“These men always have machetes,” shouts the driver. Through trees along an unpaved road, he spots a ramshackle hut, slows down, and warns his passengers: this is a checkpoint. It’s the only way to enforce rules in this part of the jungle, at the top of a mountain in southwestern China, he explains. They inspect every incoming car. If they find something they don’t like, the self-appointed enforcers don’t bother to call the police.
By the time we inch up to the tree-shaded hut, a low structure with wooden walls and a sloping corrugated-metal roof, my pulse is racing. We stop and wait for the men with knives. Nothing. Still nothing. After several long moments, my driver, a man in his early 20s wearing camouflage pants, shrugs. “Maybe they’re away or sleeping.” He slams the gas pedal and our Toyota SUV speeds along the dirt road, its tires churning up clouds of red dust. About ten minutes later, while idly flipping through songs on Internet radio, he muses that perhaps