Riding the Iron Rooster

by Paul Theroux

  "It has recently snowed," Jinguo said. "That is not unusual. It often snows heavily in March here. And in the passes it snows all year. Foreign friends like snow!"

  As if in welcome a flock of eight gray cranes gathered themselves together and made off, just ahead of the train, rising and still folding as they flew, like large mechanical bumbershoots blown sideways by the stiff wind.

  Golmud was hardly a town. It was a dozen widely scattered low buildings, some radio antennas, a water tower. One of the few cars in town was Mr. Fu's ridiculous Galant. There were some buses, but they were the most punished-looking vehicles I had seen in China—and no wonder, for they toiled up and down the Tibetan Plateau.

  "Snow," Mr. Fu said—his first word.

  I had not expected this snow, and it was clear from his gloomy tone that neither had he. The snow lay thinly in the town, but behind the town it was deep and dramatic—blazing in the shadows of the mountain range.

  We were still at Golmud Station. Mr. Fu had driven from Xining, and had met me. But he was very subdued in the car.

  When I asked him how he was he did not reply directly. He said, "We cannot go to Lhasa tomorrow. Maybe the day after, or the day after that, or—"

  I asked him why.

  'The snow. It is everywhere—very deep," he said. He did not even glance at me. He was driving fast through the rutted Golmud streets—too fast, but I had seen him drive in Xining and I knew this to be normal. At the best of times he was a rather frantic driver. 'The snow is blocking the road."

  "You are sure?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you see it?"

  He laughed: Ha-ha! You idiot! "Look at it!"

  He pointed out the window. But I was not looking at the snow. I noticed that he was wearing a pair of elegant driving gloves. He never took the wheel without donning them. They seemed as old-fashioned as spats or gaiters.

  "Did anyone tell you that the road was blocked with snow?"

  He did not reply, so that meant no. We continued this sparring. The snow was bad news—it glittered, looking as though it was there forever. But surely someone had a road report?

  "Is there is a bus station in Golmud?"

  He nodded. He hated my questions. He wanted to be in charge, and how could he be if I was asking all the questions? And he had so few answers.

  "People say the road is bad. Look at the snow!"

  "We will ask at the bus station. The bus drivers will know."

  "First we go to the hotel," he said, trying to take command.

  The hotel was another prisonlike place with cold corridors and squawks and odd hours. I had three cactuses in my room, and a calendar and two armchairs. But there were no curtains on the windows, and there was no hot water. "Later," they said. The lobby was wet and dirty from the mud that had been tracked in. An ornamental pond behind the hotel was filled with green ice, and the snow was a foot deep on the path to the restaurant. I asked about food. "Later," they said. Some of the rooms had six or eight bunk beds. Everyone inside wore a heavy coat and fur hat, against the cold. Why hadn't my cactus plants died? The hotel cost $9 for a double room, and $2 for food.

  "Now we go to the bus station," I said.

  Mr. Fu said nothing.

  "We will ask someone about the snow."

  I had been told that buses regularly plied between Golmud and Lhasa, especially now that that there were no flights—the air service to Tibet had been suspended. Surely one of these bus drivers would put us in the picture.

  We drove to the bus station. On the way, I could see that Golmud was the ultimate Chinese frontier town, basically a military camp, with a few shops, a market and wide streets. There were very few buildings, but since they were not tall, they seemed less of a disfigurement. It was a place of pioneers—of volunteers who had come out in the 1950s, as they had in Xining. They had been encouraged by Mao to develop the poor and empty parts of China; and of course, Tibet had to be invaded and subdued, and that was impossible without reliable supply lines—settlements, roads, telegraph wires, barracks. First the surveyors and engineers came, then the railway people and the soldiers, and then the teachers and traders.

  "What do you think of Golmud, Mr. Fu?"

  "Too small," he said, and laughed, meaning the place was insignificant.

  At the bus station we were told that the snow wasn't bad on the road. A Tibetan bus had arrived just that morning—it was late, of course, but it was explained that all the buses were late, even when there was no snow.

  Mr. Fu was not placated. He pointed south and said, "Snow!"

