Out into Chongqing streets for 8:30 am excursion, solo exercise regime commencing at once, as author mounts first hill. At the airport we are warmly received by friends of companion’s family: mother, uncle, daughter. The city, though heavily industrial, is nonetheless to all appearances a pleasant, friendly, provincial place. Last summer, they say, temperatures had reached 44 degrees. The faces on the street are open, innocent, foursquare. But this summer the weather is unseasonably cool. Given its grade of ascent, author reconsiders route, begins descent. Arrived in town, we are welcomed by the father, offered a dinner that he has prepared. Over the portal of a nightclub, a dust-layered Venus de Milo. (In Sichuan, we are told, husbands often do the cooking.) Entering a lower boulevard, the gradient levels off. The talkative mother, a woman of 54, dominates conversation, her husband meanwhile consuming glass after glass of beer. The sidewalks wider than those of Shanghai, pedestrian traffic is more relaxed. Seated next to the father, the son, 23, attentive to his elders, is not entirely comfortable in their midst. Author passing a group of four-foot-high tribes-people clad in blue costumes. The mother is a friend of companion’s uncle, her father’s brother. To the left, a handsome male soldier, stars on his epaulets. He lives in a village above the Yangtze, to which we will soon be traveling for a visit. Arm in arm with a pretty female soldier, stars on her epaulets as well. A retired businesswoman, the mother now stays home, playing mahjongg, tending to the family’s affairs. At curbside, seated on their bamboo axes, several workers have paused to smoke. After dinner, the daughter, 25, recently married to a soldier, returns us to our hotel.
The weather this morning is again unseasonably cool. It is here that she has her job, as accountant. Author passing construction site, where foreman, in red arm band, sits on a bamboo chair, atop a pile of gravel. The younger brother, a cook, works at the same hotel. From his vantage point he looks down disdainfully. Both, it is said, are lucky to have such good jobs. Author passing video store, from which loud Chinese music issues. Like the mother the father has also retired. Author passing traditional tea stall. Both have been successful in business ventures. Its products housed in stainless steel cans, porcelain canisters cream-colored paper packets.
All along the avenue side streets enter at delightfully skewed angles, their grades of ascent and descent unpredictable. The maze thereby created means, however, that the visitor is constantly in danger of getting lost. At 9:30 the crowd seems a little desultory, as though the pedestrians’ purpose for being on the street were not entirely clear. Are they shopping? Two men pass, bearing a cage of live pigeons. Are they on their way to work? A pretty girl in white, turquoise-fringed shorts, two dumplings poised on toothpicks, strides across the zebra stripes. Or are they merely out strolling? A man in a long white beard, blue under garment visible beneath his jacket, saunters by.
Author pauses to observe a single-story, single-room building in the process of being razed by a dozen workers, all with ruddy ethnic faces. As one man knocks at the wall, doing in the tiles, another fiddles with the bricks, a middle-aged female colleague looking on, hammer in hand. Behind them, in the adjacent rubble, stand nine other workers, all doing nothing. Having noticed author, the first two men stop working, all twelve now turning to stare slack-jawed.
Strolling farther, author spots a staircase ascending between two buildings. He waits for traffic to clear; cars, vans, buses, labor up the incline. Finally crossing, he mounts the stair to discover at the top a shaded plaza surrounded by a residential neighborhood. Outside shops merchants are displaying their wares: beige bras, fresh fruit, plastic rafts, goofy cartoon figures adorning them. Seated on the edge of a large planter, a nineteen-year old boy, his little sack of belongings beside him, studies a freshly opened map of Chongqing.
Chongqing, endowed with rich natural resources, a favorable geographical position, convenient land and water communication, has long since been a center of distribution. Over the past 43 years the city has emerged as the biggest commercial and industrial site in Southwest China, as well as the economic center for the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. Serving as a link between East, Middle and West, it is the gateway of Southwest China, unifying the area that comprises Sichuan, Tibet, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi.
Under the current developmental plan energy resources, transportation, and telecommunication will be rapidly improved. With more than 8000 industrial enterprises, Chongqing already has a solid economic foundation. It is one of China’s nine bases for iron and steel production, one of three for aluminum, and the largest for automation instruments and machinery. With the advantage of ample rainfall, moderate climate and the same season for rainfall and warmth, Sichuan has a plenitude of agricultural products, among them pork, citrus fruit, and the silkworm cocoon.
10:30 am, second outing. Having together with daughter and companion climbed an overpass, author proceeds alone to its end for first river view, not of the Yangtze but of the Jialing, whose confluence with the long river marks the city’s lower reach. From the balustrade a view of construction trench ten stories below: an ancient road winding down the hillside, lengths of pipe, blocks of concrete, piles of rock distributed randomly beside it. Yellow crane, grader, bulldozer, all dwarfed by the distance, are at work in amongst already demolished buildings. At riverside, five stories farther below, workmen are digging at ditches. A single welder’s flame blazes against the scene’s dull foil.
Author descends to another stage of the platform, where the vista opens up more broadly, noise of the bulldozers suddenly audible, more demolition in progress. Off shore an old barge is moored; farther out, headed down the muddy waters, a passenger ship. Beyond them, through a gauze of smog, stretches the opposite shore, its blocky modern buildings – industrial, residential – seen through a haze of grey-green foliage. All about in the basin below, signs of activity: workers shoveling black sand into large wicker baskets, a truck dumping a load of rusty red dirt, cranes wielding their cargo. Behind them a single blue commercial craft, heavily laden, struggles upstream.
Author mounts steps to rejoin his two companions reposing at a railing another stage below. Behind them: two yellow stuccoed building fronts, cracked and soot-begrimed, both bearing long white pennons with red-lettered slogans. In between, a large, square, nine-paned window, set in the wooden face of a Japanese house. Alongside it float two skeins of red lanterns, each adorned with silver characters.
The threesome continues its meandering through Chongqing’s meandering streets, pausing at a five-way intersection, where the flow of traffic imitates the city’s topography. A bus stops at the left-hand curb to deposit passengers; the on-coming traffic veers toward the opposite curb. In Chongqing, it would seem, nothing occurs on a flat straight line.
