And of that life too I shall perhaps tell you one
day, the day I know that when I thought I knew I was merely existing and that
passion without form or stations will have devoured me down to the rotting flesh
itself and that when I know that I know nothing, am only crying out, more or less
piercingly, more or less openly. Let me cry out then, it's said to be good for
you. Yes, let me cry out this time, then another time, perhaps, then perhaps a
last time. Cry out that the declining sun fell full on the white wall of the barracks.
It was like being in China.
-- Samuel Beckett
Dear Friend,
on the other side of Chinese New Year, the Year of the Pig, I send my latest form
letter. Before launching, I'd like to thank those who have sent letters, cards
and cultural artifacts by glorifying their names in print. The names, please ...
Frank Barnett, Jack Barth, Adam Braff, Steve Dixon, Elaine Doyle-Gillespie, Jordan
Ellenberg, Nancy Ho, Jonathan Jackson, Karla Kuban, George Landow, Carolyn Lee,
Jason Lewis, Ping Lin, Sara Perkins, Eric Raabe, Marie Tribley, Uncle Wally, Henry
Wright, Heather York, Gene Yu, and anyone I've forgotten. Your submissions were
all appreciated and accepted (^_^). Hopefully this will encourage those who haven't
written to get off their duffs (^_^).
Once again, I've placed myself in the unenviable position of telling you about
my life and times during the past two months. I'm sorry about this letter's epic
length -- hopefully you'll finish it before I return to the States. To remain
concise (a word I just taught my students last week), I'll see if I can cut down
on my standard wordy wanderings.
Winter is being washed away, and you'd think I'd be happy, but I seem to be stuck
in a mood befitting the future author of Beijing Blue. My telephone has
been on the fritz for a week, with no hope in sight. I accidentally left it off
the hook for a few days, and when I picked it up again, zilch. I suspect that
the operators who listen in on my telephone conversations got sick of the off-the-hook
tone and disconnected me. I only half-joke. Naturally I've asked the (alleged)
building managers to help, but they know nothing about telephones and have to
wait for the Beijing telephone company to send a man. Perhaps this year, perhaps
not. So apart from my students and fellow teachers, I've had next to no contact
with the friends I've accumulated over the past half year.
And the niggling inconveniences and frustrations of Beijing are wearing on me.
You literally have to fight every day, even if it's against something relatively
innocuous like the oppressive coal and carbon monoxide pollution, or haggling
with every cab driver and market seller on the street. You know, the kind who
ask for "twenty dollars. American," when you want a ride. Not to mention the natives
who stare goggle-eyed at you in restaurants or grin widely after they insult you.
My lack of language ability is frustrating -- I can understand people when they
throw slurs at me, but I don't have the verbal ammunition to fire back. In a recent
letter my mother said (in typical mother-fashion) that I seem to have "matured."
If that means being more sour and kvetchy than before, I plead guilty.
So I've retreated within myself a bit the past few weeks. I succumbed to the urge
to buy a VCR, and since then I've been watching old football tapes, Hong Kong
movies, and Japanese animation regularly. American materialist, and proud of it.
I can detect the changes in my life over the last six months, though. The thawing
climate reminds me of when I was a relative neophyte in Beijing's streets last
fall, countless new buildings and traffic jams and inflated prices ago.
As for more palpable change, we have two new foreign teachers this semester, as
the Limeys finally received the boot they deserved. One of the arrivals is Steve,
John's best friend from Ohio and a kung-fu expert who rarely says much and has
a perpetually burning gaze. The other is perpetually friendly John (we call him
John #2), who by sheer coincidence was a group leader in Duke's Asian Student
Exchange program (of which my dad is the director). They had a harrowing experience
last fall -- while exploring some waterfalls in a remote province, a student slipped,
plunged, and died. It took a week to find the body, and the three American students
(John #2 included) who remained to help the search were detained by the local
authorities because they couldn't "reimburse the state for the costs of the search."
It took some scrambling and a few calls from my dad to the local government in
which he "reassured them" that the costs would be paid to get them released. Needless
to say, the student's parents were devastated, and they had to pay to have the
body transported back to the U.S., to boot. My father explained it all to me when
he visited Beijing a few weeks ago, and it was truly good to see him again. Back
in America, our discussions were always limited to standard father-son topics,
like shouldn't I get a real job before I start writing, or when are those grad
school applications going to be done. But when he visited our conversation was
focused solely on China, and it was eye-opening. It's impossible to sum it up
here, but incidents such as the one above have impressed me. To put it sentimentally,
I'm pretty proud of him.
