross the city, find her sitting on the steps of the border crossing at Futian, take the envelope, exchange some trivial courtesies, and off I go. I tear open the envelope from Justin, and my old business card he scavenged from somebody in the office falls to the ground. Good old Justin, he didn’t let me down!

I stumble across the border with my two Orlieb panniers digging into my shoulders and sleeping bag bouncing off the back of my thigh. 7-11, there you are! I take a deep breath and realize that I’m free again. Every time I come to Hong Kong, it’s like dying and walking into heaven. I celebrate with a bottle of sugar-free Oolong tea, and board the train toward the city. As I sit on the train switching my Hong Kong sim card into my phone, I look up and see the dismal wall of gray towers marked up with those ugly simplified characters, and revel in the fact that it’s further away with every second. I text Pete. He responds, “Welcome! I’m drunk on pimms at rugby…” The rest is unintelligible, and I know I’ve missed a good day.

In a flash, I make the right switches and am in the Tsim Sha Tsui subway station. I ask a jovial looking policeman wearing glasses for a “photo machine.” My English is deteriorating noticeably, but he understands and gives me instructions in that lolling, whimsical Hong Kong English that I love so much. I find the Photo-maton, crank out four visa shots while listening to a gaggle of drunk English girls discussing how great the rugby was, feel a little disappointed, and shoot out onto Carnarvon Street, working past three Pakistani men screaming, “make a suit! make a suit!” into Mirador Mansion, walk past the old Indian man who sells those delicious potato samosas and head to the sixth floor to the Fujian Guest House.

That goofy Fuzhou woman with the long hair and flip flops who talks in long, loud bursts of saliva, remembers me and just like last time tries to overcharge me. After a good five minutes of yelling, she gives me the old price but puts me in a window-less room with bunk beds next to where she is sitting. I get on the phone with the owner, who tells me she can process my business visa by Tuesday noon. I give some cash, my photos, my passport, and the business card to the woman, who has now pulled a 180 and is very warm to me. Whatever, crazy bitch. I take a shower and hear her yelling at somebody else in Cantonese. I text Pete, and he tells me to meet him at the Globe bar in Soho on Hollywood street. When I emerge, I find the woman has been yelling in Cantonese at a young Indian guy, who says to me in an amazed voice, “you speak Mandarin?” I say yes, and you speak Cantonese? “Yes! Do you want to hang out with me,” he says in his thick accent, but I politely decline, descend, pick up some snacks in the 7-11 downstairs that’s full of Africans and cut a B line through the herds across Tsim Sha Tsui to the Star Ferry. It is now after 7 and completely dark.

Ah, the Star Ferry at night. I move to the bow and enjoy the easy rolling motions as I stare across that beautiful Victoria Bay full of boats at Hong Kong island all lit up and inviting. I suddenly become aware that I’m exhausted, but I feel completely at peace with the world. I being to ask myself why I don’t live here. Why am I in China? Is there a value to being uncomfortable all the time? Why not just live live the Hedonist Hong Kong life?

Boom, we smack the central pier in the middle of my thought and are moored up in a minute. I rush up and out straight south and up onto the elevated walkways. Around the walkway are hundreds of groups of dark-faced women of all ages sitting in circles on blankets, talking or filling in what look like lotto scratch-off cards. Ah, yes, it’s Sunday, and all the Filipina maids have off. I wonder at this sight a minute longer and then rush through the big shopping malls full of ritzy stores and long, rich streets until I’m at the entrance to Lan Kwai Fong, which is beating already. I realize that Pete is drunk, and I’m not, and so I snag a big Heineken from the 7-11. The dark faced Indian guy with the big afro from the Thai restaurant we ate at last time with Dreyton hails to me, but I run up the steep hills, guzzling my brew as fast as I can. I must catch up.

After 10 minutes of little back roads, I’m staring at the Globe, and my beer is done. For a minute I revel in the beauty of the signs on the Hong Kong businesses. They jut out proudly and exude a feeling of permanence and pride — it’s something I never feel back in the mainland. I snap out of it, walk into a 7-11, and pound another beer. Pete is late, so I walk into a little Middle Eastern restaurant, grab a hummus, and shoot the breeze in French with the bald owner who’s playing Serge Gainsbourg. I head back to a 7-11, buy a Guiness this time, and then I hear from down the street, “VILLLARRRRRUBBBIA!” Pete comes running after me, wearing that light blue USA shirt we both bought at the Olympics with a towel around his head. He’s with another Pete, a tight Northeastern guy wearing a polo and shorts who reminds me of the business school kids from Georgetown and a chubby guy wearing a lion suit. “I’m from London, and I’m in investment banking, and that’s all the boring details I’ll tell you about myself. Call me Lion,” says the lion in his posh British accent. Fair enough. Pete’s three sheets to the wind and talking raspily in his high mischievous voice, the one he conceals when he’s in his usual Connecticut WASP mode. We have some high times, but neither of us is in the mood to talk to the gaggle of typical American girls at the bar. I pound two more beers, and we agree that he should stay in my bunk bed instead of going back to China tonight.

