Then arrangements were made, compromises offered, and the waltzers sat down and were replaced by the singers. The ship had a karaoke machine and soon the lyrics scrolled across the screen. I watched as a woman of middle years gleefully took to the stage and, to some exotic Arabic-sounding groove, began to sing before flubbing the intro and, after resetting the karaoke machine, started to sing again—and boy, I had to admit, she could really sing. They take their karaoke seriously in China. These aren’t drunken Japanese salarymen here. No, no. They can sing. At least, the passengers on board this ship plying the nighttime waters of the Yangtze could. After a half hour of showstopping tunes, the waltzers returned to the floor, and I sat and watched them and, in a rare China moment, became all rosy-cheeked at the wholesomeness of it all.
“Do you speak Chinese?”
“I can say nihao, xie xie, and bu yau. That’s about it, though I can count to ten with one hand. Do you want to see?”
Her name was Lu Hang, and she was leading a tour group from Xiamen, a prosperous city on the coast of Fujian Province. We stood on the ship’s deck as we drifted through the jagged cliffs of Qutang Gorge, the first of the Three Gorges. It is a narrow chasm—not more than 500 feet in some places—and many regard this as the finest of the gorges. But perhaps I’d been spoiled by Tiger Leaping Gorge. Possibly, I expected too much. My expectations were too high. This, I thought as we passed through the stony escarpments, was nice, not awesome, just nice. But it was not without its finer sights. Much of the cultural heritage of the gorges—ancient temples, stone pathways, calligraphy, not to mention thousands of homes—now lies underwater. But high above were wooden coffins, some nearly 2,000 years old, which had been placed in small crevices and caves, most likely during the Han Dynasty. Before the dam, these coffins would have been more than a thousand feet above the river, and to this day no one is certain how exactly those caskets were brought to such lofty heights. As we glided below, Lu Hang translated what the onboard guide, our very own Julie McCoy, was saying through her loudspeaker.
“She is describing what each hill looks like. This one looks like an eagle, and that one looks like a cat.”
This was amusing to me. I thought I’d been missing out. I thought she’d been talking about the caves I’d seen. I thought, perhaps, there had been commentary on all the villages that had to be relocated, or a discussion about the impact of the rising waters of the Yangtze and the mud slides that have killed dozens as the earth shifts to accommodate the surging river. But no. An eagle. A cat. Sometime around the age of nineteen, I had lost the poetic impulse. I did not see eagles and cats. I saw a big hill. Okay, a nice big hill.
“It’s very beautiful,” I said. Okay, a nice big, beautiful hill.
“I think it is very boring,” Lu Hang informed me.
“Really?”
“Yes. It was much more beautiful before the dam.”
“Do most Chinese people think the Three Gorges Dam was a good idea?”
“No,” she said. “People think it was a bad idea. They say it has ruined the beautiful scenery.”
“That’s true, but at least it provides electricity.”
“Only for Hubei Province. People in China think the dam only benefits Hubei.”
Lu Hang was friendly and inquisitive, and she asked me about my travels.
“You must join my tour,” she said. “After the cruise, we are going to Wuhan.”
“Maybe I will. Does your tour come with hats? I can’t join a tour group unless it comes with hats.”
“I will get you a hat,” she said.
“Can it be orange?”
“I will get you an orange hat.”
We glided onward to the Little Three Gorges, a canyon that meandered away from the Yangtze following a tributary called the Shennong River.
“In a minute you will see acrobats,” Lu Hang informed me.
Say wha?
What was this about acrobats? What were acrobats doing here at the confluence of the Three Gorges and the Little Three Gorges? Who would be doing acrobatic endeavors amid the gorges of Hubei Province? Vroom. This could not be real. My eyes were deceiving me. But there, way up there, 200 feet up there, on a thin strand of wire stretched above the river, a motorcycle roared overhead, followed by an acrobat spinning and jumping and not only defying death, but taunting it. And then they waved. We slid farther up the Shennong River, past more hanging coffins, wooden caskets perched in impossible locations. Death happens—always has, always will—and one would think, surrounded by these coffins, that the acrobats would understand restraint. But they do not. And so they twirled on a wire high above the river.
