River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze

by Peter Hessler

  I started to realize that in a place like Fuling it actually wasn’t so difficult to learn spoken Chinese once you had the foundation. Virtually nobody knew English, and there was so much curiosity about waiguoren that people constantly approached me, and once we started talking there seemed no limit to their interest and patience. The most important part of my study routine was simply making myself available—I sat in the teahouse with my textbook, and whoever was walking past would stop to see what the waiguoren was reading. We’d start talking and if it was a good conversation it would last for thirty minutes, and then somebody else would stop. I’d spend three hours there, the xiaojies refilling my cup whenever it cooled, and in that time I’d have conversations with more than a dozen people. The city was teaching me Chinese.

  Above the teahouse was a karaoke bar where they had prostitutes, and sometimes young men would walk past me on their way upstairs. Often they were drunk, moving in packs with their beepers and cigarettes, and sometimes they’d stop to talk. Usually I could tell they just wanted to give the waiguoren a hard time and I’d pretend I didn’t understand, and they’d laugh and move on. Song Furong thought that was funny, and after the young men had left we’d talk about why I hadn’t liked them. That was something else I realized that semester: One of the benefits of being a waiguoren was that nobody could tell how much you knew.

  I had finished the language lessons about catching trains and saying goodbye, and now my new textbook dealt with Chinese history and politics. It was a Chinese-published book with a Chinese political agenda, which made the classes much more interesting, because the vocabulary was useful and I could watch the way my tutors reacted to the material. One chapter featured a political debate between two fictional American students of Chinese, one of whom asked how it was possible that China could be a democratic country when it was led by only one party. The other American student, named John, answered:

  Why can’t a country led by a single party achieve a high level of democracy? The Chinese Communist Party represents the interests of every group, and the Chinese people enjoy wide-ranging democratic rights.

  When we reviewed that lesson one day in class, Teacher Kong paused and ran his finger over the paragraph. “Some people,” he said, “would not agree with that.”

  I said that I didn’t know much about it, although most Americans had their own opinions about Chinese politics.

  “What do most Americans think?” he asked.

  “Most Americans think that China is not a democratic country.”

  I wouldn’t have said that to any of my students, or anybody on the street, but it was different with Teacher Kong. I knew he wasn’t a dissident—and indeed he would join the Communist Party himself the next year—but he was slow to judge and he could listen to ideas without either flatly accepting or refuting them. In Fuling those were rare qualities.

  “Our China is different from America, I think,” he said. “The education level in America is higher. Most of the Chinese are peasants, and if they chose our leaders directly it would be dangerous, because anybody could lie to them, or trick them. China isn’t ready for that yet. But that’s just my opinion—I don’t know if it’s correct or not.”

  He appeared to be slightly uncomfortable with the subject and I didn’t pursue it. And in truth I wasn’t certain about my own notion of democracy, which had broadened considerably since my arrival in China. Part of this was because the Chinese government also claimed the word, which made me consider how it was sometimes abused in America. Teacher Kong’s remark was cynical, but at the same time there was a strain of idealism in the way he looked at American-style democracy, because he didn’t realize that in fact the poor and uneducated rarely bothered to vote in the United States. Sometimes that was how I felt about democracy—regardless of whether it was the Chinese or the American government claiming to be empowered by the common man, part of it was dishonest wordplay. But even at my most cynical I recognized that there was an enormous difference in the degree of dishonesty.

  Living in Fuling taught me that democracy is as much a matter of tolerance as of choice. After talking with Teacher Kong, I thought about my own participation in America’s system, and I realized just how shallow my involvement had been. I had never cast a vote that truly made a difference, and I never would; elections are not decided by a single tally. Nor had I ever played a major role in organizing a demonstration, and I had yet to react to an injustice by writing letters or alerting the press. Essentially, this was the extent of my role in American democracy: casting meaningless votes and accepting the results. But still I didn’t feel particularly powerless, because I knew that my role resulted from my own decisions, and I could always increase my involvement if something struck me as intolerable. In the past I had simply chosen not to be involved, and this choice was just as democratic as any positive act.

  Many of these democratic options had been made extremely difficult in Fuling, where the price of dissent was high. Or at least I assumed that it was, because I had read about Chinese dissidents; I certainly didn’t meet very many in Fuling. It was far more common to meet people like Teacher Kong, who seemed uninspired by the notion of democracy. Of course, such citizens were the natural by-product of a system like China’s, but this worked both ways: the Chinese system could also be seen as the natural creation of people who had little faith in their own power. As to which had come first, the people or the system, that was hard to say. But it was striking that while most Fuling residents were completely disengaged from public affairs, there wasn’t a strong sense of powerlessness that accompanied this condition. Rather they didn’t seem to care very much, and it wasn’t much different from the way I felt in America. In the end, Fuling struck me as a sort of democracy—perhaps a Democracy with Chinese Characteristics—because the vast majority of the citizens quietly tolerated the government. And the longer I lived there, the more I was inclined to see this as the silent consent of people who had chosen not to exercise other options.

