A Fortune-Teller Told Me

by Tiziano Terzani

  I looked at the woman at the wheel of the Volvo, and thought of the readiness with which she was willing to forswear love in order to become a millionaire, and of her promise to give the monk a portion of her wealth, in the form of a Mercedes. She too was Chinese.

  Chinese, all Chinese, were the shopkeepers I saw from the car window. Chinese the ferrymen on the river. Chinese the heads of the food industries. Chinese the builders of skyscrapers. Chinese the bankers, insurers and speculators. Chinese all those who were destroying Bangkok. Yes, they were the ones who were responsible! This was what passed through my mind as the car was again held up in traffic. Coming from southern China as emigrants fleeing the wars and famines in their homeland, they have done better in Thailand than anywhere else in Southeast Asia. Here, thanks to the tolerance of the people and to Buddhism, they have found work, married, and become citizens with full rights. Expert artisans and clever traders, the Chinese soon amassed huge wealth. The Thais have little aptitude for war and business; they are playful, always keener on fun than on work. Strike a gong in Bangkok and you will see a Thai sketching a dance step; blow on a pipe and a whole group will lift their hands in the air, sway their hips and begin to dance. “Mai ping rai” is their favorite expression. It means “Never mind,” “It doesn’t matter,” “Why worry?” Has the wind blown the roof off your house? Mai ping rai. Do the streets of Bangkok flood at the first sign of rain? Mai ping rai. Has the city become unlivable? Mai ping rai.

  The Chinese, with their innate practicality, have profited enormously from this Thai attitude, and have become masters of the city. The biggest Chinese festival is the beginning of the lunar New Year. In Thailand those three days are not officially recognized as holidays, but Bangkok comes to a standstill. The streets are empty and the banks are closed because the Chinese, who control the biggest slice of the city’s economic activity, take those days off.

  By now the same is true, in varying degree, of the other countries of Southeast Asia. If one day all the Chinese of the region took it into their heads to stay at home, close up shop and not go to work, the Indonesians would have no cars to drive, or cigarettes to smoke, or paper to write on; the Filipinos would have no ships to ferry them between their thousands of islands; the Japanese would have no prawns in their pots. Most of the skyscrapers under construction would remain unfinished. The whole continent would shake in its boots, because it is the Chinese of the diaspora who are the fuel that drives the engine of the Southeast Asian economic miracle. And who are they exactly? Descendants of coolies and merchants, of the poor devils who for decades have emigrated to seek their fortune in the nan yang, the South Seas.

  As the two women chatted between themselves in Thai I went on thinking about these remarkable, devastating Chinese, missionaries of practicality and materialism. With their energy they are covering the whole world in cement—from Asia to Canada, where tens of thousands of them are arriving from Hong Kong in anticipation of its return to Peking’s rule in 1997. I recalled that one of the first big reports I wrote for Der Spiegel twenty years ago was about these same overseas Chinese. Then they were seen as a possible Maoist fifth column, always under suspicion and often victims of racial pogroms. How the world has changed in twenty years!

  It struck me as a good idea to return to the subject for a new story, one that would take me from Thailand to Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia. They were all places to which, with a bit of patience, I could travel without using planes.

  8/AGAINST AIDS? RAW GARLIC AND RED PEPPERS

  At night Turtle House came into its own. The skyscrapers rising all around us were taking away more of our sunshine every day, but in the evening, when the gardener Kamsing lit the lights concealed in the trees, the torches around the pond and the little oil lamps in front of the statues of Ganesh and Buddha in the garden, the house again took on that warm, quiet, tropical magic which had induced us to come to Thailand after five years in the chill and depressing austerity of Japan.

  When we arrived Angela and I worked like mad for two weeks to find the right place for every piece of Chinese furniture, every statue, every vase, every god, every scroll, every lampshade of pale yellow silk—the things that give a room atmosphere. We then called a halt, but the house felt better and better with time. It was like us: old and lived-in, full of all that so many Asian years had made of us. The story behind every object was what would remain with us. As for the objects themselves, we saw ourselves as no more than their temporary custodians.

