Riding the Iron Rooster

by Paul Theroux

  The rare quality of the terra-cotta warriors is that, unlike anything else on the tourist route in China, they are exactly as they were made. They were vandalized by the rebellious peasants in the year 206 b.C., when these people invaded the tomb to steal the weapons—crossbows, spears, arrows and pikestaffs (they were all real)—that the clay warriors were holding. After that the figures lay buried until, in 1974, a man digging a well hit his shovel against a warrior's head and unearthed it and the disinterrment was begun. The warriors are the one masterpiece in China that has not been repainted, faked and further vandalized. If they had been found before the Cultural Revolution instead of after it, they would undoubtedly have been pulverized by Red Guards, along with all the other masterpieces they smashed, burned or melted down.

  Chinese tourists also flock to Xian to see the hot springs, the Hua Qing Pool, a sort of Tang Dynasty resort that is associated with the two-week arrest in 1936 of Chiang Kai-Shek, the so-called Xian Incident. They crowd around the sign saying This Is the Window that Chiang Kai-Shek Jumped Out Of and say, "Where are the bullet holes?"

  They go to the Big Goose Pagoda, the Drum Tower, the Temple of the Recumbent Dragon, and the Banpo neolithic site, where a sign reads People in this primitive society with low productivity couldn't understand the structure of the human body, living and dying and many phenomena of nature, so they began to have an initial religious idea.

  They go to the Great Mosque, Qinzhen Si, where many people still do have religious ideas. This mosque was founded 1200 years ago, and enlarged, vandalized, demolished and rebuilt many times since. It was in the process of being restored when I visited. I asked an old man how many believers there were in Xian. He said there were hundreds and that a few dozen had been to Mecca. He also said that during the Cultural Revolution the mosque had housed animals—pigs, mainly—which seemed the most popular way of insulting Muslims. When I left him he said, "We are Sunni. Not Shi'ites. No Khomeini. Ha-ha!"

  That was a ha-ha I hadn't heard before, and seemed to mean Death to the infidels.

  Walking among the gates and pillars with their Arabic inscriptions, I saw an old man.

  "Salaam aleikum," I said. "Peace and blessing be upon you."

  "Wa-aleikum salaam," he replied, returning the greeting. "Are you from Pakistan?"

  "No. America."

  "Are there Muslims in America?" he asked, using the word Mussulmen in his Chinese.

  "Yes. Quite a few," I said. "Why did you think I was from Pakistan? Did you think I looked like a Pakistani?"

  "Maybe," he said, and shrugged. "I don't know. "I've never seen one."

  9. The Express to Chengdu

  I became sad, looking at Mr. Fang's lopsided expression of longing, one eye screwed up and one spiky patch of his hair sticking up. He could be so silent. He merely followed me, perhaps hoping that I would do something wrong. He looked so grateful when I asked for his help. Now we were in the Soft Class Waiting Room at Xian Station, killing time with magazines, and I became sadder when I saw him trying to work out with a dictionary a page in China Products Monthly. I had the same magazine, and that page was an ad for "Jiangsu Ceramics"—small, ugly statues of angels, Santa Clauses, snow-covered churches, Mickey Mouses, choirboys with lyres; and what Mr. Fang was trying to read, described the ceramics as "Ingeniously conceived! Vividly modeled! Freshly colored! Boundlessly interesting!"

  He looked up and smiled at me, which depressed me even more, because I suspected that he was sad. Then I decided that he was not sad at all. He was like so many other Chinese—reserved and fatalistic and steeling themselves against disappointment. Yes, the Great Wall was a masterpiece and the Tang Dynasty had been glorious and they had managed to thrash the Japanese, and they invented poison gas, toilet paper and the decimal point; but they also had a long history of convulsions and reverses. Never mind that they forgot they invented the mechanical clock. Look at the upheavals that had taken place in just the past hundred years or so: the Taiping revolt, the humiliating colonialism of Europe and Japan, the Boxer Rebellion, the fall of the empire in 1911, the republic of Sun Yat-sen, the Sino-Japanese War, World War II, the battling between Chiang Kai-shek's Guomindang and Mao's communists, The Great Leap Forward and all the other witch-hunts and hysterical purges that followed the emergence of the People's Republic, culminating in the Cultural Revolution. Who wouldn't be uneasy? And these sudden agonies were undoubtedly the reason that few people ever showed confidence in the future. It was better not to think about it. And it was a loss of face to seem disappointed, which was another reason the Chinese never opened presents in front of the giver (nor commented on the gift, no matter how large or small), and why their impulse when startled was always to laugh.