  The week after my class with Teacher Kong, I reviewed the same chapter in my textbook with Teacher Liao. When we came to John’s response, I asked her what she thought.

  “That’s correct,” she said. “China is a democratic country.”

  “But some Chinese think it’s a problem that there’s only one party, don’t they?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “All of us support the Communist Party. And we have elections all the time—we had one recently. China is a democratic country.”

  “Do you think that China has any Capitalist Characteristics?” I asked, because this was something else that Teacher Kong and I had discussed. We had talked about the way capitalism was taking hold as Chinese state-owned enterprises were privatized, and how the reforms allowed people to own private businesses. But everything was different with Teacher Liao—the language was the same, but its political parameters shifted dramatically whenever I changed between my two teachers.

  “China has no Capitalist Characteristics,” she said flatly. “It is Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.”

  It was pointless to argue with Teacher Liao, at least with regard to politics, where she strictly followed the government line. And it was remarkable how far this line stretched; in Fuling bookstores you could buy a copy of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, which included Article 35, Section II:

  Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession, and of demonstration.

  That was almost as good as the slave-owning American revolutionaries writing about equality. My favorite part of the Chinese Constitution was Article 32, Section 1:

  The People’s Republic of China may grant asylum to foreigners who request it for political reasons.

  Newspapers were the same way, and anybody in Fuling who wanted real news relied on either the Voice of America, itself a propaganda organ, or xiaodao xiaoxi, which translated as “small alley news,” or word of m
outh. It seemed incredible that in a modernizing country of China’s size many people turned to rumor as the most reliable source for information about current events. To me, this was the most substantial political distinction between America and China—even though much of what America believed about itself was also fraudulent, at least the press and publishers could express unorthodox views. It wasn’t until I went to China that I realized a person could become homesick for conspiracy theories.

  At the start of the spring semester, an English-speaking teacher from another department asked if he could borrow some literature books, and I invited him to stop by my apartment. I showed him my small collection—Hemingway, Jack London, Mark Twain, a Norton Anthology. I also had some political books about China, which he examined carefully.

  “Those books all criticize China,” I said. “I don’t know if they are true or not, but probably you wouldn’t like them.”

  His eyes lit up. He was a tiny man with thick glasses and a jutting jaw, and he took my copy of China Wakes and looked at the back cover. “In China we can’t get books like this,” he said.

  “That book is very negative,” I said. “It was written by two reporters for the New York Times. Some of it is about the student protests in 1989.”

  “Can I borrow it?” he asked.

  I saw no harm in that and I gave him the book. I asked him how he usually found out about things that were forbidden, and he mentioned the small alley news. Recently the foreign press had carried reports of ethnic unrest in the far-western province of Xinjiang, and out of curiosity I asked if he had heard anything.

  “I’ve heard that there are some problems there,” he said. “Or actually, they said on the television that there are no problems there. But if there were no problems, why would they say so on the television? So I knew there must be something wrong. But I don’t know exactly what is happening.”

  I gave him a recent copy of Newsweek that included an article about Xinjiang, and he took his book and left. Over the semester he came periodically to borrow my books, although he never said much about what he thought of them. He was a shy, quiet man who never seemed comfortable talking with me, and it was the same way with a couple of young English teachers who occasionally stopped by my apartment. I sensed that these men were searching for friendship, but something seemed to be holding them back. Perhaps it was their own uncertainty, but more likely it was the warnings of the college; I never learned for sure. To me they were nothing more than shadowy figures who seemed to be groping for something that couldn’t be found in Fuling.

  Teacher Liao was different—she had no patience for the foreign view of China. In some ways I couldn’t blame her; the American press tended to portray a China that was overwhelmingly negative and Beijing-centered. And yet like any waiguoren in China, I knew that I had access to a great deal of information that was unavailable to the Chinese, and as a result I often felt as if I understood the political situation better than the locals. It was impossible to avoid this type of arrogance, even though I realized that it was misleading and condescending, and I was careful not to voice my opinions openly. But Teacher Liao obviously noticed my skepticism about the material we studied, and I, in turn, sensed her suspicion of what I had been taught in America. She liked that I was learning Chinese fairly quickly, and I could see that she respected my efforts to study the language. But as my Chinese improved we began to see each other more clearly, and soon there was no avoiding the central issue in our relationship: that I was a waiguoren and she was Chinese.

  During the spring semester our relationship grew increasingly unhealthy, fueled by the political and historical lessons in my book, and often there was a definite tension as we prodded each other carefully. When the textbook discussed the Opium Wars, she quietly pointed out that America had also benefited from the unequal treaties that were forced upon the Chinese, and she lingered over the description of the waiguoren looting and burning the Summer Palace. During our review of the chapter on science and technology, she was careful to note that although the American experts had said there were no major oil reserves in China, native scientists had discovered the vast Daqing fields after Liberation. This pleased Teacher Liao immensely—she pointed out that the Chinese were now self-sufficient in oil, whereas America had to rely on the Middle East.

