Riding the Iron Rooster

by Paul Theroux

  6. Train Number 324 to Hohhot and Lanzhou

  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!"

  "You are very generous to offer to look after me, but I can manage alone," I said. "I may not want to talk to anyone. And I don't want any of your kind assistance."

  There followed a rapid conversation in Chinese, Mr. Fang doing most of the talking. I had been fascinated by his sea lion's face, his sorrowful eyes and down-turned mouth. He spoke with insistence and authority, and he had seemed very intelligent when he had been listening.

  Fattish and insolent-looking Mr. Zhong went on slurping his noodles and sucking his tea as Mr. Fang spoke. One of Mr. Zhong's slurps was actually a form of reply. I decided that he looked brattish and spoiled, and I guessed that he had been a Red Guard, from the way he nagged.

  He said quietly, "Mr. Fang says he will go with you."

  "Why?"

  "Because he does not speak English."

  "I don't want to walk around with him either," I said, imagining Mr. Fang breathing down my neck.

  "He will simply sit," Mr. Zhong said.

  "But in another compartment," I said, "because I would like to meet other people."

  "He will occupy another compartment," Mr. Zhong said.

  "If he doesn't talk to me, and he doesn't walk around with me, and he doesn't travel in the same compartment," I said, "I don't understand why he wants to come with me."

  'To make sure you are comfortable. Hospitality. You are our guest. Ha-ha!" Mr. Zhong's shouting laughter was cruel and accusing.

  I said, "Mr. Fang is head of the department. He is obviously very busy. He has a desk, a chair, and work to do. He has to write reports. He has a family—right? Wife? Children?"

  'Two females."

  "Okay. So wouldn't it be a lot more convenient if he didn't come with me? I can hire local guides—it's cheap enough."

  "Perhaps. But this is the Chinese way."

  Mr. Chen was becoming anxious. He signaled to me with his eyes, Enough, no more, leave off.

  That was how I came to be traveling with this small, silent man on the train to Hohhot. The fact was that the authorities had gotten wind that I was traveling in China, and afraid that I would snoop and that I'd rat on them afterwards, they stuck me with Mr. Fang. Interestingly,
this episode was probably the most irritating thing that happened to me in China, and they could have made me very happy if they had decided not to haunt me in this way and attempt to obstruct me with this nannylike official.

  When we were alone on the train and rolling through Hebei Province and its endless rice fields, I asked Mr. Fang in Chinese whether he spoke English.

  "Not well," he said in Chinese, and it was then that he divulged his fluency in Russian. He had taught Russian literature and language at a technical college in Peking.

  "Evgeny Onegin," he said. "Pushkin. Chekhov. Gogol. Dostoyevski."

  "Turgenev. Tolstoy," I said, and he nodded. "Bulgakov. Mayakovsky."

  Saying these names was like holding a conversation. But it was a short conversation. I had made a thing about not wanting to sit around talking English, and so they had called my bluff by sending this Russian speaker.

  I was grateful that I had been spared Mr. Zhong. I had not wanted to travel with any official, but at least Mr. Fang was a gentle soul. He offered to carry my bag, and then he offered to heave it into the luggage rack; I said I could manage. His own bag was very small. Because the Chinese don't own much, they travel light. And Mr. Fang's bag contained a large book and not much else.

  "Pushkin?" I said.

  He laughed and showed me. It was an English-Chinese Dictionary. I tried to look up a few obscene words, but there were none in it. I riffled the pages and saw a word, a definition, and a sample sentence in italics: Because of the calumnies of the enemy, Lu Xun was compelled to fight harder.

  It was a twelve-hour journey to Hohhot, but this was a long-distance train, going on to Lanzhou, so we left at midnight. We were joined by two jolly Cantonese who were going to Datong to change trains for the Taiyuan line. They were going, they said, to Pinghe, to an open-cast mine—one of the largest in China.

  I looked on the map.

  "I can't find Pinghe."

  "It's not on the map yet."

  That was another Chinese conundrum—that they could build cities faster than they could print them on maps, and build railways quicker than they could show them with black lines.

  'The whole province of Shanxi is a coal seam," one of the men said. Heavy equipment was his specialty. He said that two thousand men were digging and that there would be coal being produced soon.

  "What sort of a place is Pinghe?"

  "It is a horrible place," the second man said, with a smile. "It is flat and windy. There are no trees. There is dust. It is desert."

  They were traveling with enormous amounts of luggage, but they explained that most of it was food, since there was no food in Pinghe. There was nothing in Pinghe except coal.

  They dragged themselves and their provisions off the train early the next morning, and soon after we entered Inner Mongolia—a bare dusty landscape, with low, stunted-looking trees, and square-sided settlements made of smooth mud, and goats, and mongrels, and people hacking at furrows and bashing weeds, and here and there, the occasional horseman. It was one of the regions the Chinese described by wincing and calling it "the grasslands"—and they prayed they would not be sent to work in such a region. On the other hand, it was a fact that the Hans had displaced the Mongolians here—the expatriates and exiles had taken over.

  Rounding a bend, the engine came into view—a big black locomotive, squawking and blowing out smoke and steam, a fat kettle on wheels. The air was so still on the Mongolian plain that on the straighter stretches the smoke from the engine passed my windows and left smuts on my face, and I was eighteen coaches from the smokestack.

  By hot, yellow noon, the landscape had wrinkled mountains behind it, but they were bare and blue, and some nearer hills were only slightly mossy. There were no trees. There were plowed fields everywhere, but nothing sprouting. In the villages there was a mud wall around every house. You would not have to be told you were in Mongolia—this was about as Mongolian as a place could possibly be.

