Part I.

Part II.

Part III.

April 15:  Impressions from a day on a Chinese train: loud Chinese pop music – vendors pushing carts of rice and celery and liver – our Malaysian neighbors singing “What a friend we have in Jesus.” People spitting, throwing garbage out the train windows – rice paddies, hills, small villages, oxen, children in the countryside – sleep – heat. “Chrysanthemum Cola” for sale on the platform in Pepsi bottles – a train car full of kids smiling and giggling and shouting “Hallo!” – mysterious rashes appearing on Glenn’s and my hands – Lipton cup-a-soup from the Singaporeans for dinner – the beginnings, unfortunately, of a head cold.

April 16: We arrive in Guangzhou at 7 a.m. Armed with the Foreign Language Institute address in Chinese and youthful optimism, we snag a taxi to set out to find Kathy. A winding route through jungle-like terrain leads us to the institute, a young student of Indonesian who also happens to speak English leads us to the foreign teachers’ dorm, the Chinese caretaker’s puzzled look at the mention of Kathy’s name leads us to believe we’re at the wrong place. A friendly Canadian couple directs us on how to get to the Management and Commerce Institute on Yile Road.

We bus and taxi to the place, and inquire of whatever English-speakers we find: “Do you know an American girl who teaches here?  Her name is Kathy. Dark hair – rides a bike.” An older woman leads us to a room, where there lives, as she says, “a very beautiful, beautiful American girl, yes, and she always, yes, I know, she always wears black, yes?” I think of Kathy’s black sweatshirt with a picture of a cow on it. We knock expectantly. No answer. We leave a note and go for lunch.

After a hearty meal of fishballs and noodles, we return to find our note still in place. A peek through the transom reveals Kathy’s bike. She can’t be far off! We head for the cafeteria, where a student volunteers excitedly, “You look for Miss Kassy? Wait, I ask if anyone see her.” And a few minutes later: “He not here now.  He be back maybe couple of days.”

I am confused. “He? You mean Miss Kathy, right? She’s a girl, right?”

“Yes, he be back later.”

“Yes, I know, but I want to make sure, you’re talking about a girl, yes?”

“Yes. A girl.” We take this as positive ID. We leave, disappointed at her absence, and head for the wharf to see if we can buy tickets to go to Hong Kong tonight. Guangzhou is no fun without Kathy. We decide to go get our India visa and new China visas in Hong Kong this week and return to Guangzhou on Thursday or Friday.

The tickets to Hong Kong are available and easily obtained for Y38 each. The overnight ferry leaves at l0pm. We realize belatedly that Kathy will probably be told that we had come looking for her and be concerned when she doesn’t hear from us again, but it’s too far to go back to leave a note.

Glenn and I walk the whole way back from the wharf to the train station. Guangzhou seems much more city-like than Beijing. Noisier, more cosmopolitan in some ways, more polluted. The variety of food seems greater here, and the prices slightly lower. We enjoy a late lunch of rice, sprouts, cauliflower, onions and tea. We take detours through alleys where people munch on huge stalks of what looks like wood but is actually sugar cane, and 10 little kiosks in a row sell the exact same imitation leather bags.

The air is heavy with moisture. Boats glide or chug down the brown Pearl River as a haze settles over the city. Near the train station we wander through a labyrinth of tiny alleys with scores of small kiosks run by knitting, smoking, eating, spitting Chinese. Outside a hair boutique we see a young girl kicking a small cylindrical object with feathers protruding from the top. She is remarkably skilled. She kicks with effortless accuracy; my attempts to kick with her are frustratingly clumsy. I’m jealous. She laughs at my fascination as I walk away, watching over my shoulder. I wish I had brought a hackeysack. She is still kicking as I turn a corner.

We wind up somehow at the back of the train station. We cross the tracks, get a quickie dinner in a styrofoam plate, take our bags from the locker we rented, and take a taxi to the wharf. The ship seems luxurious – carpeting, little stores, actual western toilets in the bathroom. Our beds are in a long, spacious room. Nine beds end to end, two deep, with a wide corridor between the two rows. The movement of the ship is barely discernable. I am exhausted. I’m filthy. I sleep.

April 17, 7 a.m.: Arrival in Kowloon. We pass through customs into a huge mall-like ticketing area, with shops everywhere and pervasive western pop music. MIRRORS, NEON LIGHTS, COLOR, NOISE – it’s all pretty startling after spending 8 months in the USSR, home of endless rows of gray stores with names like “Meat” and “Shoe Repair.” I knew there would be a degree of culture shock when I returned to the West, but it is more acute than expected.

Advertisements seem to scream at us from all sides; the color and glitz are incredibly distracting. Stores are filled with American and other Western goods. Seeing so many people in Western fashions is almost as strange as seeing them so animated. We sit in the ticket area taking it all in until the banks open at 8:30 so we can get Hong Kong dollars.

