A Boy of China

by Richard Loseby

  And so it went on. The driver always had the upper hand, as there were no other methods of delivery — he was it.

  The driver had a young girl as his helper. She collected money and allocated the passengers their seats, even if that ‘seat’ was nothing more than a plastic stool in the aisle. She was slim and pretty, dressed in a pink top and denim shorts with a sunflower motif on the pockets, but when it came to dealing with anyone who stepped out of line she was as tough as they come. Those who tried to short-change her invariably ended up on the receiving end of an almighty tongue-lashing and, sometimes, a clip across the head for good measure.

  Her name was Ping, or at least that was what she answered to whenever the driver needed something, or someone, sorted out. If the radiator needed topping up with water, it was Ping who fetched the container strapped to the top of the bus. If the driver felt hungry, it was Ping who peeled the fruit and fed it into his mouth. She was all things to all people, but one thing she wasn’t was a pushover.

  By the end of the morning we had turned south and were quickly gaining altitude. Xining and the populated world were left far behind as we journeyed over the vast grasslands, dotted here and there with the black tents of Amdo tribesmen. It was a glorious day. Blue skies stretched to all points of the compass and the sun streamed in through dusty windows.

  At the back of the bus a game of cards was in progress, played by three villagers with tatty clothes and tobacco-stained teeth. At one stage a disagreement over a bet quickly turned sour, to the point where knives were drawn. But the matter was settled when the rest of the bus united together in a chorus of disapproval. It was just too nice a day for murder.

  Not so glorious was the hideous creature who occupied the seat beside me. Her husband sat across the aisle eyeing me intently, suspicious that I might make a move on his woman. She was beyond ugly though, a veritable disaster area of knotted black hair and sulphurous breath, wearing layers of dirty green-and-orange robes tied together with a rope at her ample waist. The Tibetans are a noble race, with a handsome gene running through their line in most cases, but for her that line must have done a U-turn and gone someplace else. The odd thing was, her wary hubby across the way clearly couldn’t see it. It occurred to me she might be rich, but judging by the state of her clothing it seemed unlikely. Maybe she had other talents that had captured his heart, but for the time being I just couldn’t see any. It wasn’t until later in the afternoon that her special gift was revealed.

  A problem with the spare tyre meant we were all left sitting for several hours on the side of a dead straight road that was raised higher than the surrounding plateau by a couple of metres. Suddenly a beautiful voice began singing a wonderful folk song, and we all looked to see who it belonged to. It was my ugly neighbour from the bus who had walked down onto the grass below us, so that it appeared as if she stood on a vast stage that stretched to the horizon, while we were gathered in the circle. I discovered the songs were about a lover pining for her champion horseman, who was trapped in a far-off valley by a sudden snowstorm. Their separation would have to last through the winter, a long time in this part of the world, until spring could once again unite them.

  The husband sat down next to me as if to say, ‘See: am I not the luckiest guy in the world?’ Just in case, he then gave me another one of his withering ‘don’t you even think about it’ stares. I decided the best course of action was to give up my seat to him when we eventually climbed back on board, and this he graciously accepted. We became good friends after that, even to the point of sharing our food and water, and it was he who made the first entry in my notebook. At first he was reluctant to write anything, but I was insistent. It didn’t matter that he had no knowledge whatsoever of Little Mao and precious little to say about any other subject relating to Mao himself, although this was to be expected given that so many others were listening in — in China candour could be foolhardy in the company of strangers. Nevertheless the notebook was soon being passed around the bus for everyone to read, just as I had hoped. Finally, after some time and much amusement, it came back to the front of the bus and was given to Ping.

  ‘Read it,’ said the driver abruptly, pulling another cigarette out of a pack with his lips. He was a large man but not tall — thick set in the way of wrestlers. He had been watching in his rear-view mirror and listening intently to the conversation.

  Ping turned to the first page. The driver’s eyes constantly flicked between the road and his attractive helper as she read aloud from the notebook. When Ping finished, he took it from her and checked it for himself. We drifted across the road towards a ditch and he was forced to swerve suddenly to avoid ending up in it.

