Riding the Iron Rooster

by Paul Theroux

They were good-tempered people, but always in a flap. Inevitably there are squabbles among the Chinese, who live on top of each other. It is surprising that fighting is not more frequent. Fistfights are rare. Often children are beaten, and hit very hard. But the most common mode of conflict is the screaming out-of-hand row—two people screeching at each other, face to face. They are long and loud, and they attract large crowds of spectators. For face-saving reasons such disputes can only be resolved by a third party, and until that person enters the fray, the two squabblers go on shrieking.

  I witnessed a barracking like this in Xiamen one day. All tourist sites have so-called Viewing Places, where the Chinese visitor is obliged to go—otherwise the trip is futile. The ritual element in tourism is carefully observed. In Xiamen there were the Eight Major Views, the Eight Minor Views and the Views Outside Views. It is customary to have your picture taken on the spot, and since few Chinese can afford to buy cameras, professional photographers stand around these Viewing Places and offer their services for one yuan a shot. The shouting match I saw was between one of these photographers and his dissatisfied customers.

  Mr. Wei translated the screams. At first they were all about money—a man and wife claiming that the photographer had put the price up after they had agreed on a lower one. But for face-saving reasons, the screaming became more general and hysterical. It wasn't an argument. It was a random howling—everyone at once, the couple, the photographer and then the onlookers joined in. It started at the Viewing Place, moved down the path, flowed behind a rock and then continued in a shed. It was extremely loud and went on without a break, a remarkable torrent of abuse and exclamation.

  "First we're told it's one kuai, and then the thief changes it to two!"

  "I'm not speaking to anyone until the unit leader comes. But I've never been so insulted—"

  "Someone get the unit leader!"

  "This is ridiculous! All these people are liars!"

  "We're being cheated!"

  "Thieves—!"

  They were almost certainly tourists, Mr. Wei said. He could tell from their northern accent. Shanxi, he thought. He was whispering, "The woman says that they are thieves. The man is saying liars. There is a child in the shed. The photographer is banging the table with his fist—"

  Then there was a greater commotion and the child began to scream. Someone was howling at the child. Then everyone was howling at once.

  "What happened, Mr. Wei?"

  "The child cursed the worker."

  "What did he say?"

  "He called him a wang ba—a tortoise," Mr. Wei said, with some reluctance.

  "Is that bad?"

  "Yes. Very. If a wife sleeps with other men her husband is called a tortoise."

  "Is that expression used all over China?"

  "No. Mainly in the north. Northerners are very tough. North of the Chang Jiang they are loud and muscular. They use violent language. That's why the demonstrations in the north were large and noisy. But we are thin and small and very gentle. We don't use such language, calling someone a 'tortoise' because he overcharges you."

  The screaming match was still in full cry fifteen minutes after it had started. I got bored and went away. Mr. Wei said he found it distasteful having to translate this abuse for me, but I told him I had to know these things in order to understand China. And I explained that our version of a tortoise is a cuckold, which (coming from cuckoo) is a more logical word. Female tortoises, I told him, are not great copulators. They only need one screw and they are able to lay fertile eggs for years!

  "You are interested in arguments and also interested in biology."

  "I'm interested in everything, Mr. Wei."

  "In China we specialize in knowledge. One person studies agriculture, and another does engineering."

  He went on in this vein until, soon after, we saw a child being beaten by its mother in a yard. I was riveted by it. The child was smacked so thoroughly that he became hysterical and could not be calmed. He went around hitting his mother and wetting himself and howling. He was about seven years old. The usual Chinese reaction to someone in distress is laughter, and soon Mr. Wei and the others watching began to find the tormented child an object of amusement.

  Xiamen gave me vivid dreams, but the dreams were not of Xiamen or its ghosts—Marco Polo, foreign traders, Manichaeans, missionaries, pirates, or the compradors of old Amoy. I dreamed of home in one, and of Tadzhiks in another (was it a coincidence that the Tadzhiks were the only Indo-Europeans among China's minorities?). I dreamed of Ronald Reagan again. That was a lulu. The president appeared from behind a tree on the banks of the Potomac. He did a silly walk, waggling his legs, and said, "Come along to the picnic. You can do the cleaning up—okay, Paul?"

