A Libertarian in China
by
Terry Hulsey
by Terry Hulsey
My family and I returned last month from three weeks in China. The
experience provided some concrete references for the often abstract
views about that country. As a Libertarian, my key questions were:
- How open
is the society?
- Is it easy
to travel about?
- How pervasive
is the influence of the state?
- Are the
people receptive to the basic principles of a free and prosperous
commonwealth?
- What are
they like in general?
The mobility
of foreigners
Notable in
my visit through several key cities in the south was the absence
of Americans. In three weeks I encountered not one native American
citizen who was visiting directly from our country. And yet there
is no
state restriction on tourism from abroad. It is easy to get
online and book a tour without
any intervention or oversight from any government body aside
from the visa required by most countries. The visitor can go to
any part of the country and engage
in any ordinary tourist activity such as hiking, sightseeing,
bicycling, etc. and does not need to be a member of a package tour,
whether state-sponsored or otherwise. Once there, it’s unlikely
that you will take any notice of government at any level – at least
I didn’t.
This current
relative openness contrasts sharply from my visit of about 10 years
ago, when I had to travel with a sponsor – in my case with a private
citizen who later became my wife.
If you are
thinking of a trip to spread the Gospel, please stay home: there
is official indecision on the subject of religion. On the one hand,
the government has since 1999 officially banned
cults – especially the Falun
Gong – and it makes occasional
arrests of Christians for what it interprets to be political
reasons. On the other hand it tolerates Christianity and the mass
distribution of Bibles, and during my visit the government was
busy restoring Saint
Mary’s Catholic church in Kunming along with other church properties.
But entirely
apart from what is and isn’t allowed, the whole idea of going to
a country over a hundred times older than your own and lecturing
its citizens on a subject at the heart of their culture is extremely
presumptuous and in the worst form.
The influence
of the state
During my
entire stay I saw only three police interventions, all in traffic
matters: one to stop an overloaded vehicle, one to check a taxi
medallion (free hire being illegal, just as it is in America), and
one to resolve a minor fender-bender. This is not to deny that there
are few legal protections from the state: the recent arrest of journalists
Shi
Tao and Ching
Cheong and the holding without trial of journalist Zhao
Yan (not to be confused with the Chinese
woman of the same name who was beaten by a Homeland Security
guard) are proof of that.
The Chinese
government, like our own, dabbles freely in purely economic affairs.
And just as in our country, the Chinese state offers examples of
public policy producing results exactly opposite of those intended
by the law. For example its one-child can be better enforced in
smaller towns, but many families have extra children in one place
then migrate anonymously to bigger rural cities, adding the further
problem of indigent poor migrating to cities.
The Chinese
government is very busy in building infrastructure, but lacking
omniscience of economic variables, the result is predictably uneven.
In Kunming I witnessed the open sewers right alongside brand-new
streets. In Guangzhou it has created overnight a very impressive
university system. This is part of the central government’s effort
to provide the next
generation of technicians – an effort that is already gathering
considerable momentum. But there is no state-prescribed cursus
honorum for scholars, and since it’s obvious that ideas can’t
be swallowed whole, no one can guess the outcome of that initiative.
The state
has a few vestiges of its totalitarian past. There are the typical
gold-on-red banners, but they aren’t conspicuous in the south as
they are around Beijing. They almost all carry the same uninspired
message: “Citizens [note, not comrades], be patriotic, honest, polite,
and kind!” The personality cult is certainly non-existent with today’s
current leadership of technocrats, but at least in Tiananmen Square
you can still see the huge portrait of Chairman Mao hanging from
the Gate of Heavenly Peace. The southern part of that square is
dedicated to a macabre public exhibition of the Great Helmsman’s
corpse – or what is said to be his corpse.
Sun Yat-Sen,
an apostle of democracy in G.W. Bush’s vein and the first president
of China’s first republic, is given honorific respect by the socialist
state. (Another contributor to LewRockwell.com, the very learned
Bevin
Chu, makes a case for him as a proponent of limited democracy.)
In this regard he is much like our “Founding Fathers” – prolific
in lip service but not studied. Even Mao commemorated Sun Yat-Sen
as far back as 1956 (page 339 of the 1967 edition of his Quotations).
There are two museums to him: one in Guangzhou proper and a new
one in his home town of Zhongshan.
The receptiveness
of the Chinese to capitalism
Millions of
Chinese have decided to xia hai – jump into the sea of entrepreneurship.
In the small circle of family that I met on my three-week trip there
was a stockbroker, an owner-manager of a company selling air ionizers
to Wal-Mart, three successful businesswomen, and a handful of self-employed
small businessmen. Anyone who has had business dealings with the
Chinese can tell you that they are very astute, to put it mildly.
The Chinese
economy is a juggernaut. No matter what time of night I looked out
onto a prominent bridge in Guangzhou there were concrete trucks
on the move. Everyone seems to be busy, and indeed “on the make.”
I did not once see an idler on a street corner or in a public place.
In spite of
this cultural foundation of industry and hard work, when I asked
a professor at one of the new universities what he thought was the
main problem facing the country, he gave a surprising answer. He
replied that the main problem is getting all the people, many of
whom were scrabbling just for their next meal a few years ago, or
who just came from some night-soil-enriched farm, “to act like gentlemen.”
It’s true that there is some jostling in public – literally so in
some cases, since there is no notion of an English queue for a bus
or other public service, for example – but this may be a function
of recent poverty. In my own case I found strangers to be courteous
and eager to please. An example of what he meant is the case of
intellectual property theft: some businessmen are more than willing
to satisfy the appetite for Western videos by making illicit copies
of them. Although it’s not yet released for purchase, you can buy
Cinderella Man for less than a dollar.
The character
of the Chinese people
“Gentlemen”
or not, it is certain that all of the Chinese I met lacked Western
sentimentality. For example, there was no second thought about chasing
beggars and cripples away from the front of businesses. Similarly,
I found that there was no hesitation to “stretching” the terms of
a bargain so as to make themselves gainers. My wife, who is herself
native Chinese, was surprised to learn that a prominent business
didn’t have a lost-and-found. It seemed to the clerks perfectly
natural that property could be taken by the finder without any questions
asked.
Once again,
all of this may well be a function of recent poverty. Hardship has
a way of removing sentimentality, and it has certainly been a way
of life for the Chinese. The common greeting “Have you eaten?” attests
to this fact. This long history of hardship may also explain their
lack of restraint when the Chinese are able to eat their fill. It
may also explain their willingness to eat just about anything that
moves.
The historical
inward-looking of the Chinese may account for several characteristics
that may annoy the American traveler. On quite a few occasions I
found myself the object of unabashed staring. I felt, however, that
they were not trying to be rude, since the staring was never accompanied
with ridicule, but that they were looking at me with a kind of scientific
detachment, as if they had happened upon an animal as yet unknown
to anthropology. I could suppose that they thought all humans should
look like themselves. What was annoying to me was the scarcity of
English speakers, in spite of the fact that English has been a mandatory
part of the public school curriculum for a generation. But I can
suppose that they have few opportunities to feel a need for English
in the Middle Kingdom.
In general,
my brief snapshot of the Chinese leads me to believe that they are
most receptive to capitalism, and that it’s silly to suppose that
they have some kind of ant-like instinct that disposes them to authoritarianism.
Working with their noses to the grindstone for basic needs, they
are beginning to lift their heads to higher things – just beginning
to ask what constitutes the good life for a Chinese
23.July
2005 Saturday
A downpour
greeted me when I arrived at noon in Guangzhou.
According to Qiong this was a blessing since it brought a cool respite
to the previous steamy week. It’s wonderful to see the two girls
Miranda and Helen, Qiong, and Qiong’s father Mr. Chen. As we travel
by taxi south from Guangzhou airport to the apartment on Hua Yuan
Street we pass over a bridge on the Zhu jiang (Pearl River)
just west of there, seeing the Hai yin qiao (Ocean Bridge),
which is suspended from two white-pointed spires about 10 storeys
tall with pinkish copper-painted cables streaming down from both
sides of each spire. It had not been there ten years ago.
The rain has
stopped. We arrive at Ji you xin an (Free Spirit Shore) condominiums
and cross broken sidewalks and pass through an opening on the side
nearest the river. The river is less than 200 yards away to the
north. There are all the signs of construction (stacked scaffolding,
wheelbarrows, stacked 1-meter square finished stone) but no activity.
The courtyard which will obviously have a swimming pool and fountains
is a mud hole. We ascend a slow elevator (automatic but nevertheless
attended by a woman) to our apartment 2205. Walking to the front
of our door you look through the breezeway to see the Hai
yin qiao.
Qiong must leave
to meet friends, but she wants me to get a massage from an enterprising
shop that has just opened across the north driveway to cater to condo
tenants. The two-room shop is plain with plain girls, who to Qiong’s
surprise, refuse to do any massage on a man: a facial is the best
they can give me. No, we must walk a block toward the river and down
a side street to an incredibly seedy salon: two young women and three
young men sit on broken chairs, watching TV; a hole in the front glass
allows electrical access. To the right of a narrow stairway covered
in long plastic grass (we will never know why) is a dark hole where
one girl is having her hair washed as she lays on a two-foot-high
table. After chatter between Qiong and the matron, I am led to the
hole and asked to recline on a table alongside the other one. I do
so. As I look up at the peeling ceiling panel my demise becomes evident:
my throat will be slashed and the blood will go down the drain; the
three young men will sit on my body to squeeze out the last drops
of life; and my corpse will be rolled up in a dirty carpet and dumped.