  For a moment I thought he might know something of use, but in the end his interest proved to be mere curiosity. Ping gave the book back to me and smiled sweetly.

  ‘Do you speak Chinese?’ she asked in Mandarin.

  ‘A little,’ I replied. ‘Do you speak English?’

  She shrieked with laughter and put a hand over her mouth, then retreated to her seat at the front. My guess was she spoke little English, although at her age she would probably already have sat through at least four or five years of English classes. This was one big change I’d noticed since my earlier visits to China: just how many of the younger generation could now communicate in basic English, providing they were brave enough to do so.

  The breakdown had taken quite some time to fix and the afternoon was well on the wane by the time we reached the little village of Huashixia. The regulation pit stop was a welcome relief because we had been on the move for 12 hours. My water was all gone and the altitude was beginning to give me a headache. I sat on a low wall beside the bus and rested my head in my hands.

  Huashixia was the home of my new acquaintances: the man and his sweet-sounding but not-so-sweet-looking woman. He walked up to me with a sack on his back, pointed at his head and let out a mock groan, as if his head was exploding. I nodded back and rubbed my temple. His medical diagnosis was right on the button. Above 2,500 metres, altitude sickness is one of the many things that can kill you (the others being more dramatic, like snow leopards and avalanches). It’s 10 times worse than a hangover, and a very bad one at that, and is basically caused by insufficient oxygen reaching the brain. Symptoms include poor vision, doziness, vomiting, an inability to sleep and a head that feels like its gone one-on-one for 10 rounds with Muhammad Ali. There’s no telling who will get it and there’s no known cure. The only wise thing you can do is ascend slowly to allow your body to adjust, and, if it strikes, retreat to a lower elevation as soon as possible. In my case I wasn’t suffering any of the other symptoms, so I was happy to stay put and see it out.

  ‘Come,’ said the man, slipping his free hand under my arm to lift me up. ‘Tea.’

  Our burly bus driver was hunched over a plate of noodles outside a small roadside kitchen and didn’t look like he was going anywhere for a while, so I followed the couple a short distance to a narrow street that climbed a hill beneath jagged cliffs of white stone.

  The sun was low in the sky, its last rays making the sacred peaks of Amnye Machen glow a brilliant celestial white in the east. At one time this holy mountain was thought to be even higher than Everest. This was shortly after it had been brought to the attention of the Western world in 1921 by Brigadier-General George Edward Pereira, an experienced soldier and explorer known to his regiment as ‘Hoppy’, after he injured his leg in a riding accident. But a few decades later an American climbing team recorded the exact height as 6,282 metres, well short of the Everest mark. This, however, mattered not to the 10,000 Tibetans who continued to make the 200-kilometre pilgrimage around the base of the mountain each year. To the local Golok people and Tibetans worldwide, Machen was an earth god who controlled the rain, hail, thunder and lightning and was the protector of the Goloks, whose paradise floated above the mountain’s blessed peaks. Machen would appear to them, sometimes in the guise of a handsome Tibetan shepherd, at other times
as a fearsome deity. The Goloks were pretty fierce themselves and never shied away from cutting the throats of anyone who came close to their mountain, which may explain why it took so long to be discovered by the outside world. In the Tibetan language, Golok actually means ‘head backward’ or ‘rebel’, so they must not have cared two hoots about what Lhasa, Beijing — or anywhere else for that matter — thought of them.

  The couple’s home was a humble affair of sun-dried brick with a flat-topped roof supported by rough-hewn timber rafters gaily painted in blues and reds. We sat outside on wooden stools, the sun on our faces, as the wife brewed up what her husband indicated would be the perfect remedy for my complaint. She sang as she did so, a happy song that spoke of her delight to be home, and, after a few verses, appeared holding a glass that contained a brown, pungent liquid. It took some getting used to, but it was hot and thirst-quenching, so I didn’t care. Two glasses later, I was feeling better. Three glasses later and the pounding in my head had diminished to a bearable throb. In the space of ten minutes, whatever it was they’d given me had brought about a rapid change. The old man showed me some dried roots that were tied in bunches to the wall of his house, as well as something that looked and smelt like a block of compressed animal dung. Mixed with hot water, this apparently had a magical, curative property and yet no special name was given to it. He simply said it was ja, or, in other words, ‘tea’.

