Lost on Planet China: One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation (47 page)

I stepped into a restaurant for some Korean barbecue. There were Koreans in this restaurant. They were legal, I presumed; Chinese-Koreans, or perhaps South Koreans who had come to look at North Korea from the other side. They were most certainly not North Koreans. North Koreans who manage to cross the border hide. They stay in the darkness. And they stay hidden. Or they try to find a way to South Korea. But they do not eat in restaurants near the neon glare of the Friendship Bridge. This is because China sends them back, these escapees from North Korea, and then bad things happen to them. Bad things happen to their families. And this is because Kim Jong-il is a monster.

I returned to my hotel, this hotel overlooking the Yalu River and the Friendship Bridge and beyond that the darkness of North Korea. A Britney Spears tune was playing in the lobby. Inside the elevator, a dapperly dressed Chinese man turned to address me.

“Good evening,” he said in English.

“Good evening.”

“And you are from California, yes?”

“Uh…yeah.”

Nothing about my being suggests California, with the possible exception of a fondness for flip-flops. But this was the North Korean border in December. I was not wearing flip-flops. So this was eerie. The dapperly dressed man got off the elevator before I could inquire how he might know that I lived in California, and I was left alone to ponder this spookiness.

In my room, I sat at the window and watched the trucks rumbling over the Friendship Bridge toward North Korea. One certainly wouldn’t know there were sanctions against the regime. Not here, I thought as I viewed the proceedings from my perch above the border crossing. This was the perfect spy room. I could count trucks. I could take pictures. There was all sorts of information that I could discern from my place at the window of this hotel. Yes, I thought, there is not a finer spy room than this one. Then it occurred to me.

It’s probably bugged.

It has to be bugged. Things were afoot in North Korea. Spies would stay in this room. And this is China. There are no legal hassles here to prevent the government from bugging hotel rooms. So this room was most certainly bugged.

I resisted the temptation to speak to the lamps.

Should I speak to the lamps? What would happen if I spoke to them? No, I shouldn’t speak to the lamps. And then I spoke to them anyway.

I turned to the lamp shade. “Alpha, Charlie, Delta. This is Renegade One. Repeat. Renegade One. The package has left the building. Repeat. The package has left the building.”

And I spent the rest of the night waiting for my door to be kicked in.

I had come to Dandong because it seemed like an interesting place to ponder choices. Here was a vivid display of roads taken and not taken, of destinies forged by choices and the consequences of those choices. Once China and North Korea had been brothers. I saw vivid examples of this brotherhood in Dandong inside the Museum to Commemorate U.S. Aggression. They are not subtle, the Chinese, when it comes to naming museums. We call it the Korean War, while the Chinese call it The War To Resist America and Assist Korea, which is interesting, to see this war where the United States is portrayed as the bad guy, the imperialist thug, because one gets used to seeing America as the one wearing the white hat. In 1950, there was a civil war on the Korean peninsula. The Americans took one side and the Chinese the other, and when China saw General MacArthur marching up toward the Yalu River and the Chinese border, Mao sent his People’s Liberation Army into the fray. And then they did that war thing, and after three years of doing it, they called it a tie and everyone went home. China and North Korea pledged to be Best Friends Forever, and for several decades they were, happily being evil Communists together behind their walls.

But then China started to take down those walls, and today there is light and laser shows and dancing and money and films and energy, so much energy, in China. There is everything in China. Not everyone can have everything in China, not yet, but every day there are more who do. If you ignore the environment—and you can’t because the damage is utterly overwhelming—the future looks sunny for China—okay, smoggy—and I suspected that China would find a way to manage all its fissures and problems and perhaps Chinese society would indeed become harmonious—barring a complete societal collapse as the environmental degradation undergoes devastating feedback loops. It’s a complex country, not easily summed up. It could still go in so many directions.

But once, not so long ago, China had been like that place across the river. When the sun came up, to my great surprise, I found myself facing the city of Sinuiju, a Potemkin village complete with a Ferris wheel. Of course, the Ferris wheel wasn’t turning; there is no electricity in Sinuiju. That is why I couldn’t see this city at night. There are only the rusting carcasses of old boats on the shores. And there were people.

There are, in fact, two bridges across the Yalu River. Or rather, one and a half. The Americans shot one up during the war, and today it extends only as far as midriver, since the North Koreans have dismantled the remainder. I wanted to get a little closer to North Korea, and so after breakfast I walked along this blasted bridge past a few lonely vendors selling North Korean trinkets, which I strongly suspected were made in China.

