19 Hours in XiaoJin

The bank is closed, so I know I have to wait for tomorrow coming.

I’m not desperate, for there is nothing I can do about it. In a small mountain county like XiaoJin, it is routine for a bank to be closed at 4:30, as well as its ATM machine, even though it has a sign above it that reads: 24 hours for cash withdrawal.

“Therearetwootheragriculturebankshere. Let’sseeifwearelucky.” the taxi driver says with a strong local accent, which takes me a while to dig his meaning out. Then he hurries to take me to the destination. He doesn’t want the payment to be postponed.

Well, I’m out of luck. I only manage to catch one of the bank’s clerks tidying up their desks, ready to go home.

“You’ll have to wait till tomorrow morning.” the woman tells me.

“Can’t you just extend your work a little longer? I need to withdraw the cash. I haven’t got even a cent in my pocket and I got to go back to RiLong town. Please!”

“Sorry, there’s nothing I can do to help you. The computer is turned off, you see? It’s impossible to get it back on, the whole computerized system is not controlled by us.”

“So tomorrow 8:30?”

“No. 10:30.”

“Why? The sign outside says …”

“Tomorrow is Saturday, and we don’t open the door until 10:30 on Saturdays. It’s a routine, regular thing.” She is a little annoyed. For her, the job taking and paying out money, not answering questions.

“Now, whatyougonnado? Howaboutmy20yuantaxifee?”


I’m lying on a bed in a small dark room now. There are two other empty beds in the room. The Darkness is falling. Bulbs are lit up outside and the shimmering light comes onto my face through the window. The dark room is quiet, deadly quiet. The ceiling is so high that all I can see is only a black hollow above me, coming down to devour me. There is a moldy smell coming from God-knows-where.

I have an oily and stained quilt covering my body. I don’t take off my clothes nor my shoes. It is going to be chilly in the valley in the night, although it is August. I don’t want to get a cold.

Three hours ago, I got on the taxi in the hope of fetching the money. We could have withdrawn the cash from the bank in RiLong, if it hadn’t been moved to XiaoJin three days before we arrived there for the mountain climbing. After paying the climbing guide 300 yuan including the money for the rental of horses and tents, we ran out of money, yet we still needed to pay for the accommodation and buy two return tickets. Now I’m in XiaoJin, 35 kilometers from RiLong, where my friend is lying in the hotel after a hot relaxing bath, watching TV probably, and here I am, on a appalling bed, under a smelly quilt.


I spent 2 yuan for a simple supper: a bowl of dumplings. Now there is only 2.5 yuan left, which will enable me to buy myself a breakfast and make another call to my friend tomorrow, who, at the same time, in RiLong. I could use my cell phone to kill the time if it was able to pick up the signal. The mobile telecommunication company in its advertisement tells the customers that the signal can be picked up almost everywhere even in the mountains or on the oceans. Bastard! Now I have the evidence that they are liars.

My mother is going to be crazy. I have been phoning her since the beginning of the tour to report that I’m safe or everything is OK, things like that. Three days ago when I was still in ChengDu, a pig plague broke out in a small town of southern Sichuan. I forgot to phone her that day, and she called me instead in a furious and hysterical pitch accusing me of making her mad. Since my father left her for another woman, she’s been in an uneasy state and she becomes so overwhelmingly possessive of me that her nerves are on the edge of collapsing. One day she told me, What am I going to do if you leave me, too? I consoled her by saying that I wouldn’t. She murmured, Yes, you will, someday, sooner or later. She just couldn’t let it go.

I lied to her when I was planning to go to Sichuan for mountain climbing. I told her that the school had assigned me research to do for this summer holidays and I needed to go to ChengDu. She sighed and said, If it’s the school’s assignment, then I’m not going to stand in your way. It would be harsh and cruel for her to know that I’m 2000 kilometers away and yet full of uncertainties.

Half an hour ago, I made a call to my friend in an IP telephone supermarket.

“I’m stuck here.” I said in a calm tone. I don’t understand how I maintained my composure.

“What? You mean you can’t get back?”

