Last chance to see

by Douglas Adams

  The other odd thing was that the music was clearly completely foreign to them. Well, obviously it was foreign music, so that's not altogether surprising, but it was as if they were playing from a phrase book. Every extempore flourish the trumpeter added, every extra fill on the drums, were all crashingly and horribly wrong. I suppose that Indians must have felt this hearing George Harrison playing the sitar in the sixties, but then, after a brief indulgence, so did everybody else; clumsy replications of Indian music never supplanted the popular music of the West. When the Chinese listened avidly to mangled renditions of 'Auld Lang Syne' and `Little Brown Jug', they were obviously hearing something very different to what I was hearing and I couldn't work out what it was.

  Travelling in China I began to find that it was the sounds I was hearing that confused and disoriented me most.

  It occurred to me, as we tried to find a table in one of the more muffled corners of the bar, that the dolphins we had come to look for must be suffering from the same kind of problem. Their senses must be completely overwhelmed and confused.

  To begin with, the baiji dolphin is half-blind.

  The reason for this is that there is nothing to see in the Yangtze. The water is so muddy now that visibility is not much more than a few centimetres, and as a result the baiji's eyes have atrophied through disuse.

  Curiously enough, it is often possible to tell something about the changes that have occurred during an animal's evolution from the way in which its foetus develops. It's a sort of action replay.

  The baiji's eyes, feeble as they are, are placed quite high up on its head to make the most of the only light that ever reaches them, i.e. from directly above.

  Most other dolphins have their eyes much lower down the sides of their heads, from where they can see all around them, and below; and this is exactly where you will find the eyes on a young baiji foetus.

  As the foetus grows, however, its eyes gradually migrate up the sides of its head, and the muscles which would normally pull the eyeball downwards don't even bother to develop. You can't see anything downwards.

  It may be, therefore, that the entire history of soil erosion into the Yangtze can be charted in the movement of a single baiji foetus's eyes. (It may also be that the baiji arrived into an already turbid Yangtze from somewhere else and just adapted to its new environment; we don't know. Either way, the Yangtze has become very much more muddy during the history of the baiji species, mostly because of human activity.)

  As a consequence, the baiji had to use a different sense to find its way around. It relies on sound. It has incredibly acute hearing, and 'sees' by echolocation, emitting sequences of tiny clicks and listening for the echoes. It also communicates with other baijis by making whistling noises.

  Since man invented the engine, the baiji's river world must have become a complete nightmare.

  China has a pretty poor road system. It has railways, but they don't go everywhere, so the Yangtze (which in China is called the Chang Jiang, or 'Long River') is the country's main highway. It's crammed .with boats the whole time, and always has been - but they used to be sailing boats. Now the river is constantly churned up by the engines of rusty old tramp steamers, container ships, giant ferries, passenger liners and barges.

  I said to Mark, 'It must be continuous bedlam under the water.'

  'What?'

  'I said, it's hard enough for us to talk in here with this band going on, but it must be continuous bedlam under the water.'

  `Is that what you've been sitting here thinking all this time?

  'Yes.'

  `I thought you'd been quiet.'

  'I was trying to imagine what it would be like to be a blind man trying to live in a discotheque. Or several competing discotheques.'

  `Well, it's worse than that, isn't it? Mark said. 'Dolphins rely on sound to see with.'

  'All right, so it would be like a deaf man living in a discotheque.'

  'Why?'

  'All the stroboscopic lights and flares and mirrors and lasers and things. Constantly confusing information. After a day or two you'd become completely bewildered and disoriented and start to fall over the furniture.'

  `Well, that's exactly what's happening, in fact. The dolphins are continually being hit by boats or mangled in their propellers or tangled in fishermen's nets. A dolphin's echolocation is usually good enough for it to find a small ring on the sea bed, so things must be pretty serious if it can't tell that it's about to be brained by a boat.

  `Then, of course, there's all the sewage, the chemical and industrial waste and artificial fertiliser that's being washed into the Yangtze, poisoning the water and poisoning the fish.'

