Within three weeks Adam was the undisputed number one drinker in the English department. I was ranked second; Party Secretary Zhang slipped to third. In truth I wasn’t much of a drinker at home, but Fuling tolerance levels tended to be low, because many residents have a genetic intolerance of alcohol that is common among Asians. Even Party Secretary Zhang, despite his lofty ranking, turned bright red after a few drinks. This was one reason why local drinking patterns were so abusive with relatively light consequences; most people were genetically unable to become alcoholics. Once or twice a week they might be able to drink heavily, but they got too sick to do it all the time. It was a ritual rather than a habit.
In a pathetic way, drinking became one small thing that Adam and I were good at, although it was difficult to take much pride in this. If anything, it said a great deal about our troubles adjusting to Fuling life, because the banquets and the drinking, despite their strange childishness, represented one of our more comfortable environments. We gained instant respect for our tolerance levels, and to a certain degree this was how the department authorities communicated with us. If they had something important to tell us, or if a request needed to be made, it was handled at a banquet. Our colleagues, who usually seemed stiff and nervous around the waiguoren, loosened up once the baijiu started flowing. These events were strictly all-male—the only women involved were the waitresses who served the baijiu.
Before the December banquet, Adam and I were escorted into the English department office to meet our hosts for the evening. Two men stood up and shook our hands, smiling. One of them was a tall handsome man in his forties and the other was a short older man of perhaps sixty years. The tall man wore a new sweater, and from the way he carried himself it was clear that he was important—a cadre. It was also just as obvious that they were here to make some request of us, because they were sponsoring the meal. Teacher Sai and Dean Fu were there to translate.
“This is Mr. Wang from the Chinese department,” Teacher Sai said. “Mr. Wang came to the college in 1977—he was part of the first class when the college opened after the Great Cultural Revolution. He was the best English student, but English was not a preferred subject in those days. So he became a Chinese professor instead. But he is still very interested in English.”
Adam and I shook Teacher Wang’s hand again. Teacher Sai seemed to have forgotten the other man, who didn’t appear to be offended. Obviously he was accustomed to moving in the bigger man’s wake.
All of us sat down. Adam and I waited for the request; cynically I assumed that Teacher Wang wanted English lessons. Already I could imagine myself sitting in this cadre’s office, bored to tears while he said, slowly, “How-are-you?”
“Mr. Wang has heard that you studied literature,” Dean Fu said. “He wants to ask you some questions about American literature.”
This took me by surprise. I asked him what he meant.
“Mr. Wang is the editor of the college literary magazine,” said Dean Fu. “He has more than ten thousand books.”
He paused to let the number sink in. Then he leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “Mr. Wang,” he said, “has the most books of anybody in Fuling Teachers College.”
A proud smile flickered across Teacher Wang’s face and I could see that he understood what had been said. I wondered if Sichuanese men had book rankings as well as alcohol rankings, and what the relationship might be between these two sources of prestige. This was all uncharted territory—in Peace Corps training nobody had warned us about books.
I said that I knew less about American literature than English literature, but I’d try to answer his questions. Teacher Wang nodded and shot off his first query in Chinese to Dean Fu, who translated.
“Mr. Wang has a question about Saul Bellow,” he announced. “Does the average American understand his books?”
I said that I had read very little of Bellow’s work, but my impression was that his style was accessible, and that he was considered one of the best Jewish American writers and a voice of Chicago. Teacher Wang nodded, as if this was what he had expected to hear. He had another question ready.
“What about Joyce Carol Oates?” Dean Fu said. “Do you think that she follows in the tradition of Virginia Woolf?”
“Not really,” I said. “Most people say that Joyce Carol Oates isn’t a feminist writer. Actually, some feminists criticize her.”
This led us to a discussion on feminism, followed by Toni Morrison and black women writers, and then we came to southern literature. After that we talked about Hemingway and the “Dirty Realism” of authors like Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff. All of it was translated through Dean Fu, and as we talked I realized that he had an even more impressive knowledge of American literature than I had thought. I also realized that I was a jackass for assuming that the ten-thousand-book Teacher Wang needed my help to say “How-are-you.”
After half an hour we moved to the banquet hall. The first toast was a general one, for everybody at the table, and then Teacher Wang gave Adam and me a special toast. Party Secretary Zhang followed with another shot for the entire party. When the next toast came around, Teacher Sai pushed his cup away and grinned nervously.
“I can’t drink any more,” he said. “That is enough.”
“Drink it,” said Party Secretary Zhang. “All of it.”
“You know that I do not drink,” Teacher Sai said. He brought his hands together and bowed his head quickly in a pleading gesture. Teacher Sai was one of the brightest of the department teachers, a pudgy man in his forties who was always smiling. Tonight his face was already bright red after two shots. He shook his head again.
“No, no, no,” said Party Secretary Zhang. “You must do it for our guests.”
“I can’t.”
They were speaking English for our benefit, but then they shifted to Chinese. While arguing they fought over the cup—Teacher Sai tried to push it away while Party Secretary Zhang held it firmly on the table. Dean Fu and Teacher Wang grinned. They joined in, scoffing at Teacher Sai until at last he picked up the shot glass. Everybody watched.
