A Touch of SARS
March 31, 2010 by admin
Filed under Linger Longer
Linger Longer: Driving the Trans-Siberian
Chapter 26: A Touch of SARS
Startled by the bleeping sound of my alarm clock, I sit up
and wipe my sticky face on a towel. I climb out of bed and
grunt at Si, who sits on the edge of his bed with his head
in his hands. We quickly get dressed and head down to
reception with our heavy bags. The lady from the tourist
office greets us outside the elevator.
‘Good morning!’ she sings from behind a pair of enormous
sunglasses. ‘Your transport to the boat terminal is
waiting outside. Please follow me.’
‘What about breakfast?’ I whisper to Si.
‘Later!’ he snaps.
We clamber inside the back of a taxi, and look sleepily
out of the window as we head through the quiet city
streets. Within no time at all we arrive at the boat port. Si
quickly grabs some water and a sack of plain crisps from
a small kiosk. The lady from the hotel escorts us to the
small hydrofoil terminal, and we join a long queue at passport
control. The woman shakes our hands, and with genuine
sincerity she wishes us a safe journey.
‘Yut will meet you on the other side,’ she shouts over the
noise of the crowd. ‘Good luck!’
Like two confused toddlers on their first day at school,
we slowly wave and watch her leave.
‘Hey, wait a minute!’ Si cries. ‘I thought Yut was meeting
us on the boat?’
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‘Don’t worry, it’s all cool.’
Reaching the front of the queue, we approach the glass
screen and hand over our passports to the stern looking
Russian official behind the desk. A spotlight glares in my
face, and I’m made to stand behind a yellow line with my
hands by my sides. I suddenly remember the Sierra, and
begin to worry they’ll quiz us about its whereabouts.
Thankfully, the guy doesn’t say anything, he just hands
back our passports and waves us right. We head towards
the exit where we’re greeted at the gangplank by two
female customs officials dressed in military uniform. With
short skirts and black leather boots, both women are blonde
and extremely attractive. They look like the stars of a low
budget pornographic movie, or a couple of strip-o-grams
in costume. I struggle to hold my composure. The dirtier
looking of the two wears blood red lipstick and glares at
me coldly. They check our exit stamps and dismiss us
without so much as a smile. We find our way onto the boat,
and sit at a table with two friendly women and a young
lad of about fifteen years old. The kid looks sulkily out of
the window, and it seems clear that even out here in the
depths of the Far East, teenagers suffer from the same hormonal
roller coaster ride as the rest of the world. I can
hear his thoughts. “I hate you! I didn’t ask to be born! Why
can’t you all just leave me alone?” The woman sat next to
him opens a plastic tub filled with sandwiches and places
them in the centre of the table. She offers us both one and
feeling it would be impolite to decline, we both gratefully
accept. Si tears open the sack of crisps in a gesture of good
will, and we all munch happily in silence as the boat pulls
away from the pier.
The hydrofoil rockets down the Amur River for three
hours. I catch forty winks and study the map of China in
my pocket atlas. We haven’t a clue where we’re going. We
don’t even have a guidebook for China, and apart from
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being able to say “hello” and “thank you” in Chinese,
taught by Kong who owns the local Chinese takeaway
near our house, it suddenly occurs to me that this could
potentially be a bit of a problem.
All of a sudden the engines cut out. I glance out of the
window and see a small pier jutting out from the riverbank.
Si opens his eyes, as the other passengers begin to
gather their possessions together in anticipation of their
arrival. As the boat comes to a halt, I look over the crowd
of heads and watch as one of the crew opens the exit
doors. Two Chinese customs officials in dark green uniforms
immediately climb aboard, and I’m surprised to see
they are both wearing white surgical masks. The female
customs official carries some kind of scan gun in her
hand. She works her way from one end of the boat to the
other, methodically firing a red beam of light against the
forehead of each of the passengers.
I turn to Si. ‘What the hell is she doing?’
‘Don’t look into the light!’ Si laughs. ‘She’s erasing
everybody’s memory.’
I watch with fascination as she fires the gun at a chubby
lady a few seats away. The Russian woman looks stunned
as the laser bounces off her wrinkled forehead.
‘I think she’s taking everybody’s temperature,’ I mutter.
‘Yeah, that must be it … they’re checking to see if anyone
has SARS.’
‘Don’t be so naive, Chris. SARS is just a mythical disease
that was invented by a secret inter-planetary organization
to scare people from going to China. Communism kept
people away until recent times, but as the country has
opened up to the rest of the world they had to invent
something else. People love a good epidemic, so they
invented the SARS outbreak. The Chinese aren’t really
human at all, you see. They’re Mohogs from the planet
Zorg. They lost their planet zeons ago and have been living
here ever since. That’s why they built the Great Wall
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of China. It’s basically a signpost for passing spaceships.
