Bound for Vietnam

by Lydia Laube

  By the ship’s searchlight, in the driving rain, I saw sheer concrete walls that rose, glistening, a hundred metres above me on both sides. It was like being in a grave. The lock was just wide enough to accommodate our boat. Seven ships, big and small, were tied to brackets in the walls, one behind the other. Then the gates were opened, the water poured in, and we were lifted slowly to the level of the road alongside the lock. As the boat rose, I went from only being able to see concrete walls, to seeing the lights of the town. Leaving the lock I looked down on the floodlit muddy water to see the salvo of polystyrene containers that our boat had left behind.

  We were now about to enter the beautiful, but treacherous, Yangtze gorges. The Sanxia (Three Gorges) run for two hundred kilometres through the mountain ranges that separate the provinces of Sichuan and Hubei. They were created by an inland sea that once flooded across the Asian continent to the Pacific Ocean. For centuries the reefs and whirlpools of the gorges claimed a thousand lives a year. The forces of nature on the Yangtze are so great that many myths have grown up to help make sense of them. It is said that junk-men used to cut off a rooster’s head and smear its blood on the prow of their boat to placate the river dragons. Fifty years ago boats were pulled through the gorges by thousands of straining coolies.

  In our boat the helmsman’s assistant stood at the very front of the prow, his eyes fixed ahead, and gave the captain signals. I could feel the tension. There is no room for error between the Yangtze gorges. We crept forward, our way lit by the boat’s searchlight and the warning beacons that clung here and there on the dark rock edges between the wild water. It was magic.

  At dawn I looked out to see that we had anchored in the second gorge to wait for enough light to navigate further. The river here was too deadly to take on at night. The narrow walls of the gorge looked as though they had been cut out with a giant knife. A torrent of water rushed between their sheer rock faces that rose straight up as high as nine hundred metres and enclosed us on either side. We pushed on laboriously. It seemed difficult to make headway against the current. Every now and then the white thread of a small waterfall cascaded down to join the river. Narrow and fast flowing, they zig-zagged through dark-green slots in the black rock. A lone brown falcon cruised past, rising and falling effortlessly on the eddies that formed in the narrow chasm.

  The river channel became even narrower and the boat had to dodge rocks that stuck up out of the water. As we struggled through one dangerous part, the water boiled towards us and tossed the boat around like a cork. Then the river widened and the channel was marked by buoys on boat-shaped platforms. The walls changed to yellow and white limestone and were dotted with mysterious-looking caves. Coffins containing bronze swords and other artefacts have been discovered in these caves. They are said to have belonged to an ancient tribe of the Warring States period – 500 BC–whose custom was to place their dead in these high mountains.

  Our captain obviously understood the river. At times he steered well away from the water’s edge where I discerned evil-looking whirlpools. But we passed some of them close enough to see several feet down into their swirling, seething, terrifying depths.

  When we emerged from the gorges, everything was lightly veiled in early morning mist. The river was now a hundred metres across, but still boisterous, as it surged in front of the boat. Steep mountains folded one after the other into the churning brown water ahead, hiding the course of the river. We passed several riverboats going down river. That voyage took three days as opposed to the five it needed to battle upriver against the enormous current, which probably explained why I was the only foreigner aboard.

  The boat was now sailing very close to one bank where, on a steep cliff at a bend of the river, a monastery hung out over the water. Perched precariously, halfway up on the sheer rock face, it seemed to cling by its fingernails to the bare stone. The edges of its roof curled upwards like hands lifted to heaven. Perhaps it was built on this high, remote and beautiful spot to make the monks feel closer to God.

  A fisherman wearing a traditional straw hat sat with a scoop net where the bank, which was still all steep rock, sloped a little to afford a toe hold. Close by, a tiny village surrounded by terraced gardens squatted halfway up a mountain. Partly obliterated by trees and shrubs, it looked ancient and inaccessible. Miles from anywhere, I wondered how you would get into it, or out, for that matter. I could see no roads. Behind the village the mountain peaks were even higher, and only great stretches of uncultivated and deserted mountains followed it.

