waiting for no one

Nepal once welcomed a steady stream of visitors, but the long-running Maoist uprising and a series of other events have brought the tourism trade to its knees

By Jason Overdorf
(This article appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review in September 2002)

THIS IS A TOWN that tourism built. Along Kathmandu's streets and alleyways, rows of travel agencies, postcard kiosks, souvenir stands and budget hotels stand patiently waiting for customers. Alongside, hawkers sit with piles of curved kukri knives and Buddhist tanka paintings. But instead of wearing the sunny grins that once endeared Nepalese to travellers, the hawkers' faces look glum and tired. Business is bad.

Six years of a simmering Maoist uprising have taken their toll, as has a government state of emergency, not to mention continuing travel warnings from the governments in Washington and London and the global downturn in travel following the September 11 attacks. Against such a background, many travellers have decided this isn't the year to make the pilgrimage to the Mount Everest base camp or take in the famed Annapurna mountain range. Up to the end of July, tourist arrivals were down 37% on the same period in 2001, already a bad year, when arrivals dropped 17% over the full year. For a country in which tourism was expected to contribute three percentage points of GDP this year and where the travel industry accounts for nearly one in 15 jobs, this is close to a disaster.

Hoteliers will admit that more than half their rooms are sitting empty. But if the deserted streets of Thamel -- Kathmandu's tourist ghetto -- are a fair indicator, the city has more guesthouses than it has guests. At night, Kathmandu takes on the eerie aspect of a ghost town. Soldiers man checkpoints set up to discourage saboteurs. A curfew ensures bars are closed by 11 p.m.

The industry is feeling the pain from top to bottom. One of Kathmandu's countless walk-in travel-services companies, World Touch Tour & Travels, has had nary a customer in six months. "We are all worried we'll have to close down," says one staffer. "All day I have to wait for the guests, but nobody comes. Sometimes 10 days go by without seeing anybody." A nine-year-old girl selling embroidered handbags had adjusted her usual patter: "Please sir, 100 rupees [$1.30] for two, 100 rupees for two. Please sir, I have no business. Please sir, 100 rupees for five."

The trekking industry has perhaps been the hardest hit. Malla Treks, a respected high-end outfitter that sells most of its trips abroad, has already received cancellations for 50%-60% of the trips scheduled for the October-November trekking season, says General Manager Rajendra Shrestha. Likewise, at the other end of the spectrum, a guide-turned-tout for Himalayan Glacier Trekking, seeming desperate for someone to talk to in Thamel, confesses he hasn't landed a client in three months.

The crisis is the result of a chain of events over the past few years, according to Pradeep Raj Pandey, chief executive of the Nepal Tourism Board. First, a Kashmiri militant group hijacked an Indian Airlines flight at Kathmandu airport in December 1999. Then, in a bizarre incident at the royal palace in June 2001, King Birendra and eight other members of the royal family were gunned down, apparently by Crown Prince Dipendra, who then shot and fatally wounded himself. In the wake of the killings, the Maoists stepped up their activities. Not long afterward came the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington -- events that devastated the tourism business worldwide. Finally, last November, after a series of deadly attacks, Nepal's government declared a state of emergency, which for the first time allowed the mobilization of the army against the rebels. (The state of emergency, which also limits free speech, was revoked in late August, primarily so candidates can campaign without restrictions ahead of November's scheduled elections.) "So the whole world has been focused on violence, emergency and insurgency, an impression that couldn't be further from the truth," Pandey says.
"The board's challenge today," he adds, "is to take the help of or convince the media to help us clear the air: to say, 'Yes, as news media you must present the facts,' but to seek a way to put the facts in perspective, to say, 'Yes, there has been trouble in certain areas, but, yes, there is no risk to the tourist'."

It's not an enviable task. Although the tourism board has launched an ambitious public-relations drive, dubbed Destination Nepal Campaign 2002/2003, to reposition the country "as a reliable, safe and attractive destination," it has a budget of only 20 million Nepalese rupees. That won't do much to counter the impression of the country created by the media over the past six years: The Maoist uprising has led to a steady stream of press reports on the daily death toll (fuelled by the security forces' take-no-prisoners approach) that has probably made the fight seem larger and bloodier than it actually is.

At the same time, it's not clear just how safe tourists are in Nepal. The tourism board and Pandey maintain that the Maoists have not targeted foreign travellers or tourist-related sites. But the accidental explosion of a bomb at a hotel that was being used as a base by Maoist saboteurs and an attack on Lukla airport, which is used by tourists travelling to Mount Everest, are ominous reminders that it's always possible to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nor can there be any guarantees that the Maoists will not adopt more radical tactics in response to the government's relentless efforts to stamp them out. Already, walkers making the journey through the Maoist-controlled western areas from Simikot to the Tibetan border have reported being asked to make "donations" to the revolutionary cause. Once, a box of cigarettes was enough; now it's about $100 per person.

Perhaps ironically, Pandey points to the insurgents' own words in his efforts to reassure visitors. "Not only has no one been injured or threatened or physically harmed," he says, "the insurgents themselves have issued their own statements saying that they recognize the importance of tourism to Nepal and have said they won't harm visitors."

Those statements, though, have proved to be a mixed blessing for the government. In a letter faxed to the media early this year, Dr. Baburam Bhattarai -- deputy to Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the Maoist leader commonly known as Prachanda or "the Fierce" -- wrote that foreign tourists are "most welcome into the revolutionary base areas." But the letter also warned travellers against patronizing the "anti-people and anti-national monopolistic structure" that comprises "all the five-star hotels and travel businesses" in Nepal. Bhattarai also "kindly advised" travellers not to venture into areas where fighting is active because of the risk of being caught in the crossfire.

Not the most reassuring invitation, and it hasn't resulted in a huge surge in tourists. But the tactfully worded message has spawned a boutique trekking industry of a new kind. A stream of intrepid journalists are walking into the hills to meet the revolutionaries and generate dispatches that, to at least one local newspaper editor, read like a new kind of travelogue: "My trip to meet the Maoists." And from the tourism board's perspective, more accounts of reporters' derring-do can only mean one thing: more frightened tourists.

white man's burden

The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling, By David Gilmour. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26

By Jason Overdorf
(This book review appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review in August 2002).

LIKE MANY one-time giants of Western literature, Rudyard Kipling has suffered a sharp fall in his reputation in recent decades. He's been reviled as a racist, exposed as a closet homosexual, and dismissed as a man of little talent; a propagandist for the elite. It wasn't always so: In 1907, Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature at the age of just 41.

Kipling was born of English parents in Bombay in 1865, at the height of the Raj. Throughout his career he recorded his wonder at the empire Britain built. In his work, he contributed more phrases to the English language than anyone since Shakespeare and described an India that, for many, is more real than any contemporary depiction.
A half-dozen of Kipling's books -- Plain Tales From the Hills, Kim, The Jungle Book, Just So Stories, Captains Courageous and Gunga Din -- are still regarded as classics, and for all the attacks on his reputation his defenders remain staunch: Many start off apologizing for his politics, as if excusing the behaviour of an outspoken, ill-mannered
but much-loved uncle. Others go further, suggesting that the great writer was neither a Tory nor an imperialist.

But to sustain such arguments, sympathetic biographers have tended to ignore at least half of Kipling's literary output -- poems like The White Man's Burden -- and have focused instead on his prose: Kim and The Jungle Book, for instance. Ironically, according to the laureate's latest biographer, David Gilmour, they have ended up doing as much damage to our understanding of Kipling's work as his detractors.

