OUT OF EDEN WALK

There were fields of loess where farmers were out planting onions.

We walked up over the tan, grassy gap of Shiling Guan, a strategic pass between the rich trading cities of Taiyuan and Xinzhou in central Shanxi Province, a vast upland that historically had been a buffer zone between western pastoralists and Han farmers. An ancient brick gate in a village had been built, according to its faded stone plaque, by 133 local men in the year 1587. A shrine beside the crumbling gate honored Wǔdàoshén, the Five Ways Gods who represent the five manifestations of heaven. Atop this high vaulted entryway, the Kuomintang had constructed a sloppy concrete machinegun pillbox against invading Japanese in 1937. (The Japanese flanked the position and took Taiyuan anyway.) The region had experienced many wars going back 3,000 years. So it goes.

Nightfall obliged us to shelter at a roadside inn that featured shelves of fake books used as decorations in the lobby. The titles on the cardboard spines included, in English, The Descent of Man and Anne of Green Gables. Teletubby statues stood at attention outside each room door. The Teletubbies were named Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, Laa Laa, and Po. They were of molded plastic in bright primary colors and six-feet tall. The effect in aggregate was creepy, like a hallway of leering off-world honor guards, and sleep came uneasily.