It’s pouring rain outside, so we take a cab to the infamous Chungking Mansions just around the corner. This street surely has more advertisements per square meter than anywhere else in the world. The “Mansion” turns out to be a huge building that houses dozens of small shops, many of them seedy-looking, souvenir places, money-changing places, eateries. In the lobby the primary ethnic group seems to be Indians; the ethnic mix is quite varied.

This is budget traveler heaven. On each of the seventeen floors are about eight or ten small “guest houses” which rent tiny rooms for anywhere from HK$80 to HK$l80, with the exchange rate at HK$7.75 per US$1. The guest houses have names like “the Happy House,” “the Sun House,” “the Tourist Hostel.” We get a tiny but adequate room with 2 beds for HK$90 per night.

The building itself is in horrendous shape. A view out any window reveals mounds of garbage thrown out windows, with much of it decorating the window sills. An abandoned elevator shaft houses a collection of old rags, tissues, beer cans, orange peels – every conceivable kind of garbage. An occasional hallway reeks of hashish, and leering Arabic-looking men are well represented. But the “Sun House,” our little hostel, has a big iron gate, so we can rest easily in our little room. The halls downstairs are continually teeming with people; it’s sort of like a big intercultural budget-class bazaar.

Glenn and I walk to the wharf and take the ferry from Kowloon, where we are staying, to Hong Kong. The Hong Kong skyline is a mass of skyscrapers against a backdrop of lush green hills; very striking. Very western. Very much a city. The 60-cent ride takes 5 minutes.

Hong Kong itself is an even greater shock to my Soviet-influenced sensibilities. I can’t believe how many THINGS there are. Every conceivable electronic gadget, rows of clothing stores, fruit and pastry stores with the sort of goods I haven’t seen in over 8 months. Not only are there things, there are WELL-MADE things. And a CHOICE of which kind of a particular thing you want. I feel like a kid at Disneyland. I try to imagine a Soviet seeing Hong Kong for the first time. I can’t.

We go to the Indian embassy, where we’re told getting a visa will take a minimum of 7 to 10 days. Too long. We decide to go back to Beijing, then fly from there to Urumqi. We are disappointed, but it quickly fades as we contemplate lunch in this culinary acropolis. At the sight of a red-roofed logo, our fate is sealed. Pizza Hut! I almost weep at the salad bar. So fresh! So cheap! So easy! And I used to take it all for granted. Never again. Even just the sight of the 7-Eleven in Hong Kong gives me an absurd euphoria. I grin all afternoon. Eating my chocolate covered doughnut I get for dessert, in the middle of the downpour that has started again, I am grinning.

We browse through bookstores for maps and information on the Karakoram Highway to Pakistan. I worry about altitude sickness. We head for the Chinese consulate to get new visas for re-entering China. Since we can’t get the India visas here, I want to get back to Guangzhou as soon as possible, to see Kathy. Glenn will probably stay in Hong Kong a few more days. At the consulate we meet Lee, a copywriter living in Taiwan. We agree to meet for dinner.

Glenn and I sail back to Kowloon, and I take a badly needed, much anticipated shower. All my clothes by now are horrendously dirty, but the laundry service downstairs is cheap and takes one day, so tomorrow they’ll finally get cleaned.

April 18: A leisurely morning, followed by a late breakfast at one of the Indian restaurants in Chungking Mansions. Spicy potato curry with chickpeas, fried bread and orange juice. Yum.

Glenn and I ferry over to Hong Kong and set out on the great immunization search. The first clinic we go to has cholera and typhoid boosters but no gamma globulin. They advise us of another clinic that has GG, and we make the 20 minute walk there. The doctor there looks at my shot record and says no boosters are necessary. He says to avoid shellfish and Shanghai and we shoud be okay. We head for McDonalds for lunch.

Returning to Chungking Mansions, we pick up our clothes at the laundry. This is the first time on the trip my clothes have been cleaned, except for the habitual underwear-in-the-sink cleanings common among budget travelers. We feel almost spiritually renewed, probably due to the fabled cleanliness/godliness link.

We have dinner at Glenn’s friend’s apartment in Northpoint, then on the way back to Kowloon, I call my parents. Only dad is home, and we catch up on each other’s news. Developments at home – my insurance company cancelled my policy (health), the Moscow embassy claims I still owe $5 and is withholding a paycheck, and I have already received a letter from a Soviet friend, but they can’t tell me who because it’s written in Cyrillic.

Interesting developments in Beijing have made us unsure if we’ll even be allowed to go back. Beijing University students marched all the way to Tiananmen Square in protest over the treatment of ex-secretary of the Communist Party Hu Yaobang. Two years ago he was forced to resign when Deng determined that his calls for more democracy were extreme and dangerous. His death this week is fueling the students’ already growing dissatisfaction with Deng.

The number of protestors was in the tens of thousands; troops were called in to disperse them. It seems everywhere you look, the Communist world is undergoing an accelerating crumbling – Eastern Europe, China, the Soviet republics.