Yellow River Odyssey. Bill Porter

the occasion, Li Pai wrote: “like tumbleweeds drifting apart/let us drain this cup in our hand.” I would have hoped what they drained was something more drinkable than the Confucius Family Liquor I had waiting for me back in Qufu, which is where I headed and where I arrived just as the sun was going down.

       KAIFENG

      It was time to move on and join the Yellow River again, which I planned to do in the city of Kaifeng. Maybe I should have taken the train. But the road looked shorter, so I took the bus. Big mistake. It took twelve hours to cover 300 kilometers, and that was the express bus. The problem was that there was so much road construction going on, the bus couldn’t take its usual route, and the driver was unfamiliar with the new route. The only relief came at the halfway point just outside the town of Hotse. We passed acres and acres of peonies. Hotse, it turned out, was the peony capital of China. But it was early April, and the flowering season was still a month away. Still, the sight of so much green in an otherwise barren landscape at least made me feel better. But it didn’t last long. There were so few passengers on the bus, I moved to the back seat and stretched out and tried to sleep. It was not a very successful sleep, but at least I didn’t have to look out the window. Finally, the sun set, and the world turned dark, and I looked out the window again. But all there was to see was row after row of truck-repair shops and places where truck drivers could eat or sleep. It was ten o’clock when I finally checked into the Kaifeng Guesthouse.

      Other than snacks, I hadn’t eaten all day. Fortunately, the Kaifeng Guesthouse was three blocks from Hsiangkuo Temple, which had one of the best night markets in China. It wasn’t very big as night markets go, but the variety and quality of the food was exceptional. I had two memorable trays of hsiao-lung-pao, or steamed dumplings, and washed them down with, believe it or not, two cold beers. And for dessert, I had two dishes of steamed pears in a sauce made from rock sugar and cloves. My twelve-hour ride from Chufu was suddenly a distant memory.