The renegade artist Ai Wei Wei explained once that he owned 40 cats and one of them knew how to open a door. On my visit to the idyllic Ping’an village in Longsheng, I met a cat that dined, well, like one of the ladies. Her name is Mimi.
The drive up to Ping’an village is rough – a four hour merry-go-round of looping around steep rice hills – but the village immediately charms. Its rustic, sloping bamboo roofs emerge from the hills like the pop of a farmer’s bamboo hat as he tills the field. The rice terraces stun you with their orderliness, their engineering. They sit, pooled with water, gleaming like neat stacks of tipped dominoes.
Jonathan and I stayed at a cozy family-run inn. Mimi was the hotel regular. They most likely never owned her. I imagine she strolled in one day and lingered on. Petite, heart-faced, with coal eyes that swept the room like a broom, she watched customers come and go.
We took lunch at a small restaurant with a balcony overlooking the village. We ate rice roasted in bamboo husks and drank sweet black tea. Quite frequently, as we admired the view, the smoke rising from the slatted roofs, a line of ancient-looking, leather-skinned women in their traditional, embroidered garb would march up the steep stone paths with jarring, flat panel Samsung televisions strapped to their backs and remind us, after all, it was 2012.
We spent the rest of the afternoon away from the crowds, wading through the tall grasses, hiking through each of the steps of the terraces, and saying hello to local farmers as we passed them on our climb.
That evening, our first and last night at the hotel, we selected a steamed catfish for dinner. The earthy smell drew Mimi out from the kitchen.
She never begged. Neither did she ask.
Like the way she claimed her place at the inn, she stole quietly into our dinner booth, a petite phantom against the dark wood bench. Noiselessly, almost elegantly, without any movement except that of her paw, she held it in the air, claws out like the tines of a fork, and then helped herself to leftover catfish.
