Ni Hao Grumpy

While savouring an exquisite lunch, consisting of some sort of spicy, crispy green beans, a Beef flavoured noodle soup and some beef chunks to dip in a sweet mixture which I reckoned was some sort of plum sauce, my two partners told me a bit more about their tribulations so far in life:

Kerstin was a native of the Dresden area, in the former Eastern Germany. At the age of choosing her way into life, she had decided to go travelling in Australia with her backpack  before coming back to Europe a few months later, where she studied, in turn, in Flensburg, Germany, in some Danish University and finally in Portsmouth, England.

There she met Bastien, sparsely at first, then in a much more regular basis that I could guess full of drunkenness and various intoxications. At the time, he was studying International Business in Portsmouth University, pursuing studies he had sooner started in his native Brittany before leaving to Frankfurt am Main where he worked for a year or so. Now he was a marketing employee in Reading, England, and she was an English teacher in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, where he had just come to visit her.

A renewed wave of irritation surged up my spine when Bastien, in the unconcerned tone which seemed to characterise him, explained how good the occasion was to “take a few holidays, come around and have a look at China…Why not? Looks like a cool place”…

“Holidays”, he had just said! I had two weeks to find a bloody Dutch cyclist driving around in the middle of the most populated country of this globe, and this insane Froggie was talking about holidays. Although I felt I was flushing in anger, I somehow contained my resentment to answer the Frenchman in a dry but polite manner:

- “I guess you’re fully aware of the mission we’re involved in, are you?”…
- “Take it easy, dude!” Kerstin was speaking now, “We’ll achieve nothing if we start getting all worried about the job…We’ve got two weeks, plenty of time!...” , she went on before I could argue anything, “We’ll meet a Dutch buddy of mine tonight. He has information that could prove essential for our quest…For now, let’s have another beer…Oki-la?”

Plenty of time?! I was stunned… Either these guys were completely unconscious of the task raised in front of us, or they were playing some kind of mind-game, flirting with my patience’s boundaries for any reason they would consider relevant. I was boiling in anger… The prospective encounter of this Dutch informer was enough a reason to stick with them though, along with the fact I was not really offered a choice…       

We downed our beers and a few minutes later, Kerstin drew her purse out of her handbag to pay the check: “Welcome to China, Guys!” she said as leaving the table… “Now, before we rush into some in-credible adventures”, she said and I could feel a slight sparkle of irony in her voice, “let’s have a peek inside this Wuta Si Temple”…

Following the two of them in the Temple’s front courtyard, a rather small place bathed in the warm sun of the midday hour, I felt suddenly stricken with the silence reigning around us. It was not so much the absence of noise itself, nor was it the contrast with the busy streets singing their motor songs outside these walls.
That silent heat, only troubled by a soft breeze that went whispering through the tinker bells sprayed around the Temple and brought us the fragrances of incense burning in front of the pagoda-shaped prayer rooms, seemed to carry in itself the secret of Time. Time didn’t exist here, and while Kerstin was spinning a gigantic prayer mill under the benevolent eyes of a majestic quartet of golden Buddhas, I followed Bastien, walking up the Temple’s main attribute, the Five Pagodas’ Tower.

Climbing up the very narrow, small-roofed tower, I couldn’t help a smile and a feeling of contentment when I heard him throw a salvo of French swearwords after his head hit the Stone Arch leading towards the tower’s rooftop. Being easily classifiable on the small persons category, I would never experience the everyday contrarieties a 1.85m tall person is subject too when travelling in a country like China.

“Ah…Fuck it”, Bastien was rubbing his head top with his right hand while looking at me and Kerstin joining him on the Terrace, “Could this people not be giant Vikings like everyone?”.  “The Viking drakkars did not fit in the Trans Siberian”, Kerstin answered most seriously… Were these two definitely not able to speak more than two sentences before they felt a vital need for some random absurdity?

I felt I would not be able to cope with their fantasies much longer. This investigation needed a minimum of seriousness and they would have to understand it sooner rather than later.

