The Bumpy Road to Lesha's

Lesha's Restaurant, located on the main dirt road of Langmusi, a small sleepy town in northern Sichuan, in a valley surrounded by bright green hills and mountains with grazing yaks and sheep, is not easy for outsiders to reach. You can come from either a small remote city in Gansu province, one of China's poorest, or you can do what we did—take a bus to Songpan (8 hours by bus from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan), transfer to a bus to Zoige (5 hours by bus from Songpan), and then take another bus or hire a car to Langmusi, an additional 3 hours. In these parts, where the roads are steep and narrow, and bus breakdowns are more the rule than the exception, any notion of schedules and time expectations must be cast aside. For the sake of one's sanity, what must be adopted is a faith in statistics. Yes, there are many road accidents in China. But of all the beatup vans and and minibuses that wind their way up and down these rocky, dusty roads, only a few actually break down permanently and even fewer actually fall into the deep valley below. Most can be fixed within half a day—enough time to observe the local nomads who live in black tents tending their yaks on the mountain's grasslands. So, if you are patient and calm, it is not a matter of if you will get to Langmusi, but one of when you will get there.

Certainly, it helps to have good company along the way. On the bus to Zoige, we were fortunate enough to meet some fellow travellers who agreed to share a van with us for the second half of the journey. Nolan, a youthful Canadian who just turned 40, proved be a typically likeable representative of his country, the kind of guy who maintains a friendly, diplomatic tone and makes it impossible for anyone not to like him. We cannot say quite the same of the other 3 travellers, which is not surprising, since they were all from France. The young couple, both of whom were just entering university, were nice enough, but somewhat naïve and rather boring. The lone French traveller, whose name was Eric, turned out to be quite a different story.

Langmusi is a place of paradox—a haven for backpackers who want to get away from most other backpackers but still be surrounded by them. Because it is fairly remote, only the more hardy travellers make it there, leaving the others clustered in the large cities and major tourist sites of China. Lesha's Restaurant is a haven for the English-speaking, burger-eating visitors of the town. Lesha, a no-nonsense Chinese Muslim, runs the popular restaurant with her husband. She makes up for her stern demeanour with her excellent food—the most famous of which are her pancakes and yak burgers. The Big McYak Attack, ground yak meat sauted with onions, potatoes, and zucchini, and sandwiched in a pita, come in small, which is big enough to feed two, and large, which is big enough to feed a small army.

It was in Leisha's, as well as in the van and on numerous encounters in town, that we got to know our lone French traveller friend better. Some background on Eric: He is what we Americans often caricature as a typical Frenchman—somewhat arrogant and obnoxious, highly valuing his own lefty opinions, all the while assuming that Americans are naïve to the effects of their country's political culture and foreign policy on the rest of the world, so naïve that he must lecture us on the history of the Cold War and "the solution" to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Despite this condescension, Eric turned out to be an interesting and provocative conversationalist. He has travelled extensively, including several trips to remote parts of Tibet and Kazakhstan. Though he detests religion, as all good French people do, he (paradoxically?) admires the Tibetans for their religiosity. Having received his MBA—yes, even French socialists get MBAs these days and go on to work for large multinationals—from the U of T at Austin, he actually has a soft spot for America. As he liked to say in his heavy French accent, "It is all an im-age. We have an im-age of America. You have an im-age of France. In the end, it is all an im-age."

There were some other interesting characters at Lesha's—many of whom, like Eric, combined certain stereotypes with unexpected charisma and warmth. There was Willie, the middle-aged American doctor from California who was teaching temporarily at the medical school in Chengdu. After having married or dated one (or a few) too many American women, he had met a young and very attractive Chinese woman named Phoebe who was with him. With Willie, we could talk about "home." He knew New York, as he had served as an emergency doctor in the Bronx many years ago. In conversation, he displayed an interest in the world, a social conscience, and at the same time an easy sense of humor. He's the kind of guy who makes it easier to understand why the Chinese like Americans as much as they do. Also at Lesha's we met an energetic Dutch couple in their forties who have travelled all around rural China with good cheer and good stories, despite their lack of Chinese. There was also a younger Dutch couple who bicycled to China from Europe via the Middle East. Lindsy, a middle-aged New Zealander teaching English in a small Hunan city (Zhongjiajie) impressed us with her down-to-earth attitude about life in China. So many English teachers here seem "lost"—having come to China in order to run away from life. But Lindsy appeared to simply be living here—neither running away from anything in particular nor toward anything for that matter.

Amidst this crowd, we spent 3 memorable days—eating yak burgers, drinking beer, discussing Chinese and American politics and culture, sharing travel stories, and stories of our home towns. Though we're sure we will forget our friends' names and they will forget our, we will always remember our time at Lesha's and of course, we will remember her yak burgers.