Volume 7 Chapter 7 The Haunted Building

Either don’t do it, or don’t dawdle. The next day, I confirmed my trip to Golmud.

I had never been to that area before, so I asked my friend at the travel agency about the route. The friend told me that there was no direct flight to Golmud, so I had to fly to Chengdu Shuangliu first and then transfer. He would take care of the flight ticket and even the local hotel. I let him handle it for me, because I couldn’t just leave here and go. I booked a flight two days later.

This time I wasn’t going to steal, I was just going to take a stroll around the city of Golmud, and it wouldn’t be for long, so I only brought a few pieces of clothing and some cash, and the total was a backpack or a flat.

Fatso returned to Beijing that day, and I didn’t tell him about this either. Since I had decided not to tell anyone, Fatso was no exception.

During these two days, I said hello to Wang Meng, asked him to take care of things at the shop, gave my family a vague explanation, and sorted out some of my relationships.

I slept the whole way, and I was already comfortably asleep when I arrived in Chengdu Shuangliu. I spent the few hours flying to Golmud thinking about things. At around 8:00 p.m. that day, I arrived in Golmud, which is known as the “highland inn.”

This is a legendary city. Golmud means “a place with many rivers” in Tibetan. Although the entire flight was over the Gobi Desert, I could imagine what the city looked like when it was named. According to the information I read on the plane, the city was built by General Mu Shengzhong, the “father of the Qinghai-Tibet Highway,” who set up tents for the road construction workers here. The city has only a history of 50 years, and was once very prosperous. Now, its status has gradually been replaced by Lhasa, and the entire city is in a rather awkward position.

After getting off the plane, I had a very embarrassing bout of altitude sickness. I fainted for two or three seconds at the airport exit. It wasn’t like the exhausted coma I had experienced in the Qinling Mountains before, but rather a feeling that the world was receding from you. All of a sudden, all the scenery turned black on the sides, and then I fell to the ground. Fortunately, I woke up after two or three seconds, and I was already lying on the ground. What was even more embarrassing was that when I was buying medicine, I realized that I was already on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. I was unfamiliar with the geography of China and didn’t even know that Golmud was on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau!

After taking the medicine, I went to the hotel arranged by my friend and settled down. I didn’t care about the headache and fever, and I set off again without stopping, got into a taxi, took out the address, and asked the driver to take me there.

However, after looking at the address, the driver immediately shook his head and said that the place was a very small alley, and the car could not drive in. The area was full of old houses, and the roads were very narrow. He could take me to the vicinity of that generation, and then go further in, I would have to go in and ask people myself.

I agreed to that, and let him drive. In a short while, I arrived at the old city of the city.

The driver told me that Golmud is a newly built city, with wide roads. The old city has been expanded countless times, but there are still these small areas everywhere, because of their awkward location, they have been left behind. Most of these bungalows were built in the 1960s and 1970s, and there are illegal buildings everywhere. My address is one of these alleys.

I got out of the car, and it was already the end of dusk. It was dark and dim, with a little bit of sunset. I looked up and saw only a long row of black tile-roofed buildings in the backlight. These were all 1960s and 1970s buildings, and the old city looked particularly mysterious at this time.

Walking in and looking around, I discovered that this place could not really be called a district, but rather a few old streets that had survived the expansion of the city. These buildings had no heritage value and were not regularly maintained, and they all looked a bit shaky, so they must not be around for much longer. There weren’t many people in the old town either. I saw only a few hair salons, and walking through the houses, the old houses and the old wires, the dark and the colorful lights of the hair salons mixed together, and it felt quite strange.

I walked around for about two hours, and the ladies in the hair salons thought I was a thief with no guts, and they all opened the door and smiled at me. However, as the taxi driver said, the layout inside was too chaotic. Many alleys were separated by illegal buildings, and there were no street signs. It was useless to ask people. Several migrant workers who passed by shook their heads kindly and smiled, probably meaning that they didn’t know where this place was either.

I had never encountered such a thing before. I walked around with a wry smile, feeling the fickleness of the world. Just when I was getting lost, a yellow-roofed tricycle came up behind me. The driver asked if I wanted to get on. I was tired of walking, so I got on and let him take me around.

The driver was Han Chinese, and had probably come from the south in the early years. He spoke a lot because I had a southern accent, and told me that he was from northern Jiangsu, surnamed Yang, and named Yang. He has been driving a tricycle here for 12 years. He asked me where I wanted to go, whether it was high-end or low-end, Han or Tibetan, and whether I wanted to meet a girl or a boy. He said he could give me a 20% discount on the full package. If I didn’t like that, he could also take me on a tour. There are no famous attractions in Golmud, but he is familiar with the surrounding Gobi Desert.

I thought to myself, if your father had given you a three-character name, you could have changed it to Hengyuanxiang. But when he mentioned this, I was moved, thinking that these drivers have been here for many years, and most of the streets and alleys are familiar to them.

So I showed him the address and asked if he knew this place.

I didn’t have much hope, but as soon as I finished speaking, Hengyuanxiang nodded and said he knew, and then he pedaled off.

There were old houses on both sides of the road, and there were almost no pedestrians under the dim streetlights. When he stopped, I was really scared, as if I were going to be kidnapped. He laughed at my expression and said to me, “I’ve reached the place I’m looking for.”

I looked up and saw that it was a three-story building with a courtyard. Under the streetlights, the building was pitch black, and I could only see the exterior walls. There didn’t seem to be anyone inside. The whole building was eerie.

I was dumbfounded and asked the driver what kind of place this was. He said, “This was a PLA sanatorium in the 1960s, and it has been abandoned for a long time.”