We have ordered tea and are seated on the starboard deck, facing mainland China. Passing behind us, farther out to sea, a ship from the Linea Mexicana heads south. Though we are but two hours out of port, Hong Kong has begun to fade from memory. Our cups arrive, sweet and milky. The weather is warm, the ocean shrouded in heavy mist. Enveloping us are the strains of popular Taiwanese music. We are skirting a group of islands only dimly visible, peering beyond them into an even vaguer distance, as the cabin of a small boat emerges into view, a silvery phantom on the face of the grey-blue waters. Overhead a veil of cloud; beneath our feet, a carpet of Astroturf, scarred, up-rooted.
The ship’s crew, energetic and professional, speaks its Mandarin with a heavy Shanghai accent. Though ample, the vessel is surprisingly small, its complement of passengers not exceeding two or three dozen. One had expected two or three hundred, including perhaps businessmen from Hong Kong, wealthy western tourists, Shanghai gamblers returning from a spree. Instead, our shipmates seem a rather scraggly, if distinguished, gaggle: a Mandarin-speaking Dutch couple, their nine-year-old, Cantonese-speaking son; a foursome of high class Shanghai ladies traveling together; a single girl of twenty, resident of Gold Island, returning from a visit with family.
The boat rolls onward, its graceful progress sympathetic to the senses. Before long night will fall. Tomorrow will bring a new day.
The adventure is underway.
The dining room, 6:00 pm: fare rather meager, staff – all seven – standing about in their slightly seedy hairdos, white unstarched uniforms. The meal consists of an individual portion of shrimp and eggs, a bowl of rice, a shared plate of green beans in an oily sauce. One’s dinner mates, seated in family groups, are for the most part quiet, even subdued, many, it would seem, already familiar with the ship’s routine. They pay little heed to the foreigner. Dinner finished, the clunk of bowl, clink of glass, as tables are cleared.
Back out on deck: we are starting to get somewhere. The humidity, if not yet dissipated, has decreased in effect with an hour’s fall in temperature. Along the eastern horizon, languid layers of pink and pewter, rose and steel. Above, a blue bowl of sky behind scumbled cirrus; beneath, the steady table of the sea. In the near distance wavelets peak and subside. Ahead, the ship’s prow steadily plows forward, pushing aside waters that flare, decline, deliquesce, emitting at last a languorous foam.
Author to new station below captain’s deck, facing forward: three large grey steel blocks support three corrugated red cargo containers. Overhead: heavy rigging, winches, pulleys, all with a silent, almost symbolic, air about them. Recently painted, the vessel is only moderately ship-shape. Rust everywhere stains her fittings, her decks dirty with accumulated crud: oily detritus, metal scraps, rivulets of fluid. High above looms a dormant crane, the side windows of its operating cab almost completely whited out by crude brush strokes.
At each five-minute interval the temperature falls another degree. The overcast skies continue to darken. And yet the ship, secure in its regular motion, rolls on, as though with good intentions, its steady engine hum oblivious to external circumstance. Author to aft deck, where the atmosphere is mottled. The cabin’s enameled surface throws back a light captured from the spuming surface of the sea. On the southern horizon three pearly craft steep in a modulation of milky grey and venous blue that mingles sky and sea. It is not clear whether the ships be following or receding from us.
Peering over the railing, author discovers below another deck, used to store equipment: two empty buckets, two bamboo-handled brushes; a random pile of weathered lumber; large machinery parts strewn about; a half-overturned wicker basket; a dried mop top stuck in a can. Perched on a pedestal, a woman’s black leather purse.
Perhaps it is here that the crew, in their after hours, come to relax, for two chairs, imperfectly aligned, face in opposite directions. One, tubular, its back and seat upholstered in grey plastic, faces toward Hong Kong. The other, of never-before-seen design, flimsy, open-worked, faces toward Shanghai.