  (Sadly, much of this wild beauty is about to be inundated with water as the Sanxia Dam project progresses. Due for completion in the year 2009, this colossal enterprise will be the world’s largest water reservoir. Located thirty-eight kilometres upstream from the present dam, it will cost twenty billion American dollars, provide electricity equal to one fifth of China’s present generating capacity, control floods – the last flood in 1992 claimed over 200,000 lives – and make the river more easily navigable. It will also necessitate the relocation of more than 250,000 people from the area the lake will cover, submerge unexplored archaeological sites, most likely kill species not yet discovered and destroy the unique loveliness of the gorge area, which I was glad that I’d had the chance to see now.)

  Then the land levelled a little and larger plots that were being ploughed by oxen or bullocks appeared, while goats, stark white against the dark green, clambered about on the precipitous hillsides. The villages comprised a series of tall thin buildings with mottled grey or yellow walls and tiled roofs. Some villages looked like fortresses.

  Finally, I caught a glimpse of what, from the paintings I had seen and the poetry I had read, I had expected of China; terraces planted with gardens and crops that wound around the mountain slopes in soft green furrows like the lines on a child’s top or a shih tzu dog’s face, and among groves of pine trees and waving bamboo an occasional mellow village or house.

  At Fengjie, the ancient capital of the state of Kui, six hundred stone steps led up from the water to a stone archway above the entrance of the town. Both sides of the steps were littered with shanties and shacks, but the town above had some fine buildings. We tied up at the pontoon wharf, and I went up on deck to lean on the railing. In an open-air waiting room on the pontoon, at eye level, fifty people sat entranced in front of a lone television set. One noticed me and shouted, ‘Loala!’ Fifty pairs of eyes at once swivelled from the magic of the screen to fix on me. I was much more riveting than the soap opera they had been watching.

  Later that day we passed another large town. Sitting on ledges that had been cut into the top of the high bank, the town was surrounded by the black steps of an open-cut coal mine. Tall chimneys belched coal smoke over the grimy buildings in a dismal scene.

  In sharp contrast, shortly after leaving this nightmare, a kaleidoscope of soft greens – vegetables, rice and bamboo – rose to carpet the sloping riverbanks until they met the luminous misty woods that stood above.

  A mini magpie the size of a swallow had joined the boat. He adopted the front deck as his home and chirped away as he patrolled it on foot. I’ll bet he found a fair bit to eat there. The Chinese wasted an incredible amount of food on this boat as I had seen them do in many other places. In the dining room I watched a young mother and her tiny child eating. The baby would not have been more than two years old, but his diminutive fingers handled chopsticks deftly. He dipped and delved, picking up and transferring pieces of food from the communal plate to his bowl with a dexterity that made me envious. When he and his mother had finished their meal, more than half of the food they had ordered was left on the table.

  Four hours later we arrived at Wanxian, the next big river settlement, and a town of some consequence. It had a grand clock tower, and hundreds of wide steps, like the Spanish steps in Rome, led up to it. The houses of the town, built on the second quarter of the sloping riverbank, looked like a pile of building blocks had been stacked up the rise. Hovels edged the low lin
e of the river, sitting directly on the rock or silt. They were little more than bits of wood covered with sheets of plastic or tarpaulins and looked ready to be swept away with the next flood.

  I hung over the deck railing looking down on the landing, watching coolies bent double with great weights offload stores from the lower cargo deck. A pretty young girl in the crowd glanced up and saw me. Her eyes widened and I saw her lips form the dreaded, ‘Loala!’ Her companions then stared up at me too. How I had come to hate that word!

  On the outskirts of Wanxian we passed many gaunt buildings that rose from the riverbank as though they had grown out of its grey mud. Among them an enormous chimney billowed forth a massive cloud of sulphur smoke which the wind snaked along the mountains, the town and the valley like a scarf that half veiled them. When I looked back from kilometres further up the river, I could still see the smoke hanging low and partly obscuring the view.

