Lost on Planet China: One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation (23 page)

Strange, I thought. I couldn’t decide whether Maoism was truly good and dead in China, or whether these signs represented some mutant variation of it.

The bus stopped near a pier and I joined this elderly quartet of jocularity on board the boat to Putuoshan. It was a jet boat, an odd boat to use for ferrying people over open water that rippled with the wakes of giant containerships. It was sleek and made of metal, and it floated low in the water with a flat bottom that suggested that we wouldn’t slice through the waves as much as fly over them. Unsurprisingly, the attendant on board handed out plastic barf bags, leading to another burst of mirthful joshing among the four travelers. Whatever meds they were on, I wanted some. On the shoreline, there was frenetic building: new factories, office towers, apartments, bridges. Huge containerships were being loaded with shoes, computers, televisions, sweaters, hats, mittens, toys that may or may not have lead, tables, chairs, and everything else.

We zoomed over the water, each ripple sending us into the sky. The water spray was brown. There were hundreds of fishing boats. On a television screen at the front of the boat, there was a short movie about Putuoshan, home of Guanyin, the bodhisattva of compassion, otherwise known as the Goddess of Mercy, and as the DVD turned to traditional music, the grandmas next to me sang along, which I found very endearing. These are fun people, I thought, these oldsters on the boat to Putuoshan. Soulful people. I wanted to hang out with them, have dinner. But I didn’t speak Chinese and they didn’t speak English. I had asked.

It was dusk when we finally arrived on the island. It was raining lightly, so I put on my windbreaker, heaved my pack onto my back, and started walking. Immediately, I had good feelings for Putuoshan. As I walked up a rain-slicked road, the surroundings reminded me of a village in Japan. I have not been to a village in Japan, but had always imagined it might be like this: tidy, orderly houses with happy families cleaning fish, laying out clams in buckets of water, waving kindly to passing strangers.

Now it was growing dark and it was beginning to rain harder. I found my target hotel, and as I didn’t have a reservation, I steeled my mind for the ensuing bargaining, determined to get as close as I possibly could to the mythical, fabled, and ever-elusive
Chinese Price.

“No standard room. Only executive suite,” said the assistant manager, who had been called over to deal with the
laowai
who didn’t plan ahead.
Executive suite,
I mulled. A bold opening move.

“I have no need for an executive suite,” I explained. “Perhaps you have me confused with Zhengrong Shi,” I said, referring to the richest man in China, who had made billions in solar power. “I am only a traveler. I simply need a roof over my head.”

A standard room could be arranged, possibly. It would be trouble, but perhaps arrangements could be made, solutions found. Another assistant manager had to be called. And now the bargaining began in earnest. The calculator was brought out. We parried. Spectators formed around us.

“Would you accept this price?” I offered.

No, no, no, they said. This was a three-star hotel. See—look. There are our three stars. Your price is a two-star price.

“But I have stayed in official, certified by the People’s Republic of China, four-star hotels for less than that price.”

The crowd murmured. Who was this mysterious
laowai
?

I had stayed at only one four-star hotel, the Grand Hyatt in the Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai, and as I recalled the grim tally of my bill, I can say quite confidently that it wasn’t a two-star price. But in China, white lies are perfectly acceptable in the game of bargaining.

Would I then accept this price? It is far lower than the standard rate, as you can see.

“Thank you for working with me. I am hopeful that we can come to a satisfying resolution. But that price? That is the price for a rich man. I am not a rich man. I am just a traveler. I am here to learn about China. I wish to understand China. I have a deep respect for Chinese culture.”

The audience nodded approvingly, and this pleased me, because when haggling in China, it’s important to have the crowd with you. By now, the manager had come out herself. She had taken control of the calculator.

“Will you accept this price?” I said, tapping in a number.

“I will have to sleep in the streets for the remainder of my trip, but this is the best I can do.”

She could not. No one had ever stayed in this hotel for that price.

“I am very sorry,” I said. “I shall try the next hotel. Thank you for your time.”

And I turned, and I made my way through the spectators, who had swelled five deep, and walked for the exit, and as I opened the door, I suddenly found my arm yanked by the manager. Yes, okay, she said.

“Xie xie,”
I said, feeling exultant.

After depositing my bag, I made my way down a hallway, past a sign on a door that informed me that just behind resided the curiously named Department of S and M, and wandered into the hotel restaurant. As usual, I was the solitary diner at a table for twelve. All restaurants in China have tables for twelve. Very often, they only have tables for twelve, and this was such a restaurant. My table was in the center of the room and every other table was crowded with Buddhist monks in saffron robes. There were female monks too, I noticed, though somewhat belatedly, since every monk, the women included, had shaved their heads. They had come here because Putuoshan is considered holy. Or perhaps they lived on the island; of the three thousand people inhabiting Putuoshan, I had read that one thousand of them are monks.

The menu was in Chinese only. There were no translations, no pictures, and so I indicated to the waitress that I was amenable to anything she suggested. Perhaps seafood. Yes, sea-food. I was on an island and I desired to dine upon the bounty of the sea. Whereupon she returned with Whole Jellyfish Head. Intriguing, I thought. I had not known that jellyfish had a part of their being that could discernibly be called a head. The victuals on my plate looked like diseased muscle tissue and managed to be both crispy and gelatinous at the same time.

Next there was shrimp, salty and deep-fried. And a platter of spinach. It was, as I had feared, far too much food. Restaurants in China, as the tables suggest, are not meant to be enjoyed alone. Dining out is a group activity and servings are sized accordingly. As I picked at my Whole Jellyfish, the waitress brought the next course, a large glass bowl capped by a plate. She set it before me. She removed the plate. Out leapt a squid. And then another. And another. There were three squids flopping about before me. The waitress quickly returned the plate to its place atop the bowl and decorously removed the rogue squid from the table.

