Bound for Vietnam

by Lydia Laube

  After half an hour the boat’s hooter gave a loud blast and we were off again. The Yangtze Star, for all its size and appearance of being top heavy, took off smartly from landings and rapidly gathered speed.

  The Yangtze River is known as Chang Jiang, the long river. And so it is. It is the third longest river in the world, and is beaten only by the Nile and the Amazon. Arising in the snow-covered Tanggulashan mountains in Qinghai, it flows through Tibet and cuts across the middle of China through seven provinces, before emptying into the East China Sea near Shanghai. The voyage from Shanghai to Chongqing takes at least eight days.

  At first the riverbanks were out of sight, one or two kilometres away. Later the river became less immense. It was still very wide, but the trees and greenery on its banks could be seen occasionally. By mid-morning, passing kilometres of smoke stacks and grey buildings, we came to the large city of Nanjing. This was the ancient capital of China and has a recorded history that dates back to the Warring States Period in 476 BC. Here the sluggish brown river was crossed by a good-looking bridge, which our boat pulled to one side to pass under as though the captain knew the channel well. This impressive double-story bridge – road on top, rail below– is one of the world’s longest.

  After Nanning, rice paddies and rushes lined the muddy shore from which now and then rows of green fishing nets protruded, while men in small boats fished close to the banks with nets that stuck out in semi-circles from their sides. Behind the paddy fields trees marched to the skyline. On the two or three stops we made during the day I took the opportunity to pound across the barges that were used as pontoons and landings and investigate the riverbank stalls that sold supplies to passengers. Here I obtained beer, Coke (or a reasonable imitation of it), the pickled eggs that I had developed a taste for when I had got past their appearance, and other essential provisions. Once I leaned over the boat’s side as it was pulling away from the landing and bought two cans of soft drink. My change was getting further away from me very fast and I thought I could kiss it goodbye, when the vendor rolled the money into a ball and threw it at me. All those evenings playing cricket with the boys had not been wasted. I could still field a catch.

  Susan was good company once I got over staring at her bald head. She told me that she had shaved it in a moment of weakness, thinking it would be less trouble when travelling. It might have been, but she had forgotten that she was heading north into a bitter winter and she was already feeling the cold.

  We passed several of the ocean-going ships that navigate this river, countless hefty coal barges, and other large passenger riverboats like ours. One riverboat had a top deck that was covered by a roof with turned up corners and looked like a monstrous, multi-storied pagoda. Another looked like a tiered wedding cake. Towards sunset we pulled past one more big town, and after that the river traffic lessened somewhat.

  By this time I was fed up with the nagging voice that harangued us continuously with political propaganda from a loudspeaker on the wall of our cabin. It started at the crack of dawn, when all good communists should be up and about, but this bad capitalist had no intention of being so rudely aroused. Getting out my nail scissors I performed a highly successful laryngectomy on The Voice.

  Stretched across the ship’s prow was a sitting/dining room that was reserved for the use of the second-class citizens. Meals were not served here, but it was a comfortable place to sit and look out at the river. In the sitting room I met a businessman from Taiwan, and Susan and I went to lunch with him. The food was stone cold and not very appetising and the dining room was a dingy dump. Functional and institutional, it had a metal floor and unpolished wooden tables and chairs.

  In dramatic contrast, the second-class sitting room had no food but tables covered with white cloths and graced with plastic flowers, a sideboard full of cups and plates, lino tiles on the floor and an enamel po spittoon beside each armchair. I was fascinated by the overhead decorations. There was a large recessed square in the centre of the ceiling that contained white wooden panels embossed with dragons and two 1960s five-armed light pendants. And from all around the edges of the square purple plastic grapes dangled invitingly.

  Not wanting to face the fare of the boat’s dining room again, Susan and I had instant noodles, fruit and beer for dinner, all of which we had bought very cheaply on our forays ashore. The fruit –mandarins, pears and bananas – was especially good. That night I subdued the neighbours by banging my elbow on the wall and roaring, ‘Quiet!’ and, though we stopped several times to load and unload cargo, I slept well.