We’d entered the land of the Tujia, one of China’s distinct minorities. Once they had been trackers, using thick ropes to pull river traffic through the shallow rapids of the Yangtze. Famously, the Tujia men were always naked as they heaved the boats over the shoals. Chafing, apparently, was an issue. But, of course, today the river is deep and there is no need for the Tujia boatmen, and so instead they make their living from us, the tourists, pulling sampans, little flat-bottomed wooden boats, up shallow rapids. And, as I was gratified to learn, they keep their clothes on now. Lu Hang left to attend to her tour group, and soon we had all hopped off our little cruise ship in Badong, another new city of apartment blocks built far above the remains of the old town, which lay submerged. Next to us was an enormous cruise ship. Ikea Components Kick Off, said the sign draped over the side. We boarded another, smaller boat, which would take us to the even smaller sampans.
“This is a new village,” said our guide, pointing. She was a young woman of the Tujia tribe with a golden laugh, the sort of rare, perfect laugh like a baby’s that you want to box up and take out from time to time because it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. “See, all new houses, very nice. You like wine? They don’t drink beer here, only corn wine.”
Above us was a village of new cinder-block houses, constructed for the farmers who had lost their homes to the deluge caused by the Three Gorges Dam. Maybe they were better off. Probably not, I thought. Hundreds of thousands of people were claiming that they hadn’t been compensated fairly. Everyone displaced by the rising waters had to start anew. New villages, new apartments, new land, new work, new relationships. Everything was new, and not everyone likes new.
“What do you think of the dam?” I asked the guide.
“It is safe,” she said neutrally.
Let’s hope so.
We were let off next to a small stream where we could board the sampans.
“They are called peapods,” my guide informed me as we stepped in and six men began to pull us up the stream using bamboo rope. They sang and they raced against the other boatmen pulling tourists. They wore shoes made of rope as well.
“Fifteen years ago, the boatmen were naked,” the guide informed me. “Their clothes were rough and hurt the skin when wet. When hot they drink the river water, and when cold they drink spirits. Before the dam was built, they pulled the river traffic. Now they pull tourists.”
It all seemed kind of pointless to me. I listened to the singing and scanned the canopy of trees looking for monkeys. The government had reintroduced macaques to the region and, very thoughtfully, was training them how to ask for food from tourists. Ideally, they should do a performance. It’s endless, really, the lengths to which the government will go to ensure that visitors have a good time in China. I, however, did not see any macaques, and so I reflected on the trackers pulling this sampan of tourists. It seemed like an inane endeavor. But, I thought, the dam had put the Tujia boatmen out of business. And pulling sampans filled with frolicking tourists has got to beat pulling barges of coal. And they seemed to be enjoying themselves, and that’s a good thing, this enjoyment of work.
My guide began to sing a soft, piercingly haunting song, and when she finished I asked her about its meaning.
“We sing this song when we get married. When girls get married, it is the custom to cry for fifteen days.
”
But there would be no tears today, not for her, she of the golden laugh. I spent the remainder of my journey up the Shennong River, pulled by the no-longer-naked Tuija boatmen, doing everything I could to elicit this laugh because it was so splendid.
Normally on board this cruise ship on the Yangtze, we woke to the strains of Doctor Zhivago softly wafting through the intercom system. On this morning, however, we arose to the bleating of fog horns, and as I looked out the window I could see why. We were enshrouded by a wet cloud, a billowing fog that reduced visibility to less than fifty yards. This would be my last morning on board. We’d celebrated the end of the Yangtze Cruise the night before with a crew fashion show followed by karaoke and waltzing. The boat could go no farther on account of the dam, and so after breakfast we’d clambered into a bus to go see the Three Gorges Dam itself.
