Checking In off Chang'an

Four days overland from Almaty: a shared taxi to the border, the crossing itself on foot with all my bags through two customs halls that took their time, then Chinese rails from Khorgos, Ürümqi at dawn, and then the long run east with instant noodles and a window that never once ran out of country. I arrived in Beijing looking exactly how that sounds. And then I did the one extravagant thing of this trip: I checked into the Beijing Hotel on Chang'an Avenue, three nights, a price I refuse to type, because this building is where my whole route begins.

The lobby swallowed me. A reception counter long enough to land aircraft on, stone, warm wood, staff too professional to notice what the trains had done to my hair. I photographed myself at the desk as evidence: one woman, one backpack, one establishment that has hosted every act of the century I study.

Upstairs I lay on a bed the size of my kitchen and listened to the avenue hum through the glass. The plan, since this page has not heard it yet: south and west from here, slowly, toward a mountain in Chongqing with a factory inside it that never switched on. But first, this hotel. It has a dance floor I need to see.