Papillon

Guiyang - showed up here to meet a friend whose phone has been off since I arrived. I can't get in touch with her and I might give up and go back to Kunming tonight. How annoying. I came to Guizhou Province to teach English in Liupanshui over the weekend, and then I came here to Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou, to see this friend. She's a foot massage girl I used to know in Beijing and she told me yesterday to come down and call her and we'd hang out today. Well, I came and I called, but no one answered. Maybe she's married now or something and she didn't want to tell me, but now something happened and she's avoiding me. Chinese girls like her (uneducated and from the sticks) that I've met tend to get married young. So, I'm alone in Guiyang. All I've done since I arrived is read in my hotel room and wander around the city. I'm staying at the Xin Miao Sen Apartments, a kind of transient hotel with 60 RMB double rooms (no bathroom). The window looks out onto the street and my room is just above the red neon sign advertising the hotel - it's like being in a bad movie. And I just read Papillon for the first time and it really affected me - but more on that later.

So now I'm in Guiyang. Maybe my friend lost her phone or is lying unconscious in a hospital somewhere, but I'm still mad.

When I got to Guiyang I jumped in a taxi and the driver helped me find the Xin Miao Sen Apartments (I highly recommend this place if you ever find yourself in Guiyang). Today it took two taxis to find a place to get a foot massage, and I wound up in this beauty parlor in the big hotel near the train station. Taxi drivers in China are great. The girl kept apologizing to me (before and during) that she couldn't wash my feet (not sure why - she did soak and dry them) and that she wasn't a professional at foot massage.

Back in Liupanshui, where I went to teach English for two days (remember that part of the story?) something very weird happened. When I got there I was picked up at the train station and taken to dinner by some people from the school. Then we went to the hotel. Two Chinese guys and I, one was a government worker and the other was the husband of someone who worked at the school (neither of these people were directly associated with the place where I was working, but connections and relationships are very important in China - maybe I just didn't really understand who they were) checked me in and we all went upstairs to my room. I assumed they were just helping me find my room, saying goodnight, and making sure everything was OK. It was Friday night and I had class early the next morning. The government guy turned to leave and before I realized what was going on the other guy sat down on one of the beds and took his shoes and shirt off.

The next morning the two of us woke up and went to work together. After work everyone went out to dinner. Breakfast and lunch was also provided at the school for the whole staff; we all ate together and of course it was all free. After dinner we went to a fancy place with private suites to play mahjong and it was here that I realized that I hadn't been allowed to order anything for myself, use any of my own money or be unescorted (except for using the toilet) in over 24 hours. Keep in mind that I was in the middle of reading Papillon.

They knew I wasn't a mahjong player (I like Chinese card games, not mahjong) so the government guy took me in his van for a ride. We went to the main park in Guiyang, watched people dancing in the square, drank tea, and chatted. He told me that Guiyang is also called "liang du" or "cool capital" because the weather is never hot, and it did feel very nice and very cool as we sipped tea from little plastic cups. We talked about America and how he's dying to visit, but can't speak English and doesn't have enough money to make the trip yet. Halfway through our chat I brought up the subject of my confinement. I tried to tell him, as politely as possible, that I wanted to sleep in my own private room and that I didn't need a bodyguard or an escort, especially when I was sleeping. He told me that since there weren't many foreigners in Liupanshui it was a little sketchy and they just wanted me to be OK. I reminded him that I was OK, that I was able to speak Chinese (I had been speaking Chinese with him for a whole day and two evenings already) and had been living and traveling in China for years. And, in my experience, Chinese cities are relatively safe for foreigners (just avoid the crazy drivers). Besides, I reminded him, I'm much bigger than the guy who was protecting me; maybe I should be his bodyguard. The government guy said he'd see what he could do and we got back in the van to pick up the mahjong crew.

At this point I started getting a little panicky. I do that sometimes: panic. I wanted to get a foot massage. I wanted to walk outside and grab a snack. It was 9:30 and I wanted to be alone and sleep alone. I've never had to have a handler before, and I realized that was what was going on, although in a very informal way. Maybe Guizhou, being more remote, is a bit more communist than most other places in China. In any event, I'd been un-alone for over 24 hours and I was looking at at least 18 more. I had just finished reading Papillon's description of the two years he spent in solitary confinement in the "man-eater" on one of the islands off the coast of French Guyana and, although making any sort of comparison is ludicrous, reading about Papillon's trials made my situation seem more acute: I must escape!

We got back to the hotel and it was clear that the guy who slept in my room the night before was determined to stay with me again. At this point I got annoyed. I had tried to be polite, but that hadn't worked. It all seemed so ridiculous. The school was down the block and this guy had a wife and kid at home. The next day I was going to go deeper into Guizhou; what was he going to do - follow me and keep protecting me? And, I was working off the books for these people, without a work permit, which is of course illegal, although very common. But maybe that was the point. In their minds, that made them more responsible for me. Mostly I was annoyed because I had been promised round trip train tickets, 770 RMB, plus a hotel room for my weekend's worth of work. It's not a lot of money (about $110) and I mostly took the job to get a free trip to Guizhou. But in my mind, my hotel room should not have come equipped with a skinny middle aged Chinese dude smoking cigarettes in the morning.

So I sort of played the "culture difference" card, something I hated to do, since it always irks me when people chalk up any minor difference to culture: "oh, of course he's left handed - he's a foreigner!" Without directly mentioning culture, I explained that I hadn't slept well the night before and I needed my own room because I'm just not used to sleeping in a room with another person. Amazingly, they agreed and booked another room for my handler across the hall from me.

Now for the crazy part. There is a point to this story; I hope you're still reading. I started reading Papillon again in my room and feeling trapped. I really needed a foot massage. I'm a foot massage junkie and I hadn't had one in over a month. Foot massages are one of the best things about China. Soaking your feet, having a cute Chinese girl scrub and clean them, and then massage them for an hour is heavenly.

Every Chinese hotel I've ever been in has massage services, either directly or indirectly connected. What would be the harm? My handler would never know, and I probably wouldn't be leaving the hotel anyway. I went down to the front desk and asked the girl if I could get a foot massage. She said the hotel didn't have any massage services. I was so shocked I questioned her: "really?" This was a big hotel in a relatively decent sized Chinese city. Inconceivable. Oh, well. No worries. I'll just go out and find one. So I asked the girl where a close one was and she said there weren't any places close by and didn't I want to take my friend? I answered no, he's not my friend, and I'd rather go by myself. I told her I just wanted to take a walk by myself. She said "wait" and picked up the phone.

In an instant, everything became clear. She had been given instructions to call up if I attempted to leave the hotel. She had already dialed the room. I remembered Papillon's speech to all the inmates about the purest thing, the break, and how it ought to be respected. I walked quickly towards the door and she yelled "wait" one more time. I opened the door and jogged down the block to freedom. Five minutes later the school called me.

Of course I was never really really confined. It was more like being under observation, ostensibly for my own good, but I'm sure they were covering themselves, too. But combined with the emotions Papillon was stirring up, it made me realize how terrifying imprisonment probably is. No secret there. I hope I never experience a real prison, especially if it's a French penal colony off the coast of South America in the 1930's. That would really suck.