In The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling, Gilmour sets out to re-establish the author as the unofficial bard of the British Empire. He does not seek to pass judgment, but the portrait that emerges is not flattering. Kipling was not as skilled a political thinker as he was a dramatist. Moreover, though one finds occasional
brilliance in his prolific poetry, in cataloguing his political writing Gilmour draws attention to Kipling's immense output of doggerel. The best of Kipling's poetry and prose champions the achievements of Britain with light nostalgia; the worst with outsize sentimentality.

But, Gilmour says, Kipling "was not a reverential songsmith of national valour . . . [His] panoramic view of the Empire was closely followed by a realization of the perils that threatened it, so that in the mid-1890s Kipling added the role of national prophet to that of imperial laureate." In Gilmour's view, Kipling foresaw Britain's decline and sought to raise the alarm. His poem Recessional, for instance, warns the British against complacency:

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law --
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget -- lest we forget!

The phrase "lesser breeds without the Law" has been viewed by many as incontrovertible evidence of Kipling's racism. It is difficult to defend the author from accusations of bigotry, but Gilmour argues that it is a misreading to assume that "lesser breeds" refers to non-white, colonized peoples. The Gentiles of the poem represent the Germans, Americans and Boers, whom Kipling "considered guilty of boastful lawlessness."

Gilmour's defence of Recessional is not entirely unconvincing, but his other efforts to excuse Kipling from charges of jingoism sometimes make the biographer sound absurd. In his eyes the "white" in The White Man's Burden, for instance, "plainly refers to civilizations and character more than to the colour of men's skins." Plainly? This is the poem that refers to America's new Filipino subjects as "Your new-caught, sullen peoples,/Half-devil and half-child" and warns against their "Sloth and heathen Folly." Gilmour's argument that Kipling meant America to pick up the civilized man's burden is laughable when set alongside the text of the poem. Gilmour himself seems to recognize he has gone too far with this reading as he eventually acknowledges that The White Man's Burden is "profoundly racist in sentiment."

This turn-around illustrates the trouble with this biography. Gilmour does not explain Kipling's contradictions -- here identifying with Britain's colonial subjects, there with their rulers. Gilmour struggles with the puzzle, introducing and examining the pieces, but fails to fit them together. The book's weakness is not its defence of Kipling, but
rather that, in seeking to catalogue Kipling's political writing, Gilmour has generated a survey that although comprehensive is rarely illuminating.

coming to a terrible end

The Road to Maridur, By Christopher New. Asia 2000, Hong Kong, HK$195 ($25)

By Jason Overdorf
(This book review appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review in July 2002).

CHRISTOPHER NEW'S fifth novel, The Road to Maridur, tells the story of a young Englishman who travels to India in the late 1970s to recapture the memories of his grandmother, who was the governess for a princely Indian family in the last days of the British Raj.

Staying in the fading ancestral palace of the former raja, Jonathan Kelley discovers that the family, caught between the pressures of modernization and the legacy of ritual and caste, faces financial ruin. Because the raja's eldest daughter married a man from a lower caste, the labourers have refused to work the family lands, their only source of income. To appease them, the raja's family has disowned the daughter who married outside the clan and intends to ensure second daughter, Sakuntala, marries within the caste -- to the feeble-minded son of backward fundamentalists. Though Kelley believes he loves Sakuntala, he cannot prevent her from sacrificing herself. Unwilling to marry the man chosen for her, Sakuntala commits sati, burning herself alive.

It is difficult to imagine why New -- whose China Coast trilogy is justly regarded to be among the best post-colonial novels written about Asia -- has devoted his considerable talents to this melodrama. The fat, juicy book has some of the pleasures of the first book of the trilogy, Shanghai, which remained on The New York Times' best-seller list for eight weeks. But in his latest novel the understated beauty of the writing and the evocative portrait of India only camouflages the overblown romance. While Shanghai also trafficked on the stereotypes of the exotic Orient, its setting was far enough removed in time that its focus on devious opium dealers and sing-song girls did not seem like the selective obsessions of the West. The Road to Maridur's catalogue of inscrutable sadhus, deposed princes and distressed damsels is more problematic, given the contemporary setting and Western writers' reputation for noticing the snake charmer pulling tourists instead of the automobile factory behind him.

Those concerns aside, and doubtless some will dismiss them as the tyranny of the politically correct, it cannot be denied that The Road to Maridur is a fun summer read. New also deserves credit for an evocative portrait of India. But fans of his more literary work will wonder why he chose this melodrama, when with the book's final ritual suicide a week of guilty pleasure ends with a cringe.

method in madness

Red Poppies, By Alai (translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-Chun Lin). Houghton Mifflin, $25

By Jason Overdorf
(This book review appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review in April 2002).

PUBLISHED THIS YEAR for the first time in English, Alai's Red Poppies -- winner in 2000 of China's highest literary accolade, the Mao Dun Prize -- is the story of the rise to power of the "idiot" son of a Tibetan warlord.

Narrated by its idiot-hero, the novel's portrait of a warlike, feudal society ravaged by internal strife and Machiavellian intrigue explodes the myth of a mystical, pacifist Tibet. Still, it is the Chinese who supply the warlords' weapons and direct their battles, always with an eye to the outcome. And while this is not a novel of destroyed temples and rebellious monks, few if any Tibetans welcome the arrival of their Communist "liberators" at its close.

It is a tale told by an idiot, but what does it signify?

Alai, an ethnic Tibetan living in what is now Sichuan province, has said that the model for his idiot-hero and narrator is a legendary wise man who "represents the Tibetans' aspirations and oral traditions." Not interested in accolades, the sage "preferred the wisdom masked by stupidity."

Not surprisingly, therefore, there is an unmistakable method to the madness of Alai's narrator, the second son of the chieftain of the powerful Maiqi clan.

Only the idiot-sage understands his time, foreseeing the end of the reign of the Tibetan warlords as the Han begin to exert more and more of a destabilizing influence in the region. And though he does not dispute his own stupidity, he knows full well that his mental defect is all that protects him from death at the hand of his older half-brother -- who would otherwise consider him a threat to his birthright.

By choosing as his narrator an idiot whose stupidity keeps him alive, Alai invites readers to see the author, too, as one who knows more than he can safely reveal. The world of this novel, after all, is one in which a monk's tongue must be cut out before he can become an historian, in which "you must hurry if you have something you feel you must say about the present, or about the future, because you won't be able to say it after you lose your tongue."

The translation is another fine effort by veteran translator Howard Goldblatt and his wife Sylvia Li-Chun Lin, whose collaborative rendering of Tien-wen's Notes of a Desolate Man was named Translation of the Year (1999) by the American Literary Translators Association. In Red Poppies, the unmannered prose is deceptively simple. Reminiscent of the language of parable, it captures the enigmatic wisdom of the idiot-narrator perfectly.

revenge against america

The Dragonhead, by John Sack. Crown Publishers, $25.95

By Jason Overdorf
(This book review appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review in March 2002).

IN THE 1980s, a Hong Kong furrier named Johnny Kon became the supreme leader of the Big Circle Gang, a violent clique of former Cultural Revolution Red Guards seeking to take over the Asian drug trade. According to journalist John Sack's latest book, Kon's first act as "dragonhead" was to declare war on America.

