It was nearly dark when we came to it. Yanshiping was twenty houses standing in mud on a curve in the road. There were children and dogs, yaks and goats. Several of the dogs were the biggest and fiercest I had ever seen in my life. They were Tibetan mastiffs—their Tibetan name means simply "watchdog." They lollopped and slavered and barked horribly.
"There is nowhere to stay here," Mr. Fu said, before I could ask—I was slowing down.
"What's the next town?"
He produced his filthy scrap of paper.
"Amdo. There is a hotel at Amdo."
"How far is Amdo?"
He was silent. He didn't know. After a moment, he said, "A few hours."
"Hotel" is a nice word, but China had taught me to distrust it. The more usual Chinese expression was "guest house." It was the sort of place I could never identify properly. It was a hospital, a madhouse, a house, a school, a prison. It was seldom a hotel. But, whatever, I longed to be there. It was now seven-thirty. We had been on the road for ten hours.
We continued in the dark. It was snowier here, higher and colder, on a winding road that was icy in places. There was another pass, choked with ice that never melts at any time in the year because of the altitude, another 17,000 footer.
Mr. Fu woke and saw the snow.
"Road! Watch the road!" he yelled. "
The altitude put him to sleep, but each time he woke he became a terrible nag. I began to think that perhaps many Chinese in authority were nags and bores. He kept telling me to watch the road, because he was frightened. I wanted to say, You almost got us killed, Jack, but to save his face I didn't.
I often mistook the lights of distant trucks on the far side of this defile for the lights of Amdo. There was no vegetation at this altitude, and the freezing air was clear. In the darkness I saw these pinpricks of light.
"Is that Amdo?"
"Watch the road!" Mr. Fu's voice from the backseat set my teeth on edge. "
His nervousness made him nag. He was the passenger. I was the chauffeur. They were both in the backseat now—he and Miss Sun—she was whimpering still, he was chattering. "Keep your eyes on the road," he was saying. "Watch the road!
Now and then he would tap me on the shoulder and cry, "Toilet!"
That was the greatest euphemism of all. It was usually Miss Sun who needed to have a slash. I watched her totter to the roadside and creep into a ditch, and there just out of the wind—and it was too dark even for the yaks to see her—she found relief.
Three more hours passed in this way. I wondered whether we might not be better off just pulling off the road and sleeping in the car. Midnight on the Tibetan Plateau, in the darkness and ice and wind, was not a good time to be driving. But the problem was the narrowness of the road. There was nowhere to pull off. There was a ditch on either side. If we stopped we would be rammed by one of the big army trucks that traveled by night.
I was glad we were still going. Why didn't the back wheel fall off? Why was the axle still screaming? Why didn't we get a flat tire? After all, we were traveling without a spare. Nothing bad happened. The moon came out from behind a cloud and showed me a snowy mountainside and the black pit of a valley beside the road.
I glanced at it and almost immediately Mr. Fu yelled at me.
Towards midnight I saw the sign saying Amdo. In the darkness it seemed a bleak and dangerous place. I did not know then that it would look much worse in daylight.
"We are staying at the army camp," Mr. Fu said.
To save face, Mr. Fu changed places with me and drove the last twenty feet to the sentry post. Then he got out and argued with the sentry.
He returned to the car trembling.
"They are full," he said.
"What now?"
"The guest house."
Miss Sun was sobbing quietly.
We drove across a rocky field. There was no road. We came to a boarded-up house, but before we could get out, a mastiff bounded into the car lights. It had a big square head and a meaty tongue, and it was slavering and barking. It was as big as a pony, something like the Hound of the Baskervilles, but vastly more sinister.
"Are you getting out?"
"No," Mr. Fu said, hoarse with fear.
Beyond the crazed and leaping dog there were yaks sleeping, standing up.
Mr. Fu kept driving across this rocky hillside, pretending he was on a road. Was he trying to prove something, after hours of yelling in the backseat?
There were more dogs. I could take the yak-meat diet; I could understand why the Tibetans didn't wash; I found the cold and the high altitude just about bearable; I could negotiate the roads. But I could not stand those fierce dogs. I was not angry or impatient. I was scared shitless.
"There is a guest house," Mr. Fu said, grinning at some dim lights ahead.