But this fate passes me by. Instead, a young woman starts a languorous
hair washing with annoying flicks the fingers as they leave the scalp.
Midway, one of the young men takes over, who, a graduate of the same
school, also employs the same annoying flicks. I close my eyes and
compose my exit sentence in bad Chinese. After toweling, I return
to the main room where a boy with an orange mane of hair and long
fingernails dries my hair. I give my exit sentence (Nuren ni gei
wu yuan?) to nods of comprehension that gratify me, and I escape.
At the apartment
I watch the two English channels from Hong Kong, looking in vain for
BBC news, which I know to be accessible. Minus Qiong, we all eat.
I go to our balcony, over 60 meters up and facing the Pearl River.
Dark now, concrete trucks even at this hour are crossing the Hai
yin qiao. Below it, the boats plying the river all trimmed in
colored neon lights look interesting, but this planned excursion is
put off since I suddenly feel terribly sleepy.
24.July 2005
Sunday
Sunday is a big
day: it’s the day the round-eyed monkey is introduced to the Guangzhou
relatives over lunch.
Morning begins
with a walk to the playground on the west side of the river (which
is nearest to the apartment), I and Mr. Chen leading the two girls.
We visit the playground, which also has adult exercise stations. Miranda
can make seven steps as she hangs from the ladder bars: she is strong
now; only a year ago she could barely do one. We see a little boy
urinating in public.
Occasionally a
person will stop and look at me with that pinched, suspicious look.
It is the same look the world over, given by those for whom each day
is a struggle between life and death. I look at them and remember
Whitman: “not till the sun excludes you, do I exclude you; not till
the waters refuse to glisten for you, and the leaves to rustle for
you.” My countrymen may be busy pissing in the well from which their
children will drink, but I will remember you and the well that belongs
to all of us. Of course the look is unknown to Americans: we grin
ceaselessly; we say “Hi!”; cutting up, we want to do a cannonball
into the big ethnic melting pot. Other gawkers look at me dispassionately,
with a kind of scientific interest. I imagine them thinking: “How,
like a fish, does his brain digest those two different images from
either side of his nose?” However, I must say that there seem to be
fewer of either variety since my last trip of ten years ago, and none
of them show any ridicule toward me.
We go to a three-storey
restaurant (we will visit even bigger ones) where we have rented a
private room. Qiong will also meet a courier there who will take cash
to pay for air tickets to the western part of our journey. At the
round table we sit and eventually the relatives arrive: Victor Tian,
a man who owns a company that makes air ionizers for Wal-Mart in Kowloon,
in his 30s and, blessedly, an English speaker. He sits to my right.
Around from him are his wife Awing, two cousins (the male of which
is also Awing), the stooped and elderly Tai Gugu (“gugu” meaning
“aunt” – Qiong’s father’s younger sister), uncle Yu the stockbroker
(also Gu-Zhan because he’s the husband to the elderly gugu),
Mrs. and Mr. Chen, another uncle (shu-shu) and auntie (shen-shen),
and back to Qiong at my left. Lai-lai (the Tian’s girl) and the cousins’
boy sit with Miranda and Helen at a separate table.
Hot jasmine tea
is first brought out, as it is at every restaurant. This is not immediately
drunk, but rather poured into one of the soup bowls, where all the
china is then washed. If possible the wash is then thrown out the
door onto the street; if not, the waitress just takes it away.
At the public
table the Chinese cast off restraint, especially the Chinese of Guangzhou,
the Latins of the country. Hey, some people aren’t eating at all,
and we’re feasting – hot damn! Talk is loud and simultaneous; bits
of food are spat out onto the tablecloth; the edge of the tablecloth
is used as a napkin; unapolagetic belching is in order: in short, it’s
just this side of a food fight.
Uncle Yu is vivacious and interesting. He says
all the right things. He remembers that ten years ago I sent money
to the Chens when Qiong had lost an expensive violin. (It was owned
by the Party – not the one providing keggers – and she was accused
of stealing it, and was even led away to jail in the countryside.
Mr. Chen advertised widely and someone saw one of his flyers and
came forward with the missing violin.) I offer a ganbei –
a toast to be drained in one gulp – and he points out to all that
I have some knowledge of Chinese ways. I say (through Qiong) that
the grasshopper has much to learn. At a later juncture I suggest
that freedom is an orphan, being driven from its home in America,
possibly to China. This is met with surprise – do I say that China
is more free than America? No, I didn’t say that: I hope I don’t
live that long. Their great-grandchildren may see what I mean.
Qiong’s courier arrives and we must replace one
of the US one-hundred dollar bills: he has rejected it because an
eighth of an inch is nicked from one corner. All larger denomination
bills are closely inspected in China: counterfeiting is rampant.
Indeed, Qiong had taken a fake 50-yuan (RMB) note before my arrival.
Comparing it to the real thing, you see great craftsmanship. But
a sheen is missing from the numbers, and, the usual downfall of
the counterfeiter, the paper feels wrong.
We leave, traveling in Mr. Tian’s Lexus SUV to
the Grandview Mall, the largest in Guangzhou. I entertain the tribe
by describing some of my linguistic mishaps and innovate some more
mishaps by trying to speak Chinese. Of course the chief difficulty
of the language is the requirement that each of its four tones be
sounded
correctly. Ma can mean “mother,” “leprosy,” “grasshopper,”
or “horse” (not counting the synonyms!) depending on the way it’s
sounded: high, high with a waver, low, low with a waver. In short,
the requirement is not only the memorization of words unrelated
to Indo-European, but that the accent be perfect, right from the
start. I tell them that not only do they get to see a monkey for
free but they also get free laughs. I foresee a career as a Chinese
humorist – where I will have little competition among this literal-minded
people.
We drop the wives near shoe and clothing stores;
Mr. Tian drives on to shops where I can bargain for the three things
on my shopping list: a PC camera, an iRiver MP3 player, and a repair
of my DVD player, whose tray sticks half-way open. For these I pay
100 yuan ($12.50), 360 yuan ($45 – not an iRiver but all the features
and 256Mb memory), and 20 yuan ($2.50), respectively. It is good
to see the young repairman work: he seems to sense how the tray
must work, with a kind of empathy for the machine. He asks for only
10 yuan, but I insist on 20 (more might insult him). I also pick
up some pirated DVDs for 80 cents apiece (The Polar Express
and Cinderella Man), although the latter has not even been
released to DVD yet, justifying my complicity by calling them conversation
pieces – and anyway, Bill
Gates said it: “As long as they are going to steal it, we want
them to steal ours.” I check my email at one of the sales booths.
Going out, a man with some kind of bone deformity
has lain down in front on the sidewalk, with a tin can for alms
beside his head. Someone comes out and yells at him, gives him a
poke with the foot, and chases him off.
Mr. Tian and I return in the SUV to pick up the
wives. Negotiating traffic is hair-raising. Although lanes are painted,
they are taken as merely suggestions, and on urban streets you never
see that stripe of oil drippings that observance paints in the middle.
There is indiscriminate competition for the asphalt: cars, trucks,
people, shirtless men on bicycles with huge loads of vegetables
and slaughtered unplucked chickens stacked over the rear wheel,
motorcycles, and scooters all pass within an eyelash of death. But
several natural laws seem to have emerged from this anarchy: in
town no one dares go more than 30 kilometers per hour (less than
20 mph) except for rare non-competitive bursts of 50 kph; competitive
claims to the right-of-way are resolved in a duel of horns; and
the bigger vehicle or, for vehicles of the same size, the more aggressive
driver, is generally given the right-of-way. During the motorized
melee we talk about the UNOCAL deal that has put Chevron and a Chinese-government-controlled
company in competition. Mr. Tian readily concedes that the US government
is interfering. I’m not sure how he takes my characterization of
Congress as a bunch of fair-weather capitalists and demagogic yahoos.
I consider all my observations of the Guangzhou
street scene, and I feel that something is missing. It occurs to
me that several things are conspicuously absent. There are no policemen,
no speed limit signs, no pets, no bumper stickers, no panhandlers
at corner traffic lights, and no babes in arms. For my entire stay
I will see three police interventions, all in traffic: one to stop
an overloaded vehicle, one to check a taxi medallion (free hire
being illegal), and one to resolve a minor fender-bender. By a count
of uniforms you would think that America is the police state. But
I suppose the Chinese rely not on the show of force, but its swift
and sure application upon apprehended
criminals, putting to death more of them than the rest of the
world combined. As for the missing stop signs, one might also question
the absence of all sorts of state-posted signs bearing information,
exhortations, and orders, disobedience of which in America can result
in a fine. Local governments in China must get their money somewhere
else, and with much less nuisance to the citizenry. I learn that
there are no pets in Guangzhou because one must pay an annual fee
of 10,000 yuan ($1250.00) to keep one. You can step into many things
on a Guangzhou street, but dog poop is not one of them. I suppose
the missing bumper stickers is a function of mass democracy, since
these stickers are often an appeal to sway some faction of the voting
public; and voting is certainly not a civic duty of the Chinese,
as it is for American Supreme Court justices. The corner panhandlers
are unceremoniously carted off by the authorities, without any yelps
or squawks from the ACLU. As for the absence of babes in arms, I
don’t know.