It was strange being with him here and hearing his familiar Fujian Chinese dialect
mixing with the rough, buzzing "rrrrr"s of the Beijingers. It was also eerie traveling
around the city with him; he would recall places where there was nothing but farmland
only ten scant years before while buildings, shops, and restaurants now proliferate.
For all he's been through with this country, he remains optimistic about its future
and has returned often for research or conferences, doing work that digs deep
into his field and his life. That seems to me to be the beauty and tragedy of
China: all Chinese, overseas or otherwise, never forget the homeland. Even the
ones who don't owe the country a damn thing -- the reverse, in fact -- can't seem
to forget it, even if they left when they were children. I know Chinese Americans
who vote for U.S. presidents based on whether their policies toward China are
friendly or not. I don't see this kind of almost religious devotion with any other
country, and I don't understand it. Perhaps it's my future mission to try.
Other occurrences from recent weeks:
Spring Festival in Beijing was no great shakes. Firecrackers are banned here,
so people resorted to popping balloons. You don't realize what a pathetic sound
a series of exploding balloons makes until you've experienced it. Hardly anyone
was around, anyway. But fortunately one of my students (whose name is Lee [ed.:
actually, it's Ling], has an interest in American football, and utilized one of
my new vocabulary words perfectly when she proclaimed, "Socialism sucks") invited
me over to her house for a stuffing Indonesian dinner (her grandparents spent
thirty years of their lives in Indonesia). I spent some time talking to her grandfather,
an 80-year old with bad hearing but an agile mind and perfect English. Turns out
he was a translator for Chairman Mao himself back around 1956-8. Almost everything
about China fascinates me, but especially the old people, the ones with history
on their side, for good or ill. Even the irascible daylight robbers on the street.
As for personal pursuits, I've been trying to dig into Chinese literature lately,
but most of the English translations leave much to be desired. In the music department,
I'm still itching to catch a few concerts, but apart from Roxette and Air Supply
no bands have passed through, and the underground scene remains difficult to track
down. The Hong Kong movie addiction continues, happily enough (a few hot tips:
catch Jackie Chan's Rumble in the Bronx and The Bride With White Hair
I and II if you can), but I may soon put it on hold to approach the
unexplored territory of Taiwanese movies. The few that I've seen so far have been
hypnotic, film-noir affairs, and I'm naturally a sucker for that stuff. And for
those who are into gossip: no, no torrid love affairs as of yet. You should know
me better than that.
Christmas and New Year's weren't the big production shows that we've come to expect
in America, but they had their moments of genuine warmth. We were invited to a
Chinese friend's house for Christmas dinner, and even though there was hardly
a traditional dish in the place, the goodwill within that crowded apartment was
contagious. Chris, being the ingratiator that he is, cozied up with the grandfather,
who is unfortunately a little dazed, but the two of them were the big hit of the
party.
As for my students, many of them overwhelmed me with gifts and cards, a severe
expense considering how much money some of them have. It made me feel very humble.
I was just happy to survive for that day -- a week before, while being driven
back from my night class job, our car slid right into the back of a truck, and
the tail smashed through the windshield, coming a foot within decapitating me.
I emerged unscathed but very shaken.
As for New Year's, I invaded the university classroom building where student groups
were having parties. I tracked down one of my classes there, and proceeded to
awe and bewilder them with "freeform" disco dancing. The Chinese are big on social
dance, which of course includes memorization of steps -- the Chinese culture depends
nearly solely on memorization -- so as I danced, the students vainly tried to
mimic my steps, as if I was an instruction video. They only had three dance songs
which they repeated over and over, including one by the infamous Ace of Base,
a holdover from Hopkins days, and the rest of the time they swayed to classical
pieces with electronic drum beats.
First semester final exams went smoothly, and apart from last last-second grading
anxieties, were a complete success. I didn't have to fail anyone, anyway.
So I now come to the major event of the past few months: my two and a half week
vacation to Hong Kong, Guangzhou (southern tip of China), and Hangzhou (slightly
north of the Yangtze). After purchasing airplane tickets to Guangzhou which were
twice as expensive as those for Chinese citizens (ah yes, lovely double standards),
John, Chris, and I jetted down on January 12 with little incident, a welcome relief
after some of the horror stories I've heard about Chinese airlines. Upon arriving,
we were shuttled to the Guangzhou railway station -- the place redefines the word
"madhouse." People camped out on the streets for what must have been five square
blocks around, waiting for tomorrow's train or the rare scalper. My friends received
a lot of stares from passersby, but also a boatload of "hello"s. The Southern
Chinese in general seem to be much warmer than the Northerners -- usually when
someone says "hello" to you in Beijing, they're trying to extort you. The Guangzhou
people lacked such ulterior motives.
