The Chinese dancers in Lichang square wore traditional caps and capes. The sun beat down on their ample bodies and some dropped out when they’d had enough. Plucky tourists joined the circle, only to realise they didn’t know the music or the dance moves. Usually I would have enjoyed the spectacle for hours, but for some reason my heart wasn’t in it.

This malaise continued into the evening, where in a grim bar, drummers recycled the same beat for hours — as if changing it would bring the whole town crashing down around them. The music was dreadful, the beer tasted like water and I wasn’t even looking forward to Dali anymore. The man to blame for this was the sunken-eyed Frenchman sitting opposite me who had just announced that Dali was the same as Lichang but with fewer cobbles and shops. He was turning out to be a miserable drinking companion and doing nothing to help my mood.

What was I doing with my life, standing around watching dancing? What was I doing with my life, seeing sights, checking boxes and moving on? What was the point?

I trudged out of the bar and stood outside scrolling through my emails. After ten minutes of junk, one message remained. It was from a Swedish girl I had met in Mongolia.

“Hi Tom,

I’ve just got back from Yuan Yang. It’s the most beautiful place I’ve been to in China (a small village with really nice views). It’s a nine-hour bus trip from Kunming. From there you can take a minivan to an even smaller village — which I truly recommend. If you go to Yuan Yang there is a place called “The Window of Yunnan.” Speak to a guy called “Penknife” — he can help you find your way to a small village where you can stay with a family. Tell Penknife and the family I said hello … if you go.”

Of course I was going. This was exactly what I needed. The “Window of Yunnan.” A guy called “Penknife.” It sounded almost mythical. I was no longer another weary tourist following the guide books — I had an experiment to conduct. Could I find one person in a billion armed with just a village name? I had four days left in China and I planned to spend them finding out.

The Quest Begins

Most of the town’s tourists had got up early to avoid the droves. It would have been the perfect plan had they not all thought of it. My bus looked like it had been bombed, looted, and then pushed into the station as the punchline to an elaborate joke. At the front of the bus something caught my eye — on the gear stick was an extravagant golden lion’s head, prompting a scenario to arrive fully formed in my head:

A mechanic stood in front of the bus holding a clipboard. He spoke slowly to make sure the bus driver definitely understood.

“Let’s go through this one more time. All four tyres need replacing, including the spare in the boot. There’s a crack the size of a small country in your windscreen. Your brakes are dead and your clutch is worse. The windows don’t open so when the engine implodes — which it will — none of your passengers will escape the blaze.”

He pointed to the golden lion locked in a glass case.

“Are you sure you want to spend all your money on the lion?”

The driver nodded as if the case contained the meaning of life. The mechanic threw the clipboard over his shoulder and unlocked it.

I spent so long daydreaming about the lion that I missed my stop and finished up at the bus depot. As I waited in the bus for the driver to eat his lunch I resolved to be more careful. The road to the “Window” would be littered with false prophets — if I was going to make it I would have to stay on guard.

From Lichang to Kunming

Tangy green ledges nuzzled the plains, women scooped water from pools, men wrestled hay into cone towers, and mothers washed babies in streams. I could have lost myself in the scenery for hours, but unfortunately the bus stopped at a petrol station instead.

In the car park, the driver made an announcement and pointed out of the window. I don’t know what he said but judging by the groans it obviously wasn’t “You’ve all won a thousand pounds.” A woman pointed to her injured leg and begged to stay on board, but the driver pointed out of the window again. Clearly no one was exempt from wherever we were going.

The driver led us into a restaurant where the floor was stained brown, the tables were flaky, and no two stools matched. A row of dumpy women stood guard over pots of sludge. The driver nodded at them as if to say, “I’ve done my bit,” then disappeared upstairs.

