Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation or How He Became Comfortable Eating Live Squid

by J. Maarten Troost

  It was a little ditty about Kublai Khan, sung by a chorus of women. It was a very moving song, very powerful, and when it finished, I, too, felt anger and hatred, and wished only to set out on the warpath. But Xuen Ke toned the atmosphere down by introducing a song played during the Yi Torch Festival. It consisted of a girl playing a small mouth instrument, and as I listened to these trippy, warbling sounds, I thought this must be what ancient techno sounded like. This was followed by a Tibetan man, a former hunter who kissed the amulet around his neck and sang, a cappella, a gripping song about a friend.

  “He sing from the heart,” Xuen Ke went on, “not from the face like Chinese pop singers. We hate them. This man only a grade-three education from mountain school. But his singing a Ph.D.”

  I liked Xuen Ke. There was a cheekiness to him. He ended the performance with some sage advice. “Don’t eat the fish from the lake, or the heart of the animal. And don’t drink beer or spirits. Then smoking no problem.”

  “So what did you think?” Jack asked me afterward.

  “I’d be very curious to know what he said to the Chinese audience members. I mean, twenty-one years in prison for being a Naxi. I’d say he has cause to be just a trifle pissed off with the Han Chinese.”

  “That’s the Chinese Chinese?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, there sure are a lot of them here.”

  All wearing cowboy hats like Jack. Yes, Lijiang was now very touristy and very Chinese. True, there were many who were Naxi. But most seemed to be employed to be the cute supplicant minority, with young women in traditional dress stepping out of the restaurants to do a dance on the canals at five-minute intervals. Ten kilometers to the north in the town of Baisha, Dr. Ho’s home had become an extremely popular stop on the tourist trail.

  We had dinner on a second-floor balcony, overlooking the hordes of visitors. And then, below us, through the bustling crowds, three young, very dirty pilgrims were lying down, touching their foreheads to the street, standing and bowing, repeating this devotional rhythm again and again, as they made their way forward through a crowd that pointed and laughed. They were Tibetan Buddhists on pilgrimage to the Yufeng Temple, a small lamasery outside of Lijiang.

  “So,” I said to Jack after the Tibetans had passed. “Are you feeling rested? Ready to do some hiking?”

  “I’m not entirely convinced this is a good idea. The thought of marching into the wilderness in some remote corner of China with you kind of scares me.”

  “It’ll be fun. Trust me.”

  “Okay. Now I’m really worried.”

  16

  A week earlier, somewhere in the hills above Dali, it had occurred to me that hiking the high trail above Tiger Leaping Gorge might be a little challenging. This is because I was apparently traveling with the world’s laziest man. Jack and I had gone to look at the Zhonghe Temple, perched upon Zhonghe Shan, a lofty eminence riddled with Bai cemeteries. It’s above 7,500 feet, a good hike. But we did not hike up this mountain. From Dali we had taken the chairlift. Where we stepped off, there stood a sign pointing us to a café 100 meters upward.

  “We are not going up,” Jack had insisted. “It’s 100 meters—that’s, I don’t know, a long way in feet.”

  “It’s about 300 feet.”

  “That’s a long way. And I’m tired.”

  “Don’t be such a wimp. My four-year-old could run up 300 feet. Even my one-year-old could waddle up the hill.”

  Finally, Jack had relented and, with an astonishing display of gasps and labored breathing, followed by innumerable breaks, he managed to heave himself up to the café.

  “There. You happy now? You’ve got a Coke, a plate of French fries, cigarettes. It wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  Jack was dripping in sweat. “Salt. I need salt.”

  “Look,” I had said. “This is nothing compared to Tiger Leaping Gorge.”

  “Well, I’m not much of a hiker.”

  “Evidently. But you did bring hiking boots, right? You’re going to need them.”

  “No, I didn’t bring hiking boots. I’ve got running shoes.”

  “And clamp-ons,” I had mused. “We’ll need to buy some clamp-ons.”

  “Clamp-ons,” Jack had sputtered. “What do we need clamp-ons for?”

  “For the ice.”

