River Town

by Peter Hessler

  We stayed for another two hours. The best aspect of eating hot pot was that it took so long—it was a slow, lazy meal, perfect for a warm night out on the sidewalk. The restaurant had cold beer and we ordered a few. Everybody had a good time. After dinner we walked the women back to their apartment buildings. I was hoping that they would invite us inside, so we could meet their husbands—sort of like meeting a girl’s parents when you went out in high school. But they just smiled and waved goodbye, and we caught a cab back to the college.

  TEACHER LIAO WAS PREGNANT; she was due in July. In June she invited Adam and me to a farewell dinner. She gave us some calligraphy that had been written by her father-in-law, who was famous for his brushwork, and we gave her some baby clothes.

  A couple of evenings earlier, the college authorities had invited all four of the foreign teachers and our tutors to a banquet. Mr. Wang, the waiban representative, had always enjoyed making fun of Adam’s and my Chinese, speaking with patronizing slowness and accusing us of not understanding. He sat at my table during the banquet, mocking me mercilessly, until finally Teacher Liao snapped at him.

  “Ho Wei understands what you’re saying!” she said. “We studied that a year ago. You don’t need to talk to him like that!”

  Mr. Wang laughed lightly, as he always did; but the point had been made, and I took great pleasure in watching this tiny pregnant woman set the cadre straight. It reminded me of the way she had defended Li Peng during our tutorial a year ago—it was the same fierce pride, and, despite being indirectly linked with Li Peng, I was happy to share in her loyalty.

  She knew that I didn’t like Mr. Wang because that spring I had been very open with her about my feelings regarding the waiban and the English department. Teacher Liao’s final assignment had been to summarize my experience in Fuling, and I spent our last two classes doing that. I was blunt—I told her about the things I didn’t like, the administration’s pettiness and the mocking catcalls in town, and never once did she try to defend any of it. But I spent most of the time talking about the good things that had happened in Fuling, and I said that by far my best experience had been learning Chinese and meeting people in the city. I told her that in particular I respected the way that she and Teacher Kong had extended their friendship as well as their patience; others wouldn’t have done the same.

  Those classes ended in May, because of her pregnancy. My office was on the sixth floor of the teaching building, and I strongly recommended that for our final tutorials we meet in her apartment, or someplace else that was more convenient. She was not a physically strong woman, and it tired her to climb all the way up to my office.

  But until the end she was very Chinese—it was appropriate for us to meet in my office, and so that was where we had class. This had nothing to do with stairs or pregnancy; it was simply how things were done. It was the Chinese way.

  In early May we had my last tutorial. She struggled up the steps, gasping for breath, and I gave her a couple of minutes to recover. As was true of so many Chinese women, most of her body remained thin throughout the pregnancy—it was as if somebody had sewn an awkward bundle onto her stomach. Finally she stopped wheezing and we began class.

  After thirty minutes she suddenly sat bolt upright, puffed out her cheeks, and rushed out the door. I could hear her getting sick in the spittoon outside my office, and then she hurried down the hallway to the bathroom.

  I waited for her to return. A year ago, I would have assumed that she would cancel class, but now I knew better—we would finish the two hours today. I knew exactly how she would act when she returned, and what she would say. And I knew that I would always remember this woman’s quiet pride and toughness, and the way it had gone from being infuriating to something whose consistency was admirable and even comforting.

  Five minutes later she came back. She smiled, blushed, and said, “Duibuqi. Sorry.”

  “Do you want to stop class?” I asked.

  “No. It is nothing—often at this time in the morning I am a little sick.”

  “Certainly we don’t have to finish today if you feel poorly.”

  “It is nothing,” she said firmly. “Now—please continue with what you were saying before I left.”

  And I did.

  I HAD MADE SOME MONEY from a story I had written for the Los Angeles Times, and I donated the payment to the Fuling Catholic church. I knew that Father Li had been looking for some extra cash so he could have a mural painted on a new wall in the courtyard, and he thanked me when I made the donation.

  “Thank you for your kindness to me,” I said, shaking the old man’s hand. We were sitting in his office, with the poster of Mao and Deng on the wall. Father Li gripped my hand tightly.

  “We’ll remember you after you’re gone,” he said. “I’ll say a Mass for you.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and then I thought of something. “Could you also say a Mass for my grandfather?”

  “Certainly. Write his name here.”

  He handed me a piece of paper and I wrote my grandfather’s name: Frank Anselm Dietz. Anselm was the holy name that he had chosen when he became a Benedictine monk. I wrote it carefully and gave the paper back to the priest.

  “When my grandfather was young, he was a monk in Rome,” I said. “He wanted to come here to China.” I had told Father Li this before, but for some reason it seemed important that I repeat it now.

  “Rome is a very beautiful city,” said the priest.

  “Yes, it is,” I said. “I’ve been there before.”

  “I’ve never gone,” he said, chuckling to himself.

  “My grandfather didn’t become a priest. But I think he would like it very much if you said a Mass for him here in Fuling.”

