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Well, I thought. No wonder the Chinese government was doing everything possible short of a rain dance to seed the clouds for rain. Every few months, authorities would announce that scientists had succeeded in discovering a method for triggering rain showers. Meanwhile, the drought continued. In response, the Chinese government drew up a plan to bring water north. Naturally, this being China, it would be a big plan, a $60 billion network of rivers and canals that would transport water from the drenched south to the bone-dry northern provinces.

One would think, after all the fussing Zhu Di had had to endure with his canals, that perhaps the Chinese might want to reconsider having their capital in a subarctic desert. But, of course, in China it’s not really possible to move tens of millions of people anymore except, apparently, from the countryside into the cities, which doesn’t quite alleviate a water problem. There is no vast empty hinterland in China capable of sustaining a huge population that isn’t already presently sustaining—barely—a huge population. There is no great emptiness in the middle of the country like there is in the United States. (I know. Technically speaking, there are people in Nebraska. I’ve been there. I met both of them.)

And so the Chinese have turned to engineering. Even if they should succeed in pumping the floods of the south to the dry north, it’s not entirely clear whether northerners would be grateful, considering the quality of the water. One-third of all the freshwater in China—that is, all the rivers and lakes in this enormous country—is considered unsafe for industrial use. When the water is so vile that you can’t even use it in a lead paint factory because it’s too dirty, I’d say you have a water problem.

“So we are approaching the tomb of Zhu Di,” Tony said as our bus clambered toward a parking lot.

Oh good, I thought. I hadn’t realized it would be my buddy Zhu Di’s tomb that we would be visiting. All I had heard about the Ming Tombs was that they were awfully boring, a sideshow really from the Great Wall, and just another way for tour operators to extract money from tourists not yet brave enough to ride a local bus on their own.

“Do you see where the tombs are located, on the hillside overlooking the river? It’s located there for good feng shui.”

“But, Tony,” I noted. “There is no river.”

“This is true. But in former times there was a river.”

“So does the absence of a river change the feng shui?” I asked. “Are we now in a place with bad feng shui?”

“This is a good question to which I do not have a good answer.”

In any event, there was very little to see, simply a small hole in a hillside surrounded by a few pagodas and gardens. Though, very helpfully, there was a sign informing us that Zhu Di was an outstanding and remarkable emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Sporting a well-groomed beard, he was pleasant and good-looking.

I had always suspected that Zhu Di was pleasant and good-looking. But the aforementioned rumors were correct. The Ming Tombs were not among the more scintillating sights in China.

“We cannot excavate anymore,” Tony informed us. “Because as soon as we take old things out of the ground, the pollution destroys it. So we are waiting for new technology before we dig further.”

Reducing pollution, apparently, wasn’t the obvious go-to solution. We returned to the bus according to our cultural heritage—Anglo-Saxons first, Latins dawdling in the distance—and drove onward to join a thousand other buses parked in front of the Traditional Jade Factory. I spent possibly twenty-five seconds lingering inside the cavernous showroom before realizing that there are far more interesting ways to get ripped off in China. Indeed, I would soon discover one as we pulled into the parking lot in front of our next stop: the Traditional Chinese Medicine Center.

We were led into a classroom, where we were greeted by a nurse—or at least a woman dressed up like a nurse—who proceeded