The Insulin Express Read online

  J. J. is shocked. She keeps her cool and knows to keep walking, since everyone else is doing the exact same thing, but a moment later she is visibly shaken. Bodies on streets are not something one comes across very often in China, especially not right in front of the Forbidden City.

  The officers—both undercover and uniformed—are moving everyone along. Only one person has a camera out, and he’s probably with the police. No one else dares. I have already put my camera away and locked the bag, or else I would try to snap a few quick photos as we walk by. It would be far too conspicuous to undo the lock on my bag, pull out my camera, take off the lens cap, and hit the shutter release button. As I had told the Chinese consulate in New York nearly a year ago, I am not working as a journalist. I am unemployed. Getting thrown in a Chinese prison ranks lower on my list of things to do than spending a week in a Nepali hospital.

  But what is plainly visible to me is plainly visible to everyone else, even if they are exercising a certain amount of willful ignorance. A day after seeing the body, I write about it in my little green notepad, and there it stayed until I copied my notes down into this chapter.

  The body is gone within two minutes. Police put the guy on a stretcher, get him in the ambulance (or, as we’ve just learned, the hearse disguised as an ambulance), and remove any evidence that something happened. Anybody who comes thirty seconds after us will have no idea anything was amiss. The general public will never know there was a dead guy near one of their most important national sites—the equivalent of someone getting killed on the steps of the US Capitol. If that happened, it would be texted, Tweeted, Facebooked, Tumblred, Stumbleuponed, Triberred, Reddited, Foursquared, selfied, Pinterested, Google Plussed, and in every other possible way broadcast to everyone in the country. It would make national news. Possibly international news.

  Here it has been swept away, and no one will ever know except the handful of people who walked by exactly when we did.

  What happened here? Was this some suicide in protest of the Communist government, and did the guy cut his own throat? Doubtful. Was he killed here and did the murderer get away? Perhaps. Was he the criminal and did the police take him down? Possible, but plausible? There are a dozen other explanations.

  In America—and most other Western countries—we would have found out. There would be an investigation. Questions asked and answered. Explanations given. Motives found and understood. They would uncover every detail of this man’s life, find his deepest and darkest secrets, and dig up memories even he didn’t know he had.

  Not in China.

  This guy—whoever he was and whatever he did and however he died—wasn’t just killed. He was erased. There is no sign of his death, and I suspect that soon there will be no sign of his life. He has been removed from the narrative of Chinese history with maximum efficiency and no delay. Delays mean time and time means observation and observation means questions and questions mean doubt. If there is one thing the government will not allow—not in this location and certainly not on this date—it is doubt. To erase doubt, China must erase the body.

  If the Chinese populace ever finds out about this, it will likely be a twisted account. Chinese news will call this man “a foreigner” and “a terrorist.” He attacked “the state.” He was “a threat.” And now he has been eliminated.

  Only now do we see the government at work, forcing the people to see a predefined perspective and making them believe a predetermined version of events. In reality, someone was killed in front of the Forbidden City, across the street from Tiananmen Square. In the Chinese alternate universe, it is another beautiful day in the nation’s capital, and there is nothing out of the ordinary to worry about or fear.

  Nearby, a giant portrait of Chairman Mao smiles down on the street. In a very real sense, this is his world, and we’re just living in it.

  A few days later, as we say goodbye to Chairman Mao and his country, J. J. does us a huge favor. She writes on a napkin in Mandarin: “Please take us to the airport. Terminal 3. Please use the meter.” The following morning, we hand that to a cab driver and board a flight for our final stop in Asia.

  Chapter 21

  May 26, 2014

  35°41’48.4”N 139°47’35.6”E

  Tokyo, Japan

  If a race of alien beings came down from outer space and asked to see humanity’s best example of sport, you would not offer up two scantily-clad, vastly overweight men hurling themselves at each other as the paradigm of athletic achievement. You could make a compelling case for soccer or basketball, but certainly not sumo wrestling.

