Lost on Planet China - J. Maarten Troost [99]
Nevertheless, it was clear why we had all come here. A major earthquake had struck in 1996, doing considerable damage to Lijiang, except for the old town, which was largely constructed with wood. Here at last was someplace venerable, a place hidden in a high valley in Yunnan, far away from the destructive gaze of Beijing. Until recently, that is. The moment Lijiang was declared an official UNESCO World Heritage Site, the gold rush was on as thousands of Han Chinese made their way to this corner of Yunnan Province to earn their living as proprietors of tick-tacky souvenir emporiums. True, there were still Naxis in Lijiang attired in traditional blue aprons and sheepskin capes, and as they lured Chinese tourists into restaurants or encouraged them to join in on the traditional dancing in the village square, they seemed more like the hired help than the guardians of an ancient culture.
Today, tourism was the business of Lijiang, and also, strangely, the building of doors. On every corner, men were sanding doors, finishing doors, scuffing doors. As far as I could tell, there was no apparent need for these doors. Every doorway had a door. So this was mysterious.
After weaving our way through a twisting alley, Tam led us to a modest guesthouse with an appealing courtyard. I went ahead and coughed up the extra dollar for a room with a “river view,” and was pleased to discover that this river was, in fact, a six-inch stream.
We thanked Tam for directing us to the guesthouse. But I was still curious about something. “Tam, could you do me a favor and ask the owner why, exactly, every man in Lijiang seems to be making doors?”
Tam exchanged a few words with the owner, then turned back to us. “Some months ago, there was a very rich foreigner, he thinks an American, who paid a lot of money for an antique door. So now everyone is making antique doors.”
If there’s a market niche anywhere, the Chinese will fill it. Do you need a very old door? No problem. The Chinese will make you a very old door. Good quality. Brand-new very old door. Special price for you.
After dropping off our packs, we joined thousands of other zombie-like tourists crowding the lanes behind umbrella-toting tour guides and found our way to a pleasant restaurant overlooking one of the canals. We had invited Tam to come along. Jack, possibly forgetting that he was in China, bravely ordered the sausage.
I turned to Tam. “So which part of the animal do you think they reserve for sausage around here?” I asked.
“I don’t care,” Jack said. “As long as it’s not a dog.”
“You don’t eat dog?” Tam inquired.
“No dogs,” Jack confirmed.
“You must try to be more open-minded,” Tam said.
“He is open-minded,” I assured him. “He’s eating a sausage in China. For a laowai, this is a very brave, open-minded thing to do.”
Afterward, Jack lit up a smoke, and because I had prepared for this just-in-case-I-felt-like-smoking moment, I reached for the stash of Nicorette I’d brought to China. “You don’t smoke?” I asked Tam, who alone among us did not seem to crave nicotine.
“No,” Tam said. “In China today, smoking is for the blue-collar or the poor. In an office, no smoking. If you go outside to smoke, instead of doing your work, you are seen as very weak.”
As we talked, we were soon joined by our waitress. She was, evidently, a genuine Naxi and not a Han woman dressed up like a Naxi, like many who had been lured to the money-making possibilities of Lijiang. She was friendly and affable, and now that we had a genuine Chinese person beside us, I asked Tam if he could translate.
“In Naxi society, it is the women who are the bosses, yes?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she said through Tam. “I am the boss. I tell the man what to do. If I want a man, he comes to me. If I want him to go