Riding the Iron Rooster

by Paul Theroux

  The Yangtze is almost a mile wide at Wuhan, and on its banks it has landing stages and flights of steps that resemble the ghats on the Ganges. On the Hankou side there were also many new buildings, and there were cars in the streets—I remembered the wagons and carts, pulled by old women. The buildings and the traffic jams were not necessarily improvements, but they made a difference. Modernization did not make any Chinese city look less horrific; many cities looked more so as a result of building schemes.

  It was cold enough in Wuhan for people to be wearing mittens and boots. That was what the salesmen in my compartment were wearing when they got out, pulling their suitcases through the windows. They did it clumsily. They were bemused by the sight of a girl walking along the platform, carrying a dead fish.

  Before we pulled out of Wuhan the sleeping-car attendant roused me and said I had to move.

  "You are in the wrong berth," she said.

  "I am in the right berth," I said. I knew she wanted to move me, but I saw no reason she should put me in the wrong. I made her compare my ticket with the berth number, and I created a hoo-hah so that I would have the satisfaction of hearing her apologize.

  "It is a mistake," she said, ambiguously, and led me to a compartment that held a man, a woman and an infant.

  "How old is that baby?"

  "Two weeks."

  The baby was snoring. After a while it began to cry. The man took a bottle out and fed it, and the child's mother left the compartment.

  That was how it went. The man did everything for this baby, which was wrapped in a thick quilt like a papoose. The man fed it, changed it and dandled it. The woman hung around and lazed, and several times I saw her sleeping in the Hard Class coach that adjoined ours. Perhaps the woman was ill. I did not want to ask. The man took charge.

  "It's a boy," he said, when he was feeding it.

  I hadn't asked.

  He was a doctor. His wife was also a doctor. He worked in Peking, his wife in Canton; and he had gone to Canton to be present for the birth. Now they were all going back to Peking for a few months—the woman's maternity leave. There were feeding bottles, baby powder and cans of soluble milk formula all over the compartment. They used disposable diapers, which they discarded in a bucket under my bed. I did not mind; I like the milky smell of babies, and I was very touched by the love and attention that this man gave the child.

  I read on my bunk while the man burped his baby and the woman looked on. I drank Cantonese sherry. It was like being in a cabin in the woods with this little family. For dinner I had the speciality of this train, "iron dish chicken pieces"—a hot iron platter of chicken, sizzling in fat. The dining car was very congenial—steam, shouting, beer fizzing, cigarette smoke, waiters banging dishes down and snatching empty plates away.

  The two men at my table were young and half-drunk. I liked these crowded dining cars rushing through the night, and the food being dished out, and people stuffing themselves.

  "We sell light bulbs and light fittings," one of the men said. "We are heading home after a week's selling."

  "Where is home?" I asked.

  "Harbin."

  "I am going there," I said. "I want to see the ice festival and the forest."

  "It's too cold to see anything," the other man said. "You will just want to stay in your room."

  "That's a challenge," I said. "Anyway—how cold is it?"

  "Thirty below—centigrade," he said, and he poured me some of his beer and clinked glasses.

  By then I had taken for granted the friendliness of the Chinese. Their attentions were sometimes bewildering, as when they leaned over my shoulder trying to read what I was scribbling in my notebook, or pressed their damp faces against my book, fascinated by the English words. But their curiosity and good will were genuine.

  "Do you travel much?" I asked.

  "Yes. All over. But not outside," the first man said. "I'd like to but I can't."

  "Where would you go?"

  "Japan."

  That surprised me. My reaction must have shown on my face, because the Chinese salesman wanted to know what I thought of his choice of country. I said, "I find the Japanese can be very irritating."

  "The Americans dropped an atomic bomb on them."

  "That was too bad, but they started the war by bombing Pearl Harbor, didn't they, comrade?"

  "That's true!" the second man said. "The same day they captured Shanghai."

  It was considered bad manners in China to say disparaging things about any foreign country, particularly to someone who was himself a foreigner. That was why the men cackled. It was naughty to run down the Japanese! It was fun! We sat there yakking until the rest of the people left the dining car. Then we stopped by Xinyang. We had gone from Hubei Province into Henan. This station was covered in black ice and slushy snow—quite a change from the palm trees and dragonflies of Canton a few days ago.

  In my compartment the man was snuggled up with his infant son, and his wife lay sleeping in the upper berth. All night the man attended to the infant. They slept together, the child snickering and snorting the way babies do. From time to time the man swung his legs over and mixed a batch of Nestle's Lactogen, using hot water from the tea thermos and an enamel cup. He was considerate: he did not switch on the light—he used the light from the corridor. The baby's fussing increased, and then the father eased the bottle into the baby's mouth and there came a satisfied snorting. The father was very patient. The train stopped and started, was delayed at sidings, waiting for a southbound express to go through, and then rattled on to the whistles of lonely freight trains. In the darkness, the man spoke softly to his child, sang to him, and when the child grew sleepy he tucked him into the berth and crept in beside him.

  The muffled sounds in the morning, and the cold drafts—and there was something eerie about the daylight, too—were all produced by the falling snow. The train was battling through this snowstorm: it was beautiful—just as though the train were plowing through surf in a stormy ocean.