  And yet I can hardly think of a better way to spend an afternoon than watching a sumo tournament in Tokyo with my parents, who have flown halfway across the world to join us on this part of our tour. I am sure the novelty wears off at some point (as it did for us after the third hour), but it’s a delightful way to spend those three hours, partly because it is quite amazing how big some of these sumo wrestlers are, and also because the ceremony that surrounds each bout is fascinating.

  First, a bit about sumo wrestling. Some estimates place sumo’s origins approximately 1,500 years ago. The first organized tournament was held around the 1680s as a result of the sport’s growing popularity, but the sport existed long before that. Legend has it that it was a way to entertain the gods or perhaps a sport handed down from the gods. The sport itself is incredibly simple. Two guys stand in a ring. The winner is the first to get the other guy off his feet or out of the fifteen-foot ring, called a dohyo. Experience certainly helps, but weight helps even more. Sumo wrestlers eat chankonabe, a stew of fish, meat, and vegetables, to help them put on weight as quickly as possible. The largest athlete in human history was a sumo wrestler. Emanuel Yarbrough stood at a height of six feet seven inches, and he weighed 882 pounds at his heaviest. He also wasn’t Japanese—he hailed from Rahway, New Jersey, a city that has no sumo culture at all (I say that confidently, having grown up about forty-five minutes south of there. My high school did not have a sumo team, though in hindsight I wish it had). In addition to sumo, Yarbrough competed in wrestling, football, mixed martial arts, and judo, making him one of the most famous sumo wrestlers outside Japan. He died on December 21, 2015 of a heart attack at the tender age of fifty-one.

  There are six sumo tournaments each year, three of which are in the Ryogoku in Tokyo, the official sumo hall. Sumo wrestling has been broadcast live on Japanese TV virtually every year since 1953, making it one of the first sports you could watch live. I imagine watching sumo on live television would be much like watching American football. There are brief, spastic moments of euphoric excitement that last perhaps three or four seconds, followed by a few minutes of downtime. Then more excitement, then downtime, excitement, downtime, etc. The excitement-to-downtime ratio leans disproportionately toward the latter half of the equation, and yet both sports bring in millions of viewers in their respective countries.

  By a stroke of luck—if one can call it that—we end up in Japan during the May tournament. There are six divisions of sumo. The rookie divisions wrestle in the morning; the experienced divisions wrestle in the early afternoon and evening. Sumo connoisseurs are fully aware of this and will not bother showing up until later in the day when the well-known sumo wrestlers compete. We are not sumo connoisseurs.

  Eager to witness our first sumo match, we show up early and immediately run headlong into the rituals that surround each sumo tournament. The elaborate ceremonies that precede every match are completely foreign to us, yet oddly entertaining. Sumo wrestlers march in together in two rigid lines, circle the dohyo and perform a ritual dance, then regularly throw salt in the ring in order to purify it from evil spirits. Each wrestler performs a spiritual dance before a bout, then gets into position and awaits the referee’s signal. After a few more minutes of ceremonies and rituals and traditions, the bout itself lasts about three seconds. Two very large men hurl themselves at each other with frightful force. One tends to be larger than the other, the smaller one
generally falls back or is pushed out of the ring, and the bout ends as quickly as it began. The referee points his accordion-like fan at one of the sumo wrestlers to declare the winner. Incidentally, sumo is written with the Chinese characters that translate to “mutual bruising,” which would make a great name for a heavy metal band.

  We settle in to watch two hours and fifty-five minutes of ceremony and five minutes of sumo. We’re mostly in an empty square, as we are sumo neophytes and cognoscenti know to arrive later. Having bought cheap seats, we happily move up for a better vantage point, trying to understand the strategy behind such a historic sport. All other things being equal, the difference between good and bad sumo wrestlers is something I cannot possibly divine. Every sumo wrestler looks like he’s doing exactly the same thing to every other sumo wrestler, namely throwing himself at the other guy quite recklessly and hoping the gentleman at the other end of the ring weighs a bit less. Yet there are at least eighty-two different winning sumo techniques, all of which look stunningly alike to the uninitiated. After watching a few different levels compete, we conclude we have seen enough of sumo for one round-the-world trip.