  I found Mr. Fang staring dejectedly out the window, and feeling sorry for him, I asked him about his Russian teaching.

  "I liked it," he said, "except for the Red Guard period."

  "What happened then?"

  "From 1966 until 1972 there were no classes. I stayed at home and read books."

  "Why? Had you been criticized?"

  Criticize—that could mean forty-six of them howling at you or even beating you.

  "Yes. They said I was a revisionist." In a plaintive way, he said, "Maybe it was true. I did not understand Marxist-Leninist theory." He turned to me and added, 'They didn't understand it either."

  "Afterwards, did you feel bitter?"

  "No. I said nothing. They were young. They didn't know anything. That whole period was a disaster."

  He was upset by the memory, so I left him alone. But my curiosity impelled me to go back, because I couldn't understand how it was that he had spent all those years at home, reading books. I said, "You mean, you were just sitting there, turning pages?"

  He shook his head. "I was carrying rocks."

  It was forced labor, he explained. The whole technical college had been moved to a remote place called Mengjin, just north of Luoyang, in Henan Province; and there they had built a bridge over the Yellow River.

  "Most of these railways were built by intellectuals who were sent to the countryside," he explained. 'That's why they took so long. What did we know about it?"

  He was disgusted, he said. In the fifties, Japan and China were about equal, he went on. In the sixties Japan developed and China went backward. "Now look at the difference!"

  I did not agree with his analysis, but instead of contradicting him I asked, "Would you like China to resemble Japan?"

  "Frankly, no."

  We were still at the window. As the mountains receded into the distance, the houses became more frequent and piled up and became uglier—the unmistakable sign in China that a city is not far off. There was a wide dry riverbed, a depleted tributary of the Dahei River, and tall gawky trees—Mongolian trees, like fakes, unconvincing because they are wholly out of place and too feeble to serve any purpose. Most trees I had seen in China seemed purely symbolic. I saw distant watertowers and chimneys, and not far off, a dust cloud. Beneath that dust cloud was Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia.

  It was not really a city—it was a garrison that had been plonked down in the Mongolian prairie, and every building in it looked like a factory. It had been planned and much of it built by the Russians, but even its newer structures looked horrible—the hotel, the guest house, the department stores. I wondered whether it looked this way because of the Mongols themselves—what did tent-dwelling nomads know about city planning? But, no, it was not inhabited by Mongols. It was all Hans in short-sleeved shirts, pouting as they cycled on Hohhot's streets.

  "What do you want to see?" Mr. Fang said.

  "I want to see a Mongol," I said.

  'There isn't time."

  He explained that all the Mongols were over there, in the grasslands, in the rugged range they called the "Great Green Mountains." The horsemen, the wrestlers, the archers, the yak herds, were absent from Hohhot. They lived in the wild, which was their right these days as a so-called minority.

  I declined a visit to Yijinhuoluo, the tomb of Genghis Khan (1162–1227), which the Chinese built recently as a sop to Mongolian national pride. It is a whitewashed yurt, in concrete, in the middle of nowhere.

  "I want to see how people live here," I said.

  Mr. Fang took me to the Five Pagoda Temple, which was a stack of defaced Buddhas, still showing traces of Cultural Revolution vandalism. But it was high enough for seeing the roofs of the old town, and the crooked lanes, and the minarets of the mosque.

  "Let's go there," I said, pointing.

  But Mr. Fang maneuvered me into the car, and we drove out of town to the tomb of Wang Zhaojun ("an imperial concubine who crossed the desert 2000 years ago to marry a minority chief in an effort to secure peace between the Han Dynasty and the nativ
e Xiongnus"). It was a man-made hill 150 feet high. He urged me to admire the ingenuity of the hill—think of all the digging!

  "I would like to see some people," I said.

  He took me to a pagoda, a lamasery, and then to the mosque.

  "How many Muslims are there here?" I asked a man in a skullcap.

  "Thousands."

  "Have any been to Mecca?"

  "One," he said. 'The government sent him last year."

  The mosque was decorated in the Chinese style, with curved-tile roofs and red-painted eaves. In the center of the main building, high above the door, there was a clock face—a large one, that gave the mosque the look of a railway station. But this was all painted, and even the time was painted on it. The time was perpetually 12:45. No one knew why.

  The following day I sneaked downstairs, skipped breakfast, and was on my way out the front door of the hotel when Mr. Fang hurried towards me, making a noise. It was a kind of laughter. By now I was able to differentiate between the various Chinese laughs. There were about twenty. None of them had the slightest suggestion of humor. Some were nervous, some were respectful, many were warnings. The loud honking one was a sort of Chinese anxiety attack. Another, a brisk titter, meant something had gone badly wrong. Mr. Fang's laugh this morning resembled the bark of a seal. It meant Hold on there! and it stopped me in my tracks.

  "Where are you going, Mr. Paul?"

  "For a walk."

  Mr. Fang conferred with his Hohhot deputy. My walk was given official sanction, and I was driven about a hundred yards to the People's Park and released. It was not a large park. It was surrounded by high walls. Its artificial lake had dried up. It was very dusty. Here, I walked. Even at this early hour there were Chinese couples smooching. The poor things have nowhere else to go in China except public parks. I said to myself: It is wrong to expect too much from a Mongolian city.

  Mr. Fang and his deputy were waiting for me by the turnstile at the exit gate.