The daughter has chosen for lunch a typical Sichuanese restaurant, where we now take seats among middle-aged women on break from their morning errands. The first dish arrives, delicious peppery cold chicken. A plate of string beans in a vinaigrette sauce makes its appearance, followed by a three-tiered set of bamboo steamers, each with its luscious glutinous envelopes. Meanwhile, a little girl in yellow smock, pigtails bound with purple ribbons, has stopped beside author’s table to stare. The dishes keep arriving: a saucer of bean sprouts, a plate of fried eel, a bowl of clear noodle soup. Author asks the little girl what it is that differentiates the Sichuanese from other Chinese. ”We are more intelligent,” she answers. As author frames a second question, fireworks explode in the street.
On the way back home we stroll the lunchtime boulevard, where many men, some naked from the waist up, all with poles, are lounging on the sidewalk. “These,” says the daughter, “are bang-bang jun [the shoulder-pole army]; “they help people to move from one place to another.” We continue on, passing a shop that advertise mo-li-hua tea, a regional specialty. The sun begins to shine. We have reached a corner where two street musicians are working an audience, one with a primitive trumpet, one with a bundle of reeds bound together, the already shrill timbre of their instruments amplified to a level of discomfort. We stand by the open door of a clinic, a medicinal odor filling the air, as white-smocked personnel, lingering for the musical spectacle, nervously glance at their watches. “The performers,” the daughter explains, “are people who have had no opportunity for education, so this is their only way of making money.” A woman in heavy makeup, black hose, a low-cut dress, sidles up to author.
At mid-afternoon, joined by the mother, we set out for the new economic development zone, situated on the banks of the Yangtze across from the city. We must take a bus to reach it. Companion and daughter seated ahead of author and mother, the vehicle packed to capacity, we follow the bumpy course of Minchuan Lu, every pothole jostling the window panes. Descending with Jiefang Lu, our view of the river obscured by buildings, we rumble past storefronts advertising tools, glass, fabrics, rubber products, heavy industrial parts. Re-ascending, we glimpse the flood, its silvery surface, tinged with blue, framed in the arches of the concrete span that will take us across it.
“Welcome to Chongqing Economy and Technology Development Area,” read the gold embossed Chinese characters, the enormous sign standing on a slab between two tunnels, one leading into, one exiting from the area. Projects for Foreign Investment and Technical Cooperation. We proceed to the central administration building. office, introduce ourselves and are offered seats about a coffee table. Minicar Radiator, Plastic Oil Tank, Mini-car Painting Line. We leaf page by page through promotional folder. Electric and Electronic Industry: Digital Laser Duplicator, Semiconductor Laser, Semiconductor Detector. Presently a guide arrives to escort us to the Division for Investment. Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Industry: Triglycidyl Isocyanurate, Ortho-Methyl- phenol, Suclose Diacetate. On our way we pass by a scale model of the whole economic zone. Application for the Establishment for a Foreign-Owned Enterprise in China: 1. Name of company; 2. Legal address; 3. Date of incorporation; 4. Business scope; 5. Scale of production. We continue down a corridor to the Department of Project Management. Construction and Implementation: 1. Technology to be used; 2. Equipment needed; 3. Volume of water, gas, electricity required; 4. Raw materials to be purchased in China; 5. Raw materials to be imported.
We have taken seats in a dim office, where we are being lectured on the principles of economic development that govern the project. Light Industry, Textile Industry, Metallurgy. The professor of economics gives us his card. Agriculture and Food Industry. Division lecture continues. Architectural Engineering. We peruse an official scrapbook of the project, an assistant directing our attention to historical black and white photographs. The professor explains the communication network, emphasizing its future impact on the region. Tourism: The phone rings. Culture and Music Square. He outlines Chongqing’s rail transport system and its proposed development. The Disney Happy Land of Olympic Culture. The phone continues to ring. Museum of Science and Astronomy. The lecture drones on. Meanwhile, another assistant arrives to inform us of a promotional conference upcoming in Hong Kong. At last someone answers the phone.
The yellow-curtained office, lit only by natural light, has no air-conditioning, no other modern equipment. Another director arrives, accompanied by his secretary. He will oversee the next phase of interview, which will deal more specifically with agricultural products. Sichuan Pickled Vegetables, Fine Pig Products, Duck Processing, Ginger Tea. Though the clock reads ten to 5:00, no one seems to be in any hurry. Feed Additive, Freshwater Prawn, Frozen Rabbit, Corn Flake Production. All are polite, everyone eager to please the stranger.
Leaving the economic zone, we hail a taxi for return to Chongqing, heading down a winding road through the suburbs. Desert Vehicle, Dustproof Grinder, Butterfly Valve. Though he cannot see around the curves, driver insists on overtaking every possible vehicle. Tour Bus Project, Marine Hovercraft, Helicopter Assembly.
Daughter points to where she lives on opposite side of the river, at least a mile distant. Laser Optical Glass, Artificial Crystal. Mother spits out window. Washing and Processing for Arenaceous Quartz. Taxi driver interrogates foreign guests. Joint Venture for Auto Rear Mirror. Mother and daughter compete to indicate the precise building where daughter lives, it at last actually having come into view. Gypsum Filmy Board, Granite-Like Non-Glazed Tile, Indoor Bambooed Decorating Plate. We rumble on through cobble-ridden streets. Corrugated Paper Case. Advised that we come from Taiwan, driver enters into long discussion of his relatives there. 1.4 Million Square Meter Cluster Nappe Carpet.
We have begun to climb the mountainside. “Uphill,” says the daughter. “We are going uphill.” Though exhausted, longing to return to hotel, we must first be shown the beauties of the city from a nearby mountain top. Higher and higher we mount. Truck Bumper, Auto Safety Belt, Clutch Assembly. A lumbering rig ahead of us belches exhaust, as it shifts down for steeper grade.
Gradually, through the trees, we begin to glimpse the city from high above. Magnetic Card Read-Out Device. The taxi driver has changed to a station that plays classical western music. Laser Therapy Machine. He turns the volume higher. Truck Dispatcher System. As we slow down, spectacular views through a gorge begin to emerge. Touching Electron Light. We are stuck behind a bus that is groaning uphill ten miles an hour. Equipment for Hypertension Therapy. Ahead of the bus a flatbed, heavily laden with building material, swings into left lane to pass a small car. Die for Truck Cabin. All wait nervously for signs of the next descending vehicle.