  Early in the morning, we pulled into a large town, and I dashed ashore to buy breakfast: more pickled eggs, sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves, one of the popular, but obscenely red sausages and a big lidded enamel pannikin for hot drinks.

  For quite a while now both riverbanks had been covered with trees and by midday kilometre after kilometre of bamboo waved in the wind. Behind it stood forests of poplar and pine and among the trees I glimpsed the odd red roof. Gradually a mountain range crept up, fold on fold, as a backdrop to the river. On a headland further on, I saw a pagoda on top of a towering rock at the river’s edge. The Precious Stone Castle can be seen for many kilometres coming or going on the river and has been poised on this peak for 1500 years.

  That evening Susan and I braved the boat’s kitchen again. This time we tried the soup. Served in real soup-kitchen style – slopped with a bent tin ladle from a huge, battered aluminium can as big as an oil drum – it was a greyish conglomeration in which vegetables and dumplings floated. Despite its unalluring appeal, however, it tasted fine, and I was enjoying it until I came across a dead match. Susan laughed so much at this I told her I hoped she had the cigarette butt.

  Various members of the boat staff had told me, in pantomime, that our ETA next morning was six, seven, eight, and nine o’clock. But we actually landed in Wuhan at ten. The day had dawned wet, cold, misty and drab. Visibility was nil and no town was in sight. The weather did not clear and we went ashore, up a long metal ramp, in a damp, steady drizzle. Later I saw that the river here was a mile wide, lined with hideous black factories and fronted by long, flat steps that looked like the ghats on the Ganges.

  Wuhan, at the confluence of the Yangtze and Han rivers, was established in about 600 BC. Now one of China’s largest cities, it is a key traffic junction as well as an industrial centre. The river here is vital but perilous; its banks are lined by high dykes that obscure it from the town, but which failed to save it from the last great flood in 1983. Foreign trading concessions were established in Wuhan in 1861 and it has many fine nineteenth-century buildings in the German municipal style. There is also a 400 year-old Gui Yuan temple that houses a white jade Burmese Buddha with a large diamond in its forehead. The tomb of the Marquis Yi, which was discovered in 1978, is close to Wuhan. The Marquis lived in the 5th century BC and died, greatly mourned, at the age of twenty-five. He was buried with his dog, twenty-one female sacrifices, enough treasure to stock several museums and a couple of orchestras worth of musical instruments.

  Susan was leaving by train for Beijing that evening and I had to buy a ticket on a boat going the rest of the way to Chongqing. We entered the enormous boat terminal complex, which resembled a cross between a massive riverboat and the Sydney Opera House. After many false starts, I was taken in hand by a kind woman who led me through the offices, until we were behind a counter where a row of ladies sat dispensing tickets. This was a new angle for me – it felt like being backstage, behind the scenery. Wherever it was, I was promptly supplied with a ticket.

  Susan and I then attempted to find a phone, so that she could contact the agent who held her train ticket. But in the entire terminal there was not one public phone. Once again we were taken in hand by helpful local people. This time a delightful young couple found the left luggage room for me and a public phone for Susan. The phone was in a booth on the street and was guarded by an attendant.

  We crossed the road and entered an upmarke
t Chinese restaurant where we had a very poor meal of what was alleged to be pork and eggs. My plate came covered with something that looked like runny baked custard. Some of the prices on the restaurant’s menu were astronomical, especially for exotic items like snake. Susan read to me, ‘Steak and eggs, 480 yuan. That’s a bit hot!’ I replied, ‘Put your glasses on, that’s snake and egg’. And it was.

  When we left it was still cold and raining. In the street we sloshed past some great Victorian buildings and entered the marvellous Bank of China. It had massive chandeliers, carved wooden Corinthian columns, wonderful leather couches and a polished dance floor between the tellers and the customers. Outside the bank, in stark contrast, a destitute old man in rags huddled under a pedestrian overpass trying to elude the rain.

