Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West (P.S.) by Hessler Peter

Author:Hessler, Peter [Hessler, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-05-06T16:00:00+00:00

40 KM/HR IS THE SAFEST

80 KM/HR IS DANGEROUS

100 KM/HR IS BOUND FOR THE HOSPITAL

The road climbed steeply to the border of Qinghai Province. We passed slow-moving Liberation trucks, their engines whining; my altimeter read nearly twelve thousand feet. For 150 miles we saw almost no sign of human habitation. There were no gas stations or restaurants or shops; the first town we passed had been recently razed. Roofless walls stood stark on the plateau, lonely as the traces of some lost empire.

In Qinghai, Goettig’s left eye began to act up. First it watered and then it hurt; he sat in the passenger’s seat, rubbing his face with his fist. We crossed another twelve-thousand-foot pass and descended to Qinghai Lake. It’s the largest lake in China, more than two hundred miles in circumference and blue as a sapphire. We camped on the banks of the salt lake, pitching my tent on a finger of land. It was one of the most beautiful places I had ever visited in China, but by now Goettig could hardly see a thing.

The next morning he lay in the tent, moaning. He had taken out his contact lenses, but the pain had increased; he asked how many hours it would be to Xining, the provincial capital. “It hurts like hell,” he said. “It just keeps burning.”

I asked if there was anything I could do.

“Maybe we’ll have to find an eye doctor in Xining,” he said. It occurred to me that this was the most ominous sentence I’d heard in about six thousand miles. The eye would eventually recover, and he later learned that the problem had been caused by his contacts. In Kunming, a friend had told him that a local shop was selling Johnson & Johnson lenses for half the usual price—a great deal, so Goettig stocked up. It turned out that the contacts were counterfeit. That became a new rule: when in Kunming, don’t buy contact lenses on sale. China was full of lessons; we were still learning every day. Don’t hike off trail in Xinjiang. Don’t shop for Strange Stones in a bad part of Hebei. Don’t hang out with people who light flares under stalled trucks. Driving along the lake, we passed another Carsicle, although Goettig’s eyes were watering so badly he couldn’t see it. He wept all the way across Qinghai—he wept along the salt lake’s barren banks, and he wept past the stranded Carsicle, and he wept through the long descent from the roof of the world.

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