“On the top of the mountain,” says the daughter, “live farmers and other workers, so public buses must take them up and back.” The radio volume makes it difficult to hear her. Equipment for Headache Therapy. A piece of nineteenth-century program music is laboring toward its climax. Odd Bottle Cap Series, Leather Shoes Production, Medical and Edible Gelatin.Suddenly the scene opens into a valley of vineyards, small houses, artificial lakes. Spun Silk Jackets, Down Feather Products, Woolen Socks. The temperature has turned cooler, the air much fresher.
A cable lift looms into view. “It will take us back to the city,” says the daughter. The music mounts higher. Fax Motor, High-Speed Banknote Counter, Floppy Diskette Drive. “This is Yellow Mountain,” she announces in English. “We will soon reach the summit,” she adds in Mandarin. The music on the radio, we learn, is not a piece of western music at all but an orchestral version of a song by Mao Zedong, one often sung during the Cultural Revolution. Caffeine Production by Tea Dust, Joint Venture for Chinese Medicine, Reaction Therapy Center. Amidst much screeching of brakes we finally reach a plaza. As we open the doors of the taxi, the song of the revolution comes to an end.
To descend to the city we must first mount the lift, two girls on either side opening the doors to the carriage. Abruptly we are thrown forward over the precipice, held by a single cable. The vista is agricultural, at each stage a new plateau opening up, each filled with small garden plots, handsome little houses interspersed among them. We hover above the heads of farmers cultivating gardens of broad-leafed cabbage, beans, smaller-leafed vegetables. In among the plots are small ponds, beside which silent ducks and geese.
There is very little traffic on the narrow road that threads the gorge: a single white truck parked at curbside, a lonely bicycle making its way up the mountain. All is quiet, the only sound the squeaking of our cable car. We dip from valley to valley, rising over little ridges to reach the next. To our left a line of ascending cars, most of them empty. It is 7:00 pm. A single passenger approaches, pensive, her head inclined, as though in contemplation. Only as she passes is her attitude explained: in her lap, a battery-operated video game.
Before long we arrive at the end of the first stage of the lift’s descent. Here we must leap from a still moving car, two more girls assisting us. Then we must mount many steps alongside a roadway to reach the next downward station. Assisted into our seats by two girls, we emerge from lateral cliffs into a prospect of the city spread beneath us. Downriver, a shadowy orange disk, almost obscured, bathes the scene in a smoggy luminescence.
Soon we have begun our approach to the city in earnest. We peer down into the suburbs, into their seedy dwellings, sooty factories, commercial buildings. Gliding to our destination, we float over a public park, its roller skating rink, its children’s playground, its benches where old people congregate. As we reach the terminal, a final pair of girls flings open the doors for us to hop out and skip away.
*
On the second morning in Chongqing the mother picks up author for outing to a technical institute, where we are to visit her younger brother. Thirty-two, he is still at his studies, though he also must work to support a wife and child. His case is presented as one of great hardship. Crushed by the press of commuting workers, we board a 9:00 o’clock minibus and are off for an hour-long ride the length of the city.
Arriving at the college, we are warmly received, by brother and colleagues, the latter already assembled across campus in anticipation of the visitor. The lounge pre-air-conditioned, he is treated to other hospitalities as well: a cup of tea, a proffered cigarette, deferential conversation. For his benefit the school’s curriculum is reviewed, its elements placed in relation to the needs of society.
Refreshed from our trip, we are off to lunch – to be treated to the genuine Sichuan hot pot. The restaurant too is air-conditioned, the table equipped with a hood to carry off pungent vapors. Below sits the pot, its two sections – hot and not – partitioned by a serpentine wall. The foreign guest is politely warned that in Sichuan we eat parts of the animal not eaten in America: the cow’s throat and stomach, the pig’s brains. In the event each delicacy proves delectable.
Lunch over, addresses exchanged, we board another minibus. On our return trip the mother recounts the daughter’s tale. At 22, against the family’s wishes, she married a man with a psychological problem: he is too intensely involved in the study of kung fu. Now she and husband have separated, daughter retaining her place in a flat for four. A Buddhist, she is very kind, says the mother, and feels that the marriage should continue, though the families on both sides think divorce would be more appropriate.
*
Chongqing train station, 9:00 am arrival for first leg of journey to companion’s family source, loaded with toys from Hong Kong, trinkets from Shanghai, sweets from Chongqing. Skies overcast, the weather is still unusually cool. The local train is not crowded. The engine starts up; popular music blares from the platform; latecomers hasten aboard. Companion, author and the younger brother have already taken seats in the high-ceilinged, dimly lit, compartment, where other passengers now take theirs. A middle-aged woman across the way opens a cardboard box to arrange her provisions before her: vegetables, other snacks, a soap dish. In the next seat forward, a 60-year-old man, having leaned his umbrella against the wall, reaches into a wicker basket between his feet. Lighting a cigarette, he blows his nose out the window. Opposite sits his son, reading. New arrivals are not so quiet, loudly exhorting their companions to take this seat instead of another. On the tracks to the right: an express train, filled to capacity, patrons standing in the aisles.
As we lumber westward out of the city, we follow the course of the Yangtze’s northern bank, the river flickering in and out of view. Quickly through several tunnels, we arrive at a higher elevation to look down upon its waters, which have paradoxically broadened as we have moved upstream.
We have reached our first stop, an enormous nondescript industrial wharf, still on the outskirts of Chongqing. Here we must wait, says the younger brother, for faster trains to clear. It may be quite a while. In fact this leg of our trip – only a few dozen miles – will take us four hours. Author walks ahead to platform between our car and the next, leaning out for view of the rail bed. It has begun to drizzle. A group of a dozen railway workers squat beside the track, a few picking and tossing handfuls of grass, the others suffering impassively. Across the way, a huge siding: black tankers sullenly stationed, orange cranes behind them, a grey sky over all. The fast train passes – rather slowly. Another locomotive rumbles by, followed in the opposite direction by a service vehicle loaded with brick, traveling another track. Alongside us another passenger train heaves a long sigh of steam and lurches forward – perhaps a foot. Finally, the last of the fast trains that we’ve been waiting for, loaded down with cargo, inches through the station at five miles an hour.