  I poked my head inside to thank his wife and found her in the middle of the room beside a traditional stove with a flue that went straight up then angled to the side so that it exited the far wall beside a large portrait of a Buddhist deity. Around the stove were low bench seats, which made sense — the warmest part of the room is of course where you’d want to spend time eating — and there were other seats against the walls that were covered in colourfully decorated cushions, so the whole effect was quite cosy and comfortable. The floor was made of a dark timber and, in the far corner, a blanket hung down, possibly screening off the bedroom. The old man appeared behind me, pointed to it and chuckled to himself as if he were saying to me, ‘And that my friend, is where the action happens.’

  His wife giggled like a schoolgirl and went back to stirring the pot of ja. I might have stayed for another glass of the incredible stuff, if the blaring horn of the bus hadn’t then sounded.

  The journey continued through early evening and into a night illuminated by a full moon. When we finally reached Maduo we were too tired to speak, and instead the passengers collected their things in silence and drifted off into the darkness. The main street had a row of shops on each side, but the few streetlights showed them all to be shut and there was no sign of anywhere to stay. A group of dogs outside a mechanic’s shop watched me walk a short distance, then scattered when a shout came from behind. It was Ping, waving from the doorway of an innocuous-looking two-storey building. It didn’t look much like a hotel but in my weary state I didn’t care. It had a room on the second floor with a single bed and a massive duvet folded at one end, as well as a few extra blankets printed with colourful geometric patterns of red and gold. It wasn’t quite cold enough for the duvet, so I simply left my clothes on and crawled under the blankets, knowing that another long day of travel lay ahead. Maduo was only halfway to Yushu, and Yushu was the place where I would eventually leave Qinghai province and finally pick up the trail of the Long March, before following it back to the point where it all started. Yushu was, I felt, a sort of crossroads, when things would start to get progressively more serious in terms of the success or failure of my journey.

  Sleep took over in minutes and, when I opened my eyes again, it was morning.

  I splashed water onto my face from a cracked porcelain sink in the bathroom down the hall, while another guest washed his underwear in the one opposite. The toilets were open cubicles perched over a single drain, down which water from a tap at the far end sluiced the contents. On the way back I stopped to look out a row of windows that faced the rising sun. The warmth felt good, though I could tell from the vaporous breath emanating from a lone yak in the street below that the temperature outside had dropped in the night. He or she — one can never tell with a yak — was munching on the aerial of a 4WD parked at the back of the hotel. It was then I noticed the door to one of the rooms was ajar behind me. Inside, a young Chinese man in his late twenties was rubbing his eyes while sitting on the edge of his bed. He stretched.

  ‘Is that your car?’ I asked.

  Maybe my Mandarin wasn’t quite clear, because he looked at me quizzically. So I clutched an invisible steering wheel, made a roaring sound and then pointed outside. This time he smiled and nodded, and said something to another person in the room, who laughed. The car was a nice one, a Jeep Cherokee, and so I guessed he took me for an admiring observer. Seconds later, another Chinese man appeared, ten years older than the first, holding a towel in one hand and a shaving brush in the other. Seeing me in the hall, he hitched up his pyjama bottoms.

  ‘Your car,’ I said again. ‘Bu yao! Not good!’

  He stepped sleepily forward into the hall and peered outside to where I was pointing. Seeing the yak contentedly eating his aerial, he immediately sprang to life and raced down the stairs, still clutching the drawstring of his pyjamas and shouting out what I could only imagine was a Mandarin version of ‘Shoo!’ The sight of him waving the yak away had his friends, including, now, a young woman from the room next door, in hysterics. They doubled up with laughter as they watched the battle down below, which ended only when the yak decided metal wasn’t all that tasty after all and ambled off to greener pastures. The upshot of all this, however, was that I had made a friend for life — or friends for that matter — and soon my attentiveness was richly rewarded with the offer of a ride further west, in the very same vehicle I had helped save.

