by You Jin
To me, my notes are even more important than my passport. If I lose my passport, it can be replaced with a little money and a little inconvenience. If I lose my notes, on the other hand, the whole trip, everything that has been brewing in my mind, will just drift away, never to return. So while I am travelling, I always keep my notes close to my chest, as if they are a great treasure.
Once when I was in Peru, I went to shop in a town infested with pickpockets. Even though I was extra alert, when we left the town, I found that my bag had been slashed. I sucked in my breath, so frightened that my hair stood on end. When I frantically searched my bag and found that my notes were still there, my grief turned to joy, and a huge smile spread across my face. Seeing that I had been robbed and yet looked so happy, the people around me thought I was traumatised and had gone crazy, so they avoided me.
In the Lion’s Den
“Isn’t it dangerous to travel on your own?” Every time someone asks me this question, I say, “There was a person who didn’t dare to go out on long trips, because she was afraid her plane would crash, her ferry sink, or her train derail. Once, she was sitting at home quietly reading the newspaper. Suddenly her rotating ceiling fan broke from the ceiling, and came crashing down on her, and she was killed on the spot.”
Life is full of unpredictable accidents. Whether at home or in some faraway place, one can meet such instances.
As an independent traveller, aside from adapting ourselves to circumstances, there are, of course, precautions to take. When we went to South Africa, we had originally planned to travel by public transportation between cities. However, the week before we started our journey, we heard reports of unrest in South Africa, with much violence and killing in the cities, making it the place with the highest tourist fatalities.
For safety’s sake, we changed our plans and decided to rent a car and drive ourselves. This proved to be a wise decision, because public security was unbelievably bad. Taking the public transportation system was like placing one’s neck onto a sharp blade, like playing with one’s life. Driving our own rented vehicle, we had to follow the company’s strict regulations, which required us to keep our windows up and doors locked when we were in the car, whether day or night. We were also required to be back at our hotel by eight each night. If we saw any hitchhikers, we were not to stop the car. During this month-long tour, though we suffered some terrifying incidents, we were never in any real danger, and we returned home safely.
However, it’s also true that you cannot play by the rules all the time when you are travelling. Sometimes we just have to gamble with fortune.
When travelling to Morocco, I was very interested in the culture of the Berber people. At the time, there were just over ten million Berbers living in Northern Africa. This huge aboriginal tribe was made up mostly of illiterate manual labourers. The men were farmers or shepherds; the women worked at home, making pottery and weaving. In the 8th century, the Arabs came to the area, and brought great changes to Morocco, homeland of the Berber people; Islam spread widely, becoming the national religion and establishing economic and social stability. Currently, the ratio of Berbers to Arabs is about 50:50. In Morocco, the happy Berber people stubbornly preserve their own traditions, struggling on the edge of poverty.
I was extremely interested in Berber culture, but it was very difficult to find an inroad; one day, the opportunity fell into my lap. When I was taking a bus from the northern city Fes to Tinghir in the south, I was seated next to a Berber person. We had a good conversation, and he invited me to his hometown, Rich, to spend a few days. About three thousand people lived in the town, all Berbers. As soon as I heard this, my eyes lit up. It was like my wish was coming true with no effort on my part. But when I calmed down a little, the question came to me—was this fellow, this Berber man called Hassan, to be trusted? I considered him carefully. The dark face was not that of an old man, though he did have a wrinkled look to him. His short hair curled about wildly, and his moustache was not trimmed well, mischievously sticking into his mouth. When I was taking measure of him, the name Sun Erniang, a character from The Water Margin who cooked steamed buns filled with human meat, popped into my head. Was this plain Berber fellow in front of me now a modern-day dealer in human flesh? Caught on the horns of this dilemma, I suddenly came into contact with his smiling eyes and thought to myself, If I am cooked and made stuffing for a steamed bun, doesn’t that just mean it was fated to be?
When this thought crossed my mind, I was no longer torn. I agreed to go with him. James and I changed our plans and set a new itinerary. We followed him off the bus, took a taxi, and made our way to his hometown. It was a 60-kilometre journey through a wild, mountainous region, with hardly any human traffic. As we drove along that dirt road in silence, I suddenly had the ridiculous feeling that I hardly knew where I was. At that moment, it would have been a lie to say I was not a little worried. When we reached Rich, it was so dark I could not see my hand in front of me. We went into Hassan’s house, and I discovered that cows, goats, horses, donkeys, chickens and other animals occupied the front of the house, while Hassan and his family lived in the back, humans and animals co-existing in harmony.
I stayed in this desolate aboriginal village for several days, gathering a great deal of first-hand information about the Berber people, and also collecting numerous valuable snapshots. Later, when I wrote the travel piece “A Happy Meeting Over a Pot of Tea”, these pictures were laid out together with the text. Frankly, before I travelled to Morocco, I had never even dreamed that I would be able to break through and enter a Berber village, much less enter a Berber house. Looking back, if I had not bet with my fortune and plunged into the lion’s den, I would not have had such a valuable experience.