The passenger at the front of the queue held a metal tray and women slapped slop onto it. The rest of us watched in horror — anyone would have thought we were waiting to be executed rather than fed. The spam wobbled when touched and the cabbage looked older than the Great Wall of China. Most of us focused on the tasteless (but at least not dangerous) rice. In fact, the rice was going down so well that people were ordering seconds. I wondered whether the rice lady got paid more — she surely deserved it — she was working ten times as hard as the rest. Meanwhile our driver was still hiding upstairs — probably relaxing in a bath of rice — complaining the temperature was too high for his weary body while Chinese girls fed him steak.

Failing to Find a Steed

The bus arrived in Kunming in the evening — if I could find a sleeper bus I would be in Yuan Yang by the next morning. The station cashier held a battered computer in her arms and her colleague tried to jam a USB pen into it. I told them I wanted to go to Yuan Yang. In response, they stared at me as if to say: “If he talks again we’re dropping this thing and making a run for it.”

One of them dialled a number and passed me the phone.

“Hello,” said a voice. “Can I help?”

“Yes. I want to go to Yuan Yang.”

Silence.

“Where?”

“Y-U-A-N Y-A-N-G.”

“Is it in China?”

“Yes, it’s in Yunnan province.”

“I don’t know it.”

“Y-U-A-N Y-A-N-G?”

“There are no planes.”

“I don’t want a plane, I want a bus.”

“No buses.”

“Do you even know where I want to go?”

“No buses.”

“Have you heard of the ‘Window of Yunnan’?”

Another silence. I pressed the receiver to my ear. She had hung up.

I looked to the two women for help, but both were now beneath the desk — having finally realised it was easier to bring the cable to the computer than the other way around.

As I wandered through the dust-soaked maze of clapped-out vehicles, touts asked if I wanted to go to Dali or Lichang, but never to Yuan Yang. Horns shrieked. Engines blared. And as I coughed through the fumes the questions returned.

What was I doing with my life, hiding behind this childish quest? What was I doing with my life, climbing on and off buses? What was the point?

A passenger took pity on me and pointed me toward a bus, but when I reached the door she dragged me back — and as I argued with her the bus disappeared through the gates. In the space the bus left behind was another ticket office. It took me longer than it should have to realise this was what she had been pointing at.

This time the conversation was brisk.

“Yuan Yang?”

“No buses.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Three buses.”

“Can I get on one?”

“Yes. First one 10:40.”

Thirty minutes later I had a bus ticket in my pocket and a roof over my head.

Meeting the Fair Maidens

The cheery receptionist at the hostel spoke good English. I told her I was searching for the “Window of Yunnan.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” she replied.

I passed her my notebook. “Can you do me a favour and write it in Mandarin?”

I watched as she filled the page with beautiful Chinese symbols.

“Can you do me another favour?”

“What?”

She was becoming less cheery by the second.

“Could you write Penknife?”

“What is it?”

“It’s a knife you put in your pocket.”

“I don’t understand.”

I pulled an imaginary knife from my pocket and jabbed it at her. She watched the performance with concern.

“You mean a traveller’s knife?”

“Kind of.”

She began to write again — but this time she didn’t care what her handwriting looked like — she just wanted me out of the way.

“You are only staying for one night?” she said as she passed me the key.

It sounded like a statement rather than a question.

The next morning, I felt compelled to tell someone about the quest, so I positioned myself next to two Australian girls in the cafeteria. Before long they raised the inevitable question: “Where are you going next?” I told them about the email. “Penknife.” “The Window of Yunnan.” I left out nothing. Convinced they would want to come, I pondered whether now was the right moment for two maidens to join the quest.

“Penknife?” one of them shrugged. “That’s a strange name.”

Then they began to talk about the shops in Hong Kong. I was only half concentrating — something about the best shops being on the upper floors. Had they heard me properly? Had they listened to a single word?

After this, I began to interrupt their conversation with questions about the “Window of Yunnan.” It was hard to tell if they were bored or alarmed — either way they left their breakfast unfinished and returned to their room. From then on I decided to tell no one else about the quest. Those girls hadn’t understood — no one would.