  They were a group of travellers from Xi’an: two men in their mid-twenties from Xi’an University; Wei, the 30-something owner of the vehicle, who wore white driving gloves, made all the decisions concerning their route and carried a Hasselblad camera; and the young woman, who turned out to be the bright spark in the group. She introduced herself and asked me to join them for breakfast while Wei fixed his aerial.

  We packed and went downstairs to a teahouse where there was a wooden table by the window in the sun. The owner appeared from behind lace curtains and we ordered bowls of hot rice soup and a few hard-boiled eggs. He said it would take a while because he wasn’t open yet and the fire was still unlit, then he shuffled back the way he had come. I heard a back door slam shut and a waft of cold air made the curtains screening his kitchen dance. As we waited, the girl explained that they were on their first trip outside of Xi’an and had hired Wei and his 4WD for the fortnight. Her name was Hua, which meant ‘flower’, she said, before tilting her head back and laughing loudly. I soon discovered Hua did this a lot. She lived to make fun of the others and to tease them about what they were wearing or something they had said. Everything was a joke to her, and for that reason I liked her. So many Chinese expressed a serious, slightly downtrodden view of life, whereas Hua sought out the frivolous and fatuous in everything. I wondered whether her parents were of the well-heeled entrepreneurial variety, making Hua a child of China’s new business elite. Xi’an was a prosperous tourist city after all, home to the second century BC Terracotta Warriors. My suspicions were later confirmed when I discovered that the Hasselblad camera, one of the most expensive you can buy, was hers and not Wei’s. He was simply its self-appointed ‘minder’.

  The watery soup arrived with a pair of hard-boiled eggs that were small and spotted. We slurped communally until Wei pulled up outside, gunning the engine impatiently. This was the signal to drain our bowls and pay the bill, a share of which I was not allowed to contribute, no matter how much I protested. Then I was shown into the front passenger seat of the Jeep no less, while Hua and the two men squeezed into the back. Compared to the beaten-up old bus I’d spent the previous day in, this was extreme luxury. There was even a digi
tal altimeter stuck to the dashboard that also registered the angle of our vehicle. It showed we were on a perfectly flat surface, 4,267 metres above sea level. Wei gunned the engine once more, selected first gear with his right, gloved hand, and we were on our way.

  Except that the journey was over almost immediately. We had gone only a couple of metres when the front of the Jeep suddenly plummeted into a hole in the street. I looked at the altimeter, which indicated we were now at an angle of 45 degrees. How Wei, or any of us, for that matter, could have missed the hole was hard to fathom. It was the size of a spa pool. And we were stuck fast in it.

  No one was hurt though, and the only damage was to Wei’s not-insignificant ego. A group of Tibetans made sure the entire village turned out to see the stupid Han and his truck, with its rear wheels spinning helplessly in the air. They pointed and laughed, and brought chairs out from the teahouse so that they could sit and watch. This was clearly better than a Jackie Chan movie on a Friday night. One man brought a donkey and the hapless animal was made to strain impossibly at the task of freeing the vehicle. Half an hour later an empty lorry rolled through town and the young driver was persuaded to help. He was Tibetan too, with cheeks rubbed raw by the elements, and he had just come from delivering a supply of frozen yak meat to a nearby monastery. ‘Nearby’, I learnt, was 200 kilometres away.

  Fortunately, with the lorry pulling and a couple of us pushing, the 4WD gained the traction it needed to reverse back out, but not without a disturbing crunching noise coming from its undercarriage. Once the car was back on the road, we saw that the right front wheel was turned in at an unnatural angle and the tyre had burst. A wizened elder tapped the wheel, then spat into the dust, indicating to the assembled onlookers that it was fixable, but the prognosis for a quick repair was not good.

  Back in the teahouse, I surveyed my options while Wei sulked in the corner, smoking cigarette after cigarette and leaving the butts on the floor. Hua was upbeat, however.