China Road 3: A Country Market

8/9/2019 China Road 3: A Country Market

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This is a draft of my third story from the upcoming nonfiction travelogue The ChinaRoad Motorcycle Diaries.

The China Road Motorcycle Diaries3 ~ A Country Market

Carla King

The China Road Motorcycle Diaries 1 Carla King
http://carlaking.com/http://carlaking.com/


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3

A Country Market

Cool air leaks into my sleeves and neck as I ride for mile after sunny mile. Mountain

peaks bite into the skyline with jagged bare rock teeth and valleys fall open to reveal

newly-green spring grasses. The sun has burned away the satiny morning haze to reveal

the details of the countrys geography.

I pass a man going my direction holding onto a wheelbarrow loaded behind him with two

long tree trunks balanced precariously on top of a bed of straw. He is barely able to keep

the load from running him over on this long downhill stretch. I always wonder where

theyve from and where theyre going, these people walking in the seeming middle of

nowhere. The last sign of civilization was about 20 kilometers back. Ten kilometers later

Ive gone up and down another set of switchbacks and theres still no sign of a village.

The man stays on my mind for a long time. Every time I reach the bottom or the top of a

hill I wonder how hes going to manage. Does he have water? Has he packed lunch? Id

feel that Id traveled back a century or two in time but for telephone poles strung along

the road, always there to remind me of modern civilization, switchback after switchback.

Suddenly I come to a huge wide concrete bridge that funnels the road over an alarmingly

wide dry riverbed, but now it serves as a parking lot for a farmers market. I putter across

the bridge to gawk at the rows and rows of tables full of fruits and vegetables, I can smell

sweet dough sizzling in boiling oil, and animal manure. Once over the bridge I find a

space to park under a tree between a dilapidated three-wheeled diesel truck and a donkey

cart. As I remove my helmet the donkey honks and bucks, stepping backwards so the cartbumps into a tree. I am surrounded by people and more people surging like waves,

trapping me within just a foot of the motorcycle all around.

Alarmed but not frightened, I remove the key and step away, and the crowd parts for me.

I expect to be followed but its the bike thats the curiosity, even though its Chinese it

attracts attention because its an old big bike, a powerful 750cc with a sidecar,



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enormous in comparison to the little 125cc models you commonly see puttering along the

edges of the roads.

I leave them to explore the bike, to squeeze the brake and clutch levers, to stare into the

odometer and to peek under the sidecar cover. Ive learned that theft is not a problem, but

in a communist society there is little concept or respect for private property, and am

trying to learn to live with it.

The marketplace is a fantastic mess of produce stands, food stalls, smells, people and

animals. People stare but they are busy, this market is the main event and its likely that

most have traveled very far on foot or bicycle to buy supplies. Using sign language I buy

oranges, pears and bananas. I ask for a column of sweet fried dough. It tastes of

cinnamon, and when I smile in appreciation the mans face lights up and he calls out

loudly something that makes everyone laugh. An old woman sits under a tarp tied to the

branches of a tree thats just starting to bud. She presides over a massive wok, lifting the

cover to spoon a dark liquid over a hundred boiling eggs. Their shells are cracked and the

whites are stained. I eat two right thereId expected soy sauce but I think its black tea,

the flavor is mild and not salty. I throw the shells in the pile of trash next to the tree trunk,

and stand there watching, and being watched. I know these people have never seen a

foreigner, but theyre staying cool about it. I buy some more eggs, letting the woman take

coins from my open palm. I dont think shes marked up the price like they do in Beijing.

Where there are no tourists, there is no tourist price. Everything cost just pennies.

I follow the scent of almonds and find a stack of freshly-baked cookies yellow with food

dye and glistening with a coating of egg whites. I buy a dozen, thinking theyll be good

with coffee the next couple of mornings, as I havent adopted the Chinese habit of

breakfasting on noodle soup. Im glad to have all these supplies to carry with me for the

next few days.

Walking to the river, I stumble over the large white rocks to a spot where I can see 360

degrees to scan the landscape, trying to imagine where all these people have come from.



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There arent enough vehicles to have carried so many, and I havent seen any buses, so

many must have walked. Clearly this market is an important event. Who knows, maybe

there are marriages being arranged. Certainly there are flirtations. A teenaged boy pushes

a girl toward me, who screams and runs away, laughing.

Its nice to stroll through a foreign market unmolested by touts. The whole place is

bursting with springtime abundance. But a young woman with dark circles under her eyes

and a long black braid is out of sync with the atmosphere. She sits on a stool next to some

cardboard boxes, staring vacantly into space. A little girl in a yellow dress skips over and

hands her some coins, and the young woman reaches into a cardboard box, emerging with

handful of tiny yellow chicks peeping and stumbling like wind-up toys. The girl selects

three of them and runs off into the crowd. The rest are unceremoniously tossed back into

the box and the woman settles into her staring again. I feel sad for her, and I know I

cannot imagine what has made her so unhappy.

