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Iguazu sits in the northeastern corner of Argentina. Since it’s in the Southern Hemisphere, everything feels a bit flipped upside down, but climatically it’s actually pretty similar to Xishuangbanna back home.

Geographically it’s similar too, bordering two neighboring countries. Rivers make natural borders for human territory, and the perpendicular Parana and Iguazu Rivers neatly divide Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay.

The three countries even teamed up to create a proper sightseeing spot called “Three Countries Viewpoint.”

On the Argentine side, it’s a free little park in the middle of town; Brazil turned its side into a tourist attraction; and Paraguay just has a lone marker standing there.

Does that reflect how important tourism is to each country? No idea.

Iguazu on the Argentine side is clearly a small city built for the waterfalls, with streets full of hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops selling mate cups, and little bars.

Every evening, it feels as if the day has ended, and is just about to begin again.

Precisely because they’re so close together, people in the three countries move back and forth frequently.

Right across from where I was staying was a gas station. Except when it was closed, there was always a huge line, all day long, and the plates were all from Brazil and Paraguay. Watching the impatient drivers outside, my host grumbled to me and said bitterly, “These people come rob Argentina every single day.”

They come to raid the fuel; tomorrow I’ll go buy cheap stuff and help even the score for you.

So the next day, I went to Paraguay.

Paraguay has no diplomatic relations with our country, so it was my first time visiting a country that hasn’t established relations with China. It felt a bit like going behind enemy lines without the protection of the organization, and I was inevitably a little nervous.

Some people might ask: what about the visa? In theory, you’re supposed to get one for Paraguay, and with no diplomatic ties, you’d think it would be even more troublesome. But Ciudad del Este ranks as the largest free port in South America, and its whole thing is freedom, so people more or less turn a blind eye and let everyone come and go.

At the central bus terminal in Iguazu, I hopped on a bus bound for Ciudad del Este. We headed north along the Parana River and, sure enough, rolled right across the Friendship Bridge over the river. Pedestrians of every complexion on either side barely even looked up, strolling through customs as casually as if they were visiting a neighbor.

Crossing customs felt like crossing an ordinary street early in the morning.

The moment I got off the bus, what hit me was chaos — a chaos brimming with vitality.

It was like stepping into a gigantic Yiwu small-goods market.

Shops of all sizes lined streets in every direction. Merchandise was stacked from floor to ceiling, spilling out of stores and onto the road, and every street corner had hawkers loudly trying to reel in customers.

As for the merchandise, it had everything from electronics to daily necessities. Nearly every block seemed to have developed around a large wholesale trading complex.

See those people on the street with bulging waist pouches and fistfuls of banknotes from different countries? Those are almost certainly money changers. And the ones buying goods in bulk are middlemen — not just traders, but international traders.

This kind of commercial ecosystem might feel novel to white Western tourists, but for those of us who grew up during China’s reform-and-opening era, it’s all extremely familiar.

In fact, the rise of Ciudad del Este was itself a kind of reform and opening-up. Paraguay is a landlocked country; without a seaport, there is no trade. Back in the day it even fought a few wars with its neighbors over that, but after so much conflict that the country nearly ran out of men, it had to find another way.

So it drew a circle in the distant east, established a free-trade zone, and implemented its own version of “one country, two systems.” Inside the trade zone, there were no taxes, people and money moved freely, and even black markets and smuggling were tacitly tolerated.

Because prices were so low, simply moving goods from here to somewhere else could instantly multiply profits several times over. So from every direction, fortune-seekers flocked eastward. Making money was the only goal, and in those years Ciudad del Este became a global re-export trade hub on par with Hong Kong.

At its peak, this tiny corner of the world, with a population of only 200,000, generated half of Paraguay’s GDP. Calling it South America’s Huaqiangbei would actually undersell it — it was more like a special zone: the Hong Kong of South America, the Pearl of the East!

An older Chinese shop owner told me that during those boom years, his store was so packed there was barely room to stand, and every day the cash had to be bagged up and carried to the bank.

With profits like that, in a place where basically no one was in charge, calling it a mixed bag of all kinds of people would be putting it mildly. The underground world ran far deeper. I heard that Hezbollah, Hamas, and al-Qaeda all had a presence here and used it as an important fundraising base.

But that has little to do with ordinary tourists like us. Today’s most important mission was to get a proper Chinese meal.

Where there’s money to be made, there are Chinese people; and where there are Chinese people, there’s good Chinese food!

Most of the first wave of Chinese who came to Paraguay to make money were Taiwanese, and the city still has a few solid old-school Taiwanese restaurants.

Beef with soft scrambled eggs and fried rice vermicelli with mixed seafood, while a Mandarin variety show played on the TV — food really is the thing most capable of stirring homesickness.

While chatting with the young owner, I was surprised to learn he was already the third generation running the little restaurant. He said Ciudad del Este had long since passed its peak, and most of the Chinese community had already moved away.

Back when the Chinese population was at its largest, three major groups — Taiwanese, people from China’s Northeast, and Fujianese — stirred up wave after wave of bloody conflict in this jungle-law city. Even though they were doing legitimate business on the surface, the brutality in other respects wasn’t much different from what you hear about today in northern Myanmar or Sihanoukville, and it gave the local government a real headache.

But as Brazil and Argentina stepped up their crackdown on smuggling from Ciudad del Este, the profits disappeared. And apparently there wasn’t much in the way of industrial upgrading or any “empty the cage, replace the birds” strategy here, either.

All under heaven bustle for profit, and once the profits were gone, everything faded into smoke. The former prosperity vanished like passing clouds. Most of the Chinese who remain today had already built up some assets in earlier years, and now live leisurely little lives in low-cost Paraguay.

As we talked, several older regulars came in to eat. They all carried themselves with a certain elegance; perhaps they too had been tempered by the years. I couldn’t help wondering whether, over meals together, they still reminisced about the city’s lively old days.

After taking a loop around town, I found the locals quite warmhearted. I wanted to exchange some coins with a money changer for my collection, and he actually called over people from several places to help piece together Paraguayan coins from different eras for me. So maybe they weren’t that busy after all.

Even though it has fallen from a super trading center to more of a super duty-free store, it’s still a shopping paradise for locals.

Everyone heading back across the Friendship Bridge was carrying big bags and small bags alike, all with thoroughly satisfied expressions.

The customs checkpoint on the Iguazu side was on high alert, looking no less serious than Luohu Port cracking down on parallel traders.

The Brazilian guy I met in Santiago was also figuring out when he should make a run to Ciudad del Este and buy himself a better-spec computer.

When I got back to Foz do Iguacu, the streets were completely empty. A quick search told me why: it was Brazil’s Children’s Day. A nationwide holiday for Children’s Day — Brazilians really know how to celebrate. I wandered up and down the deserted streets a few times, bought two cheap fridge magnets, and called it proof that I’d been there.

So did that count as having been to Brazil or not? I told a friend that, theoretically, I guess it counted. My friend comforted me by saying that in practice, it absolutely meant I’d really been to Brazil.

So, a little guiltily, I added Brazil to my list of countries visited. The rest of its broader samba-fueled warmth can wait until next time.

About the Author

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