  My parents share our feelings, which fall at an indeterminable point somewhere between “impressed” and “not impressed.”

  “It was interesting,” my dad says afterward, making it clear that even he is not sure whether he means it in a good or bad way. My mom smiles her big smile. She enjoyed herself simply because she was with us. If asked to describe sumo wrestling after having just seen three hours of it, I’m not quite sure what she would come up with or if it would have any relation to what we just saw.

  I can’t honestly say that sumo was high on my list of things to do while touring the world—it just happened to work out with our schedule—but Japan itself was always very high on our list. Cassie wanted to see her best friend from second grade, and I was busy shattering all the stereotypes I once held about Eastern culture.

  Americans tend to believe that New York City is the most important city on earth and Times Square is the center of the known universe. It’s not. In fact, it barely cracks the top ten in metro population, sneaking in behind Beijing but edging out Cairo. Don’t get me wrong. A population of nearly nineteen million New Yorkers is an impressive collection of humanity, especially when every single one of them is trying to board the subway at rush hour. But it doesn’t compare to Tokyo. Not even close. Tokyo’s metro population has nearly thirty-eight million people. New York would be a quaint suburb of Tokyo if the two were placed near each other.

  For the sake of humanity, I’m glad the two cities are quite far apart. Take, for example, the aforementioned subway systems. Every day in New York, 5.6 million people cram into twenty-one different subway lines in the most chaotic way possible. There is pushing and shoving, shouting and cursing. An eclectic array of street musicians adds a soundtrack to the cacophony every time the subway doors open, unleashing the human contents inside.

  Every day in Tokyo, 8.7 million people cram into thirteen different subway lines in the most orderly way possible. The people waiting to get on the subway queue patiently, allowing other riders to alight before boarding. There is no pushing or shoving, hardly any contact between people, and little need to get angry.

  Both systems work—and quite well at that—but they work because they fit the personalities of the people that use them. If you were to mix these two populations of subway riders even slightly, you would likely reignite World War II.

  As for Times Square’s collection of neon lights, glowing billboards, and oversized advertisements? They seem tame in comparison to just about any street corner in Tokyo. The entire city is lit up in bright, garish colors. What other city offers a combination dinner and cabaret robot show in the red light district?

  Sadly, we do not buy tickets to the show. It seems an unnecessary expense for a couple on a tight budget, and I decide it’s one of those discussions I should not start because I know I will lose. Discretion is the better part of valor.

  Before arriving in Tokyo, I had been nervous about seeing my parents again, especially my father. Granted, I saw them only two months ago when we were home, but so much has changed since then, especially my comfort level with diabetes.

  When I was home, my dad wanted to see my blood sugar numbers every day, and he would give me constant advice about how to adjust my insulin regimen, despite the fact that no one in the family has diabetes and he has never had reason to research it. Even when we started traveling again, he wanted a daily email with my blood sugar numbers, which I absolutely refused to send more than once a week or so. He tried to manage my diabetes from abroad, telling me to adjust my slow-acting insulin up or down two units based on his calculations. I promptly deleted these emails.

  Undoubtedly, he was being a caring father—one I am eternally grateful I have—and I was being a rebellious son. That doesn’t mean I despised it any less.

  I was worried the process would continue now that we were together and perhaps become even worse. Would he feel compelled to inform me how much insulin I should be taking with each meal? Or how good my blood sugar numbers were? If so, I would feel compelled to explode.

  A day before the sumo tournament, we meet them in our hotel. My parents, who have the room next to us, insist we come over to catch up, even though it is obvious to Cassie and me upon arrival that, first, my parents have just woken up from an afternoon nap and are still viciously jet-lagged, and, second, my dad is just about completely naked, save for his underwear. Shame is not something the Liebermanns are capable of experiencing. At least my dad stays under the covers until Cassie and I leave the room.