It took him a long time to drain the cup. He drank it in three painful sips, and after the last one he gasped and coughed. He put the cup back down on the table. Within seconds the waitress was there to refill it. Teacher Sai quickly put his hand over the cup, shaking his head.
“That is enough,” he said.
Party Secretary Zhang tried to pry Teacher Sai’s hand away. The waitress stood by patiently, bottle in hand. It was a quintessentially Sichuanese scene—for every scroll painting of a lovely river they could have had ten depicting baijiu arguments, two men scrabbling over a cup while a young woman waited with a bottle.
“Seriously,” Teacher Sai said. “That is enough for me.”
“Miss Sai,” taunted Party Secretary Zhang, pulling at his hand.
“Miss Sai,” echoed Dean Fu, grinning.
Teacher Wang said something and everybody laughed. For a few minutes the entire table was focused on Teacher Sai’s cup. It was hard to believe that less than an hour ago we had been talking about Saul Bellow and Joyce Carol Oates. Finally Teacher Sai relented.
“Only one more,” he said. “This is the last one.”
The waitress filled his cup. Teacher Wang smiled and turned his attention toward Adam and me. He made a quick gesture, holding up his cup, and the three of us drank. Teacher Wang downed the baijiu easily and he was not turning red.
The food came and for a while the shots slowed. When they resumed, everybody had forgotten about Teacher Sai, who was only good entertainment at the start and finish of a banquet. He was too much hassle once the serious drinking started and now he sat sipping tea while the baijiu flowed in earnest.
There was strategy to this part of the banquet and usually the shots were preceded by low murmurings, the teachers speaking the Sichuan dialect while Adam and I muttered English back and forth. The trick was to get a two-for-one—if Party Secretary Zhang toasted both Adam and
me, then we would both drink and immediately afterward Dean Fu could do the same. Our response was to hit them with a preemptive strike; if we sensed that they were plotting, one of us would toast the pair, or the entire table, and then they would have to recover before resuming the attack. Occasionally they tried to focus on me, sensing weakness, but when that happened Adam would step in and cover me. That was acceptable in Sichuan—a friend could take a shot for you. Sichuanese drinking was a lot like war.
Every banquet had a leader, a sort of alcoholic alpha male who controlled the direction of the baijiu. Party Secretary Zhang always led the English-department events, but tonight he deferred to Teacher Wang. The big man worked quickly and with surprising fairness, toasting the entire table until the other teachers started to weaken. After that he focused on Adam and me, scorning the usual two-for-one as he traded personal shots between the two of us. It was a remarkable exhibition. After half an hour the three of us were still the most sober at the table, but I was fading quickly and Teacher Wang showed no signs of slowing. I heard Dean Fu and Party Secretary Zhang asking him to ease up, because they were afraid I would get sick, and at last the flurry of toasts ended.
Teacher Wang began to tell a long story. It was about a pedicab and he told it in Sichuanese while Teacher Sai translated. The story moved slowly and I was too drunk to listen carefully. My gaze wandered across the table until I found myself looking at the little man who had come with Teacher Wang. I had forgotten entirely about him and now he smiled. He said something, but I couldn’t understand; he was a dialect speaker and in any case the baijiu had not improved either of our language abilities. Finally he concentrated very hard, pronouncing four Mandarin syllables clearly.
“Sha shi bi ya,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” I said in Chinese. “What did you say?”
“Sha shi bi ya.”
I shook my head and he repeated it a few more times, gesturing as if he were reading a book. Finally something clicked in my mind.
“Shakespeare?” I said.
He laughed and gave me the thumbs up. “Di gen si.”
“Dickens?”
He nodded and laughed again.
“Ma ke tu wen.”
“Mark Twain.”
Slowly we made our way through Melville, Norris, O’Connor, and Cheever. It took me a long time to guess Norris and Cheever. There wasn’t anything else that we were able to talk about and I never learned the little man’s name, although he was able to communicate that he especially liked the Norris novel McTeague, which is perhaps the only great American novel about a dentist. Nowadays hardly anybody in America reads Norris but there was at least one fan along the Upper Yangtze.
Teacher Wang finished with the pedicab story. Even though I had missed most of it I could gather that it was about a time when he was very drunk and spent half an hour negotiating with a pedicab, only to realize that he was already in front of his hotel. All of the men laughed at the story. Listening to its translation reminded them that Teacher Sai was still there.
“Drink,” said Party Secretary Zhang, pointing at Teacher Sai’s cup.
“I can’t.”
“Drink.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Drink.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Miss Sai!”
“Miss Sai!”
Finally he shuddered through another shot. It was clear that the banquet was breaking up, and Teacher Wang held his cup up to Adam and me. We raised our glasses.
“To books,” I said.
But Teacher Wang had something else in mind. He spoke to me, seriously now, and Teacher Sai translated.
“Mr. Wang,” he said, “wants you to write something for the college magazine.”
Our cups were frozen above the table.
“What do you mean?”
“He wants you to write an article about literature.”
“American or English? And how long?”