  It was early October, far too early for ice. But as always in China, I didn’t know what to expect of this hike above Tiger Leaping Gorge, a deep canyon carved by the Yangtze River and framed by spectacular 16,000-foot mountains. Once, long ago, a tiger was said to have leapt across the gorge, and the Chinese, who have a strong disposition toward poetic place-names, commemorated the event by calling it Tiger Leaping Gorge. Really, it is remarkable that Communism, with its deadening effect on language, lingered for so long in China. Mao, no doubt, would have called it Gorge Number Fifty-three, or some other buzz-kill of a name. The fifteen-mile, two-day hike above the gorge is said to be among the finest hikes in the world, offering breathtaking vistas of immense cliffs and the frothing river. This is what I knew. That is what I sought.

  And this being China, which is still very much under the thumb of the Communist Party, this would likely be my only opportunity to see Tiger Leaping Gorge in its full splendor. This is because the government has decided to build a dam across what by some measures is the deepest gorge on Earth. Tiger Leaping Gorge, from Beijing’s perspective, is the perfect place for another dam. And they love dams in Beijing. Indeed, nearly half the world’s dams are in China, including the largest, the Three Gorges Dam, 1,500 miles downstream. Dam building begets dam building, and Chinese engineers, concerned about sediment buildup in the Yangtze River, have concluded that Tiger Leaping Gorge is the ideal spot to take some of the pressure off of the Three Gorges Dam. One would think, however, that the local government in Yunnan would object to Beijing’s plans. After all, it would call for transforming Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the natural treasures in China, into a big pond. But there is a saying in China—Build a bridge and you’ll get silver. Build a road and you’ll get gold. But build a dam and you’ll get diamonds. There is money in dams. And money in China trumps everything else.

  So I was eager to see the gorge before it flooded. The trailhead to Tiger Leaping Gorge begins in the village of Qiaotou, forty miles north of Lijiang, but sadly for us, the early buses from Lijiang had been full, and by the time we reached it, it was nearly noon. There didn’t appear to be anything compelling in Qiaotou, and so we dropped off our backpacks at Jane’s Guesthouse, where we encountered Jane—who may or may not have been a man. The guesthouse is located just before the gate at the entrance to the high trail that would lead us up to the lofty pinnacles, and we decided, since we were there, to fuel up on banana pancakes. Jack was surprisingly chipper.

  “Let’s go for the speed record,” he said.

  I encouraged this. We would climb thousands of feet today. There was no need for reality just yet.

  It was a warm, sunny day, and we set off from the guesthouse with our daypacks full of water, wandering past fields of grain and small wooden farmhouses. Jack had set a blistering pace but then suddenly stopped.

  “Are you sure we’re on the trail?” he asked.

  “I have no idea. But you know what? It’s a nice trail, whatever this trail is, so let’s just see where it goes.”

  Jack gave me a dubious look. “Okay, right, I’m feeling really good about this hike.”

  And then, just a few steps farther along the path, we did feel really good about this hike. For a half hour or so, we’d been following the Yangtze River as it meandered past the last remnants of Qiaotou and into terraced cornfields. And then, as the trail curved around a bend, we suddenly found our jaws dropping at the sheer magnificence of the scenery. There before us rose Dragon Snow Mountain and Jade Snow Mountain, mighty ridges rising 16,000 feet toward summits of jagged rock and snow. These were sheer walls, staggering cliffs, the kind of daunting cartoonish mountainsides that one climbed to find the lam
a who knew the meaning of life, cragged precipices that plummeted toward the raging river below.

  “Wow,” Jack said.

  Wow indeed. Foreigners had only been able to enjoy this view since 1993, when China finally allowed outsiders into this corner of the country. And the view has come with a price: More than a few hikers have died along the trail above Tiger Leaping Gorge. Falls, rock slides, getting lost, a change in weather, these were among the things that could prove fatal on the high trail. I had concluded that it would probably be best to keep this sobering fact from Jack. And then I thought better of it.

  “You know, quite a few people have died on this trail. Foreigners too.”

  “It doesn’t trouble me. Because you know what? We are mountain men.”

  “Yes, we are. This is our milieu.”

  Of course, it was unlikely that a mountain man would utter the word “milieu.” Nevertheless, we pressed on, following a trail that began to grade higher.

