Last Chance to See

is supposed to be insanely difficult.”
    “Do we have much leeway if things go wrong?” I asked. “Which days are Professor Zhou and the others expecting us?”
    “Expecting us?” said Mark. “What do you mean? They’ve never heard of us. You can’t actually contact anyone in China. We’ll be lucky to find them and even luckier if they agree to talk to us. In fact, I’m only half-certain they exist. We’re going into completely unknown territory.”
    We both peered out of the window. Darkness was falling over the largest nation on earth.
    “There’s just one last bottle left, sir,” said the cabin steward to me at that moment. “Would you like it before we close up the duty-free? Then you’ll have the complete range.”
    It was quite late at night as a rickety minibus delivered us to our hotel on the outskirts of Beijing. At least, I think it was the outskirts. We had no point of reference by which to judge what kind of area it was. The streets were wide and tree-lined but eerily silent. Any motor vehicle made a single and particular growl instead of merging with a general traffic hum. The streetlights had no diffusing glass covers, so the light they shed was sharp, highlighting each leaf and branch and precisely delineating their shapes against the walls. Passing cyclists cast multiple interweaving shadows on the road around them. The sense of moving in a geometric web was added to by the clack of billiard balls as they cannoned across small tables set up under the occasional street lamp.
    The hotel was set in a small network of narrow side streets,and its facade was wildly decorated with the carved red dragons and gilded pagoda shapes that are the familiar stereotypes of China. We hefted our bags full of camera equipment, recording gear, clothes, and aftershave into the lobby, past the long glass counter displays of carved chopsticks, ginseng, and herbal aphrodisiacs, and waited to check in.
    I noticed an odd thing. It was one of those tiny little disorienting details, like the telephone dials in New Zealand, that tell you you are in a very distant and foreign country. I knew that the Chinese traditionally hold their table-tennis paddles the way we hold cigarettes. What I did not know was that they also hold their cigarettes the way we hold table-tennis paddles.
    Our rooms were small. I sat on the edge of my bed, which was made for someone of half my height, and laid out my bewildering collection of aftershave bottles in a neat line next to two large and ornately decorated red and gold thermos flasks that were already standing on the bedside table. I wondered how I was going to get rid of them. I decided to sleep on the problem. I hoped I would be able to. I read a note in the hotel’s directory of guest services with foreboding. It said: “No dancing, clamouring, quarreling, fisticuffing, or indulging in excessive drinking and creating disturbances in public places for the sake of keeping a peaceful and comfortable environment. Guests are not permitted to bring pets and poultry into the hotel.”
    The morning presented me with a fresh problem. I wanted to clean my teeth, but was a little suspicious of the delicate brown colour of the water leaking from the washbasin taps. I investigated the large flamboyant thermos flasks, but they were full of very hot water, for making tea. I poured some water from a thermos into a glass and left it to cool while I went to meet Mark and Chris Muir, our sound engineer, for a late breakfast.
    Mark had already been trying to get through to Nanjingon the phone in an attempt to contact Professor Zhou, the baiji dolphin expert, and had come to the conclusion that it simply couldn’t be done. We had two days to kill before our flight to Shanghai, so we might just as well be tourists for a bit.
    I returned to my room to clean my teeth at last, to discover that the room maid had washed the glass I’d left out to cool, and refilled the thermoses with freshly boiling water.
    I felt rather cast down by this. I tried pouring some water from one glass to another to cool it down, but even after doing this for a while the water was still hot, and the toothbrush wilted in my mouth.
    I realised that I was going to have to come up with some serious strategic thinking if I was going to get to clean my teeth. I refilled the glass, carefully stuck it out of sight in the back of a cupboard, and then tried to get rid of one of the bottles of aftershave by hiding it under the