While waiting for our direct train to Kowloon, I struck up a conversation with
a dusty four-year old. He asked me in a surprisingly throaty voice where I was
from, why was I hanging with these Americans, etcetera, and even shooed away some
of the crowd that was gathering around us. "You think we're having a fight?" he
piped up. "There's nothing to see here." (Aside: in China, if the public even
catches a whiff of a potential argument, they'll crowd around you like carnival
watchers.) Tough kid. I have no idea where his parents were or why he was hanging
out at the station, but I shared some fresh pineapple with him, shook his hand,
and wished him well.
Our train finally departed at 4:15, and approximately two and a half hours later
we pulled into Hong Kong. The train ride was cushy (and expensive -- 220 yuan.
In contrast, a bus ride might have been about 60), with adjustable cushioned seats,
stewardesses passing by with expensive brandies and cigarettes, and a Hong Kong
romance movie playing on the television monitors. As we proceeded, I occasionally
glanced out the window: plush fields alternating with dusty gold barrenness, an
occasional tattered farming community or gutted village whipping past, or craggy
mountains in the distance. The change in atmosphere as we entered Hong Kong was
electric -- one moment, the blue-velvet dark of night, the next, streetlights,
moving cars, neon signs, and towering apartment houses devouring the scenery.
As many of you know, Hong Kong has been the locus of some of my dreams, western
and otherwise, and the first glimpses didn't disappoint. After touching down and
struggling through customs, we were met at Kowloon Station by Heidi, a friend
of a Hong Kong businessman Chris met in Beijing (who is quite a character himself
-- a chain gum-chewing narcoleptic who plans to escape to Singapore before 1997),
and ushered onto a double-decker bus bound for Hong Kong Island. The ride through
the Cross-Harbor Tunnel didn't disappoint -- the bus took the curves like the
Indy 500, billboards and riotous streetlights and building signs assaulted us
from every direction, and the evening breeze whipped at our faces. Chris, John,
and I sat directly behind the driver and were thrown from side to side like loose
pieces of baggage. It was a blast.
And just like that, in five minutes, we were in the center of Hong Kong Island.
It was a major shock for one accustomed to taking thirty minutes to move a mile
in Beijing. As we walked to our hotel, I was overwhelmed by the wealth, the glitter,
and the bustle of the place -- it was different than Beijing bustle, which overwhelms
through sheer numbers. In Hong Kong, the people move at quick and efficient speed,
almost gliding from one activity to the next. After settling in at the White House
Hotel (a dive, really, but a comfortable one), it was off to a Cantonese-style
dinner of beef ribs and soup, a trek to the supermarket to buy a blessed box of
genuine cereal and milk, and then back to the room to catch an Alfred Hitchcock
movie thankfully free of dubs and edits.
The rest of the week was more of the same -- we roamed through hectic, slick department
stores, caught the latest HK and American movies (my verdicts: Time Cop, Natural
Born Killers, and Interview with the Vampire were disappointing, The
God of Gamblers II with Mr. Chow Yun-Fat was entertaining), spent a day ferrying
to Cheung Chau Island, a smallish (perhaps five kilometers long) fishing community
with innocent, Edenic scenery and killer seafood, spent nights blasting through
Kowloon video arcades and relaxing in steamy sidewalk cafes, reacquainting ourselves
with international cuisine with dinners at Wendy's, the Spaghetti Kitchen, Vietnamese,
Mexican, and Indian restaurants, trekking to the top of Victoria Peak to take
in the famous view of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon underneath, finding floating
seafood restaurants and English instruction books in Aberdeen, stocking up on
the latest Hong Kong and American CDs, marvelling at the up-to-date cushiness
everywhere, crashing a few disco clubs with Heidi where desperate men and reserved
Filipino women dance to desultory live bands, noticing the sometimes subtle and
sometimes radical differences in the people as compared to China, such as the
dress (short skirts and long stockings for the women, feathered hair and sports
jackets for the men), or the attitudes (a bit more sophisticated, uppity, and
status-conscious), and catching glorious sights of the city from every possible
position -- the top of the Peak, leisurely ferries, both sides of the harbor.
I know, I'm laundry listing, but that's the way I experienced it, one big whirlwind.