His gang used unconventional weapons: chintzy flower vases, ice buckets and picture frames filled with heroin. Nobody knows how many people died. But before Kon surrendered, pleading guilty to save his wife the indignity of sharing a jail cell with his mistress, prosecutors estimated his gang had smuggled a billion dollars worth of heroin into the United States, while the Drug Enforcement Agency had named him public enemy No. 1.

Rising from poverty and persecution in China, Kon earned millions in the fur trade in Hong Kong, only to lose it all in a property-market crash. His associates, soldiers of the Big Circle Gang, were former Maoist fanatics. But Kon did not wage his war for money or revolutionary ideals, according to Sack's The Dragonhead. The crime boss declared war on America because he blamed the U.S. for the death of two of his children. His war was one of revenge.

Sack is perhaps best known for his book on the U.S Army's Lt. William Calley, the central figure in the massacre of civilians in My Lai village during the Vietnam War. In The Dragonhead, he tells the story of Kon's rise and fall with the empathy and elan for which he is famous. Readers will recognize his style as what was once called New Journalism, but Sack is no gonzo. He spent 12 years hanging out with mobsters around the world and chatting with Johnny Kon in prison, but he makes neither his own derring-do nor stylistic high jinks the subject of his story. He succeeds brilliantly in evoking the Chinese underworld and draws his characters with the skill of a practised novelist.

After escaping from mainland China and settling in Hong Kong, Kon used his grandfather's formula for dyeing fur pelts, as well as survival skills honed in a mainland labour camp, to build up his business. But it was through his criminal connections that he became rich. A friend in a triad gang steered U.S. soldiers on leave from the war in South Vietnam to Johnny's store. Kon soon moved his business into Vietnam itself, gaining a concession in American bases there.

Kon was introduced to the heroin trade in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), where he counted America's generals among his customers and friends. He didn't arrange those early drug deals for money, but to help scared U.S. soldiers take the edge off their fear. "I do you favour, lieutenan'. I no make money from this," says Johnny. Sack believes him.

When Saigon was about to fall to North Vietnamese forces, Kon left two of his children in Cambodia, where he thought they would be safe. That was days before the Khmer Rouge rebels took Phnom Penh. Both Kon's children died in the jungle. Faced with his wife's reproaches and his own guilt, Kon found his own scapegoat: America.

"The people who killed them that day, were they me?" asks Kon. "No, the people who pushed this war from the China Sea to the Gulf of Siam . . . (were) the war criminals like Colonel I-Have-This-Movie, like General Thrash, General Cushman and General I-Am-the-Greatest, and like Mr. Hey-Hey-LBJ."

Passages like these make the dragonhead a remarkably winning figure. There is an inexorable logic to his gradual descent into shadier and shadier enterprises. And even his worst crimes -- drug-running and ordering murders -- are not beyond what he knew the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency did in Vietnam.

The portrait that emerges is not that of a ruthless mobster but of a reluctant one, whose murders are committed sadly, when self-preservation leaves him no other choice -- and even then only against others who live by the gangster's code.

Sack is more concerned with literary truth than with the moral, legal or -- it must be said -- journalistic kind. He includes few dates and eschews the Chinese names of his rogues' gallery for their more evocative nicknames (Fat Ass, Ghost, Michael Jackson, Movie Star and the like). And he rarely attributes his information to specific sources.

That is not to say that The Dragonhead is marred by a single falsehood. On most points, Johnny's story is consistent with his prosecutors' version. But without the usual clues to weigh the statements of the writer's various informants, the reader must take Sack's word on the book's central questions: Did Johnny Kon really set out to destroy America because its foreign policy killed his kids? Or is that the story of a clever man already 10 years into a 28-year sentence?

like being there

<>Something Like a House, By Sid Smith. Picador, 6.99 ($10)

By Jason Overdorf
<>(This book review appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review in March 2002).

Sid Smith's Something Like a House, the winner of the 2001 Whitbread First Novel Award, is the story of a British deserter from the Korean War who is granted political asylum in China, only to become a slave to Miao-minority peasants.

The deserter, Jim Fraser, carves a life for himself in a village during the worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution. He becomes the "only round-eye in the Red Guards," and when the Miao resort to ritualistic cannibalism, he shares the organs of an executed man "because it was a kind of belonging."

But Something Like a House is not the whinging catalogue of backbreaking labour that is the standard Cultural Revolution tale. In his happiness over his smallest achievements -- for instance, finding part of an old washtub in which to boil his meagre allotment of rice -- Fraser is more like a triumphant Crusoe.

The Whitbread award committee, as well as many reviewers, lauded the authority of Smith's portrayal of a simple man's terrible misfortunes -- making much of the fact that Smith has never travelled to China.
To Smith's credit, the novel doesn't read like the product of hours spent in a library. "The most important preparation for the book was my seven years as a labourer," said Smith, who worked as a journalist for 17 years and lives in England. "I couldn't have written about life as a Chinese peasant without the years in unskilled jobs, including gardener, gravedigger, dustman, docker, council workman, builder's labourer and railway labourer, and a year alone as a woodsman on a cliff-top overlooking the Bristol Channel."

Less successful is the plot development. This takes a serious work of literature perilously close to the cliches of genre fiction. Some marketing genius behind the book's production considers this weakness to be one of its selling points. The excited prose on the dust jacket reads: ". . . he must confront the horrifying secret behind his years in China -- that all along he has been the target of a fearsome conspiracy. And now it threatens us all . . ." The plot is nowhere near as bad as that.

Other aspects of the novel set the bar so high that one wishes Smith had realized his story of life among the Miao was already arresting enough.

travels without a deadline

The River's Tale: A Year on the Mekong, By Edward A. Gargan. Knopf, $26.95

By Jason Overdorf
(This book review appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review in February 2002).

EDWARD GARGAN set out to journey the length of the Mekong River to "hear the tales of survivors, the tales of suffering and endurance" of the people who live along its course in China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. For 15 years a correspondent for The New York Times, he wanted to escape the burden of deadlines, of being "driven by the subject of each story." He wanted the freedom to linger, to wander, to listen and reflect.

The River's Tale: A Year on the Mekong bears the signs of that peripatetic agenda, for good and ill. At moments, Gargan succeeds in communicating the sense of luxury that comes with having only the roughest of plans and answering to no one -- for instance, when he enjoys a meal of chicken and rice cooked by a boatman on a kerosene stove. But too often, Gargan's apparently conscious decisions to eschew the discipline of story-creation cause the book to meander.

He mentions his discovery of illegal casino gambling in Jinhong, China, but does not pursue the story because, he professes, he is not a gambler. In the backwater of Vinh Long, Vietnam, he dismisses with a single parenthetical phrase a lesbian marriage that occurred the previous year, choosing instead to write about young people enamoured of America. He runs into opium traffickers in China, Burma and Laos, but finds them of passing interest only. After all, he has to get down the river.

While one might think that the journey would necessarily land Gargan in remote, untravelled towns, he also spends a surprising amount of time on well-worn tourist paths. He does not always travel on the river -- some portions of it are not navigable -- or even along it. For instance, two chapters in his book focus on the towns of Dali and Lijiang in China, both 60 kilometres from the Mekong, and both way stations for backpackers in southwest China.

The book makes up for the absence of journalistic focus and adventurous derring-do in part through some fine historical writing. Gargan's knowledge of the path he travels and his chronicles of past events are unquestionable, but the book's didactic rewards are undermined by its essential aimlessness.

