Free Lost on Planet China: One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation by J. Maarten Troost

actually a luxury brand.
    “Now it’s your turn to sing,” Meow Meow continued, handing me the microphone. Naturally, I demurred. I shunned the microphone. I explained in great detail to her my deficiencies as a singer. When I sing, I explained, people are sometimes scarred for life. They did not know that there could be such terrible sounds in the world, and their psyches suffer irreparable damage. Often they end up in counseling. But really, little can be done for them.
    She was having none of it.
    She pored over a small list of English-language songs, which included that well-known song by the Beatles, “Hey Judy,” as well as, mysteriously, “Starfuckers Inc.” by Nine Inch Nails, a song not often found on a karaoke machine.
    “You live in California?” Meow Meow asked.
    I nodded. Please, no. Please, please no. Anything but…
    “‘Hotel California.’ You will sing ‘Hotel California,’” she informed me, handing me the microphone.
    And there on the screen appeared the words On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair, and soon throughout Beijing, windows shattered, small children wailed, dogs howled, and a short distance away, inside the mausoleum in Tiananmen Square, even Chairman Mao was said to turn.

 
     
    4

     
    T he Forbidden City was the longtime home of the Son of Heaven, and the Son of Heaven, of course, couldn’t live just anywhere. At least not this Son. What he (He?) needed was a home that would make mere mortals quiver in awe. And thus the Forbidden City came to be. It is immense, sprawling over nearly 200 acres and imposing to the degree that even today, when a mortal can enter with some confidence that he will leave with his head intact, it still leaves one shaking in awe. It intimidates. It overwhelms. It is also the most wickedly cool palace I have ever been to.
    I had joined Dan one morning to have a gander at this home of the Son of Heaven. It was a warm and, invariably, hazy day as we marched with the crowds toward the red-ocher walls of the Forbidden City.
    “So was Meow Meow helpful?” Dan asked as we approached the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the imposing archway that marks the entrance to the palace grounds.
    “Yes, she was. She took me to karaoke.”
    “Interesting. And did she turn out to be a take-out girl?”
    “I have no idea. She did, however, refuse to be paid for translating for me.”
    “She’s probably paid a commission by the karaoke bar for bringing people in.”
    If so, Meow Meow had certainly earned her commission. I studied the cracks in the looming walls of the Forbidden City. I’d probably caused those cracks, I thought, with my rendition of “Hotel California.”
    We joined a dense crowd of Chinese tourists and entered through the Gate of Heavenly Peace, walking shoulder to shoulder with the mass of visitors as we passed below Mao’s portrait.
    “It’s a little crowded,” I noted, stating the obvious.
    “Well,” Dan said. “If you don’t like crowds, the Forbidden City is probably not for you. Now that I think of it, if you don’t like crowds, China is probably not for you.”
    This was undeniably true. From the outside, 1.3 billion people is simply a statistic. Inside China, the enormity of the country’s population colors everything.
    “Also, it’s particularly crowded because of the Golden Week holiday,” Dan added.
    I had, apparently, managed to be in Beijing during one of China’s busiest travel weeks. There are three Golden Weeks a year in China, officially mandated weeklong holidays when urban workers and students return to their home provinces, and domestic tourists descend upon the country’s most famous sights, including, of course, the Forbidden City. Up to 150 million people were expected to jam the bus and train stations during this time.
    “Imagine traveling in the U.S. during Thanksgiving,” Dan said. “Now multiply the scale by a factor of five, and you get an idea of what Golden Week is like in China.”
    Despite the