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[11/12/99]

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We were both in a restaurant, looking out at the Yangtze. It was night. I was waiting for a boat to get me out of Wushan town, and out of the Gorges in general. When I had planned my trip, I had imagined how cool it would be to go up the Gorges slowly, taking river taxis between towns and savoring the scenery. Now, many towns later, I was sick of the idea and ready to get out of the countryside and on to Chengdu, a big city with good food, relaxed teahouses and a populace that had grown bored with foreigners and so left them alone.

I kept looking out into the darkness and watching the searchlights on the ships as they came up the river, sweeps of light on blackness, waiting for the one that would get me out of this place.

The woman who ran the restaurant kept telling me that the boat wouldn't come for a while and that I should fangxin, relax (literally, set down my heart); she would warn me when the boat was coming. I didn't see how she could tell one ship from the next any better than I could, and because I'd made the mistake of depending on others to take care of my problems before, I agreed with her that I could relax, and then kept on watching anyway.

The man sitting at the table next to mine had come in earlier and was fed by the woman without his asking or ordering. He had listened with some half interest when the woman's husband came into the restaurant, a little boy howling in tow, and shouted at me all the questions that his wife had asked before when she found out I could speak some Chinese: Where are you from? How old are you? How much money do you earn in America? Your Chinese is very good, he yelled.

Then came The Topics.

Everyone in China knows The Topics. The television stations and newspapers run the same state-generated stories all across the country, and the Chinese form their opinions based on these somewhat controlled sources. This time, the hot topics were how racist Americans were and what imperialist bastards we were for bombing Kosovo. It didn't matter whom I talked to, the conversation inevitably turned to those topics, and the opinions were always the same. It gave me a real respect for the power of state-run media.

The husband finished up the how-shitty-Americans-really-are discussion and then lost interest and left me alone again to watch the black ribbon of the river below for signs of my escape boat. Somewhere up the stairs, I heard the son yelling.

The man at the next table offered me a cigarette. When I declined, he lit one for himself and put the pack away. He asked quietly, "What do you think of China?"

I thought about possible answers. I thought of the touts who had trailed me that day, trying to convince me to book into a hotel -- and when that failed, vying to sell me a boat ticket out. Their insistence and trailing tactics annoyed me enough that I finally threatened to lead them to the Public Security Bureau and let them do their pitch in front of the cops.

I thought of the confidence scam that had targeted me on a bus, and of the Chinese who had silently watched its progress. When the scam failed and the thieves got off, my fellow bus riders said that the thieves weren't local, but that they were afraid to warn me because they didn't know if the strangers carried knives.

I thought of the businessman, riding on my latest river taxi, who had vigorously pursued the Racist American and Kosovo Topics, getting red in the face and talking loudly and so fast that I only understood half of what he said, even though I could guess the rest from his expression. Undoubtedly, he would have been even angrier if we had met two weeks later, after we bombed his embassy. Then again, two weeks later, I would have lied and told him I was Canadian.

I thought about those experiences and another fistful like them and then said enthusiastically, "China's great!"

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