  He was clearly apprehensive, although I was convinced that we should set off.

  I said, "We will go tomorrow, but we will leave early. We will drive until noon. If the snow is bad we will turn back and try again another day. If it looks okay we will go on."

  There was no way that he could disagree with this, and it had the additional merit of being a face-saving plan.

  We had a celebratory dinner that night—wood-ear fungus, noodles, yak slices and the steamed buns called mantou that Mr. Fu said he could not live without (he had a supply for the trip to Tibet). There was a young woman at the table, sharing our meal. She said nothing until Mr. Fu introduced her.

  "This is Miss Sun."

  "Is she coming with us?"

  "Yes. She speaks English."

  Mr. Fu, who spoke no English at all, was convinced that Miss Sun was fluent in English. But at no point over the next four or five days was I able to elicit any English at all from Miss Sun. Occasionally she would say a Chinese word and ask me its English equivalent.

  "How do you say luxing in English?"

  "Travel."

  Then her lips trembled and she made a choking sound, "Trow."

  And, just as quickly, she forgot even that inaccurate little squawk.

  Over the dinner, I said, "What time are we leaving tomorrow?"

  "After breakfast," Mr. Fu said.

  The maddening Chinese insistence on mealtimes.

  "We should get an early start, because the snow will slow us down."

  "We can leave at nine."

  "The sun comes up at six-thirty or seven. Let's leave then."

  "Breakfast," Mr. Fu said, and smiled.

  We both knew that breakfast was at eight. Mr. Fu was demanding his full hour, too. I wanted to quote a Selected Thought of Mao about being flexible, meeting all obstacles and overcoming them by strength of will. But I couldn't think of one. Anyway, a Mao Thought would have cut no ice with young, skinny, frantic Mr. Fu, who played Beethoven and wore driving gloves and had a freeloading girlfriend. He was one of the new Chinese. He even had a pair of sunglasses.

  "We can buy some food and eat it on the way," I said, as a last desperate plea for an early start.

  "I must eat mantou when it is hot," Mr. Fu said.

  That annoyed me, and I was more annoyed the next morning when at half past nine I was still waiting for Mr. Fu, who was himself waiting for a receipt for his room payment. At last, near ten, we left, and I sat in the backseat, wishing I were on a train, and feeling sour at the prospect of spending the whole trip staring at the back of Miss Sun's head.

  Lhasa was a thousand miles away.

  Looking towards Tibet I had a glimpse of a black and vaporous steam locomotive plowing through a dazzling snowfield under the blue summits and buttresses of the Tanggula Shan. It was one of the loveliest things I saw in China—the chugging train in the snowy desert, the crystal mountains behind it, and the clear sky above. Everything visible was jewellike, smoke and sparkle in a diamond as big as Tibet.

  About twenty miles farther, at the first high pass in the mountain range, was the end of the line in China—though only soldiers were allowed to go that far by rail—and after that there was only the narrow road, on which Mr. Fu was now skidding in his Galant.

  Mr. Fu, I could see, was terrified of the snow. He did not know its effect firsthand. He had only heard scare stories. That was why he had wanted to stay in Go
lmud for another week, until the snow melted. He believed that there was no way through it. But the snow was not bad. The road was fairly clear—anyway, two distinct ruts had been mashed into it by passing trucks. But they had created a ridge in the center of the road and this hard hump of snow and ice kept bumping and tossing the little car with its low clearance.

  In the first passes, so narrow they were nearly always in shadow, there was ice. Mr. Fu took his time. He was a poor driver—that had been obvious in the first five minutes of driving with him—but the snow and ice slowed him and made him careful. The icy stretches looked dangerous, but by creeping along (and trying to ignore the precipitous drop into the ravine by the roadside), we managed. For miles there was slippery snow, but this too Mr. Fu negotiated. Two hours passed in this way. It was a lovely sunny day, and where the sun had struck it, some of the snow had melted. But we were climbing into the wind, and even this sun could not mask the fact that it was growing colder as we gained altitude.

  In his terror, Mr. Fu did not speak a word for those hours, but his breathing—and his snorts and gasps—were like a monologue.

