China Run Quotes

“I am sorry it is you, Ma Lin," the colonel replied. For the last time, Quan stepped around behind the prisoner. Ma Lin bowed his head. He felt the gun barrel, now hot, against the base of his skull.

An odd thought occurred to him just then.
He had no close family left alive. The state would have to pay for the bullet.”
― David Ball, China Run

“As she worked she felt something stinging her and had to drop her pants and turn to see. Tyler had a better angle. "Right on the but," he commented with thinly disguised glee.”
― David Ball, China Run

“Allison slept through it all. She never felt the truck stopping for the roadblock set in the middle of nowhere, never heard the police who didn't care about the rain and dutifully climbed through the rear of the truck, never heard the rustle of papers as they examined the driver's permits and cargo manifest. She never heard the horns outside or the rain or the roar of the Xu Jiang River as they followed its course. She never heard Driver Ming stopping for fuel, never felt the bumps and twists and turns as the road deteriorated and flat farmland became hill country that became mountains.

It was still dark as they began their climb into the Wuyi Shan, the range of mountains that rose abruptly on both sides of the road and disappeared into the high mists, mountains where jungles and steep slopes kept the farmers at bay, mountains thick with bamboo forests in which wild tigers were still believed to roam. They drove all night and all the next day, through Ruijin and Xunwu, their progress slowed at times by traffic, at other times by the rain. Finally it was the horrific condition of the road that stopped them altogether. The highway was an unfinished ribbon of concrete, sometimes one lane, sometimes two. There was no shoulder at all, just an abrupt and treacherous drop-off to the adjacent ground. The roadbed sat so high up that if a wheel were to inadvertently slip off the edge, the whole truck might tip over. Allison had seen more than one vehicle that had done just that as she and Tyler watched the receding countryside through the slats of their crate. In places where only one lane existed, oncoming traffic had to stop and back up to let other traffic through. If there was an obstruction in the road, a goat or a sheep or a cart, all traffic squeezed by single file, although somehow it never seemed to slow. Driver Ming seemed good at it, and when Allison felt him swerve sharply she closed her eyes and cringed, waiting for the inevitable collision. By some miracle he always squeaked through.

Then his luck ran out.”
― David Ball, China Run

“Tyler was faster than she was and won nearly every game. Between hands he stirred the canh around on the blanket to mix them up. She taught him how to shuffle properly, and he practiced over and over. "How do you play strip poker?" he asked her once.

In the cramped space he couldn't see her surprise. "How do you know about that?"

"I dunno. I heard it somewhere, I guess. So what is it?"

"You play for whatever the other person has," she said. "The winner gets the loser's things."

"Like what?"

"Oh, odds and ends. Wallets and combs. Things."

"Oh." He dealt them each a fish hand. "I heard it was for clothes."

She supposed he knew more than he was letting on. He was testing her. "Well, some people play for clothes, too. You play until the other per-son has nothing left."

"Why would you want to do that? What would you do with their clothes?"

Allison laughed. Sometimes Tyler seemed old for his years, world-wise and as cynical as a grown-up. But then at other times, like now, he just seemed NINE. "I don't know," she said. "It's just a game.”
― David Ball, China Run

“They had both feared as much, but the reality was worse than the fear and it settled over them like an icy blanket.”
― David Ball, China Run

“He spoke with the aunties in the different wards, asking questions and taking notes. He saw stuffed animals piled in corners, and a broken bicycle, and a single brightly colored mobile hanging from the ceiling of one room without furnishings, where young girls played together. They all stared at him as he passed, some with hopeful looks, others haunted, others without expression at all. The older they were, the quieter and more subdued they seemed. There was something not at all childlike about them. He had trouble bringing himself to meet their gazes. The babies had made him want to smile. The older children just made him want to hurry, especially the ones kept off in a room by themselves, with cleft palates or misshapen limbs or the vacant stare of profound retardation. He looked through the doorway at them but couldn't bring himself to go inside. He picked up the pace as he completed his tour, growing more uncomfortable with each room.”
― David Ball, China Run

“The babies lay two or three to a crib, the cribs packed three deep along each side of the room. Despite the daytime heat, the children were tightly bound and blankets to keep them warm at night. They lay on their backs like scores of cocoons, waiting their turn for a moment's attention”
― David Ball, China Run

“Without a family, Ma Lin devoted himself to his work. He continued to shun ideology but occasionally caught himself wondering about the WHY of things he did in his work. Often he felt, and justifiably so, that something he had done had benefited the state or preserved someone's life or safety. Other times, like now, in this room with an old woman who knew nothing important and had curled up to die, he felt old and tired and worn out.”
― David Ball, China Run

“No foreigner could hide for long in a nation of curious informers”
― David Ball, China Run

“Over the noise of their voices the survivors in the dinghy heard other sounds, awful sounds: creaking and sighing and popping, and breaking glass, and the muffled noise of massive streams of bubbles coming from compartments and holds beneath the water. And, above that, something else, from near where the forecastle was now slipping beneath the water. They heard the chickens and the ducks making a terrible racket, as, caged and tethered near the bowsprit, they were going down with the ship. Amid all the death and destruction, it was, somehow, a particularly wrenching sound. And then it stopped.”
― David Ball, China Run

“He felt the strong impulse to rest, to sleep, but struggled against what he knew was the pull of death.”
― David Ball, China Run

“He had never known Allison to act so out of character. He'd often ribbed her for being so predictably straight about everything. They'd never discussed it, but he knew she had never considered running away with Mary rather than turning her over as ordered. Other mothers had run. But not Allison. She had trusted Marshall, trusted the legal system to do the right thing. Even when the system failed her, as awful as it was, she obeyed, because she always obeyed. The judge's decision was the law. In Allison's life that was the order of things. The bizarre thing was that she'd had to travel all the way to China to go insane and test her new wings of defiance.”
― David Ball, China Run

“I'm not certain. Something to do with special-needs families getting healthy babies."

Allison caught her breath at that. It was true, one of the regulations of the Chinese government. She had expected a child with some sort of hand- icap a heart murmur, a hernia, or simply an older child, a toddler- something besides a healthy infant. Under Chinese law adoptive parents had to be at least thirty-five and have no other children in order to qualify for healthy babies. Otherwise they qualified only for the special-needs children. But the rule was loose and so many babies needed adoption that somehow everyone in their group had gotten a healthy infant. Of course, no one questioned it and the issue hadn't arisen during their trip.”
― David Ball, China Run

“It was a crap shoot, adopting a baby made from someone else's genes, and it worried her sick. "It's a crap shoot giving birth to a baby made from your own genes," Marshall reminded her. She fretted and paced and dreamed and hoped.”
― David Ball, China Run