Vanessa Fabiano
Chinese on the Beach
The next morning the sky was clear.
We had been waiting for a clear sky since leaving Beijing two days ago. On a whim we had come out to this seaside town, after talking vaguely about "getting out" - out of Beijing's colossal, traffic-jammed arteries, that is, where a grey slosh plugged the sky shut. Someone needs to drain this place, Noel said, and that was when we first thought of Minglao and the possibility of catching a glimpse of blue sky out here by the shore. It seemed sensible enough, and we booked tickets for the ten-hour train ride that same evening.
What are you going to do in Minglao? Lian Li inquired, when I dropped by his basement apartment in a tiny alley behind Beijing's Nr. 6 Hospital. He declared it was a ridiculous idea. He couldn't understand why I wanted to leave the capital to spend New Year's Eve in a second-rate resort town. We were looking for the sky, I explained. He shook his head. Ten hours each way? To look for the sky? He said he would call me there, so that I could talk to someone civilized. We're just looking for a breath of fresh air, I said, and he nodded and then walked me back to the hospital, so I wouldn't get lost in the maze of lanes.