Yet I enjoyed the place. I had felt the same in Inner Mongolia, at Jaiyuguan, Turfan and Urumchi — the wilder and emptier parts of China. I had had enough of Chinese cities. But this was pleasant, and it was possible to take long walks through the countryside, watching people hoeing or pigs wallowing, and in the far-off villages, the little kids doing homework in copybooks in front of the thatch-roofed huts.
***
The railway halt at Emei was at the end of a long, muddy road, and a market nearby sold fruit and peanuts to the pilgrims, who waited patiently, leaning on their walking sticks, for the train. And then, above the sound of sparrows and the whispers of bamboos, a train whistle blew. I liked these country stations, and it seemed perfect to sit there among the rice fields in the hills of Sichuan until, right on schedule, the big, wheezing train arrived to take me away, south into Yunnan. It was twenty-four hours to Kunming, and the train was uncharacteristically empty: I had a compartment to myself, and this one — because of the intense and humid heat — had straw mats instead of cushions.
"There are two hundred tunnels between here and Kunming," the conductor said when he clipped my ticket. No sooner had he gotten the words out of his mouth than we were standing in darkness: the first tunnel.
We were among tall conical hills that were so steep they were terraced and cultivated only halfway up. That was unusual in China, where land economy was almost an obsession. And the day was so overcast that waterfalls spilled out of the low cloud, and paths zigzagged upwards and disappeared in the mist.
So many tunnels meant that we would be among mountains the whole way — and hills and valleys, and narrow swinging footbridges slung across the gorges. The ravines were spectacular and steep, and the mountains were close together, so the valleys were very narrow. All of these magnificent geographical features had meant that the railway line had been difficult to build. In fact many of the engineering problems had been regarded as almost insurmountable until the early seventies when, with a combination of soldiers and convicts — a labor force that could be shot for not working — the line was finally finished.
The line could not go through the mountains of the Daxue range, and so it crept around their sides, pierced their flanks, and rose higher and circled until it had doubled back upon itself. Then you looked down and saw the tunnel entrances beneath you and realized that you had not advanced but had only climbed higher. Soon the train was in a new valley, descending to the river once again. The river was called the Dadu He (Big Crossing). It was wide and grayer than the sky above it. For most of its length it was full of boulders. Fishermen with long poles or ancient fish traps sat on its banks.
These were the densest, steepest mountains I had seen so far, and the train was never more than a few minutes from a tunnel. So, in order to read or write, I had to leave the lights burning in the compartment. One moment there was a bright valley with great white streaks of rock down its sides, and gardens near the bottom and vegetable patches sloping at a forty-five degree angle, and the next moment the train would be roaring through a black tunnel, scattering the bats that hung against the walls. This was one of the routes where people complained of the length of the trip. But it was easily one of the most beautiful train trips in China. I could not understand why tourists went from city to city, on a forced march of sight-seeing. China existed in all the in-between places that were reachable only by train.
"What do you want for lunch?" the chef said. This dining car was empty too.
"This is a Sichuan train, right?"
"It is."
"I will have Sichuan food then."
He brought me Sichuan chicken, hot bean curd, pork and green peppers, green onions stir-fried with ginger, soup and rice — a one-dollar lunch — and I went back and had a siesta. There were countries where train journeys were no more than a period of suspense, waiting to arrive; and there were countries where the train journey was itself an experience of travel, with meals and sleep and exercise and conversation and scenery. This was the latter. When I woke up in midafternoon I saw that the mist and cloud had dispersed. The long, hooting train had passed from low steep mountains into higher, broader ones.
I sat by the window and watched the world go by. Four black pigs, each one a different size, trotting in a file along a hill path. Some hills scarred with eroded gullies and others covered with scrub pine. Deep red valleys, the soil laid bare, and green bushy hills. The river was now the same red as that clayey soil. There were junipers at railway stations, fluttering and bowing, for it had now become windy. And five ranges of mountains visible, each with its own shade of gray, according to its distance. In a pretty valley town called Sham-alada, beyond the solid houses and tiled roofs, ten naked children turned somersaults on a mudbank and plunged into the red river. It was not late, but the sun slipped beneath the mountains, and then the valleys were full of long, cold shadows, as if the slopes had dragging cloaks.
Just before darkness fell, at the head of one valley, I saw a terrace below the rail line — a cemetery. It had a big stone gateway and a red star over the gate. That red star usually meant it had something to do with the People's Liberation Army. This one had fifty graves — rectangular stone boxes with flowers beside them. Except in the Muslim regions — like Xinjiang, or the Hui province of Ningxia — it was unusual to see cemeteries in China — new ones, at any rate. A cemetery is regarded as a waste of space. The dead are cremated and the ashes are put on a shelf in the family house, along with the tea leaves, the vase of plastic flowers, the photograph of Su Lin at the factory outing to Lake Hong, the combination thermometer-and-calendar and the needlepoint portrait of a white kitten playing with a ball of yarn.
I inquired about the cemetery.
The Head of the Train (Heche zhang), a man named Mr. He, said, "Those are the graves of the men who died while building the railway. It took ten years, you see."
Those ten years, from the early sixties to the early seventies, coincided with the period of patriotic fervor and intense jingoism. It not only had the largest number of self-sacrificing soldiers and workers, but also an enormous number of political prisoners. The efforts of these passionate people produced the Chengdu-Kunming line.
I slept, but fitfully, for each time the train entered a tunnel, the compartment howled with its noise and filled with smoke and steam from the engine. In the morning we were among bulgier, wetter mountains — the Yunnan valleys are cool throughout the year, because most of the province is at a high altitude.
A bad-tempered attendant banged at the door at seven. But knocking was only a formality. After a few knocks she used her own key to open the door, and she demanded the bedding. Hurry up! Get out of bed! Give me the sheets! Do it now! I thought: What nags these people can be.
"Why are the fuwuyuans in such a hurry to collect the bedding?" I ask the Head of the Train, Mr. He.
He said, "Because the train does not stay long in Kunming. Just a matter of hours, and then we turn around and go back to Chengdu."
That was why they were nags: they were overworked.
Mr. He had risen through the ranks. He had been a luggage handler, a conductor and a cook — all jobs at roughly the same salary level, about 100 yuan a month. He had joined when he was twenty — he said he hadn't had any education ("not much chance of it in the sixties") and I took that to mean that he was a casualty of the Cultural Revolution. He had chosen the railways because his father had been a railwayman. Now he was in total charge of this train.
"I was promoted by being appointed," he said. "I didn't apply for it. One day they simply came to me and said, 'We want you to be the Head of the Train,' and I agreed."