We stayed on the rooftop for a little while, watching the still courtyard and the sparkling streets on each side of the wall. The Pagodas were not rising much higher than 3 meters on top of the roof, but the engraved representations of Buddha, as much as the stone twists and hooks that embellished each nook of their surface was a wonder of an artwork, which probably mobilized some of the finest sculptors in Mongolia at the time.

Eventually, we went down and strolled around the area for a bit, ending up on the town’s main square, a big, white paved area where the youths of the city were enjoying the Sunday sun with a bike or an ice cream, wandering around or flying their kites. Dozens of these were colouring the sky, small or mighty, sneaky or majestic, simply shaped or lengthily designed. And all of them met in the air, caressing each other, rising up or falling down, standing still in the air or spinning around.

Down by the ground, father and kids where laughing in these seconds of complicity, but despite the feeling of comfort and joy spreading around the square, I was feeling something weird about the whole picture. I could not really put the finger on it, until Kerstin evocated the loneliness of Chinese kids, and I suddenly realized a key reality of the “one child policy”.

I could see fathers everywhere, holding their infant by the hand. I could see mothers following and smiling with love in their eyes. But nowhere in the picture, could I see the complicity, fights and love of siblings in their early years. While Bastien led Kerstin to buy a cheap-made kite and tried desperately to have it leave the ground, I was remembering my youth in a five child family in Brooklyn.

Could anything on Earth replace the cocktail of joy, pain, hate, love, complicity and solidarity that makes siblings what they represent to each other? How could children in the biggest country in the World grow up with no notion of what a brother or a sister would be? I was resigning myself to a feeling of powerless contemplation, when Kerstin, still trying to take full control of the now floating kite, bumped on me while running backwards with her nose up in the air…

She understood perfectly the glance I threw her, since we walked back to her electric bike only two minutes later. She gripped the handle, Bastien seating right against her back and letting some bit of space behind him… “Climb Up” she said, “we’re on the road”… “We’re on the road again” he added chanting in some detuned voice, trying to resemble Canned Heat’s classic… No way could I go with them for a triple ride on this electric scummy double-wheeled thing. Kerstin waved at a taxi for me, and told the driver to bring me to some place in town, whose name sounded nothing but Chinese to me… I stepped in and slammed the door. I didn’t know if I felt like sighing in despise or screaming in rage…

Twenty minutes later, the Taxi arrived in a small alley, the dirtiest I could have imagined… Stinking sewer and dodgy brothel-like houses; dust, mud, gravels and little stones paving the driveway; Taxis and tuk-tuk stuck in every direction and the buzzing activity of a commercial hutong at six in the evening.  The driver dropped me down towards a dive of a dinner place, where a few Chinese men were sitting, having a beer, biting seeds and spitting the remains around them… On the front table, I could see my two partners and a third man sitting on a little round table, on the centre of which throned a bottle of Bordeaux French wine Bastien had brought along on his journey to China. Some Frenchman…

I sat down with the three of them, and before I could only think about introducing myself, the Dutch informer had engaged the conversation: “So that’s you? The Grumpy Detective…” he started, “I imagined you a bit smaller”… “He is my friend Johannes”, Kerstin interrupted him, turning towards me, her blue eyes sparkling with a hardly contained laughter while Bastien was silently giggling on my right side. Mutual antipathy was now clearly stated, and I found some comfort in it: a clear sense of shared dislike always rids one of that disturbing impression, being the lone dissonant member of a band.

“He’s a teacher in the same school as I”, she went on “and he also probably met our man a few weeks ago.”…. I interrupted her: “Where? When? How? Did he tell you anything?”…
“Hold on”, Johannes said, “We’re not sure he’s the same man yet. Do you have any picture of him?” I took Mr Li’s envelope out of my backpack and dug frantically in the contained notes and random papers to eventually pull out the picture. A digital picture of our Dutchman and his bike, printed with a low quality printer or some Ink Cartridge endings, on which one could vaguely recognize a dark blonde man, with seemingly light brown eyes looking rather tall and athletic. He wore a black jumper and tight cycling shorts, standing aside his state of the art “Oranje” mountain bike.