The Road to Yuan Yang

On the bus I daydreamed about an elusive band of village elders. These men selected the perfect spot to watch the sun rise and had erected a “window” as a viewfinder. They were reluctant to reveal the exact coordinates for fear it would be swamped by tourists — so they had deployed their most ferocious warrior (Penknife) as a gatekeeper.

A commotion at the back of the bus put an end to the reverie. A girl had been sick and the other passengers weren’t exactly thrilled about it. They demanded the driver pull over. Several minutes later, he obliged.

The girl went outside to retch into a sewer. The driver went outside to replace a tyre. I went outside because I had nothing better to do.

The parking lot was a graveyard of dead vehicles. Everyone in the lot was armed with sugar cane — they chewed huge branches and spat the leftovers onto the yellow-flecked pavement. I decided I too ought to arm myself, so I bought one and crunched it down.

Back on the bus the girl wiped the sick from her chin, the driver climbed aboard and we were on the move again.

Soon we left the dust behind and spluttered into the hills. For a long time we passed no one at all, then a group of colourful women wearing straw bonnets appeared on the horizon. They looked like they’d dropped in from a folk tale. Carrying baskets on their backs, they laughed and danced along the rice terraces as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

Then the bus climbed the steepest hill of all — and at the end of a twisting road we rounded a corner and emerged in a small settlement. Haggard shops lined the roadside and the entire town seemed to exist at a 30-degree angle. We had arrived in Yuan Yang.

Searching for the Window

The fog was so thick I could barely see my feet. I allowed them to guide me and booked into the first hotel I saw. In retrospect I should have shopped around. The room was damp, the quilt soaking, and the light burning through the orange curtains gave the room a tangerine glow — it felt like a brothel and there weren’t even any women to cheer me up.

At night I discovered why the television remote lived in a plastic holder. The damp clung to everything, including my tired bones. My skin felt like rubber and the water took me prisoner from the inside out. I put on waterproofs and returned to bed, but nothing was a match for the damp — and by 5 a.m. I had taken as much as I could bear.

As I wandered the streets at dawn I tried to remember the afternoon where all this had begun. The hot Lichang cobbles seemed like a different country. More than that — they seemed like a different world.

At 7 a.m. I tore out the page with the “Window of Yunnan” written on it and showed it to a restaurant owner. He took one glance and shook his head. My heart sank. The more optimistic half of my soul had been hoping he would carry me there on his shoulders.

For the rest of the morning I continued to do the same, but whenever people saw me coming their faces folded with concern. Those who did stop glanced at the symbols in my notebook and shook their heads. Soon there was no one else left to ask. I had reached a dead end.

I dumped my backpack on the ground and sat on the curb next to the bubbling drains. With my head in my hands, I tried to shut out the tooting horns. Then it began to rain. It was just a few flaky drops, but the pathetic drizzle seemed more fitting than the wildest tempest. I didn’t care that I was wet and cold. All that mattered was that it was over and I had failed.

Eventually, a voice wrenched me from my self-pity. I looked up to see a man pointing at a fork in the road. I rose to my feet and pointed to the scrap of paper. He nodded as if to say, “I know where you want to go — the whole village does.”

Together we walked past disparate market stalls and down a steep slope. At the foot of the steps the man pointed at a tall yellow building. I followed his finger with my eyes. High on the roof and cloaked by cables a sign read: “The Window of Yuan Yang.”

Closing in on the Elixir

I took a deep breath and opened the little red door. Inside was a tiny shop selling handmade gifts. A woman looked up from her sewing machine and shouted over her shoulder.

The door behind her opened to reveal a man with a side-parting and a headlamp smile. He wore a tired cardigan and his jeans were tucked into fluorescent trainers.

“Hello,” I said. “Are you Penknife?”

“Yes,” he replied. “I am Penknife.”

He couldn’t understand why I was so happy to see him. I think he found my joy disturbing. Much like the Australians, he didn’t understand the gravity of my expedition, but he listened patiently and answered my questions — one of which was how he got his name.

“The first part of my Chinese name is Knife, so my friends call me Penknife.”

“So you don’t even own a penknife?”

“No. Why would I need one?”