It lacks the political thrust of the travel writing of Robert Kaplan (Balkan Ghosts) or V.S. Naipaul (India: A Million Mutinies Now), so that the sum of Gargan's observations is no greater than the parts. At times, his pronouncements are rather obvious. The book's introduction tells us he wants to gauge the American legacy in the region, still deep and wide a quarter century after the Vietnam War, but the conclusion he draws is striking in its banality. While he remembers the Vietnam of Nick Ut's photograph of the naked girl running down Highway I after a napalm attack on her village, "all of that seemed so distant, so much part of another time, another place. The Vietnam through which I floated was now looking elsewhere."

In fairness, Gargan relies on his informants' stories, reported in their own words, to capture the concerns of the people along the river. A newspaper reporter must ask leading questions and omit the answers that do not suit his story, but Gargan allows the people he meets to talk about the things that interest them, often with considerable success. He skilfully unveils the complexity of emotion behind the pride one Vietnamese bui doi -- "dust of life," the name given to the offspring of American soldiers -- takes in his father: "He pushed his chest out under his black T-shirt. 'My father was an army colonel,' he said. 'He was high rank'."

Perhaps it is not surprising that the book is strongest in moments that require careful objectivity, the weighing of historical accounts and the reporting of people's stories in their own words. Those are skills well honed in a 15-year career as a reporter. But that dispassionate eye makes for a poor yarn. Gargan is not much of a raconteur -- his anecdotes come few and far between -- and he does not emerge as a personality. He is neither a likeable curmudgeon like Paul Theroux nor a mad adventurer like Bruce Chatwin.

The River's Tale offers a good survey of Asian politics and peoples along the region's most romantic river, but readers of this magazine will be frustrated, in turns, when it points out the obvious and when it fails to pursue the intriguing mysteries it uncovers.

physical culture

Boxing, karaoke, prostitution -- one-stop shopping in the new China

By Jason Overdorf
(This article appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in October 2000).

WHEN he opened the Bison Boxing Club, in Beijing, Li Zhu, a thirty-five-year-old entrepreneur, planned to become China's first fight promoter. Chinese athletes were notoriously ill paid, so it would be easy to find boxers who would fight for cash. Li counted on the Chinese love of gambling to pack the house. He also built a fight gym in the back of the club, and installed body-building equipment in an attempt to cash in on a fitness craze that culminated in 1995 with a government-sponsored National Physical Fitness Program.

The plan was a good one, but like many entrepreneurs in China, Li failed to take into account the numerous intangibles and unwritten rules of the country's changing economy. The first hurdle was crowd control. Drunken gamblers watching a fight tend to start fights of their own. The Bison hired a security force of twenty-five men who wore motorcycle helmets and carried nightsticks to discourage extracurriculars. On top of the rent and staffing costs, the club also had to grease the palms of the police and the hei shehui ("black society") to prevent them from shutting down the gambling, and there was an incessant flow of minor officials and friends of the club who expected free admission and free drinks.

The most unexpected cost turned out to be the fighters. China banned boxing in the 1950s after a death in the ring. In 1986 the Chinese government reinstated Olympic-style boxing, with its emphasis on safety and sportsmanship. Although the state-supported Olympic feeder system paid boxers the equivalent of only $12 to $25 a month, the same boxers now demand that Li Zhu pay them thirty to forty times that for a single match.

But Li refused to go down easily. He was no reformed bureaucrat. A martial-arts enthusiast, he claimed to have made his grubstake as a bodyguard in New York's Chinatown. Back in China he put the money to work "importing cars" -- smuggling them, he implied -- and in a few years branched out into other businesses that, although legal, required a certain flexibility: nightclubs, liquor, and real estate. So, adhering to Deng Xiaoping's famous advice, "It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice," Li transformed the Bison into a mongrel that combined boxing with China's usual one-two: karaoke and prostitution. He gave up on the gambling, dismissed the costly security guards, and replaced them with "chicken-girls."

That was the Bison Club I discovered when, at the age of twenty-eight, I decided I wanted to learn to box. It was my last year in Beijing, where I'd been working for Ogilvy & Mather Advertising, writing corporate propaganda and, later, a market-research study of what we called "the new middle class."After one frustrated attempt I located the club in the embassy district, next to a factory that made People's Liberation Army overcoats and belts.

The Day-Glo graffiti outside the revamped Bison Club read "I won't tol• er•ance your im•pu•dence!" The syllable indicators painted right into the words suggested that the artist had recourse to a dictionary. Nearby he had spray-painted "Thun•der" and "Mor•al•ize," and a caricature of a bodybuilder who proclaimed in a speech bubble, "Bison Very Good!"

Inside, the black walls were covered with more luminous exhortations:"OUTBURST!" "DEFY!" "HATRED!" "MANIA!" "GO CRAZY!" A dozen or so sing-along "hostesses" sat at the bar, cracking sunflower seeds with their teeth and spitting the shells onto the floor. The TV played a Wang Fei concert video, and one of the working girls, packed into a floor-length white dress, dreamily sang along. In the daylight the club was deserted; the spectators' gallery overlooking the ring and the private singing-and-groping rooms on either side sat empty. Li Zhu, giving me the tour, told me that the club still held exhibition matches on Fridays, but most nights the ring doubled as a dance floor, and had the disco ball to prove it.

THE Bison still taught boxing. The club's coach, Dongzi, was a former professional who fought for the Beijing municipal team in the late 1980s. He was built like a sprinter, with a fighter's nose. In just a few minutes he taught me what he called "the A-B-C": the defensive stance, the left jab, and the straight right hand. "Not bad" was his highest form of praise, "not pretty" his strongest condemnation. He spoke in a steady patter of trainer's metaphors:

"You have to use the momentum of your body. Your body is your TNT."

"Your fist is the bullet, but your arm isn't the gun. Your hips are your gun."

"Watch yourself in the mirror. Watch your body, not your face! This is a gym, not a beauty parlor."

Although he was already teaching three or four other beginners and training an ex-pro who had fought for the industrial team Locomotive, Dongzi was apprehensive about teaching me, a Westerner. "I will be a very diligent teacher," he said, "so that one day, when you return to America and tell them that you learned to box here, China will not lose face."

Dongzi's vow of diligence became a recurring theme throughout my training. New students inevitably asked me what country I came from, and upon hearing that I was American, would exclaim, "American boxing is very good!" (No other language underscores the banality of everyday conversation like Chinese.) On cue, Dongzi would respond with the vow, which he always expressed with gravity.

Though he was partly responsible for railroading me into a bumbling interview with China Central Television's sports channel, Dongzi protected me from many of the indignities of being a laowai -- a word that translates as "venerable foreigner" but is used as a synonym for "buffoon" or "rube." When, after I had a rudimentary grasp of the fundamentals, the club's managers began pressuring me to perform in an exhibition match, it was Dongzi who provided me with a series of face-saving excuses: I worked overtime, I had a mild injury, I had a date, and so on. My real reason for avoiding a match was that my opponent was sure to be Gao Qiang. One of the retired professional boxers who frequented the Bison Club, Gao Qiang was always trying to lure me into a thumping. I was certain that he would be unable to resist humbling me under the lights, especially with the crowd chanting, "China! China! China!"