We walk back to the Star Ferry. If it was warming when I took it sober, it’s downright blissful now that I’m a little drunk. We decide on the spot that we will live here one day, no matter what or when. I realize that I like Pete more every time I see him. We buy Nestle ice cream cones at the African-loaded 7-11, slip past the Fujian woman, and pass out in the bunk beds. Pete wakes me at 6am, takes the bag of gear Andy and I are offloading from the trip, and slips out of the room.

I wake up some hours later, enjoy some free internet, and walk out to pay the woman. She hits me with googly eyes, even though she’s easily ten years my senior. I talk to her a while. She’s lonely here, and has to spend all her days cooped up in a little hotel, with no friends and all her communication being yelled. I feel sorry for her, but nothing to do. I spend the entire day buying bike gear and 1200 HKD worth of books, classics and novels for research and for personal use, most importantly all written in beautiful full form characters. At night on a recommendation from a friend I head to Chungking Mansions, the notorious Chungking Mansions, wind past hundreds of Africans, Indians, Pakistanis, and clueless tourists to the E block elevator, which takes me to the 7th floor and a mysterious Indian restaurant full to the brim of brown people. I, the only white person in the room, sit alone next to the door listening to all the languages and smelling the sweat and curry in the air, while eating the best Indian meal of my life and reading the introduction to Long Yingtai’s book about how the revolution destroyed the lives of so many Chinese people. I cherish this moment.

The next morning I wake early, fill my bag with the 10 kilograms of books I’ve bought and take the early star ferry to Hong Kong. I wish I could take this ferry every day and ever night. I know this will be the last time I smell salt water for six months, and I try to soak in the feeling, almost meditatively not thinking of anything else. Then I ship the books back to my mom’s law office in Baton Rouge from the central post office, and walk up and through the HSBC building. It was here a little over a year ago that Klaus, my crazy German partner, and I opened the bank account for our company, Easting International, the company we dreamed of over a week of revelry in my apartment before a long hike through the snow covered hills of Zhejiang, but which we’ve never actually operated. This time I’m in shorts and a tshirt, and all the suits of various ethnicities are staring at me like I don’t belong. They’re right. I bust down Des Voeux Road, take down a delicious breakfast of salmon and eggs with a croissant, and head toward Mercer Street and my final objective for the Hong Kong trip.

I find the Fukien Tea Company exactly where our blog follower Lew said it would be, number 6. It’s like something out of an old movie, big brown tins full of tea stacked in cabinets on the walls, the type of tea written on them in yellow characters. There are scraps of paper and bags lying around everywhere. It’s kept very proper, but with lots of clutter anyway, owing to the fact that they’re obviously busy and are pressed to use every inch of the space. It smells old, and I exult in the old fashioned nature of it. There’s a red flying horse adorning the back wall. I ask the first old man I see at the desk next to the door if they speak Mandarin, and his brother, in his 50’s with glasses and a hearing aid responds, “No problem!” in that language and leads me to a little leather couch at the back corner in front of which sits a frequently used metal tea tray and red clay pot.

Mr. Yeung, the younger of the two brothers, sits me down, gets a pinch of the Tieguanyin I asked about, and starts talking. And boy, can he talk. He gets so into whatever he’s talking about at the moment that he forgets to make the tea, often picking up the boiled kettle and then putting it right back down again without pouring. I’m so enthralled listening to him that I forget I’m on a tight schedule. He explains that his father fled Xiamen back when the commies took over and came to Hong Kong via Singapore. “All the old masters left after the revolution,” he says, pointing out how his father knew the art of roasting Tieguanyin the right way. “All that raw stuff they sell in the mainland now is crap!” he says, and after tasting the fruit of his labors, I believe him. He tells me how after collectivization, all Tieguanyin was sold by the state, and so everybody outside the country had the exact same tea. That situation wasn’t ideal, but everything went to hell after reform and opening, he tells me. “There are no individual shops for that many years, and then all of a sudden, everybody is a boss! How do you think so many experts popped out of the woodwork all at once? Think about it a second! It’s impossible!” He tells me that even the tea farm his company has had a contract with for ten years frequently tries to rook him. “Mainlanders have a lot of problems with the truth,” he says in Mandarin, following it with a long drawn out, “HOOOONNNNESSTY” in Hong Kong English for emphasis. He then tells me how he and his brother follow the exact methods of his father and roast the tea for over 30 hours in a little factory not far from the shop. “It’s hard work, but it’s the only way to make Tieguanyin the right way,” he tells me, and I believe him. The tea tastes wonderful, deep, dark, and full of character, but more than the taste, it appeals to my sense of righteousness, since I know this is a piece of real China, the old China that existed before the great swindle. Mr. Yeung tells me that he has no children, and the sons of his brother have no interest in carrying on the store. When they die, so will their roasting technique. I feel profoundly sad and on the spot make a promise to myself to come back one day before it’s too late to learn how the Yeungs make their tea so their family’s work won’t have been in vain. I pray that I won’t forget my promise, realize it’s almost noon, and buy a bag of tea from them before darting to the subway.

