After chuntering out of the filth encrusted capital city of the People’s Republic, the Beijing to Guangzhou Express was soon rolling through rice fields frozen by frost. There was one other westerner in the carriage, an American girl in her 20s, and the common bond of skin colour got us chatting in a common language amid the surly Chinamen, scowling and smoking on bunks, travelling en masse to distant homes for the New Year festival about to begin.
We were joined by another foreigner, an African, I thought. He didn’t say anything, just sat close by, eyes fixated on the good-looker from Maryland sat opposite. Couldn’t blame him for that, the entire carriage was copping sly glances at Selindra’s eye candy.
“What’s your name, mate?” I asked, to break an uncomfortable silence.
“I’m Max. Max Washington,” he answered.
“Nice to meet you Max. Where you from?”
“Washington.”
“Oh yeah? DC or state?”
Stumped, Max plumped for DC, though his shamed face gave the true answer.
At dinner in the restaurant car we added an international flavour to the Han slurping their noodles through steamy soup and were interrupted by a fight breaking out in the kitchen. Diners downed chopsticks to crowd the serving hatch - public violence being a spectator sport in China. Two chefs traded insults and machete chops and the inscrutable countenance of the on-board policewoman was shattered as she ushered me away with a look of sheer horror at what she’d just witnessed.
The next morning, Selindra teetered onto the Guangzhou platform hidden by an enormous backpack. I had a shoulder bag while Max carried a pair of gloves.
“Haven’t you got any luggage?”
“My friends are bringing it.”
“Geez, my friends would never do that.”
Africans in China mostly study medicine on educational exchange programmes between quasi-communist states, and out on the vast concourse, where the locals were penned in like cattle, waiting days for their train, all eyes were squarely on Max Washington’s ebony skin. The two white-assed foreign devil big noses barely got a second look.
From there we took a double-decker bus crammed full of gossiping Hong Kong women heading home after a frenzied day’s shopping on the way cheaper mainland. Everybody traipsed off at the still distinct border where, thanks to an expired visa, I was arrested. My “forgot all about it” excuse seemed to work because after making me sweat for an hour the cop released me and my passport with the line, “Today you are lucky.”
Walking out of the office I was convinced the bus wouldn’t have waited and I was wondering how the hell I was going to get down to Kowloon when the driver miraculously appeared outside the police station door shouting “Come on! " and we hurried over to the parking bay under the glare of eighty furious Oriental housewives. I might have survived the cops but I wasn’t too sure about this lot.
“What happened!?” Selindra screeched when I sheepishly climbed on board.
I explained my memory loss and consequent luck.
“Where’s Max?”
“No idea.”
“But they took him too.”
I hadn’t seen him in there.
The back story unfolded that she’d met Max Washington in a Beijing club, from where he had followed her home and hung around outside the gate for a week or so. His naive infatuation and belief that she would reciprocate falling head over heels and pave his way to the Land of the Free had led him to follow her onto a train all the way to Canton without documents, luggage or a clue.
God knows where he is now – an African without papers in the hands of the Public Security Bureau – but it certainly ain’t DC.