Jingia, somewhere between Shapoto and Lanzhou....

The police came twice to scatter the crowd. I heard them say over the loudspeaker to disperse, stop bugging the foreigner, go away. But the crowd came back. I couldn't breathe, I counted 70 of them 4 layers deep surrounding me and the bike and the mechanic who was helping me deal with the timing problem. There were more people in the street, too, stopping on their bicycles and motorbikes, asking what was the excitement?. It was just a stupid timing problem. Ever seen a timing problem? About as exciting as filling the oil.

It's been a hot day anyway and I'd just crossed the desert, sand dunes with herds of camels, sand across the road, and an exhausting headwind that became a cool pleasant breeze in Jingia. At least I felt a breeze before all these people came to see the foreigner. The smell of oil and gas and sweat and soured clothes. The mechanic never looked at me once. He was very competent. A bit macho. It was how he was dealing with the situation, with being the center of attention. He checked the valves, fooled with them just enough to make everybody think they needed fooling with, the spark plugs, too, and corrected the timing. I've always had a problem with the timing, I can't deal with it and I was watching how he did it so I'd know, later, but I literally couldn't move around to look because there were so many people pressing in. I stood up and started walking toward the mechanics shop and they parted for me. I shut the door and breathed for a moment.

When I heard the bike start, I came running outside. He was on it, such a fat macho mechanic. I ran to stop him or at least to jump on the back seat but he was gone, over the curb and revving it down the street, beeping away the bicycles.

Half an hour went by. My computer, two cameras, a tape recorder, film, and all my tools were in the unlocked trunk. I felt like starting smoking again. Inside the mechanic's shop a well dressed guy with a flat-top crew cut was telling me not to stress, that the people were crowding me because they thought I was cool, and the mechanic was just great, he'd have me on the road to Lanzhou in no time.

I drank tea and stressed. I wanted to at least be on the back of the bike when he took off. But the Chinese had been very honest so far, except for the hotel in Datong where my T-shirt went missing. Oh yes, and near Linhe were I let the guy use my tools. After I said I wouldn't pay one of the three missing items mysteriously reappeared, but the other two are lost forever. I know I know, they're poor, they're tempted, and I put it in front of them. But I don't let anyone use my tools any more.

So about 40 minutes later this guy finally comes striding in the door, throws me my key and sort of collapses in bed. 20 faces are pressed to the windows, trying to see in. I try to read this guy. Is it fixed? He looks at the ceiling, I have the key in my hand. He's not asking for money. He expects me to test ride it then? It's fixed, then? He's done his macho thing, casually come in and expects me to discern that the bike is perfect, and after my ride we're going to have to deal with the price, the American price Chinese price thing, I can tell he's that kind of guy, and with an audience I'll have to pay dearly.

I go out, wade through the crowd, now about 500 and counting because school's out and all the students are here, too. I get on the bike, put the key in and put it in first. Sounds fine. Ride it down the road, second is good, third....

I look in the left side mirror to check traffic before I make a U-turn and come back. But there's no mirror. The left side mirror is gone. The left side turn signal is gone. The one in the back, too. The handlebar is bent. I stop and open the trunk. Everything in there is a shambles. Tools all over the place, cameras, computer, all dirty, all jumbled, not tight and neat like I always have them. It's like he turned everything upside-down.

The spark plug wire is missing, metal is bent all over the place. He did turn it upside-down. Or at least sideways. The guy has two Chang Jiang's sitting out front, he knows that right turns will roll you over to the left. My blood pressure is up half because I'm pissed off and half because I am scared to death. A confrontation with 500 people around... 600, now maybe 700 people part for me as I rev up the engine, beep the horn and they scatter. They fly into trees, bicycles, each other. It's so crowded that they literally can't move. All because of a stupid foreigner? I think. Geez. Get a life.

I run into the house and the mechanic is lying on his bed looking straight up. He doesn't look at me at all as I stare at him. I can't even communicate what I'm thinking, but he knows, believe me, he knows. As I stare at him he stares at the ceiling. He's a paunchy guy of about 35, just as macho as can be until now, cares the whole world about what others think about him. His cigarette is lit backwards and he's smoking it. Doesn't even notice.