A badly tattered red flag, its gold star intermittently visible, flutters above the rail, wrapping itself about its standard, half unwrapping itself. A white-shirted attendant, white socked, having suddenly appeared below, catches the silver halyard, glances up at author, squeekily pulls in the flag and furls it for the night.
Author on-deck venture, 6:00 am, forward to ship’s bow, against a stenciled prohibition (though the gate was open). The bright painted deck, green over cracked asphalt, gleams yellow under the constant rays of a sun pale behind light cloud cover. The morning horizon is a meeting of touches, milk-fed forearm resting on creamy breast. To the West, through 180 degrees, the coast is nowhere visible, the sea a tabloid, its news in a foreign script. Over his shoulder author glances at captain, stationed above on bridge. Captain glances back.
Mid-afternoon views: at the ship’s prow a man in white cap, grey overalls, paints with a black roller, shifting it from hand to hand; across the turquoise-green, aqua-blue sea a grey-hulled ship, its stack in black and white, its waterline in red, rusted, riding high; the shadow of our own ship hovers over jettisoned, ever-out-rushing waves.
Author takes seat on a creamy bench, supported by creamy armatures, attached to a creamy wall. At his feet: the ship’s swimming pool, its basin painted a blue not seen for 50 years, though once a generic color for swimming pools. The basin, rimmed in grey, is small, 30 feet by 15, its water, like the sea outside it, milky with salt, not wholly translucent. Patterns of blue and grey play on its turquoise surface. A young Chinese boy, gasping as he paddles, grasps at the pool’s grey railing. A bearded western man, aimlessly sculling, chats with his seated wife, whose ankles dangle in the pool.
Beyond this scene of pleasure two workmen straddle a door, set on its edge, to mark the position where new hinges will soon be attached. Lifting a leg and throwing it backward, the first man lands upright, then bends to pick up a pair of tar-begrimed gloves. He walks off, leaving the second man, who supports the door alone, to work its edge with hammer and chisel.
Another western man and wife arrive poolside, lather themselves with lotion, spread their towels, and recline. The wife, her breasts obscenely white, lights a cigarette and blithely takes a drag, as she pesters her husband, who raises two hands together to block the sun from view. At some distance, under a shaded portico, yet another western couple sunbathes, fronted by a Chinese sailor who stands observing a colleague. The latter, in violet shorts, white shirt, black gloves, is working an unruly gate back and forth.
Author arises, passes aft, and mounts circular stair to higher deck, gazing back at the scene he has left: sunbathing tourists, unruly gate, swimming pool, door. Directly beneath him, two other scenes: seated in upright chairs, a row of six Chinese tourists, one of whom, a woman in pink shirt and white shorts, reads an English book, a small dictionary open in her lap. In the middle ground: two more sailors, their hair wind-tossed, the taller holding a steel eyelet, as the shorter passes a heavy cable through it. Off to starboard a black-hulled, white-cabined freighter plods by.
A middle-aged Chinese woman, dressed in a black blouse, its back embroidered with a red-and-gold phoenix, has climbed the white stair to stand at author’s side. Meanwhile, the black-hulled freighter, its cargo of red and green containers, frames itself in our rigging, its two yellow cranes completing the picture. Slowly the vessel extends itself beyond the frame, heading in a southerly direction. “Where do you come from?” asks the woman in Mandarin. Author, absorbed in the pristine white, rectangular surface of a sun-struck cabin wall, answers. ”Where are you going?” she persists. Author offers abbreviated itinerary, a red-painted box attached to the wall now catching his eye. ”What do you do?” she wonders out loud. Author states occupation, as a bright green baseboard completes the composition.
