The tourists were leaving China for home. Some had gone already, the Wittricks, the Westbetters, laden with souvenirs (lacquerware, carpets, chopsticks, brassware, fans); and the Cathcarts were already back in Bexhill-on-Sea.
Kicker and Morris had not left the bar of The White Swan since arriving in Canton. Kicker said, 'The guys back home will never believe it when I say I screwed a bald woman."
He was chuckling softly. His laughter always reminded me that he had a metal plate in his head. Then he squinted at me.
"But I was a Marine," he said. "We fuck anything."
He had met a young Japanese woman in Canton — had just passed by the open door to her hotel room, started shooting the breeze and ended up in bed with her. Kicker was sixty-seven years old and had the face of a rapist. But his features softened as he recalled the encounter — just yesterday, it was, on the fourth floor.
"It was real nice," he said. 'That gal gave me more loving in those six hours than I had in fifteen years of marriage."
Morthole was looking on. He was very drunk. He was alone. He had not made any friends on his long trip. He asked me what I was planning to do. I told him: Head north — more China.
"More tombs," he said. "More chopsticks. More pagodas. What are you doing?"
"Trying to get the hang of it," I said.
"And you're going by train? It'll take ages!"
"It'll give me a feeling of accomplishment."
Morthole laughed. He did not seem to me very bright, but I had never said much to him. I had merely noted the times when he had gone in search of stones, and I had marveled at the satchelful he had collected. His prize was a chunk of the Great Wall — he wondered whether he would be able to smuggle it through customs at Canton Railway Station.
Each of those tourists had surprised me in one way or another. It made me think that you never really know anyone until you have traveled 10,000 miles in a train with them. I had sized them up in London, but they were all both better and worse then they had seemed then, and now they were beyond criticism because they had proved themselves to be human. Morthole, the recluse and rock collector, had a surprise for me, too. I had taken him for an illiterate, and I had not taken him very seriously — or his bag of rocks.
"Do you know The Excursion?" he said.
I said I didn't know what he was talking about. What was this, some China sight-seeing tour to the high spots?
"William Wordsworth," he said. "I learned it at school."
"Oh, that Excursion."
Morthole raised his glass and said,An irksome drudgery seems it to plod on,
Through hot and dusty ways, or pelting storm,
A vagrant merchant under a heavy load
Bent as he moves, and needing frequent rest;
Yet do such travellers find their own delight…
Oh, God, I thought, and all this time I've been patronizing this poor bastard.
But speaking of travelers finding their own delight, I decided that day to leave Canton. I went to bed thinking how China exists so distinctly in people's minds that it is hard to shake that fantasy loose and see the real thing. It was not quite the same as looking for igloos in Alaska, or grass skirts in Tahiti, or big blubber-lipped Ubangis in Africa; but it was similar. And it was as wrong to lean on the fake Chinese imagery that comes thirdhand to every Westerner as it was to believe in the wholesome air of poverty.
I had a nightmare. I woke up in a sweat as the nightmare ebbed away: I was on a mobbed street, full of toothy and unfriendly faces, and felt trapped and suffocated in a big city. It was a Chinese city — a Chinese nightmare. I thought: Most of my nightmares are Chinese nightmares. On its most ordinary-seeming street, this unraveling republic had sights to scare the hell out of me. But I was growing fond of its gorgeous insects.
6. Train Number 324 to Hohhot and Lanzhou
It had been a very bad month on China's western railway, where wild yaks on the line accounted for some delays, and sandstorms were frequent. Just before I set off I read in the China Daily that 330 miles of track had been buried by the worst sandstorms for twenty years. The report was precise in its tale of woe: a "force 12 gale" had raged for forty-eight hours, and the "eye-blinding sandstorm" had dumped 100,000 tons of sand on the tracks, stranding forty-seven trains and closing the line for nine days, during which 10,000 rail passengers were evacuated. People died in the storm. People were injured. Vast prefectures of Gansu and Xinjiang were cut off.
But in the way it was ignored by the world, and even ignored by most Chinese (it was just a tiny news item), and in the way it was quickly remedied, it was a very Chinese disaster. (The 1976 earthquake in China, hardly noticed by the world, killed more than 2 50,000 people, and the famines of the late 1950's killed as many as 16 million people.) After the death and destruction, shovels were distributed, the trains were dug out, the tracks disinterred and new sand barriers erected — fences this time, instead of grass clumps. The Chinese had their political dilemmas, and the technological side of Chinese society was a mess ("communications" was an inappropriate word for toy telephones, Morse code and scribbled notes), but if it was possible for the Chinese to shovel themselves out of trouble, they succeeded brilliantly. Digging was a national preoccupation, and during the Cultural Revolution — as my friend Wang said — everyone had his own hole, in case of war. Come to think of it, the Great Wall too was a sort of digger's masterpiece. And the old fable that Mao always cited, "The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains," was the digger's gospel — the point was that the old man was not foolish at all and that the Chinese could move mountains (even the metaphorical ones of imperialism and feudalism) by digging.
When the line was clear, I left for Hohhot, in Inner Mongolia. I was not alone. A small portly gentleman had been assigned to me. He had the face of a sea lion — not an unusual face in China. Speaking English was not one of his skills, but he was fluent in Russian, a language that mystifies me. His name was Mr. Fang. We were traveling together as a result of a discussion I had had with the Railway Board, but these discussions were more in the nature of struggle sessions.
A delegation had come to my hotel and delayed me with politeness and abused me with flattery, blackmailing me with such phrases as "famous writer," "important person" and "foreign friend." Indeed, I was so important and dignified that I could not possibly travel alone on this journey to the west, but would have to be provided with an entourage.
I said that I usually traveled alone, and that I made a virtue of it, and I refrained from saying that if I was in need of a traveling companion it certainly would not have been a huge, goofy man like Mr. Zhong, with his sinister laugh and his slurping way of eating.
We were in the restaurant of my hotel, Mr. Zhong, Mr. Fang, Mr. Chen and I. Mr. Zhong blew on the surface of his tea, then sucked it in, gurgled it inside his cheeks and gulped it. And his way with noodles was worse, and noisier: he made his mouth into a suck-hole and woofed them through it in a wet, twisted hank. His gasps made me feel violent towards him.
So far, Mr. Fang had not said anything; and Mr. Chen only put in a word now and then to be helpful.