Of course, I have also often had experiences that made me break out in a cold sweat, such as the time I travelled to Yugoslavia in June 1991. At the time, many of the ordinary people in the country rented out rooms to tourists. They often waited at train or long distance bus stations for customers, holding signs high overhead with the address and price written on them. Naturally, there is some danger involved with such arrangements, but, adapting to the situation, James and I found our lodgings this way throughout our trip.
One day, we travelled to the western part of Yugoslavia, to Split, a city with a population of 150,000 people. This town faced the sea on one side and mountains on the other. The scenery was stunning. Many old relics stood among modern buildings, resulting in a startling, perfect combination of the new and the old. The downtown area was quite lively, with many small stalls selling all kinds of handicrafts. There were numerous open-air cafés in the square, with musicians entertaining the crowds. The atmosphere of the whole town was harmonious, laid back, serene and pleasant, but one night when we went back to our quarters and chatted with our landlord and his friends, I realised that the serenity was only superficial. In fact, the whole little town was a pot of oil, boiling inside, though not yet boiling over, so there was no steam yet, creating an illusion of serenity.
At the time, two republics in northern Yugoslavia, Slovenia and Croatia, were fighting to separate from the central authorities, pushing for independence. Everyone in the country, old and young, grew very excited and emotional when they talked about this. Practically all the residents of Split talked about nothing but civil war. Because of this tense atmosphere, we cut our trip short, returning to Singapore on 15 June 1991. On 26 June, the Slovenians and Croatians made their push for independence, and all air travel was halted, while the whole of Yugoslavia was thrown into the turmoil of civil war. If we had not cut our travels short and returned home, we would have been trapped right in the centre of the battle zone.
Characters Entering the Travel Narrative
There are several different approaches to travel writing. My personal favourite is to make characters the central focus of the piece. The main reason for this is that scenery does not change over the centuries, and sometimes a postcard can express more than a thousand
words. People, on the other hand, are an expression of their times, and are ever changeable. Every country has different races and, even though they come together to form a single nation, times and experiences change, and these things shape the mental outlook of the people. People are a reflection of the nation. Through the living circumstances and trend of thought of the ordinary people, one can usually objectively perceive the country’s political climate, economic development, living standards and other such points of interest.
I often bring people into my narrative, as a form of praise to humanity. For instance, in “Czech Music, a Silent Composition”, I wrote about a mixed-race couple I met in the Czech Republic. Before I went there, I was travelling in Portugal. There, a Chinese friend I met at a Chinese restaurant said to me, “When you go to the Czech Republic, there is a person you have to meet. She is very hospitable, a person of rare warmth. Any Chinese person who goes to Prague and encounters any difficulty need only contact her and she will find a way to help you.”
I took the phone number he gave me and, when I reached Prague, I called this woman. She had originally come from Beijing and was called Tang Yunling. As soon as she heard that I had travelled from Singapore to the Czech Republic, she asked excitedly, “Where are you? I’ll come see you right away.”
Yunling’s husband, Ruzicka, was a Czech man. They had met when he was studying in Beijing. After they married, Yunling dutifully followed him to Prague. In the 1990s, there were only a handful of Chinese people in Prague, but Yunling managed to start a Chinese tuition school, spreading this beautiful language to the Czech people. She also collaborated with a Czech Sinologist to publish the world’s first Czech-Mandarin dictionary.
These sorts of encounters really touched me. When the article about my Czech encounter appeared in the Taiwan newspapers, the European Daily reprinted it. When the renowned author Zhao Shuxia, who had been living in Switzerland for a long time, read it, she wrote especially to ask me for Yunling’s address, hoping to invite her to join the European Chinese Culture Association.
In “Waiting for His Flag”, I wrote about a Singaporean, Xie Dali, who had lived for many years in Chile. I went to Chile’s southernmost city, Punta Arenas, a remote town of just 110,000 people, with countless penguins as their tourist attraction. When we drove our rented car to this remote spot at the end of the world, we never imagined we would see a Chinese restaurant there. We went in to eat, but the menu was all in Spanish. We took out our dictionary and ordered in Spanish, but the waitress could not understand us, making our conversation futile. After a moment, a young Chinese fellow appeared and, in fluent Spanish, helped us out of our embarrassing situation. As we chatted, we learned that Dali was the restaurant owner’s son, and he was a Singaporean. Learning that we were compatriots, we were all extremely happy. After we ate, he kindly offered to drive us around and show us the sights.
Several years earlier, he had travelled all the way from Singapore to Chile, mostly to help his mother with her restaurant. His other motive was to run his own container shipping business at the South Pole, flying there once every six weeks. We were in town for just two days, and he accompanied us on both days. When we parted, he asked us to send him a Singaporean flag when we got home. He said earnestly, “No matter how things develop for me in Chile or how successful I become, I will never give up my Singaporean citizenship.” This confident, dignified, self respecting, independent young man showed me the beautiful sentiment of one who possesses national consciousness. After “Waiting for His Flag” was published, I received messages from many readers who wanted to contact Xie Dali and make friends with this extraordinary young man.