  We passed the first range of mountains, and behind them—though it was cold—there was less snow than on the Golmud side. Mr. Fu began to increase his speed. Whenever he saw a dry patch of road he floored it and sped onward, slowing only when more snow or ice appeared. Twice he hit sudden frost heaves, and I was thrown out of my seat and bumped my head.

  "Sorry!" Mr. Fu said, still speeding.

  Most of the curves were so tight that Mr. Fu had no choice but to go slowly. And then I sipped tea from my thermos and passed cassettes to Miss Sun, who fed them into the machine. After a hundred miles we had finished with Brahms. I debated whether to hand her the Beethoven symphonies, as I listened to Mendelssohn. I drank green tea and looked at the sunny road and snowy peaks and listened to the music, and I congratulated myself on contriving this excellent way of going to Lhasa.

  There was another frost heave.

  "Sorry!"

  He did not slow down. The road straightened, and he went even faster—about eighty, which seemed ridiculous for such a small car on such a narrow road. The only other traffic was trucks—big, rusted ones, loaded, with flapping tarpaulins and Tibetan drivers. Mr. Fu always leaned on his horn and passed them carelessly, not seeming to notice whether there was a curve ahead.

  He was an awful driver. He could not have been driving long. He had probably gone to a state driving school and earned a certificate, and had been assigned to a Xining work unit. The driving gloves were merely an affectation. He ground the gears when he set off, he gave the thing too much gas, he steered jerkily, he went too fast; and he had what is undoubtedly the worst habit a driver can have—but one that is common in China: going downhill he always switched off the engine and put the gears into neutral, believing that he was saving gas.

  I am not a retiring sort of person, and yet I said nothing. A person who is driving a car is in charge, and if you are a passenger you generally keep your mouth shut. I had an urge to say something, and yet I thought: It's going to be a long trip—no sense spoiling it at the outset with an argument. And I wanted to see just how bad a driver Mr. Fu was.

  I soon found out.

  He was rounding bends at such speed that I found myself clutching the door handle in order to prevent myself being thrown across the seat. I could not drink my tea without spilling it. He was going ninety—I could not tell whether the dial said kilometers or miles per hour, but did it matter? And yet if I said slow down, he would lose face, his pride would be hurt, and wasn't it true that he had gotten us through the snow? It was now about noon, with a dry road ahead. At this rate we would get to our first destination, the town of Amdo, before nightfall.

  "Play this one, Miss Sun."

  Miss Sun took the Chinese cassette of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. She rammed it into the machine and the first few bars played. The sun was streaming through the windows. The sky was clear and blue, and the ground was gravelly beneath the gray hills. There were snowy peaks to the left and right of us, just peeping over the hills. We were approaching a curve. I was a little anxious but otherwise very happy on the highest road in the world, the way to Lhasa. It was a beautiful day.

  I remembered all of this clearly, because it was about two seconds later that we crashed.

  There was a culvert on the curve, and a high bump in the road that was very obvious. But Mr. Fu was doing ninety, and when he hit the bump, we took off—the car leaped, I felt weightless, and when we came twisting down we were heading into an upright stone marker on the right. Mr. Fu was snatching at the steering wheel. The car skidded and changed direction, plunging to the left-hand side of the road. All this time I was aware of wind rushing against the car, a noise like a jet stream. That increased and so did the shaking of the car as it became airborne again and plowed into a powerful wind composed of dust and gravel. We had left the road and were careering sideways into the desert. Mr. Fu was battling with the wheel as the car was tossed. My clearest memory was of the terrific wind pressing against the twisted car, the windows darkened by flying dust, and of a kind of suspense. In a moment, I thought, we are going to smash and die.

  I was hanging onto the door handle. My head was jammed against the front seat. I was afraid that if I let go I would be thrown out the opposite door. I thought I heard Miss Sun screaming, but the car noise and the wind were much louder.

  This went on for perhaps seven seconds. That is an achingly long time in a skidding car; terror has everything to do with time passing. I had never felt so helpless or so doomed.