  `So,' I said, 'what do you do if you are either half-blind, or half-deaf, living in a discotheque with a stroboscopic light show, where the sewers are overflowing, the ceiling and the fans keep crashing on your head and the food is bad?'

  'I think I'd complain to the management.'

  'They can't.'

  'No. They have to wait for the management to notice.'

  A little later I suggested that, as representatives of the management so to speak, perhaps we ought to try to hear what the Yangtze actually sounded like under the surface - to record it in fact. Unfortunately, since we'd only just thought of it, we didn't have an underwater microphone with us.

  'Well, there's one thing we can do,' said Chris. 'There's a standard technique in the BBC for waterproofing a microphone in an emergency. What you do is you get the microphone and you stuff it inside a condom. Either of you got any condoms with you?'

  'Er, no.'

  'Nothing lurking in your sponge bags??

  'No.

  'Well, we'd better go shopping, then.'

  By now I was beginning to think in sound pictures. There are two very distinctive sounds in China, three if you count Richard Clayderman.

  The first is spitting. Everybody spits. Wherever you are you continually hear the sound: the long-drawn-out, sucking, hawking noise of mucus being gathered up into the mouth, followed by the hissing launch of the stuff through the air and, if you're lucky, the ping of it hitting a spittoon, of which there are many. Every room has at least one. In one hotel lobby I counted a dozen strategically placed in corners and alcoves. In the streets of Shanghai there is a plastic spittoon sunk into the pavement on every street corner, filled with cigarette ends, litter and thick, curling, bubbly mucus. You will also see many signs saying `No spitting', but since these are in English rather than Chinese, I suspect that they are of cosmetic value only. I was told that spitting in the street was actually an offence now, with a fine attached to it. If it were ever enforced I think the entire economy of China would tilt on its axis.

  The other sound is the Chinese bicycle bell. There is only one type of bell, and it's made by the Seagull company, which also makes Chinese cameras. The cameras, I think, are not the world's best, but the bicycle bells may well be, as they are built for heavy use. They are big, solid, spinning chrome drums and have a great resounding chime to them which you hear ringing out through the streets continuously.

  Everyone in China rides bicycles. Private cars are virtually unheard of, so the traffic in Shanghai consists of trolley-buses, taxis, vans, trucks and tidal waves of bicycles.

  The first time you stand at a major intersection and watch, you are convinced that you are about to witness major carnage. Crowds of bicycles are converging on the intersection from all directions. Trucks and trolley-buses are already barrelling across it. Everyone is ringing a bell or sounding a horn and no one is showing any signs of stopping. At the moment of inevitable impact you close your eyes and wait for the horrendous crunch of mangled metal but, oddly, it never comes.

  It seems impossible. You open your eyes. Several dozen bicycles and trucks have all passed straight through each other as if they were merely beams of light.

  Next time you keep your eyes open and try to see how the trick's done; but however closely you watch you can't untangle the dancing, weaving patte
rns the bikes make as they seem to pass insubstantially through each other, all ringing their bells.

  In the western world, to ring a bell or sound a horn is usually an aggressive thing to do. It carries a warning or an instruction: 'Get out of the way', 'Get a move on', or `What the hell kind of idiot are you anyway? If you hear a lot of horns blowing in a New York street you know that people are in a dangerous mood.

  In China, you gradually realise, the sound means something else entirely. It doesn't mean, 'Get out of my way, asshole', it just means a cheerful 'Here I am'. Or rather it means, `Here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am...', because it is continuous.

  It occurred to me as we threaded our way through the crowded, noisy streets looking for condoms, that perhaps Chinese cyclists also navigated by a form of echolocation.

  'What do you think?' I asked Mark.

  'I think you've been having some very strange ideas since we came to China.'

  `Yes, but if you're weaving along in a pack of cyclists, and everyone's ringing their bells, you probably get a very clear spatial perception of where everybody is. You notice that none of them have lights on their bicycles?

  'Yes...'

