by Lydia Laube
At the corner he left me and I walked on alone. Beneath my calm ‘face’ I was in a state of shock. I went to report a crime and I got investigated and interrogated! A display of local gut-rot booze on the street caught my attention. Just what I needed to sedate my nerves. For one dollar thirty cents I bought a litre of something that turned out to be remarkably like dry cleaning fluid, which I mixed with some of the delicious, fresh squeezed mandarin orange juice that the café provided. It was a sin to pollute such beautiful stuff with this poison and it tasted frightful. Now that was a crime I should have been arrested for. A glass of this concoction imbibed before and after my dinner was all I could manage. I still had nine hundred millilitres left to dispose of, but I could not face another of shot of petrol!
I reflected that I was in loss mode. Today I had also lost my sun glasses. I put them down on the counter of a shop and they disappeared, poof, like magic. Yesterday I had left my camera case on the top of a mountain and I certainly wasn’t climbing back up to retrieve it. My faith in the inherent goodness of man had taken a severe battering since I had come to China. It was in intensive care at the moment, still alive, but only just.
That night in bed when I closed my eyes I could still see the face of Nasty Pants. And in my sleep the revelation came to me that China was a place not to be enjoyed but endured.
Talking to other travellers, I had found that many did not think that China was a country they would want to visit again. The hostility, prejudice, discrimination and rip-off foreigner prices thoroughly bugged them. One German couple said that they had come for six months, but were leaving after six weeks. An American man had come for three months and left after ten days. And there were many other similar stories.
One night at a café I met the first Australian I had seen in a long time. He was the only person who said that he would like to return to China, but then he had only been in the south and to Dali, which is another hippie heaven. I would have liked to know what he thought after he had travelled in the north.
I agreed with the general opinion that Yanshu was Okay. Yanshu was a back-packer’s haunt and the local people had got used to weird western ways. The drawback to Yanshu, which was full of travellers, was the mob of touts who continually hassled you. The staff of the youth hostel were extremely cordial and helpful and actually knew something about the rest of their country. So did the small local office of CITS. I couldn’t believe my ears when I was told this. But Murphy’s law saw to it that this was the one place I did not need advice. I had arranged a berth on a sleeper bus to Guangzhou absolutely painlessly through Khai at the hostel.
I spent a morning in the park opposite the hostel. At the ornate gate, I was asked to pay one hundred and twenty times the price the locals paid. For this extortion I received a pretty postcard ticket. The park was one of the few peaceful places I found in China. Leafy trees shaded concrete paths flanked by stone-edged garden beds, while on the grass, small stone stools surrounded stone tables like a fairy ring of mushrooms. Some senior citizens played crochet; others minded tiny tots. That seemed to be a very good system – put the very old and the very young together to take care of each other. It beats child care centres. Under spreading trees, hopeful fishermen dangled their lines from the walled edges of a big, clear pond that was fed by the river. A group of old men sat in an open-sided pagoda soaking up the sun and playing cards. An old lady invited me to join her in some tai chi. Thank goodness tai chi is universal. I have had ten lessons in sum total, but I did my best to keep up with her. She was a champ.
I climbed three hundred or so steps to the top of the park’s skinny hill and reached the pagoda that was at eye level with my bathroom. The steps, which were overshadowed by trees and foliage, had been cut into the rock and, with their worn and crumbling edges, felt unsafe in places. The tiny pagoda had stone seats around its open walls for visitors to rest on and look out over the countryside. I flopped down to lower my pulse rate. Surveying the condoms and cigarette packets under my feet, I was surprised that anyone had had the energy to indulge in either of these pursuits after those coronary inducing stairs.
One day I came across the local dentist at work and I was grateful then that at least in Chungking I’d had an inside job. In Yanshu the dentist had a tiny office where the torture chair was strategically placed in the middle of a large window that fronted the main street. The victim had to face crowds of fascinated onlookers, who lined up outside, only millimetres away, to watch the fun. It was better entertainment than the pictures and much cheaper. What an audience I’d have drawn.