“Yes. The banks had been closed when I got here and won’t be open until 10:30 tomorrow morning. I’ve checked the time table in the bus station here. Tomorrow, the last bus back to ChengDu is due at 11:30 by way of RiLong and I’ll pick you up there. So we still have time, just have to wait.”

“Why don't’ you ask the taxi driver to take you back to RiLong?”

“I did, but he said it would be impossible for him to take me back unless I promised to pay him twice the price.”

“That bastard! Then where are you gonna spend the night?...You only have 9 yuan with you…Have you had supper?” A deflated voice came from the other end of the cord.

“The driver got me a place to sleep. Don’t worry. It’s OK. We just need to wait.”

The driver knew a woman who ran a cheap inn. It’s only costing me 4.5 yuan for a night, a good deal. I know I can’t ask too much when I haven’t brought luck with me.

My friend used to be a straight-A student at high school. But he succeeded in changing himself to a new man after attending university. Maybe it’s the university that changed him. His mother was very strict on him when we were little kids. She never allowed him to play with us. Now beyond his mother’s control, he was addicted to video games, playing day and night. I once said to him, You are taking revenge on your mother by getting the childhood back that you missed. He smiled and said, I can’t say you are wrong.

Last semester, he failed 3 courses. When I went to see him in the winter holidays, his mother told me he’d gone to the internet bar for video games since last night. Then with tears dripping out of her eyes, she begged me to help her son out of this game addiction, You are his best friend. He won’t listen to me but he will listen to you. I complied. It was embarrassing for me to see someone else’s mother crying in front of me.

One night I asked him whether he was ready to quit. He said, you’re fond of reading, then when are you going to quit? I answered, How come these two things are related? He suddenly got a little excited, you’re entertained when reading books, so am I; you live in your own world, so do I; you’re not going to make a living by reading books, neither am I.

But think about your mother, how concerned she’s about you.

Well, she doesn’t know much about me. Everything that she thinks she’s done for my good makes me depressed. She’s happy to do whatever she thinks makes a perfect child but never asking my feelings. That’s selfish.

I was speechless. If a son accuses his mother of being selfish, what else could I say.

My mind is clear, terribly clear. I’m supposed to be tired and drowsy after two-day’s climbing, so that I can instantly fall asleep and forget all the troubles to be awake in next day’s dawn.

The peak of the snow mountain is 5760-meter high. It happened only 9 hours ago. The night before our ascent, we pitched a tent 1500 meters below the peak. At midnight, I went out of the tent to pee. The rain was dripping and the wind brushed my neck softly. I shivered. All the mountains surrounding me were dark and melancholy. How could they appear so tender and warm to me when they claimed a number of lives every year? The next early morning when we reached the peak, looking at the snow caps near us, I cried. I don’t know why I cried. I just couldn’t suppress my tears.

We sat there for almost an hour. I could have sat there all day but for the guide’s urging us to leave.

I thought of my mother, her weary face. Finding a job, meeting a man, getting married, giving birth and maintaining the family were all she had since she became a woman. Now part of the family is lost, she is at loss. I don’t know why my father left us. I guess he must have been tired of the marriage or the family. Me and my parents used to be silent at supper except when my father would occasionally ask me, How is school? He and my mother seldom talked at the dining table. What have they got to talk of after 22 years of marriage? My girlfriend once told me that she was amazed that her parents never appeared to be tired of conversation at supper. How come there’s so much for them to talk about? I can never imagine living with a man for 20 years and still having much to talk about, she said to me on a sunny afternoon. Two years after that sunny afternoon her parents divorced. Maybe they found there was nothing much left to talk about. 3 days later, she sent me a text message saying she wanted be left alone for a while and asking me to forget her forever. I know the reason. Two weeks before we were done with talking.
The woman that keeps the inn lives downstairs in a dark cell. The cell is in a horrible mess. I got a glimpse of it when the woman asked me to have a seat to watch TV. I refused. She is watching TV now. I can hear the sound distinctly. She has two cats, two fat cats, just like her. She lives all alone, I can tell. She is too heavy to get herself a man.

The door is smashed open violently. I know I’ve got a company.

