T A B L E_T A L K Do you haggle? Share your tales of bargaining abroad in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Road Warrior By Brent Gregston Insider's guide to Brussels (05/11/98) Sex and the salaryman By Dave McCombs Changing fortunes are altering one of Japan Inc.'s most cherished relationships (05/08/98) Road Warrior Dawn MacKeen Airfare roulette (05/07/98) Mondo Weirdo Come back soon An ambiguous encounter in Switzerland (05/06/98) West Africa's capital of ghosts By John M. Edwards What has Parisian-style boulevards, eight-lane highways and Christendom's tallest church -- all dead-ending in jungle? (05/05/98) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives		into the heart of C H I N A _______ON SUMMER VACATION, TWO URBAN ENGLISH _______TEACHERS VISIT THEIR STAR STUDENT -- AND _______GET A GLIMPSE OF RURAL REALITIES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BY JOSHUA COHEN We were going 40 miles per hour on the motorcycle when we had the accident. It was a clear, sunny summer afternoon in northern China; the road was straight and smooth. We had left at 9 that morning and had made great time with little traffic. I was sitting on the back of the bike, blithely enjoying the weather, when without warning an irresistible force slammed me forward into Paul's back as the tires shrieked bloody murder, dragging us to a dead stop as we fought to keep from flipping. I wasn't surprised by the accident; I was surprised it hadn't happened sooner. We had been jolting our way through northern China for half a month on our Shanghai-made motorcycle, bouncing over rock-, bottle- and pothole-strewn roads, dodging oncoming trucks and cars, swerving around stray fruit stands, errant bicyclists and (except for one memorable incident) stray chickens. We had been averaging two breakdowns a day on the shoddy vehicle -- everything from punctured tires to burned points -- and our effortless morning ride had left us wary, if elated. Our near-death experience promptly quashed that. After a brief pause to pry my glasses out of Paul's back and catch our breath, we determined the cause of the accident: The aluminum chain guard had fallen off again, this time winding itself like party bunting through the spokes of the back wheel, locking it firmly. It took us an hour of prying and poking to disentangle the mess, but finally we managed to free ourselves and limp on, our shock-distended chain flapping slackly beneath us. The reason we were there, a hundred miles from nowhere, was to visit Michael, a student at the college in Hunan where we taught English. In a classroom full of bored and restless students, Michael stood out: He didn't nap, spit or read comic books in class; he always arrived on time; he helped us with out-of-class projects; although a novice English speaker, he translated a French instruction manual for a pocket computer by guesswork and analogy well enough to program his daily schedule into it. And, unlike most of our other students, who came from well-connected families in the provincial capital, Michael came from a tiny farming village in north China, one of the poorest regions of the country, on the border between Ningxia and Gansu provinces. So when he stuffed a scrap of paper with his address into Paul's hand just before the end of term, we felt obliged to make an effort to drop by. The first man we showed the scrap of paper to pointed us down one of the two paved streets that constituted the town. At the other end of the street another man pointed us back the way we had come. We were yo-yoed several times this way until we chanced upon a farmer walking beside the road. He looked at the paper and pointed to a narrow dirt path leading off the paved road toward the distant surrounding hills. The trail was the petrified record of a generation's worth of cart and bicycle traffic. I dismounted so Paul could negotiate the heaves and ruts carefully on the bike. Ahead, a skinny boy in a blue cotton Mao jacket watched openmouthed as we approached the outskirts of a mud village. We showed him our slip of paper and he promptly vanished, reappearing a minute later with a crowd of curious villagers, none of whom was Michael. The villagers encircled us and began enthusiastically quizzing us on our age, marital status, occupation and salary until Michael arrived several minutes later. He beamed as he squeezed through the crowd of babbling farmers, obviously surprised that we had come. Our arrival would doubtless be the talk of the town; the last foreigner to visit was a surly Russian engineer 15 years before, who stayed just long enough to survey the nearby hills before vanishing during the night without a trace. Michael hopped onto the back of the motorcycle and I trotted behind as we threaded our way through the crowd into the village. The village seemed to have been carved out of the yellow clay countryside itself. Michael steered us down the main street, a wide dirt avenue bordered by high adobe walls that were interrupted only by narrow cross streets and weathered wooden doors. Evil-tempered dogs were chained to each door, attempting to supplement their meager diet of rice and vegetable scraps with unwary passersby. The dogs were cunning enough to lie motionless on top of their chain next to the door, preventing me from estimating their reach, then suddenly lunging just as I came into range. After two episodes of this I played it safe by sliding along the opposite wall whenever I encountered a dog. Finally, Michael told Paul to pull over and he hopped off. He opened a set of wooden doors and directed Paul to drive through. Inside was a 30-foot-square paved courtyard flanked by two low cinder-block buildings -- the family home. Michael asked if we would like to wash up before dinner. He apologized in advance for the simple food; he hadn't known when we were coming and his family hadn't had a chance to prepare a special meal. I asked to use the bathroom and was told it was behind the kitchen building on the right. In the rear of the kitchen I found a small vegetable garden but no bathroom or outhouse. Thinking he hadn't understood what I wanted, I went back to ask again. "Toilet," I said clearly, repeating in Mandarin, "Ce suo." He nodded vigorously, led me behind the kitchen and waved toward the garden; I understood. Wedging myself deeply between two rows of corn, I dropped my pants and squatted. I hadn't wedged myself deeply enough, I discovered, when a rash of high-pitched giggles caused me to turn and look up into the faces of a flock of children watching me raptly from the main street over a low section of wall. I smiled, waved and called out hello -- "Ni hao!" -- to shrieks of delight. N E X T+P A G E | Marauding watermelon thieves!