Sadly, we could barely see it, this very large dam that should not be hard to see. It’s more than a mile long and 610 feet high, but so thick was the fog that little could be seen beyond the locks that carried ships above it. There was a sound system near the viewing platform and it informed us that “when the dam is completed it will have the attention of the world.” This seemed very important to China, to be noticed, to be paid attention to.
And they could already see that the world was watching. The Three Gorges Dam generates 22,500 megawatts of power, which sounds like a lot but comprises a mere 3 percent of China’s energy generation. The Three Gorges Dam seemed like a lot of trouble and destruction for a 3-percent bump in the power supply. It does little to alleviate the burden from China’s 21,000 coal mines. And nuclear energy still produced only a little more than 2 percent of electricity in China.
And only now is the dam’s environmental impact becoming evident. According to Xinhua, the state-run news agency, the lack of water flow in the Yangtze is preventing the river from flushing out the pollution, and needless to say, there is a lot of pollution floating in the Yangtze River. Increasing levels of sedimentation have become problematic, and today the Yangtze is an extraordinarily brown river. And now there are algae blooms too. The eroding banks along the reservoir have caused landslides and waves that, incredibly, have reached 150 feet high. And these are the problems that the government admits to. Who knows what’s really going on.
“So will you join my tour to Wuhan?” Lu Hang asked me as we walked around the visitors’ center. “I will get you a hat.”
“I am very tempted because of the hat.”
But there are 10 million people in Wuhan, and those were 10 million very good reasons not to go there (no offense, good people of Wuhan). Instead I made my way to Yichang, a modest city on the banks of the Yangtze, where I walked around trying to figure out why there were so many coffee shops. And as I walked around some more, I came to the inescapable conclusion that there were so many coffee shops because Yichang itself is such a sedative. True, there were people waltzing in a riverside square. And there was a strange plethora of bridal boutiques. But this small city lacked the mad vibe I’d come to expect in a Chinese city. It was strangely quiet. I walked into the Old Street Café Bar, which was doing a very good imitation of a Hungarian café, with its high ceiling and gold inlay and wall paintings done in the style of Titian, ordered a coffee, and wrote postcards featuring giant earthmoving equipment and cranes for my sons. There are quite likely only two groups of people who think that building the world’s largest dam might be a really cool thing to do—Communists and the Bob the Builder set.
22
Xi’an reminded me of Dusseldorf. This was the peculiar thought I had as I wandered around the Bell Tower, a gray stone eminence from the Qing Dynasty that marked the center of the city. How can this be? you wonder. Isn’t Xi’an the fabled terminus of the Silk Road? Yes, it is. Isn’t Dusseldorf in Germany? Yes. And isn’t Xi’an in China? Yep. And aren’t Germany and China, you know, different? Truer words have never been spoken. So how can Xi’an be like Dusseldorf?
I know. It’s weird. Here I was in an ancient capital that had presided over the rise and collapse of eleven dynasties, and I was thinking of Dusseldorf. Perhaps it was the rain. Whenever I’m in Dusseldorf, the weather is dreary. And it was dreary in Xi’an too. I’d haggled for what I estimated, by this point, was my twenty-eighth umbrella in China. I did not have twenty-eight umbrellas in my possession, of course. The world is divided between those who lose umbrellas and those who don’t. I lose them. But it wasn’t merely the damp spittle that conjured up a city in the Ruhr Valley. From the Bell Tower, I could see a sign informing me that Starbucks would be brewing soon. There were two McDonald’s within my line of vision. The streets that fanned out from the Bell Tower were all lined with bourgeois retailers. Before me, there was an enormous new shopping plaza. It seemed so comfortably prosperous. Like Dusseldorf.
