myself. We grinned and nodded at each other, then he tucked both hands against the side of his head and made a snoring sound to indicate that it was time to sleep. I bobbed my head in agreement, and he backed out the door, bowing and grinning the whole way. Shucking boots and pants, I stretched out on the cot, smoked my last cigarette, and fell sound asleep.
I awoke next morning to find three young girls hanging in the doorway staring at me. I winked at them as I rolled out of bed, and they went' flying like startled birds.
The first thing I noticed was my own sour stench. It was hot and humid there, and I hadn't been out of my underwear for almost three days. I've lived in Asia long enough to know that "fox-stink" is the one thing about white people that offends Asians above all else, so I stripped naked and squatted down by the wash basin to scrub myself as clean as possible with my handkerchief and water. Then I wrapped the sarong around my waist, stepped into the straw sandals by the cot, and headed down the hallway.
The main room was full of smoke from a cooking fire, which smoldered in the far corner. An old woman squatted by the coals, stirring some sort of porridge. The girls stood against a wall gazing at me, all three of them wearing faded sarongs and short sleeveless blouses that left their bellies exposed. The old woman wore the black, nondescript gown that all Shan women adopt after the age of forty. When I entered the room, she turned her head and grunted a command at the girls. Immediately one of them led me to a bamboo stool at a low table, while another brought me hot tea, and the third set a bowl of steaming hot porridge before me. There were several saucers of condiments on the table to spice up the porridge, which turned out to be a blend of barley, millet, and rice. It wasn't bad—if you don't mind garlic, chili, onions, and fermented fish paste with your morning cereal.
Kiang appeared just as the girls were serving me a second portion of porridge. He sat down next to me and applauded my appetite, as if I were doing him a great honor by eating his food. His eyes reflected not the slightest hint of resentment at my presence there. Perhaps the sarong and sandals, plus my timely morning bath, made me seem a bit more civilized. I later noticed that most of the white men there clung stubbornly to button-up shirts, tight trousers, leather shoes, and other items of Western clothing, despite the extreme discomfort that such clothing causes in that sort of climate. And they bathed so rarely that even I felt offended by their odor. Most of the white men there also spurned the native food as no better than cow dung, insisting instead on eating beef and bread. As for me, after so many years of living in Asia, I felt very comfortable with both the local diet and the way of dressing, and I had no trouble adjusting to either.
Kiang puffed on a crinkled black cheroot that looked like a dried turd. He offered me one, and one of the girls fetched a glowing twig from the fire to light it. As we sat there contentedly puffing cheroots and sipping tea, Kiang commanded his three daughters to come and stand before me. They giggled and lined up obediently.
Kiang then rattled off a rambling speech in the local lingo, aiming his bony fingers at me and the girls as he spoke. They appeared to be between fourteen and eighteen years old, though it's hard to tell with Asians, especially women.
I indicated that I had not understood a word he'd said by shrugging my shoulders and muttering in Chinese, "I don't understand." Though I did not expect him to understand Chinese, it somehow seemed more appropriate than English.
Kiang's eyes lit up the moment he heard my words. "You speak Chinese!" he yelped with delight, clapping his hands. He said he'd picked up a bit of the language from dealing with Chinese overlords for so long. He spoke it with a very heavy Yunnan accent, no doubt the influence of Ching Wei's troops, and his vocabulary was limited to three or four dozen words, but in Chinese that's enough, and soon we were communicating quite well.
Pointing at his daughters, he asked, "Which girl most pretty?"
"All very pretty!" I replied. "All three same."
He looked scandalized and shook his head vigorously. "One girl pretty," he insisted, holding up a single finger, "only one."
That confused me. Apparently he wanted me to compliment his most attractive daughter, so I looked them over again. They were all quite lovely, but the oldest one was running a bit fat in the gut, and the youngest hadn't quite developed the curves of a full-fledged beauty queen, so I chose the one in the middle. She was an absolute knockout, with big, dark doe eyes and long silky lashes, thick jet-black hair hanging in a single braid down her back, and a beautiful face with a flawless complexion. Her full firm breasts strained at her buttons, and the curves of her hips bulged through her sarong like an hourglass.
"That one most pretty," I said decisively, pointing at her. The girl immediately clapped her hands against her mouth and dissolved into fits of giggling, while her two sisters shrieked and nodded knowingly at her. Then the three of them disappeared in a huddle through the door. Kiang looked very pleased.
Just then his wife stood up from the fire with a grunt, shuffled over to the table, and set a three-tiered lunchbox of woven bamboo before her husband. She was an enormous bow-legged woman, with a kind but work-worn face. Kiang placed his palms together and bowed in the traditional Buddhist gesture that means "hello," "goodbye," and "bless you" all in one, then he grabbed his lunch and headed out to work in the fields.
I finished my tea alone and wandered into the village. Most of the men had already gone off to the fields to farm, or up to the hills to hunt and fish, while the women busied themselves hauling water from wells, washing clothes by the river, winnowing grain, and screeching at their children. No one paid me much notice.
A smooth dirt path bisected the village, which ran about a hundred fifty yards from end to end. Compact huts of mud and wattle with thatched roofs and shaded verandas stood on short stilts on both sides of the main path. In each yard grew at least a dozen areca palms, source of their beloved betel nut. In the middle of the village the path widened to form a sort of public square or plaza, shaded by several enormous pipal trees. The pipal, which looks like a banyan tree without the branch roots, is called the bodhi tree by the natives. Buddhists regard the bodhi tree as sacred because the Buddha attained enlightenment while meditating beneath the shade of a bodhi tree 2,500 years ago in India. Every bodhi tree in the village had a small shrine erected against its massive trunk, with fresh offerings of fruit, sweets, flowers, and incense always present.
I sat down on a rickety bench in the shade of the biggest bodhi tree in the village and looked around. I would have given anything for a cigarette. In the middle of the village square stood a big communal hut about sixty feet long, set on thick, squat stilts, but without any walls. It was an open pavilion that served as a sort of community center. Near it was a stone house of Western design, with corrugated tin roofing and real glass windows. Boxes and barrels of supplies were piled carelessly behind it. This turned out to be the foreign provisions shop to which Ching Wei had referred. Attached to the shop was a bar, where only Ching Wei's troops and white guests were permitted to drink. The bar suddenly reminded me of the outside world, and I wondered how my disappearance was affecting my family and friends back home. I cursed Ching Wei out loud.
"You must be new here," a voice rumbled over my shoulder. I leaped up and spun around to see who it was. There stood a tall, stooped, skinny white man dressed in sarong and sandals like myself. "My name is Moreau," he said, extending a limp hand. "I am the orchid man."
I introduced myself, and he sat down next to me. "The orchid man?"
"Yes, it is my duty here to care for Ching Wei's orchid collection. He has over five hundred varieties, you know, and almost three thousand specimens. Some are very rare. It is a big job." His voice was flat and listless, but there was no mistaking his accent: it was French. There was also no mistaking his condition: he was stewed to the gills on opium, his pupils shrunk down to the size of pinholes. He reached into his shirt for a pack of cigarettes and offered me one.
"Thanks,
