The tourist season has started. The obvious indicator, apart from the crowds of people, is the shit. It is everywhere. I am not using the four-letter word as a metaphor for litter. There's plenty of that too. I mean real, steaming turds.
Squeamishness about bodily functions is low in China. The Chinese, who have few public toilets, think little of urinating or defecating in public—although it may now be considered uncouth in major towns and cities.
Tourist shit, particularly here in Moganshan, bears out a three-part theory of Chinese tourist spots I developed some time ago.
The first part is about the tourist spot itself, be it a temple, waterfall or very long wall. Here there will be cable cars, wooden shacks selling random memorabilia (in Moganshan it is Russian dolls) and restaurants with criminally high prices for awful food cooked by a chef who is a truck driver in the off-season. There will also be a map which deceives the innocent into believing that subsidiary attractions are just two minutes away.
The second—and key—part is the shit level. Just beyond the main attraction there will be a path. Around its first corner you will find a recently laid pile of shit, perhaps several, surrounded by used toilet paper.
The third and final part involves the real beauty of the tourist spot. Assuming that you hold your nose and watch your step, then up above the temple, on the hill beyond the wall or the far side of the waterfall, the view will be stunning and the wildly beautiful countryside will stretch for miles. And the real treat is that no one else will be there, because they've all had a shit and gone back to the bus.
The best paths of Moganshan are now summer shithouses. The other day I was delighted to walk home from the coffee shop, turn off the road up the steps towards our house, and halfway along them find… yes, you've guessed it.
The price of doing business
I have just passed up potentially the most lucrative opportunity I have come across in a long time, one I have been waiting for since I first visited this mountain in the backwoods of China over ten years ago.
The perfect villa has come up for rent, and we were offered it. With the right ideas it could be the Chinese boutique hotel mentioned in every Condé Nast magazine. It is just below where we live. I know it well and I want it desperately.
But I won't take it. It would require major investment, and time to earn it back. During that period, I'd have to prevent it being nicked or shut down by jealous competitors with connections. That is par for the course in China (see my article "That's China," Prospect, April 2006, for my past experience of this).
And there's another reason. The government owners of the villa have announced a new business "regulation" applying to both Chinese and foreign tenants: they can grant a lease for only three years. Renewing the lease would be "no problem"—or so they claim. Who in their right mind would take that on? It is short-term bonded labour masquerading as a business opportunity.
What pains me is that this is typical. Moganshan could be the Chamonix of China—I'd have mixed feelings about that, but I'm trying to make a point—yet the opportunity is being squandered. No one with the necessary power has the vision or confidence to make it happen. And the people who could make it happen are being prevented from doing so.
The Moganshan Olympics
The other day, I heard an ominous warning from one of the government loudspeakers which, in China, adorn lamp-posts: "All illegal electronic recording and broadcast of the Olympic opening ceremony is illegal and will be strictly punished according to the laws." Olympic fever has reached Moganshan, and we are joining in by organising a triathlon.
"We" are the three foreign residents, who live on top or on the slopes of the mountain here. One evening during dinner the bragging started. It came mostly from Christoph, the Frenchman. Grant, the South African, and I were merely standing up for our self-respect. A couple more beers and we had fixed a date, sketched out a course and agreed the prize: official bragging rights, valid for one year.
Since I live highest up the mountain, which means that my training for the event always ends in a nasty uphill struggle, I am confident that I will triumph. I have also given up smoking. However, Christoph is a very good swimmer and is counting on Grant or me drowning in the first leg. He wants us to swim across a vast lake, while Grant and I would rather swim around a small one.
The course will then go past Christoph's property developments in his tea plantation, and, after that, Grant's farmhouse retreats. We have invited friends to keep us company and boost the numbers for a big party at the end, which will be at my coffee shop.
It might take a few years, but if we keep it up—and don't drown—perhaps our race will achieve the popularity of the old Moganshan tennis tournament, whose results were reported faithfully in the North China Daily News.