  'I read somewhere that the writer James Fenton tried riding a bike with a light on it in China one night and the police stopped him and told him to take it off. They said, "How would it be if everyone went around with lights on their bicycles?" So I think they must navigate by sound. The other thing that's extraordinary about cyclists is their inner peace.'

  `What?

  'Well, I don't know what else it can be. It's the extraordinary, easy unconcern with which a cyclist will set off directly across the path of an oncoming bus. They just miss a collision which, let's face it, would not harm the bus very much, and though they only miss by about nine millimetres the cyclist doesn't appear even to notice.'

  'What is there to notice? The bus missed him.'

  'But only just.'

  'But it missed him. That's the point. I think we get alarmed by close scrapes because they're an invasion of space as much as anything else. The Chinese don't worry about privacy or personal space. They probably think we're neurotic about it.'

  The Friendship Store seemed like a promising place to buy condoms, but we had a certain amount of difficulty in getting the idea across. We passed from one counter to another in the large open-plan department store, which consists of many different individual booths, stalls and counters, but no one was able to help us.

  We first started at the stalls which looked as if they sold medical supplies, but had no luck. By the time we had got to the stalls which sold bookends and chopsticks we knew we were on to a loser, but at least we found a young shop assistant who spoke English.

  We tried to explain .to her what it was we wanted, but seemed to reach the limit of her vocabulary pretty quickly. I got out my notebook and drew a condom very carefully, including the little extra balloon on the end.

  She frowned at it, but still didn't get the idea. She brought us a wooden spoon, a candle, a sort of paper knife and, surprisingly enough, a small porcelain model of the Eiffel Tower and then at last lapsed into a posture of defeat.

  Some other girls from the stall gathered round to help, but they were also defeated by our picture. At last I plucked up the bravado to perform a delicate little mime and at last the penny dropped.

  'Ah!' the first girl said, suddenly wreathed in smiles. 'Ah yes!'

  They all beamed delightedly at us as they got the idea.

  'You do understand? l asked.

  `Yes! Yes, I understand.'

  'Do you have any?

  'No,' she said. 'Not have.'

  'Oh.'

  'But, but, but...'

  'Yes?

  'I say you where you go, OK?

  'Thank you very much. Thank you.'

  'You go 616 Nanjing Road. OK. Have there. You ask "rubberover". OK?

  `Rubberover?

  'Rubberover. You ask. They have. OK. Have nice day.' She giggled happily about this with her hand over her mouth.

  We thanked them again, profusely, and left with much waving and smiling. The news seemed to have spread very quickly around the store, and everybody waved at us. They seemed terribly pleased to have been asked.

  When we reached 616 Nanjing Road, which turned out to be another, smaller department store, and not a knocking shop as we had been half-suspecting, our pronunciation of 'rubberover' seemed to let us down and produce another wave of baffled incomprehension.

  This time I went straight for the mime that had served us so well before, and it seemed to do the trick at once. The shop assistant, a slightly more middle-aged lady with severe hair, marched straight to a cabinet of drawers, brought us back a packet and placed it triumphantly on the counter in front of us.

  Success, we thought, opened the packet and found it to contain a bubble sheet of pills.

  'Right idea,' said Mark, with a sigh. 'Wrong method.'

  We were quickly floundering again as we tried to explain to the now slightly affronted lady that it wasn't precisely what we were after. By this time a crowd of about fifteen onlookers had gathered round us, some of whom, I was convinced, had followed us all the way from the Friendship Store.

  One of the things that you quickly discover in China, is that we are all at the zoo. If you stand still for a minute, people will gather round and stare at you. The unnerving thing is that they don't stare intently or inquisitively, they just stand there, often right in front of you, and watch you as blankly as if you were a dogfood commercial.

  At last one young and pasty-faced man with glasses pushed through the crowd and said he spoke a little English and could he help?

  We thanked him and said, yes, we wanted to buy some condoms, some rubberovers, and we would be very grateful if he could explain that for us.

  He looked puzzled, picked up the rejected packet lying on the counter in front of the affronted shop assistant and said, 'Not want rubberover. This better.'

  `No,' Mark said. `We definitely want rubberover, not pills.'