25.July
2005 Monday
Monday is
a down day. Mrs. Chen, I, Miranda, and Helen walk to a large park
just northeast of the Hai yin qiao. The steamy heat is enervating.
Once inside the park the girls drive a motorized boat on the largest
lake; they feed huge goldfish and coy there. Choral song comes from
a small amphitheater facing the smaller lake. Getting closer, we
see retired people singing. I know that fake uplift music anywhere:
I ask Mrs. Chen if they are singing hong tongzi (“red comrade”)
music, and somehow she understands me and says yes.
I see women
walking arm-in-arm. Later there is a pair of men walking, one with
his arm across the shoulder of his companion. They aren’t “gay.”
They are the same guileless innocent pairs that Hedrick Smith recorded
in his wonderful 1984 book The Russians. To see them is to
understand, by its absence, what those in the West really mean by
“self-consciousness”: it is in large part a self-monitoring, a self-censorship.
“If I touch my friend’s shoulder, will people think I’m gay?” –
or the flip side: “If I tonsil-wash Bruce in public will I get the
thrill of offending someone?” “Gay rights” has done great harm to
true friendship, which I think Aristotle was right to view as a
love higher than romantic love: the latter introduces many complications,
lacking in the spiritual exchange between friends. But this notion
of friendship is certainly not what commonly passes under that word,
whether in English or Chinese. The great majority have acquaintances
instead; true friendship is a great natural mark of distinction.
And fry me in a vat of PC oil, but the democratic levelers are at
war against every natural distinction: families, social hierarchies,
the natural aristocracy of ability, and even individual identity,
which is rooted in sex – all to be pummeled into the shapeless dough
that the revolutionary will remake into the new socialist man (cf.,
Igor Shafarevich, The
Socialist Phenomenon). The strolling innocents are in for
a nasty collision with democratic modernity.
26.July
2005 Tuesday
Zhang Qiang,
a violin teacher in Guangzhou Conservatory, who has been working
in Belgium the last few years, arrives in front of our apartment
at 9:30am. Not with him is his wife Li Dan from Shanghai, now teaching
in the preschool of the Guangzhou Conservatory where Qiong went
to school. She is away with their two girls Qiau-Qiau and Yang-Yang,
which is probably a fortunate thing.
He drives
us through University Island in the Guangzhou suburb of Panyu, a
part of town thick with new condos and gated communities for the
well-heeled and nouveau riche, and just 16 miles north of Macao.
This suburb is in fact the site of the original
settlement of the city in 214 BC. He has given up a job in Belgium
to come back to a professorial position on this new campus.
University
Island is in fact surrounded by the Pearl River, which fans out
around Guangzhou and thus has very many branches. It is the central
government’s new showcase in higher education. It provides newly
built facilities for old departments of established universities,
such as the Guangzhou University’s music department where Zhang
Qiang is a professor, and new departments, such as the School for
Foreign Economic Partnership. Inside the former there are even humidity-controlled
rooms for practice and instrument storage. Outside, the landscaping
alone represents a serious investment: flowers, shrubs, and grasses
are meticulously trimmed. Conspicuous by absence is the motorized
lawn mower. It is used here, I am told, although I have only seen
two during my entire three weeks in China; but I have seen very
many people crouching barefoot, cutting grass with something between
a carpet knife and a scythe.
It is impressive
that just a few years ago only ancient shacks existed on what is
now University Island. The inhabitants of these shacks took it ill
that all their land was being confiscated, so much that Zhang Qiang
tells us that students are cautioned not to get their fresh vegetables
from them: they might be poisoned. But most of the durable structures
of this village were preserved and the village renovated.
For lunch
we go to a restaurant on the island where water sheets down an entire
wall of glass. Once inside you have the unusual feeling of dining
inside a waterfall.
Afterwards
we are driven to our check-in at the fabulous five-star Chime
Long Hotel, built in 2001, which features two glassed-in atriums:
one with a pair of white tigers and one with a flock of flamingos.
After my wife’s wheeling and dealing in Cantonese we get a huge
suite with a king-size bed and two twin beds for the kids for about
$100 US per night. (If you do only English, that amount still gets
you a great regular room.) The theme of the hotel is African safari,
since it is host hotel to the giant African animal nature preserve,
the Xiang Jiang Safari Park, next door, and nearby Night Zoo. We
go swimming in the giant pool, with an outdoor spa under a thatched
roof.
That evening
we have dinner in Yu ming xin cun (Fisherman’s New Village),
a five-storey restaurant where you walk in to meet a six-foot alligator,
a menu item of course, roaming freely though attended by a man in
rubber boots. Fortunately his mouth is taped shut with black electrical
tape. For about a hundred feet in front of you, open aquariums and,
on the floor in front of them, plastic buckets of water, are filled
with every imaginable live creature of the deep: shrimp, prawns,
lobster, eels, turtles, urchins, sea slugs, flounder, grouper. Girls
with the traditional Suzie Wong silk dress with a slit to the thigh
take you to your numbered table, then back to the sea creatures.
Add a new term to the French list of huissier and sommelier:
your poissonnier, who, dressed in the restaurant’s uniform
and pen in hand, now approaches you to write down your selections.
You can point out the particular critter you want if it’s big, or
if you’re fussy about your choice. The choice is written on a book
of labels with carbons behind; the label, bearing your table number,
is stuck on a scale for the next worker in rubber boots and plying
a fish net to fulfill. This worker takes the thrashing prey to cooks
along the wall, who start to work and have it ready for your table
just minutes after you’ve sat down. Restaurants of this setup, not
unique to Yu ming xin cun, will give me the best seafood
I’ve ever tasted. And you wonder why Americans, who prefer theirs
deep-fried in a blanket of batter oozing oil, don’t care for seafood.
At the table
with Zhang Qiang, I ask why he returned to China. He explains that
in Europe “every move you make is regulated” and that he was always
made to feel he was taking a job from some European. Also, his money
goes further here, and this is his home. I ask him about China’s
prospects for the future. He replies that the main problem is getting
all the people, many of whom were scrabbling just for their next
meal a few years ago, or who just came from some night-soil-enriched
farm, “to act like gentlemen.” I wonder how to compare these formerly
poor Chinese with the “gentlemen” of South LA, or Oak Cliff in Dallas,
or South Bronx – how to compare them with the multicultural “innerleckshuls”
(as Flannery O’Connor put it)…. But I don’t say anything.
27.July
2005 Wednesday
The Xiang
Jiang Safari Park is the largest of its kind in Asia, and home
to one-third of all the known white tigers in the world – 89 of
about 270. While waiting in the shade for the family to buy tickets,
I provide waiting Chinese with another curiosity. Some boys, aged
about 10 to 12, surround me to get a closer look at the white animal
even more strange to them than the tigers. I humor them by saying,
“OK, it costs one yuan to look at the monkey.” An adult among them
knows English and translates. They laugh. Another adult asks for
a lone photo of me, and without asking why, I comply with a smile
suitably big enough to identify myself as an American.
The park is
divided between the open-air native habitat and the zoo. After a
quick bus tour of the open-air side, we walk through the zoo in
the steamy heat. We get the obligatory photos of pandas, as well
as albino wallabys. The girls are variously photographed on the
backs of a pony and a Bactrian camel, and even beside and petting
a white tiger – an event that insurance companies would surely forbid
in America. There is a bird show where parrots fetch money held
aloft by spectators, one where baby elephants play soccer against
young humans, and one where chimpanzees compete in various games
against humans. In one of the latter, the wife Qiong is drafted
into a tug-of-war against a chimp and loses – but after a respectable
showing. The most spectacular event has 14 white tigers jumping
through flaming hoops and a tug-of-war between a white tiger biting
the rope and humans outside the cage pulling it (after adding a
fifth human, the tiger loses). We are reminded that this is the
only white tiger circus event in the world after the mishap at Siegfried
and Roy’s show in Las Vegas. Once again, considering the humans
pulled against the bars of the cage, the insurance companies obviously
don’t rule over here.
In the cool
of late afternoon we take a golf cart tour of the open air half
of the park. Our driver is a young man fluent in English, knowledgeable,
and funny. Lots of photos. Bruno
Bettelheim was right: the kids have a magical affinity for animals.
Back at the
Chime Long Hotel, we meet not relatives but family friends. “Joseph”
Wong is a dealer in scrap metal with a pretty wife Zhuodan, who
used to own a photography studio with my wife’s sister. Joseph is
an interesting character. His dark, cropped head is as square as
building block and he has a very flexible expressive mouth, usually
turned down after uttering some wry or sardonic comment. His face
reminds me of many drawings of the Chinese emperors, especially
the first one, Shihuangdi: with the nostrils flared he could appear
very cruel. Squat and powerful, he is dressed in a camouflage t-shirt
and shorts, and he has a heavy belt replete with all sorts of gear:
digital camera, cell phone, keys attached to climbers’ carabiners.
A wireless pipe microphone connects him to his cell phone, which
apparently rings several times during dinner: at those times he’s
talking to his food.
“What kind
of business are you in?” I ask him. He replies in good English,
telling me about his dealings in scrap, especially scrap metal and
lead from batteries. For most of his business he rounds up used
vehicle batteries around Guangzhou, ships them to Vietnam where
they are dismantled, and then reimports them to battery makers in
Guangzhou. There is something shady about the detour into Vietnam,
which may be illegal in itself, not to mention the possible dumping
of pollutants into that country, but I don’t press Joseph about
it.