  “I’ll do that,” Father Li said, nodding.

  “Thank you very much,” I said. “I’ll come back sometime and see the new wall.”

  “You will always be welcome here.”

  He walked with me into the courtyard, where high walls kept out the noise of the city. Flowers were growing around the Four Modernizations sign. It was a hot afternoon. I was thinking about my grandfather and the old priest, and suddenly I was so sad that I couldn’t say anything else. Silently I shook his hand and turned to leave.

  “Manman zou,” he said. “Go slowly.” But I walked quickly out of the courtyard and into the roar of the city.

  I GAVE THE LITERATURE STUDENTS their final examination during the last week. Linda’s father was very sick now, and she took the test a few hours early so she could catch a noon bus home. I offered to let her take it later, or not at all; she had always been one of the best students and the news about her father had not sounded good. But she insisted on taking the test before leaving Fuling.

  Later that afternoon I supervised the rest of the students during the scheduled exam. As always, they were nervous and worked seriously, although I noticed that one girl, Susan, seemed distracted. She was very pale and spent most of the second hour with her head on the desk.

  I didn’t think much of it until later. It was Adam’s birthday and after the exam we had a banquet for all the students at a local restaurant. Everybody drank too much and it was a good night, spilling over to the Students’ Home, where Feng Xiaoqin served us more beer.

  At some point during the evening, Mo Money told me that Linda’s father had died while she was taking my examination. The fortune-tellers had been right; and now I wished that I had insisted she take the test some other time.

  The following day Susan disappeared from the college. The story came out gradually, in bits and pieces. Four days earlier she had had an abortion, and the night before the examination she had been taken to the emergency room because of complications. Somehow it had been kept secret up to that point; my impression was that she had found some sort of illegal private doctor, although this wasn’t clear. All we knew for certain was that her emergency-room trip had alerted the college authorities, and now they knew the truth, which was why she had left. Students we
re expelled whenever they were caught having sexual relations, not to mention getting pregnant. And a note was attached to their dangan—the dossiers that followed them wherever they went in China. If Susan ever took a danwei job of any sort, her superiors would know what had happened to her.

  Groups of girl students talked quietly in the hallways, their faces drawn. The night after Susan left, I ran into Sarah and Lisa outside my office. They were serious and we spoke in Chinese, standing on the landing overlooking the city. I asked about Susan, and Lisa looked at me carefully.

  “Do you know what happened to her?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Other students have told me.”

  “What do you think about it?”

  “I think it’s very sad, of course. And I think she should be allowed to graduate.”

  “That won’t happen,” Lisa said quickly. She was one of the better students and also one of the more thoughtful. I asked her if Susan had gone home, and Lisa shook her head.

  “She can’t go home,” she said. “Her father is very angry.”

  “How does he know?”

  “The college told him. When the authorities found out, at first they agreed not to tell her family. But for some reason they told. This same thing happened to Susan’s older sister a few years ago, and when her father found out he beat her. So now Susan will not go home. Her father is very angry—it’s a big loss of face for the family. This is the second time they have lost face in such a way.”

  “Do you think the department should have told him?” I asked.

  “I don’t think it’s their affair. It’s a private matter.”

  I told her that I agreed, and I asked how Susan’s boyfriend was treating her.

  “He is fine. She has good guanxi with his parents and I think they will help her. Perhaps that is where she has gone. But you know, she paid several thousand yuan to get a teaching job in his hometown, but now she won’t graduate and she’ll lose the job. She’ll lose the money, too.”

  That didn’t seem to be the biggest concern—to be honest, I was far more worried about Susan jumping off a bridge. But I said nothing about that.

  “This sort of thing happens everywhere,” I said. “In America it’s very common as well.”

  “What do people do about the problem there?”

  “It’s very difficult, just as it is here, but usually it can be kept private. Probably that is the biggest difference.”

  “That’s the way it should be. But here everybody knows—the whole college has heard about it.”

  “What do most people think?”

  “A few people think it’s funny; others think she’s a bad woman. But most of the students in our class are very sorry for Susan, although we can’t help.” She shook her head and gazed out on the rivers. “Mei banfa,” she said. “There is nothing that can be done.”

  THE NEXT DAY I turned twenty-nine years old. Always in the past my birthdays had felt like somebody else’s—it seemed impossible that I had really gained another year. But this time I knew that I was twenty-nine; in some ways I felt much older. It had been a long two years and during that time I hadn’t left western China.

  In the morning I went with Adam and Mo Money to the bus station, because Linda had asked us to meet her when she returned. She wore a black armband and her eyes were red. After getting off the bus she tried to smile, one of those brave Chinese smiles that held the emotion at bay, compressed and controlled and pushed to the peripheries—a corner of the mouth, a line across the forehead. But today the sadness was too much; her mouth trembled, and she looked away.

