Na Bang

Writing. I’m sitting at a desk in a hotel. Listening to a BBC podcast about the golden ratio. The host of the show is interviewing a composer whose religious music utilizes golden section divisions. Inspiring stuff. Should be, at least. The hotel is in Na Bang, a border town on the Chinese/Myanmar frontier. We’re on the Chinese side, and this town seems to exist solely for the bigger Myanmar town across the little river. The local people, both Chinese and Burmese, can cross the river and the border relatively at will, but I’m stuck on the Chinese side – this is not an official border crossing point, and foreigners can’t exit or enter China from here. No big deal. I’d rather be stuck on the China side than on the Myanmar side.

Writing, writing. I’m on my third packet of Nescafe black. Soulful, religious music is still podcasting in my headphones. Writing well is so goddamned difficult. I feel as if I have nothing to say, but how can that be possible from where I am? Last night the three of us wandered the six streets of Na Bang – this town is tiny. It’s impossible to tell who’s from China and who’s from Myanmar, since many ethnic Burmese live in this part of Yunnan. The three of us (American, Chinese, and Mongolian) wandered into a brothel looking for a foot massage for our aching hiking feet. My Chinese friend freaked out and went into instant panic mode, repeating “go, go, go” and “out, out, out”. He didn’t want to speak in Chinese because he didn’t want the girls to undersand him, but his English is lacking. He then repeated “bitches, bitches, bitches”. None of the girls looked 18. We were in the brothl for less than a minute, and I knew we shouldn’t linger. Underaged Burmese hookers, border town, heroin trafficking area. But something made us linger for that near minute. For me, it was the one with the typical Burmese off-white face paint covering still pudgy cheeks. She looked up at me and smiled, nothing sexy or whory, just a cute smile. How should I feel? The PC list would’ve covered a range of emotions starting somewhere around pity and ending somewhere around rage. But I felt something more natural, male, primal, just attraction and urges. Young, my Chinese friend, is perpetually scared of things, and he lives here. I knew there was no immediate danger, but we left just the same.

Writing, writing, writing. Outside I told him that I of course knew that they were hookers – I’m not that dumb or naive. I simply hadn’t understood her Chinese, which was mostly local dialect with a little Mandarin mixed in. I asked her if we could get a foot massage and when she said “no” I asked her what the place was. She said something simple, something like “take me”, but it was all dialect. I asked Young to translate and the situation became kind of absurd. But he’s so scared all the time. Once we went to a nightclub in Yingjiang and he warned me over and over about the bad women and all the drugs inside. It sounded adventurous, but it turned out to be a typical Chinese disco with college and high school kids and nothing stronger than beer. Afterwards he admitted he’d never even been there (or any other club).

Back to writing. Damnit again, this hotel feels like the place to do it. Foreign country. Border town. My iPod is playing a new BBC podcast now, something about science. Two days ago we started our hike from the midpoint of the Yingjiang to Na Bang road. The first day we passed a town that had been hit by the recent earthquakes. The local school was damaged and the kids had class in tents. We wandered into a classroom (something I’ve done a few times in Yunnan and I’m always greeted warmly – in America I’d probably be arrested before turning the doorknob) and chatted and taught English for 10 or 15 minutes. That first day we hiked 22 or 23 kilometers, too much for an inexperienced hiker like me. One of our bags, the heaviest one, was a crappy Chinese backpack and hurt like hell after an hour. We took shifts, of course, but on the second day we konked out after 12 kilometers and wimped out by taking a minivan with a carsick Burmese girl who kept vomiting out the window.

Young has guanxi with the Chinese border patrol forces at Na Bang. He works for the local Yingjiang TV station, and they did a story in the area. So when we arrived yesterday we headed straight for the border crossing, a short bridge with two Chinese cops on our side and two Myanmar cops on the other. But it’s relatively friendly and people cross easily. The tricycle taxis on the Chinese side are all from Myanmar – I think they come over to work during the day and return to Myanmar at night. The head cop told me that lots of Chinese men have wives from the other side, but he also added that the Burmese girls aren’t good – their skin is too dark. People in China are obsessed with white skin. The Burmese girls look good to me.

Writing, goddamnit again. Now I’m back in Yingjiang. Yesterday at the Na Bang border crossing I taught an impromptu English class to all the cops in their barracks. We roleplayed the situation of foreigners trying to cross the border, which is not allowed. We practiced saying “it’s impossible!”, “you can’t cross here!”, “show me your passport”, and “it’s the law!” In each roleplay with each cop I took out a wad of money from my pocket at some point and offered it as a bribe to let me across the river and into Myanmar. I taught them to say “no! no bribes!”. Even though it was all acting, offering bribes to the entire border patrol force, one by one, felt dangerous and thrilling.

Writing. Not much more to say. The hiking trip is over and it’s almost time to go home to Kunming.