  The loudspeaker had come on. The morning exercises were over. The comedy program with its canned laughter had ended. It was now playing music. The selections from Carmen were followed by "Rhinestone Cowboy," "Green, Green Grass of Home," "Ave Maria," and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"

  I drank green tea and watched the storm abate, but as it did the weather seemed to turn colder. The ground was that pale brown of hard frozen earth, the trees stark and slender against the snow. The towns and cities lost their nightmarishness beneath the snow. But nothing else changed; nothing stopped because of the storm. There were donkeys pulling hay carts, workers crowding into factories, children tramping through fields on their way to school (wearing wool caps and carrying book bags), and lots of people cycled through the snow, down partly cleared roads.

  The sky was the color of ashes. For a few minutes the sun appeared, materializing into a perfectly round but very dim orange, like an old light bulb that is about to blow. It hung there and then trembled and withdrew into the rags of cloud.

  The train was still very noisy. A man was shouting—he wasn't angry, just carrying on a normal conversation. It occurred to me that this is how many prisons must be. The voice of authority was always barking over the loudspeaker, there was always a crush of people, never any privacy. It made travel in China a strange experience for anyone used to silence and privacy.

  As we approached Peking, the frozen fields and furrows were emphasized by the snow, and in the coal yards beside the line, men were hacking at coal piles with picks and shovels. The snow wasn't deep—just a few inches of hard-packed stuff, because of the high winds. And then in the distance, through the smoky air, I could see the cranes and derricks of the rising city.

  Because it is a flat, dry, northern city, at the edge of Mongolia, Peking has beautiful skies. They are bluest in the freezing air of winter. China's old euphemism for itself was Tianxta, "All Beneath the Sky"—and, on a good day, what a sky! It was limpid, like an ocean of air, but seamles
s and unwrinkled, without a single wavelet of cloud;endless uncluttered fathoms of it that grew icier through the day and then, at the end of the winter afternoon, turned to dust.

  Thinking it would be empty, I went to see the Great Wall again. Doctor Johnson told Boswell how eager he was to go to China and see the Wall. Boswell was not so sure himself. How could he justify going to China when he had children at home to take care of?

  "Sir," Doctor Johnson said, "by doing so [going to China] you would do what would be of importance in raising your children to eminence. There would be a lustre reflected upon them from your spirit and curiosity. They would be at all times regarded as the children of a man who had gone to view the Wall of China. I am serious, sir."

  The Wall is an intimidating thing, less a fortification than a visual statement, announcing imperiously: I am the Son of Heaven and this is the proof that I can encircle the earth. It somewhat resembles, in intention, the sort of achievement of that barmy man who gift wrapped the Golden Gate Bridge. The Wall goes steeply up and down mountainsides. To what purpose? Certainly not to repel invaders, who could never cling to those cliffs. Wasn't it another example of the Chinese love of taking possession of the land and whipping it into shape?

  Anyway, the Wall was not empty. It swarmed with tourists. They scampered on it and darkened it like fleas on a dead snake.

  That gave me an idea. "Snake" was very close, but what it actually looked like was a dragon. The dragon is the favorite Chinese creature ("just after man in the hierarchy of living beings"), and until fairly recently—eighty or a hundred years ago—the Chinese believed dragons existed. Many people reported seeing them alive, and of course fossilized dragon skeletons had been unearthed. The dragon was a good omen and, especially, a guardian. It is one of China's friendliest and most enduring symbols. The marauding dragon and the dragon-slayer are unknown in China. And I found a bewitching similarity between the Chinese dragon and the Great Wall of China—the way it flexed and slithered up and down the Mongolian mountains; the way its crenellations looked like the fins on a dragon's back, and its bricks like scales; the way it looked serpentine and protective, undulating endlessly from one end of the world to the other.

  On the way back from the Wall I decided to stop at Peking University, where there had been student disruption. The campus was at the edge of the city, in a parklike setting, with pines and little man-made hills and a lovely lake. The lake was frozen. Skinny, panting students, with red cheeks and bobbing earflaps, slipped and skated on the ice.

  I watched them with an American teacher named Roy who said, "They do have grievances. They want to believe what they read in the papers and hear on the news. At the moment, they get it all from the VOA and BBC. They want to trust their own government—and they don't. They want to believe that the reforms that have begun with Deng are going to continue."

  There were three theories to explain the sudden student discontent. One: that, as Roy said, the students really did have grievances. Two: that the government was divided and the students were being used by the liberal elements to test the conservatives. Three: that the disruptions were the work of conservative elements who wanted to discredit the liberals.

  I was persuaded that the students had demonstrated on their own initiative. Their grievances were genuine bur muddled.

  "They were really frightened," Roy said. "They didn't think they'd be arrested, but some were. They didn't think the police would push them around—but the police beat some of them and abused others. They know that if it happens again they will be arrested and not released. That scares them. It means they'll be kicked out of the university."

  "The right to demonstrate is written into the constitution," I said.

