Riding the Iron Rooster (24 page)

A few days before I left Canton I met a woman who had been there, she said, many times. She was also leaving, but she was going in a different direction. Her name was Lisa Packard. She lived in Hong Kong. She had been visiting China for a dozen years, off and on, and now she was sick of it. She was in her mid-forties and she seemed to me an enterprising person, with enough cultural and commercial interests to keep her busy. And she seemed well connected.

I agreed with her that things had changed, and I asked her whether she remembered the year that had happened.

"Remember the year?" she laughed. "I remember the
week
things changed. There was a speech by Deng. Everyone responded to it. The Chinese are experts at interpreting jargon, and they knew he was saying something significant. It was one particular week in 1984, and after that everything was different."

She said that sourly, so I said, "But there have been a lot of improvements."

"I don't think so," Lisa said. "I hate the changes. Now, all they want are trinkets and toys—color TVs, cameras, watches, tape recorders, refrigerators, motorcycles. They're greedy, they're starting to be very crooked, they don't trust each other, they lie. Remember how you used to hear how they'd give you back your used razor blades? 'Oh, we don't need these. We have razor blades of our own.' So honest! So straight! So Chinese!"

I said that was a directive of Mao's from the Little Red Book. The Three Main Rules of Discipline for soldiers—but also for Party workers—were: Obey orders in all your actions; Do not take a single needle or thread from the masses; and Turn in everything captured. He had also made rules such as Speak politely; Return everything you borrow, Do not swear at people; and Do not take liberties with women. Was this disillusionment with Mao a reason for this change in conduct?

Lisa said, "Their excuse is that they have to get things while they can. They've only had a few years of this free system. But they know that China has periods of violent change. No one had foreseen this period. No one can foresee when it might end. So they are absolutely frantic. They feel it could all end tomorrow, and so they are grabbing with both hands. 'If we delay we might never get another chance.' That's what they say when I ask."

"Surely that's an understandable attitude for people who have had their asses kicked for the past thirty years. And all the sermons they've had to listen to!" It often seemed as though Chinese life was one long sanctimonious drone of warning and advice, and it was often hard to distinguish the moralizing edicts of the Chinese Communist Party from the corn-pone saws of Elbert Hubbard. Not only Mao, but his followers as well had created a whole anthology of pious parables, from "The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains" to "Lei Feng the Model Soldier."

"I'm talking about real corruption, the worst kind—Party corruption," Lisa Packard said. "Where only the high Party members get privileges—they go abroad, they get into five-star hotels, they have access to hard currency. The rest of the people are out of luck. But the army is watching. The army isn't sharing in any of this. A soldier has no means of making extra money, he is not part of the economy, he simply watches people come and go."

I had heard that before: only the army—still sentimentally called the People's Liberation Army—had the key to China's future because no one could govern without the army's consent. And the PLA was notoriously conservative.

'The army is watching, and what does it see? People who are spiritually hollow, spiritually bankrupt. At least with fat, crazy old Mao they had a kind of faith—even idealism—and a sense of working together. They always used that Chinese expression 'working together.' There was a unity in that, but it's totally lacking now. They're not nice, they're not polite. I think they're lost and it will all end horribly for them."

But far from dampening my ardor, what Lisa Packard said only made me eager to plunge back in. Anyway, I was sick of this rain. I heard there was no rain at all in Inner Mongolia, and that the crocuses were popping up all over distant Gansu; so I planned a long trip by train through the westernmost provinces of China—so ambitious a trip that I had to enlist the help of the Railway Board. They were suspicious, but they said that if I went to Peking they would discuss it with me. I needed permission, they said.

The tourists were leaving China for home. Some had gone already, the Wittricks, the Westbetters, laden with souvenirs (lacquerware, carpets, chopsticks, brassware, fans); and the Cathcarts were already back in Bexhill-on-Sea.

Kicker and Morris had not left the bar of The White Swan since arriving in Canton. Kicker said, 'The guys back home will never believe it when I say I screwed a bald woman."