  The house had been described by Architectural Digest as “an oasis of tropical splendor in the concrete jungle.” What the article did not say was that termites were eating the beams, and the wooden floors were getting shakier and shakier. Rats, displaced by the bulldozers, dredgers and cement mixers that filled the whole neighborhood, found their last refuge with us, and in the night they often woke us with their shrill, riotous cavalcades in our attics, where they joyously reproduced. Luckily we also had a great number of squirrels, so if a guest became nervous about the strange shadows scampering along the branches of the mango tree over our dinner table, or the rustling in the straw roof of the tree house we had had built among the branches of two coconut trees, we would say: “Don’t worry, it’s only the squirrels.” Well, the only difference is that squirrels have nice fluffy tails and rats have long pointed ones.

  But the rats were deadly. Attracted by the bird food, they got into the aviary and murdered some of the most beautiful specimens I had collected, including a hoopoe that we called Mrs. Punk, and the “fairy-tale bird,” a bright green pitta that might have come straight out of the illustrations to Grimm’s fairy tales. Nor can we forget poor Callas, a nightingale: whenever I whistled, no matter at what hour of the day, she would launch into the most glorious arias I had ever heard.

  Then there was Totò, an Indian myna which we bought when he was tiny. I had patiently taught him—at dawn, both of us in the dark under a big towel—to utter a few words in Italian. He would imitate the ring of the telephone, the barking of dogs and the calls of other birds, but he spoke mainly in Thai, saying things like: “If you love me, why don’t you tell me?” He drowned in his cage when it fell in the pond one stormy night.

  Baolì, our beloved family dog, born on the Peak in Hong Kong, had lived with us for five years in Peking and another five in Tokyo. By the time we moved to Bangkok he was so old that he could hardly move, and he seldom barked anymore. We needed a guard dog, so we adopted a newborn puppy someone had left in a cardboard box under our car in a parking lot.

  Angela used to spend hours reading and writing behind the mosquito netting on the veranda over the water. At first the deaths of the animals at Turtle House caused her a great deal of anger and grief. She wanted justice, or order at least, but in the end she accepted “the natural cruelty of our ecological system.” “This is no pussycat pond,” she would say, consoling herself for the fact that the big turtle ate the ducklings as soon as they hatched, the rats ate the birds, and the birds ate the little sparrows that came to peck the crumbs in their cages.

  The events of the pond, the garden and the animals were a constant reminder of how important it is for people to have nature around them, to observe it and learn its logic and enjoy it. How can children grow up mentally healthy in the middle of a city, without feeling the rhythm of plant and animal life along with their own? Never in his history has man drifted so far from nature as now, and this has been perhaps the worst of our mistakes.

  The traffic in Bangkok made it hopeless to attempt any social life. To lunch with someone in town meant arriving home around five in the afternoon; an invitation to dine at some embassy meant setting out at least two hours before. Having built myself a workroom on the other side of the pond, I was one of the few people in Bangkok who could commute between home and office in a matter of seconds. Hence we resisted all inducements to go out, and used Turtle House to tempt people we wanted to see to come to us instead.

  The story of my flightless year soon
made the rounds of the journalists in the area, and the commonest reaction was good-hearted envy. When the subject came up at dinner, many of them had their own stories to tell. One came from Claudia Rossett of the Wall Street Journal, who was living in Hong Kong at the time.

  Claudia’s family lived in Baltimore. In the 1930s her grandmother had been left a widow, wretchedly poor, with three children to bring up. In those days lottery tickets were on sale in the drugstores, and once she dreamed she had won with the number sixteen. She told her dream to her next-door neighbor, who urged her to put everything on that number. She did, and sixteen won, bringing her a tidy sum of money that changed her life overnight. From then on she never ceased talking about her amazing premonition. Many years later one of her three children, Claudia’s father, went back to the neighborhood where he had grown up. He met up with the woman next door, who told him that her suggestion to play the lottery had been used by his mother’s friends to give her money which otherwise, being a very proud woman, she would never have accepted. When they heard of the dream, they had made a collection, and gave the money to the drugstore owner. He then gave it to her, telling her the winning number was sixteen—the very one she had dreamt!