  So I was surprised when the car finally stopped. It was on its side. Only the deep gravelly sand had prevented it from turning over completely. I had to push the door with my shoulder to open it. The dust was still settling. The rear tire on my side of the car had been torn off, and I could hear it hissing.

  I staggered away to be as far as possible from the Galant and saw Mr. Fu and Miss Sun gasping and coughing. Miss Sun was twitching. Mr. Fu looked stunned and sorrowful because he saw the damage to the car. All its chrome had been torn off, the grille was smashed, the wheel rim twisted, the doors smashed; and we were fifty yards from the road, sunk in desert gravel. It seemed incredible that the sun was still shining.

  Mr. Fu laughed. It was a cough of blind fear that meant God, what now!

  No one spoke. We were wordlessly hysterical that we had survived. Mr. Fu tramped over to me and smiled and touched my cheek. There was blood on his finger. I had gotten out of the car not knowing whether I was hurt—I suspected I might have been. But I checked myself. My glasses had smashed and dug into my cheek, but the wound was not bad—anyway, not too deep. I had a bump on my forehead. My neck ached. My wrist hurt. But I was all right.

  It infuriated me that this had happened on a dry road, under sunny skies, so early in the trip. Now we were stuck, and it was all because of the incompetence of Mr. Fu. He had been driving too fast. But it was also my own fault for having said nothing.

  Mr. Fu had unpacked a shovel and was digging around the car. What good was that? We could not go anywhere on three wheels. It seemed hopeless. I debated whether to grab my bag and start hitchhiking; but in which direction? Mr. Fu had got himself into this mess; he could get himself out of it. I could not imagine how this car could ever be dragged onto the road. I looked around and thought: This is one of the emptiest places in the world.

  We took turns digging for a while, but this merely seemed a cosmetic endeavor, unearthing the car. And the more we saw of the car, the more wrecked it seemed.

  After twenty minutes or so, we were exhausted. Miss Sun was making little piles of broken bits of plastic that had been torn from the grille and scattered. These she intended to save, as if collecting them showed her deep concern.

  Some brown trucks were laboring slowly down the road. We had passed them hours ago.

  "Let's stop them," I said.

  "No," Mr. Fu said.

  Chines
e pride. He shook his head and waved me away. He knew they were Tibetans. What a loss of face for him if these savages witnessed this piece of stupid driving. He had no excuses.

  "Come back," Mr. Fu said. "Help me dig."

  But I did not turn. I was waving to the approaching trucks, and I was delighted to see them slowing down. It was a three-truck convoy, and when they parked, the Tibetans came flapping slowly through the desert, laughing with pleasure at the tipped-over car and Mr. Fu on his knees digging, and Miss Sun squatting like a lunatic with her piles of broken plastic. There were seven Tibetans. They looked very greasy in their old clothes, but I was reassured by their laughter and their squashed hats and their broken shoes: their ordinariness gave them the look of rescuers.

  I dug out my "List of Useful Tibetan Phrases" and consulted it. I said, "Tashi deleg!" (Hello—Good luck!)

  They returned the greeting and laughed some more.

  I pointed to the car. "Yappo mindoo." (That is not good.)

  They nodded and replied. True, they were saying. That's not good at all.

  "Nga Amayriga nay ray," I said. (I'm an American.)

  They said, "Amayriga, Amayriga!"

  I looked at my list again and put my finger on a phrase. I said, "Nga Lhasa la drogi yin." (I am going to Lhasa.)

  By now one of them had taken the shovel from Mr. Fu, and another was digging with his hands. One was unloading the trunk—pulling boxes out, unbolting the spare tire. Several of them were touching the wound on my face and going tsk, tsk.

  "Want a picture of the Dalai Lama?" I said.

  They nodded. Yes, yes!

  The others heard. They said, "Dalai Lama, Dalai Lama!"

  They dropped what they were doing and surrounded me as I pulled out the roll of portraits I had brought for just such an emergency. They were tough men, but they took the pictures with great gentleness and reverence, each one touching the paper to his head and bowing to me. They marveled at the pictures, while Mr. Fu and Miss Sun stood to the side, sulking.