They drive
us through the night over new eight-lane expressways in their new
Chinese-made compact to their house in Zhongshan, over an hour away,
flying at 110 kph (almost 70 mph). Downtown Zhongshan is interesting,
with huge floodlit billboards in the heart of the city. Pizza Hut,
Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Subway have a presence. Joseph drives
right through the first stop sign I’ve yet to see, just like the
guys in front of him. I tell Joseph that the Chinese when driving
must have a sixth sense like fish in the water, so that they all
move together in a school. “Well, you don’t see fish bump into each
other, do you?” he answers. We turn down a narrow alley near the
heart of the city and park on the curb. A woman is scavenging trash
bins in the dark.
Once inside,
I ask if Joseph has an Internet connection and he says yes and shows
me his office. He does not drive to work, but conducts all his business
out of this room, which is equipped with several computers with
a fast Internet connection sitting on a big desk buried in papers.
I mentally excuse his non-stop use of the cell phone when I think
of what long hours are signified in America by “owning your own
business.” I ask him if there are any government restrictions on
his use of the Internet. He says that there are supposed to be,
for example the restriction on accessing pornography, but he smiles
and says that they’re easy to circumvent. I tell him that I won’t
be doing anything like that. He leaves me alone, free to shut down
and go to bed when I like.
28.July
2005 Thursday
After a good
sleep-in, we have a look at the walled three-storey home. It’s about
40 meters square with an eight-foot wall topped with vines and barbed
wire. Doors and windows of the house are kept open, and our hosts
seem to tolerate the heat very well. The garden on two sides has
pomegranate, lime, and peach trees. (The trees and grass are maintained
for 50-yuan [about $6] a month; a housekeeper comes in every morning
at 7am [100 yuan a month].) There is a swing in the shade and a
nude marble of a Roman woman. It is quiet.
After a big
Western lunch at Prince Grill in downtown Zhongshan, we drive to
see a quarter-million yuan home where the owner Mr. Li is directing
building. In an unusual arrangement, the land itself is not owned;
it is leased from an element of the People’s Army, who are the true
owners. There is a small waterfall and goldfish pond in the back
and a great view over a valley, where tractors are clearing for
further development.
We drive to
the new Sun
Yat-Sen museum – quite different from the museum shown to visitors
in Guangzhou, only the latter of which existed ten years ago. This
new museum is a memorial to his birthplace in the village of Cuiheng.
His home and many artifacts of his life are preserved there. After
his death in 1925, the county was renamed for him, and in 1983 the
city was renamed for him. Although he founded the Kuomintang, the
political party that became the steadfast enemy of the Communists,
and which fled to Taiwan after its defeat by them, the Communists
also hail him as Guofu – the Father of the Nation. Both sides
indeed have a right to claim him: his thought was a muddle. He confessed
to be influenced by Karl Marx, Lincoln, Hamilton, and Henry Clay,
to name a few. His most systematic utterance is the Three Principles
of the People: nationalism, democracy (as foggy as George W.
Bush’s notions and equally ignorant of the Founders’ distrust of
it), and something called “the principle of livelihood,” which marries
Marx and Clay to enshrine the interventionist state. As he puts
it in his Fundamentals
of National Reconstruction: “After comparing various schools
of economic thought, I have come to the realization that the principle
of state ownership is most profound, reliable and practical.” Well,
considering the context of the times, it’s a bit much to have expected
Adam Smith or David Ricardo of the man.
I sign the
visitors’ ledger: “Democracy: the ideal of absentee vote counters.”
Don’t worry about it: the Chinese don’t understand it either.
After several
hours of museum walking, all of us are ready for swimming at the
all-indoor Hawaii water park. 100 meters by 50 meters, the
facility has slides, jets, hot jacuzzis. All this for just a few
yuan per person.
Afterward
we are ready to eat. On the road I see the big gold characters on
a long red banner on the side of one building. My suspicions are
confirmed: it is a “public service announcement.” It says: “Citizens,
be patriotic, honest, polite, and kind!” Hard to argue with that.
In fact it has a certain groove that might work in Los Angeles.
Nothing so hard-edged as George Washington saying “government
is force,” you know. We continue downtown to a seedy but very
“authentic” restaurant, which nonetheless has the Suzi Wong greeters.
Just inside the door are buckets of menu items, most of them alive.
There are squirming grubs – OK, call them silkworm larvae and eat
up – giant earthworms, beetles, waterbugs, snails, along with the
usual sea critters, eels, turtles, and frogs. I walk past and have
rice noodles, stir-fry beef, and bai cai.
29.July
2005 Friday
After a good
night’s rest at Joseph’s and Zhuodan’s, we insist on riding the
bus back to Guangzhou, saving them a boring drive there and back.
In the afternoon Qiong’s old friend Xiao Mei and her husband Gu
He and family drop over for conversation before our plane flight.
I am somewhat puzzled that so few Chinese can speak English, despite
its being a school requisite at all levels for some 20 years. Quite
aside from the convenience to myself, it would certainly be a vocational
benefit to the speaker. I learn that the English teachers however
are Chinese. The result is the same as state-certified English speakers
teaching German or French in American high schools: it can never
give fluency.
We get the
airplane to Kunming
at Guangzhou’s modern airport. Like every flight I’ve ever had on
an Asian airline, it’s pleasant. There’s a genuine courtesy and
desire to please. Besides that, all the stewardesses are damned
good looking. And come on, I want you to say that word OUT LOUD:
stewardesses. STEWARDESSES! If you remember the days when
there wasn’t “political correctness” or other forms of thought police,
I know you feel better. Sometimes I have the impression that the
Western flight attendant or clerk does a quick mental scan, asking
himself: “Is there a rule I can reference to deny this traveler
his request, or show him that although I make a tenth of his salary
I’m the boss here?” Also, it is very clear that the Western airlines
no longer make youth or attractiveness a job requirement.
Qiong’s old
friend Hong Jian and her husband Don Zhou and Tong-Tong, their four-year-old
girl, meet us at the airport. On the way out we are greeted by deliciously
cool and dry night air, some 20 degrees Fahrenheit less than Guangzhou,
and some 30 less than Shanghai, which is gripped by a heat wave.
Many are in long sleeves, it’s so cool. We see the n’er-do-wells
annoying the travelers: some offer carts to arrivals for a fee,
when everyone seems to know that the carts are free; some approach
us with the same cockamamie story that if they only had a few yuan
they could get their car going, which is either carrying or going
to a sick relative, blah, blah, etc., etc. – Chinese versions of
Krishnas, Moonies, Scientologists, and the usual airport crackpots,
except that they don’t know how to say “Do you know Christ as your
personal savior?”
Don Zhou knows
some halting English, but at least he’s eager to try to speak it.
I see some amazing things, and he tries to answer my questions, often
with my wife’s translation. But what impresses me about him is the
way he answers: he doesn’t want just to dispose of the question;
he tries to see where I’m going with it and tries to answer comprehensively.
For example, unlike Guangzhou, the streets of Kunming, even at 9pm,
are filled with children: youngsters, toddlers, and especially those
elusive babes in arms. Don Zhou explains that this is the result of
China’s official one child per family policy: in small rural towns
it’s easy to enforce this policy. But in the larger cities like Kunming,
where people arrive anonymously every day, it’s not possible. So the
rural people, who cling to the old idea that a large family is old
age insurance, come to the city and live where they can, even if they
have no job or even no skill. This also explains the presence of lean-tos
and shacks around the city – another of my questions. He says that
he had covered this story as a reporter for the Kunming People’s
Daily.
He also explains that there is no fee for keeping
pets, hence there are a number of dogs on the street. In fact, there
is a pet market in the middle of town where we will go tomorrow.
Kunming streets are in a state of development.
Driving down a nice paved road, we suddenly are bouncing along a
pot-holed gravel one. We drive alongside a dark canal, and Don Zhou
points out that where we now see apartments, only a year ago was
a field. We reach a paved street again, turn, and see street vendors
working over smoky barbeques, narrowing the street. Bare light bulbs
illuminate carts of fresh vegetables and meat, which can be bought
for home use or selected for the grills. Across the street from
the vendors someone has dumped a trash can full of lettuce and other
vegetables. Someone is poking through the pile with a stick.
We stop at a guardhouse where uniformed young men
peer in to verify that it’s someone they know. They salute with
white gloves and raise the barrier.
Inside the new apartment with ash hardwood floors
there is evidence of good taste constrained by parsimony: There
are few but quality pieces of furniture in white fabric, one with
a bowl of fresh flowers; there are good curtains; there is a piano.
But there is nothing on the walls, there are no carpets, and despite
his being a reporter, there is no computer. (“I have one at work,”
Don Zhou explains.) Clearly, much of their income goes to the nice
apartment, with the decision to acquire furnishings piece by piece,
and with care.
Incredibly, they want to give up this new apartment
to us entirely, and stay at Hong Jian’s teaching studio in town.
More thoughtfulness: they have put Western breakfast food in the
kitchen, including eggs and fresh-baked white and wheat bread. Qiong
says we should accept the arrangement.
That night after the girls are asleep, we go into
the study where the VCR-DVD player is located. An entire wall is
filled with at least a thousand books, including Dan Brown’s The
daVinci Code in Chinese, poetry, and politics – more evidence
that indeed Don Zhou lives the life of the mind. We view the pirated
Cinderella Man, which is a very bad copy: the sound seems
to come from a barrel, there is occasional coughing, and a shadow
of a person finding a seat passes over the screen. Someone had held
the equipment in a theatre. As I said, this was only a conversation
piece, and I hope that’s been a lesson to you. – Hey, did I mention
where you could get a fine $20 Rolex on the street in Guangzhou?
