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“So, Lijiang,” said Jack, trying to muster enthusiasm for the six-hour bus journey. “And what can we expect to find in Lijiang? More hippies? Maybe some anarchists? Crackheads?”

“We’ll be visiting the Naxis.”

“Naxis?”

“Uh-huh. Naxis.”

“Well, okay. Let’s party with the Naxis. Will the Israelis be joining us too?”

Naxi is actually pronounced Na-khi, but we did not know this then. Descendants of nomadic Tibetans who had settled in the verdant valleys and soaring mountains of northern Yunnan, the Naxis are the predominant minority in Lijiang. It is a matriarchal society wherein men are relegated to the status of useless dolts, henpecked ninnies, or, if they’re lucky, dreamy slackers, which is good work if you can find it. In any event, such an arrangement seemed profoundly un-Chinese, and this, too, seemed in need of observation.

The bus was crowded, and we crossed the flat farmland alongside the blue waters of Erhai Hu on a two-lane road without an emergency shoulder, which would be unremarkable except for the fact that the road, this narrow slab of cement, was elevated ten feet above the farmland, presumably to deter farmers and animals from wandering across it. And naturally, this being China, there wasn’t anything like a guardrail. Passing a truck, with no room for error, while oncoming traffic was barreling toward us at seventy miles an hour, is one of the more uniquely terrifying experiences I’d yet encountered. The drive was essentially one long cardiac event, and I tried to calm myself by watching the Bai farmers in their fields, hundreds of men and women, threshing wheat by hand. On a small television screen that rested above the driver, we were treated to a long loop of martial arts films and highlights from the Bruce Willis oeuvre. I had always wondererd what the movie Die Hard might sound like dubbed into Chinese. Fortunately, I now had the opportunity to hear Yippeekaya Motherfucker spoken in Mandarin. This pleased me to no end. Clearly, my threshold for entertainment is low, which is a good thing because it was a long bus ride.

Lijiang is situated above 8,000 feet, and as we climbed into the hills I began to notice an increase in soldiers and military garrisons. Traditionally, this area of China was the frontier. But the soldiers, of course, are not in Yunnan to guard against an invasion from the Republic of Myanmar. China has the largest army in the world and there’s only one reason, of course, to maintain an army of that size: to keep the Naxis in line. And the Bai. And the Tibetans. And the Uyghurs. And anyone else who might have subversion on their mind. According to the Chinese government, there are three evil forces in the world: terrorism, separatism, and extremism. It’s a broad group of evil forces and it gives the government a lot of leeway.

Despite the soldiers, however, the scene was an Arcadian paradise. There were forested mountains. There were the farmers threshing grain and people selling apples by the side of the road. There were wood-beamed farmhouses with yellow corn drying in the sun. Now and then we passed donkey-led wagons and the peculiar three-wheeled tractors that looked like choppers on steroids. I couldn’t imagine leaving a farm in Yunnan for an urban cesspool like Guangzhou.

I was lost in my reverie when the man across the aisle asked me where I was from. “My name is Tam,” he said.

Tam was from Beijing, where he worked as an engineer designing medical supplies. Or at least, that’s what he used to do.

“I quit my job last week.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. Beijing is too big, too dirty. Everything is about money now. I don’t want to live that way. I want to live in the mountains under a blue sky. I can get a job anywhere.”

Tam’s wife and young son had remained behind in Beijing. The nuclear family, as we know it, wasn’t the norm in China anymore, as the booming economy had been scattering families to the wind. Not so long ago, it had been nearly impossible to obtain residency permits outside one’s place of birth. True, political realities might have taken