  Mr. Fang, who was a Russian specialist, who had lectured on Pushkin and acted as interpreter in Moscow and Leningrad at a time when the Russians and the Chinese had been comrades, had been howled at in the 1960s for teaching a bourgeois foreign language and forced to carry boulders in a sort of chain gang. And now he was shadowing an ungrateful American through central Sichuan. Instead of screaming What next! he looked up and shyly smiled.

  He pretended not to see me board the train, but I called out to him, "I'll see you in Chengdu."

  The train pulled out at about five-thirty in the bright early evening, and passed the wheat fields and the harvesters. It also passed a great number of mounds and tombs and tumuli, probably all of them looted (though no one took treasures to the Government Antique Exchange anymore, where they were paid a pittance for the object which was then sold for a high price at a state shop). I had heard at my hotel that another pit near Xian had just been excavated and was full of yet more terra-cotta figures. I asked for information on this, but either no one knew about it or else they had decided to keep it a secret.

  As the sun drooped and the steam train went chik-chik-chik-chik- chisssss at a siding, a dark, perspiring Chinese man threw the compartment door open and entered, dragging four big bags.

  "I am from Kowloon," he said.

  He looked very sick. He was out of breath, he fumbled with straps and zippers. He jangled a bunch of keys that hung on a chain from his thick leather belt. His track shoes stank. He constantly said sorry, both in Mandarin and English. His eyes were narrow wounds.

  "I drink too much last night."

  He abruptly left his bags and ran out of the compartment. When he returned, he cleared his throat and said, "I vomited in the toilet."

  Another man entered the compartment. This coming and going was quite usual. Travelers sauntered through the train looking for empty berths and free seats. When they located one they paid a surcharge on their ticket and claimed the place. An empty compartment did not stay empty for long; and the coming and going went on all night, too.

  This new man was youngish and rather tough looking, beefy faced, with a big belly and big feet.

  "I want to sleep here," he said, slapping the berth on which I was sitting.

  "This is mine," I said. "I am sleeping here."

  He didn't like my saying that. He was in a sort of uniform—army pants and a khaki jacket. He had the look of a pushy, bullying Red Guard. There was no question in my mind but that he was a Party hack.

  I ignored him and continued to write in my diary, pleasant thoughts about Xian. This Red Guard grumbled to the man from Kowloon.

  "He says he has to sleep there," the man from Kowloon said.

  "Sorry," I said.

  Because I had been in the compartment first, and this was my berth, I had the use of the table, and this corner seat. I knew he coveted it when the man from Kowloon said, "He has to write his report."

  "I have to write my report," I said.

  "His is very important."

  "So is mine."

  "His report is for the government."

  "Then it must be a load of crap."

  "He is not writing about a road," the man from Kowloon said.

  The two men took out cigarettes and filled the compartmen
t with smoke. I told them to cut it out—a recent ruling on Chinese railways had said that people could smoke only with the consent of other passengers. It was late, and "hot, and stifling in this small compartment.

  "It's against the rules," I said.

  They put their cigarettes away and began to talk—very loudly, shouting in fact, because the man from Kowloon had the Hong Konger's characteristically poor command of Mandarin, and the Red Guard was from Urumchi and spoke a rather debased version of Mandarin. This language problem didn't stop them yakking, but it meant that most of the time they were interrupting each other and repeating things constantly. I opened the window because of the heat. Smoke from the engine blew in and gagged me, and the chik-chik-chik made my teeth rattle.

  "He says he has to write his report."