  "Sure, but it requires five days' notice, and the students have to submit their names in advance," Roy said. "So the government will know exactly who the ringleaders are."

  The students were going around and around on the ice, shrieking and skidding.

  "There won't be any more demonstrations," Roy said. "They're too scared. But it was interesting. They tested their freedoms and discovered they didn't have any."

  The students would not tell me their names—well, who could blame them for being suspicious? They stood on the ice of Weiming Hu and became circumspect when I changed the subject from the weather to their discontent.

  One boy told me he was "a small leader." He said he was a philosophy student and had been in the demonstration as well as its aftermath, when about 500 students had returned to Tiananmen Square and held a vigil from the night of January first until the early morning of January second, when the news came of their fellow students' release from police custody.

  "Our teachers support us but they are afraid to say so," he said. "Officially they are said to condemn us. But the government misreports everything. They said there were three hundred students in the first demonstration when there were actually three thousand."

  I said, "Do you think this repression is an effect of socialist policies?"

  "I am not allowed to answer that," he said. "But I can tell you that the trouble with a lot of Chinese students is that they don't have a will to power."

  Perhaps he was quoting Nietzsche from his readings in philosophy. And then I asked whether he thought that the students were too frightened, as Roy had said, to hold any more demonstrations.

  "There will be more," he said. "Many more."

  A moment later he was gone, and I talked with other students. They were jolly, frozen-faced youngsters on old, floppy skates. To ingratiate myself with them I borrowed a pair of skates, and seeing me fall down and make an ass of myself, they became very friendly. What did I think of China? they asked. How did American students compare with Chinese students? Did I like the food? Could I use chopsticks? What was my favorite city in China? They were goofy and lovable, with crooked teeth and cold, white hands. When I asked them whether they had girlfriends they averted their faces and giggled. They did not seem like counterrevolutionaries.

  I had repeatedly requested a High-Level Meeting—that is, a chance to talk with an important government official. In the past my request had done nothing more than make certain people suspicious. What was I doing in China? they demanded to know. They had asked me for my itinerary. Using an extremely clever if somewhat fanciful Chinese technique for ensnaring awkward visitors, they insisted that I was too important to travel alone and so stuck me with Mr. Fang. He had gone back to his desk in Peking: he did not know that I was still in China. Now I was traveling on my own.

  I risked asking for a High-Level Meeting once more, hoping that they would not pounce on me and give me another nanny or babysitter. I received a message telling me to report to Comrade Bai at the well-known Ministry of Truth. I was told that I could ask anything I liked.

  Before I left for the ministry I asked a Chinese friend what questions I should put to the official. He said, "No matter what you ask him you will find his answers in the People's Daily"

  The taxi driver who took me to the Ministry of Truth was impressed by the address I had given him. He said, "Can you meet American officials as easily as this?"

  I told him truthfully that I had never met a really high government official in Washington—that I had never gotten the urge to meet one. It was only in foreign countries that such things seemed important. But the fact was that I had spent all my time talking to people on trains, or farmers, or market traders, or kids playing in parks, or students. They were the people who really mattered; but it was absurd to spend a year going up and down in China and not talk with an official and hear the Party line.

  "What would you ask this official if you could?"

  The driver said, "About the future."

  "What about the future?"

  "Will I be all right? Will the reforms continue? Will we have more democracy? What about prices? And"—he started to laugh—"how can I get a new license for my taxi?"

  I was met by Comrade Bai, a little fellow in a blue Mao suit. He explai
ned that he was not the official—certainly not the high official, he added anxiously, and he breathed noisily through his clenched teeth. Then he laughed. It was the Chinese laugh of warning.

  Comrade Bai led me to a ministerial reception room, and then he went to tell the high official that I had arrived.

  Comrade Hu entered with a flourish, gesturing for me to return to my plump armchair. He was about fifty or so, and had Deng Xiaoping's broad, tomcat face and unblinking eyes. It was obvious that he was a Party man in the new mold: he wore a gray Western-style suit and speckled tie in the manner of the rising Mr. Zhao Ziyang. He seemed brisk and even a bit impatient, but he was candid, and his English was fluent.

  After our opening pleasantries I asked him about the relations between China and the Soviet Union. He said there was trade between the two countries, but that there were political obstacles— Soviet aid to Vietnam, the Afghanistan business, and troops in Mongolia.

  "The Soviets make a big mistake in thinking that their kind of socialism can be exported to other countries," he said. "It doesn't work."

  "Can Chinese socialism be exported?" I asked.

  "We do not force our ideas on other people," he said.

  I then asked him a roundabout question, wondering whether the government was alarmed by the recent disturbances.

  "Perhaps you are referring to the events in Peking and elsewhere caused by the students," he said, and he explained, "China is in the first stage of socialism—we are just beginning to develop. In some ways, we are underdeveloped and we are proceeding slowly and carefully. In the countryside the reforms have gone smoothly. But in cities much remains to be done."

  "How long will this stage of socialism last?"

  "Until we achieve our target," he said. He told me the statistics, the income figures and projections; but in an uncertain world such numbers seemed meaningless to me. It was not just inflation that he seemed to be ignoring but the rising expectations of the Chinese people.