And naturally I loved every minute, the brisk atmosphere, the cosmopolitan life,
the obvious wealth and corruption which accompanies it. I realize it's hard to
judge a place based on only one week, but compared to China's enigmas, here was
something I could understand and confront head on. Even the pollution was familiar
and comfortable, reminding me of a great day in NYC. Maybe you won't agree, but
HK feels like a San Francisco of the East to me -- a place where cultures and
complications collide, glamorous and affluent on the surface, with identity problems
and unrest beneath. Maybe I'm attracted to it because it reflects certain aspects
of my personality -- trapped between China and the West, continually uneasy about
its place and status in the world.
While there I tried to imagine what it would be like after 1997, and I simply
couldn't envision it. All the efficiency and cultivated politeness and super-smooth
bustle -- how can it co-exist with the rigid, chaotic PRC? Already the "Hongkies"
are leaving in droves, so they're fearing the worst, but it would be exciting
and perhaps a bit sad to be here in the next decade -- perhaps HK will eventually
be swallowed up, losing everything that makes it distinctive. Maybe China will
let things be. But let's just say I'm pessimistic, and leave it at that. At any
rate, I want to be there for it.
I made a visit to the Chinese University (located in the New Territories) while
I was town to have an interview with the English Language Teaching Unit. The campus
looked good -- compact, but very scenic and set back from the activity beneath.
It blew the People's University away, anyway. Likewise with the faculty. I'll
save my bitching about Chinese college teachers for a future letter, but suffice
it to say, this was definitely a "serious," "normal" university, and it was a
bit intimidating. The interview went okay, although the teachers (all Americans,
strangely enough) caught me up on a question about whether I had any linguistics
training in college. I could only fudge and say that I've learned a bit since
I started my current job.
Anyway, here's the scoop -- a few positions for teaching instructors have opened
up, with a monthly salary between 16,000-21,000 Hong Kong dollars per month. A
good apartment costs about 10,000 a month, so I figure I can survive. if the university
can give me a place, it'll be a bonus. The catch: this is an honest-to-goodness
job, which means that I'll have very little time for writing and the recreational
pursuits which I've been indulging in for the last two and a half years. I'm also
wary about committing to anything with no time limit, and I'm not sure if I can
stay enthusiastic about the English teaching gig. Then again, it's Hong Kong,
which would be good for my health and psyche, and it should enable me to be in
town during the 1997 takeover. Nothing is guaranteed at this moment, but I should
find out in about a month or two if I got it, so cross your fingers.
There's really much more to tell about HK, but I'll have to save it for my next
novel (^_^), so I move on. After our stay, we zipped by ferry to Zhongshan, one
of the southernmost cities in China, and then rented a cab to San Xiang, a tiny
little village already in the throes of modernization. Why, you ask? John's great-great-grandfather
came from this village, so we decided to do a little roots-digging.
We stayed for only one night, but it was a memorable stopover -- I inspected the
local market, which was housed in a gigantic warehouse and included everything
from black market sneakers to Japanese animation collecting cards to live chickens
whose feet were tied with black straps to dead rats (for what purpose, I'm still
not sure) to fresh fruits and vegetables. The layout of the town was fascinating
-- on one side of the main drag, neat rows of modern housing, all done in a light-colored
Spanish villa style, and on the other, dilapidated alleyways, fetid canals, and
houses the color of scorched earth. Unfortunately I was too busy exploring on
my own to see this firsthand, but John and Chris visited the local police station
to discover the whereabouts of John's grandfather's descendants, and were promptly
taken to a mental asylum -- two of the managers there knew everything about every
townsperson's personal history, for some reason. As luck would have it, he did
have two relatives in town -- except that they were on vacation in America that
week. So we retired to a night of garish seafood (the teapots themselves were
worth the price of admission: spouts literally three feet long, with hot water
jetting out and splashing everything in the vicinity) and Chinese billiards (more
balls, longer table, total frustration) at the local karaoke joint. Someday I'll
tell you about our nasty karaoke experience over Christmas. Fortunately the detour
wasn't a complete waste for me, as I came away with some cheap Chinese translations
of Japanese comics to aid my language studies.
So after a dusty bus ride back to Guangzhou, Chris and John opted to end the trip
and head home, but I was feeling adventurous, so I continued on my own. Within
minutes after separating, I was scooped up by a hotel hawker and escorted in a
spiffy bus fifteen minutes outside of town to a youth-hostel type building. It
was a cloudy day (par for the course for Guangzhou), and the smog and humidity
was nearly overpowering. The room was sparse but more than adequate, and complete
with moldy mosquito net. My guide turned out to be from my mother's hometown of
Wuhan, and immediately ingratiated himself to me as a "brother." He was 23 years
old, but with his crows' feet wrinkles and thin body, he looked at least 30. He
lives at the hotel and makes his living by grabbing customers at the train station
between 8 a.m. and 2 a.m. Sounds like a lot, but he takes some long breaks, as
all good Chinese do.
