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T H I S+W E E K



> Burma or Bust


By Joshua Cohen

A charmed traveler in
China takes the hard road
to a forbidden border.



D E P A R T M E N T S


The Surreal Gourmet


By Bob Blumer

A fruity, non-boozy,
end-of-summer smoothie



Mondo Weirdo


By Don George

Strange bedtime tales from
Thailand, Peru and Ecuador


Passages
A Simple Gift


By Robert J. Matthews

A touching encounter
with a leper in Nepal



Readers' Tips and Tales

Great Railway Journeys





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[Salon Wanderlust Marketplace]

Your virtual travel agency




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LA S T+W E E K


Tuesday, August 19, 1997


[Sleeping with elephants]


Sleeping with elephants


By Don Meredith

Earth-shaking encounters in Kenya




A full list of all


Wanderlust articles
















[Illustration by Susan Synarski]







_______________burma 


_____________________________or bust



_______________
A CHARMED TRAVELER IN CHINA SETS

_______________
OUT FOR A FORBIDDEN BORDER.



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BY JOSHUA COHEN |  we've all met one of them, the charmed person who
bumbles through life encased in a suit of golden armor, defying the laws
of physics, chance and society at will.  Usually one meets him while
traveling.  Usually in an exotic location.  He is the man you see
interviewed on the evening news as the only surviving witness to 
a tornado that flattened his Texas town, or the dropout roommate from
college who sends you a postcard 15 years later of his
palace in Kuala Lumpur and inviting you there for a summer party. 
Carlos was one of these people.  I met him while teaching English in
China. 


A Molotov cocktail of Ecuadorian, Panamanian and American genes, Carlos
taught English at a neighboring college in Hunan.  Despite strict
official and social prohibitions against relationships between Chinese
and Westerners -- one could still lose one's job for that sort of
thing -- Carlos had been sleeping with his housemaid since he'd arrived. 
When the college found out, he was fired. Within the week he had been hired
by another college at a higher salary and with a deluxe, on-campus apartment,
into which he moved with his new, wealthy Chinese girlfriend.  


Carlos seemed able to will these things to happen.  During an earlier
trip to Hong Kong, Carlos had shown up unannounced at the Ecuadorian
embassy and demanded they put him up.  They did, for three days, free of
charge.  Then, while booting around the waterfront, he ran into the scion
of a Philippine bicycle manufacturer who flew him to Manila and put him up
for a week in the family mansion. After that week Carlos walked into the
Colombian embassy without an invitation and demanded to be introduced to
the ambassador.  He was.  They had lunch.


How Carlos even managed to get his job was a wonder.  With his thickly
accented, rapid-fire English, even I had trouble understanding him when he
was excited, which was usually the case.  I often imagined his students
sitting at their desks, backs straight, eyes fixed on the teacher, dutifully repeating
after him: "Do ju hwish to speak to me about someding?"  


I had been in Hunan for five months when we decided to travel together. 
We had a full month's holiday for the Chinese New Year in January, and
Carlos, a very likable guy (these charmed people always have a certain,
well, charm), asked me to travel with him during our  break. 
Since traveling solo in China was difficult, I accepted.  



We eventually decided on Xishuangbanna (pronounced shee-shwang-ba-na), a
small region in southwestern China, as our destination.  We had different
reasons for our choice.  I chose it because other teachers had described
the region's warm weather and relaxing atmosphere, as well as the added
bonus that it offered a wide range of authentic minority cultures vastly
different from the mainstream Han Chinese culture.  Rumor had it one
might even be able to catch a glimpse of a tiger or elephant in China's
last remaining bits of rain forest.  



Carlos chose it for a totally different, and predictably pathological, reason: 
He was a Border Fanatic.
 



[Detail of illustration]


 

 
 
NEXT PAGE | Terrifying and unpleasant -- and highly recommended
 









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ILLUSTRATION BY SUSAN SYNARSKI






















S A L O N +|+ C O N T A C T+U S + A R C H I V E S + N E W S L E T T E R + T A B L E   T A L K + M A R K E T P L A C E + S E A R C H