OK, I kinda figured you weren’t interested.
30.July
2005 Saturday
The oldest
restaurant in Kunming is our first destination at the center of
the city, where upstairs we have lunch of the locally renowned guo
qiao mi xian (“over the bridge rice noodles”), a giant bowl
of noodles cooked in boiling chicken stock into which we rake various
thin cold cuts, onions, and green vegetables. It’s like a small
cauldron of chicken noodle soup, with a floating film of oil to
keep it hot. In spite of the old admonition “never to eat anything
bigger than your head,” everyone except me finishes off his bowl.
At the curb
outside the restaurant an old man wearing the traditional pointed
rice farmer’s hat is selling crickets for three yuan each. They’re
not to eat – where are your manners? – but for the sound to keep
you company at home, or to help you sleep. The crickets are in a
little prison of woven bamboo leaves, an angular wiffle ball. The
cricket reminds me of gentle, sympathetic Lafcadio Hearn, who describes
just such an “atomy” in one of his last Japanese writings, entitled
“Kusa-Hibari” (Wandering Ghost: the Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn,
Jonathan Cott, ISBN 0394571525, page 398). I want to buy one, but
have nowhere to put it. Also, what to do with it when I leave?
We go out
into the street where there are a number of open-air markets: a
parakeet market is directly in front and a puppy market is diagonally
across from the restaurant. We spend a long time wandering around.
Trinkets are bought, mostly for the girls. I see a gun, but it is
plastic. I ask Don Zhou whether he has any kind of home defense.
No, he doesn’t. Well, does he have a weapon? No, that’s illegal.
In some areas it’s possible to get a hunting permit, but only the
rich can afford it. Well, don’t the criminals shoot up everybody?
No, they don’t have guns either, although some have been known to
use homemade pistols. A nationwide offensive against criminals was
launched in 1996 (under the rubric “Strike Hard”), with no official
close, but this rounded up only a few hundred weapons. All things
considered, you’re pretty safe from criminals in China – the unincorporated
ones at least.
We take a
taxi for the biggest park in Kunming. Watching the city go by, it
seems to me that the girls here seem to be prettier than in subfusc
Guangzhou, especially in the appearance of their skin and in their
making an effort to look stylish. In all the cities on this trip,
I see no billboards along the highways, especially between cities:
they are reserved for the middle of town, where they are huge and
floodlit by night. One of them congratulates officials of the on-again,
off-again Singapore-Kunming
Rail Link.
Construction
techniques are similar everywhere in these southern cities. It seems
that building the concrete shell is the heart of all construction.
In Guangzhou especially, these older residential hives cluster with
depressing regularity, nearly all stopping at nine storeys: a law
had been passed requiring elevators only after the tenth. Sometimes
it seems that the shell was built with electricity and plumbing
as an afterthought, since they can be exterior to the building.
There is no central heating, and air conditioning usually consists
of a hole for the unit, punched into the wall separate from the
window. Conspicuous by absence, these units are very rare in Kunming,
the “Spring City,” and consequently the buildings look nicer. We
pass a new mausoleum-like building. I am told that it is a regional
Party administration, but that despite the structure it’s not too
powerful. Most of the public affairs decisions are made by the city
and by Beijing.
We arrive
at Cui hu (“Emerald Park”) to pedal boats on the lake there.
There is an hour of unhurried talk as we pedal around. Willow trees
line the lake. Old people sit on benches there and watch us softly
churn past, children playing around them. We finally go out, walking
past a shaded square filled with earnest mahjongg players
with numerous onlookers. We catch a taxi home.
Lao Zhou (“old
Joe”), a very close cousin to Qiong, comes over to pick us up at
the apartment that Hong Jian and Don Zhou have surrendered. This
is another big grin-to-the-relatives dinner where I meet Lao Jiu,
his young wife Xia, their son, the elderly Kong shu shu, his wife
Tai Po, and a rich aunt Yang Ling Ling, a successful businesswoman.
None except Lao Zhou and Yang Ling Ling make a big effort at conversation.
Food is shared from the big rotating lazy Suzan in the center of
the table, but I home in on to doe zi (shredded potatoes
with hot green peppers) and xuanwei huo tui (fatty ham in
a bed of sauerkraut steeped in soy sauce) – though the local mushrooms
are good, too.
Qiong brags
on our girls; Lao Zhou tries to make a remark to the effect that
his son is lazy, but his wife says “stop right there.” There’s a
lot of subtext here, and I really don’t want to know about it. I
realize that the really great thing about being an American is that
unless you’re from the South and read a lot, you’ve got no history
– not the kind that pits families and nations against each other.
If you want history you go to the library and whip up a genealogy
– and nobody gets hurt. But I am from the South, and still pissed
off – mostly at Lee, just the way Allen Tate was. I think of the
popular song from The Band: “He was just 18, proud and brave; but
a Yankee laid him in his grave; I swear by the blood below my feet….”
What blood? Do I have the right to compare my relatively puny half-million
Confederate dead to the some 35 million Chinese victims
of the state since 1949? But here now, I’ve got nobody to talk
to, and I’m chattering to myself! Think of the great meal in front
of you and enjoy!
31.July
2005 Sunday
This morning
we meet Xiao Boa, Qiong’s very close cousin, who first takes us
to Qiong’s old music conservatory overlooking Lake Dianchi, the
eighth largest lake in China, which is west and south of the city.
She was sent to this school from Dali at age 12 to continue violin
study. After crossing from Kunming over the lake to its west side
the road becomes potholed dirt and gravel: piers for a brand new
multi-lane expressway rise up alongside. Qiong points to the spot
where she would lay in the grass reading, with a fishing pole in
the lake. It would be noisy there now.
We wake up
a dozing student who is at the conservatory’s guardhouse, and he
lets us drive through. Some of the buildings from 25 years ago are
still there. Between two dormitories are long concrete tables where
the students washed their own clothes by the centuries-old pounding
and rubbing method. We go into Qiong’s old dorm, up to the third
floor on the end facing the lake, where her room was. Although there
was no plumbing, heating, or cooling when she was there, I can easily
imagine how the trees dappled light over her window, and how simple,
serene, and perfect it once was.
We take a
cable car part way up the Long Man (Dragon Gate), a steep
cliff overlooking Lake Dianchi, and start walking a single lane
asphalt road the rest of the way. It’s cool, and since it’s Sunday,
many people are out, including older folks. Along the side of the
road opposite the mountain are vendors. Most are holding great wads
of cash folded in half, but there is not a policeman in sight. Two
different booths are selling original 1967 editions of Quotations
from Chairman Mao, with English on the right facing the Chinese.
I buy one for 60 yuan ($7.50). Near the cable car were Buddhist
temples, but along the ascent there are only Daoist temples: the
ancient creator of the path wanted everyone to know that the Daoist
gods were superior. We crest the mountain, which lacks a dramatic
spot to mark the event, and begin the descent. Xiao Boa carries
Miranda on his back down the peak, so I have to do the same for
Helen.
That evening
there is a big dinner at Lao Zhou’s house, with local mushrooms
and local huo tui (ham). I sense a bit of tension at the
table and feel that I am being tested. What, are these thimble-gut
Chinese trying to out-drink an American, and with German ancestry
besides? Fools! So I accept every offered ganbei, and follow
with one of my own. Over four liters of beer disappear in short
order. And since I know that you must show deference by touching
your glass lower than those around you, and since they know
that, there is soon an I-can-go-lower-than-you competition. Hamming
it up, I thrust my glass under the table and call out a ganbei.
They roar with delight. After a good deal more of this, Lao Zhou
thinks I’m tanked, and he says, “OK, OK, drink just half
this time.” I shake my head like a beaten man. “No… no,” I mutter,
looking sadly at my full glass. Then I holler: “Let’s ganbei!”
and I drain my glass in two seconds. A great roar of laughs goes
up, and I know they’re ready to go on a Long March with me any day,
comrades forever.
People start
to leave soon after, and when Lao Zhou’s wife Xia asks him to drive
her to the tea house that she owns and manages, the party breaks
up. With the feast ravaged in front of us and the ashtrays full,
Qiong serves as translator between myself and Yang Ling Ling. I
ask her if she can tell me anything about the Mao years, and she
tells about the time of the disastrous Great Leap Forward, Mao’s
attempt at complete economic self-sufficiency in 1958 that starved
to death some 27 million Chinese. She remembers being constantly
tired and hungry and how so many people had terrible skin conditions
because of their subsistence diet. I ask her whether she prefers
Hu Jintao to Mao, and I am astonished to learn that she not only
prefers Mao but still admires him. I am unable to get to the reason
for this admiration, other than the feeling of solidarity in a great
cause, in spite of (or possibly because of) the great suffering
it entailed. Beyond this, she herself might not even know. But this
single reason divides two moral orders among human beings: those
who hear a summons within their own hearts, and those who hear what
is blared into their ears by a clerisy waving banners that change
from one day to the next, like those crowds
forever circling outside Dante’s hell, stung by hornets.