  As evening approached, the river became wilder and we moved into ever higher and denser mountains. Great towering monsters that soared, peak after peak, line after line, all around and formed a dark blue backdrop for the gathering grey mist. When night fell, we were gliding – the throbbing engines pushing us slowly against the rushing water – into the deepening gloom and the mountains that appeared to sink into the water ahead. I felt as though we were being swallowed up.

  During the night, we crawled along, at times very close to the banks, as the captain, aided by his spotlight, felt his way between the green pinpoints of light from the beacons. I could see, high above, the towering tops of the mountains dimly outlined against the velvet night sky. Now and then their sides were dotted by a small yellow glow from a house or the cluster of lights of a village sparkling in the warmish night. We had turned south again. And among the gorges, or folded in the arms of the mountains as we were now, it was not as cold as when we had been exposed out on the open river.

  My cabin mate had got off the boat at Wanxian and it was a pleasure to sleep alone for the first time in over a week. Next morning, in desperation, I had a cold shower. There was only hot water in the evening, but usually at a time when the bathroom had already been locked for the night to protect it from violation by the lower orders. I hung my washing on the rail outside my door where it flapped merrily, drying in the breeze. The other passengers, also inspired by the warm air, indulged in an orgy of cleanliness and all along the deck, trousers, shirts and undies fluttered in gay abandon.

  At five that evening we approached Chongqing, a city with a 3000-year-old history. In the Qin dynasty of the third century BC, it was the capital of the kingdom of Ba. Following the Japanese invasion in the second world war, it became the capital of Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang and was heavily bombed. Built on the mountain-sides of a promontory between the confluence of the Yangtze and the Jialing rivers, it is the major city of Sichuan province and is crucial to transport and commerce. But approaching Chongqing I could hardly see it for the great clouds of smoke that belched from the factory chimneys.

  Our boat tied up alongside another, which we had to climb over to reach the landing. I could manage my two bags fairly easily by myself, but as soon as I stepped off the boat I was mobbed by a pack of would-be porters who swarmed around me like angry bees. I can cope with being harassed and accosted, but this gang of vultures grabbed the bags out of my hands and knocked me about in the process. None of the Chinese passengers got this treatment. I resisted and standing my ground, tore my bags back. ‘No!’ I said vehemently. But they followed me, yelling in my ears. I made it across the boat, down the gangplank and onto the landing unaided, but the porters continued to pester me. At the bottom of the gangplank, I stood behind the guard, who got the message and chased my assailants off. But they only went a certain distance, like jackals from a kill. I said thank you to the guard very politely, which, to my horror, inspired him to grab one particularly persistent coolie and give him a hiding. No one took any notice. But it bothered me.

  On the other side of the landing I was confronted by a flight of stone steps that went up to the sky. My jaw dropped and I thought, No way! I’m not climbing five hundred steps carrying these bags. I turned to a young coolie who, unlike the others, had not been aggressive but had just stood back and offered me a price. ‘Okay mate, it’s all yours,’ I said. He took the bags, I put my mountaineering legs into gear, and up we went.

  The steep stone steps did not appear to have been cleaned since the Ming dynasty. They were overlaid with mud which made the ascent hazardous and mucky. At the top of the first flight the porters re-appeared. They had given up on carrying my bags and, now, having decided I wouldn’t make it the rest of the way, wanted to carry me. The final indignity! When I declined their chair lift, the porters wanted to hold me under the arms and support me. I shooed them off and made it to the top only to encounter another gang of sharks – rip-off taxi drivers quoting ridiculous prices. Knowing that the hotel I wanted was close, I took out my guidebook to show one driver where I wanted to go. A crowd of hundreds instantly materialised and leaned over me to peer at the book. I was squashed in the middle of this mob and developing a galloping case of claustrophobia when I saw my saviour drive up, a young woman in a miniature taxi. I grabbed her and jumped in her car.

  4 Three Dog Night

  The taxi driver seemed to understand where I wanted to go. I squeezed myself and my bags into her micro-dot vehicle and off we rattled. At the hotel the notorious discrimination against ‘big noses’ was blatantly exposed in writing. A large sign on the wall listed two prices, Chinese and Foreigner, and the latter was three times the former! I complained, but the price did not come down.