We have been traveling for some time. As we round a bend, we can see the front of our train, some twenty cars ahead. Once more the river opens up to view, its famed mistiness enhanced by the white smoke effusing into the ambiance from factory stacks on the opposite shore. On our right we pass a refinery, only the upper reaches of its apparatus visible over a high wall surmounting the tracks. Above brick smokestacks rise workers’ dormitories, some situated high on the mountainside above. The agglomeration of buildings in this industrial complex is awesomely ponderous.
During the trip we make many stops, sometimes for five minutes, usually more, all the stations resembling one another. Little can be seen from our vantage point. Nor does the scenery improve much, once we start moving again, for neither river on left nor mountain on right ever fully opens to view. Instead the scene flickers past through the branches of trees only to vanish, as oleander bush, banana leaf, concrete retaining wall rush up to curtain it off.
Author moves across aisle to take seat with a better view. Suddenly the river vista opens up, but here smoke is so heavy that the mountain top on the opposite bank is not visible. As we have progressed farther upstream, the river has narrowed considerably. On either side: rolling hills, behind them more rolling hills in echo of the lower range.
We have stopped again. Hawkers, balancing panniers of bao-zi, large basins of duck eggs, perambulate below, cramped by a granite wall that defines a meter-wide space between train and mountainside. Heads bob up, shouting, soliciting potential customers.
Two hours out of Chongqing: we have still not escaped signs of industry along the river banks, though the scenery here is far more rural than it was an hour ago. Once more we’ve been stalled by the passage of a freight train, which finally begins to clatter by.
Two and a half hours out of Chongqing: first shrouded Southern Sung views of a misty Yangtze. Better to enjoy them, we all three move across the aisle, joining a solitary high school student, who, when the younger brother asks him to move, quite reasonably refuses. Gradually, however, relations improve. We ask if we may inspect his schoolbooks; we discuss the curriculum, companion speaking in Mandarin, he responding in Sichuanese. His literature textbook consists mostly of modern essays, descriptive and analytical prose, intended as models for practical writing. Only at the back do we find works in classical Chinese, then mostly historical. Before long the younger brother also engages him in conversation. The son of a farmer who lives in a small town near our stopping point, he has spent the summer in Chongqing, working construction. Asked how he liked it, he says the food was not really sufficient. He is seventeen years old.
We arrive at a small city, only the second so far. From the platform’s loudspeaker martial music blares. Many passengers having boarded, all available seats are now full. We have yet another hour to go, says the brother. Then we must change to the first of two boats for our voyage farther upriver.
We arrive at a third small city, achieving a new stage in provinciality, for here there is no sign whatsoever of any form of locomotion other than bicycle. Faces along the platform are swarthier, features more squarely set. The people seem adequately dressed, but their clothes are noticeably worn. Those boarding here may be heading for even more provincial destinations.
The hills observed earlier have sloped down almost into a plain. We begin to move backward in time as well as space. The river, which had earlier narrowed, suddenly opens into a bay-like expanse, gradually bowing back on itself. Then, equally suddenly, our view of it disappears, as we burrow behind trackside retaining wall and foliage, our ignorance of what lies beyond reinforced by the train’s dull clickety-clack, clackety-clack, clickety-clackety, clickety-clack.
As we begin our final approach, we enter upon a plateau of rice fields and viticulture. We pause at Bai Sha, a city of perhaps a hundred thousand; the pink of its trackside buildings echoes the color of the river’s surface. Having recognized where we are, but a stop away from his own destination, the farmer’s son points out his family’s riverside plot, then nimbly ties his bag and straps it on his shoulders. Adjusting a floppy straw hat that reads “Mountain City,” the ancient name for Chongqing, he gracefully accepts a few leftover cookies and prepares to depart, visibly excited to be home.
Exiting the train ourselves at the next station, we are quickly absorbed into a crowd of bamboo-hatted farmers exiting with us, many of whom carry pieces of equipment for cultivating rice paddies. A man walking beside us bears on his back a relative whose foot has been gravely injured. Ahead, a commotion: the shouting has to do with the boarding of the ferry that we ourselves are about to board.
We tiptoe across several gangplanks, fearful of being pushed, the muddy river waters swirling beneath us. Up onto the first deck, still moved ahead by the flow of the crowd, we look down into the boiler room, its machinery noisily idling. The engines are fired with coal; the scuttle contains huge black unbroken chunks of it. A boy, one eye patched shut, turns to stare at the foreigner. The deck is packed. Others regard him with toothless, half-toothed, yellow-toothed smiles. The roiling of waters beside us produces the illusion that we are already under weigh. Yet masses of people are still crowding onto the decks, still mounting the stair, still passing over the gangplanks.
We have boarded just in time, for the gears shift and we are off, leaving some passengers stranded. We make heavy headway against the rushing eddies. The few seats on the first deck have already been occupied, by single men, by middle-aged women with their children. Older people are sitting on their luggage. The general crowd surges forward, forcing everyone higher. Mounting the stair, we arrive at a deck with cabins, whose maroon-painted doors are flung open to reveal communal spaces filled with eight bunks apiece. From the railing we gain, for the first time, an unobstructed view of the river’s surface. On the opposite bank, two pastoral figures are strolling. Above them, on a beautifully eroded cliff, its crevices filled with a mossy growth, stands a white house. The skies are mottled, wispy with cloud, as though giving thought to an imminent clearing.
We have taken seats on the aft deck at a table cluttered with tea cups, cookie wrappers, an enormous sack of peanuts. For twenty minutes we have been in conversation with an understandably inquisitive crowd, whose half dozen questioners include two children, now enjoying two yellow candy canes, part of the load of favors purchased in Chongqing.
The river here is still quite broad, its surface a creamy blue, off in the distance rippling into mellow muddy swirls. It is hard to tell where the mountain cliffs end and the sky begins. In the distance, downstream, the mountains themselves seem an illusion. As we develop a head of steam, islands begin to appear in the river’s midst, covered with lush green grass, a light branching of saplings above. The smoke from the engine of another boat, just passed, lingers in puffs overhead. A sprinkling of rain commences. Approaching a small town, we prepare to dock. The rain abates.