They discussed this quickly. Our three cups were still in midair; it was without question the most favorable instant for a request.
“American is better,” said Teacher Sai. “Only about ten thousand words.”
I caught my breath. “I don’t know American literature well enough for that,” I said. “Tell him I can do either Elizabethan poetry or Charles Dickens, because that’s what I studied at Oxford. Or Shakespeare. But otherwise it would be difficult. I don’t have many notes here.”
There was another discussion. My arm was growing heavy. Teacher Wang nodded.
“Dickens,” said Teacher Sai. “Ten thousand words.”
We drank the shot. The baijiu was starting to taste dangerously foul and I shuddered after it was down. A good banquet was like a good short story: there was always a point, but you didn’t quite understand it until the very end. Now I realized why we had been invited tonight, but I wasn’t resentful; at least now I knew how a Sichuanese literary journal recruited new material. The table bullied Teacher Sai for a few more minutes and then all of us staggered out.
I HOPED THAT EVERYBODY would forget about the promised essay, but within a week the quiet reminders started. I delayed, explaining that I was busy with teaching, but then I began to receive messages about Teacher Wang’s impending deadline. Finally I sat down and wrote what he wanted, which was an essay about Dickens’ relationship to political reform.
I wrote it as quickly as possible. I argued that Dickens was essentially a middle-class figure who liked writing about social problems not because he wanted revolutionary change, but rather because these subjects made for good creative material. I knew the Marxists wouldn’t like this approach, so I added a line that accused Dickens of being a Capitalist Roader. I liked being able to use that term in a literary essay. Otherwise the article was not very enjoyable to write, and I loaded the descriptions in order to jack up the word count. Teacher Sai had to translate it into Chinese. For a solid week he struggled with the damn thing, coming into my office with questions about my inflated prose, holding his head in his hands.
ON THE SECOND DAY of January, the city of Fuling held a road race in the center of town. It was the Twenty-second Annual Long Race to Welcome Spring, and all of the city’s schools and danwei, or work units, competed against each other. Two weeks before the race, Dean Fu asked if I would run on the college team. He was obviously nervous, because it hadn’t been long since the problems of the faculty basketball tournament.
“You must understand,” he said, smiling uncomfortably. “There will be many peasants and uneducated people. They don’t know anything about sportsmanship, and perhaps some of them will be rough. Also, in twenty-one years they have never had a foreigner in the long race. They welcome you to participate, but I think it will be different from in America.”
I could see that Dean Fu thought it would be simpler if I didn’t run, and I knew he was right. For a while I considered not taking part, because the basketball tournament had been a low point in an otherwise good semester. All of the difficult parts of my life were already public; there wasn’t any reason to seek out more crowds.
But there are no referees in running, and it is not a contact sport. There would be crowds but I figured that at least I would be moving. It couldn’t be much different from a race in America—and even if it was, I was curious to see what it was like, at least once. I told Dean Fu that I wanted to participate.
He explained that every runner had to have a physical exam, and a week before the race I visited a doctor in the college infirmary. It was a low tile-roofed building next to the croquet court, one of the old structures on campus that remained from the pre-Cultural Revolution days when the college had been a high school.
The doctor checked my pulse and blood pressure. After each test he smiled and told me that I was very healthy, and I thanked him. Then he led me to a side room where a dirty white box-shaped instrument hung on the wall. Dean Fu said, “Now you will have a chest X ray.”
I stopped at the entrance to the room. “I don’t want to have a chest X ray,” I said.
“It’s no problem,” said Dean Fu, smiling. “It’s very safe.”
“I don’t want a chest X ray,” I said again, and I looked at the dirty box and thought: Especially I don’t want this chest X ray. “Why is it necessary?”
“Everybody in the race must have one. To make sure they are healthy.”
“Everybody?” I asked, and he nodded. I asked how many people would be running.
“More than two thousand and five hundred.”
“And all of them must have a chest X ray before they can run?”
“Yes,” he said. “That is the rule. It is very safe.”
It struck me as a ludicrous notion—that a city with a per capita income of about forty American dollars a month would require a chest X ray from each of the 2,500 participants in a four-kilometer road race. I had my suspicions about what was really happening: some administrator in the college was probably worried about me dropping dead in the middle of the race, and they wanted to cover their tracks. It was always Dean Fu’s job to convey such commands to the waiguoren, and occasionally he served as a filter as much as a translator. It was a lousy job and I always felt sorry for him when I sensed that this was happening, but there was nothing to do about it except try to find a tactful solution.
We were at an impasse. Dean Fu could see that I was serious about refusing to have an X ray, and I knew that he couldn’t simply back down and say that the procedure wasn’t in fact required. We stood there for a moment, the doctor watching expectantly. Finally I told Dean Fu that I would go to my apartment and call the Peace Corps office in Chengdu.
I tried to call but the medical officer wasn’t in. I sat in my bedroom for ten minutes, reading a book, and then I returned to the infirmary.
“I’m very sorry,” I said, “but the Peace Corps told me I can’t have a chest X ray. I don’t know what we can do about this.”
River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze Page 10