LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER 3

      Every travel website Michael Tang had looked at that summer had advised him not to go to Qinghai Province.

      One of the poorest and least populated provinces in the country, where political prisoners are sent to work in labor camps.

      The provincial capital typifies the worst of modern China: polluted, industrial, without aesthetic merit. You are better off going straight to Tibet.

      Qinghai isn’t the armpit of China—that distinction most likely goes to Hubei—but it certainly comes close.

      Still, this is his destination, as he sits on a hard sleeper train from Beijing to Xining, the capital of Qinghai Province, in the northwest of China. It would have been much quicker to have taken a flight, but Michael wants to save money, and besides, he thinks that this way, he can see some of the country.

      It turns out to be the most mind-numbing twenty-four hours he has ever experienced; physically numbing as well, for although the dark-green bunks are sparsely padded, they still feel like concrete to sleep on. Michael has the top bunk and feels like the main attraction in a hearse. During the day, the people who sleep on the upper bunks come down and sit on the bottom bunk, three per side, staring at one another like participants in a bad expressionist play. There are tiny hunched grandmothers, mothers holding infants, men in cheap rayon suits. People’s Liberation Army soldiers, dressed in olive-colored uniforms, sit at small tables beneath windows on the other side of the aisle, playing cards. Despite the signs that indicate no smoking, every male seems to have a lit cigarette, so the train car is filled with a faint bluish smoke that smells like burning trash.

      When Michael looks at the other people on the train, he sees nothing in their faces that reminds him of himself, or his parents, or even the recent immigrants he has seen on the streets in Chinatown. Most of those immigrants are from coastal areas and not the interior of the country, but still, these seem like a difference species of people—blunt, impassive, totally devoid of hope for a better life. They are, in a word, peasants.

      Dressed in a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers, he realizes that he stands out as a foreigner, even if his facial features more or less resemble those of the people around him. None of the other men, even though their clothes are of poor quality, are so casually attired. Also, no one else seems to have a backpack, although many do have large, square red-and-blue-striped plastic bags stuffed with everything from melons to DVDs. Michael recognizes these bags, filled with fake designer purses and sunglasses, from the vendors on the street corners in New York City. They must be the internationally designated receptacle for pirated consumer goods.

      Despite his appearance, or perhaps because of it, no one speaks to Michael. He supposes it is just as well. Like Emily, he does not know how to read or write in Chinese; unlike her, he also does not know how to speak it, although he understands some of the phrases his parents used to toss around, usually having to do with it being time to eat, time to sleep, or time to go outside. Things that a five-year-old, or a dog, might understand. Periodically, he catches someone staring at him unabashedly, as if trying to read a fortune told on his face instead of his palm. At first, Michael looks away, but when he gets tired of it, he returns the stare until the other person drops their eyes. They seem to exhibit no embarrassment in doing this, and Michael comes to understand that staring is not considered rude in this culture. He also realizes that it doesn’t mean the person is interested in whatever they are looking at. It’s just something to see, to pass the time.

      There’s nowhere else to go on the train, other than the stinking latrine with its metal squat toilet. Once, Michael thought to stand in-between the cars, to try and get some fresh air, but came upon a woman holding her infant son over the gap, with his pants pulled down. She was whistling a tuneless song, and as she did so, the child began to urinate, not only into the gap but also all over the corridor. Michael turned around and went straight back to his seat.

      So, still jet-lagged, he sits next to the window and looks out of it, the landscape passing by as if in a dream. It seems like days, but, in fact, has been just one since he’s left the bustle of the modern airport in Beijing, stayed overnight in a nondescript hotel, and made his way to the crowded railway station where it appeared as if refugees were trying to get on the last train out of the city, but which he suspected was simply an ordinary day in the Chinese capital.

      Since then, fields of grasses topped with yellow blossoms have given way to some of the most inhospitable-looking vistas he has ever seen: slopes covered with dun-colored rock, dry riverbeds that appeared as if they have been without water for the last hundred years. Sometimes the train track runs alongside a road, upon which an ox, followed by a farmer, trudge, both so covered with dust that they are nearly indistinguishable from the ground they walk on. Mud houses the same color as the landscape appear and disappear back into their surroundings. When there are more than several houses, apparently they are enough to be considered a village, and then the train stops. People open their windows and buy packages of dry noodles, tea eggs, bottles of water, and cigarettes from the vendors outside. When they are done with their purchases, they throw the wrappers and bottles back out the window. The sides of the tracks are littered with trash, often providing the only spot of color in the otherwise monochromatic scenery.

      Also, along the whitewashed mud walls, are large Chinese characters written in red, sometimes ending with an exclamation point. They look as if they are out of another time period, probably some kind of propaganda. Go back! Michael imagines them saying, in a private message just for him. This is a mistake! You won’t find what you’re looking for!

      What, or rather who, Michael is hoping to find at the end of his trip is a man named Liao Weishu. This is the name signed at the end of a letter that Michael discovered among his father’s things after

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