Having first engaged author in conversation, a junior high school teacher has, in typical Chinese manner, moved on to lecturing; his topics: Chinese culture, Chinese history, the province of Sichuan. Author makes modest claim of some acquaintance with these matters – all to no avail. Confucius the pedagogue pronounces “the first great educator”; the Tang dynasty, “the greatest cultural era”; Sichuan, “a great agricultural province.”
As historical anecdote flows toward the present, we sail deeper and deeper into the past, peasants debarking with their primitive cultivators, others boarding empty-handed. “These farmers,” the teacher explains, “live alongside the river on the streams that flow into it. That is where their rice fields are.” We pass a barge made of logs lashed together. “They have gone downriver to do business,” he continues. One encourages him to speak in more detail of his own locale, but all response is cast as generalization.
In despair of emending the teacher’s practice, author returns to the task of describing the riverscape. On the opposite shore rises a forest of tall bamboo in heavy if still graceful clumps. Mudflats line the bank, indicating higher levels that the river had earlier reached. “In the summer, the river rises,” says the teacher, having caught the drift of author’s words; “in the winter it subsides.” As he re-navigates into historical lecture, author devises another plan to divert him. “What,” he inquires, “of ancient literature?” Tea-glasses refilled, teacher launches out again, churning the waters of literary commonplace. Author steers conversation back to the boat itself, remarking that he has seen the same sort in the harbor at Shanghai. “Not surprising,” says the teacher, ”since such boats are known to ply the course from Chongqing to Shanghai, often in one day’s time.” We continue at our steady upstream rate of fifteen miles an hour; no doubt progress downstream is faster. Still, we are over a thousand miles above Shanghai.
Author resituates himself on southern deck to view the passing scene in greater quietude. The landscape has grown mistier still, the ridge but a dim outline, scarcely distinguishable from the steady miasma that issues from our own smokestack. Even the line separating boat from water has grown vague. Off in the middle distance, a low-lying island with its lush ground cover reads as the faintest of greens. The bordering cliffs begin to fade into insubstantiality. All this having been said, unpredictably the sky begins to clear. Within minutes the sun is out, sparkling brightly over a long ridge, atop which stands a solitary stucco house, two tiny windows beneath its eaves, at either end of which glint two small TV antennae.
In the course of two hours we have graduated into a much wilder domain, at first pausing at docks to let off large groups of passengers, then at sandy reefs to let single farmers debark. Finally we have entered a region with virtually no sign of human habitation. Again, as author speaks, a fishing boat on the shore comes into view, a huge four-cornered net suspended from bamboo poles. The fisherman himself, however, is nowhere to be seen, a dark carpet of duck grass spreading out for acres behind his delicate craft.
We navigate by moving periodically back and forth across the broadened tide, apparently to avoid the peril of sandbars. Through certain stretches we must hug the shore for a mile or more, sometimes following a string of barges behind a struggling tug, sometimes looking down into their cabins as we pass. With overhanging branches scraping our port flank, we look back now across the shallow quarter-mile of river, its surface a turmoil of eddies. A much smaller boat, its hull aquamarine, its deck a creamy white, skims downstream in the center of the current, heading east.
After another hour and a half author retires to cabin for nap, awakening to learn that we are yet another hour and a half from Hejiang. We have moved from wilderness back to human habitation. On the northern bank, viewed from some distance: a farmhouse, many small figures in the scene, ducks flecking the surface of a pond. With no warning, a large block of apartments quickly materializes, rising eight or ten stories above the shore. Within moments we arrive at the wharf of a small city, as though in a dream, its central esplanade transformed into a ramp leading down to the river, where a grey truck has been backed into the water. Nearby four barges, tied together, are in the process of being unloaded. Over a buckling walkway porters double wicker baskets on poles carry coal. Dancing along to maintain their balance, they leap at the truck’s bed to dump their load, both baskets at once. On a levee below the town we stop to deposit a dozen passengers, farmers and their wives, their sisters, their sisters’ children.
The river here, quite turbulent, is a curdled grey and tan. We cross to the northern bank to avoid the channel’s snares. Behind us, over the southern shore, a series of peaks thrusts upward at different intervals. Meanwhile, in the near ground a various scene composes itself: on a mounded terrain, a pleasant greenery of shade trees; in the middle range, a silhouette of shadowy charcoal forms; beyond, as though in musical repertoire, scales of escarpments mounting in melodious counterpoint. This range in turn suddenly rises, as though exceeding its frame, to intercept and outflank the more distant range, superseding the mountain in grandeur, only to dissolve into a passage of peaks uncertain of their own definition. Gradually the most distant range reemerges behind, though atmosphere once again subsumes geology, melding the ranges together into a general murkiness of earth, air and cloud. As the skies darken, even these distinctions are rendered doubtful by the incomprehensibility into which all is plunged.
Companion reports on long conversation with eleven-year-old boy. He has been in Beijing and is returning with his family to the place where they live along the river. He wants to be a scientist, is interested in everything. Companion asks him many questions, treats him like an adult, points out things along the way for him to identify and explain to her. She tells him that she has a niece his age, who is very pretty; the boy expresses no interest. She asks if she herself could be a movie star; he says, “Yes, certainly.” She tells him that she hopes to become a reporter, that when she does so, she will come back and interview him as a scientist.
It is almost 6:30, ten hours since we left our hotel. For one more rest before debarkation author returns to cabin, on whose wall hangs a souvenir photo taken perhaps 35 years ago. It shows a city, not identified by name, situated on a bend of the river. The glass is cracked, the gold frame bent; a pink bow, dating no doubt from the time the picture was made, still hangs over the edge of the photo.
After a ten-minute nap author returns to deck, where younger brother announces that we have entered the final bend before Hejiang. As we round the promontory, a pagoda with a conical spire appears. Meanwhile, an inexplicable turbulence has developed about our bow. The coffee-and-cream-colored liquid swirls into whirlpools that look like classic representations of the principle of the Dao. Fluctuating, they belly up into circular, oval lozenges that momentarily sit atop the stream.
The junior high teacher rejoins us to explain that the pagoda in question was built in the Ming dynasty. Again the river’s atmosphere changes, mist hovering heavily over its grey-blue surface. Doubtful that we are about to arrive, eager to escape the teacher, author retires once more. The landing, at any rate, is not yet in sight.
