Hot Summer Day in an Ancient City

by Anthony Karambelas (United States of America)

A leap into the unknown China

My eyes are open. Am I blind? The ceiling fan spins five feet above me, as it did two hours ago when I drifted off. The bed feels so cool, so spacious with no bedmate for company. There she is in the corner. Good, my eyes have not gone. Her silhouette, befitting her frame, is so slight it barely makes a shadow. I smile with the eyes of one following a hunch and hoping beyond hope he’s not wrong. Really, what can one do with six days in China, so far from home, but to find peace in the arms of another? She turns from her computer. “You’re up,” she says, a statement of fact rather than a question, but I nod anyway. She studies me. “Feeling better?” “Yeah,” I say. “I thought it was the food, but it was probably just heat exhaustion.” We spent the day in Tongguan Ancient City, about an hour’s drive from central Changsha, the kind of place expats never find on their own. She brought along a friend of hers and as our Volkswagen sped along the highway, we gazed out our backseat windows—streaks of city grey, farm green, and then a river brown—like three lobsters in a tank awaiting a hot and bubbly death. By the time we tumbled out of the car, the clock had turned back on the world. Our shoes kissed damp earth and the happy memory lingered in the soil behind us. As our driver pulled away, a century went with him and suddenly, we were three travel-hardened bodies, sweating lightly under our city clothes and wishing we were anywhere else. As we trundled past the shops, ancient faces peered up at us curiously. I wondered how much time had passed since the last American walked this strip. An hour passed. The blustery sun showed no signs of rearing its angry glare and from it, there was no escape. Where it could not see, it smothered. And every time, like gasping groundhogs, we stumbled out from the gift shops like woozy groundhogs, back into the fryer. By noon, we bore a resemblance to three soldiers at the end of a long march, standing on twig legs, vision crimping around the edges, gasping for food, water, and air. We found all three on a rough-hewn patio overlooking the Jingou River, where a restaurant owner and his wife observed us with amusement. After we’d finished our lukewarm tea, they plopped down a plate of dried sardines and a heap of rice. Displaying toothless smiles, they struck up a conversation in Hunan dialect. A black cat crept up to my side and I busied myself with her fur while they chatted. As we exited the restaurant, she nudged me. It’s the first time they’ve seen an American, she said. I turned to shake their hands and thank them. Xie xie. The couple turned to another and laughed. Had I done something wrong? No, she said, they’re saying you speak well. Back at the hotel, the Ancient City feels like a bad dream. We’re showered and air-conditioned, but our bodies still bear the afternoon’s tortures like freed convicts. Tonight, we will gather along the Xiangjiang River to see the Orange Isle firework show. A crowd will gather and lift their heads to the night sky. Over the water, tiny bonfires will cook that dank canvass into a blazing oven. But down here, the light is cool on our smiling faces.