He gropes for the bulb wire in the darkness. He sees me when the flickering light is on. He is short, wearing tattered jeans and an oddly dyed hair, standing at the threshold emotionlessly. His pants have cement on them, and mud, too. He is a laborer working at a building site here without any doubt.

The light is turned off, back to darkness again. I hear him falling down onto the bed. The bed instantly makes a creaky sound. Then come the alternate sounds of drinking and chewing. He sighs heavily every time after he finishes swallowing. The room is filled with a mixed smell of mould and snack. Bang! He throws his plastic bottle onto the floor. The bottle rolls in the unpredictable darkness till it meets the wall and stops. He lets out a heavy sigh, lying down. His bed creaks.

Back to silence.

Administratively, XiaoJin is a county, which governs several other towns including RiLong. But it’s actually quite small. After supper, I walked through all the streets, and I then looked at my wrist watch, only 11 minutes and 27 seconds had elapsed. The central area consists of four streets, like two overlapping crosses, forming a Chinese character “Jing” meaning “well”. Yes, this remote valley county is like a well with mountains circling it. Then I walked and walked, to kill time, aimlessly and without direction, back and forth, covering the well-formed streets 5 times until the dusk fell. The route was monotonous, like a hideous refrain hypnotizing my feet. The shop keepers along the streets must have thought I was a lunatic. I noticed one of them talking with a cop and then pointing at me. It is probably rare for them to see a stranger here, especially a stranger wandering the streets and circling them like a stray dog as if there was no end to the road. They can totally tell I’m not a local by the way I dress and look.

I walked and walked. I don’t remember at which spot I stopped. But I do remember a shopkeeper who sold stewed pork. He kept a tiny shop at the street. Inside the shop it was dark and a couple of tables were arranged. I saw him putting a pig’s head into a bubbling cauldron. The pig’s blank and bloodless eyes on its head were right staring at me. Then he stooped down to deal with the beheaded pig, rinsing and chopping. There were ham and sausages hanging down from the ceiling, and all the stewed organs were placed on the table with flies hovering above. It was like a butcher’s shop. So boring to have a job of killing and stewing day after day!

Yes, so boring to have circled the streets 5 times, each time to meet that pig’s dead eyes!

The door creaks, a man slides in. He switches on the light, surprised to find a stranger here. Then he gives me a smile, and turns off the light. He looks like a farmer but a farmer can hardly make a living in this barren valley. His face is so tired yet smiley. He walks secretively to the only vacant bed, takes off his shoes, pants and outfit. Then he slides onto the quilt and props himself against the bed. It seems to me that he’s quite familiar with this room, as if it was his own house.

He lights a cigarette and exhales a long grey cloud of smoke. The smoke rises up slowly to the ceiling, like a winding snake desperately struggling in the endless darkness. I watch that red shimmering dot, which illuminates a pair of tired lips, inhaling and exhaling, alternately. The grey snake is still twisting and rising, coming out of that tired mouth, like there is no end.

The room is so silent that I can hear the burning of the tobacco. And it is motionless, except for that snake moving up to the dark and hollow ceiling.

The morning comes. I open my eyes with a suffocating feeling to find the room full of smoke and hundreds of cigarette butts lying on the floor. That man is still propped against the bed in the same posture. His face was pale like a dead man. When I rise from the bed, he lifts his eye lids, and gives me a smile, exactly the same smile he gave me last night. Then his eye lids are quickly shut. I carefully slide off the bed, trying not to make any noise, but the stupid bed just won’t let me. It creaks again. Fortunately, the other man is still snoring. Can’t believe he can sleep like that in such a smoky room. I go outside and make a deep breath. It’s chilly outside but it feels good.