  I slapped him on the back and said, "Wait till I tell my mother I'm cleaning up the White House!"

  This annoyed him, because I deliberately twisted his words. He yelled at me, "It's a picnic!"

  A few nights later I dreamed of walking through the ravines that I had seen earlier that week in the hills of Fujian. I was captured by some Mongolian-looking men who were led by a small and very fierce woman. They all had curved knives that they kept jabbing into me, as if impatient to kill me.

  "Empty your bag!" the woman shrieked.

  Only then did I realize that I had a bag and that I was carrying some little antique statues that I had bought in a Chinese market.

  "Show your certificate!"

  "Here," I said, finding a piece of paper in my bag. It was the wrong certificate, but I thought: The Gurkhas will save me.

  The woman read my mind and replied, "We are the Gurkhas!"

  That was probably more a nightmare of buying trinkets illegally than a nightmare of traveling on the open road in China and encountering strangers—nothing was safer than that, judging from my experience of traipsing up and down in China.

  The wonderful market in Xiamen, and the dry-goods stores under the shop-houses, reminded me that the best buys in China are not in the souvenir shops and the Friendship Stores—not jade carvings, cork sculpture, ivory letter openers, stuffed pandas, turquoise jewelry, cloisonné, brassware, plastic chopsticks, lacquerware, bone bracelets, or the really dull and derivative paintings on scrolls. If I were to recommend anything special in China that was a bargain—good quality, one of a kind, worth bringing home—I would say: socket wrenches, screwdrivers, watercolor paints and brushes, pencils, calligraphy, sturdy brown envelopes, padlocks, plumber's tools, wicker baskets, espadrilles, T-shirts, cashmere sweaters, bonsai trees, silk carpets and silk cushion covers, tablecloths, terra-cotta pots, thermos jugs, illustrated art books, herbs, spices, and tea by the pound. Bamboo bird cages are also lovely, though the thought of keeping a bird in them is depressing. China may also be the only country in the world where you can buy a cricket cage—made either of a gourd or of porcelain.

  A number of these items are made in Xiamen, in the Huli Industrial Area. In more revolutionary times this area was part of a land-reclamation scheme. Mao had said (this was during the early years of the Cultural Revolution), "China must learn to feed itself! People have one mouth but they have two hands!" And so forth. The Red Guards and work gangs decided to build a causeway linking Xiamen to the west side of the harbor, and then to fill in the land behind the causeway and plant rice. But the land was poor and salty. Rice would not grow. And time passed. Now the area is a stronghold of money-making ventures—banks, light industry, factories—as well as the city's new municipal buildings.

  There had once been a commune here. There had been agricultural communes all around Xiamen. I had been interested by the ones I had seen elsewhere, by the way they had developed into cooperatives and family farms, so I visited what had been the Cai Tang Commune, in the countryside northwest of Xiamen, to see what had happened.

  Walking through the fields at Cai Tang, I came across an ancient grave. Two eight-foot guardian figures, a man and a woman, had been placed at the entrance of the gravesite. This was behind a hi
ll, at the margin of a field of carrots. A bird—perhaps a flycatcher—was flitting back and forth. And buried to their necks were stone animals—a horse, a ram, lions and other broken beasts. There was an altar, too, with carved tablets. It was all unnoticed and it had not been seriously vandalized. In an earlier period a traveler would have taken the figures and crated them and shipped them to the Fogg Museum at Harvard. The tablets said (according to Mr. Wei) that it was a Qing Dynasty grave of the Hu family. And it was so far off the beaten track that no one had disturbed it.

  A farmer and his wife were working nearby, hurrying back and forth in the carrot field, each one of them wearing a yoke with a balanced pair of watering cans. A loudspeaker at the far side of the field played a Chinese opera.

  "This was once part of the Cai Tang Commune," the man said. "We planted rice, because they wouldn't let us plant anything else. And we listened to the Thoughts of Mao Zedong on that loudspeaker all day."