  “It’s called Tiger Leaping Gorge,” I noted. “Kind of makes you think, doesn’t it.”

  “What? That we’re in tiger country?”

  Whenever I was hiking in California, I couldn’t get mountain lions out of my mind. I always expected to see one, perched on a ledge, a spring in its step, a big cat looking for lunch.

  “After the market in Guangzhou,” Jack said wryly, “I’d say that the likelihood of us encountering a tiger is zero.”

  Not quite, as it turns out. There were indeed still tigers in Yunnan Province. Scientists had, in fact, recently filmed an Indo-Chinese Tiger in the Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve near the border with Burma and Laos. And indeed, in 2001, tigers near one village managed to kill six buffalo and twenty-four cows. In some parts of Yunnan, tiger prints are said to be a not entirely unusual thing to see. It’s one of those things you like to hear in China: Other people have seen tiger prints. I, however, did not want to see them. I just liked knowing they were there, out there, somewhere—just not here.

  The trail was becoming more dramatic. We passed a farm, beside which a boy had clambered up a tree and begun to sing. What a pastoral hamlet, I thought, nestled here in the gentle slopes below Jade Snow Mountain. This was China as I had envisioned it. A warm breeze stirred the air. The river below had the faint bluish color of ice. The sky had a deep, purple tinge and the mountains glistened with snow. And then, as I walked around a bend fringed by tall grass, I encountered a snake.

  I am, frankly, a complete sissy when it comes to snakes. I do not want to say I shrieked like a little girl. So I won’t say it.

  “I think it’s dead,” Jack observed.

  “Are you sure? Why don’t you throw a rock at it?”

  Gingerly, I made my way around the snake, which on closer inspection was indeed dead, extremely dead, had already been munched upon by some beast or bird. But perhaps there were others, a multitude of serpents in the grass, just waiting for some hiker to pass on the trail, and I began to wonder about the snakes of Yunnan Province, and whether they were venomous or not. It was a familiar sensation. I recalled my time in the South Pacific. You think you’re in paradise, when, in fact, you’re residing in a den of foot-long, poisonous centipedes.

  I resolved to turn my mind off. There was too much beauty here to be savored. The awesome magnificence of the natural world was all around us. And so I settled into the pleasant rhythm of bringing myself ever upward, following this trail that carried us higher and higher above the river. We walked on until we stumbled into the village of Nuoyu, where we found the Naxi Family Guesthouse, a wooden farmhouse with corn drying from the walls, where we could replenish water and have a bite to eat. We settled ourselves at a table in a courtyard that offered a dramatic view of the mountains.

  “Okay. It’s been nice knowing you,” Jack said, sweating freely and breathing hard. “This is where I leave. I’ve decided to join the Naxis.”

  I laughed, but in truth we were not even close to halfway. It would be about another 3,000 feet up before we saw another guesthouse, and we had about five hours left to do it before darkness.

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Jack groaned as we got to our feet.

  “I’ve been telling you all week that we’re hiking Tiger Leaping Gorge.”

  “But I didn’t think you meant it.”

  But I did.

  We returned to the trail, which was becoming ever more interesting, switching freely from dirt path to stony cliff-side ledges that swiftly narrowed. It was ten feet wide. Not so bad, I’d think. Then it was five feet. Um. Three feet. And because we had already ascended a thousand or two feet in elevation, there was now genuine danger. Because it would be so easy to topple off a three-foot ledge, particularly if, like me, you might be susceptible to wooziness when confronted with perilous heights.

  “You okay, there?” Jack inquired as we made our way over one such ledge. “I’ve never seen anyone hug a mountainside quite like that.”

  “I’m not so good with heights,” I breathed.

  “Well, you might have thought of that earlier, don’t you agree?”

  We clambered on, a pair of hikers on a mountainside high above the torrent of the river, one suppressing his fear of heights, the other struggling through the debilitating effects of too much campaign food and cigarettes. There were other hikers strung out along the trail as we went on. Most were Europeans, though here and there we came across a Chinese hiker or two. And there were donkeys.

  “Okay,” I said as we found ourselves in the midst of a cluster of mules. “I think this is the beginning of the 24 Bends.”