It’s a dreary-looking city, Sinuiji, and if this is the best the North Koreans could do in terms of its face to the outside world, it must be bleak indeed. I came back to the Chinese side and walked along the river path, where soon a man offered to take me in his little speedboat for a closer look at North Korea. Cool, I thought. I didn’t hesitate a minute and soon I was speeding across the murky waters of the Yalu River. We careened around the remains of the old bridge and suddenly we were in North Korean waters. Well, okay, I thought. I’m in North Korea. I am technically in North Korea. Holy shit. And we sped closer to the North Korean shore. Behind us a rusty and decrepit trawler bearing the North Korean flag chugged along. Okay, Jesus, we’re deep in North Korean waters now. Ha! And we went farther. We went to the very shoreline. He slowed the boat and we cruised six feet from the actual land. I could hear a megaphone, a rally. I’m in North Korea. I am in fucking North Korea! There were people behind these wrecked ships. Soldiers. I was giddy. I waved. They did not wave back. They looked upon me with stony faces. I waved some more, but they did not wave. I was the imperialist dog.
Yoo-hoo. Hello. Give up your bombs and we’ll send your leader a hairstylist. Some new platform shoes too.
But they did not laugh, these North Koreans. The soldiers eyed me. I’m in North Korea. I’m in fucking North Korea. Ha!

And the engine died.

What is this? Are you shitting me? Here, six feet from the North Korean shore, the fucking engine dies. You have got to be fucking kidding me. Whatever happens, I thought, do not get out of the boat. That is what I told myself. Jesus. All I had was a California driver’s license. That’ll go over real well with the North Korean authorities. The soldiers were alert. They were watching me. They were watching us drift, drifting closer to shore, ever closer. Jesus. Could you get that fucking engine started? It coughed. It hacked. The engine did not start. Fuck. Come on, start. Goddamn it, start. But the engine would not start, and we drifted closer and I looked across the river to China, to soaring China, to those brand-new buildings and glittering lights, and I yearned for China. I wanted to embrace China. I love you, China. Please, China, take me back.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to acknowledge that he is a bad man. As evidence, he offers this e-mail from his editor’s husband:
This is Ann’s husband. She is in labor at the hospital now. I have printed out the Chengdu chapter for her at her request.

The author doesn’t know what to say. He is mortified by this. He had, of course, known that his editor, Ann Campbell, was with child. It was not a surprise. Indeed, his book deadline had been some months before her due date. The author, however, is very bad with deadlines—we needn’t go into this; deadlines are not interesting—but here, at least, was a very firm date. He could not tweak and tinker and revise beyond the due date. The book
had
to be done. The author is a parent himself. He knows newborns and they are unforgiving. He has stood in the delivery room himself. He knows, if only as an observer, what childbirth is like. And yet, because he is a very bad man, his editor, in between contractions, with pencil in hand, was compelled to focus on a gay bar in Chengdu.

The author wishes to acknowledge this. His editor had been—as if she didn’t have enough to deal with—forced to grapple with a book that wanted to become a 500-page monster, and she’d tamed it into something manageable
during labor.
He cannot thank her enough. He also cannot apologize enough, so he has decided to flog himself here, out here, on the stage.

He would also like to acknowledge all the other people at Broadway Books whose lives he’s made challenging—Clare Swanson, Laura Lee Mattingly, Anne Watters, and Rachel Rokicki. He’d long believed that for a July publication, May, possibly even June, might be a good time to submit a manuscript. He has since been disabused of the notion. He would also like to thank his agent, B. J. Robbins, whose good humor and optimism coaxed him through.

Regarding China, the author received invaluable assistance from Dan Friedman, Greg Adler, and Huaping-Lu Adler.
Xie xie
very much. Also, to the farmer who offered him an orange on the train from Shenyang to Dandong, he would like to say thank you. Just as he was succumbing to China fatigue, Jack St. Martin came out to travel with the author for a couple of weeks. And they got drunk. Several times. The author is grateful.

Finally, the author would like to acknowledge his family. His boys, Lukas and Samuel, no longer remember the long absence as he wandered around China. But the author does. He will not miss out again. And to his wife, Sylvia, thank you. And yes, once again, he owes her big-time.

Further Reading

Among the books I consulted, several proved particularly useful. Surely
Mao: The Unknown Story
by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday is now the definitive word on the Great Helmsman. Jonathan Spence’s
The Search for Modern China
offers a sweeping and elegantly written overview of modern China. Iris Chang’s
The Rape of Nanking
ensures that one of the great crimes of World War II is not forgotten. And finally, if there is a funnier and more harrowing account of what it’s like to do business in China than Tim Clissold’s
Mr. China,
I have yet to find it.

Also by
J. M
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The Sex Lives of Cannibals

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PUBLISHED BY BROADWAY BOOKS

Copyright © 2008 by J. Maarten Troost

All Rights Reserved

Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of The Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

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