Whether I fought or not, the club's managers reasoned, if they buddied up to me, my foreign friends would pave a path from the Hilton Hotel to their sing-and-grope rooms. They were always after me to sample the wares, offering free drinks and access to their hospitality rooms -- I'd only have to tip the girl, they assured me. I told them I'd consider the offer, and declined the drinks. I was familiar enough with Beijing manners to know that once I'd accepted one, my hosts would make sure I didn't leave until I had to be carried out. Instead I placated them by making myself ill on the cigarettes they constantly proffered.

Nevertheless, in the end Wang, the night manager (meaning he handled the girls and the karaoke bar, not the gym), wore me down, and I agreed to attend one of the Friday-night exhibitions -- not to fight, not to bring friends, not to accept any of the Homeric catalogue of "courtesy girl" discounts, but simply to watch the match. "Excellent," Manager Wang said. "This Friday we will have genuine professionals."

When I showed up that Friday, bartenders, security men, and hostesses were all running around shouting into radios, trying to locate replacements for the "professionals," who had backed out. Nobody told me that, of course. To help them save face I pretended not to notice the panic surrounding us -- a denial of reality that was quintessentially Chinese. Manager Wang did his best to distract me from the fiasco. He bought me a beer and set me up with a beautiful, calculating girl named Ju Ling, who draped herself over me but before long declared in a strong provincial accent that talking with me was "one part listening, one part guessing."

Finally they lined up the fighters, and Li Zhu announced that they were ready to begin. Ju Ling took me upstairs to the gallery overlooking the ring. We watched the other girls work the room below, finding their regular clients and escorting them up the spiral staircases that led to their seats. The johns were all businessmen from Hong Kong or Taiwan. The management turned away locals, because, as Li Zhu told me later, he didn't like to see brawling every night. Soon the gallery was full of businessmen and prostitutes, cuddling like teenagers. On one of the walls Day-Glo proclaimed: "COME ON GIRL, HAVE ENOUGH WINE FOR DRINKING! CRAZY!"

The match was a farce. I recognized one of the combatants, Old Lu, from the club's boxing class. A balding fireplug, he was nicknamed "the Panda" by the ring announcer. By no means was Old Lu a professional boxer; he was the proprietor of a roadside snack stand that sold ice cream and shrimp-flavored chips, and he looked drunk. His opponent, Cao Yu, had graduated from the boxing class some time ago and was also a head taller and forty pounds heavier.

The businessmen shouted for Old Lu to charge in close and "jia you" ("give it gas"). They sounded like big brothers trying to get a little brother to fool with hornets. During the breaks one of the hostesses climbed into the ring with a round card and strutted across a few times. The DJ fired up the club music and colored lights.

The exhibition ended when Old Lu was hit with a love pat and went down. Mr. Beijing 1996, the club's bodybuilding instructor and referee, lurched into the center of the ring and stopped the fight.

"It's fixed," Dongzi explained. Later he warned me that Ju Ling and the other hostesses were chicken-girls. He translated to make certain I understood: "How do you say? Hookas?"

I assured him that my motives were purely anthropological. "I know," I told him. "I just wanted to find out more about their way of life."

"Don't find out too much," he said, "or I'll stop coaching you."
DONGZI'S protectiveness was charming but absurd. That year I was living illegally in Beijing's most notorious foreigners' ghetto, a filthy enclave of crumbling alley houses and soot-stained, anonymous apartment buildings called Maizi Dian -- "the Wheat Shop." It was one of the few neighborhoods where the police overlooked migrants without Beijing residence permits, so half the town's prostitutes lived there, a short walk from the Hard Rock Cafe and the "big boss" karaoke bars on the main road -- monoliths flaunting the new Chinese aesthetic: Ionic columns, million-watt light displays, and plaster-of-paris knockoffs of Michaelangelo's David. The usual set of down-and-out-in-Beijing-and-Bangkok foreigners lived there too, "local hires" dodging restrictions that forced expatriates to live in designated enclaves where the rent ran $1,500 to $12,000 a month. As a "local hire," a kind of second-class laowai, I received no housing allowance, and on my salary I couldn't afford even the cheapest legal apartment.

A score of all-night barbershops and massage parlors lay between my compound and the main street. Whenever I went out for dinner, touts accosted me: "Massagie? Massagie?" I walked everywhere with purpose, because otherwise a furtive character would step into stride with me and begin whispering about a barbershop just around the corner where the girls were beautiful and cheap and where you could da pao ("set off a bang") for only $25.

That the Public Security Bureau tacitly allowed prostitution was clear from the nonsense of its periodic crackdowns. Instead of closing the brothels themselves, Public Security preferred to cordon off the neighborhoods where the prostitutes lived and issue fines to people who had no residence permits. The officers had to make a show of doing something. The Strike Hard campaign against crime and corruption which the Chinese Communist Party had revived in 1996 was in full swing. But it was proving no more effective than an earlier campaign to force government officials to drive domestic "integrity cars"instead of the usual Mercedes-Benzes. When Public Security made its predictable raids before the city's political events (meetings of the National People's Congress, President Clinton's visit to China, the anniversary of the June 4 protests in Tiananmen Square), the few laowai bivouacked illegally in Maizi Dian spent the night elsewhere.

Li Zhu resented the Strike Hard campaign, because he thought it gave the men he paid off, who could now say there was added pressure to close down the club, more leverage in negotiating bribes. He often complained that the club lost money and that it didn't make sense for him to keep it open. He claimed he persisted only because he loved boxing -- he trained with the class between mysterious trips to his liquor factory in the south -- and because he wanted "a place like this" for his own use. He waved his hand at the rusted Universal weight machines when he said "a place like this." I tried to imagine what he meant, how he reconciled his vision of a world-class fight club with the absurdity of the Bison's English graffiti and the prostitutes crooning saccharine Hong Kong pop.

The boxers went along with his face-saving fantasy, conspiring to ignore the hostesses, who arrived every evening around eight o'clock and marched haughtily through the gym to the drab barracks room in back where they changed into their work attire. Oddly, there were no off-color remarks, no whistles of appreciation, no lessons in comparative anatomy from any of the men. As far as I could tell, I was the only one who ogled. The boxers never acknowledged the prostitutes, except to remark with a kind of pride, "I bet there's no place like this in America."

Then one day, while Li Zhu was away on business, the girls didn't show up. None of us thought anything of it at first, until the two kid bartenders who had staged a comic slap-fight boxing match at the club's Chinese New Year party also stopped coming to work, and the karaoke bar closed down. Soon Manager Wang was gone too. The "auntie" who took membership cards and dispensed locker keys could tell us nothing about where everyone had gone. For a few days johns wandered back to the fight gym, where someone would inform them that the karaoke bar was closed. Word spread, and it wasn't long before the Bison Boxing Club had become just that -- a boxing, karate, and bodybuilding gym, and nothing more.

I began to worry that Li Zhu had been telling the truth about the club's financial woes. I was glad to be rid of the johns, who liked to make wise remarks about me for the benefit of their companions, but I missed the nightly procession of girls.

Then, one Saturday morning, I arrived at the club to find Li Zhu back in town to hand-pick a beefed-up security force. Ever since the club had dispensed with gambling in favor of prostitution, its only security guard had been Old Zhang, a gray-haired gentleman whose principal qualification for the job was a well-fitting army-surplus uniform. He lived with his family in a shack next to the club's iron gate. Guard duty entailed waking up in the middle of the night when clients banged on the bars and letting them in. Today a section of the gym had been roped off, and Li was seated at a scorer's table next to it with his own harmless-looking bodyguard. About thirty young men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five were smoking, stretching, or otherwise preparing to audition. They were demobilized People's Liberation Army soldiers, too fresh-faced to be frightening. Even so, this tryout seemed like an ominous development.