Well, I thought. Well, well, well. And what am I to do with a bowl of live squid? CLANK CLANK went the plate, as squid after squid made sad, desperate attempts to flee. I slouched down to peer at them through the bowl. It was like having my own personal aquarium. There were a dozen or so, swimming and flopping, bewildered to find themselves in a bowl on a table in a restaurant. They looked like the peculiar offspring of a shrimp mated with an octopus. I flagged down the waitress and asked her to help me out here. What is it that I was meant to do? How, exactly, does one eat live squid with chopsticks? She indicated that I was to eat them by hand. I simply had to rip the head off the squid, tear its shell off, dip it into a vinegar-y sauce, and then enjoy this fine example of fresh seafood from Putuoshan.

“Ah…” I said.
“Xie xie.”

I pondered my squid. Could I do this? Could I, in a room of Buddhist monks who presumably were vegetarian, murder a squid? Could I take life away with the mere snap of a finger? Would it completely mess up my karma for the rest of my days? Was I a squid murderer?

Yes, I was.

In the years to come, tales would be told in the squid community of the epic carnage that occurred one dark and stormy night in a restaurant on an island in the East China Sea. Among the squid, it was said that this monster, this
laowai
from the West, found it difficult, initially, to eat them. His first victim, little Jimmy, squirmed out of his grasp and leapt back into the bowl, and there he remained for a long while as the
laowai
considered his course. But determination overtook him, and after little Jimmy had been disposed of—the cruel decapitation, the torturous peeling of skin, the body dipped in vinegar—the remaining squid were quickly subjected to a gluttonous blood-lust. The
laowai
decided that he liked his squid fresh, and methodically, efficiently, mechanically, he emptied the bowl, until finally nothing remained but a pile of squid heads with wet, black eyes staring blankly up at him. He then sat there contentedly picking his teeth with a toothpick, satisfied to have crossed this culinary Rubicon.

The new day began with sheets of rain and tempestuous winds. A squall had descended upon us. But this was fine. I like weather. I am intrigued by weather. Across the narrow road from my hotel were a few small shops where I bought an umbrella and an orange plastic anti-rain sheet that I draped over myself.

I had come to Putuoshan because, even after the beaches of Qingdao, I had been overcome by a serious case of urban fatigue and an island somewhere off the Yangtze delta in the East China Sea had seemed like an excellent cure. Putuoshan is a very small island; I could walk from end to end in an hour or two. But it is not an island for speed walking. It is an island for lingering. There are pagodas and gardens and warrens of alleys where shops sell dried fish and the joss sticks, or incense, that burn inside every temple. And there is greenery. Eighty percent of the island is forested, a verdant tangle composed of 1,800 ancient trees, including camphor trees, which are special, though I’m not entirely sure why.

It is said that in the year
A.D.
916 a very naughty Japanese monk sought to steal a statue of Guanyin, the bodhisattva of compassion, from the Chinese mainland and abscond with it back to Japan. It’s endless, really, the mischief of the Japanese in China. Guanyin, however, did not wish to go to Japan. And so when storms terrorized the young monk as he sailed back home, she appeared to him in a dream and informed him that if he would just leave the statue on Putuoshan he might live to see another day. Otherwise, it was Davy Jones’s locker for him.

Putuoshan thus became an important sight for those of the Buddhist persuasion, and its most prominent landmark is a hundred-foot golden statue of Guanyin built in 1998 that overlooks the harbor. Indeed, the summit of Mt. Putuoshan, a small hill really, is considered to be one of the four sacred mountains in Buddhism (not to be confused with the five sacred mountains of Taoism, such as Tai Shan). Over the years, the island acquired a strong monastic tradition, and there are several prominent temples such as the Puji Temple, which is where I soon found myself, drenched despite the anti-rain gear. Inside was a large golden Buddha. They are the friendliest-looking deities I know of, Buddhas—there is just something about the big potbelly that encourages levity. You cannot imagine them smiting an idolater with a lightning bolt. Inside, monks and worshipers lit joss sticks and did their devotions. Two mothers stood nearby, teaching their slit-pants-wearing youngsters how to bow and pray.

Buddhism, I was pleased to learn, was enjoying somewhat of a revival in China. It had long been present in China, of course. The first Buddhist missionaries arrived in the first century, and with time Buddhism developed a sizable presence, particularly as it evolved to include facets of homegrown Confucianism and Taoism. But then came Mao, and as with all things old, he was determined to crush Buddhism. Temples were destroyed and monasteries padlocked as Mao turned his sledgehammer on the opiate of the masses. Today, however, the Chinese government, confronted with such profound social discontent, has decided that a little opiate might be good for the masses. President Hu Jintao wants a harmonious society. So, too, do the Buddhists. And while Tibetan Buddhists remain as repressed as ever, the 7 million Buddhists in China who are not Tibetan have regained considerable latitude in expressing their beliefs. According to the government, there are now 13,000 Buddhist Temples in China, with more than 200,000 monks and nuns, including the ones here on Putuoshan.

Outside, the temple was surrounded by branching alleyways where young monks leapt among the puddles in front of shops selling joss sticks, golden Buddhas, chicken carcasses, slabs of meat, eels, starfish, mussels, clams, shark fins, and seafood of a kind completely unrecognizable to me, though no doubt I would find it in my evening meal. Pelted by cold, wet drops, I walked on to the One Hundred Step Beach, which is nine hundred steps smaller than the One Thousand Step Beach a short distance farther on. My umbrella whipped inside out and then collapsed in the gale, and as I watched the foaming sea I began to wonder how exactly I was going to get off the island after dinner. I had planned on taking an overnight boat to Shanghai, but this now struck me as an unsensible mode of transport.