  The last guest at Turtle House before I took the train for Malaysia and Singapore was Joachim Holzgen, a colleague from Der Spiegel. In early March the United Nations Transition Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) invited each of the main European journals to send a reporter there. The aim was to interest European public opinion in the UN peace mission preparing for the Cambodian elections to be held at the end of May. The program included a visit by helicopter to the military installations, and to avoid confronting me with a dilemma Der Spiegel’s editors in Hamburg decided to send Joachim Holzgen. It was his first trip to Indochina, and I invited him to dinner with a couple of colleagues who had just returned from Cambodia. The next morning he got on the plane for Phnom Penh, and I went to the Hua Lampun railway station, with my rucksack on my back, and in my head the plan to write about the overseas Chinese.

  I have long had a passion for railway stations. I could spend whole days in one, sitting in a corner and observing the life around me. The spirit of a country, the state of mind of the people and their problems are reflected better in a station than anywhere else. In half an hour of watching the sea of humanity as it ebbs and flows beneath the canopies of Hua Lampun station, you can learn more about today’s Thailand than by reading any academic treatise. Trains coming from the north disgorge people by the thousand, mostly young, many of them girls, all full of hope. They have left their villages with a bundle of clothes and a one-way ticket, to look for work in the capital.

  Recruiters from the construction industry wait on the platform as each train draws up. They offer about 100 baht ($2.50) per day, plus a camp bed on the site. The prettiest girls are invited to work in the brothels. It all happens in a few minutes: offers, wary hesitations, verbal contracts, and then away in the back of one of the many pickup trucks parked outside the station. In the crowd, looking more lost than the others, quite tiny children can be seen. They too find work, right under the noses of the police, who parade up and down with badges all over them and dashing pistols at their sides. Theoretically even in Thailand there are laws against the exploitation of minors, but in practice, as in so much of Asia, nothing is really illegal.

  My southbound train was due to depart at 10:20, and it left on the dot. The Thai railways are an example of that efficient public administration which has fostered the rapid development of the country, and which, along with Buddhism and the monarchy, is still one of its cohesive elements. The further the train went from Bangkok, the more people in the stations gave the impression of a militarized society. Everyone had a uniform: students, postmen, taxi motorcyclists, ticket collectors. The train conductor, with his chestful of ribbons from heaven knows what campaign, could have passed for an air marshal. The journey was an ongoing banquet. Dozens of vendors with baskets full of local specialties got on at one station and off at the next.

  I traveled for a day and a night, lulled by the rattling of the wheels. At 5:30 sharp I was woken by the air marshal-conductor. The carriage had a stale smell. I was unshaven and my tongue was like sandpaper from the bottle of Mekong (Thai whiskey) I had drunk the night before with the railway police. I began to think that perhaps a year of such trips was madness. But I had only to get off the train and inhale a lungful of that pungent dawn air, full of promises, to feel inspired once more. I was in Yala! How many more times in my life would I arrive in Yala?

  I thought of Chang Choub and his advice to meditate. Perhaps this traveling, all alone, was my meditation. Free from the daily routine, accountable to nobody but my own conscience, my mind grew calm. Frivolous thoughts rose to the surface, pleasant thoughts, fleeting impressions. Deep down I felt a great joy. I ate some soup at a stall outside the station and went for a stroll.

  Yala is a town like many others, with no character to speak of. The main street is lined on both sides with shop-houses, all exactly alike: the ground floor is for selling, the upper for living. The owners are all Chinese—my tough, practical Chinese, penniless on arrival, who set up as small shopkeepers. They redeem themselves by spending their lives in pursuit of a goal largely despised by their own culture. The China from which these emigrants came was Confucian, and trade commanded scant respect. Merchants were on the lowest rank of the social hierarchy, just below soldiers, and far below peasants and artisans.

