The fire this time

It happened as we were driving into Yongning, the provincial capital of northwest Yunnan, deep in southwest China. As we... moved slowly down the main street, evading wandering pigs, horse caravans, and a miscellaneous traffic of people, bikes, and the occasional blue construction truck, a wide column of smoke, first grayish-white, then deeply black, pulsated above the rooftops.
We pulled into the courtyard of a restaurant, already filling with smoke. “We can't eat here,” I protested, fearing asphyxiation more than incineration by the local food, notorious for its hot peppers. At that moment, the flow in the street seemed to reverse itself; everyone seemed to begin running towards the smoke.
“It's a fire,” I said. “Let's go see.”
“Not unless you want to carry buckets of water,” our guide warned.
“Let's eat lunch first,” another of the foreigners said.
I left. The crowd was moving swiftly north along the main road, armed with everything from basins to buckets. After two blocks, they turned left into a laneway, carrying me with them. At the end, I could see a large stately mansion, perhaps the province's administrative offices, plastered white and all of three stories high. Beside it, to the right, was an adobe wall and a row of little sheds, their roofs already ablaze, the bright yellow flames surging through the roof tiles. The crowd ran into the courtyard as close as the heat would allow, then stopped. At the far end of the row of sheds, a team of young men were lined up along a hose, pumping a stream of water into a blazing doorway. Moving nearer, it became clear that its source was from a pump pulling water from an open drainage channel lying at the courtyard edge.
Where was the fire brigade? Was this the fire brigade? The young men wrestled with the hose. Behind them rough-looking mountainy men stood around the pump, wondering at this thing that could pull the water up into a tube, now writhing so powerfully that it had to be held down like a wild horse. Others milled about, among them entire families complete with children and grannies, several in the dress of the minority cultures here: the Moso, with colourful skirts and turbans, or the Yi, with great black-square umbrella hats. Men in tight little groups shouted cheerfully to each other or into a mobile telephone. Occasionally a young girl would approach the flaming doorway of a shed, hurl in a basin of water, then run away giggling. In the middle of the chaos, a large black pig meandered, rooting for lunch.
To an outsider, it all had a crazy festival air. Except for the two men crouched on the roof of the mansion next door watching, with intent desperation, the fire making its way towards the fleece blankets soaked in water they had spread over the large, extended wooden eaves.
Just then a small three-wheeled vehicle forced its way through the crowd. Another hose inside; but too late. The sheds were gutted. The crowd threw stones to knock the rafters inwards. There was a large “Ahhh…” of satisfaction when the roof finally collapsed in a fountain of sparks and a final lunge of flame. Now the fire could burn itself out within containing walls. After that the crowd began, slowly, to scatter.
By this time, our guide had located me. At first he gazed at me contemplatively from a distance as I snapped pictures at what had, without a doubt, been the most exciting moments of the morning's tour. Then he came over, taking my elbow, nodding towards the large black pig.
“Too bad all that fire has been wasted,” he remarked. “With that pig, we could have had a fine barbeque.”
“With all due respect,” I replied, examining the damaged sheds, “that is a very Chinese observation” – hoping that the lurch in my stomach was only telling me that it was, indeed, time for lunch.
Jersuha McCormack is a visiting professor in Beijing's foreign studies university