I visited another clinic to enquire about some anti-malarial tablets. In a grotty hole, an unqualified practitioner offered massage and other cures for ten yuan and prescribed and dispensed pills without a licence. He also did some dentistry and calmly interrupted our discourse to pull a tooth. No anaesthetic was given and no attempt was made to save the tooth of the young woman. She was a stoic; she did not even flinch. The ‘dentist’ used unsterile pliers for the operation, thus giving the patient a good chance of acquiring septicaemia. She spat out a stream of blood onto the floor. I left.
At the hostel I’d had a change of neighbours and, now, when I relaxed on my balcony in the evening, a pair of Chinese tourists from Hong Kong sat close by. He was a round chain-smoking butterball and his girlfriend must have been hilarious. He shrieked in a high-pitched giggle at every word she uttered. She, however, had nothing to smile about. Although she was dainty and smartly dressed, he was unattractive to an extreme degree. His teeth were like crooked washboards you could have driven a truck between and he had tiny piggy eyes. Sick of his noise, I concluded waspishly that he must have had some well hidden attribute like a large wallet.
Some evenings rifle shots rang out from the side of the mountain that faced me on the balcony and I saw ant-sized figures moving on the path that wound around its densely wooded slope. Another endangered species for the pot.
The surrounding villages took turns to hold their markets and on the morning that the village of Fuli had theirs I set off to visit it by small boat. Although Fuli was only five kilometres away by road, it took an hour to chug down the river lazily. It was a glorious morning and the other passengers, two German boys, sat in the soft sun on the deck of the prow and played Chinese chess with round checkers.
The river’s still waters reflected the beauty of the mountains and buffalo stood ankle deep in the shallows. Maybe it was too cold for further insertion just yet. Men in small boats harvested water-weed for animal food and women squatted at the water’s edge to beat their washing on flat rocks. Occasionally a water carrier came down to dip his two wooden buckets in the river and move off with them swinging on the yoke across his shoulders.
We landed on the riverbank opposite Fuli, and I stepped from stone to stone across the rocks that made a path through the shallows to the other side. Reaching the roughhewn stone landing, I climbed a lofty flight of steps to the top of the bank where, shaded by colossal old trees, a pretty pagoda looked down on the river. From here a narrow cobbled lane, lined by tiny old wooden houses with tiled roofs, meandered round before it reached the centre of the village high on a hill. Most of the houses consisted of only one room with wooden shutters that opened onto the street across its front. Most shutters were open to the sun and I could see that the houses were frugally furnished with wooden stools and low tables. One house sported a big picture of Chairman Mao surrounded by other deities. Some dwellings were being used as warehouses, or for cottage industries. In one I saw a girl treadling an old-fashioned sewing machine and in another, wool was being spun. Women sat on stools in their doorways. Some knitted, one young mother fed a bald baby noodles with chopsticks. I noticed that all the people of this district wore conical straw hats and traditional clothes. Outside the barber shop a young man washed his hair in a red plastic bucket – that must have been the shampoo service. There was obviously no running water or electricity.
I reached the market; a long, narro
w cement floor flanked by concrete pillars that held up a peaked roof under which were housed several avenues of stalls. Throngs of people slowly wended past the goods – clothing, shoes, wool, buttons, bows and gegaws –which were displayed on benches or on the ground. In the press of bodies, I moved as fast as I could through the meat section, another of those places it was best not to dawdle in. The poisons department, positioned conveniently next to the food, offered bottles and packets of lethal potions, as well as a tastefully arranged display of large dead rats as proof that they worked. There were also medicines that I concluded must be for your afflicted buffalo. A munificence of fruit and vegetables was exhibited, as well as sacks and baskets of every kind of grain and lentil imaginable. And a marathon array of an unbelievable variety of spices, condiments, herbs and Chinese medicines were lined up neatly in tiny hessian bags with their tops turned down. Next came all kinds of dried plants and animals and stacks of dried ducks, as flat as pancakes, which were the colour of dirty tan shoes and looked just as tasty.