Sometimes, using people as the focal point of my stories can mirror life in other countries. In 1994, I travelled to Myanmar. The country had been closed to the outside world for more than thirty years. After it opened up, I quickly arranged to fly over and see the place for myself. The situation was even more dire than I expected. Unemployment was high, and even those who were employed earned very little. For example, a teacher only earned about 700 kyat (or seven US dollars) a month, and a doctor only about 1500 kyat (or 15 US dollars) a month. The pay of blue-collar workers was worse. Workers in a coffee shop worked 365 days a year for at least ten hours a day, and only earned 600 kyat (or six US dollars) a month. In the more remote areas, the villagers did manual labour night and day, and did not even receive enough to take care of their basic needs. This led many mothers to give their children away, in hopes that they would find a better life. Once, while we were eating in a small café in the eastern city of Taunggyi, we saw a gaunt boy of about seven who, as soon as the customers arrived, would rush to pour tea into their cups. As soon as the customers left, he cleared their dishes. When no one required his attention, he pulled out a washcloth and went about cleaning here and there. When I was talking with the café owner, he told me in helpless tones, “I go to the mountain village every three months to buy native products, and this boy’s mother has four children, all starving. She begged me to take this boy on, and I saw how poor the family was, so I took him.”
When I later visited the sandbanks on the Irrawaddy River, and I saw with my own eyes how the women performed the backbreaking work of carrying sand in exchange for very little pay, it was really shocking. They filled a large, round bamboo basket with sand, weighing about 40kg and, though they themselves were of very small build, they carried it on their heads effortlessly. They carried and emptied the sand, their actions as rhythmic as wound up robots. When the boats were filled with sand, they moved to the bank, where two other women waited. The new women stepped onto the boats, filled their baskets, then hoisted them on their heads and carried them to the bank, where trucks waited to carry the sand to various places. Each boat held about 1500kg of sand, and each basket could carry 40kg, so to fill or empty one boatload of sand took more than 30 trips. Each boatload of sand, filled to capacity, was worth 40 kyat. Two women working together, without resting, could load or unload about four boats a day. In other words, working like a beast of burden, each person only earned about 80 kyat (80 US cents) a day. This sort of income was considered fairly high in Myanmar.
During the dry season from November through June each year, the women stayed on the sandbank. During the rainy season from July through October, the tides would rise, flooding the sandbank, so the women would move to the nearby village, having nothing to do as they waited anxiously for the next dry season to come. The thatch houses on the sandbanks were shockingly simple, better described as human nests. Aside from a large, round earthen bowl in each home, there were only an old wooden crate, a few cups and bowls, and a bit of clothing. The living circumstances of the local people effectively explain the current economic situation in Myanmar.
Many people have a negative impression of the free-spirited, singing tribe, the gypsies. When I was travelling in Spain, I met several gypsies, none of whom earned an honest living, with the old being swindlers, the middle-aged pickpockets, and the young beggars. Like many other tourists, I had a bad impression of them and intended to keep my distance. Later, I met a gypsy named Marcial who made me understand the dark side of their lives.
The gypsies migrated from India to Spain about two hundred years ago to the mountain city of Granada in southern and central Spain, where they discovered a system of caves previously inhabited by heretics. These vagrants cleared the skeletons left in the caves, and settled down in them. They had children and, as their numbers grew, they dug more caves. According to rough census information, more than four or five hundred caves were opened during the heyday, each occupied by a dozen or so gypsies. Later, a torrential rain collapsed the caves, and many innocent lives were lost. The surviving gypsies moved to the mountainside and dug more caves to live in, and have stayed in these conditions until today. They are not generally accepted by society, and are given no educational opportunities. Most of the men do manual labour such as woodworking and pottery. Most of the women sing and dance. Because their lives
are very difficult, a portion of the gypsies swindle and pick pockets to survive. Some gypsy children have developed the habit of begging, and in their perception, there is no shame attached to it.
After some investigation and in-depth conversations with the gypsies, I came to understand more about their lifestyle and their development. I felt real affinity and sympathy toward them then. Later, when I wrote about them, what flowed from my pen was not cruel scorn, but tender portrayal and descriptions.
When travelling, talking with the local people allows me to uncover a country’s innate character and not be deceived by its surface appearance. In 1983, before my first trip to Argentina, I had read a lot about the place, and learnt that this was a country burdened by foreign debt. But when I arrived at the capital, Buenos Aires, there appeared before me something I could hardly believe—all the streets and alleys were filled with light. Every few steps, I came across a café or restaurant filled to capacity with diners. The tango was very popular there, and when music filled the air, pedestrians stopped in the square to dance. It was a lively, peaceful scene.
My mind filled with questions, I talked with the local people, and found out that everything was a façade. At the time, the Argentinian peso was plummeting, losing value every day, while prices soared. The local people were extremely anxious, but, to put on a front, they ate, drank and partied. When they had the chance, they changed the money they earned into US dollars and hid it under their pillows. Their philosophy of life, then, was to enjoy it while they could, and to care less about the next day. Had I not bothered to talk with the local people, I probably would have been deceived by the dancing and drinking I saw everywhere, and written an unrealistic report.