Escaping, he descends the stair, at the bottom of which the two sailors, their hands on a second gate, labor to make it open freely too. Badly over-painted, the hinge also needs lubrication. “One-two-three, push,” says the man in violet shorts. A third mate arrives to help. ”Push! Push! Push!” chant the sailors in Shanghai dialect. The gate begins to give. A fourth man arrives with a can of oil to lubricate the hinge, his three fellow workers looking on. He knocks at it with a file: ca-link, ca-link. It refuses to budge. Picking up a hammer, he bangs it: clunk, clank, ca-lunk. Having made no progress, he pauses for breath. Kicking an orange bucket, he searches within it for a more effective tool. Two of the sailors have started conversing. The third walks off. The fourth now grips the gate to peer into its hinge. Meanwhile, author takes a seat six feet away.
A foreman arrives and engages the crew in friendly conversation, the first man positioning himself for more pushing. The third man returns, bearing a tube of heavy grease. With the end of the file the fourth man forces the lubricant deeper into the hinge, as the third man, hands on hips, offers advice. Having taken note of author, foreman sidles over to apologize for any inconvenience. Author responds with a joke. Lively conversation ensues. Before long the crew is ready to start up again. They grip the gate, the foreman looking on. “Hee-ho-sank, hee-ho-sank, hee-ho-sank, sank.” Together the foursome pries it half way open. Exhausted, they pause, the foreman departing. The third worker squats on his haunches, his dark leather shoes paint- bespattered. He lubricates the joint, scrapes it with the claws of his hammer. As he does so, author engages the other three sailors in conversation. Talk turns to Shanghai, what to see, where to go, the availability of local women. The foreman returns. Once again work resumes (though slowly). More pushing, more banging, more lubrication.
Meanwhile, the lovely girl from Gold Island, having made an appearance, engages author in conversation. She is much taken by the foreigner and says so. Two of the sailors have quit working. She likes books very much, she says. Having sighted an island, they have entered into conversation. She especially likes to collect them. The squatting third man, eldest of all, continues to putter. Author suggests that when they part he will give her a book of his. The fourth man now rests his hand on the gate. With one condition: The foreman returns. That she write to him and tell him what she thinks. The sailors again take up their positions. “That way we can be friends,” she agrees. Will they make more progress this time? It is hard, it turns out, for her to make friends. So far they have only managed to duplicate their first results.
“One-two-three,” two men pulling, as two men push. On her Little island. “One-two-three,” two men pulling, as two men push. By her own admission. The gate moves to its forward position. And by her mother’s account. Then back to where it started. She is a very special person. Again there is not much visible progress.
Stronger measures are needed. She is very pretty. The foreman swings into action. But doesn’t think she is. Now five men give it a try. She has no boyfriend. Moving together in backward and forward motions. But her mother and father. Abruptly swinging the gate. Whom she calls “Mommy” and “Daddy.” This way and that. Want her to marry soon. But the hinge is still substantially stuck.
Another rest is called for. Again the foreman departs. The crew sits down. They are tired and thirsty. This had been her first extended trip away from home. Before long the foreman returns, bearing a large red thermos. In Hong Kong she has visited her older sister. Taking turns, the crew guzzles its contents. Author inquires of her first impressions there. Refreshed, they stand again. At first she is vague. Gripping the gate. “What,” he asks, “did you think of the foreigners you encountered there?” Swinging it violently to and fro. Oh, she says, when she first saw the black kind she thought they were monkeys. Abruptly they jerk it forward. She was “very afraid.” Abruptly back. Not so far from Shanghai. The lubricated hinge swivels in its socket. And not so poor in culture as one might think. Two of the men take the gate in hand and close it all the way. “We have western movies,” she says, “as well as movies from Hong Kong.” One of the men opens it by himself as wide as it will go. Her most earnest immediate wish is to see the sunrise from shipboard. A second man swings it freely back and forth. Yesterday. She slept till 7:00 and missed it. The crew looks at author and smiles. Tomorrow morning she hopes to awaken in time. Author smiles back. That will be 4:00 am.
*
Author to windy station, port deck, Venus piercingly singular in a pure sky, high above a charcoal horizon, over which lighter puffs are passing. The strong winds of night are still gusting as author stands at rail to view a scene of complex grays, the surface of the sea a milky murk, white froth lacing it along the ship’s sides. Beside him, another early riser.