I handed the photograph to Johannes, and he started watching it, seeming to examine every detail of the rather basic picture, Bastien and Kerstin bent behind him to share his meticulous observation. “Is this a rat or a squirrel in the bottom left corner?” Bastien muttered, waiting for no answer. Eventually, Johannes raised his eyes off the picture and gratified me with a satisfied grin: “I met him in Yinchuan two weeks ago… He was checking out when I checked in at some hotel”, he took a business card out of his wallet, “this is the hostel’s card, show it to some taxi driver, and he will charge you fuckloads of money, but at least you’ll come there in no pain”…

Finally, somebody was useful here. I took the card, thanking the Dutchman. Yinchuan was obviously the next stop and I asked Kerstin to stop a Taxi to the Station… She looked at me happily and answered in a smile: “No worry, Terry, have some more food”, she pointed out the plates still full of heavenly smelling barbecued beef bits, lamb pieces and other delicious unidentified vegetables, “we’ll drive to the station in a few minutes, there should be a night train to Yinchuan.” Fifteen minutes later, we were on our way to Hohhot’s train Station, after a short detour via Kerstin’s flat, where my partners grabbed their travelling backpacks.

I was sitting next to Bastien, on the rear seat, as Kerstin was trying to hold a Chinese discussion with the driver, eventually answering his mobile phone and getting hung up at, Bastien laughing his head off beside me. Outside, I could see the Little Vegas side of Hohhot Streets by night, lighted with hundredths of spectacular neon lights. Such an unexpected view in a remote town like this, stuck in the Inner Mongolian Desert… But was there anything to expect? I was opening my eyes wide, letting them wander around the street, when the car stopped in front of the Station.

Kerstin ordered three hard sleeper tickets, and we joined the queue to enter the train, scheduled to leave some forty minutes later. The waiting room was quite full, nothing unbearable though. I sat down, looking at the Dutchman’s picture, while Kerstin and Bastien were chatting to some “happy to speak English” Chinese young man. We eventually boarded in and joined our compartment.

I let myself fall on my couch as they went to buy some beer and have a cigarette. I certainly fell asleep instantly... We would arrive in Yinchuan at 6:30 in the morning, another long day awaited us.

The “Blue City": Based on my airplane readings, this was what Hohhot meant in Mongolian Language... Yet, entering the city through one of its eastern main avenues, I could only see grey all around, and the sleeping neon tubes hanging loosely on the building's wall struggled to convince me of any "blue” character" in that town, nor of any charm.

Outside the cab, I could see all the recklessness of Chinese Traffic, cycles making their way no matter the buses, cars or trucks rushing in their direction, pedestrian simply walking past, and each and everyone seeming to blow their horn for no reason but indicating on which improbable needle hole they would drive past each other…

In the middle of the shambles, my driver seemed to take his time, displaying the same impassibly bored look he had been putting on when starting the engine, back at the airport, carrying me from the loud buzzing of big swarming avenues to the silent hyperactivity of  narrow bumpy streets, as if giving me a live, mute lesson of Chinese Traffic…

Bloody taxi drivers; if one thing doesn't seem to change, wherever one goes in this world, it is probably the ability cab drivers have to rip you off gently, driving you through lanes and alleys to keep you on board and let you pay for twice the distance, ending up invariably to the expected drop-zone just before the customers might think about getting berserk, and gratifying you with that innocent and friendly smile, the unmistakable guarantee they gave you the best and most accurate service...And then you pay... What else could you do?

The grey concrete walls suddenly ended on a massive colourful gate, behind which a large avenue was stretching its way calmly, endless on both directions, seeming to act as a link between cultures I once believed irreconcilable … As we turned left, I could see the Arabic shaped building of the Muslim District standing Proudly behind me while 500 metres in front, the multicolour yurt-shaped edifices from the Mongol District faced a monumental Tibetan-styled Buddhist Monatery…

The mix of colours and shapes, on top of the most urban of landscapes, gave me the odd emotion one could sustain when faced with the surrealist paintings by Salvador Dali, these scenes where shapes and colours would never make sense, if they weren’t the sense of the creation itself…

Surrealistic Street was left behind quickly though, and the city ride protracted for another few minutes, before the taxi eventually slowed down and came to a standstill in front of the Wuta Temple. I paid the taxi and walked over the esplanade facing the temple’s entrance, admiring its architecture with interest, despite my expectations of a massively bigger five pagodas’ tower …But tourism was not the point…


I walked to the east of the Temple, as I had been advised to do, and turned right into a lane where restaurants where sitting on restaurants, bikes parking in front of each window and people were sitting in front, chatting, laughing, smoking a cigarette or playing card… Some looked at me briefly, some stared at me insistently, the way one looks at some unexpected stranger… I was trying to read the restaurant’s name on the rooftop signs, comparing the stylized characters to the reference calligraphied on Mister Li’s Document.

