Ningbo and the Road to Ningbo and the Road to

We arrive in Ningbo from Hangzhou where we have been visiting in-laws. We will stay at the splendid "Hua Jiao Hao Sheng" which translates as "Magnificently Talented Chinese Expatriate." The suppliers that my wife is visiting are paying for the hotel, so we will live in luxury for a couple of days. The Hua Jiao Hao Sheng. It sounds so desirable, so dreamy and so languid after our long, challenging day. It will be Xanadu.

The in-laws unrealistically wish to drive us to Ningbo, not wanting to expose us to the Mao-era train station and clucking with brow-furrowing concern whenever the subject comes up. There being nothing else for it, though, we have to take the train, and trains leave from the station.

It is a rough shock to enter the frantic waiting room even after all the earlier talk about "difficulty" and "being on guard." The ancient, cramped lobby is a jammed welter of arms and legs, coats as pillows, luggage as beds, babies and toddlers, moms and grandmoms, country folk with bad skin, dandruff and strange teeth, desperate people waiting for the train to somewhere, hoping the voyage will be better than the wait. My sister-in-law, a commanding, intelligent, concerned woman whose love for family, including the adopted foreigner, shines like the sun from her sweet face, takes my roller bag and pushes bravely through the horde, protecting me like a mother duck.

"Where are we going?" I ask. "To first class," my wife says. Admission is 8 Yuan per person, about a dollar each. Little paper tickets printed on newsprint with red and black Chinese characters get us past the guard and up two flights of concrete stairs, carrying the heavy baggage. We sit on dirty plastic chairs in a large, featureless and empty room. A young country woman brings complimentary tea, boiling hot and poured into small paper cups, almost impossible to hold.

The men’s room and all its occupants are clearly visible from our seats, since the door doesn’t close at all. There is a trough and two stalls. The business-doers squat in the stalls, straddling a small river of poo and green water that flows slowly by about a foot below. The partition is only about stomach high, so the relatives are able to watch carefully as I drop my trousers in preparation. I have thought to bring my own paper. It is never supplied in China, so I am always holding. My sister-in-law waves a pack, a question on her brow. I nod and hold up my own pack, knowing that otherwise she’ll be bringing me hers. Privacy has a different value in China.

When we arrive in Ningbo after the first class experience of the Hangzhou train station and its twin at our destination, I am ready for almost anything. We get into a long queue for the cabs, and my wife has a chat with some girls, students from out of town. They ask her for directions since she looks resourceful, but she can’t help them. The queue ends at a green cab, and we get in. "Hua Jiao Hao Sheng," my wife tells the driver. "Ahhh," he says, clearly impressed.

We navigate the confused streets of Ningbo. Small storefronts and home-cooking restaurants line the boulevards. At last, there it is, the hotel of our most recent dreams, the Hua Jiao Hao Sheng. A big sign in English says "Howard Johnson’s."

My wife will work tomorrow, so I am on my own to visit the Pu Tuo Shan, the mountain monastery where the famous Great Golden Buddha commands the heights. The concierge arranges a pickup by the tour bus at 6 AM. He also arranges a simple breakfast in a paper bag, meaning I will miss the huge buffet. Since I am fat enough already, I decide that won’t matter.

The bus is late and my wife is angry. I ask her to leave me to it, "I will be fine, " I say. Still, somehow she sincerely feels that the tour people, people I will depend on all day for my very existence, should start their morning with a rousing ass-chewing in their native language. So she waits until the innocent and unoffending, but admittedly tardy, tour guide arrives, getting angrier by the minute. After their "conversation" he leads me to the bus, a very sad sack indeed, and I board, looking for a window seat.

I am the only foreigner. I wear a crimson North Face jacket, Kirkland blue jeans and a bright green John Deere bill cap. I carry a big camera and breakfast in a paper bag. I sport manly footwear - fancy cowboy boots. Every other person wears black. No one speaks English and no one smiles. They all look directly at me as if to make sure I am real. I take a seat and the coach lurches onward, twisting through the warren of Ningbo and picking up more passengers at every block. They all look intent and keep very quiet. A couple in their 60s board and as there are no adjacent seats, he sits next to me and she in front of him. His deeply-wrinkled face suggests a hard life. It’s quite cold outside and our breath makes the bus windows fog up. I am riding blind in a stifling bus filled with suspicious Chinese strangers and our tour guide, who just had a memorably bad experience for which I am probably to blame. I smile agreeably whenever anyone glances my way.

We are all going to see the Great Golden Buddha of Pu Tuo Shan. This better be good.

Biffle French is an author, photographer, wood artist and the National Rodeo Correspondent to The Loop.