  I had never been a patriot, and certainly I had never been patriotic about oil, but things were different now—I was a waiguoren, and I was developing a waiguoren’s sensitivity to any sort of slight. The second time Teacher Liao bragged about China’s oil self-sufficiency, I noted that China had actually become a net oil importer in 1995. Although Teacher Liao distrusted my sources (Newsweek), I could see that she was annoyed by the readiness and precision of my statistics. And I pointed out that Americans don’t worry much about being self-sufficient in things like oil, because we have good relations with many countries and have never made an effort to close ourselves to the outside world. More sensible voices sounded in my head—what about Pat Buchanan? America First? the anti-Chinese laws in the nineteenth century?—but balance was not my goal. I was fighting fire with fire, and I responded to propaganda with more of the same.

  Those were our Opium Wars—quiet and meaningless battles over Chinese and American history, fueled by indirect remarks and careful innuendo. The same thing was happening in Adam’s classes, and sometimes we discussed the best way to react when Teacher Liao started to needle us about the unequal treaties or the loss of Hong Kong. It was difficult because she always had the advantage; the book was on her side, and so was the language. In Chinese, the Korean War is known as the “War of Resistance Against the Americans and in Support of the Koreans,” and it is difficult to discuss a war with that name and make the Americans look good. And the Chinese use personal pronouns when they speak of national affairs—it’s “our China” and “your America.” I found this to be a small but critical quirk in the language; every political discussion quickly became polarized, and every aspect of America—both its successes and its failures—became my personal affair.

  In response, Adam and I learned to attack Teacher Liao’s soft spots. It was always effective to mention innocently how rich Hong Kong had become under British rule, and we knew that we could get a rise out of her by talking about Premier Li Peng. He wasn’t popular in China—in particular, many Chinese intellectuals hated him, because of his old-style conservatism and because he had supported the use of violence in quelling the Tiananmen Square protests. And it was no secret that the foreign press criticized him mercilessly. One day there was a lull in class and I brought up the subject, just to see how Teacher Liao would react.

  “What do the Chinese people think of Li Peng?” I asked.

  “All of us like Li Peng,” she said quickly. Invariably her responses were like that—all or nothing, white or black.

  I nodded and continued, “He had some guanxi with Zhou Enlai, didn’t he?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know how to say it—I read in a history book that Li Peng didn’t have parents.” I was trying to say “orphan” in a roundabout way I was hoping to get to nepotism. “How do you say it if a child doesn’t have parents?” I asked.

  “Sishengzi?” she said.

  “Right,” I said. “I read that Li Peng was a sishengzi, and Zhou Enlai took care of him.”

  Her reaction was immediate.

  “Budui!” she said angrily. “That’s foreign luanshou! That’s waiguoren talking noise! It’s not true! I know you read that in your foreign newspapers, but it’s completely false!”

  It was the first time I’d seen her openly angry, and I had never imagined that Li Peng’s adoption was such a touchy subject. I asked her to write that word, sishengzi, and she scratched it hard on my notebook, her face red. The three characters translated literally as “personal child.” I grabbed my dictionary and looked it up: “illegitimate child; bastard.” I had been saying that Li Peng was Zhou Enlai’s bastard son.

 
“Uhm,” I said, “that’s not the right word. Sorry.”

  I picked up the dictionary again and fumbled through it until I found the correct term: gu’er. I apologized again for the mistake and she seemed relieved; yes, she said, Li Peng had been adopted by Zhou Enlai. I left it at that—I was embarrassed to have pushed her so far, even if it had been partly unintentional. The next class she asked me pointedly why the American government helped its athletes take performance-enhancing drugs, and we went around again, this time with me on the defensive. And so it went every other week, our Opium Wars raging as the countdown to Hong Kong’s return drew closer and closer.

  ONE DAY IN LATE MARCH, I was studying Chinese at my desk when I saw a lizard skittering across the ceiling. He was dull green with bulging black eyes, and he moved in jerks and starts, like a film missing every third frame.

  He was the first one I’d seen since October. On warm autumn nights the apartment had been full of them, slipping across the ceiling in search of mosquitoes. Light startled them; often I’d walk into a room, flip the switch, and three or four would fall off the ceiling. They always landed flatly, their webbed feet slapping against the concrete floor. The March lizard was a small one, and he crept slowly around the doorway and disappeared.

  The peach trees on Raise the Flag Mountain showed tiny white buds. Flowers on campus were beginning to bloom, and every few days we had rain. The sand banks and rocky islands in the rivers were steadily shrinking. The White Crane Ridge disappeared.

  For two days the winter fog faded and the sun shone more brightly than it had in months. I went running in a short-sleeved shirt. Peasants in the fields were wading behind oxen, plowing the mud. Rice-planting season was here.