It is 4:30. The sun is not yet risen. But the sky, beneath its dusky nightcap, has lightened to the East, where a feathery patch of white emerges. With Venus flying high through an inter-nebular space, the northeasterly skies begin to pale, past salmony pink to strawberry rose over cream, beneath which the lights of three distant boats glimmer. As the overhead cover dissipates, the ocean face whitens, leaving Venus enthroned in blue betwixt two moving clouds, the smoky essence of one changing to Rubensesque blush, the second trying in vain to obscure her.
The two clouds pass. Unveiled, she stands alone, reigning supreme. Now, as though in illusion, she begins to recede, the whole upper heaven opening out to a casque of whited lavender. Well beneath and farther to the North, a hatching of charcoal shades the vault, across which, in the near ground, a lighter filigree progresses. To the far North a violet fund of cloudbank reveals itself, its luxurious petals with grey. At-rail companion rehearses her interest in Greek myth, speaking of a god who at morning is one, at noon is two, at evening, three. At ship’s side the outgoing waves retreat, caught in pools of galactic spume atop deep-receding motions that hold for a moment, regrouping before they dissolve. She inquires whether the Greek waters be different from these. Meanwhile, Venus has distanced herself, faded, disappeared. Told that the Greek waters are blue, she explains that the sea where she lives is yellow, that green and yellow waters are not the same, that fish in the yellow are salty whereas fish in the green are not.
Only a solitary moon swims the central vault, its half crescent mingled with cloud. The morn has arrived, small birds skipping atop the waves, skimming the ocean in search of prey. The lifting spray sprinkles author’s glasses. As the wind shifts, fumes from the ship’s diesel fill the air. With the coming of daylight ragged whitecaps thrash atop a green-blue sea.
Our coastal progress has taken us from Guangdong to Fujian to Chejiang. Though the shore is still out of reach, three mounded hills – islands perhaps – appear to the north-northwest. At voyage’s end lies the great port of entry into China. Through the late afternoon we have steadily churned the muddy effluvium of the Long River, which debouches above Shanghai, giving to the South China Sea for a hundred miles the color of milk-laden tea.
Now it is night. We have anchored at the dirty mouth of the Huangpu River. A ship with a single red light, two white eye-like bulbs, a row of teeth-like yellows, rides at anchor. Across the becalmed surface glows an industrial complex, the odor of unrefined oil in the air. Black derricks stand in a yellow haze. Orange under-bellied clouds reflect the refinery’s glare, at whose center flares a brilliant red-orange flame. It spurts forth, blazes, quickly subsides, only to erupt once more into the foggy dark.
*
For nearly two hours we have been under way, since the break of dawn, heading up the river, whose nautical population has begun to increase: freighters anchored alongside its channel, sampans Ascending toward the city, barges descending toward the sea. We pass through an oil slick: rusty, purplish, slimy green. A half dozen coal flats drift by, their course not quite parallel with ours. The port is heavily industrial as well as commercial. Issuing forth from three grey smokestacks, three orange flames merge in a single ambiguous signal. A dashing cutter passes, its white-starred red flag proudly flapping. Our own ship sounds two long strident blasts.
The morning is mild, the milky coastal skies sweeping inland, though the atmosphere has begun to fill with smog, smoke steadily streaming from vessel and factory stack alike. Off our port two small boats tied together putt-putt upstream, one piled with gourds, one With melons. Along the bank a factory’s loud-speaker blares early-morning greetings to a queue of tee-shirted workers. Belching black fumes, a tug labors toward the city, a line of heavily-laden barges in tow, a large dog nervously promenading its narrow deck.