  My first destination was Betong, a town in the short mountain range that divides the peninsula and marks the border between Thailand and Malaysia. I shared a taxi with five other passengers and we covered the eighty-six miles from Yala in just over two hours. We passed through highly fertile red terrain, covered in rubber and pineapple plantations, then climbed a tarred road among splendid rocky peaks which appeared and disappeared between dense banks of mist.

  In the time when both Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur were fighting an armed Communist insurrection, these mountains were the natural refuge for the guerrillas, and Betong was known as a danger spot chock-full of spies. All that has changed. The first impression is highly pleasing. A handsome municipal signboard at the entrance to the town announces that “Betong is renowned for its scenic beauty.” Other signs, all in English, point tourists in the direction of the park, the stadium and, for some mysterious reason, the prison. The chief monument they are urged to see is an enormous red letter box on the main square. A sign proclaims it to be the largest in the world.

  Despite this façade of touristic innocence, there is something that immediately strikes one about Betong: the number of barber shops. There are dozens of them, one every few yards, and the fact that they concern themselves with more than beards is clear from their strange names—“Funny Barber,” or “Sexy Barber.”

  Profiting from the proximity of Malaysia, with its immense market of men sexually repressed by Islamic puritanism, Betong has developed one of the most profitable of all industries: prostitution. The services are provided by Thais; the clientele is exclusively Malay. Without requiring a passport, thousands of Muslims cross the border every day on a twenty-four-hour visa to indulge in pleasures forbidden at home. Betong is a brothel city.

  I had come to Betong to look for someone who had been in the Communist guerrillas. I had no idea how to go about it, but the task proved easier than I had expected. The porter of my hotel sent me to a photographer, who sent me to a seller of electrical appliances, who telephoned a friend of his, who came to fetch me with a scooter and dropped me off in front of a small pharmacy of traditional medicine with its window full of dried mushrooms for long life and bottles of green ointment. In the space of an hour, passing from one Chinese to another, I had reached Mr. Wu, a middle-aged man, small, thin and distinguished-looking.

  For close on twenty years Wu had been the guerrillas’ doctor. Following their surrender in 1987 he had become the best-known pharmacist in Betong. Thanks to his experience in the jungle, he
was the only one with a thorough knowledge of the therapeutic virtues of the plants, roots and barks in the nearby mountains.

  Mr. Wu offered me tea and produced the family albums. There were photographs of him and his wife as guerrillas, in Maoist uniforms with their feet wrapped in strips of cloth and old rifles over their shoulders. He said we should visit the guerrilla camp, which was only five miles from the city. He shut up shop and off we went.

  The Communist guerrilla war in Malaysia began just after the Second World War. The leader was Chin Peng, a hero of the anti-Japanese resistance. Most of the fighters, like him, were Chinese. Inspired by Mao’s revolution, they too dreamed of creating a people’s republic in what was then still part of the British Empire. The British resisted, declared a state of emergency, and in a fierce military campaign, using tactics later copied with less success by the Americans in Vietnam, they managed to isolate the guerrillas.

  In 1957 the British granted independence to a state called the Malay Federation. It was composed of Malaysia and Singapore, plus the territories of Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo (included expressly to prevent the Chinese from forming the majority of the population). Thereafter the Communist guerrilla campaign was no longer a real threat, although a few groups of a strict Maoist persuasion remained active along the Thai border. These groups, however, were torn by internal strife and purges, and in the end they gave up.

  In a solemn ceremony on April 28, 1987, the last Communist guerrillas surrendered their arms to the Thai authorities. They were unable to return to Malaysia, so with the permission of Bangkok they stayed where they were, in their camp on Thai territory. They had to make a living, and being clever, practical Chinese, they profitably recycled their past as failed revolutionaries. I had only to set foot in the forest camp to realize this. The old, feared general headquarters, now called “The Village of Friendship,” had become a sort of guerrilla Disneyland with restaurants, video halls, souvenir stalls and tours of the tunnels guided by ex-combatants.