The stalls overflowed the market place and ran along the lanes on either side of it. Bright cheery cheeps from day old chicks and ducklings that were only tiny balls of golden fluff led me to the live goods area, where big ducks quacked under wicker baskets. Someone squeezed past me holding a brace of squawking brown hens upside down by the feet – dinner on the hoof. A man pulled a small hand cart through the crowd, on which six large, pink and white pigs encased in woven bamboo cocoons were stacked in two layers. They were surprisingly quiet for pigs in this undignified position. If you have ever heard a pig venting his displeasure at being interfered with, you will know what I mean.
A watch mender sat on a stool in front of a microscopic stand that contained his accoutrements of trade and performed emergency surgery on a timepiece while its owner breathed down his neck. A boot mender also did on the spot re-furbishings. I bought a replacement for the purse I had lost and a comb from an old lady who squatted on the ground with a small rattan tray on her lap. Whenever possible, I bought from street vendors. I decided that they needed the money more than the government who owned all the big shops. Walking on, I left the market behind and followed the winding lane through the village until the houses thinned out and I came to a cross road. On the outskirts of the village, where vegetable gardens and patches of crop were being hand watered with buckets, a motorbike taxi waited.
I negotiated a return ride to Yanshu in this smart conveyance. It had bright red paint and a green frilled canvas canopy that covered both passenger and driver. I climbed in the side-car. The driver’s girlfriend hopped on the pillion and we rode slowly along the tree-fringed road through countryside that was dotted with stooks of hay and planted with vegetables, bamboo and rice. The side-car had enough room for two small bottoms and halfway along the road we picked up two girls. One got in with me to practise her English; the other took the place of the driver’s girlfriend on the pillion. The girlfriend then sat on the mudguard of the side-car and braced her feet on the step. The RTA would have had a fit, but it was very cosy and we all parted friends.
In Fuli I had seen a couple of families who appeared to have two children. Out here in the country it must be easier to get away with having more than the one child allowed – if you could escape the notice of the dreaded Baby Police. These uniformed characters, who rank on a level with the Gestapo in the popularity polls, prowl the villages in motorcycle side-cars, hunting out families who have more than their ration of children. The male partner found guilty of this heinous offence is immediately taken to the nearest hospital for a vasectomy, as well as being heavily fined and penalised. I was told the story of one man who was found to have produced three children. After being apprehended and put in the side-car for the hospital trip, he jumped from the vehicle and, hitting his head on the concrete gutter, was left there unconscious on the side of the road. He died. Some birth control!
After two weeks of rest and recuperation in Yanshu, it was time to move on to Guangzhou. By this time I had won a heart – Khai, the hostel manager, who told me I walked like a mannequin. Me! Whom my dad used to call Tanglefoot and say I’d trip over the pattern on the carpet. I couldn’t wait to tell my relatives, who say I walk like a ruptured duck. This near-sighted gent asked if I had formerly been a model. A model of what? And formerly? In a former life? Love is surely blind! Khai was unusual for a Chinese. He was a chubby, cuddly type with a round happy face, round glasses and receding hair that added to his cuddly look. He described himself as, ‘the fat man with glasses, half bald’. He was a cheerful friendly man who, despite his westernisation, still had a spit now and then. At least he walked over to the gutter to do it.
The sleeper bus was a great disappointment. I had seen them standing empty in the bus station where they looked quite civilised, but that was before the Chinese got stuck into them. I had been warned. At the hostel I met three Englishmen who had just arrived from Guangzhou on a sleeper bus. They said the trip had been a nightmare. The stereo blasted full bore in their ears the entire journey, the driver had blown the horn every three seconds and almost all of the road was under construction.
At three in the afternoon Khai carried my bags to the bus station. There it stood, the oldest sleeper bus on the market. Tatty and careworn, it looked like a zoo cage from the outside. Through its tinted windows all you could see were bars – the supports for the upper berths and the rungs for climbing up to them. Double decker sleepers were fixed along each side of the bus as well as down the middle where they were flanked by two very narrow aisles. Across the back were crammed two layers of five berths in which the customers lay like rows of sardines.