We wouldn’t want UFO’s just landing anywhere, would
we? It might freak out the little people, although, a few
have made the odd mistake over the years.’
‘Wow, I had no idea!’ I smirk.
Feeling suddenly hot and sweaty, I begin to worry my
temperature might be somehow artificially higher than it
should be, and I’ll be quarantined inside an oxygen bubble
for years in some remote hospital in northern China.
The official approaches me and raises the gun to my forehead.
I brace myself as she pulls the trigger and hearing a
healthy bleeping sound, I breathe a sigh of relief as she
continues on down the line. Making our way slowly off
the boat, we step down from the gangplank and plant our
feet firmly on Chinese soil. A huge Chinese flag flaps vigorously
in the breeze above our heads, and a boyish looking
Chinese woman with short black hair approaches us.
It’s Yut. She personally escorts us through customs, and
we’re greatly surprised by the welcoming reception we
receive from the Chinese officials. They quickly stamp our
passports, and we’re made to feel like VIP’s as we’re led to
an awaiting mini bus outside. Tossing our rucksacks on
the roof, we peer excitedly out of the window as we’re
transported through the back streets of town. The bus drops
everyone off at a busy market and we’re asked to remain
on board while they unload. It’s absolute mayhem outside.
Everywhere we look there are boxes stacked high
containing; TV’s, stereos, satellite dishes and portable
karaoke machines. Hoards of people sit around in the
street eating noodles and chatting loudly.
Within seconds, we find ourselves hurtling down the
main street of Fuyuan. The town looks fairly modern,
with newly constructed concrete buildings either side of a
tarmac road. Large red Chinese characters printed on silky
banners hang across the front of the buildings along the
main street, and splashes of gold paint decorate the roofs
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in a weak attempt at providing some colour. We pull up
outside one of these large concrete buildings, which I presume
is the bus station, and follow Yut inside. She pays in
cash for two tickets to Harbin, China’s northern-most city,
and hands them over to Si. Mutely showing our appreciation,
we follow her to a beaten-up sleeper coach outside.
The luggage handlers immediately tear our rucksacks off
our shoulders and add them to the pile of junk on the
pavement that’s waiting to be loaded onto the coach. A
brown sack next to my rucksack moves by itself and I hear
growling and yapping coming from inside. Much to my
astonishment I realise it’s a bag of puppies, most probably
on-route to the nearest Harbin restaurant. Bowing her
head, Yut says something to us in Chinese. We thank her
and watch as she scurries off back to the mini bus. We
stand there for a second scratching our balls at the roadside,
and feel suddenly vulnerable again as we’re left to fend
for ourselves in this completely alien world. Everybody
around the bus stares at us, and two teenage girls sitting
on a wall close by giggle and point at our big feet. It’s
impossible to blend in here. At least in Russia if we kept
our mouth’s shut they could have mistaken us for being
Russian, but here it’s pretty obvious we’re not locals.
People eventually start to board the bus, so we follow
their lead. It’s very cramped inside and the putrid smell of
sweaty feet hits me hard as we squeeze down the narrow
aisle between the beds. It’s immediately obvious the bus
has been designed with Chinese proportions in mind, but
fortunately we’re both pretty skinny and we reach our
bunks without too much trouble. My bed is on the top
bunk, and the guy sitting on the bottom bed stares up at
me as I haul myself over his head. The bunks are less than
one and a half meters long, and it’s impossible for me to
stretch out my legs. I console myself with the thought that
it’s only a fifteen-hour journey. The driver of the bus stands
outside my window and talks to a guy on a scooter. He
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seems quite oblivious to the fact that his bus is ready to
depart and everyone on board is ready to go. I think about
jumping off and having a quick cigarette, but I can’t be
arsed to fight my way back down the aisle. Finally, the
driver finishes his conversation and rocks this dirty bus
out of town. I grin at Si with excitement as we head into
the barren countryside of northern China. A surreal end to
a surreal journey I think to myself, as the driver switches
on the onboard entertainment system and blasts weird
sounding Chinese music from the stereo. Si’s head is literally
three inches away from the speaker embedded in
the roof, and I try not to laugh as we’re flung from side-toside
on the bumpy road to Harbin.
Observing the alien world outside, the extent of our
journey becomes a very clear reality. Have we really driven
all this way? It seems too bizarre to comprehend now.
Passing through small towns, we watch dogs scavenge for
food and study the hard faces of the people who live in a
corner of the world I barely knew existed. Featherless
chickens scratch and peck at the dry earth, while toothless
hags thrust inedible offerings through the bus windows.
Hardened by our journey across Siberia, we lie back and
embrace the surreal and the unknown. In a world where
anything can and will happen, fear for us has finally left the
building and when and where our journey will come to an
end seems very clear now that it’s a question we have always faced.
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