The rare quality of the terra-cotta warriors is that, unlike anything else on the tourist route in China, they are exactly as they were made. They were vandalized by the rebellious peasants in the year 206 B.C., when these people invaded the tomb to steal the weapons — crossbows, spears, arrows, and pikestaffs (they were all real) — that the clay warriors were holding. After that the figures lay buried until, in 1974, a man digging a well hit his shovel against a warrior’s head and unearthed it and the disinterment was begun. The warriors are the one masterpiece in China that has not been repainted, faked, and further vandalized. If they had been found before the Cultural Revolution instead of after it, they would undoubtedly have been pulverized by Red Guards, along with all the other masterpieces they smashed, burned, or melted down.
Endangered Species Banquet
“IN CHINA, WE HAVE A SAYING,” JIANG LE SONG SAID. “Chule feiji zhi wai, yangyang duo chi.” Looking very pleased with himself, he added, “It rhymes!”
“We call that a half-rhyme,” I said. “What does it mean? Something about eating planes?”
“ ‘We eat everything except planes and trains.’ In China.”
“I get it. You eat everything on four legs except tables and chairs.”
“You are a funny man!” Mr. Jiang said. “Yes. We eat trees, grass, leaves, animals, seaweed, flowers. And in Guilin even more things. Birds, snakes, turtles, cranes, frogs, and some other things.”
“What other things?”
“I don’t even know their names.”
“Dogs? Cats?” I looked at him closely. I had overheard a tourist objecting to the Chinese appetite for kittens. “You eat kittens?”
“Not dogs and kittens. Everybody eats those.”
“Raccoons?” I had read in a guidebook that raccoons were also popular in Guilin.
“What is that?”
Raccoon was not in his pocket English-Chinese dictionary.
He became very confidential, glancing around and drawing me close to him. “Maybe not lackeys. I have never heard of eating lackeys. But many other things. We eat”—and he drew a meaningful breath—“forbidden things.”
That had rather a thrilling sound. We eat forbidden things.
“What sort of forbidden things?”
“I only know their Chinese names — sorry.”
“What are we talking about?” I asked. “Snakes?”
“Dried snakes. Snake soup. They are not forbidden. I mean an animal that eats ants with its nose.”
“Scaly anteater. Pangolin. I don’t want to eat that. Too many people are eating them,” I said. “It’s an endangered species.”
“Would you like to eat forbidden things?”
“I would like to eat interesting things,” I said, equivocating. “How about sparrows? Pigeons? Snakes? What about turtles?”
“Those are easy. I can arrange it.”
Mr. Jiang was young. He was new to the job. He was a little too breezy. He had the joky and insincere manner of someone who has been dealing with elderly foreigners who enjoy being joshed as they are being deferred to. I felt this obsequiousness was a deliberate ploy to undermine me.
That night Mr. Jiang emerged from behind a potted palm at my hotel to introduce me to a small monkey-like man.
“Our driver,” Mr. Jiang said.
“Qi,” the man said, and smiled. But it was not a smile. He was only saying his name.
“I have fixed everything you requested,” Mr. Jiang said. “The driver will take us to Taohua—‘Peace Flower Restaurant.’ ”
The driver slipped on a pair of gloves and whipped the door open for me. Mr. Jiang got into the front seat, beside the driver. The driver adjusted his mirror, stuck his head out of the window to signal — although we were in a parking lot and there were no other cars in sight — and drove into the empty road. After perhaps fifty yards he stopped the car.
“Is there anything wrong?” I said.
Mr. Jiang imitated a fat man laughing: “Ho! Ho! Ho!” And then a bored voice added, “We have arrived.”
“There wasn’t much point in taking a car, was there?”
“You are an honored guest! You must not walk!”
I had learned that guff like this was a giveaway in China. When anyone spoke to me in this formal and facetious way, I knew I was being taken for a ride.
Before we entered the restaurant, Mr. Jiang took me aside and said, “We will have snake soup. We will have pigeon.”
“Very nice.”
He shook his head. “They are not unusual. They are regular.”
“What else are we having?”
“I will tell you inside.”
Bu inside there was a fuss over the table, a great deal of talk I did not understand, and finally Mr. Jiang said, “This is your table. A special table. Now I will leave you. The driver and I will eat in the humble dining room next door. Please, sit! Take no notice of us. Enjoy yourself!”
This was also an unmistakable cue.
“Why don’t you join me?” I said.
“Oh no!” Mr. Jiang said. “We will be very comfortable at our little table in the humble dining room reserved for Chinese workers.”
This was laying it on a bit thick, I thought, but I was feeling guilty about this meal, and eating food alone made me feel selfish.
I said, “There’s room at my table. Please sit here.”
“Okay,” Mr. Jiang said, in a perfunctory way, and indicated that the driver should follow his example.
It was quite usual for the driver to be included — in fact, it is one of the pleasures of Chinese life that on a long trip the driver is one of the bunch. If there is a banquet he is invited, if there is an outing he goes along, and he is present at every meal along the road. It is a civilized practice, and thinking it should be encouraged I made no objection, even though the driver had taken me only fifty yards.
“Special meal,” Mr. Jiang said. “We have crane. Maybe a kind of quail. We call it anchun. We have many things. Even forbidden things.”
That phrase had lost its thrill for me. It was a hot night, this young man seemed unreliable to me, and I was not particularly hungry.
“Have some wine,” Mr. Jiang said, pouring out three glasses. “It is osmanthus wine. Guilin means ‘City of Osmanthus Trees.’ ”
We gulped our wine. It tasted syrupy and medicinal.
The food was brought in successive waves — many dishes, but the portions were small. Perhaps sensing that it would go quickly, the driver began tonging food onto his plate.
“That is turtle,” Mr. Jiang said. “From the Li river.”
“And that is forbidden,” he said, lowering his voice. “Wawa fish — baby fish. Very rare. Very tasty. Very hard to catch. Against the law.”
The fish was excellent. It was a stew of small white lumps in fragrant sauce. The driver’s chopsticks were busily dredging it for the plumpest fillets.
Mr. Jiang crept closer and mumbled a word in Chinese. “This is muntjac. From the mountains. With onions. Forbidden.”
“What is a muntjac?” I asked.
“It is a kind of rabbit that eats fruit.”
As all the world knows, a muntjac is a small deer. They are regarded as pests. You see them on golf courses outside London. Marco Polo found them in the Kingdom of Ergunul and wrote, “The flesh of this animal is very good to eat.” He brought the head and feet of a muntjac back to Venice.
I sampled the pigeon, the snake soup, the muntjac, the crane, the fish, the turtle. There was something dreadful and depressing about this food, partly because it tasted good and partly because China had so few wild animals. These creatures were all facing extinction in this country. And I had always hated the Chinese appetite for rare animals — for bear’s paws and fish lips and caribou’s nose. That article I had read about the Chinese killing their diminishing numbers of tigers to use — superstitiously — as remedies for impotence and rheumatism had disgusted me. I was disgusted now with myself. This sort of eating was the recreation of people who were rich and spoiled.