Zhou returns
and asks if Qiong and I want to go see the tea house, which is actually
close by. We go. The tea house is the product of Xia’s wanting her
own business, and has been recently acquired. There are some quiet
tables partly open to the street and just close enough to see the
street life without being noisy. Inside are more tables on the right
side, and a row of closed rooms on the left. The four of us, Lao
Zhou, Xia, Qiong, and myself, go into one of the vacant closed rooms
and sit down at a kind of automated mahjongg table: you can
sweep the polished bone pieces off into a hole in the table, press
a lever, and suddenly the pieces magically appear in neat ranks
before each of the four players, facing a green felt battlefield.
We go out to one of the tables near the street and have very expensive
black tea. It is very strong, so that you can’t even drink the first
two or three brews. We sip this in very small glasses. This is a
good moment, and I silently wish the tea house success, thinking
that it would have a hard time in America. But at last we do need
to put the two girls in bed, and we must leave.
Later that
night, when we are unable to sleep because of the tea, Qiong tells
me the real reason for the tension at the table at the start of
the evening. It had really nothing to do with me, the foreigner.
Under the pretext of meeting Qiong, aunt Yang Ling Ling the rich
businesswoman had brought together some feuding family members hoping
that later they might make up. More subtext. All these studiously
polite people – Chinese, French, Arabs – are just alike in that
way: you never know what they’re really thinking.
1.August
2005 Monday
Toward dawn
the wife and I sleep at last, but we are up for a late lunch at
Jiang Brothers Restaurant downtown. It faces the Jin ma bi ji
fan (golden horse and emerald rooster gate), at the heart of
the city. Inside the noise is terrific, and yet there is a small
stage where various ethnic minorities – principally from the Bai
and Dai peoples – present a show, and manage to be heard by amplification.
Afterward, waiting outside for a taxi, I look down a pleasant vista
of what seem like sycamore trees lining the street alongside the
restaurant. I ask Kong shu shu about this, and he tells me that
they are fawen shu (French trees). However, most trees along
the streets are small four-foot-high shrubs with small yellow flowers,
which I am told are called baun shu, but which I can’t otherwise
identify.
I spend the
afternoon at a wan bar (Internet cafe) near Don Zhou’s apartment.
I am surprised that he does not know about it, since it is just
around the corner from his house, and very easy to spot: the Chinese
character is a box with the bottom missing, with two “X”s inside.
These places are much alike, all charging about 2 yuan per hour
of unrestricted Internet access. Don’t expect to order drinks inside
the “bar,” however: you walk in to see just rows of computer terminals.
It looks more like the computer lab at a community college, and
most of the patrons are of college age. The browsers typically open
onto Baidu, the
Asian-character complement to Google, which just in the next few
days will become an American IPO, with already a sixth of Google’s
traffic even before the public offering. (In just a week its stock
price will move from $27
to $122.54 a share.) Those around me seem to be especially interested
in playing computer games with impressive graphics and intense interaction.
These wan bar are supposedly monitored by the government,
with some sites restricted, but I was able to get to all the popular
sites, including Lew Rockwell’s blog and the Drudge Report, but
not CNN.
For a light
dinner Don Zhou, six children, and I go to Teresa’s Pizza for dinner,
near Yunnan University, on Wenlin Street. We later cross this street,
which is completely torn up by construction, to check out Lan
Bai Hong (Blue-White-Red) French Cafe. Both are simple bistros,
which for reasons that I did not experience during my visits are
highly rated by the guide books. But of course they exist as conversation
spots for the students – not for their menus.
2.August
2005 Tuesday
This morning
we are up to catch the bus for Dali,
a smaller city some 400 km (250 miles) to the west. We travel along
the new four- and six-lane Highway 320, and will drive through at
least three long tunnels through the mountains, on a trip that will
take us five hours. Along the way I see many impressive things –
quite apart from the smooth ride of the new road itself.
Getting out
of Kunming takes some time, since there is highway construction.
On the road there are only PetroChina and SinOpec gas stations –
although I’m informed that a few smaller ones do exist. Most of
the rural houses along the way look much the same: there is the
initial meter of the foundation made of rocks, on top of which is
packed earth. The roof is variously clay tile, galvanized metal,
or even straw. There are few windows. But surprisingly, outside
of the meanest house you can see a satellite dish pointed up to
the southern sky. The green earth buckles up wondrously, and you
see that every arable square meter is carefully terraced and cultivated
– primarily with what looks to me, a city slicker, like corn (maize).
By the small, imperfectly straight, and very closely planted rows,
one sees that no mechanical harvest is conceivable: it’s all done
by hand, and it’s everywhere you look. Occasionally there is a copse
of slender, straight, and very tall trees – up to 30 meters – some
looking like birches, others like firs. More common along the road
are the shrub-like baun shu with their bright yellow flowers.
Since no less
than Voltaire supplied an encyclopedia article about testicles,
I feel no constraint in mentioning Chinese toilets, which the bus
dutifully stops to honor. The Western porcelain throne is definitely
a luxury article, but is everywhere gaining acceptance. The typical
facility however is nothing more than a dirty hole in the floor,
over which you must squat with no aid for raising or lowering yourself.
Gathering up your pants so that they don’t touch the floor and simultaneously
aiming your release so that you don’t miss the hole requires gymnastic
ability. Even in the Zhongshan Sun Yat-Sen museum, a brand-new toilet
facility kept this ancient arrangement. In that case the “hole”
was a half-meter of porcelain, and had a joystick flush handle,
but it still made no concession to the West: one still had to crouch
agonizingly low so as not to spatter effluvia. Proponents of the
hole might make the case that the low crouch facilitates the parting
of the buttocks and allows the body weight to bear down, squeezing
out the contents of the entrails. Well, Voltaire allowed that absence
of huevos might better promote conjugal action, too, but
I for one plan to hang on to mine. I take the negative of this resolution,
and bring as evidence a scene in Harry Wu’s poignant memoir of life
in a Chinese re-education camp. In his Bitter
Winds (a title not cited to stoop to the pun) a stoic musician
is seen rising from this position and having to stuff his viscera
painfully back into place. Might the long application of this toilet
technique have contributed to his condition? But enough of this.
When we arrive
in Dali, Qiong’s brother Zhouan and family meet us at the station.
He allows himself to be constantly interrupted by his cell phone:
he is self-employed procuring buses for travel agencies and tours,
and independent bus drivers are calling to declare their availability.
We drive out of the Dali proper, passing through traffic lights
that give a digital reading of how many seconds until the light
changes, and passing a new mausoleum-like building – another regional
Party administration, as in Kunming. We travel north along the west
shore of Lake Erhai (Ear Lake), headed for the ancient city of Dali,
a jewel less than one mile square, with huge gates neatly in the
middle of each wall at the compass points. Here we check-in at Landscape
Hotel, getting three-star accommodations for the price of a
Motel 6. All of us, about 14 in all, half of which are children,
walk to dinner. Inside a sign with red background and gold letters
proclaims it to be recommended by the city government.
On the way
back in the dark we walk through the courtyard of the Landscape
Hotel. One of the children trips and falls, and some guests behind
us look on. One is a very pretty and athletic Chinese girl wearing
white shorts. “Small accident,” I say to her. “Oh, it looks like
just a scrape,” she says, in English with no accent. I start talking
to her, and I discover that she’s not only an American, but a Texan,
from Austin. She is the first American I’ve seen so far on my trip,
but she is originally from China, and here to see family.
3.August
2005 Wednesday
The next morning
our goal is to ascend one of the Nineteen Sisters, in the Cangshan
mountains just west of the ancient city. Although we could have
walked, we have the children so we ascend most of the way on an
Austrian Doppelmayer
Gondelbahn. Then there is just enough walking to the waterfall
to give a sense of accomplishment. We drink its cold water. Clean
water does have a taste.
Like Kunming,
ancient and new Dali sit inside a bowl of surrounding mountains
and beside a large lake, but on a smaller scale than Kunming. Its
Lake Erhai has its long side running north and south. On lake’s
narrow west shore the ancient city sits on a slope of the Nineteen
Sisters; at the southern end of the lake is the new city.
For the afternoon
we take a dragon boat ride, leaving a little dock in front of the
ancient city first for the island of the nan jao Imperial
Palace, which is now a new hotel, then to the new city. On the way,
the passengers are called up in turn to view Bai and Dai ethnic
dances in the ship’s auditorium. The dancers are young and enthusiastic.
Everyone especially enjoys their antics during the courtship ritual
dance. Afterward the same dancers perform the Bai three tea ceremony:
by design, the first cup is too bitter, the second too sweet, and
the third is just right.
When the ship
comes to the island of the Imperial Palace I walk around and take
some photos. At the new hotel I am surprised that there is no literature
about it in the lobby, and no sign such as “Ask the concierge about
your next stay.” Business must be good.
On the last
leg of the journey to the new city, a young man who has overheard
me speaking English approaches me. He is a student at Beijing University.
After niceties, he gets right to the point: he has been studying
computer science but doesn’t really want to become a programmer,
and he wants some career advice. I tell him that because of his
university training and his fluency in English he has many opportunities,
one of them being a software designer who can gather requirements
from English-speaking customers then explain them to Chinese-speaking
programmers. Then he asks about politics, politely prefacing his
remarks with the observation that most travelers don’t want to talk
about that subject. Oh, but I do, I do. And I unload a 15-minute
tour of Libertarianism on him. In it I emphasize my (and the Founding
Fathers’) profound distrust of democracy. “Suppose that you lived
on that little island – ” here I point “ – where the total of people
is 1000. Suppose also that 501 of the people vote to take away all
of your money – your money, and no one else’s. That’s unlimited
democracy.” He appreciates the illustration. Then – I’m not sure
whether he’s being polite – he says that with George W. Bush you
know exactly where he stands: he doesn’t say one thing then do another.