Li Zhu assured me that there was no reason to worry. He was evasive about his reason for hiring the new guards, though he did admit that he had closed the karaoke bar and dismissed the girls because there had been threats of some kind. He wanted the guards there mostly for appearances, he claimed. Only after I pressed him did he admit that some other karaoke-bar owners would be happier if the Bison closed down entirely. He hadn't paid the right people, or he hadn't paid them enough, or they just wanted to run him out. Still, he joked, nobody would be so stupid as to start trouble with the Bison, which was, after all, not only a karaoke bar but also, he proudly reminded me, a fight gym.

On Monday the young men Li Zhu selected moved into the prostitutes' vacant barracks and set up a field kitchen on the concrete pad beneath the front steps. When Li Zhu turned up to review the troops, they sprang into servile orderliness, scrambling into a line and standing at a semblance of attention while Li Zhu paced up and down in front of them in an imported track suit, declaiming in high rhetorical style. The rest of the time they dozed on the lobby couches or on their bunks in the back room. Apparently my big nose and blond hair afforded me some rank with this bunch, because when, between naps, they patrolled the entrance, they would snap to attention and greet me with a somewhat facetious salute.

This routine lasted three weeks before Li Zhu decided that the thugs who were trying to run him out of business were a lesser evil than his own forces, who were doing it involuntarily. The Bison might have made money, but not with two dozen young soldiers to feed and no girls to turn a profit. That night Li Zhu rejoined the sparring sessions and announced that he had taken on new business partners. I interpreted this to mean that his rivals were taking over the club.

Li Zhu admitted that he would no longer take an active role in running the Bison, but assured us that he would still come around to spar now and then. Later, at what seemed like a farewell banquet at a nearby restaurant, Li tried to save face. He explained away the club's failure with his well-rehearsed fantasies: he had failed to make a profit because he had been more concerned with improving Olympic boxing in China; all he had wanted was to provide a service for the community. With the girls gone, even his nonsense about Olympic boxing seemed less outrageous than usual. The new business partners, Li said, planned to remodel the karaoke bar and go after a better class of clients.

I was nearing the end of my time in China, and Li Zhu's final, inevitable failure was the first proof I saw that no matter how soon I returned, nothing would be the same. Manager Wang never came back. Presumably, the new partners fired him. Soon he was replaced with a grinning sycophant, whom I resolved to dislike. Four pimps installed themselves in the front offices. They brought in a new string of girls every week -- a practice that would stimulate repeat business, Li Zhu said.

The new manager cornered me one day and explained that when the renovations were finished, the club would hold a grand re-opening party to welcome back its loyal customers. For the festivities they had hired singers and exotic dancers -- real professionals, he assured me. They had even planned a fashion show, a soft-core substitute for striptease, which was not tolerated by the authorities -- even in a brothel. There would also be boxing.

Now the reason for the sales pitch surfaced: the new management wanted me to box at the show. The manager went to great pains to persuade me that it would be "very interesting" -- a phrase the Chinese use to describe things that are not interesting but humiliating, dangerous, laughable, or all of the above. I was reluctant to participate in the farce, but after almost a year of training I had become something of a club mascot, promoted in status from "the foreigner" to "our foreigner." The boxers were all keen to give me a grand send-off. It would also be good for me to have experience "under the lights," Dongzi said, and besides, the fight was fixed, so nobody would get hurt. Wang Zhe, my usual sparring partner, volunteered as my opponent, and my pro debut was on.

IN the dressing room before the fight Dongzi issued peremptory instructions. In the first round Wang Zhe would lead and I would counterpunch. In the second round we would reverse roles. The third round would be up to us to improvise, but, he cautioned us, "Bie luan da" -- "Don't get crazy."

Either because they had seen pro boxing only on television or simply because the public-address system was there, the managers decided that international standards demanded a deafening play-by-play. As I bullied Wang Zhe around the ring, the announcer wryly observed, "Wang Zhe is in a little better condition than his opponent." This was an understatement: I outweighed him by twenty pounds.

Li Zhu came to my corner during the first break. He was dissatisfied with the script. "We don't want anyone to get hurt," he said, his tone suggesting that an injury would be very good for business indeed. Then he suggested that I make a whffft! noise with my mouth whenever I threw a punch. He seemed to think that would make the conflict seem more genuine, though it was obvious to me that it would do the opposite.

I have little doubt that that night's spectators were treated to the dullest boxing match of all time. By the end the greasier portion of the crowd had turned its attention to groping the hostesses, perking up only when one of the go-go dancers strutted across the ring with the round card. My supporters were entertaining themselves with their own sarcastic commentary. Nonetheless, by the time the third round, mercifully, ended, and I was announced the winner (it was my good-bye party, after all), my efforts to look competent and make whffft! noises convincingly had left me exhausted.

The deafening public-address system told me to stay in the ring, and then Dongzi stepped through the ropes with the microphone. Whether owing to an innate affinity or as a side effect of their love for karaoke, the Chinese are great with microphones. It is as though the mindless rhetoric of the game-show host or the tour guide were a property of the device itself, not of the person using it. Dongzi deftly explained that the celebration also marked the end of my stay in China. The club wanted to present me with a parting gift, a Bison Club T-shirt signed by all the boxers and the entire staff.

Then Dongzi gave me the mike, and I commenced rambling in foreigner's Chinese. It was at least as bad, my friends told me, as what one of them called "the I love youse, because youse love me speech" at the end of Rocky IV.

Later Dongzi eased up next to me and slipped me 200 yuan -- about $25. "Leader Li wants you to have this," he said, "for the fight." I couldn't help thinking that it was just what the girls received to da pao.

photo

tajik kingdom: traveling the chinese pamirs

By Jason Overdorf
(This article appeared in Global Adventure magazine in September 1999).

Blood pumped from the throat of the slaughtered calf with each beat of its fading heart. The Tajiks had it pinned down in the dust between the house and the sewage ditch, and its eyes were white and rolling. I, the murderer, stood by slack-jawed, the offending knife still in my hand. I was trying desperately not to be sick.

The calf took only five minutes to struggle into death, but the Tajiks couldn't wait that long. As soon as its kicks weakened enough that they didn't need to pin it down, Ayoshbek (ai ôsh bek) began to butcher it. To his and his three brothers great amusement, I poured "white liquor" from my throat to the sewage ditch. Nothing for it but to say, Easy come, easy go. This is what you put yourself in for when you show up on the doorstep of a Tajik family and talk them into letting you stay as their guest.

There are only 20,000 Tajiks living in China, along the Karakoram Highway in the Pamir mountain range. But with Afghanistan and Tajikistan torn by endemic civil wars, the Chinese-owned Pamirs are the safest place to explore Tajik culture. The region is best visited en route from China to Pakistan (or vice versa). Travelers coming through Pakistan follow the Karakoram Highway, renowned for its proximity to some of the worlds best glacial treks, from Gilgit to Sust and across the Chinese border to Tashkurgan, in the Pamirs. From there they proceed along the ancient Silk Road to Kashgar, a jumping off point for the Middle Kingdom.