  “What’s that?” Jack asked.

  “The 24 Bends are the really hard part.”

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” he said, panting and sweating in the warm sun.

  A donkey keeper offered to take us up.

  “No, thank you. But you might have a customer here,” I said, pointing to Jack.

  “I’m really thinking about it.”

  “I know you are. And the moment you get on that donkey, I’m getting my camera out. Republicans on donkeys. Always a good picture.”

  We headed up. The 24 Bends, as it turned out, are poorly named. There are not 24 Bends. There are about a hundred bends, steep switchbacks that crisscrossed the mountain. Perhaps there weren’t actually one hundred bends. But it certainly felt like it. A few others struggled up the switchbacks with us, including a fashionably dressed Chinese woman who looked utterly miserable as she lagged behind her partner.

  I put my head down and powered up the trail, which was covered with donkey shit. Hiking up steep inclines is all about momentum, and soon the two dozen hikers around us had clustered into small groups according to their speed. Jack, I noticed, had fallen behind with the slowest group. I did not linger. He’s with other people, I thought. If he needed help, they’d help. Probably. I put my head down and marched on, switchback after switchback. After forty-five minutes or so, I stopped for a water break and settled down on a rock to take in the scenery, which was breathtaking in its awesomeness. Somewhere far, far below were the churning rapids of the Yangtze as it rushed through a chasm not more than seventy feet across. Four rafters had once tried to run these rapids. They were never seen again. I wondered what the tiger thought when he’d succeeded in jumping the river. Probably oops. The other side of the river was nothing less than a sheer, 6,000-foot, absolutely terrifying-looking cliff.

  Finally, Jack arrived. On a donkey. I was beside myself with mirth.

  “Didn’t you see me waving?” he asked.

  “Were you waving? I couldn’t tell. You were so far below, I couldn’t tell the difference between you and that really unhappy Chinese lady.”

  Jack paid the donkey owner. The donkey pooped. I had not read about the donkey poop on the high trail above Tiger Leaping Gorge, which is surprising really, because it is a trail of shit. Sure, the vistas are vast and beautiful. The hike is satisfyingly strenuous. Periodically, it can be very, very scary up above Tiger
Leaping Gorge. All this I had read. I had never read, however, an account that mentioned the colossal amounts of donkey crap along the way. So I would like that to be my contribution to the literature on Tiger Leaping Gorge. There’s donkey shit. Lots of it. Now you know.

  We continued to climb, stopping often, but after twenty minutes Jack decided that he could go no farther.

  “I can’t do this. I don’t know. I can’t breathe.”

  “The air is a little thinner up here.”

  “I…My head hurts. I don’t know. I can’t go on.”

  “Look,” I said. “This is the hardest part. But we’re almost at the top, and then it should flatten out. If you’re really struggling, we’ll just hail another donkey.”

  Slowly, we continued to climb, until finally the trail evened out. And then, around a bend, it was my turn to fall apart.

  The trail had been carved across a cliff that plunged thousands of feet to the river below. Every year, a few hikers go toppling off. Probably right here, I reflected. Because this looked like an excellent place to fall off a mountain. I was achingly familiar with the knowledge that, now and then, shit does happen. People do fall. Indeed, once while clambering on some rocks above a waterfall in southwestern Turkey, I’d slipped and found myself hurtling over said waterfall, landing unhappily on the rocks below. I spent the next six months waddling around in a tight-fitting corset waiting for my fractured vertebrae to heal. So I knew, painfully knew, that bad things do happen. People do plunge off cliffs. And thus the wooziness with heights.

  “You okay?” Jack asked.

  “It could be worse, I guess. There could be a waterfall too.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off my feet. I hugged the cliff. The trail was less than two feet in width, and beside me was air, a huge expanse of air, a terrible void, and far below, the river, utterly soundless. We marched on into an approaching dusk, noting the gathering clouds swirling around the mountains, and the distant rumble of thunder, and even Jack, poor Jack, poor tired Jack, began to walk, to climb, to clamber with urgency until finally, as the sun began its final descent, we entered the dusty courtyard of the Tea-Horse Trade Guesthouse, where we were greeted by a friendly English-speaking Asian man.