  Still hungry, we came upon a McMuck. At least there were no surprises on your plate there. Later we stood on a street corner looking lost. A Chinese man with good intentions, but no English, offered us help and so did a westerner, the first we had seen since Shanghai, who had lots of English, but turned out to be even more lost than we were.

  Susan and I parted at the train station and I returned to the boat terminal over the long suspension bridge that crosses the river at Wuhan and joins the two halves of the city. Except for this great bridge and the elegant old buildings, Wuhan seemed a cheerless town. The gate of the gangway that led to the riverboat was defended by an ogress who demanded six yuan to unlock it. I thought this was an extortion racket, but it turned out to be an official fee. I was given a ticket that entitled me to enter the first-class waiting room where you could avoid the rabble in the comfort of deep lounge chairs. There were fees for everything you did in China, especially if you were a foreigner. I had even been charged five yuan to cross the bridge in the taxi.

  My next ship, the Jade Vessel, was almost identical to the Yangtze Star. Once again I had an outside cabin, but this time the deck area beside my cabin was enclosed by glass windows. The attendant brought me five cakes of soap. I must have looked like I needed a good wash.

  We glided away downriver in the silvery gloom of dusk. As we passed under the looming suspension bridge, it was almost dark and the town lights and those of nearby ships twinkled cheerily. My cabin companion this time was a diminutive Chinese girl of about twenty, who put her pyjamas on ready for bed at seven and still had them on at lunch the next day. I drew my bed curtains and read while she snored.

  I slept snug and warm in my bed after I had shut up another lot of rowdies next door by elbow bangs on the wall. But I discovered that it was freezing cold and pitch dark out on the river when, in the middle of the night, I had to go down the deck to find the loo. Coming back I had a fearful time finding my door again and, palpitating and expecting to find myself in someone else’s cabin, I opened what I hoped was the right one.

  I was again woken at dawn by The Voice harassing me from the loudspeaker on the wall but, praise be! I found that this machine had a knob with which it could be turned off. To no avail, it turned out. The speakers in the cabins on either side were so loud that I could still hear it anyway. The Voice went on and on in a maddening shriek, probably exhorting me to be a good little worker and grow more rice. Then the cabin attendant barged in. There was no stopping her. She was programmed to sweep the floor at eight and that was what she did.

  It was still very cold. As I watched the dismal grey rain drizzling down, I wondered why I had thought I was leaving this weather behind in Beijing. It was actually colder here. More doleful towns lined the riverbank and more grim chimneys belched smoke from dark forbidding factories. In one town a ferry, with a truck leaning precariously sideways on its slanting deck, was being pushed across the river by a tug. We gave it a couple of blasts on the hooter to get it out of the way. Just past the town a large solitary farmhouse owned a quiet stretch of riverbank. Steps led down from the house to its dunny, a box on stilts conveniently positioned over the water.

  Although the traffic on the river had been lighter since Wuhan, a slow, steady procession of sampans and barges with loads of logs, sand, building materials and coal passed us. Sometimes three or four barges were joined together side by side and pushed upriver by a tug that was secured between them. The barges had two double-storeyed edifices roosting on their bows. One was the engine room, the other the cookhouse and bedroom. A particularly decrepit, unpainted and rusty old barge went by. The housewife (or bargewife) sat on deck on a wooden stool peeling vegetables. The husband came to the door of the cookhouse and threw his washing water overboard from a white enamel basin.

  The river here was still at least two kilometres wide – I could see only one bank, which had greenery on it that looked like bamboo – but the water was flatter, there were no white caps, and it was the colour of dark milky tea. It did not agree with my hair and I sincerely hoped I was not drinking it. But I probably was: I had to use the hot water provided by the boat’s urns for tea and noodles, and all our boat’s refuse, like everyone else’s, went straight into the river.

  Later our boat tied up at a pontoon on the riverbank of Yeoyang. I ventured onto the shore to buy supplies of nuts, seeds, fruit and noodles. I thought the nuts and seeds were awful, until I saw someone else eating them and realised that you don’t eat the outer husks. You spat them out in true Chinese fashion, preferably on the floor. This improved the taste considerably!