It’s only 6:54 by the time I’ve had breakfast. I have 4 hours and 36 minutes to wait. I roam over to the square. All the shops are closed. It’s a fancy square, paved with marble tiles, facing the Party committee building. There is a monument erected in its center. According to the inscription, the monument was built ten years ago to honor the Long March when the Red Army arrived here. On top of it is a statue of a soldier holding a rifle charging at the direction in which the sun rises. It’s not a well-designed monument, and the statue is featureless, the soldier’s body ill-proportioned by any esthetic criteria. The county doesn’t need esthetics, too luxurious a word I presume. They just need a square and a monument. Soon after I sit down under the monument, some people come to rally at the square. So many people, most are women of different ages, among them Tibetans, at least their costumes are Tibetan’. It suddenly dawns on me that XiaoJin used to be habitat of Tibetans. Then music fills the air, flying into the square in all directions. It is “The Earth is Red”. Then people start dancing to the music. They dance in a moving circle, and moving in a Tibetan style. Then the song changes into “On the Top of Beijing’s Mt. Gold”. It is originally sung by a famous Tibetan singer to show respect to our beloved Chairman Mao. But this version is electrified with a lot of pop elements. Now people are dancing to it. They don’t seem to be particularly exited, mechanical rather. I guess they do this as a routine every morning, so inevitably they get a little tired of it. Life here is so designed and doomed. I would rather die than spend all my life here. Well, maybe it’s the same everywhere. Everything is designed. I glance at my wrist watch. It’s 7:42 now. I still have 4 hours to go. I only have 30 cents left in my pocket but I’ve got a handful of time, which I don’t know how to make use of and have already idled away much of.

I get up from the marble floor and start walking. I succeed in keeping myself unconscious when walking. After a while, don’t know how long it is, I realize that I’m back to the square. I don’t count how many rounds I have circled the streets, but my watch tells me 45 minutes have elapsed.

Nearby there’s a seesaw. I see a little girl in a Tibetan costume sitting on one end. I walk over to her, and try to strike a conversation by asking her age in Mandarin. She seems to be at a loss when spoken to because a puzzling expression appears on her flushed face. Then she answers with a strong local accent, so strong that now I’m lost in return. Oh, she said “eleven”. But how come “eleven” sounds so odd! A pity that we can’t communicate in Chinese without trouble. I force a smile and she smiles back. Two old Tibetan women come sit beside us and chat in a dialect which sounds very exotic to me. I can’t make sense of their talk. They are so feeble that I wonder how they’ve managed to cover such a long way to make it here. They are 70 or older, wearing a bunch of Tibetan necklaces and ornaments. They have probably never walked out of this valley. My body shivers with cold at this thought.

I leave the seesaw and put my feet back to my street-circling routine.
It’s 10:00. Never have I felt time going so slowly. It makes me restless. I sit down at the step in front of a theatre. My feet hurt. To my right is an Agriculture Bank of China, doors shut. It’s not the branch where I’m supposed to go get the money. I remember the taxi driver told me that it’s a privately-owned bank.

“How can it be possible that the bank is privately-owned?”

“Idon’tknow. Seeminglyamansignedacontractwiththebankandrunsitbyhimself. Thingsarereally chaotichere.”

Yes, things are really disorganized here. There are three agriculture banks here, including the private-owned one and the one moved from RiLong town. There are other two banks, too, as I discovered when I walked all along the streets, a Bank of China and a Postal Savings bank. Dammit, there are 5 banks in such a small valley county, where the birds are not willing to make their nests.

3 meters away from me, a beggar is leaning against the theatre door. He is looking at me as he bites into a rotten peach. There are several half-rotten apples and pears scattered besides him. His eyes are blank and lifeless. They remind me of that pig’s dead eyes, staring at me while being stewed in a bubbling cauldron. My body shivers with cold. It’s hot now, but I can’t help it. I move my butt a little bit further to make the distance between us less embarrassing. The beggar responds by acting in the same way. He also moves to close the distance between us. I move again. He follows again. After four ups and downs, I decide to go to the bank to waiting for it to open.


40 minutes later, right after I came out of the bank, I met the taxi driver. Yesterday, when I was circling the streets I came across him in his taxi. I told him to wait outside the bank around 10:30. He is truly relieved when I gave him the money I owe him. Then he drives away.

Finally, I get on the bus. Damn, it feels so good to place my butt on a soft seat. I realize that it is the same bus we got on when we left ChengDu for RiLong town, even the driver is the same one.

Now my bus is driving away, away from this depressing place. Suddenly I catch a sight of a Lama. Yes, I remember, he’s the Lama who was with us on this bus when we came to RiLong.