Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
signswithlanternsandpagodasonthem,aneighborhoodleftbehindbythousandsofChinese
agricultural workers who arrived in the 19th century, and where very occasionally you might
still see Asian features. These guys—all men, I saw no women—seemed dressed as incon-
spicuously as possible, loose-fitting light blue jeans and generic polo shirts and sunglasses.
The bartender told me that they were here to do business. China was doing
“bastante de ne-
gocios”
inCubathesedays,includinginoil,hesaid.AtthatmomentaChinese-madeexplor-
atoryrigsatabout30milesoffthenortherncoast.Wewouldbeabletoseeit,hesaid,driving
along the main highway. Cuba has lately been partnering with foreign petroleum companies
to explore prospective undersea oil fields. A major discovery would be a main line to eco-
nomic independence, that most long-elusive goal of the revolution. So far, though, the wells
have come up dry or disappointing.
Cuba's involvement with China has been intensifying for more than a decade, as Russian
influence has receded. The Chinese have built an amusement park and sold fleets of buses.
They have been granted use—if our intelligence can be trusted—of a large signals-intelli-
gencebaseontheoutskirtsofHavananeartheairport,agiantelectronicearhornrightoffour
shores,thepricewepayforrenouncinganyinvolvementwithacountrysoclose.Thereisthe
sheer geopolitical weirdness of Guantánamo's being there, too: the Chinese and the Americ-
ans operating on the same island, off the coast of Florida. Guantánamo was supposed to be
gone. It's holding on like the Castros.
The empty midafternoon lobby was vast and square-tiled and full of the drone of floor
waxing, and the six-year-old spilled into it laughing, her mother racewalking behind her, try-
ing to catch her. They saw me at the bar and ran over. “We have to show you this,” the six-
year-old said. She was pulling on my wife's purse. Mariana pulled out her phone and pushed
play on a movie, handing it to me. At the aquarium, a little boy had celebrated his birthday,
and his parents had gone in for the dolphin special. You put the kid on a raft and pushed it
out into the pool. Shortly thereafter, one of the aquarium's giant 500-pound dolphins started
jumping over the kid and raft, in great looping leaps, one after the other. The splash was con-
siderable. The kid looked terrified, he was face forward, clutching the raft at the edges. The
repeating image of the dolphin—frozen massive and pendulous directly above him—got bet-
tereverytime.Theaudiencelaughedandclappedintheconcretebleachers;youcouldhearit
onthe video. Mywife was laughing sohard she had tears in her eyes. “Youwouldn't see that
in the States,” she said proudly.
We scanned for the Chinese-built oil platform the next day, and thought we saw something
once, though it may have been a ship. To ride along the coastal road with the windows down
was sublime. The gaps between houses kept giving you glimpses of the sea behind. There
weren't many other cars, but the few that passed left a heavy, organic smell of exhaust in the
air. You could taste dinosaurs in it. It carried that pre-catalytic-converter nostalgia. We were