  “How are your numbers?”

  “Fine.” I hand him my blue notebook where I track my blood sugars, tensing for the fight ahead. He looks them over matter-of-factly before handing the book back. I try not to show my surprise. For weeks, I had been expecting an argument, a lecture, or a suggestion. Instead, he simply nods, and we move on.

  A quick shower, and we begin exploring a new city and a new country.

  Our first stop is, strangely enough, an intersection. I can’t think of any other converging streets in a foreign country that we decided we had to see, but Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo is considered one of the city’s most popular sites. It is—and I am trying to muster up as much enthusiasm as possible for this—a five-way intersection. Admittedly, it is a very large five-way intersection, with a few main streets coming together at once, but it is, at its heart, a lopsided crossing of streets, like a pentagon that has shifted a bit to its left.

  What is amazing about Shibuya Crossing is the semblance of order that always exists here. Everything—and everyone—follows a neat, timely schedule, controlled by the traffic and pedestrian lights. It reminds me of a school crossing guard guiding a dozen children across the streets while holding cars at bay with a big paddle. Except there is no crossing guard here, and there are thousands upon thousands of children. The second the walking light turns green, the entire intersection fills with a massive crowd of pedestrians walking in every direction, yet never running into one another, as if repelled by one another’s electrons.

  Near Shibuya Crossing, we stumble upon a sushi-go-round, one of the most efficient meals I have ever experienced. A conveyer belt carries little dishes of sushi around the room. Customers sit around the conveyer belt, choosing which dishes to eat. Cassie sits quietly to my left, munching on our first decent bite of sushi in months, while my mother stares at the entire sushi-go-round apparatus, marveling at its ingenuity while deciding which bit of tuna looks freshest. The price of a meal is determined by the color of the plate. We each eat a few plates, and I spend the meal dividing my attention between picking the cheap colored plates off the conveyor belt and watching my father struggle with his chopsticks.

  Eliyahu Samuel Liebermann—a man who has a PhD in aerospace engineering, who built his own airplane, and who started his own engineering firm—cannot, for the life of him, figure out how to
use chopsticks. He fumbles with them hopelessly, trying to get the pointy ends to come together without using both of his hands. With each attempt, one chopstick doesn’t move while the other wiggles back and forth erratically, never risking contact with the first chopstick. I suspect on some level that chopsticks are too simple for him. When I was in a band in college, our guitarist was unable to play a simple chord progression. He had to complicate it, somehow. I think that’s how my dad views chopsticks. Two sticks with no protruding edges that are supposed to come together in some way to grasp food in the middle. He wants to make it more complex than that, despite our repeated instructions.

  Never one to admit that there is only one way to solve a problem, he eventually wields his chopsticks like a pair of one-pronged forks, stabbing his food and lifting it to his mouth in a gesture that reminds me of the part in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea wherein Captain Nemo fights off a giant squid by hurling spears at it. The only difference is the scale. My dad hurls a chopstick instead of a spear, and he’s aiming for a piece of cephalopod.

  Incidentally, my dad despises Japanese food generally and sushi specifically, so we end up eating at more Irish pubs in Japan than we did in Ireland, especially in Tokyo, where foreign food is easy to find. Our sushi-go-round experience is one of our few Japanese meals in Japan.

  We spend three days in Tokyo before leaving the very bright lights of the very big city for the countryside. My parents looked at a National Geographic tour of Japan for suggestions on what to see, and we simply ripped off the itinerary, adjusting it to our timeframe. From Tokyo we head to Matsumoto, Takayama, and Kanazawa, moving slowly north and west by bus and train. The order of consonants and the cities to which each one belongs escape my parents. As we talk each night about what we have seen, I am never quite sure what or where they’re talking about.