Within two minutes younger brother knocks on cabin door. “Hejiang is in sight on the opposite bank,” he says. Author again steps out on deck. Though supposed to be a large city – 200,000 inhabitants, Hejiang appears rather small. In fact we have not yet seen the city proper, for only as we complete our rounding of the bend does it emerge (what we had seen was a suburb on the bank of another river, the Chishui, entering from Guizhou). As we veer across the Yangtze, the city’s full panorama finally emerges. Now author understands: it is Hejiang represented in the cabin-wall photo.
We are heading toward the dock, our horn sounding steadily. The marketplace comes into view. To allow for the river’s current, we have overshot the landing by some distance. Steps lead down the bank, two geese preening at their base. Our final approach will be sideways, for the captain is letting our stern drift shoreward. A woman washing laundry, her hands in the water, glances up at author. We have made contact, not with the pier itself but with another, more ancient craft, tied alongside it; we will make our debarkation across its decks. On a step below the water level stands a man in a jacket, his pants rolled up to his knees. Amidst great jostling and vociferation the crowd crosses from ship to ship, descending a gangplank on to the waiting stairs.
*
Second day of journey to family source begins with a breakfast date. A man, met on the boat, has helped us find our hotel. We invite him to dinner, where he insists on taking us the next morning to the agency in charge of Mainland visits by Taiwanese relatives. We arrive at a chilly 8:00 am, are introduced to Mr. Wu, who offers us tea and cigarettes. Companion explains itinerary, younger brother’s role, author’s interest in the region. Sunlight streams through the unopened window, warming the room, as assistant records all pertinent information. Before long a representative from the national police arrives to chat amicably. Everything seems to be going fine. We will register at the government office and be off.
Mr. Wu walks us across the courtyard, where we are introduced to the principal officer; our papers again requested, a military secretary recopies the information. Abruptly the head of police arrives. He wishes to display his English. “Passport,” he says curtly, looking at the foreigner. Author obliges. “This is all you have?” he asks. “The foreigner must have special permission to visit this area.” Author decides passivity is the best policy. Silently he accepts another cigarette from the principal officer.
A long discussion ensues, head of police explaining regulations to principal officer, repeating them in English for author’s benefit. Mr. Wu looks on. Author indicates that younger brother should smoke a cigarette, that companion should explain our purpose in coming. Her father’s mother, who lives with her father’s brother, is very old. The uncle had planned to meet us in Hejiang, but the grandmother’s health has required that he stay back. The younger brother from Chongqing will help us find the way.
Having heard the argument, the head of police repeats the regulations. Twenty more minutes go by. Principal officer suggests that he and head of police leave the room for consultation. Mr. Wu remains. Another half hour passes. The two men return, principal officer in a happy mood, head of police blushing, averting his gaze.
Farewells said, author shaking hands with head of police, we return to Mr. Wu’s office. Inadvertently he has locked the key inside. A window pane must be removed. Door opened, we enter again. Mr. Wu absents himself. Outside a workman arrives to repair the window, tamping the pane into place. After twenty minutes Mr. Wu returns. Again he requests our vital information, entering the details in his personal address book. The worker glazes the pane. All has been arranged, says Mr. Wu; he has spoken to Che Wang, our destination along the river. Next time, however, we must go through the proper procedures. He insists on taking us all the way down to the wharf, where we are introduced to the woman in charge of tickets. She will see that we get aboard.
We lunch at a small restaurant beside the wharf, run by older and younger sister. Goods bundled in burlap, carted down to the tops of the steps, are being unloaded. Inside the filthy, soot-streaked restaurant, a huge pot of rice simmers over charcoal fire. Porters, hefting bundles onto their shoulders, carry them barefooted down the slippery, eggshell- and straw-strewn steps. Over another charcoal fire a huge pot of boiling water awaits noodles.
Having finished lunch, companion and younger brother leave to look about the harbor, author remaining behind at table. An old man enters, scrutinizes author, turns to older sister for information. Taking a seat adjacent, he decides to investigate the matter further, starts up conversation with author, who, it turns out, is a year older than he himself. Having found out where author is from, where he is going, old man wishes to know if he has brought American money with him? Others step up to catch his response. Author allows that he has. Can the old man see it? Older and younger sisters second the request. Author protests that he keeps it under his belt and would have to take his pants off to show it. Crowd is much amused by this response.
It is 1:00 o’clock. Seated on deck for the past half hour, we are still awaiting the boat’s departure. An old woman circulates among the passengers, selling pears, carefully weighing them one by one. A middle-aged man, cigarette behind his ear, steps on board to deposit a ship’s propeller, its blade recently welded. The boat horn sounds. Passing under a bridge, we head south, to begin our three-and-a-half-hour voyage up the Chishui River.
As we clear the city, the sun comes out. Vegetable gardens rise on the western bank. In among them graze four geese, two of them flapping their wings for exercise. We cross to the eastern bank and continue on upstream under tall stands of bamboo that arch out over the water. In a very wide hat a skinny farmer walks atop the margin between two rice fields. A pole-driven ferry waits for us to pass resuming its course across the river.
Along the western bank cliffs begin to rise precipitously. Beneath them three white-shirted children walk along a road in single file. Rounding the first bend, we pass a village of long, A-frame thatched huts, some of their roofs reaching almost to the ground.
For an hour we converse with our inquisitive fellow travelers. Tiring at last of the hard seats and the company, we move to the foredeck, which affords an unimpeded view of the whole expanse of the river. We are passing a putter-y iron barge, which in turn is passing a sampan, on whose front deck the family’s laundry is hung out to dry. The oncoming breeze is cool, the surface of the water smooth. Hovering six feet above it are huge dragonflies.
We make our first landing at a small town of two or three hundred inhabitants, several young girls running along the bank to meet us. As we leave the town behind, we round a bend, where a ten-year-old boy works at the oar of a small boat to push himself offshore. Running along some distance behind, barking, is a white dog with brown and black spots, who has just realized that he has missed his chance to get aboard.