Part of Chinas Xinjiang (New Frontier) province, the Pamir region was first settled by Muslim peoples in 1895, when the British drew out a thin promontory from Afghanistan called the Wakhan strip. Looking for a strong buffer between India and Russia, the British encouraged the Chinese to take and fill out the settlement, which they promptly did. The gross ethnic and cultural differences between these Afghani Muslims (later joined by other Central Asians) and the ruling Han Chinese laid the foundation for resentment that continues today.

Ruchaikh (roo chä eek), my Tajik host, tactfully expressed this resentment just minutes after I landed up on his doorstep, the unexpected guest. "Mao Zedong was good," he said, echoing a common attitude of China's farmers. "When he was around we didn't have to worry about all the Chinese people moving in."

As the name New Frontier suggests, the mainly Han government considers the province an untapped resource ripe for settlement, much as the former Soviet Union viewed Siberia. Rich in oil and mineral deposits, the region has attracted industry and with it a legion of ordinary Chinese looking for brighter futures. Forced into close contact with the Han, the Tajik peoples feel a palpable threat to their Muslim way of life, according to Ruchaik.

Their animosity toward the Han may be one reason the Tajiks like foreigners. Another reason is curiosity. In the isolated Pamirs, the Tajiks have only Chinas state-controlled television to rely on for entertainment and information from the outside world. Nevertheless, there are few home hostels of the kind found in Uzbekistan or Mongolia, probably because of Chinas Public Security Bureau (PSB). Both as a carryover from more zealous days and because Muslims have recently agitated for independence (even detonating a few bombs), the state prohibits foreigners living with local families unless they register with the police first. That doesn't mean that families won't take in travelers, only that they are a little circumspect about it. Penalties for violating this kind of minor regulation are light, provided that the visitor in question is not engaged in smuggling or trying to visit closed areas. The regulations nevertheless make it difficult to find host families because the Tajiks cannot set up hostel businesses without registering with the PSB and applying for a hoteliers license.

With these obstacles in place, travelers can only succeed in finding host families by being brazen. Countless China-trekkers recount stories of going up to doors, knocking, and explaining in elaborate and comical mime that theyd like a bed for the night. A less interesting but easier option is to camp near a village, where much of the grazing land along the rolling foothills is held in common. Herdsmen rarely object to tents pitched on the common, and when they do can usually be pacified with cigarettes.

For travelers unfamiliar with Central Asia, this kind of easy hospitality may seem unbelievable. But like many of the minorities of Xinjiang, the Tajiks view their reputation for hospitality as a crucial part of their heritage. As a case in point, although I showed up on his doorstep with nothing but an illegible note scrawled on the back page of a Uyghur-English phrase book to explain my presence, Ruchaikh's first move was to give me a broad handshake and invite me into the house for tea and nan (bread).

Milk tea is almost synonymous with hospitality, and as integral to the Tajik diet as rice is to the southern Han. Whenever a guest arrives, whether from across the world or from a neighboring field, the host brings out a tray bundled in a quilt, inside of which is the days old, dry nan, and a fresh pot of salty milk tea. Made from red leaves, Tajik tea is more similar to English tea than any other in China, especially if you can talk them into giving you some sugar. Tajik nan is thick, dry and hard: an edible stone. Mysteriously, the Tajiks have no interest in fresh nan. Nan is cereal in the morning (broken up and floating in milk tea), bread at lunchtime (munched dry and washed down with tea), and shovel at night (scooping up noodles that taste suspiciously of milk tea). For days in a row, barring the arrival of a prodigal son and slaughtering of a fatted calf, this is their diet, without variation.

Before I finished my tea, Shakurbek (shä koor bek) came in and gave me the high sign. Ruchaikh's oldest son, Shakurbek had collected me in Tashkurgan after an eventful afternoon with the PSB. The two of us had cycled out to the village on matching Flying Pigeons, and finished off matching bottles of "white liquor" at a roadside shack. Though Shakurbek was 36 years old, he had sworn me to secrecy as we wove down the highway: "Don't tell my father we got drunk." We became instant friends in our petty conspiracy.

"This is my eldest son, Shakurbek," Ruchaikh said. "You're lucky you came today. Tomorrow we will have a party because Shakurbek is moving into his own house." I pretended to be meeting Shakurbek for the first time. In a moment, Ruchaikhs remaining three sons, Ayoshbek, Kushi and Amanila, had arrived, and the second conspiracy -- to get me to slaughter my own calf -- had begun.

There was some voluble discussion in Tajik, and then the brothers left me alone again with Ruchaikh. A practiced informant (his family had already hosted an anthropologist), Ruchaikh began to tell me about the design of the Tajik house and its relation to the beliefs of the Aga Khan Muslims. Indicating the pentagonal skylight over the stove, he explained in Mandarin that five is a sacred number for the Aga Khan. "You see the window has five sides. This room has five sub-rooms. There are five platforms on five different levels. There are five outer walls. Everything is in fives."

I was more interested in the ornate rugs and tapestries covering the walls and the platforms than in Tajik numerology, but I nodded politely. Tajik homes center around a main living room that is similar in conception, though not in size, to the Mongol yurt. The entryway and area surrounding the stove is at ground level, and paved with stone, concrete or dirt. This pit serves as workplace, spittoon, ashtray and playpen, sometimes all at once. When tea gets cold, for instance, one of the women will take your bowl from you and sprinkle it lightly around the pit.

Around the pit are the five platforms Ruchaikh mentioned. Each is very similar to the kang (brick bed) of northeastern China, but there is no heating system underneath. Thick Uyghur, Kazahk and Tajik rugs are piled on the platforms, making them both beautiful and comfortable. The walls are decorated and insulated with the same variety of rugs, though now that factory production is commonplace, you may find modern exotic among the ancient. In Ruchaikh's central room, a wall covering of light blue peeks from beneath the hanging rugs. It has a black border with "SOS SOS SOS SOS" written on it and silhouettes of palm trees on alternating yellow and red fields, above each of which is scrawled "Aloha Hawaii."

No sooner had I made these cursory observations than the four brothers, led by the grinning Shakurbek, returned.

"Since you have come from so far away," Ruchaikh announced. "We have decided to slaughter a calf in your honor."

My thanks were obscured and preempted by my pidgin-Chinese attempt to recount the story of the prodigal son and Ruchaikh's sudden, "Let's go."

The calf was waiting for us in the snow. Ruchaikh stood by as the brothers made short work of heaving it to the ground and twisting its head around until its nose was pointed to the sky and its throat exposed. In a detached way, I thought, "Yes, Muslims always slaughter animals by slitting their throats." So from a college course on North Africa and the Middle East. Then Ruchaikh handed me a wickedly primitive Uyghur (a Turkic ethnicity also present in the region) knife.

"You want to do the slaughtering?" he asked.

"No. I think I won't do a good job." What I meant, of course, was that I'd make a mess of it, cover everyone with blood, and put the calf through more misery than necessary. My Chinese isn't that good, frankly, and neither was theirs.

"Mei guanxi," said Ruchaikh. No problem: The old conversation stopper.

They paused expectantly (all but the calf), and I was forced to admit, "I'm afraid."

There was a quick, uncritical laugh, and Ruchaikh abruptly took the knife and sawed into the calf's throat, avoiding the sudden spurt of blood and cutting all the way through the windpipe, so that the calf's ragged breathing began to gurgle. "I could have done that," I thought, but I kept my mouth shut.

