Dispatch from Moganshan, East China

A banker friend from Britain out here on a whirlwind business trip borrowed some local currency from me. He wanted to repay me promptly, so while in Shanghai he drew a cheque from a major national bank. He posted it from Hong Kong. It arrived 34 days later.

I took the cheque to my bank, also a major national one. The teller laughed. “No way can we cash this. It’s from a different bank. Besides, it’s expired.” (Chinese cheques are generally valid for one month.) Her advice: “Go to the bank where your friend drew it. Try to find the person who gave it to him. Take your passport.”

Next time I was in Shanghai, I made a detour to the branch my friend visited.

“No way can we cash this, it’s expired,” said the teller. I appealed to the manager, showing her my passport. “The name in the passport is in capital letters,” she said. “On the cheque only the first letters are capitalised. Can your friend redo it?”

An hour later, they agreed to make an exception. I had to open an account, which required a Shanghai address I do not have (a friend helped), and they promised to transfer the funds into it. On my next trip to the financial centre of the far east I went back to the same branch and withdrew the money. I still have the useless bank account.

Wheels

I have a new set of wheels: a Chang Jiang 750cc motorbike with sidecar. The bike is based on a BMW design from 1938 that the Russians acquired with the spoils of war and passed on to China. It looks like a vintage bike but is still in production.

A friend in Shanghai gave me the bike. He had to get rid of it because it is over ten years old and the rules state that ten-year-old motorbikes must be scrapped, no matter how well maintained. He preferred to send it to a good home. The authorities had taken the number plates so I had it trucked to the mountain. The first person I met as I rode the illegal bike the few hundred metres from the unloading point to my coffee shop was the police chief, who pulled me over.

“Can I have a go?” he asked. “I haven’t ridden one of these since I was a recruit. They were the only transport we had.” He gave me the keys to his police car and told me to follow him to where he was going.

A few days later I was summoned by the deputy police chief in charge of traffic. He laid down the rules: no driving the bike below a certain point on the mountain and be careful. His prime concern, quite reasonably, was the lack of insurance. Since then I have “acquired” a set of number plates, which mean I can buy genuine insurance.

On my first ride down the mountain the village traffic cop pulled me over, looked at the bike, took in the plates.

“Running all right?” he asked.

“Yes, thanks.”

“Drive safely. Bye.”

Signs of Winter

You know it’s winter in rural China when the neighbours compliment you on how fat your dog is. We used to have another dog, a retriever who had been abused and was too much trouble for our young family. We found her a better home, we hope, almost a year ago. Yet only now, during winter, are people asking where she went. The implied question is: did she make a good stew?

Like Britain, we’ve had heavy snow. A van spent a few days upside down in the bamboo below the road. I had to go to Hangzhou, our nearest city, to catch a train the day after the worst snowfall. The highway was littered with wreckage and abandoned cars. The local radio reported that the average number of accidents in the city each month is 500; on the previous night there had been 3,600. I passed crowds waiting for buses that would never come. All services had been cancelled.

I refuse to leave the mountain despite the fact that our house is freezing (it was built for summer use). I keep a couple of rooms warm and cope with minor inconveniences like frozen cooking oil and washing-up liquid. It’s when the water freezes in the pipes that life gets awkward. It’s tougher for the old residents, some of whom also refuse to leave. They rely on their children to bring them supplies, often on foot, through the snow. Every year there are fewer of them.

Like the snow, this year the first death came early. The other day I noticed the tell-tale signs of a funeral: yellow scraps of paper scattered along the roadside to show the spirit of the deceased the way home, once the road is open again.