  I had to follow him through the carrot field. He would not stop watering in order to chat. But he said he didn't mind my questions.

  "This is my family's land. I never liked the commune idea. I would rather work in my own fields."

  "Do you think about freedom to do as you want?"

  "Yes. I have more freedom now," he said. "I can plant what I like. They used to say 'Plant rice' whether it was a good idea or not. Know what the trouble was before? Too many officials."

  He squelched through the mud to the standpipe, filled his buckets, filled his wife's buckets and off they went again through the plumelike carrot tops.

  "You have a healthy crop of carrots," I said.

  "These are for pigs," he said. "The price of carrots is low in the market at the moment, so instead of accepting a few fen I'll feed them to my pigs. It makes more sense. I can fatten ten pigs, get them up to a hundred kilos and sell each one for about a hundred yuan. When the price of carrots goes up, I'll sell the carrots at the market."

  He was still splashing water and gasping up and down the field.

  "This is much better business!" he called back.

  From there I went to the eastern part of Xiamen, called "The Front Line" (Qian Xian) because Quemoy (Jinmen), which belongs to Taiwan, is just offshore. The east coast road had been closed for thirty-five years, because of the periodic hostilities, but just recently it was opened. There were trenches, pillboxes and fortifications everywhere, but there was also a lovely beach of palm trees and white sand and dumping surf—and not a soul on it.

  I broad jumped a foxhole and made my way through the palms.

  "Don't, Mr. Paul! You might get shot!"

  Mr. Wei trembled at the edge of the road, calling me back.

  "Who would shoot me?"

  "The army!"

  "Which army?"

  "Maybe ours—maybe theirs."

  He tried to console me—perhaps one day there would be peace between China and its easternmost province of Taiwan, and then I would be able to swim here. Because the area had been off-limits and dangerous (Quemoy had been bombarded from these gun emplacements in 1958, provoking an international incident), and because of the fear of retaliation that had aroused in the local Chinese, the beach was unspoiled and lovely.

  One of the largest buildings in Xiamen was the Workers' Palace. Other Chinese cities had Soviet-inspired community centers like this—they had all been built in the 1950s—but I had never been inside one. Mr. Wei was bewildered by my interest, and he said it might be difficult to get permission to enter. I now knew enough about Chinese bureaucracy to realize that the quickest way to see the Workers' Palace would be to walk in and not bother with permission. It was such a dithering and buck-passing civil service that special requests were almost invariably turned down, while blatant trespassing was seldom challenged.

  Once, this Workers' Palace had been all hate films and sessions of political indoctrination. Now the film theater was showing a documentary about the Dunhuang Caves, and the reading room was full of people perusing newspapers and magazines (among them, movie magazines and body-building monthlies); and in the drill hall there was an aerobics class. A dancing class had just ended.

  I asked one of the women doing aerobics why she had decided to sign up.

  "I do this for health and beauty," she said. "Also I have headaches."

  It was in the library of this building that I found a copy of Dong Luoshan's translation of Orwell's 1984. It had been published in Canton in 1985. He had told me it was regarded as neican—circulated only to safe and unexcitable intellectuals. But obviously that was wrong. Anyone in Xiamen could come here and borrow it from the library—I specifically asked the librarian.

  "Is it any good?" she asked.

  "Excellent. You'll love it."

  "I'll take it home with me tonight!"

  Another room was lined with electronic games. I wondered whether anyone used them. Mr. Wei said they did, but that no one had spare cash to squander on them. I saw about eight children lurking near the machines and asked them whether they knew how these things worked. They said they did. Would they teach me? I asked. Oh, yes. So I pushed a few coins into these space-invader machines, and the children sprang into action, their fingers flying. They were as expert as any person in America, misspending his youth at the controls of an electronic game.