I had been told once that every single Chinese character could be written in hundredths of ways and it seemed I was on my way to experience this by myself just know…The locals kept on observing me as I walk, nose in the air, they would probably think I was some kind of weirdo looking for some strange detail, some mystical mark on the wall, while I was actually losing my mind into wondering if a bended stroke and a slightly hooked stroke could be the same, and what about this other one, apparently straight … I could not see a difference, but far more awkward, I could not have a clue if there was a difference… I reached the decision that I could not expect to dig an answer to this question by myself and went on with the examination of a Yellow walled restaurant when my thoughts were interrupted by some cow-boyish scream resounding on my back…“Yihaaaaaaaaaa!”

I turned in a flash move to confront the noise and found myself facing two specimens from the weirdest specie… Both Western, rather young, probably about 25-30 years… A small, chaotically haired girl was holding on the handle of one of these dodgy electric bikes Chinese seem to love, riding it straight on me. Sitting behind her, clinging to her red “Shaolin School” sweater and agitating the surrounding air with his free hand, a tall, long haired man kept on shrieking moronically and they
both laughed loudly when she hit the brakes, stopping her vehicle a few centimetres off me…

Before they even spoke a word, I had to yield to evidences; these two weirdoes were going to be my partners on the Dutchman’s hunt… Things were starting to take shape now, and the least I could say, is that my confidence towards the success of this mission was already undergoing serious damage…   

“Hey Buddy!”, the man was removing his black sunglasses while holding out his right hand that I shook in a reflex move, watching him in the eyes as he was introducing himself : “I'm Bastien”, he simply said, to what I answered in an equally robotic way, “Terrence Grabble”… The girl had finished locking her bike a few meters away, and came back to me, shaking my hand firmly and introducing herself as Kerstin. “How was your trip?” she politely asked in a very slightly accented tone. I heard myself mumbling some commonplaces about jet-lag and cultural shock and saw Bastien nodding approvingly behind her…

“So true,” he said with a thick, undoubtedly French accent, “I reckon we should both fix our jet lag issue with some good, fresh, local beer… And Kerstin, no jet lag is not an excuse for no beer”… “There are no excuses for no beer”, she answered instantly in a smile before walking into the Yellow walled restaurant where I followed the two of them to sit on a table by the counter, at the far end of the little room.

Kerstin ordered three bottles of beer, “Sanga Pijiu”, and watched the waiter walk towards the back-room to get the drinks, while Bastien was busy watching a couple of Chinese Kids playing joyfully behind the window… A few seconds passed silently before Kerstin took the initiative of the conversation:

“I'm very honoured to work in this mission with you, Terrence... I think we'll spend wonderful times together on the Dutchman's trail", she paused and had a quick glance at Bastien, busy throwing peanuts in his air and catching them in his mouth... "And I'm pretty sure Bastien will agree with me", she went on in a manifestly amused tone. "Yep", he replied instantly,"It's gonna be good fun! Reggae Night! Hiha!"... He pronounced these last words with nearly no intonation, as if talking about the weather or buying a can of Raviolis...

"Wonderful Times", she had just said! I had been assigned to enquire along two wired specimens, easily classifiable among the silliest human beeing I would ever meet, and I should think about "Wonderful Times"? The perspective looked rather dark to me, its the least I could say, but I had no choice... I remembered the last words Mister Li spoke before he vanished in the Shangaiese alleys, and I knew I would have to cope with them if I was to succeed in the mission... And I guessed this required to establish a friendly contact, as much as this was possible.