I do not directly contradict him, but I say that I emphatically
do not like him, a
C-minus party student, alcoholic, cocaine-sniffer, and failed businessman.
The ride ends
at the dock of the new city, where we go to an authentic huo
guoa (hot pot) restaurant. In this kind of restaurant a hole
is cut into the tables to accommodate a gas burner, controlled by
the diners sitting there. Over this flame a cauldron of beef or
chicken stock is placed. Beside the table is a small stand of shelves
which hold plates of various foods that will be raked into the cauldron.
These plates of food are brought out in a certain order – meats
cook longer, so plates of that arrive first, followed by fish, then
kelp and green vegetables. Little bowls of soy sauce and sesame
oil mixed together are on the tables, as well as rice. I like this
arrangement very much: you can see that the ingredients are fresh
before they go in, and you can extract just what you feel like eating.
The only danger is that because you take out bits at a time, you
lose track of how much you’ve eaten, so you can end up stuffing
yourself.
After dinner
I go outside on the sidewalk to wait for the others, and I have
an annoying moment. A family of people from the country come up
to me and beg for money. I tell them no, but they return, especially
the old mother, and I must be even more emphatic. A Chinese group
exits the restaurant and gets the same treatment from the beggars.
It seems that they are so rude because they are so desperately hungry.
One of Qiong’s friends brings out a bowl of rice, and the family
carries it away and then pounces on the contents with their dirty
fingers.
4.August
2005 Thursday
In the morning
the wife, two girls, and her friend and two boys, and I are destined
for the Butterfly
Spring, some 27 kilometers to the south. Ostensibly it should
be a great attraction: like the swallows at Capistrano, butterflies
had been coming to this particular spring every year, covering the
grounds with living color. But because of the presence of so many
humans, they stopped coming. Undaunted, the entrepreneurs came up
with the idea of selling colored hearts on a long ribbon, which
prospective lovers must purchase and fling onto the willows overhanging
the spring: lots of color, but quite a mess, and a sure deterrent
to any future butterflies. Add to this a huge throng of people with
a distinct aversion to the English notion of queuing up, and the
site gets scratched off your itinerary.
In the afternoon
our same group strolls along hu guo jia (or alternately yang
ren jia) (Foreigners’ Street), which, it turns out, can be accessed
through the back of our hotel. I hear more French, some Dutch, and
something else, which I later learn to be Finnish. There were Finns
at Chinese universities during my visit ten years earlier, so apparently
there is some inter-government cooperation at work. I see many European
students, and even lone pairs of girls with the standard equipment:
backpacks and long Western legs, tanned and athletic.
We walk up
fu xing lu, the north-south axis street of the city, headed
for the north gate. There is a poorly maintained watchtower on top
of the gate. We ascend the gate and pay a few yuan to a family that
is evidently the caretakers, and enjoy a view of the city from about
30 meters up. The most remarkable thing to see is that virtually
every roof has solar panels to fire the water heaters.
On the way
back I get ahead of the group and sit in the shade to wait for them.
A pair of girls walks by, wearing sandals and thin skirts. They’re
speaking German. One of them makes eye contact, so I speak to her:
Entschuldigung, ich habe Sie zufällig mitangehört. Kommen Sie
aus Deutschland? Yes, they’re from Germany. They are traveling
around with no definite purpose, but their next stop is Tibet. They
were in Shanghai, which was roasting at 40 degrees Celsius when
they were there. The girl is plump – she must have suffered in the
heat – but pretty. I want to talk to her, but I have to tell her
that my group has gotten ahead of me, and that we’re sure to bump
into each other again – it’s a small place, after all.
After we have
gone back to the hotel and showered and rested, I learn that this
is my night to dine alone: Qiong wants to party a bit without any
detours into English.
I have supper
at the Tang Dynasty restaurant on Foreigners’ Street: beefsteak
with French fries. The butter is from New Zealand. As I eat, sip
my wine, and watch the young world go by, I listen to a recording
of Country Western music, a good artist that I don’t know, covering
Willie Nelson’s Blue Eyes and others. I figure that this
would be a great spot to open up a place selling real barbequed
brisket. Had any brisket passed under my nose lately? I would have
known about this. But quality beef seems to be imported from Australia.
And could the chili powder be imitated over here? Hmm. And finding
good help may be another problem: over my table is a sign offering,
incredibly, free lodging to waiters who speak fluent English. Can
the pay be that bad?
I wander around
a bit. I pass a shop offering to rent bicycles for 60 yuan ($8.50)
a day, and I take note of its location. While buying some bottled
water, I strike up a conversation with a young man and his wife
who are originally from Michigan, but who are on vacation from their
English-as-a-foreign-language assignment in Japan. I ask them, and
they admit to being fluent in neither Chinese nor Japanese, which,
they say, is no great hindrance to their teaching assignment. In
one way they aren’t being paid well, but all their expenses are
covered, and they are having the experience of their young lifetimes.
5.August
2005 Friday
After a sleep-in,
I awake to find that it is raining, I think because of tropical
storm Matsu that is sweeping into Shanghai, far away to the northeast.
I go alone to the free Western breakfast offered by the hotel. It
is cussed difficult to get two eggs over easy with salt and pepper,
but I finally manage it. I talk with a family from France while
waiting at the buffet table for my toast to pop up. (On doit
y attendre parce-que le grille-pain ne marche pas parfaitement:
il y a de danger de brűler le pain.) He says that he usually
comes through China on business, but decided to bring along the
family this time. I overhear other French speakers as I sit alone
and eat.
Our morning
destination was to have been the Three
Pagodas northwest of the city, but I decide to part company
with the group and spend a few hours browsing at a wan bar
– not the one directly in front of our hotel on yuer jia,
but on fu xing lu, the north-south axis street. I also need
a haircut. The group’s visit to the Three Pagodas northwest of the
city and ride ponies near the north gate is actually not far from
my destination.
According
to the wife I’m supposed to bargain, so I decide to practice this
important skill. I first go to the barbershop, which is right next
door to the wan bar. I suggest five yuan for a haircut, but
the young man in charge gives a short laugh, says no, and looks
offended, saying the price is ten yuan. I try again, same price.
This time he raises his voice a bit, saying “shi quai,” and
makes a Celtic cross with his two pointed index fingers – the Chinese
character for ten. I have a try at looking offended, and I walk
out – to go next door, that is. After two hours of answering email
and surfing for three yuan (38 cents), I come back to the barbershop.
I try the five yuan again, and this time the young barber gives
a curt “shi quai,” keeping his eyes on his work dying a Chinese
woman’s hair reddish brown. Without any more nonsense I agree, and
in just a few seconds he has turned over the dying to an assistant
and is at work on my hair. This includes a shave of the neck with
a straight razor, the beginning of which operation I preface with
“wo bu yao don” – I’m not going to be moving around. This
remark breaks up the group in the back seated around the TV into
laughter. The ten yuan also includes a wash and dry of the hair.
As I leave I tell him, “Zhe ge meiguo ren shi hun nan” –
these Americans are really difficult. “Meiyo,” he says politely:
not at all.
I walk back
to the Tang Dynasty on Foreigners’ Street, and just by luck the
wife is eating there and has sent the girls out in front to look
for me. They see me, yell, and come running.
On the walk
back to our hotel, just outside the back gate we pass a shoe-shine
man. I had put him off the day before with a “mingtian” (tomorrow),
of which fact he now reminds me, and the wife as well. It’s only
three yuan, so as the girls clean up I go back to fulfill my promise.
With my cowboy boots off and in a comfortable spot, I watch the
people go by. It seems that this operation is taking a long time.
The actual polishing seems to be perfunctory, but complete. He has
moved on to cutting out a pattern from a sheet of rubber. I ask
him what’s that for. He points out that the bottom of my boots is
thin, but I emphatically say wo bu yao – I don’t want that.
He insists. “OK,” I say, “san quai,” meaning three yuan,
part of the original deal. He nods absentmindedly, although he is
already at work. In short order I have a new rubber sole epoxied
to my boots. He writes down 150-yuan on a scrap of paper and shows
it to me. What! I didn’t ask for that. We agreed on three yuan!
Another shoeshine man comes over, genially points out the work,
and in one hand rubs the thumb against the fingers – the universal
dumb sign for money. I give him all that I have in my front pockets,
50-yuan, wipe my hands down my arms, and turn up my palms. “That’s
all I’ve got, pahdnah.” Actually, I’ve got quite a bit more in another
pocket, but this guy has been dishonest.
Back at the
hotel, I relate this to Qiong, and she explodes. She does so hate
to be out-bargained. The problem is, she counts in terms of yuan;
I count in terms of dollars, always dividing the figures by eight
to see what I would have paid in America.
That night
we have supper back in the new city with Qiong’s brother Chuan,
his wife Xian, and their son Jia-Jia and daughter Hui. The interesting
moment of the evening comes when I ask Jia-Jia, who is in his sophomore
year in high school, what he’s been doing in his computer classes.
He starts his computer, whose home page comes up on a gaming site.