Outside his two helpers are working like crazy on the bike. The handlebars are off, the turn signals. I part the crowd and take everything out of the trunk, spreading it around me so I at least have some breathing space. I can't breathe. It's hot, there's no air at all. But I can't snap at them to back off, not this many people. Some of them have climbed on top of bicycle seats, their friends holding them up. Others have broken all the little trees that were planted on the street. It's like a rock concert, festival seating, and the star has come out into the crowd except their concept of a respectful distance is nonexistent. I think, this could get really really ugly, and I just concentrate on putting all the wrenches into their little pockets. 8-10-12-14-17... are they all there? The spokes go in the bottom along with the big wrench and the ball-peen hammer - but that got nabbed by the guy in Linhe - and then the exhaust wrenches, the plug puller, long screwdriver, both shorties, pliers, large adjustable, small adjustable. My fingernails are black. My hands are covered in dirt.

Now, the cameras. I can deal with looking at the cameras now. I remember my American trip, when the tow truck driver mashed the computer and the camera and prepare myself. But they look okay, both the digital and the 35mm, and the computer looks fine from the outside, these people are staring at what I'm doing and relaying every move to the people outside so I don't dare open the computer. It would bring in the people from the next town over. So I sweat in the dirt with all my things around me, and I wonder if these people have a total lack of empathy, would THEY like to be treated this way? This cannot be the most exciting thing that's ever happened to them, can it? To observe a foreigner? I am trapped. Maybe I won't be able to get out. I want to leave, but it's 6:30 and there's no way I'm going to make it to Lanzhou, a five hour drive at least.

A young girl in a student's uniform comes to the front. She is so very cute and so very young, and the crowd is shouting at her for information. “May I offer help to you?” she says. I say “Thank you,” she says “not at all.” She pronounces her T's very precisely. The crowd is shouting. “They want you know Chinese are good people,” she says, sincerely, her black eyes staring into space with concentration. “Not bad thing, you happen.” Well, okay. But I cannot breath, still. I cannot see the end of people. Are there a thousand now? The entire town?

The two mechanic's helpers are frantically replacing things. Mirror, signals, bent pieces of metal, clutch. Cripes, that guy took a dive. I wonder, suddenly, if he needs a doctor. The girl is talking about her English teacher and suddenly there is a man there with whom I can communicate. But then I think of Jin Zhe in Linhe and lose hope. He's about the same level -- can probably read and write perfectly but when it comes to communicating with a real person and the entire town shouting at you there's just no hope.

“Is there a train to Beijing?” I ask him.

“No truck. Now is difficult,” he replies.

:”No... I mean train. T-R-A-I-N.”

He looks at his watch. I think, maybe I can get this bike and me out of here! Please.

“No train to Beijing.”

“To Lanzhou?”

“No... you must take Lanzhou-Beijing train.”

So I am here for the night. Where will I stay? Will the mob leave me alone? Yes, there is a bingyuan, a tourist hotel with a guard at the gate.

“My student will show you.”

The bike isn't quite fixed. They're spraying black paint on the bent parts. “It is finished,” says the English teacher, but it isn't. The clutch cable is so loose that when I let it out it doesn't even engage. There is no front brake. Every time I let the clutch out the bike quits.

The mechanic suddenly appears and mashes my hand down to rev the engine way up high. It's going to explode I think, and try to pull my hand from under his but he's really mashing it down. He's going to break my wrist, I think, and I've got a big knuckle scrape, too, the other day on the engine, and it's raw enough without his mashing it. He is going to break my wrist. Or blow up the engine, whichever comes first. Everyone presses in. There are faces everywhere, at knee level at eye level, overtop of me. I reach over and violently push his hand off of mine. He raises his arm, like he's going to hit me. I sit up straight on the bike, I am taller than him, and I think “I dare you.” I have no idea what I'm doing. What would happen? Would they take him away or would they help him? Would there be a riot? I just want him to leave but he's barking orders at his minions and they're running around with wrenches and pliers and screwdrivers, handing them over like nurse to doctor as this guy is bent over the clutch cable adjustment between the right side of the bike and the sidecar.

