passenger in transit

As every single morning these last days, Mr Zhu is waiting for me outside of the hotel, next to his car, a black Kia. With a half smoked cigarette in his mouth, dark glasses, the nail of his right hand little finger disgustingly long and his unavoidable ensemble of grey pants/black shirt, he looks like a member of a Chinese mafia. A bodyguard or something like that. Mr Zhu’s Spanish (or English, or French) is as good as my Chinese (or Japanese or Thai). None of us can say even ‘good morning’ in the other’s language; that’s why, after nodding our heads to greet each other, I take my seat in the back of the car and look through the window or read something while he starts driving. None of us talks. That makes me feel like now I’m part of the same Chinese mafia than Mr Zhu and he is my bodyguard. He is taking me to a secret place to close a secret deal and it’s better not to talk or give him any details, to keep him safe. I’m a serious and professional Chinese mafia person.

But no, Mr Zhu is not a member of any Chinese mafia, at least not apparently. Mr Zhu is one of the drivers at the Huang Pu plant and, while I’m here, he is the one in charge of taking me to the plant, or the hotel, or the airport, because the ‘foreigner’ doesn’t speak any Chinese and she might get lost. And that’s very true.

It is easy to imagine that communication with Mr Zhu has been difficult. Not that we really need to talk a lot, as the people from the plant tell Mr Zhu where I want to go and Mr Zhu tells them how much I have to pay; but being alone with another person in a car, during trips of approximately one hour and with the crazy traffic between Guangzhou and Huang Pu, is bound to happen that one of us will try to point at something with the finger to say ‘look at that bus how it got into the front of that other car, crazy!’ or ‘that motorbike almost hit us!’ and in my case I’m longing to ask him what’s that building over there, or how many people he thinks live at Guangzhou, but it’s just the intention and the pointing finger for a few seconds. When we are about to open our mouths we remember our communicational barrier and the finger and the intentions fall down.

The first afternoon that Mr Zhu left me at the hotel, he turned and said something, in Chinese of course. I answered that I didn’t understand, obviously in English. He kept talking and, frustrated, counted till 7 with his fingers. I figured out that meant he was going to pick me up the following day at 7am. I counted to 7 too, said yes, ok, si and smiled. He smiled back and the following morning we were both there at 7am. That’s how we have communicated with Mr Zhu. If Mr Zhu wants me to stay at some place while he gets the car, he points emphatically to the floor and I nod my head also emphatically and we both feel better. If Mr Zhu wants me to follow him some place he makes another signal and I start walking. At those moments I’m not the serious and professional Chinese mafia person, but the stupid cousin that came from the country and Mr Zhu is showing me the ‘city ways’.

Mr Zhu has a tape with Chinese music and we listen to it and listen to it and listen to it in the car. Sometimes he turns the volume down, sort of an instinct, when he feels like turning back to say something to me. Then he realizes we are not going to talk, he mumbles something and turns the volume back up. I act like it’s not with me and continue looking through the window, dying to ask him what’s that huge house on the left. The tape is not particularly good, but I already know at least the order of the songs and yesterday afternoon I found myself amused by the fact that after the song that was playing at that point I knew my ‘favorite’ was next. I think I was about to sing it.


This morning something incredible happened. Traffic was awful, we were completely stopped. Mr Zhu turned the volume down and up at least three times, until he couldn’t take it anymore and left the car to talk to somebody about what was going on in Chinese, not without making the ‘don’t move from here’ sign first, pointing emphatically to the car floor. He came back a minute later, made a ‘doubt’ gesture that I interpreted as ‘I couldn’t find out anything’ and without any word he sat in the car again and turned the volume up. Finally the traffic started to move and we arrived eventually to the place where 7 cars had crashed, Quite impressive. Mr Zhu turned the volume down and turned his head to me and not thinking it twice said something in Chinese, very excited, pointing at the crash scene. Without even noticing what I was doing, I answered to him, with the same excitement, but in Spanish. It seemed that I had understood him and that he was understanding me as we continued ‘talking’. Somebody else’s tragedy have made us so basic we were able to communicate and, for a few minutes, we both knew what the other was thinking and/or saying whether it was in Chinese, Spanish, English or Russian. We both were talking amazed and surprised, almost enthusiastic, pointing at the accident. It was an odd great moment, but it lasted just a couple of minutes, once we left the crashed cars behind, Mr Zhu turned the volume up again and I kept looking through the window, asking myself ‘what could be that huge building?’

Before we arrived to the plant, Mr Zhu took a different route than the one we’ve been taking everyday. We went through a very beautiful park, along a river. It was stunning and I was looking through the window embezzled. I still don’t know if Mr Zhu did that as a celebration of our little ‘episode’, or to avoid the heavy traffic or if it was because he was trying to evade the police… because, you know, we are from a Chinese mafia….