Saving Fish from Drowning - Heal Burma

SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING
What they tasted was not the chili substitute often found in
American-made Sichuan tofu. The Lijiang version was made of the
berrylike pods of the prickly ash. The zing in the mouth derives from
the numbing quality that the berries have on the mucosa. And the
particular variety of the genus Zanthoxylum that my friends were
eating was not only from Sichuan but also of the Himalayan region,
where people eat it like jelly beans. It tends to have more heat factor,
ma-ness, and also to cause an almost anesthesia-like paralysis of the
gut, especially in those who are delicately inclined. That would be
Dwight, I might add.
T HE NEXT DAY, when the group assembled for breakfast, Bennie
had an announcement: “By nothing short of a miracle, Miss Rong,
as a final courtesy, was able to book flights for us today so that we
can leave as soon as possible.” In a few hours, they would leave for
Lijiang airport and fly to Mangshi, which was only a couple of
hours’ drive from the Burma border. As Bennie knew, palm-greasing
helps to speed things along. The night before, after the group had
voted to leave Lijiang, he rang up Miss Rong and said he would give
her two hundred U.S. dollars of his own money to use as she saw fit,
no questions asked, if only she could help him out of this predica­
ment. She in turn gave away a portion of that to the various expe­
diters connected with hotels, airlines, and the office of tourism, who,
in the age-old custom of guanxi-giving, showed their appreciation by
granting almost a full refund on the much-shortened visit to Lijiang.
At ten in the morning, they boarded the flight, and as they as­
cended, so did their moods. They had escaped their troubles with
nothing more than a few mosquito bites and the pinch of several
thousand kwai.
Their new guide, Miss Kong, was there to meet them at the gate in
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