Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
place really grim. A polluted place that isn't nice. A place I can point to and say,
Yes. It's
even worse than you imagine.
Cars swam past in the murk as we parked and headed into the hotel. In the lobby, the
staff seemed to have lost our reservation, seemed in fact surprised that anyone would want
to stay in their hotel for an entire night. A dwarf stood by the desk, looking me up and
down with a sneer of disbelief.
I shuffled upstairs to my room, past the hall attendants, who insisted on taking my key
and opening the room. It seemed less a point of hospitality than a security procedure. My
room smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and urine, and I went to sleep grateful, having at
last found what I came for.
The next day, though, the spell was broken.
Preferring something less redolent of gambling and low-rent organized crime, we
changed quarters, moving to the Honglou, a nice hotel near the university and in sight of
Linfen's drum tower. After dropping our bags, we went to check out the city.
If you're counting drum towers, the one in Linfen is supposed to be the second tallest
in China, at 150-some feet. At the base of the tower, a worker was sweeping the sidewalk,
pushing a carpet of beige powder as he went. I noticed again that everything in Linfen was
dusty. A brown film coated cars that had been parked outside for even a single day. In the
lobby of the Honglou, a woman had pushed a dust mop back and forth over the wide marble
floor, Sisyphean and smooth.
We climbed the tower's dusty stairs. Inside, we stared up at the ornate wooden vault of
the ceiling. Drum towers and bell towers used to be important features of Chinese cities,
timepieces to mark the day's passage. But that's all over now. Besides, when exactly would
you drum the sunset in Linfen? When the sun disappears behind the smog? Or sometime
later, when you assume it has reached the horizon?
From the balcony, we looked onto the hue and drone of the traffic circle that surrounded
the tower. To the south, down the crowded boulevard of Drum Tower Street, we could see
only a few blocks before the traffic faded away into the haze. It was like a thick mist lay on
the city—but there was nothing misty in this mist, nothing damp or fresh.
At this moment, though, something began to dawn on me. I was having that feeling.
That good feeling. The sensation of having woken up in an interesting new place.
Oh, no,
I
thought.
Not again.