  `Why want rubberover? Pill better.'

  `You tell him,' said Mark.

  'It's to record dolphins,' I said. 'Or not the actual dolphins in fact. What we want to record is the noise in the Yangtze that... it's to go over the microphone, you see, and...'

  'Oh, just tell him you want to fuck someone,' muttered Chris, scottishly. 'And you can't wait.'

  But by now the young man was edging nervously away from us, suddenly realising that we were dangerously insane, and should simply be humoured and escaped from. He said something hurriedly to the shop assistant and backed away into the crowd.

  The shop assistant shrugged, scooped up the pills, opened another drawer and pulled out a packet of condoms.

  We bought nine, just to be on the safe side.

  'They've got aftershave as well,' said Mark, 'if you're running out.'

  I had already managed to dispose of one bottle of aftershave in the hotel in Beijing, and I hid another under the seat of the train to Nanjing.

  'You know what you're doing?' said Mark as he spotted me. I'd thought he was asleep.

  'Yes. I'm trying to get rid of this bloody stuff. I wish I'd never bought it.'

  'No, it's more than that. When an animal strays into new territory, where it doesn't feel at home, it marks its passage with scent, just to lay claim. You remember the ring-tailed lemurs in Madagascar? They've got scent glands in their wrists. They rub their tails between their wrists and then wave their tails in the air to spread the scent around, just to occupy the territory. That's why dogs pee against lampposts as well. You're just scent-marking your way round China. Old habits die hard.'

  'Does anyone happen to know,' asked Chris, who had been lolling sleepily against the window for an hour or so, 'what the Chinese for Nanjing actually looks like? I only ask so as we'll know when we've got there.'

  At Nanjing we had our first sight of the river. Although Shanghai is known as the gateway
to the Yangtze, it isn't actually on it, but is on a connecting river called the Huangpu. Nanjing is on the Yangtze itself.

  It is a grim town, or at least we found it to be so. The sense of alien dislocation gathered us more tightly into its grip. The people we found to be utterly opaque, and would either stare at us or ignore us. I was reminded of a conversation I had had with a Frenchman on the plane to Beijing.

  'It is difficult to talk to the Chinese people,' he had said. 'Partly it is the language, if you do not speak Chinese, but also, you know, they have been through many, many things. So they think it is safer perhaps to ignore you. If they talk to you or do not talk to you they are paid the same whatever, so, pfffft.

  'I think if they get to know you they talk a little more, perhaps, but pfffft.'

  The sense of dislocation was sharpened by the presence, in the centre of town, of a single major Western-style high-rise hotel, called the Jing Ling. It was an anonymously grand conference-holding, revolving-bar-and-atrium-ridden modern hotel of the sort that generally I heartily dislike, but suddenly it was like an oasis to us.

  We made straight for the revolving top-floor bar like rats from a sack and sat huddled for safety round a cluster of gin and tonics. After twenty minutes or so of sitting in these unexpectedly familiar surroundings, we found, as we gazed out of the panoramic windows at the vast, alien, darkened city which turned slowly around us, that we felt like astronauts in a vast, warm life-support system, looking out over the hostile and barren terrain of another planet.

  We were all seized with a sudden desire not to have to go out there any more, not to have to be stared at, ignored, spat at, or have our personal space invaded by bicycles. Unfortunately the Jing ling had no free rooms, and we were ejected into the night to find lodging in an altogether grimmer crumbling hotel on the outskirts, where we sat and thought, once more, about the dolphins out in their filthy river and how we were to make our recording.

  On a day darkened with drizzle we stood on' the bank of Yangtze, watching the great drifting sea of sludge which flows sullenly from the depths of China. The only colour in a heavy landscape of dark brown shading to grey, against which long, black, smoke-belching silhouettes of diesel-engined junks thudded and growled up the river, was a little pink knotted condom dangling limply on the end of a cable attached to Chris's tape recorder. The half-heard swish of unseen multitudes of bicycles was like the distant drumming of hooves. From here the bewilderment of Shanghai seemed like a remote warm memory of home.