Then he launches Excel, in the English version, and shows me a page
with two columns: one of goods, the other of prices, but with no
total. I ask if he can get a total and he says no. I tell him that
he should make himself the task of going through the all the F1
Help. But at least part of his problem is the deficiency in English.
It is said
that in China Bill Gates has more star power than Britney Spears,
but this may not be universally true. Still, China is turning out
four
times America’s number of engineering graduates, and they’re
just getting started.
6.August
2005 Saturday
For our final
day in Dali, I first take the girls to the Tang Dynasty for lunch.
There is a new group of waiters there this time. I order one pizza,
half fruit and half meat, stating this several times in Chinese
– wo yao yi pizza, ban shui guo, ban rou – complete with
mime: raised index finger for one, chopping motions for the half
and half. All of this is greeted with nods of perfect comprehension.
Then the order appears. It is two pizzas, one fruit and one meat.
I dig my heels in. I let the waiter know that I am not paying for
two pizzas. Not only are the prices close to Pizza Hut retail at
20 yuan apiece, but dammit, this is card sharping. John Wayne wouldn’t
stand for this, and besides, I’m not going to be whipped a second
time. Qiong arrives just then from shopping at this point, and tells
the waiter that I ain’t a-payin’. He seems to accept this. But when
the bill is presented, there is two yuan added for the paper napkins
– which in every Chinese restaurant are free. I refuse to let 12
cents get my goat, and I laugh at this and pay.
In the afternoon
we go near the north gate so that the girls can get a second pony
ride. There is the inevitable dickering over the price, which Qiong
seems to enjoy. While the girls are riding, Qiong tries to drive
down the price of a carriage ride to the southwest corner of the
city, where there is a gentle waterfall running between the sidewalks.
“What, you want that price? We’d rather walk!” The genial old man
with a flat army cap smiles and replies, “Yes, you can do the Long
March, too. That’s a long way.” There is the walking away, returning,
and further exchange of offers. At last a price is agreed upon.
When the girls return, we all get into the carriage and travel from
the north gate, along the outside of the city wall to the west gate.
Qiong wants him to go a bit further, but he won’t. We walk the rest
of the way to see the waterfall, which I think has really been a
diversion for more shopping. Qiong does get a huge bargain on some
colorful shawls.
The cases
of the shoe-shine man, the waiter, and the carriage driver are small
examples of the notoriously tough business dealing of the Chinese.
There’s an admirable side to this trait: the Chinese strictly obey
the law – the need for a police presence is not necessary. But up
to the letter of the law they feel free to rape and pillage. Furthermore,
the party who seems the loser in any deal feels compelled to shift
the terms of the deal so as to regain face (ai mianzi, an
important concept to all Asians) on the putative winner. Thus the
driver of the carriage took us exactly to the west gate and not
a step further, although it might have been no real effort to take
us closer to our true destination.
On the way
back to the hotel to pack, Qiong looks for the shoe-shine man as
we go past his corner. She is “loaded for bear” as my mother used
to say – ready to tear into him. He’s not there. “Of course he’s
not there,” she says. “Yesterday somebody paid him a month’s vacation.”
We catch the
bus for the long ride the back to Kunming. When we arrive, I deal
with the luggage while Qiong goes to the lost-and-found to see if
our video camera has shown up. We apparently had left it on the
Kunming-to-Dali bus. She comes back laughing. “I asked them for
the lost-and-found and they looked at me as if I was from another
planet.”
At Kunming
we catch a taxi for the loaned apartment and on the way pick up
supper from Dicos’ Chicken, which comes in a bucket and looks like
the KFC product, except that the neck and head of the chicken are
also included. It tastes good, though.
7.August
2005 Sunday
In the morning
I and girls go to Mrs. Fu’s house, the mother of one of Qiong’s
friends. I doze and browse the Internet while Qiong shops and talks
until supper time.
We all go
to Lao Zhou’s home to a simple but large meal cooked by his wife.
It includes fried bee larvae, which I try. They are crunchy on the
outside and gooey on the inside, but tasteless. Afterward Lao Zhou
drives his wife to the tea room, taking our two girls to meet his
wife’s mother. Alone with just myself, the wife, and Tai Gugu, the
big screen TV is off and she is able to talk. This she does for
about an hour. In the course of the talk I ask her what was the
worst time of her life, and she says that it was the time of the
Communist takeover in 1949 and shortly thereafter. Her father was
a landlord who had his house and property taken away. The family
had to suffer and go hungry like everyone else.
8.August
2005 Monday
After a late
snooze we have lunch at a good Kunming restaurant near to the apartment.
One of the more interesting items is baby shrimps, brought alive
to the table in a clear covered dish, wriggling and flipping around
like two-inch-long minnows. The cold, spicy, tomato-red sauce eventually
kills them, whereupon the lid is removed and they are eaten – by
the Chinese, thank you very much.
After having
our Yunnan red wine confiscated at the airport security point, we
fly back to Guangzhou. Qiong learns that the mechanics of our airline
are on strike, so we have to leave early to accept the airline’s
rescheduling offer. Since it takes us to Beijing, I want to go.
As we return
to our apartment in the taxi, we see an airship covered in lights
in the night sky above the city. It is advertising the very development
in the Panyu suburb where Zhang Qiang (see 26.July) lives. I can’t
help thinking of the street scene in the film Blade Runner,
where an advertising airship floats above a rainy, squalid city
of the future. Later, after cleaning up, we stand on our balcony
facing the river and watch it float by, following the path of the
Pearl River, seeming almost close enough to touch. Even after midnight,
concrete trucks are busy crossing the Hai Yin Qiao.
9.August
2005 Tuesday
This is a
shopping day in Guangzhou for Qiong. Also I need to buy a cable,
which I have somehow misplaced, that allows unloading of photos
from my digital camera onto my laptop. Walking to the taxi, I pass
the second gold-on-red government political slogan of my stay in
China. Like the first one in Zhengshen, it bears the same message:
“Citizens, be patriotic, honest, polite, and kind!” It’s a banner
in a closed walkway over Dong Xiao Lu, so few people can see it.
10.August
2005 Wednesday
We meet the
relatives of friends at the apartment. One of them, a very successful
businesswoman, drives us to the airport for our flight to Beijing.
We arrive there and are shuttled to the Sino-Swiss Hotel in the
Shunyi district late at night.
11.August
2005 Thursday
We are up
early to squeeze in a visit to Tiananmen Square before our flight
leaves. (See the excellent interactive map by Andrew
Nathan at Columbia University’s site.) We walk out of the hotel
to a taxi pool parked a short distance away. Qiong launches into
bargaining for the cab fare to a group of drivers who are standing
under some trees. After she is satisfied that she has jawboned the
last yuan out of them, we climb in. The girls sleep during the long
drive, and we arrive at last at the square.
The roads
approaching the square are notable for their weird combination of
corporate signs (Motorola, Siemens, Toyota, Lucent, DuPont, Nestlé)
alternating with red banners bearing gold patriotic slogans (compared
to the south, they vary on the same theme, but there are more here
than all I’ve seen so far combined). In perhaps an icon of this
hybrid, I see a John Deere riding mower cutting grass on the Chang’an
jia median, which runs east-west, separating the Forbidden City
from the square in front of it.
The visitor
is immediately impressed by the enormity of this slab of concrete.
In the morning haze, it seems to stretch to the horizon. In the
middle of it is the Monument to the People’s Martyrs, the center
of the center of Beijing, at which the student demonstrators erected
their Statue of Liberty in 1989. To the north of it, just across
the boulevard Chang’an jia, and hanging from the Gate of
Heavenly Peace, Mao’s big portrait is visible with its eponymous
wart on the chin. A few meters to the south of it there are neatly-dressed
soldiers, regularly changing guard.
Further south
from the Monument is the tomb of Mao
Zedong, which has two entrances: one from the Monument and one
on the opposite side. Thousands of visitors, almost exclusively
Chinese, and many of them gradeschoolers following the flag of their
teachers, are lined up to walk past the body. We don’t have time,
and besides, the whole thing is ghoulish, with a whiff of the totalitarian
occult: there are large signs outside in both Chinese and English
giving detailed warnings against spitting, disorder – even disorderly
dress – and against the use of cameras. Inside are armed guards
briskly moving everyone along. (This last detail I take on faith
from a
member of a tightly-controlled package tour.) I tell Qiong that
those people are lining up to see a piece of wax: human flesh can’t
be pickled that long – at least not by the techniques available
to China in 1976, the year of his death.
But our adventure
has come to an end.
After waving
off vendors who want to sell us Mickey Mouse watches with Chairman
Mao replacing Mickey, we climb into the cab, starting our return
trip of over 18 hours to arrive at last in Fort Worth. During the
drive out of Beijing I see a pretty woman on the sidewalk, with
long legs and full breasts, like many others here in the north it
seems. Oů sont les nieges d’Antan? – Where are the snows
of yesteryear? I think that some things will outlast the propaganda,
the popular noise, the everlasting lying that is at the heart of
everything that comes out of a crowd or goes into a crowd. There
will always be a young man and a young woman sitting alone in a
garden, with the fountain splashing and the linden leaves falling,
and his blood will rise as he looks at her. There will always be
a hope that humanity can one day stand up and walk without a crutch
of lies
September
15, 2005
Terry
Hulsey [send him mail]
is a writer living in Fort Worth, Texas. His latest book is Heroic
Tales and Treasures of the Lonely Heart.
Copyright
© 2005 LewRockwell.com
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