He was chuckling softly. His laughter always reminded me that he had a metal plate in his head. Then he squinted at me.

"But I was a Marine," he said. "We fuck anything."

He had met a young Japanese woman in Canton—had just passed by the open door to her hotel room, started shooting the breeze and ended up in bed with her. Kicker was sixty-seven years old and had the face of a rapist. But his features softened as he recalled the encounter—just yesterday, it was, on the fourth floor.

"It was real nice," he said. 'That gal gave me more loving in those six hours than I had in fifteen years of marriage."

Morthole was looking on. He was very drunk. He was alone. He had not made any friends on his long trip. He asked me what I was planning to do. I told him: Head north—more China.

"More tombs," he said. "More chopsticks. More pagodas. What are you doing?"

"Trying to get the hang of it," I said.

"And you're going by train? It'll take ages!"

"It'll give me a feeling of accomplishment."

Morthole laughed. He did not seem to me very bright, but I had never said much to him. I had merely noted the times when he had gone in search of stones, and I had marveled at the satchelful he had collected. His prize was a chunk of the Great Wall—he wondered whether he would be able to smuggle it through customs at Canton Railway Station.

Each of those tourists had surprised me in one way or another. It made me think that you never really know anyone until you have traveled 10,000 miles in a train with them. I had sized them up in London, but they were all both better and worse then they had seemed then, and now they were beyond criticism because they had proved themselves to be human. Morthole, the recluse and rock collector, had a surprise for me, too. I had taken him for an illiterate, and I had not taken him very seriously—or his bag of rocks.

"Do you know
The Excursion
?" he said.

I said I didn't know what he was talking about. What was this, some China sight-seeing tour to the high spots?

"William Wordsworth," he said. "I learned it at school."

"Oh,
that
Excursion."

Morthole raised his glass and said,

An irksome drudgery seems it to plod on,
Through hot and dusty ways, or pelting storm,
A vagrant merchant under a heavy load
Bent as he moves, and needing frequent rest;
Yet do such travellers find their own delight...

Oh, God, I thought, and all this time I've been patronizing this poor bastard.

But speaking of travelers finding their own delight, I decided that day to leave Canton. I went to bed thinking how China exists so distinctly in people's minds that it is hard to shake that fantasy loose and see the real thing. It was not quite the same as looking for igloos in Alaska, or grass skirts in Tahiti, or big blubber-lipped Ubangis in Africa; but it was similar. And it was as wrong to lean on the fake Chinese imagery that comes thirdhand to every Westerner as it was to believe in the wholesome air of poverty.

I had a nightmare. I woke up in a sweat as the nightmare ebbed away: I was on a mobbed street, full of toothy and unfriendly faces, and felt trapped and suffocated in a big city. It was a Chinese city—a Chinese nightmare. I thought: Most of my nightmares are Chinese nightmares. On its most ordinary-seeming street, this unraveling republic had sights to scare the hell out of me. But I was growing fond of its gorgeous insects.

It had been a very bad month on China's western railway, where wild yaks on the line accounted for some delays, and sandstorms were frequent. Just before I set off I read in the
China Daily
that 330 miles of track had been buried by the worst sandstorms for twenty years. The report was precise in its tale of woe: a "force 12 gale" had raged for forty-eight hours, and the "eye-blinding sandstorm" had dumped 100,000 tons of sand on the tracks, stranding forty-seven trains and closing the line for nine days, during which 10,000 rail passengers were evacuated. People died in the storm. People were injured. Vast prefectures of Gansu and Xinjiang were cut off.