Unlike the ferry to Hejiang, the ferry to Che Wang has but one cabin. Invited to rest on its upper bunks, we take seats above four young men who are gambling, their hand-painted cards four times as long as they are wide. The players keep their money in their rolled-up pant-cuffs. Two hours upstream, they too prepare to debark, along with twenty other passengers.
Having attained a higher altitude – we are now three hours out of Hejiang – we enter into a new landscape, the steep banks covered with fir trees. The temperature has fallen, the level of wilderness dramatically increased. Two black mountain goats bleat as we pass, two kids scampering behind them.
We are making our last rural landing before our destination. A family group of seven boards the boat, all with distinctive features, all smiling. Five ducks, having watched from the shore, enter the water to tour the scene. They paddle toward us, nervously turn away, take yet another tack, all five beaks pointed in the same direction.
Having departed for Che Wang, we are joined on the front deck by the officer for this district, a portly, 35-year-old housewife. She converses in a lively way with several members of her community. As we approach Che Wang, she introduces herself. Having learned of our destination, she invites us to visit the city hall. Then, resuming her political rounds, she stands aside to scrutinize author. At last we head on in to dock. We enter the mouth of an estuary, a bridge spanning it. As we step off the boat, we are welcomed by family members. They have spent the last two days in town awaiting us.
Climbing on up into the village proper, we retreat further into the past, for Che Wang was founded during the Ming dynasty, many of its buildings centuries old. We climb down steps as well as up, under covered passageways, through narrow plazas. Old men, seated on stools, stare in amazement at the sight of the foreigner. In a tavern, distinguished from ancient times only by its black and white television set, card players smoke cigarettes stuck in the end of long thin pipes. At a smithy, glowing iron is being struck, the light from the furnace illuminating the shop’s inner recesses.
After tea with district officer and registrar we leave the village to begin our journey up the mountainside. Crossing the estuary, we follow a path of single stone slabs that leads along its bank. We turn a corner past an abandoned factory and begin the ascent proper. Beans, twining up small sticks, border the path. As we mount a terraced hill, topped with deciduous trees, the outline of the mountain emerges. We climb higher, the entourage led by the uncle’s twenty-year-old son, burdened with the heavy backpack of favors that we have brought. We leave behind a large family complex, ringed with a high stone wall, a portico over its gate. In a rankly manured field below stands a woman with her ten-year-old son, already in his pajamas at 6:00 pm We look back across the tributary, the landscape reflected in it. On the opposite side of the mountain farmers are working their fields.
We have reached a plateau, over whose lip descends a waterfall. The air is heavily humid. Quickly the ascent grows much steeper, the brook alongside us noisily sluicing downward. We arrive at a cliff and must pass under a limestone shelf. Again the path ascends. Achieving another plateau, we must balance our way across a six-foot plinth to cross the brook. As we thread our way between flooded, harvested fields, it continues to flow quietly, four feet below us.
In addition to the aunt, son and nephew, our party includes the district officer’s secretary, sent along as a gesture of courtesy. So strenuous the ascent, we have scarcely breath for conversation. Turning away from a series of large fields, we begin another climb that will take us 30 feet higher. As the path narrows, patches of red pepper begin to border it, a woman standing in one to tend it. On a precipice above a goat bleats, repeatedly, as though to engage the party in conversation.
So perilous is the path – steep, narrow and slippery – that one dare not take one’s eyes off it. Mercifully our progress is slowed by an old man returning from a stream below, an enormous bag of freshly washed, still wet clothes on his back. We continue to mount. The brook, dwindled to a rivulet, passes swiftly back and forth under the stone pathway. At the top of the next rise we reach our first downward vista, from which we survey the mountainside, field after terraced field descending on both sides. We resume our ascent. Bamboo stalks, thickly clustered, crowd the path, tiny iridescent dragonflies escaping from them as we pass.
Midway up we pause at a wicker covered hut, where four farmers are seated. We crowd, all six climbers, into the narrow room, to chat and smoke. Soon we’ve been joined by two wives, at work in adjacent fields, by a teen aged boy, by several small children. Rest concluded, we are told to move slowly, as we negotiate a high ridge between two rice fields. A fall to the right would mean a ten-foot drop into flooded paddy; a fall to the left, a tumble half way down the mountainside. Before long we cross a ridge and enter another valley. More terraced fields spread out beneath us, those below already harvested, their ridges semi-circled with sheaves; above them, those in the process of being cut, their sheaves scattered randomly; higher yet, those that have not yet been harvested. At long last the path slopes downward. A cluster of houses appears ahead. Splashing across a shallow brook, we mount its bank and follow a muddy path to the homestead.
*
Author arises at the break of day, a little earlier than the farmers. Told to go back to sleep, he indicates that the cock is already crowing. Together with the uncle he steps out into the courtyard for manly conversation, uncle describing his situation, author his. In addition to a daughter and her fiancé, the household includes two paternal grandmothers, the grandfather’s first and second wives. Within the mountain fold are many relatives, among them an aunt, whose husband, author later learns, has run off with another woman, leaving behind a brilliant nine-year-old son. Uncle tells author that he has no quarrel with his neighbors, that life here is safe.
The farmer of course has no money, but his life above Che Wang, if the uncle is typical, can hardly be described as exiguous. Having inherited an acreage and old brick house, uncle and family now inhabit a large stone addition, financed by his Taiwanese brother, who has also provided the household with a television set. Electrified, the farm has no machinery, but a water buffalo helps in the narrow paddies. No doubt the uncle’s situation is far above average among mainland farmers.
The young people make a trip down the mountainside three times a week, returning with supplies – though all here pride themselves on their self-sufficiency. As for social life, someone tried a Karaoke club in Che Wang, but no one came to sing. Son tells author he has a girlfriend nearby, who makes an appearance at dinner the first evening. Casting her eyes down throughout the meal, she scarcely utters a word.
On the first morning atop the mountain we are taken by aunt to visit some of her relatives. Throughout the day we receive a stream of guests. By late afternoon companion must draw with a pebble on the front stoop a genealogical tree to sort out the dozens of names and degrees of affiliation. As she does so, a formal register makes its appearance. Its elegant calligraphy distinguishes the three living generations by the common first character assigned to each ming-zi, or proper name.
