We’d gone to Dali, to a market on the lake, but we must have eaten something bad because, while I had a mild cold and a case of the runs, Ben had full on dysentery.
And without private toilets, the government’s public toilets, built as part of a new sanitation drive, with their open concrete cubicles located some distance away from the village, were no place to have dysentery.
When we went there to do our business, one or two of the locals would follow us in, would stare in on us unabashedly as if our anatomy was any different. Nights were the worst – there were no lights so it was hard enough to see but also our torches would cast a freakish glow on the maggots that jostled like a wave at the bottom of each hole. And the maggots were fast little buggers.
Only Darius was OK.
So we took a detour to Xichang instead of taking staying another night in the village, and we didn’t argue when Darius suggested that we book into a tourist hotel instead of the usual guesthouse.
Once settled in, I took a sample of poo, one from Ben, and one from me to the pharmacy next door and we waited to see the outcome.
The following morning I returned to the pharmacist. Ben was still laid up and stayed in the room. A grey-haired man with a traditional wizened beard handed me a folded piece of paper that looked like a prescription.
“This person OK,” he said. Instead, it was my stool report.
Then he handed me another piece of paper.
“This person will die”, he continued.
I went white.
“What’s he got?”
The pharmacist handed me a small glass bottle of black pellets. The pellets looked like rabbit droppings.
“He take these and he goes home now.”
Well, we were stuck in Xichang for a second night and yes, Darius was fine, I would be fine, but Ben was ready to go. But until the following morning, there was nothing we could do apart from feed Ben black pellets.
It was later that day that Ben insisted we go get something to eat.
I loved the atmosphere in these family-style restaurants. The locals surrounded us on large circular tables with cheap plastic tablecloths. You could be with them, or not. It was a raw food experience. They split chopsticks or clacked plastic ones, they staccato’ed Mandarin while scooping sticky rice, while fingering chicken feet and crunching the skins, then they spat the bones on the floor despite the ‘No Spitting’ signs. Yes, I loved that too.
But don’t leave the sticks in the rice. That’s not good.
So that we would all feel a bit better, we ordered masses of food.
Ben figured tofu would help, so we took one order steamed and one Mapo Dofu style, as well as chicken in peanut sauce and a steak hotpot. The tofu and the mounds of rice, we hoped, would help with the dysentery. (Note to reader: Please don’t take this as medical advice)
It was after we were done, after we were sitting at the table with full stomachs – well Darius and I at least, not Ben; after we were looking at the remains of the food in front of us, that Darius noticed a tapping at the window. A dark-haired man perhaps in his thirties stood there, a Mao cap in his hand, his hair matted and dripping with rain.
I was stirring my rice around at the time, and once he saw that we’d seen him, he kept going, tapping, tapping to keep our attention. Then he pointed at our table and mouthed at us as he pushed at the window.
I hadn’t finished my Tsing Tao so at first I ignored him but he just wouldn’t let up. The rain poured down and made him a blur against the window.
So I finished the beer and reached over, and I cranked the clasp, then handed him my can through the open window. Yes, he took it, but he also looked annoyed. Still pointing at the table, he began to talk louder, though none of us could understand.
I’d come across people who wanted the cans, but we never thought he might want the leftover food.
Darius was still picking at the chicken in the peanut sauce but he motioned the guy in, and the man disappeared from the window just as fast; was through the main entrance and by our table before we could get him a chair.
We thought he was going to sit down and help himself but he stood in front of us; he refused a seat. Instead, he held out his Mao cap and pointed at the food like he wanted us to put the food in it.
At first, I thought he was joking but he wouldn’t move, he held the cap like a bag gripping it by the sides, and with his head, he motioned towards the food.
Darius had finished his rice so we started by emptying his bowl in because we figured that at least the rice was dry and it wouldn’t ruin the cap. I held on to my rice. What little remained of Ben’s was a health risk, and we thought that that would be enough, but the guy kept the cap held out like he wanted more, kept bobbing his head up and down at the rest of the dishes.
I still wasn’t sure he was serious but Darius separated the leftover chicken from the sauce and put them in as well. Still, he wanted more.
Then Darius just said “Hang it!”
He scraped the peanut sauce in on top, then he took the hot pot, all but the broth, and he added it in, until there was nothing of the cooked meat left from the serving bowl.
The cap was bulging with the weight of our food, was overflowing, and by the time the plates had been scraped clean there was a skilful mound that protruded from the man’s cap. Nothing remained on the table but my own rice, so you can guess what was going to happen next.
I made some noises just to show the guy that I still wanted my rice, and I was sure he could understand me but he wouldn’t give in. Even though his cap was practically splitting at the seams he kept snapping at us in Mandarin and nodding his head at my bowl, but I kept it up, stirring the rice, looking up at him defiantly, making as if I was about to eat it.
The fact was that, earlier on, I had accidentally coughed up a green gelatinous blob of phlegm. I hadn’t known where to put it and didn’t want to swallow it or spit it on the floor. I figured that, as I couldn’t eat any more, I might as well drop the lump in my mouth into my bowl. So that’s what I did: spat it in the bowl and stirred it before it congealed, stirred it so that I wouldn’t have to look at it.
But here was this man adamant about having my bloody rice.
I thought of spitting in the bowl again to stop him from taking it but then I thought better of it. It would be rude, and he was getting more impatient.
So I started to eat, shovelled the now glutinous rice in my mouth. I kept going one ball at a time, while he watched me.
I was still going when he put down the cap then snatched the bowl from my hands and tipped it upside down on top of the mound of food.
It was a soggy mess but the cap held firm.
I said nothing. I just looked at him in surprise.
‘Saving Face’ was about pretending that there was no ‘Face’ to be lost in the first place, we figured, so we let it lie, and the three of us watched him walk away, cap in hand, with a feast full of food.
The next day, impressed by the tensile strength of these caps, I bought my own green Mao cap and Darius, Ben and I got on the train,
, to Chengdu.We had been lucky.
The train we had booked in Dali had been delayed because of a derailing so we’d retained our places.
October 1988