When the British were debating whether to occupy the Pamir and Kun Lun mountain ranges in the late 19th Century, the military officers familiar with the region described it as perhaps the most difficult and inaccessible country in the world, and advised that taking it for Britain would be folly. For todays traveler, difficult and inaccessible are some of the most attractive words in the language and the area is nearly unrestricted. On the Pakistani side of the border, the Karakoram highway has become one of the worlds most popular destinations both for serious climbers and for ordinary adventurers. It passes by K2, the worlds second highest peak, and six more that climbers rank among the worlds best. The novice-level trek that passes K2 (only possible with a guide) is the best known and most popular trek in Pakistan.

Pakistans trekking season extends from April to October. August and September, when the weather is best, are the most popular months. There are many unrestricted treks, but those routes which reach an altitude above 6000 meters or pass near Afghan or Kashmir border areas generally require special permits that are an expensive headache to attain. Both Lonely Planet and Rough Guides have written comprehensive guidebooks on Pakistan and the Karakoram highway, and offer extensive information about the treks available in the Karakoram and how to arrange for guides and permits.

The route to China goes over the Khunjerab Pass (4700 m), which closes at the end of October and may close at any time that authorities deem it impassable. Rock slides are common in rainy weather and many travelers experience altitude sickness -- usually mild. Buses run from Sust in Pakistan to Tashkurgan in China (and vice versa), a 220 kilometer journey. It is also possible to cross the pass on foot or by bicycle, as testified by two adventurous Swiss guys who claimed to have cycled all the way from Greece. The border guards cant believe it, they said, but they let you pass through.

Tashkurgan itself is a rather dull town, particularly if you cant communicate with the natives. Most travelers, impossibly hoping to see all of Southern China on their 3 month visas or scooting off to Pakistan, take a brief look and move on, forgetting that in places like the Pamirs, its not the cities or the nightlife you come to see.

On all sides, Tashkurgan is surrounded by imposing snow-capped peaks. And because China has yet to develop the infrastructure for adventure tourism present in Nepal or Pakistan, precious few climbers have tackled these ranges. Unfortunately there are few, if any, outfitters who offer guided treks in the Chinese Pamirs, though the growing interest in climbing, which has recently garnered coverage on China Central Television and spawned the first rock gym in Beijing, may change that soon. Even well-funded and experienced expeditions face bureaucratic challenges that eclipse those posed by the mountains. Chinas two-time hysteria over Richard Bransons balloon invasion epitomizes the countrys attitude toward foreign adventurers, even the very rich ones.

A more realistic, and perhaps more interesting, travel possibility may be to tag along with a local Tajik trapper as he runs his trapline. The bazaars of Kashgar, 200 k farther into China, are filled with bobcat, lynx and wolf pelts brought down from Tashkurgan by Tajik trappers. Sadly, the Tajiks are not aware of or do not understand the problem of endangered species, so the rare animals living in and around the Pamirs are in mortal peril. Ten years ago a national park initiative was begun on the Tajikistan side of the mountains, but as civil war continues the chances of successful completion of the project dwindle. The threatened species include the Markhor, the Siberian Ibex, the Marco Polo Sheep, the Asiatic Mouflon, the Snow Leopard, the Long-Tailed Marmot and the Asiatic Bear. Even Ruchaikh has the poorly stuffed body of a Snow Leopard in the yurt behind his house, along with several wolves. If he was upset by the depletion of the animal population, it was the sorrow of the hunter whose sport has suddenly evaporated.

On the other hand, adventures dont always require Gore-Tex. The second day I spent with Ruchaikhs family was the day of Shakurbeks party. By this time, I had decided that Shakurbek must have been their black sheep; he didnt go to work, and he was more than willing to get blotto in the middle of the afternoon. Sure enough, his friends were hardly what one would call devout Muslims. From 10 a.m. when guests began to arrive until 10 p.m., when we adjourned to a wedding reception in a neighboring house, the liquor was flowing. The Chinese favor a sorghum-based moonshine that is crystal clear and smells like kerosene. Not knowing any better, the Chinese Tajiks have adopted the stuff. There is no way to consume it without ceremony -- its not sippin whiskey -- but the Tajiks have a particularly ritualized approach. One man, in our case Shakurbeks younger brother Ayoshbek, controls the bottle, pouring healthy shots into a common bowl and delivering them to whomever he chooses. The recipient, as far as I could tell, is not allowed to refuse.

By the time dinner was served, none of us was feeling any pain, and one of the less distinguished guests had curled up in the fetal position in a corner and passed out. The older kids were tickling his face with bits of straw and sitting on him.

The main course was a dish called hand grab rice (zhuo fan) in Chinese. Greasy saffron rice is served on a large communal platter with stewed beef or lamb in the center. Using your fingers, you take a piece of meat and some rice, press it into the side of the platter to pack it, and pop it in your mouth. The dirty fingernails of your companions notwithstanding, it is very good in a Lawrence of Arabia sort of way.

After dinner, everyone lolled on the carpet, telling stories or listlessly digesting. Now that the young men had exhausted themselves drinking, the older men took over one platform and the women and children sat down to eat at another. Ruchaikh called me over to sit next to him and translated the questions of the older men into Chinese. They wanted to know why Westerners imprison their elderly in hospitals, how common laborers were able to afford cars, whether there were Tajiks in New York, and the following gem:

They want to know if you have dogs in America, Ruchaikh asked.

Yes. We have dogs . . . But we dont eat them.

We dont eat them, either. The Han eat them.

Translations issued in both directions and a spirited discussion began. After a moment, Ruchaikh recapitulated for me. Dog, horse, mule, snake, he said, ticking off the animals on his fingers. We dont eat them.

We dont eat them, either.

Sheep, cow and chicken we eat.

Us too.

I tried to look reflective as Ruchaikh spoke some more with the men.

What about camels? he finally asked.

We have them, I said.

Camels, Ruchaikh said. We eat camels, too.

Soon it was time for the young men to head off to the wedding reception, and Shakurbek called me aside.

If anybody says anything to you at the party, he said. You tell him youre with Shakurbek. Very reassuring.

It was a long walk across furrowed fields to the house where the reception was being held, and Shakurbek and I had to hold each other up to make it. Like any good host, he was drunker than I was, and kept insisting that we stop so that he could express more eloquently and with greater sincerity that he was my friend. I learned to know that these soliloquies had come to an end when he said, Now tell Ayoshbek that hes drunk. Nothing like sibling rivalry to keep you going when every ten steps you find yourself face down in the snow.

Id like to say that the wedding party itself was a fascinating glimpse into the Tajik culture, but Ill tell the truth: The wedding party was terrifying. There were nearly 600 men crammed into a five-room house of the same design as Ruchaikhs. Under dim lights, men danced together in a ring formed by their peers while off in a corner a few veiled women watched. Within a few minutes I went from being a curiosity -- a fool in a Tajik cap borrowed from Shakurbek -- to a bargaining chip. A very good and very relentless dancer grabbed me by the shoulders and tried to drag me into the ring. I was set to oblige him, being a good sport, drunk and not having much choice. Then Shakurbek stepped in and started shaking the guy around by the lapels. I didnt see how they managed to resolve it -- some absurd dance off? -- because Ayoshbek whisked me outside. I guess he noticed me turning white with fear and decided to take me back to the house that had become, in that instant, home.