yourself overwhelmed by the next wave of change.
AFTER LEAVING WUSHENQI , I returned across the Great Wall and headed south back to Yulin. I wasn’t sure how much longer I wanted to stay on the road; the nights were growing cold and I could feel a fatigue settling in. From the beginning I had planned to divide my journey into two parts, so I could see the countryside in both autumn and spring. In Yulin I intended to rest—I hoped to spend a couple of nights in a bed, eat good meals, and decide how much farther to chase the wall. But in the end the local government made the decision for me.
It was the first city I had seen in weeks. The population was about one hundred thousand, small by Chinese standards, and the town had a pleasant, sleepy air. An old city wall still surrounded the downtown, where streets were narrow; the auto boom hadn’t yet touched this place. I checked into the best hotel, took a shower, and lay down for a nap. Almost immediately the telephone rang. It was the hotel receptionist, and she told me that there was somebody in the lobby who wanted to see me.
“He’s from the government,” she said.
Of all the ways to get woken up, that was one of the worst. I dressed and went downstairs. The man was in his thirties, dressed in a dark suit, and his face wore a tight thin smile that said: Trouble.
“I understand that you’re a journalist,” he said.
He asked to see my passport, residence permit, and journalist accreditation, so I handed them over. He studied the documents in silence, jotting notes onto a pad of paper. At last he looked up. “You know, in China we have a law that requires a journalist to apply to a place before he does any reporting,” he said. “You’ve broken this law.”
“I’m just here to see the Great Wall,” I said. “I don’t need to talk to anybody in the government. I’m not planning to interview anybody here in Yulin.”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t matter. You still need to apply.”
I apologized and told him that in the future I’d be sure to apply in advance. “I’ll leave tomorrow if you want,” I said.
The man’s smile tightened a little more. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave now,” he said.
“Can I have lunch?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But you have to go immediately.”
He waited in the lobby while I packed, and then he followed me all the way to the City Special. He was accompanied by a cop, to make sure I left town. From Yulin I drove south to Yan’an, six hours away; it was a cradle of the Chinese Communist Revolution, where Mao and other leaders had built their base in the late 1930s. Nowadays, Yan’an had become a tourist destination, and I hoped to check into a hotel without attracting attention. But this time the police appeared before I had even finished unpacking. They already knew where I had come from, and what kind of car I was driving; a warning must have been sent out across the province. The Yan’an cops told me to keep moving, and that was when I decided to abandon the Great Wall until spring.
I took the highway back to Beijing. A new toll expressway had just been built across Shanxi Province, and after weeks of rural roads it felt like flying. The surface was perfect; there was almost no traffic; I flashed past miles of harvested corn. At Capital Motors I returned the City Special with exactly one-eighth of a tank of gas, no new dents, and a backseat full of empty Coke bottles. In the office Mr. Wang was smoking a cigarette beneath the performance ratings sign:
CUSTOMER SATISFACTION RATING: 90%
EFFICIENCY RATING: 97%
APPROPRIATE SERVICEDICTION RATING: 98%
SERVICE ATTITUDE RATING: 99%
He studied my rental papers, checking off items and entering them into a computer. When he came to the mileage, he put the cigarette down.
“Look how far this is!” he said. “Where did you go?”
I could have claimed that all my driving had been within the Beijing city limits, but it would have been a shameless lie: the City Special had accumulated over 2,200 miles. At first I tried to be vague—I told Mr.
Wang that I had driven west.
“Where exactly?” he said.
“Hebei, Shanxi,” I said.
“That’s all?”
“Well, Shaanxi, too,” I said. “And Inner Mongolia. But not too far in Inner Mongolia. Mostly along the Shanxi border.”
“Waah!” Mr. Wang exclaimed. “Did you go by yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know that you’re not supposed to leave Beijing?”
“I thought it would be OK as long as I was careful.”
“Did you stay on paved roads?”
“Most of the time.”
“You’re not supposed to drive off the pavement,” Mr. Wang said.
“I know, ” I said. “But some parts of Inner Mongolia don’t have paved roads. I drove really slowly.”
Mr. Wang seemed nearly as thrilled as he did whenever I returned a damaged car. “That’s great!” he said, beaming. “All the way to Inner Mongolia!” He called over the other workers and showed them the mileage; everybody laughed and lit cigarettes in celebration. I picked up my deposit and headed to the door. They were still talking about it when I left: “All the way to Inner Mongolia!”
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