Nearby are stacks of crates that hold baby rabbits, and then a few crates of pink squealing

piglets that squirm and push against the metal grate. When I stop to look at them the old

woman sitting next to them grabs one by a back leg and shoves it inches from my face. I

jump and she cackles while the poor writhing creature screams and struggles. The old

woman is hunched and wrinkled, obviously its difficult for her to stand, but holds her

back and laughs, still waving the little pig high in the air, for the entertainment of those

around her who are holding their stomachs and slapping their thighs with the hilarity of it.

I smile and stroll away, I dont care if they make fun.

I slowly make my way back to the bike, admiring the crowd. The vast majority are well-

dressed and neat. The women wear dark slacks and colorful suit jackets in Easter egg

colors: pink, peach, light green. The men wear darker jackets, neatly pressed but frayed at

the edges. A lot of the old folks are dressed in navy blue Army-issue pants and jackets,

while many young people wear camouflage. Its a little funny, the middle-aged people

surrounded by Army fashion on each side of the generation. Its impossible to tell whos

in the army. Maybe nobody. My friends in Beijing told me that Army goods are



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subsidized by the government. Theyre so cheap that a lot of people wear them.

My peace is cut short once I get to the bike. I sit on the step of the sidecar and take out

my Swiss army knife to cut up some food but people press so tightly that it is impossible

to move. Frustrated, I stand up quickly, towering over the black heads to look for a

peaceful place to sit, and consider riding away. But before I do I spot a tiny ancient man

and woman, both dressed in navy blue Mao clothes, come to get me and with their tiny

gentle hands the lead me through the crowd, who art and let me go with to their fruit

stand just across from where Id parked the motorcycle.

I let them take charge and obey when they sit me down onto a ridiculously tiny stool. It

looks like something for a four-year-old. They chatter as I eat, and shoo everyone away

and chatter. Their friendly faces are intensely wrinkled. How I wish I spoke more than

just basic Mandarin! They must have so many tales to tell. The Long March. The Cultural

Revolution. The war with Japan. Maybe even some insights about todays China. None of

them happy tales, but history.

The old man rinses a cup with hot water from a thermos and offers me tea. I offer them

some cookies. The woman kneels down beside me and the man snaps at anyone who

stops to gawk. Everyone walking by now is so high above me now that Im on this tiny

stool I feel a little vulnerable so I decide to just look down at the dirt, and enjoy my food.

It works better.

After a while the woman hits my knee and starts babbling in an incomprehensible,

toothless, Mandarin. It feels like shes asking questions, because every ends with a nasal

intonation of eeh? and so I tell her that I am American. She hits my knee and throws

her face into the hair and bellows, as if Ive just said something very funny. She talks and

talks and I answer with place names and words of Chinese that I know. Some of the

conversation makes sense. I tell her that I am going to Gansu, Sichuan, and Yunnan. She

answers that shes never been there, so far away. I tell her that I am forty years old and

have no children. She wags her head in disbelief. We understand nothing and everything.



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It is a phenomenon, how once you give up the possibility of understanding spoken

language, suddenly communication is easier. I like her toothless smile, her tendency to

slap my knee and laugh for no apparent reason. After a while, she runs out of questions,

and were silent. I hand her an almond cookie and it dangles in her wrinkled callused

fingers as she stares vacantly into the street past the people busily passing by, to

something else, into another world, another time.

We sit for a long time and then the donkey starts braying as if it were being killed. I stand

up to see the driver trying to get the cart past the motorcycle. I need to move it, and

anyway, its time to go. The couple, so very very tiny and old now that Im standing up

again, so far away, just smile and nod as I take their hands, bowing down to meet their

faces and say goodbye. Just another day in their long lives. Everything behind them.

Whats tomorrow mean?

I put on my helmet and it seems a cue for the whole marketplace to converge on me. I

start the bike and put it into reverse, but the people nearest cannot move because of the

crowd behind. The donkey honks and bucks and the driver curses the crowd, yelling as I

inch slowly back. The faces arent friendly but they arent hostile, either. Theyre benign,

its disconcerting. Only the donkey expresses emotion.

Finally and with relief I am out of the marketplace and on the road again, the warm air in

my face, free to ride in the empty countryside. Though I enjoyed the market, I feel more

affinity with the road, a familiar friend no matter where I am in the world.


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China Road 3: A Country Market