  "First I have to finish mine," I said.

  "He wants to smoke."

  "Smoking isn't allowed in the compartment unless everyone agrees," I said. "I don't agree."

  "He wants to know why there is a smoking box on the wall," said the man from Kowloon, clicking an ashtray on the wall.

  "Why not ask the fuwuyuan or the lieche yuan?" I said, because these room attendants were passing our door.

  "Each room has smoking boxes," the Red Guard said to me, in an intimidating way. "What are they for?"

  "For putting out cigarettes," I said, trying to stare him down.

  "We must have cooperation," he said.

  This meant: Stop being a pain in the ass.

  "For the sake of friendship," he said.

  This little formula was spoken through gritted teeth.

  "I am minding my own business, so why don't you mind yours?" I said. "Fish face."

  I went back to my diary, but their shouting back and forth made it impossible to concentrate, so I went to the dining car. It was past eight o'clock, late by Chinese standards (they usually ate dinner before six-thirty or seven), but the menu was recited to me in the usual way, and I ordered. No food came. I asked why.

  "There are some foreigners on board," the waiter said.

  "I'm a foreigner."

  "But you are alone," he said. "We must wait for the group."

  We stopped at Baoji, the junction we had passed through a week before; but this time we turned south towards Sichuan. No food came. It was after eight-thirty. The waiter said, "Foreigners ... Group."

  I told him I was hungry and to bring the food soon. "Dying of hunger" was a phrase sounding like ursula. Still no food came.

  Then the group of foreigners appeared: fourteen chunky Swedes, with sunburned arms and whitish hair. One had a video camera. As he poked it and whirred it, the others put their elbows on the sticky dining-car tables. Their guide bought all the beer, before I could order any. Then the food came—to them and finally to me. It was after nine o'clock. The Swedes ate slowly, trying to pincer their slippery noodles. Then the train stopped at Liangkou with such a jolting halt the noodle bowls shot into the Swedes' laps.

  "I'm still hungry," I said to the waiter. "Is there any more food?"

  "We have some sausages."

  "Pork?"

  "No. Horse."

  I had four of them. They were not bad. The meat was dark and tough, with a strong smoky taste.

  When I got back to the compartment it was full of men—the man from Kowloon, the Red Guard and three others. The corridor was crowded with men in pajamas, and children squawking, and some cardplayers. The fans rattled and buzzed; so did the train.

  "He is from Xinjiang," the man from Kowloon said. "He is a student. He wants to know your name."

  "My name is Paul. He is sitting on my bed. I want to go to sleep."

  This disapproving tone had the effect of emptying the compartment very quickly. We turned the lights out, but the three others—a new man had joined us—went on shouting at each other in the darkness.

  There was no dawn. The mist grew lighter, thinned slightly, and as we passed at that early hour from Shaanxi into the vast, populous province of Sichuan, small knobby trees became visible, and so did the faint outlines of mountains and hills; and people appeared as small dark brush strokes in this simple Chinese watercolor.

  The mist hung over the mountains, and as the sun heated it and made it thinner, a greenness came into it, and there was a lushness, the rice fields, beneath it. It was like looking at a landscape through etched glass, seeing everything blurred, and now and then getting a clear glimpse of the beautiful contours of mountains, of fields and valleys. The sharpest line was the path that always led around the hillside, a packed narrowness that looked bright and baked. In this blur, people were hoeing, and cycling, and leading hairy pigs to market.

  The landscape was softened by the mist, but when the mist all burned away what had seemed idyllic looked senile. And the farmers had a hard routine this humid summer morning. Chinese farming is backbreaking, but it is some consolation to know that these days the farmers are well-off—much better off than any teacher or factory worker. The free market has helped them by guaranteeing them good prices: they no longer have to sell at fixed and punitive prices to the state. We had only gone a few hundred miles, from Shaanxi into Sichuan, but we had moved from a wheat-growing region to paddy fields. It was more southerly here, and wetter and warmer.