But in the way it was ignored by the world, and even ignored by most Chinese (it was just a tiny news item), and in the way it was quickly remedied, it was a very Chinese disaster. (The 1976 earthquake in China, hardly noticed by the world, killed more than 2 50,000 people, and the famines of the late 1950's killed as many as 16 million people.) After the death and destruction, shovels were distributed, the trains were dug out, the tracks disinterred and new sand barriers erected—fences this time, instead of grass clumps. The Chinese had their political dilemmas, and the technological side of Chinese society was a mess ("communications" was an inappropriate word for toy telephones, Morse code and scribbled notes), but if it was possible for the Chinese to shovel themselves out of trouble, they succeeded brilliantly. Digging was a national preoccupation, and during the Cultural Revolution—as my friend Wang said—everyone had his own hole, in case of war. Come to think of it, the Great Wall too was a sort of digger's masterpiece. And the old fable that Mao always cited, "The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains," was the digger's gospel—the point was that the old man was not foolish at all and that the Chinese could move mountains (even the metaphorical ones of imperialism and feudalism) by digging.

When the line was clear, I left for Hohhot, in Inner Mongolia. I was not alone. A small portly gentleman had been assigned to me. He had the face of a sea lion—not an unusual face in China. Speaking English was not one of his skills, but he was fluent in Russian, a language that mystifies me. His name was Mr. Fang. We were traveling together as a result of a discussion I had had with the Railway Board, but these discussions were more in the nature of struggle sessions.

A delegation had come to my hotel and delayed me with politeness and abused me with flattery, blackmailing me with such phrases as "famous writer," "important person" and "foreign friend." Indeed, I was so important and dignified that I could not possibly travel alone on this journey to the west, but would have to be provided with an entourage.

I said that I usually traveled alone, and that I made a virtue of it, and I refrained from saying that if I was in need of a traveling companion it certainly would not have been a huge, goofy man like Mr. Zhong, with his sinister laugh and his slurping way of eating.

We were in the restaurant of my hotel, Mr. Zhong, Mr. Fang, Mr. Chen and I. Mr. Zhong blew on the surface of his tea, then sucked it in, gurgled it inside his cheeks and gulped it. And his way with noodles was worse, and noisier: he made his mouth into a suck-hole and woofed them through it in a wet, twisted hank. His gasps made me feel violent towards him.

So far, Mr. Fang had not said anything; and Mr. Chen only put in a word now and then to be helpful.

"There is no earthly reason why anyone should come with me."

Mr. Zhong went
schhhllooopp
with his tea, and chewed it loudly, and then said, "To give you correct information."

"I think I'm capable of getting correct information on my own," I said. "I've done a little traveling, you know."

"But not in China."

"In China, as a matter of fact. Six years ago. Down the Yangtze."

"The Chang Jiang," he said, giving me correct information, as if I didn't know what the Chinese called the damned thing. Like all pedants, at heart he was just being stubborn and obstructive.

"And Peking and Canton."

"Beijing and Guangzhou," he said, woofing noodles.

"I'm giving you their English names, Mr. Zhong. We don't say Hellas for Greece, or Roma for Rome, or Paree, if we're speaking English. So I don't see the point—"

"I must come with you," Mr. Zhong said.

Never,
I thought.

"We will leave tonight," he said.

Over my dead body, I thought.

"I will help you," he said.

"Believe me, it's extremely kind of you to offer," I said, "but I don't need your help."

His face was big and pale. He smiled at me and said, "I can carry your bag."

I said, "Did you go to a university?"

"Oh, yes. Jiaotong University. I studied engineering."

"So you're trained for a different job—not for carrying bags."

"My English is very good. I can be your interpreter."

"I want to improve my Chinese."

"I can help you with that," he said. "And you can teach me some more English, and about literature, and about your country."

"I'm afraid that's out of the question," I said.

"You must be looked after properly."

"I don't want to be looked after," I said. "I just want to take the train and stare out the window."

"Oh, no," he said. "We must do our best. You are our responsibility. And we can talk."

Why wasn't Mr. Fang saying anything?

"I may not want to talk," I said. "I may want to sit and read. I may want to look out of the window."

Mr. Zhong put his face against his tea cup, everted his pale lips, and whooshed at it. I had taken a dislike to him very early in the discussion—as soon as we were introduced, in fact—because he was a person whose banter sounded to me like a reprimand. I had left some papers in my room and he had said, "Don't get lost!" and "Don't disappear!"