In the afternoon he escorted me to a minibus that would take me to the village my friend had described. The sun was setting above the hills and I could barely contain my good mood.

I’d done it. I’d found one person in 1.3 billion armed with just a village name. I guess it’s true what they say. Anything is possible.

Up ahead, a herd of buffalo climbed the hill and the front-runner winked at me as if to say, “You made it. I really didn’t think you would. Good on you.”

Half an hour later the bus stopped and the driver pointed to a path. I walked through the glistening rice fields. As I bounced along that dirt track I had never felt so alive.

The path ended at the courtyard of a large farmhouse. The owner took one look at me and decided I needed “looking after.” She fed me far too much food and insisted I call her “Aunty.”

After dinner she showed me to a bedroom with a view of the hills. I slipped beneath the clean sheets, exhausted but happy. Tomorrow I would wake early to see the sun rise. It was going to be magnificent — I just knew it. Delirious with accomplishment, I shut my eyes and waited for the gods of sleep.

A Terrible Discovery

My body was tired but my mind refused to rest. I couldn’t sleep so I rose earlier than planned and stumbled into the darkness.

I tripped through the fields, infuriated by my bad mood. Why couldn’t I enjoy the moment? Why couldn’t I be content? It was over, so why couldn’t I rest? I tried to push the thoughts away — but it was already too late.

What did it mean? What was the point? “Anything’s possible” isn’t an answer. It’s like punching 2+2 into a calculator and it telling you, “You decide!”

“Anything’s possible.”

The words felt cheap.

“Anything’s possible.”

A child looking at a globe for the first time could have told you that.

Up ahead, tourists gathered on a viewing platform, all waiting for the perfect sunrise shot.

I joined them, dreading the sun’s arrival because everything it represented yesterday was gone. It would just be another reminder of the juvenile anything’s possible hypothesis. I prayed for a freak of nature — that today the sun would say, “You know what? I don’t think I’ll bother.”

As I stared into the fog, I considered flying back to England. What was the point of seeing the world? I might as well be at home watching television. Either way it was all utterly pointless. For a moment I even flirted with the idea of throwing myself off the viewing platform — but eventually decided against it because I had no interest in becoming a talking point in a load of holiday snaps. And also — in business I think this is known as the deal-breaker — I didn’t want to die.

The End of the Quest

It took me longer than it should have to notice the tourists packing up their equipment. It was light now, but the fog had not shifted.

“Today’s no good,” a man said as he folded his tripod. “Too much fog.”

No one argued with the sky.

They had come to see something. They hadn’t seen it. Now they were leaving.

I stayed where I was.

A few days earlier, in a bar in Lichang, I had asked myself what I was doing with my life. Watching dancing. Moving from town to town. Checking boxes. Chasing the next thing.

Then the email had arrived. The Window of Yunnan. Penknife. A name that sounded like a clue in a treasure hunt. I had seized it as proof that this journey could become something more than movement. Something deliberate. Something meaningful.

Since then there had been the golden lion on the gear stick, the broken bus, the rice-stained restaurant, the Australians who didn’t understand, the damp room that felt like a punishment, the long climb into the hills. I had stitched it all together into a story. A quest. A test.

The sunrise was supposed to be the final page.

Instead there was fog.

Standing there, I saw what I had done.

The buses had not been stepping stones toward revelation. Penknife had not been a gatekeeper. The Window had not been a portal. They were just places, people, and inconveniences I had inflated with expectation.

The question I’d asked in the bar had followed me across provinces. What was the point?

It wasn’t answered by the email.
It wasn’t answered by the village.
And it wouldn’t have been answered by the sun.

I had mistaken experience for explanation.

The quest had not given my life direction. It had simply been my life for a few days. The heat, the hunger, the embarrassment, the hope, the disappointment. None of it was a symbol. It was just movement.

The tourists climbed aboard the bus. I watched the fog settle over the terraces one last time, then turned and followed them.

I was still moving.

I was still asking questions.

But I no longer needed the journey to justify itself.

For now, that was enough.