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what?” For a moment I thought she was talking about the pork.
    “To Smash the Hu,” she said. “How much?”
    Good question—how can anybody put a price on destroying indeterminate nomadic tribes? “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’m going there anyway.”
    Her name was Gao Linfeng, and she was twenty-seven years old. She told me that she had grown up in Smash the Hu but now she worked in a factory in Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia. She was traveling home in order to see her grandmother—the pork was a gift. In these parts, transport was rare; she had caught a ride on the Ninglu bus, which only took her as far as the pass. From there she had planned to continue on foot until a ride came along. She wore a new gray business suit and fresh makeup, and her hair was neatly styled. How was it possible to look so good on a dirt road in Inner Mongolia? I was dressed in an oldgray T-shirt and dirty trousers; it had been two days since somebody last washed my hair.
    Like many rural Chinese, Gao had left home to find work in the city. In 1978, at the beginning of Reform and Opening, approximately 80 percent of the population lived in the countryside. As the economy boomed, it created an increasing demand for construction workers and factory staff, most of whom came from rural regions. Chinese farms had always been overpopulated, and young people were glad to leave; by 2001, an estimated ninety million had already left home. To drive across China was to find yourself in the middle of the largest migration in human history—nearly one-tenth of the population was on the road, finding new lives away from home.
    Most migrants went to coastal regions, but there were also opportunities in provincial cities like Hohhot. Gao told me that she had started on the assembly line but worked her way up, and now she was in management. Her factory produced wool sweaters for export. She had a three-year-old son in Hohhot, and they rarely returned to Smash the Hu. “It’s so poor here,” she said. “Farming is hard, because of the elevation and the dryness. Look at that corn.” She pointed outside, where a field of dusty green stalks bordered the road. “In most places it’s already been harvested, but everything happens so late here, because it’s so high.”
    After we chatted for a while, she said, politely, “You’re not from our China, are you?”
    “No.”
    “Which country are you from?”
    It was tempting to say that I was Hu, but I told the truth.
    “My factory exports sweaters to your country!” she said happily.
    Like many young people in the factory towns, she had studied some English on her own, although she was too shy to practice it with me. She was curious about life in America—she asked how many people were in my family, and if farmers lived in my hometown. “Do you drive on the same side of the road as in China?” she asked. I said yes, although at the moment it was irrelevant, because our route had deteriorated to a single pair of tire ruts. And if there was any irony in having a friendlyconversation with a foreigner just beyond the Great Wall, on the way to Smash the Hu, Gao Linfeng didn’t show it. I dropped her off at the town’s massive entrance gate, which had been built by the Ming; she thanked me and waved as I headed off toward Slaughter the Hu.
    The towns along this road were heavily fortified, and they were also emptying fast. Everywhere I stopped, residents told me that most young people were already gone. Life here had never been easy—there was a long history of instability, and for centuries these remote areas had been shaped by the impersonal and sometimes violent demands of the outside world. In the old days, these were the borderlands: places like Smash the Hu could engage in Chinese-style agriculture, sometimes marginally, but north of here the land was suitable only for grazing. Herdsmen naturally developed a high degree of mobility, whereas the Chinese were rooted to their