It's no use, the cable is too long. I can't get it into first. The crowd clears three times as I rev it up and try to head out of there with the student on the back seat, a teenager with thick heavy classes and no chin. The mechanic follows me making adjustments. Okay, so we're going to make amends, save some face here, okay, I can do that, just fix it, I think. Save some face and get my clutch working. I cannot wait to get out of here. I have tasted some of the cool breeze that is outside of the crowd and I want it. It's been maybe six hours since I stopped for the timing help. Maybe six hours since I've been sitting in the dirt surrounded by hundreds of people.

The front brake doesn't work but I take off anyway. I want nothing else to do with this guy, this town, I cannot wait to get out. The student is telling me from the back seat “Please turn left.” “Please turn straight ahead now.” “If you please you might turn right.” “Thank you.” “Nothing at all.”

The guard at the gate wants me to park the bike by the gate about 1000 yards from the door. “No” I say, “not until after I get my bags out of the car.” He doesn't understand me of course and I just ignore him and go in. This has been a problem at every single hotel I've approached since I've been in China. “Wait 15 minutes,” I say, “and then I will move it to wherever you want.”

They have their orders, and the guy follows me in. The student is a terrible hindrance. If he couldn't speak his 50 words of English I would be able to check in five minutes but because they are looking at him to translate I cannot communicate the simplest idea. I want to spend only one night, I am trying to tell them. They keep coming up with 300 yuan. I say ONE NIGHT ! Only SLEEP, ONE NIGHT! But the women behind the counter are not looking at me, they are looking at dweebface and he is saying, “yes, thank you, when do you leave at 9 o'clock it will be ago two days?”

I throw a 100 yuan bill on the counter and ask “is this good?” How? Doay? And finally one of the women takes it. I go outside and everyone helps me load my bags. I'm still thinking that I need to check my computer and about 10 guys sitting outside are all saying “hello? hello?” and laughing. Yeah, real funny. I have never heard that one before. That, and “okay? okay? yes? yes? what your name? yes? no? okay? hello?” I say "jeaga jeaga nega nega doay doay" and they shut up and grumble amongst themselves.

I think that if I have to deal with one more minute in public I will explode into outer space and that will be okay. Heaven. What a wonderful idea.

But because I am not all that convinced of heaven I let dweebface help me pack my bags and take them inside, and parked where the guard wanted me to park which also made him very happy. I smile at them both, trying to hide the fact that I was having the most frustrating day of my life. I am trying to think, IS it the most frustrating day of my life? I cannot remember any other that's been worse. What a sweetheart he was to be 16 and deal with all this.

The room price is 88 yuan, and they take me upstairs but it isn't the second floor it's the fourth floor. It's a room with four beds and no bath. I say “no bath?” geez, for 88 yuan in China you ought to get a bath and they finally get me a room with a real bed and a desk and phone and toilet and shower instead of four iron beds in a room. This is Foreigner price again, I can see.

Dweebface won't leave. “Can we be friends?” he asks. “Yes, of course," I say, "here's my card. You write letter. I write letter. Bye.” He looks at me uncomprehendingly. After a five minute exchange in which I try to be as friendly and polite as possible, and encouraging, he really has done a marathon try for me here, I take him by the arm and lead him out the door.

Then I want to make a phone call. Can they just turn on the phone and let me dial 0 and whatever number I want? Nope. They all have to go through the switchboard and the switchboard cannot get 10811 AT&T which is a toll free number that I have successfully dialed from every other hotel in China. But this is this stupid town, and why should I think that they could do it? They're totally dense here. Amazingly insensitive. Every other place there have been some people who keep the crowd from getting this insistent. Some old people, normally. Where were the old people in this town? At least the floor girl got me a beer, and helped me with the phone. Not that it helped the idiots at the front desk who can't dial 10811 without adding an area code for Beijing or something. It's making me CRAZY!

But finally I am alone... no, there is a phone call from the student that wants a photo now. No, I am sleeping, I say. He doesn't understand and I say Good Night and hang up. I can't deal any more. The hot water is coming on at 9pm and will stay on until 11pm and I'm going to get the early shift and go to bed. The hot water comes on. The phone rings. The student again. I say NO and hang up. There is Karaoke outside my window.

In the morning before light I will start for Lanzhou and I will not stop until I get there.

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