My first night at the hotel was unremarkable, as I ate at a pricey but run-down
restaurant nearby, followed by restless TV-watching and mosquito bites as giant
trucks blasted obnoxious horns all night. The next morning my newfound friend
took me on a tour of a city park (he naturally hogtied me into paying for both
of us all day, of course), which provided a little relaxation from the overwhelming
crush of people outside. The highlight was a five-story history museum which had
artifacts, maps and manuscripts from every period of China's past. One amusing
note: one panel proclaimed that the reason that the Japanese left China at the
end of WWII was that the courageous Chinese underground movements "forced them
out." With all due respect, I think that fire and A-bombs in Japan had a bit more
to do with it. But China has to feed her people doctrine, even if it consists
of plain fat.
After the excursion we hopped on a standard overcrowded bus into one of the city's
major shopping districts -- people bumping each other in the close quarters, shops
and food nooks and traffic all arms' length away, the buses moving a few blocks
every half hour, bodies jammed at bus waiting areas, cut-price clothes and jewelry
everywhere, magazine stands and bicycle repairmen popping up at every corner,
the smell of gas and urine. With all this scenery, the people are accordingly
rougher and less mannered, but also a bit more open and warmer than Beijingers.
I had been told that Guangzhou is one of China's industrial and modern commercial
centers, but to my eyes, it was merely a more run-down Beijing -- the stores weren't
much different than anything I'd seen in China, and of course my recent experiences
in Hong Kong didn't provide favorable contrast.
After an exhausting afternoon spent struggling through all of this, I caught the
bus back to the hotel and whiled the evening walking around the small town I had
been isolated in. The street lighting was worse than Beijing's, and there were
long periods in which I couldn't see anything, but I managed to find a filthy
but tasty restaurant for dinner. As I sat there, I saw people staring at me, then
realized that I was eating alone for the first time in months. The Chinese never
do anything alone -- perhaps they were staring at me because I had no company.
On my way back to the hotel, welder workers throwing shadows and light, Bruce
Hornsby of all people began playing on my walkman, and yet he seemed to fit the
occasion: As the day goes down on the water town...
On my second day in the city, my Wuhan buddy volunteered to buy me a sleeper car
ticket to Hangzhou, the next stop on my itinerary, from a scalper, and asked me
to give him 400 yuan -- pretty expensive, considering that a plane ticket costs
650 yuan, and is about 15 hours shorter, but considering that I still had yet
to experience a Chinese train ride and it was Spring Festival time, I let it go.
Wait, you say, how could you hand that much money to a relative stranger? The
possible answers: a) devil-may-care approach to life. b) stupidity. I elect the
former.
But I had a wait of nearly twelve hours, so I walked downtown to the Pearl River
while my friend went on his usual rounds. It wasn't as far as you might think
-- unlike Beijing, you can walk from one end of town to the other in a few hours.
The river itself was depressing, the color of sand. As I watched passersby fling
cigarette butts and banana peels in, I couldn't help but feel that some things
stay the same all over the world.
The downtown sections were claustrophobic, of course, but somehow a bit more orderly
and laid-back than the uptown areas I had visited the day before. Off the main
streets were tiny, mazelike alleys with fresh-faced kids, little pavilion shops,
and huddled, pleasant apartments. Hardly high class, but certainly better than
anything else I had seen in town.
Shortly afterwards I worked myself over to the financial district, where luxury
hotels and faux parks dominated. I even went inside the Plaza Hotel and found
myself overwhelmed by the yawning spaces, the infinitely high roofs, the polished
floors. It all seemed too hypocritical. I returned to the train station as night
fell and English neon billboards lit themselves. My friend, huffy and exhausted,
handed me a ticket listed for Shanghai. That and the 60 yuan price should have
tipped me off that something was wrong, but I was too tired to really notice.
The train passes through Shanghai to Hangzhou, my friend explained, although
I knew that Shanghai was north of Hangzhou. A circular line, he elaborated.
It'll take about 17 hours. Yes, it's a hard sleeper car. It cost 500 yuan with
the scalper prices, you don't trust me, is that it? I waited in line for two hours
to get it for you. I can take you there and you can look yourself. It actually
cost 500 yuan.