  I sought fresh fields. The next hotel recommended in my book, the Huixianlou, had the same nefarious sign displayed at the reception desk and Foreigners’ rooms were again grossly over-priced. On principle I refused to subscribe to this highway robbery. I was not going to pay such a fee for a room that I knew would not necessarily be clean and most certainly would not have all its accoutrements working. For that price in other countries I could get a positively sanitary hotel room where everything worked, at least someone spoke my language and I was not ill-treated, disdained and ridiculed. The receptionist offered me an eight-bed dormitory for ten dollars. I took it.

  The room actually had seven beds. Either the staff couldn’t count, or the rats ate the other one – there were enough of them, rats that is, not beds. And they had company. The hotel was also infested with cockroaches.

  The beds were crammed together in the room, but only one appeared to be occupied. When I returned late that night, I found, to my astonishment, that the owner of the other bed was a young Japanese man. I had presumed that communal rooms would be segregated. Sharing a hotel room with a strange young man was a bit of a novelty, but no problem. Hiro was amiable and easy to get on with, despite the fact that he had three words of English and I only knew two of Japanese. I gave him some pills and bananas to settle his crook tummy and after two days he was better and we parted good friends. Co-habiting was, in fact, amusing. One morning we wanted hot water to make tea. I said, ‘I’ll get it.’ Hiro said, No, he would. We came out of our room together, he clutching the water jug and I, holding the thermos. A pile of Chinese who were waiting for the lift goggled. A Chinese man – and my Japanese friend could have passed for one – getting off with a foreign woman, is punishable practically by death in this country. I had read horror stories about western men ending up in gaol just for being seen with a Chinese girl.

  The dormitory was on the ninth floor and had extensive windows that gave a good view, but also vertigo. The impression I got was that Chongqing was made up of building construction sites. Wherever I looked, cranes pierced the sky and a constant racket of pile drivers and bulldozers hammered at my eardrums. A great empty pit yawned directly below me and from it to the end of the street everything had been demolished. The only intact structures I could see were the produce markets that were housed in what looked like heritage railwa
y sheds two streets away.

  The Hotel Huixianlou was in the process of being remodelled, which meant that its prices would go up. In my room, half the light bulbs were blown, cold air poured in through big gaps where the windows didn’t fit adequately, the wall paper was peeling off in strips, the cases of the airconditioners– which of course didn’t work – were missing and two of the wall lights hung from their fittings by a thread. The room had a television with no sound and one cupboard, padlocked shut! The beds had no mattresses. You slept on one blanket spread on a flat wooden base. A tiny pillow and one more blanket (they were rationed one to a bed) made up the sleeping apparatus. I pillaged more blankets from the spare beds. It was still fairly cold. I had hoped that this far south the weather might be warmer – but Chongqing is high in the mountains.

  Wondering why I could hear the guests in the adjoining room so clearly, and smell their cigarette smoke, I discovered that the walls at both ends of my room were only thin partitions. My bed was against one of these and a gap gave me, if I had been so inclined, direct access to my neighbours. Lovely people, they came home at two or three in the morning, shouting and screaming and blew cigarette smoke in my face as I lay in bed.

  As soon as I had staked my claim to a piece of the dormitory, I went for a walk. The Hotel Huixianlou is in one of Chongqing’s main streets that are lined with shops. They were mostly small places that sold clothing, but there were a couple of big department stores. In all the shops the merchandise – even torch batteries and chewing gum –was safely locked away under glass. Then, as an added safeguard, a sentinel was stationed at the exit. Even a posh furniture shop came complete with a guard at the door – to stop you walking in, picking up a sofa and making off with it under your jacket.

  Near the hotel I found a very lively night market. Although it was quite dark by then, I felt safe wandering around it, until I became aware that two young blokes were following me and eyeing my handbag. I slowed up and meandered along, stopping now and then until they had to pass me. Then I followed them. They kept looking around to see where I was, but it’s hard to mug someone who is in the crowd behind you.