I’m only just in time getting to the hotel to check out. The goofy woman in the flip flops gives me my passport and tells me they gave it to me cheaper than anybody else, only 1600 HKD. Lying becomes instinct for some people, I guess. I run back downstairs, pick up two samosas from the old Indian man who squirts mint sauce all over the little styrofoam plate, and I stumble into the subway, where I call the visa agent in Shenzhen. He can process my 6 month business visa if I give him the passport today, he says, but since he has to send it to Beijing, it won’t be back until Saturday morning. The fee for rush processing will be 5500 kuai. I’m backed into a corner, and I agree reluctantly. I call Alexis to tell him the news, but then I realize that I’ve just lost my iPod on the subway. I consider the next six months without it, the dictionaries and books I’ve stored on it, and then I take the train back to Tsim Sha Tsui to buy another identical one. Money out, money out. It never ends.

Finally, new iPod in stow, I board the train back toward Shenzhen. As we approach that grey wall of authoritarianism, I ask myself why it is that I keep willingly going into this country. It’s like knowing in your mind that you’re walking into a building where a dog will bite your balls, and as you approach, you notice on top of the building is a sign in which a dog is depicted biting somebody’s balls. I groan and remember the mission at hand and Andy and Alexis waiting for me in Zhanjiang. I buy one last sugar free Oolong plus a pack of Drum tobacco that comes with 60 papers in the Duty Free just in case we need to share a cig with an LBX buddy out in there somewhere, and enter on my hard-earned 30 day business visa.

I find the LBX with the Beijing accent whose number I found on the internet at Starbucks waiting for me just as he promised. He’s young and with a good looking girl who says nothing. He explains while fidgeting with his iPhone that his company has connections with the police in Beijing, and that they’re going to have to apply for a housing registration first, and then they can have their connection sign the approval form without having to go through the red tape. I give him my passport, and he disappears into a taxi. This is by far the most tenuous connection in the long chain of events that will allow me to finish this silly bike trip without exiting the country again. I am again thoroughly exhausted, and order another Venti Americano. I open my computer and sign onto chat. Marissa finally responds to my text and tells me she’ll be home at 6. I buy a tea pot at the giant store next to her house and go find her Chinese-Italian roommate Alessandro, with whom I have dinner and play Halo on XBox for hours, the first time since college. My mind is swimming through fatigue-driven emotional despair, and all I want to do is walk aimlessly through the streets. Finally at midnight everybody goes to sleep, and I open my bag to go to sleep. On top, just below my new iPod, I see my old iPod. I never bothered to check my bag. “That figures,” I think to myself before passing out cold wrapped around an uncomfortable sofa cushion.

Time passes slowly in Shenzhen, but I manage to keep sanity by drinking profound amounts of Tieguanyin, translating, and cooking — lots of omelettes and a giant dinner of red beans with sauteed vegetables, which Marissa and her Mexican roommate find too spicy. It’s the first time in six months I’ve cooked my own food, and the taste of my own red beans makes me think about home, filling me with dreams of the kitchen I’ll cook in when I have my apartment in New Orleans. I think about the can of red beans I ate in Big Sur this summer before starting this crazy trip and how they gave me the same feeling.

On Friday, I get a call from the young guy’s female colleague in Beijing, and she insists that I wire the 5500 to her account before she’ll courier me my passport. I think to myself that I’ve been duped, but I remember that this is how I did it in the past, and I have no choice but to trust them. I rush to an ICBC across the mega boulevard in front of Marissa’s apartment and get the wire out just before the bank closes. Angels are watching over me, I swear. Marissa and her roommate come back late, and we go out for a night on the town, which begins with a bottle of wine in a Pizza Hut and winds through several boom-boom clubs where I see all the short skirt bar skanks for whom Shenzhen is notorious. This will be the last time I see any such thing for six months, and I enjoy the experience for its relative novelty.

The next morning, I wake up hungover to the doorbell ringing, and miracle of miracles, there’s my passport, stamped with a new F visa valid to September 30, my birthday. It all worked out! My heart flops over with relief. I spend the rest of the day cooking and talking with the girls, and then I fight through the Tomb-sweeping festival crowds at the Luohu bus terminal to buy a seat on a night bus to Zhanjiang. After the ticket is purchased, I leave to find something to drink, but all I can find is more old women trying to pimp alley whores on me. Oh this dreadful place. When I return to the terminal, I see a sign that reads, “Hong Kong / Luohu Bus Station” pointing in two different directions. I want with all my heart to walk across the border and never again go back into the wilderness, but I remember the mission, and begrudgingly my feet carry me toward that hellish bus station.

The night is sleepless, made worse by the semi-hourly puking of the woman sitting in front of me, but finally I arrive in Zhanjiang at 5am, where I grab a just-steamed red bean bun and take a three hour nap on the floor in between Andy and Alexis, before they wake me up and tell me it’s already late. After a cup of coffee, it’s back out again, onto the open road on those loaded touring bikes, the whole reason I went through all those shenanigans in the first place, and for the moment, the last goddamn thing I want to do in the world. I grind my teeth and pray that life will become more beautiful, and soon.