Maybe you're wondering why I didn't chew him out, call him a liar, etc. Maybe
I was too tired, maybe too scared, maybe too oblivious at the time. I was the
stranger in a partly-strange land, so I let it be. At 8:15 my buddy escorted me
to the station, requesting in the standard not-so-subtle Chinese way that I give
him extra money for the work he'd done for me the past few days. "Do you have
American dollars?" he asked. No, I said, brushed him off as best I could, and
then was promptly left at the gates of the train station, otherwise known as Hell.
No discernible entrance, crowds huddled everywhere, green-coated policemen shoving
people to the ground and screaming through megaphones to move it. I witnessed
a woman clubbing an interloper with a megaphone, and the strangest thing was the
man just stood there, smiling as his head was bashed in. I finally found a small
crack in the human wall which was the entrance, and on my way in an overweight
policeman growled to move it and gave me a rude shove to the side, never mind
that he saved a mere second by pushing me away. The famous Ho Lin temper flared
and I did something completely hotheaded and reckless -- I caught up to him and
gave him a solid elbow to the ribs, then passed on as if I hadn't done anything.
I could feel his stare of surprise, but then he must have seen my STANFORD backpack
and assumed, idiot lao wai. Anyway, I escaped with impunity.
Thus I scrambled inside, where the crowds were equally bad and the temperature
much worse. After ten minutes' struggle I made it to the snack counter and purchased
a water bottle for the long trip. After another half hour I determined the departure
gate, whereupon we were herded into a formless crowd in the midst of another formless
crowd, united only by a beaten aluminum sign which had our train number. At 9:35
we surged -- well, butted against each other -- to the gate amidst screams to
get in line (and more beatings, as far as I knew). On the way I felt behind me,
and the water bottle I had jammed in my backpack was gone, trampled to death somewhere.
Easy come, easy go.
After another long tunnel I arrived at the train gate and trundled upstairs. Car
9, seat 57. Those numbers will haunt me the rest of my life. The first thing I
noticed about car 9 from the outside was -- ahem, no beds, just hard seats. Hell,
I thought, you can deal with it for 17 hours. So I attempted to board. "Get on
the car in front of this one," the conductor snapped. So I went. "Get on the one
behind us," the man said. At this point I was a hair-thread from insanity. Back
to car 9, and after a very loud complaint in mangled Chinese, they let me on,
"on" being a relative term. I barely made it past the doorway.
A Chinese hard seat car is supposed to seat 113, and that includes jamming three
people into a seat which can only really carry two, but there must have been at
least 200 people in the car. Cramming the aisles, jamming the doorways, camped
in front of the bathroom door, squeezing in the crannies of the open washroom,
squashed legs overlapping other squashed legs like some bizarre game of one-potato,
some already sleeping with their heads lolling on others' backs. Cigarette smoke
colored the air white, and the smell was of diluted beer, nicotine, and sweat.
It was literally impossible to move down the car and get to my seat, which I was
sure was already taken -- around here assigned seats are assigned seats in name
only. And if I vacated my tenuous position now, there would be nothing left when
I got back. So I reluctantly plopped my bag onto the floor next to the bathroom
stall, scrunched myself down on it, and was stuck in that position for the next
20 hours.
I still feel queasy thinking about the train ride -- people throwing trash into
the aisles until it was up to my knees, food carts barreling through every twenty
minutes, even at four in the morning, forcing me to stand to let them pass, people
spitting and smoking and drinking in profusion, the night air hot and stifling,
the accumulated smells and liquids oozing out from under the bathroom door making
me faint-headed, people literally stepping on human carpets in order to negotiate
the "aisles," trios and quartets of sleepers arranging their bodies in bizarre,
intimate arabesques. The people were all villager types, some boisterous and rowdy
around the clock, some sullen and muttering, all aged dry and wrinkled beyond
their years. I must have heard at least ten different dialects on that train that
night, most of them completely unfamiliar, with only an occasional standard Chinese
word breaking out.
In between bouts of misery I thought to myself, Beijing and politics and the world
don't mean anything to these people. The peasants have survived thousands of years
of turmoil and extermination and oppression, and they'll likely always survive
it, down to the final Armageddon, always laughing and drinking and disregarding
manners and hugging each other. Yet, I pride myself -- I don't think anyone suspected
I wasn't a native despite my bags and clothes. I guess they must have thought
that no foreigner would be insane enough to travel third class like this.
At four in the morning a ticket man came, and because I didn't have the original
receipt for the ticket I had to pay 40 extra yuan. No problem. Then he caught
a glimpse inside my wallet and shouted at me to take better care of my money,
or something like that. I nodded, I was too tired to do anything else, and a few
seconds later he shouted at me again to do it, then slapped me in the face. "If
you keep it out like that, people are going to steal it! Idiot!" He screamed.