We started off with the bus only half full of passengers, six of whom were foreigners. As we drove through the pretty country outside Yanshu the conductor issued us with a doona each. I rolled mine into a bolster to prop myself up and knitted. You couldn’t sit, so I travelled sprawled back like the Queen of Sheba rolling through her domain.
We passed more of the mountains peculiar to this locality that stuck up like fingers growing straight out of the ground. Everywhere I looked I saw people in the fields bringing in the harvest, while children played under the watchful eyes of their grandparents. In the villages fruit was laid out on racks and tables to dry, and rice was spread on the ground or being winnowed. Now and then we passed a large pig going home on a bicycle – not riding it, but hanging over both sides in an open-weave, wicker basket. And most definitely alive, as evidenced by the stream of fluid that emitted outwards from the business end of one to hit the side of our bus. One bicycle even had two pigs on it. Another bore an army of chooks in two tiers of wire cages. A regular bus passed us with a ludicrous looking load tied on its roof; a three-seater sofa atop an awkward and unstable pile of motley baggage. I reflected that this was the ultimate way to travel; taking your own seat with you. In one village the bus swerved to miss a puppy, not a pet, but someone’s dinner. It was the only dog I had seen alive in China so far.
We had only driven a short distance from the bus station when we were hailed by a group of people who were waiting by the side of the road, all packed and ready to travel. After they had spent fifteen minutes arguing and shouting with the driver and the conductor, I wondered testily why they couldn’t have booked a ticket. The crew finally decided to take them on board. The main concern seemed to have been the establishment of the fare. From then on this performance was repeated every few kilometres until midnight when, after much squeezing, shouting and shoe-horning, we had been finally jam-packed to our maximum capacity. By then the aisles were a climb-over job and the front of the bus was stacked high with cargo. It took an incredible amount of fuss to get people allocated places. Wondering what they could possibly be going on about for so long and in such a convoluted manner, I decided that they all must be a bit thick.
One group’s luggage included many large fodder bags tied at the neck, one of which was moving suspiciously. Some of this baggage went up on the roof, but most ca
me inside the bus. The female of the group negotiated with the driver’s mate and the conductor, who prodded all the bags to suss out their contents. But when the conductor turned away for a moment, two more huge bags were manoeuvred on to the bus from behind a wall. One of the men got in the bus and opened my window so that the woman could pass the stuff up to him. He then hauled these grotty old bags over me, my bedding, and my bags. Towards evening we passed another sleeper bus. It was lying on its side in the rice paddy.
Just on twilight we pulled into a wayside stop for dinner. It was a rough sort of shed that was open to the road at the front and contained low wooden tables and Lilliputian, kindy chairs. I ate chicken and green chilli peppers, hot and tasty, while watching a mauve, pink and purple sunset streak the sky. Then it was dark – and how! There had been a power failure. Candles were produced, but they were obviously cooking with coal as food still continued to be supplied. Tripping downstairs to the loo, I found a damp wet dungeon, and then it was back on the road.
The bus was now mostly full of Chinese men, all of whom chain-smoked, spat and blew their noses – I didn’t want to know where – they had no hankies and they did not open a window. My berth was the last one in front of the double row of bunks across the rear where the occupants lay smoking and shouting to each other. I began to feel the effects of inhaling so much nicotine, but the fresh air fiends of day time buses, who put all the windows down and blew your head off, converted after dark to wimps who were convinced that the night air kills. The bus remained shut tight as a drum and the air inside became progressively foggier and foggier. Cigarette butts and ash were dropped inside the bus rather than out the window. When I opened my window, the man behind me pushed it shut. The man directly above me hung the hand that held his cigarette down level with my eye until I took his wrist and gently pushed it up. He took the hint, but still flicked ash down onto the people and the boxes and bags below. Finally his still lighted butt descended, he cared not where.