"Cheers!", Kerstin grabbed her beer and raised it up in the air, "To our Mission"! "Prost", Bastien answered, and I raised my bottle towards theirs...

That was it, we were officialy a team. I would simply need to get used to it...

Hohhot, Inner Mongolia.... Here I was... An unending journey from New York to Shanghai, where I spent the day with my contact, a weird old man introduced to me as « Mister Li ». 

A day of walking around the smoggy avenues and surreal Gardens of Shanghai, a long walk through the grey shapes of the City, as if each street had to be visited, except with no time to offer any of them a glance or a glimpse of interest. 

A long day of briefings and stories : about Mister Li and his role during the Vietnamese and Korean Wars, his life as a Trader in the meantime, a jeweller in his lost hours as well as a sailor, an air force elite pilote, a two, four or eight wheels racing driver and an adventurous Travellers' guide to the Southeastern Asian Jungles... He had been all these and so much more...Or so he said...

About Chinese culture and customs, about the Country's Heritage, “a wealth no US Dollar could never afford”, he giggled in his thick, singing Chinese accent... Stories about Pandas and Terracotta Warriors, glorious armies and bloodthirsty emperors, modern and ancient, snakes and dragons...

Only when the sun was on his way down, at the west of the financial district's Skyline, he would turn at me solemnly and enlighten me, at last, on what brought a retired Shanghai-ese adventurer to call for the services of an anonymous Brooklyn detective like me, Terrence Grabble, as New Yorker as a New Yorker could be ... “You've been recommended to me”, he would say, before handing me a  bundle of neglectfully stapled documents, a low-quality wallet and an Air China Ticket to Hohhot, Inner Mongolia.

“You will take off from the International Airport tomorrow, 7:50 am, he said, your contacts in Hohhot will be a German Lady, her name is Kerstin, and a French Gentleman called Bastien.  I recommend you not to trust anyone else than these two, whatever your feeling may be... Anything else you need to know, you will find it in this notes. Now, have a good night, tomorrow will be a long day...” He had hardly finished that last sentence when he started walking away, signifying me through a brief and severe, nearly petrifying glance, that I was not expected to follow him anywhere anymore...

Damn it! I whispered to myself... How the fuck did I come from the other end of the globe to this Country I didn't know in any way, to enquire on a case I still had to learn about, for such a peculiar character as this “Mister Li”... Did this bloke only know I had barely investigated anything but misplaced conjugal jealousies and genuine adultery in my long years as a Private...  I guessed he did, certainly he knew much more than I could simply imagine... Well, I was on a mission...

Another flight in the early morning, drawing my way towards Northern China's Desertic regions,  browsing my notes again and again, searching for an inspiration, a direction to take to ignite my quest. Beyond the airliner's wings, Chinese mainland unwrapped  its never-ending landscapes, repetitions of rocky mountains and sandy plains, lengthy grasslands and dusty cities.

A nearly sleepless night and the parody of a coffee spilled at my hotel's bar had already cut deeply into my good will capital . I was summoned to find a Dutch ranter suspected to have been involved in some high-scale burglary in one of Mister Li Trade Estates. A matter too delicate to be assigned to the Chinese Police, the document specified...

I was expected to localize the man, inform Mister Li immediately and remain in his shadow until my employer would come to “meet him personally”.  The Dutchman was believed to travel around China, disguised as some kind of degenerate hippie touring the country with his bike and a backpack...

The wallet contained a credit card and its secret Pin Code on a piece of paper that I immediately swallowed after learning it by heart. I had a free hand, unlimited funds and two weeks to locate our suspect... “This should be a rather straightforward mission”, I thought to myself as my Boeing was preparing for touchdown...  But how could I have known?...

It was 10:30 a.m. when I stepped in a black taxi towards Hohhot's town centre... I was appointed to meet my contacts at 12:00 in a little Restaurant by the City's Five Pagodas' Temple. For now, I was stuck in that Taxi, with desert as far as the sight could reach on both sides of the road, a few huts there and there, and at the end of the way, approaching slowly, the streets of Hohhot where shaping, ready to reveal me their secrets and mysteries, surely...

I was on the mission...