  A young woman had just finished her dancing class and was on her way home when I accosted her. She was Wan Li, a cadre at the economics ministry. She had gone to the Dalian Foreign Language Institute (she hadn't met Cherry Blossom there, unfortunately) but she had been raised in the central Fujian town of Sanming. That town had the reputation in China of being somewhat Utopian. It had been developed by people from all over China, before the Cultural Revolution. Miss Wan claimed that everything that had been said about Sanming was true—no problems, no pollution, perfect integration, a model city.

  "Any Tibetans in Sanming?"

  "No," Miss Wan said. "They have to stay in Tibet and solve their own problems. But people in Sanming are very civilized. They are from all places. Like the United States!"

  She was about twenty-five and seemed very frank beneath her nervous giggle. She came to the Workers' Palace every day, she said, because she liked meeting people here—she enjoyed talking to strangers.

  Mr. Wei merely looked on, but I could see he was quite taken by this young woman's boldness.

  I said, "Are you a member of the Chinese Communist Party?"

  "You are the second American in Xiamen to ask me that!" she said. "There are three hundred people in my unit at the ministry. Only twenty are members of the Party."

  "Why so few?"

  "Because it is hard to be a member. You don't volunteer. You have to be asked to join the Party. You must first act very well and leave a good impression. Do your work diligently—work overtime, study, be obedient."

  "Like Lei Feng, the model soldier," I said. Lei Feng had scrubbed floors all night because of his love for Mao. In China he was a joke or else a paragon, according to who you were talking to. Most Chinese I had spoken to had found Lei Feng a bit of a pain, if not an outright fake.

  Miss Wan gave me a Chinese reply. "Not like Lei Feng. You have to be noticed."

  Lei Feng had only been noticed after his death, when his diaries were found, containing such exclamations as "I have scrubbed another floor and washed more dishes! My love for Mao is shining in my heart!"

  Miss Wan said, "You have to be selected for the Party. The Party needs the best people—not just anyone who wants to join. If the Party works well, the country will work. The Party needs high-quality people."

  "I'm sure you're a high-quality person."

  "I don't know."

  "Do you have healthy Marxist-Leninist thoughts?"

  "I am trying," she said, and laughed. "I also like dancing!"

  After she left, Mr. Wei said, "She gave me her card. Did you see?"

  "Are you glad?"

  "Oh, yes. I hope I see her again. It is so hard to meet girls in China
."

  He said he probably would not get married for another five years. Twenty-six was a good age for marriage.

  With the greatest tact I could muster I asked him whether he had ever slept with a woman. I put it obliquely. He proudly said no.

  "It seems to be a problem in China. No sex for young people." It had been one of the issues in the student demonstrations.

  "It's a problem. Even if you meet a girl there is no place to take her. But I don't mind."

  "You mean you don't believe in sex before marriage?"

  He looked slightly disgusted. "It is unlawful and against our traditions."

  With that, 2000 years of sensuality went straight out the window. Mr. Wei seemed blind to the fact that Chinese culture was rooted in sexual allusions. The mythical Yellow Emperor had made himself immortal by sleeping with a thousand women; and even a common object like a piece of jade had sexual associations—it was said to be the petrified semen of the celestial dragon. The dragon was phallic, the lotus was a sort of icon for the vulva, and so forth.

  "Would you be arrested if you were caught with a woman?"

  "You might be. You would be criticized. You could be reported."

  "But surely you could be very careful if you had a lover."

  "Someone would know," Mr. Wei said. "And even if you didn't get caught, people would look down on you."

  That seemed to settle it, but Mr. Wei equivocated when I asked him about Miss Wan.

  "I will keep her card," he said, breathing hard.

  That was the last I saw of Mr. Wei. But I had no trouble fending for myself in Xiamen. For one thing, Spring Festival was about to begin, and this the happiest of Chinese holidays put everyone in a good mood, as they bought greeting cards and calligraphy and red paper banners with New Year's greetings inked on them.

  Just before I left Xiamen I met an American, Jim Koch, a Kodak employee who had been hired to supervise the installation of a coating machine. This sounded a fairly modest contraption, but it had cost the Chinese $70 million, and the entire project was costing $300 million. The object was for the Chinese to make their own film for cameras and not be dependent upon the Japanese for photographic supplies.