  The next day was still cold and the sky was leaden and misty. The river was now the colour of dishwater – a pale ash-brown– the washing up after a mud pie party. When I woke, we were anchored at Shashi, another sombre industrial town. Shortly after Shashi the banks of the river came close enough for me to be able to see rice growing on them. In places the banks had been cut and reinforced with stones to form dykes. Another bank further up protected neat and pleasantly green villages that were surrounded by pine trees. Grazing cows dotted grassy banks where now and then I saw the odd peasant digging. These were the first real villages I had seen, as opposed to small ugly towns.

  Although the Jade Vessel was very similar to the Yangtze Star, much to my sorrow there were no plastic grapes in the sitting room. But it did have two classes of dining room, the posher of which I fronted to sample the fare. In the long wait for my food to be sent up to the ritzy dining room, I watched a man drink a bottle of Chinese whisky and down a large bottle of beer as a chaser. When the food did arrive it turned out to be the same food that was available downstairs; not very good, just colder after its travels. I had chicken that had been machettied into clumps, splintery bones and all, but it was a change from the fruit and noodles I had been existing on.

  Out on deck, nailed to the front of the wheel-house, I noticed the boat’s emergency equipment – a big axe and a crowbar. The fire-fighting apparatus consisted of a row of red buckets that served only to decorate the prow; they held at most half a pail of old rusty water. There were no life boats or jackets –we swam or sank.

  Gliding under a long bridge, we began passing between slight hills that rose on both sides of the now narrowing river. Gradually the hills increased in number and size until they were rounded mountain bosoms that rose straight up from a rocky base at the water’s edge. The mountains were interspersed wherever possible with tiny rice terraces and here and there harboured a house. It was now freezing. Heaters and reverse cycle airconditioners abounded, but not one worked.

  In the sitting room of the boat, I had company; four young men who played cards, a popular pastime, and smoked heavily, as did most Chinese men. Later the men played checkers, another favourite Chinese game.

  Arriving at the large town of Zhicheng, we found an enterprising row of vendors had lined up on the edge of the pontoon and were conveying noodles, rice and drinks to customers on the boat by means of a basket on a long pole. The money came back down, with any luck, the same way. Other sellers paddled up on the river side of the boat in sampans and also sent goods aboard by the pole method.

  The cook, wearing her red carpet slippers and still knitting
– Chinese women knitted everywhere, even standing up –went down onto the landing and had a social gathering with her family who had been waiting there for the boat to arrive. I defied the spitting rain to go ashore in search of food. The word must have been broadcast that culinary delights on riverboats were few and flawed. Passengers were offered plenty of edible supplements at all the stops we made, and a profusion of buyers eagerly contested them. I bought hard-boiled eggs and bread sticks that were plaited in a pretty design, but rock hard, and on which I broke a large tooth filling.

  One day I looked at the sludgey mud pie that remained in the base of my empty thermos and concluded that by this time I must have taken in a fair slab of the Yangtze’s bottom. But what a blessing those battered tin thermoses were. They provided water for instant noodles, tea, coffee, a wash, clean teeth and drinking water, as well as adding a bit of silt to the diet.

  At each stop, crowds of passengers bustled on and off the boat. I noticed men holding pieces of bamboo loitering among the crowd. I wondered what this piece of equipment was for until I realised that it was the stock in trade of the porter coolie. This was the pole that he lay across his shoulders to carry burdens and bundles on each end.

  Early the next day, we came to Yichang, a walled city that was new in the days of the Sui, about 1300 years ago, and which is regarded as the gateway to the upper Yangtze. The riverbank here was high and reinforced by a stone wall. On one corner of it there was a pagoda, and a promenade lined by trees ran along its top for kilometres.

  We tied up at the town for an hour and then, moving into the middle of the river, dropped anchor with a rattle of chain. It was raining heavily and the boat’s red-painted decks were washed clean and shining. We stayed anchored in mid-stream all day, left at five in the evening, and arrived at the entrance of the massive Gezhouba Dam’s locks at night.