  That evening I graded my literature examinations. I thought about how pleasant everything had seemed when I monitored the exam, walking through the rows of students with their heads down, working hard. I liked being surrounded by their silence and concentration, and I liked the way that all of the black-haired heads were bent seriously. There was a simplicity to the scene, and there was a similar simplicity to the examination, which had nothing to do with the complications of life in Fuling, or the political problems in China, or the nationwide struggle of Reform and Opening. It was simply a literature test.

  For the final section I asked them to analyze Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay”:

  Nature’s first green is gold,

  Her hardest hue to hold.

  Her early leaf’s a flower;

  But only so an hour.

  Then leaf subsides to leaf.

  So Eden sank to grief,

  So dawn goes down to day.

  Nothing gold can stay.

  We had studied the poem back in May. I had lectured in detail about its rhythm—I always did that, because the students liked analyzing the sound of the language and you could take a poem apart without boring them. Most of them had understood what I said about Frost, and it was one of those classes that made me feel good about teaching literature. During the exam I felt the same way, walking through the rows and watching them work.

  But now I realized that the simplicity had been a mirage. Linda’s father had been dying as she took her final exam, and Susan had been struggling with the fear that had now driven her from the college. That was the way so many things in Fuling turned out—even teaching, which seemed to be a straightforward job, was complex and uncertain. There was an unemotional veneer that the people presented to the outside world, especially to waiguoren, and this made it harder when you lived there long enough to catch a glimpse of the way things actually worked. Of course, to some degree it was just the difficulties of life anywhere in the world—during my time in Fuling, two students had died; another student had an abortion and was expelled; a father died; a child died; people’s marriages crumbled. Those things happened everywhere. But in Fuling it had taken me longer to see that side of life, because at first as a waiguoren I was held at a distance, and in a way that distance was hardest to deal with once it was gone. It was like looking at a blank meaningless smile and suddenly recognizing a lifetime of sadness concentrated in the corner.

  I had never had any idealistic illusions about my Peace Corps “service” in China; I wasn’t there to save anybody or leave an indelible mark on the town. If anything, I was glad that during my two years in Fuling I hadn’t built anything, or organized anything, or made any great changes to the place. I had been a teacher, and in my spare time I had tried to learn as much as possible about the city and its people. That was the extent of my work, and I was comfortable with those roles and I recognized their limitations.

  But now I found myself wondering if anything would be left from those hours in class. I hoped that my students would remember that Frost poem, or something else that we had studied. It could be something as small as a single character from a story, or a sliver from a Shakespeare sonnet—but I hoped that something would be remembered. I hoped that they would keep it somewhere in the back of their minds, and that they would find something steady and true in its simple beauty. This was the faith I had in literature: its truth was constant, unaffected by the struggles of daily life. But at the same time there was always the issue of relevance, and there were moments when a poem like “Nothing Gold Can Stay” seemed useless against the harsh realities of a place like Fuling.

  I thought about that for a while, and then I went back to grading the examinations. I didn’t have any answers; in the end I just had to hope for the best. Most of them would be fine, I figured. Certainly Linda would be fine, and Mo Money would be fine, and William Jefferson Foster would be fine, and so would Anne, working down in Shenzhen. Most things in the city would work out all right. The priest would be fine, and my tutors would be fine, and the family at the Students’ Home would be fine. Most of the people would continue to make the best of things, and most of the children would have better lives than their parents had. That was really all you could hope for. Perhaps Susan would not be fine, but there was nothing to do about that, just as there hadn’t been much to do for J
anelle and Rebecca and the others who had lost their way. Mei banfa.

  A couple of days later, Jimmy gave me a cassette tape and asked if I would make a recording of all the poetry we had studied. He was one of the liveliest boys, but he had never been a particularly good student; usually he sat in the back of the class and muttered “yahoo” and yashua whenever anybody said something. But he had always been one of my favorites, and now I was touched by his request.

  “Especially I want you to read ‘The Raven,’” he said, “and anything by Shakespeare. This is so I can remember your literature class.”

  I told him that I would make the tape that evening.

  “Also, after you finish the poems,” he said, grinning, “I want you to say all of the bad words you know in English and put them on the tape. Even if there are some bad words you did not teach us, I want you to say them. I would like that very much. And maybe some of the other students will copy it, too.”

  It took two long sittings to record all the poetry we had studied. After that was finished. Adam and I spent five minutes shouting obscenities into the recorder, and I returned the tape to Jimmy. He would turn out fine, too. Most of them were that way. They were tough and sweet and funny and sad, and people like that would always survive. It wasn’t necessarily gold, but perhaps because of that it would stay.

  I LEFT FULING on the fast boat upstream to Chongqing. It was a warm, rainy morning at the end of June—the mist thick on the Yangtze like dirty gray silk. A car from the college drove Adam and me down to the docks. The city rushed past, gray and familiar in the rain.

  The evening before, we had eaten for the last time at the Students’ Home. They kept the restaurant open late especially for us, because all night we were rushing around saying goodbye to everybody, and it was good to finally sit there and eat our noodles. We kidded the women about the new foreign devils who would come next fall to take our place, and how easily they could be cheated.