We have come alongside two big freighters, the first from Tianjin, its gorgeously rusted sides in grey and rose. On his deck, in an undershirt, arms akimbo, stands the captain; a level beneath him, another officer weaves with his morning tai-ji motions. We are entering a gentle bend of the river. “Snow Dragon, Shanghai, China” reads the stern of a small white ship, two cranes poised atop her like robots. The sky begins to brighten, patches of delicate blue tentatively opening. We are passed at close quarters by the Colomba, as she heads upstream flying a colorful Latin American flag. Once we have cleared her, we see that the Hyundai has also been passing us, in the opposite direction. Over a hedge of high trees, far in the smoky distance, arise the first slab-like apartment dwellings. Two ferries, one bearing three large trucks, the other a boatload of cars, enter from a tributary perpendicular to the bank. Flitting across our deck, a little bird flutters shoreward, buffeted by the wind.
The consecutive river scenes emerge into being, linger a moment, fade, blending in memory with the rivers of Russia, Thailand, Europe, India.
Stepping in front of author, one of our ship’s crew, a cigarette dangling from his lips, descends one stair and climbs another to reach the first grey cargo slab. Here he begins to loosen the braces that restrain its red container. Another sailor joins him, desultorily bangs at the fittings, inadvertently drops his tool. A third arrives, metal rods balanced uneasily on his shoulder. Shifting his weight, he lets them drop. As they clatter onto the metal deck, the first sailor flicks his lighted cigarette into the air.
We continue on, passing the Oravita, three derricks rising above her deck; the Tacitus, a Chinese flag silently fluttering off her stern; the Aristoteles, anchored in the channel. The sun appears from behind a cloud. We are tracing a large curve, the river bowing back upon itself. We pass the Rowan of Nassau, the Rhea, the Liu Jiu, the Cotta Inda of Singapore, her black stack, red cabin, white hull obscuring a shipyard, which slowly emerges on the left bank. In its first berth a ship is half way through construction; in its second, activity is about to resume. The Tai Shun passes at close quarters, revealing behind her the Hai Kang, over whose forecastle two yellow lights are still burning.
Against the smog-mass of the city behind it, a vast new bridge overarches the flood, soaring into sight like two huge fans, veiled by a flood of smoke streaming from the stacks of a nearby power station.
From the port side a ferry approaches, back-pedaling to avoid us. Gradually it turns its bow to face us. Its passengers, packed shoulder to shoulder, attend our passage. The ferry has come about in order to circumvent us. As it veers astern, to starboard the bright orange Encounter also maneuvers by us.
We approach the great bridge and pass beneath it, entering first Into its geometrical maze. No sooner have we cleared its shadow than The Global Neptune appears. Passing her in turn, a four-deck cruise ship, the Chang Jiang, heads down river. Crowded by bank-side moorings, the channel has narrowed to two lanes. We pass a large tug called the Sichuan. The channel narrows further. We pass a crowd of bicycling workers. The city skyline begins to emerge. We pass young mothers walking their children to school. We pass a huge industrial yard, dusted in rust-red, color of the gravel heaped at its riverside margin.
We pass a bouquet of ships, rising like blossoms from the flower bowl of the river’s enlarged basin, including the Hagios Nectarios of Athens; tied alongside her three ranks of barges, each of a skein of four, all in different colors. We pass the Shanghai Shipyard, where the Greek Priamos is being refitted. The mild breeze of early morning has taken a wintry turn. We pass a river boat, the Nomadic Querida, its Chinese passengers visible through the open doors of their cabins, Some huddled on deck outside them. The haze has shifted from grey to green, as the scene grows increasingly urban.
As a large tower under construction emerges into view, a tugboat, crossing the river, swerves abruptly and heads directly for us. Churning beneath, its olive decks rinsed in spray, it struggles to keep pace. Revving higher, it eases into contact with our hull. A hundred yards ahead our berth appears. As our bow shifts dockward, the granite forms of the Waitan reveal themselves: pyramidal roof, Greek colonnade, Roman dome. Gently the tug, called the Hai Gang II, eases us into our berth, the Enarxis standing behind, the Suchow Hau before us.