Even the beggars in Xi’an were fat. In front of the Bell Tower Hotel, two obese teenage girls glided by on pullies in the rain, showing their curled feet and bent toes to any and all. The idea being, apparently, that they had suffered cruelly from bound feet. Surely, the upscale tourists who stayed at the Bell Tower Hotel would greet these girls with hoots of derision. Binding feet had ended generations ago. There wasn’t a woman alive in China whose feet had been bound. And then I watched a couple in their North Face parkas drop 50 kuai into their fat hands, and suddenly I was filled with admiration for these enterprising youngsters. The tourists would go home with tales of the poor young women disfigured by bound feet in Xi’an, and the girls would go to McDonald’s. And then I came across a man on the sidewalk who was missing a third of his head, as if it had been sliced off by a blade, a blade that had also taken both arms, and who stood painting calligraphy on the sidewalk before taking a microphone between his stumps and belting out a few tunes. Okay, I thought, so maybe Xi’an isn’t like Dusseldorf after all.
Nevertheless, I was struck by the prosperity evident in the streets spilling out from the Bell Tower. I even found a bookstore with an English-language section, and as I perused their eclectic selection of titles I wondered how the censors had missed Penthouse Letters. I bought a book about Harry Truman, and as I went to pay for it I noticed the bestseller list hanging on the wall. And who might we find at the summit of the Chinese bestseller list? The Da Vinci Code by the nefarious Dan Brown.
I had more to shop for, however. When I’d left months ago, I’d packed for spring in Beijing and summer in tropical Hong Kong. I was no longer in tropical Hong Kong. It was November. Indeed, before my journey’s end I had plans to go up to Harbin in the far north of China, where the newspaper confidently informed me that it was presently well below freezing, suggesting the need for a warm coat. I did not have a warm coat. To rectify this deficiency, I wandered around downtown Xi’an popping into stores and trying on coats of various styles and shapes. I, frankly, often wished that men’s fashion had remained frozen in 1940 so that every day I’d know to wear a gabardine suit and a fedora and I wouldn’t have to spend any time choosing what to wear and wondering what my sartorial choices might reflect about me. I didn’t care about clothes. But I also didn’t care to look like a dweeb. So, I suppose, I did care. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to reach into my closet and grab my gabardine suit and my fedora without another moment’s thought. It’s a complicated mind, that of the male animal.
So I walked around Xi’an trying on coats, where it soon became clear that I was getting ahead of myself wondering about style issues, because as I tried coat after coat, it became evident that Chinese men, apparently, did not have shoulders. I couldn’t find anything that fit. I walked into a high-end mall, and ambled past a woman playing a grand piano, and loped among stores selling Polo, Versace, Hugo Boss, and other upscale brands, and wondered who in China spends $5,000 on a coat. And was there some essential Chineseness being lost as the Chinese started to buy cars and condos and lattes and $5,000 coats? And was this good or bad? Will we all be united in consumerism? And then I realized there wasn’t a soul buying anythin
g in this upscale mall. There rarely is. The Chinese are frugal. They do not waste. So I guess that’s that, I thought, and then I figured since I’m here I might as well try to find a clean toilet, but a sign informed me that it was Restricted To Four Star Patrons Only. And this I know about myself: I am not a Four Star Patron.
And so I set forth for the Muslim Quarter. There are Muslims in Xi’an. Lots of Muslims. Sixty thousand Muslims. True, it’s all relative in China. There are 10 million people in Xi’an, give or take, and 99 percent are Han Chinese, non-Muslim. Unlike the Uyghurs, the Muslims in Xi’an are Hui, another of China’s diverse minorities, and they’d settled in the sprawling warren of alleys and streets beneath fluttering, colorful streamers near Xi’an’s Great Mosque. I walked in what I presumed was the general direction of the mosque surrounded by men in white hats and women in headscarves and more than a few Arabs and Africans. I could hear the call to prayer emanating from loudspeakers. Every second shop in the Muslim Quarter appeared to be a butcher’s shop, and inside these shops dangled the carcasses of cows and goats and sheep. There were hunks of flesh everywhere, much of it spilling onto the ground. Meat is rarely refrigerated in China, and as I walked among all this flesh and bone, I contemplated a permanent conversion to the vegetarian cause, until I came across two women selling delectable-looking meatballs, the ultimate comfort food, and I reflected on the art of cooking, and that’s why we cook food—right?—to kill the germs, and so it was perhaps okay to eat meatballs amid this scene of bloody carnage.
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 Page 30