Thanks for announcing it to the world, asshole, I thought. If I were anywhere
other than in a crowded Chinese train currently in Dante's seventh circle at four
in the morning, I probably would have belted him. But common sense, as it sadly
does too often for me, reasserted itself.
As the night continued and I fought wakefulness, I began hallucinating, thinking
that some of those garbled tongues might actually be English. A tall middle-aged
man was sharing a seat on my bag without my permission, but I didn't care anymore.
The train slithered into day -- a cloudy, rainy day, as far as I could tell, but
I was too far away from the windows and they were too warped and fogged to be
certain. Slowly, very slowly, people began departing. Our first stop was five
in the morning, followed by several more in the following hours, all small villages
and isolated places. Still no seats within sight, however. By this time I resembled
one of those tortured prisoners who is numb to anything but the most tender sensations.
Enough, I thought. I'll get off at Shanghai, take a taxi to the airport, then
fly to Beijing, and forget this ever happened. I didn't have the strength to last
to Hangzhou. My friends would be sympathetic but also give me that "I told you
so" tone, remind me that I should have come back with them.
The day continued, and I moved back to sanity by small degrees. The crowds dwindled,
the middle-aged man vacated my bag for a seat across the aisle, and the food carts
appeared with less frequency. I alternated between being slumped uncomfortably
the wall or standing, stretching sore legs. Two men who had been sandwiched next
to me -- they proved to be the champion spitters, drinkers, and talkers, performing
those actions during the entire trip, even simultaneously -- had prepared in advance
and had brought plastic stools with them. By mid-afternoon they managed to scoop
some seats and left me one of the stools. They struck up a conversation with me
and the truth of my American citizenry emerged.
"Really?" a girl across the aisle spoke. Her tall, stolid soldier boyfriend had
his arm around her shoulders. "I thought you were from Hong Kong." Better than
thinking I'm Japanese, at least, I thought.
The middle-aged man who had shared my suitcase asked my destination, and I said
Shanghai, and from there a plane to Beijing. "Why not take one from Hangzhou?"
he asked. It took another few hours for me to figure it out, but the train was
actually the slow train to Shanghai, and would arrive in Hangzhou first -- the
next morning.
"This foreign devil is crazy," the middle-aged man said after I realized this.
"Gets on a train and doesn't even know the order of the stops." I must have been
very tired, because even the foreign devil reference didn't stir my gall. Fate,
I told myself. I guess I'll see Hangzhou after all.
Meanwhile, the girl was pressing her boyfriend to speak. "You know some English.
Talk to him," she said, but the soldier, with the standard shyness or standoffishness
of many young Chinese men, shook his head with a small smile and refused.
As the afternoon swept by they continued talking to me intermittently and determined
from my listening problems that my Chinese was horrible. Never mind that their
dialects might as well have been from the Andromeda galaxy.
Finally, at around 8 p.m., I got my seat -- next to the middle-aged man. For lack
of anything better, I talked to him. He was a travel inspector who made his living
by riding all the major routes and observing the schedules and the routines on
board. "It's a little less crowded this year than last," he said. The standard
hopeful statement here: everyone always says everything is a little better than
the year before. As I always reply to myself, Things may be better, but that doesn't
mean I'm required to like it. Whenever he asked me questions about America, he
always prefaced them with the phrase, "In your America..."
The weather was getting colder, and I strapped on my winter jacket. At every station
I saw plastic styrofoam lunch boxes dumped on the platform, and old, hardy women
wheeled carts under our windows, offering beers and dinners. I declined everything
except water. I must have drifted off around 10 p.m., my head buried in my hands
on the tiny table in front, and ordinarily I wouldn't have, but my body's need
outclassed everything else.
The next morning I awoke to my first real sights through the window -- pockets
of small towns whizzing by, surrounded by bright green, soaked fields, bristly
stalks emerging every so often. The houses were concrete, several stories high,
and solidly basic. Sometimes I caught glassy waterways and overlapping mountains
in the distance. Compared to Guangzhou, it was breathtakingly natural and fresh.
Finally, at 10:30 a.m. in the morning, the train mostly empty (the attendants
having cleaned the bathroom for the first time on our voyage only moments before),
we pulled into Hangzhou, and I stumbled off, not even saying goodbye to the middle-aged
man. You can imagine how I must have looked -- bags soiled with God knows what,
hair dishevelled, clothes caked with nicotine, bristle on my face aging me by
years. Somehow I made it to the pedicab section, and a jovial man who assumed
I was Japanese (and charging me accordingly) whisked me downtown. The weather
was cold, cloudy and damp, but bracing. A block away from the city's famed West
Lake, he found me a three-star hotel for me and I happily overpaid him, pulled
out my parents' plastic and signed up for a week's stay. As soon as I entered
my room I took my first bath in eight years, dunked my clothes and bags into the
still-full bathtub, and collapsed on the bed for four hours.
