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.A couple hours later, near the Inner Mongolian border, I pulled over on the side of the road and got the City Special stuck in snow.It took us a while to find a farmer with a tractor that could pull us out, and by now I wondered if I’d ever make it back to the Great Wall.The snow was falling harder, and things were getting Stranger; that evening, in the town of Jining, we checked into a hotel called the Ulanqab that had a bowling alley in the lobby.We registered at the front desk, surrounded by the crash of balls and pins.Early the next morning we set off determined to make it to Hohhot.At the entrance to Highway 110, the local government had erected a sign with changeable numbers, like the scoreboard at Fenway Park:AS OF THIS MONTH,THIS STRETCH OF ROADHAS HAD 65 ACCIDENTS AND 31 FATALITIESThe snow had stopped falling, but the temperature was brutally cold.From Jining to Hohhot there was nothing but empty steppe—low snow-covered hills huddled beneath the howling north wind.We passed Liberation trucks that were stopped dead on the road; their fuel lines had frozen, probably because of water in their tanks.After fifteen miles we crested a hill and saw a line of hundreds of vehicles stretching all the way to the horizon—Jeeps, Jettas, Santanas, Liberation trucks.Nobody was moving, and everybody was honking; an orchestra of horns blared into the wind.Never had I imagined that a traffic jam could occur in such a desolate place.We parked the City Special and continued on foot to the gridlock, where drivers explained what had happened.It all started with a few trucks whose fuel lines had frozen.The trucks stalled, and then other vehicles began to pass them on the two-lane road.While passing, they occasionally encountered an oncoming car whose driver didn’t want to budge.People faced off, honking angrily while more vehicles backed up; eventually it became impossible to move in any direction.Potential escape routes along the shoulder were quickly jammed by curb-sneaking drivers.A couple of motorists with Jeep Cherokees had taken advantage of their rear-wheel drive by embarking off-road; usually they made it about fifty yards before getting stuck.Men in loafers slipped in the snow, trying to dig out City Specials with their bare hands.The wind was so cold it hurt just to stand there.Meanwhile, truckers had crawled beneath their rigs, where they lit road flares and held them up to frozen fuel lines.The tableau had a certain beauty: the stark snow-covered steppes, the endless line of black Santanas, the orange fires dancing beneath blue Liberation trucks.“You should go up there and get a picture of those truckers,” Goettig said.“You should get a picture,” I said.“I’m not going anywhere near those guys.”At last, here on the unmarked Mongolian plains, we had crossed the shadowy line that divides Strange from Stupid.There was no sign of police or traffic control, so Goettig and I watched the flares for a while and then turned around.This time the Sinomaps came through—I leafed through the book and found a back route to Hohhot.The moment we arrived, the City Special celebrated by breaking down.The vehicle wouldn’t start, and finally I called Mr.Wang at Capital Motors.“No problem!” he said.“We can come get you.”“Umm, I don’t think that’s possible,” I said.“Where are you?” he said.“In Hohhot.”“Where?”“Hohhot.The capital of Inner Mongolia.”“Waah!” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice.“All the way to Hohhot! Not bad!”As always, Mr.Wang took everything in stride.He told me to find a mechanic, do whatever was necessary, and save the receipt.Goettig planned to catch a train out of Hohhot, but he hung around long enough to help get the City Special working.We push-started the Jeep and drove it to a garage, where they replaced the starter for a little more than a hundred bucks.The mechanic chain-smoked State Express 555 cigarettes the whole time he worked on the engine, but after Highway 110 it seemed as harmless as a sparkler on the Fourth of July.WHEN THE CITY SPECIAL returned to working order, and the weather improved, I finally found the walls again.There were plenty of them out here—of all the places I’d been, Inner Mongolia most belied the singular nature of the term Great Wall.On my first journey I had followed the Ming wall along the southern border, and now I drove nearly two hundred miles northward to another barrier.It was over eight hundred years old, dating to the Jurchen Jin dynasty, and the thing was so weathered that it had faded into the steppes: a long grass-covered bump, thirty feet wide and three feet tall, heading straight as an arrow to the horizon.I couldn’t have found it without a local resident, who sat in the passenger’s seat and directed me across a stretch of grassland.After he told me to stop, and we got out of the City Special, I realized that I had parked atop the relic itself.“It’s not a problem,” the man said.“They just don’t want people to drive on it for long distances.” Another hundred miles to the west, outside the city of Baotou, I stopped at a barrier that dated to the Warring States period, which had ended in 221 BC.It was the oldest wall I ever saw—after more than twenty-two centuries the structure was still impressive, as tall as a man and visible for miles [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]