  That was another virtue of traveling by train in China. It allowed one to make visual connections in a place that was otherwise full of shocks and bafflements. Every other mode of travel made the country seem incomprehensible. Well, even on a train it was incomprehensible at times. But doing it this way helped. It wasn't one countryside: it was a thousand landscapes and hundreds of crops. Sometimes, only an hour passed and everything was different.

  Now there were cornfields, and harvesters flinging ears of corn into gunnysacks; and browsing buffaloes; and a brownish goose with an orange beak standing in the middle of a flooded field; and women yoked to buckets; and a human scarecrow—a boy frightening birds by waving a long stick with blue streamers on it; and a man on the bank of a canal, fishing Chinese-style, a fishing pole in each hand.

  I could not understand the Red Guard's Chinese, so I asked the man from Kowloon whether he would translate my questions.

  He said, "I am interested myself!"

  "What does he do for work?"

  The Red Guard was sulking in his bed.

  "He works in an institute—agricultural. No. Language institute. In Urumchi."

  "I was in Urumchi."

  "He says, many people go to Urumchi."

  I said, "What language does he teach at this institute?"

  "He doesn't know the answer to your question."

  "Does he speak foreign languages?"

  "He says he works there—"

  The Red Guard was gabbling in his berth.

  "—he is not a teacher."

  "What is his job?"

  "He is a cadre."

  An official. Why did they use this French word? Probably because they hated the word official—it smacked of feudalism and the class system.

  "Is he a member of the Chinese Communist Party?"

  "He is."

  One of the few.

  "Ask him when he joined."

  "When he was eight years old."

  "That's impossible."

  Gabble, gabble.

  "When he was sixteen, he says. He joined the Party then."

  "Ask him if he was a Red Guard."

  "Yes, he was a Red Guard."

  I was pleased that I had spotted him. But why did he still look like one.

  "Ask him if he was in the Gang of Rebellion." These brutes, the Zaofan Pai, were said to be the toughest, most thuggish of the Red Guards. They did battle with the Bao Huang Pai (Emperor's Gang) until long after the Cultural Revolution ended.

  The question was translated, but with a mutter that meant That's enough questions, the Red Guard slid off his berth and hurried into the corridor, clacking his plastic sandals.

  Nearer Chengdu, the man from Kowloon said that this was his
first trip to China. His name was Cheung. He was exactly my age—he showed me his passport so that I would see his name written: we had the same birthday.

  "The Year of the Snake," I said.

  He was married, he had three children. He was a taxi driver in Kowloon and had come to China for the same sentimental reasons that so many overseas Chinese had for making the journey. And practical reasons, too: the discounts, the freebies, the brotherly goodwill, the ease in making arrangements as a Foreign Compatriot, and all the other angles that went under the general heading of ethnic nepotism. In Xian he had met some Chinese taxi drivers and they had bought him enough beer to get him plastered.

  "In ten years you'll be able to drive your taxi from Kowloon into China."

  "Yes," he said. "But I don't want to."

  "Chinese taxi drivers make money—didn't they tell you that?"

  And because no Chinese could afford to ride in a Chinese taxi, the customers were always foreigners. This was what the Party would call a pernicious influence, and I agreed. Chinese taxi drivers, as a breed, seemed to me stubborn and grasping. And they weren't particularly skillful drivers. It was very rare to spend any length of time in Chinese taxis and not experience an accident—usually your taxi crashing into a cyclist.

  Cheung said, "They have to earn seventy yuan a day. After they make that amount on the meter they get a percentage of the rest. But they only have to work eight hours. In Hong Kong we all work twelve hours. It's a very hard life. Food is expensive, rent is expensive, everything costs too much."

  "Maybe the Chinese government will straighten things out when they take over Hong Kong.

  "No. They will ruin it. No democracy."

  "There's no democracy there now. It's a British Colony. The governor-general is appointed. And the strange thing is," I said, because I had suddenly realized what a political anachronism Hong Kong was, "very few people actually speak English in Hong Kong."

  "We speak Cantonese."

  "That's the point. It's part of Guangdong province, really. British culture didn't sink in. It's all Cantonese."