Maybe you haven't heard of Hangzhou before -- why the interest in it, you ask?
They have a saying in China: "In the sky there is Heaven, and on Earth they have
Hangzhou and Suzhou." The city itself is unremarkable for the most part -- it's
certainly more updated than lost, with a lot of tourist shops, shoe stores, international
restaurants, and less congested traffic. But it's the scenery around the city
that counts, and the place didn't disappoint. The natural surroundings, the air,
the atmosphere -- it was all a perfect tonic to the madness of the past four days.
That afternoon I ambled around the northern end of the West Lake, and caught glimpses
of what I would encounter for the next week. Apart from the insistent, unreasonable
horn blasts from passing cars, you would never know you were in China. Clear,
unpolluted water, full trees, lonely boats mere shadows in the middle of the lake,
benches liberally placed on the lakeside, which nearly matched the water level,
weather which alternated between sunny and moody, clean air, hiking trails through
the surrounding mountains affording generous views of the lake below, temples
with Buddhas carved into every available craggy surface, silent causeways which
were nearly deserted even in mid-day, elegant parks with carefully sculpted courtyards
and pagodas, a pervading sense of peacefulness, quiet, reserve all around.
The following five days were more of the same -- lots of lone walking and thinking
and resting and soul replenishment. As I sit in my Beijing room and trucks rattle
and people yell at each other outside, I miss it. Even the hotel room had a laid-back,
relaxed quality quite unlike any hotel in downtown Beijing. At night, the streets
outside my window were silent, save for Hong Kong pop music flowing from the music
shop across the way. The food was delicious -- mostly seafood dishes, all cooked
well, and I even managed to find a few good American-style restaurants along with
the ubiquitous KFC for cheap eats.
In terms of superficial activity, I didn't accomplish much during my week in Hangzhou
-- I doubt I walked more than fifteen kilometers in either direction. But in terms
of soul-cleansing, it was immensely helpful. Even though it would have saved me
a lot of trouble, I refused to take a single taxi or bus the entire week, opting
for calming, contemplative strolls around the lake and in the environs instead.
Even when I got completely waylaid into sleepy villages which climbed up the mountains
to dead ends, it was refreshing to meander without any specific destinations.
Call me a bourgeois tourist at heart if you want, and Hangzhou is definitely a
tourist trap -- you're often inundated by boatman and hawkers trying to make some
deal with the foreigners -- but what I witnessed there was such a pleasant change
from everything I had encountered in China up to that point that I couldn't help
but feel good about the whole experience.
My days settled into unpremeditated rhythms -- I would sometimes retreat back
to the hotel for some cable television for an afternoon, at night I would sometimes
forego rest for another walk by the lake. It was liberating after being crammed
schedules and deadlines for the past five months. The highlight of my stay was
probably an early twilight walk down the Su causeway, winter rain gently trickling
down, the scenery green but with a haunting, sparse austerity. I took shelter
inside a pagoda and listened as water trickled down gently and the far-off lights
of the city burned smoky through the descending night and clouds. For once, i
enjoyed the lone contemplation which seemed almost impossible to find before then.
It felt good to be away from people, away from the epic tragedies of modern China
and the daily frustrations and weariness, if only for a moment. It was then that
I finally understood how those ancient Chinese poets felt as they sat in spots
similar to this one, feeling dwarfed and petty in comparison to the nature around
them and yet receptive to it. It was a strangely melancholic feeling, but I gladly
embraced it.
Alas, before I realized it I was on a jet back to Beijing, and since then my newfound
focus and calm has been whittled away by the gritty grayness around me. Here,
everything is boiled down to face value -- politics may be a minefield, but everything
else is almost garish in its openness -- the Chinese aren't as good at the subterfuge
game as Americans are, and it shows. At least you know exactly what you get when
you're in China: a fight for survival and "face" every day.
And speaking of fighting, this letter is struggling to stay within 8 pages, so
I must end, with much left untold, as usual. Sorry to be so abrupt. But best spring
wishes to you and yours, and write me at:
Foreign Experts Building #304
Renmin University
39 Haidian Rd., 100872 Beijing, PRC
when you have the time. Take care, or as we say here, man zou. Zai jian
--