Throughout the early afternoon we pass out candy, Taiwanese coins and toys to the children, who arrive, disperse and reassemble. The nine-year-old nephew recites for us his multiplication tables; records a song; is taught for the first time the region’s geography. He attends school, but only once or twice a week; has no books, no one who could teach him the Taiwanese pronunciation system, were we to send him beginner’s texts.
Later in the afternoon we visit two or three more families. In each courtyard the audience grows from a handful to a dozen or two. At the first grandmother’s homestead, where companion’s father was born, we stand about the courtyard, as the rice grain is sunned, turned, into wicker baskets. At the center of the large, red-brick, thatched house, sits the granary. Entering over its high sill author stands beneath its fifteen-foot ceiling to view portraits of Marx and Engels; of Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong, Zhu De; of Stalin and other Communist heroes. Many farmers on the hillside are nominal party members. Back in the courtyard, a young man of twenty appears. Clad in a tee-shirt with Russian words on it, he is a third-year undergraduate at the province’s normal university, where he studies journalism. One of a very small minority of mainland students who go on to college, he will be assigned his post after graduation.
On our visits we wander about through beautiful terrain, its winding paths secretly communicating among its various levels. Houses, hidden by high-ridged paddies and groves of trees, only at the last moment come into view along with adjacent houses, through whose courtyards we must pass to arrive at our destinations. We have been lucky to have had no bad weather, for this is the rainy season, the fields already soaked to capacity, water audible as it drains through them.
It is 7:00 pm. Refreshed by first bath since Hejiang – a basin of hot water in a dark closet, author sits in the courtyard awaiting supper. Last night, exhausted by two days’ journey to reach the mountaintop, he retired at 8:00 o’clock, only to be awakened at 9:00 by the uncle, who, in a gesture both hospitable and proprietary, had come in to check if everything was all right. At 10:00 o’clock he enters again, to take his place in the large canopied bed alongside the younger brother from Chongqing. He talks loudly for ten minutes, waking both author and younger brother. At 1:00 author manages to get back to sleep. At 3:00 uncle exits room to relieve himself, on return reawakening author to see if he needs a second blanket. At 6:00 he gets up again to turn on the light. Author, sleepless since 3:00, decides it is time to exit into courtyard. Uncle says it is too early, author must go back to sleep.
As account of all this is being recorded, the nine-year-old genius arrives, having traveled half an hour down the mountainside, half an hour back to provision us with beer for the evening meal. Together he sits in camaraderie, listening as author continues to speak in English. Two chickens peck at the dirt behind the pigsty, above them a vine supporting the leaves of melons, their yellow flowers interspersed. It is growing cooler. Dinner is still an hour off.
Arising late, the farmer breakfasts at 8:00, has lunch at 1:30, dinner at 8:00 in the evening, the menu for the three meals pretty much the same: rice and noodles, though rice is the staple of preference, the Sichuanese here regarding themselves as southern. To the bowl are added kong-xin cai, empty-heart vegetable, nan gua, the southern melon, a few chunks of thick-cut bacon. On our first night as guests we were treated to smoked ham. The broth of the vegetables is drunk with a spoon, each diner ladling it out of the common dish. A formal dinner begins with beer, poured into wide bowls and accompanied by peanuts, di-gua – earth melon, and the salty ham. Candy is also served at this point. After “cocktails” one moves on to sturdier fare.
Young genius departed on his rounds, author takes tour of homestead, standing at adjacent paddy’s end to view the house. Through the roof tiles of the old kitchen smoke from the wood stove is escaping. Up over the house a light has gone on in another house some three hundred meters away, at the base of a forbiddingly steep cliff, whose sides are nonetheless terraced a third of the way up. Author returns to courtyard, entering the ancient dirt-floored kitchen, scarcely illuminated by a single bulb. Next to the stone stove sits the 87-year-old first grandmother. Gorgeous, almost toothless, clear-eyed, she stares intently at author. Her hands are large and gnarled, her feet, bound in youth, tiny. Only in the past ten years, she says, has she taken to wearing the sporty tennis shoes that she has on. She lights up a cigarette as she chats with author.
Seated beside her, the aunt is preparing vegetables, selecting long beans from a pannier, snapping them into sections, tossing them into a water-filled basin. Her lively instructions keep the younger folk busy: daughter, a cousin, companion. Now enters uncle’s mother, the second grandmother, followed by a male cousin, whom she instructs to deposit on the floor a huge bundle of dried bamboo stalks. First grandmother, cigarette still dangling from her lips, takes up machete, bends a stalk back on itself, and begins to slash it into smaller sections, feeding them into the stove. The fire glows with intensity.
Author retires to roof of new stone addition, where in the waning twilight the nine-year-old genius has joined his elders: uncle, son, cousin. Grain, dried on the roof, has been swept into wicker baskets and covered with plastic. As the elders talk, smoke, eat candy, the nine-year-old plays with author, speeding his new Hong Kong racing car back and forth, inventing for it ever more fantastic scenarios.
Late tomorrow we will descend the mountain to accept a dinner invitation from district officer and registrar. After overnighting in Che Wang we will set out again for Chongqing. This evening author is hoping for a little more rest and has asked companion if she will speak to the uncle about the undesirability of frequent wake-up calls.
*
Waked up by uncle at 4:00 am, author dozes for another hour, then decides it is time to get up and out. In the dark he makes his way through bedroom, deals with double-barred door, escapes into courtyard, only to find uncle in vigilant pursuit. Told he must come back and go to sleep, author turns around and tells uncle what uncle needs to know, looming over him physically. Uncle retreats into house. Having exited courtyard, author now takes seat on flagstone step between two rice fields, listening for the first signs of day. The sky has begun to lighten.
A rooster crows, answered by a second, an even more distant third joining in.
A frog leaps and splashes. Still, there is no sign of daylight. Perhaps those were middle-of-the-night roosters. Perhaps uncle’s wake-up call this morning was even earlier. At any rate we seem to be making no further progress toward daylight. Author decides to take a walk. Unable to see either ahead or underfoot, he nonetheless continues on down the path. Within ten feet he has reached a point of unbearable narrowness. He can go no farther. As he tries to turn around, he almost falls off the path into a rice field. Cautiously retracing his steps, he looks up to find uncle standing in his way. Author continues to record. Apparently the action of describing the uncle has caused him to withdraw.
No so. Within three minutes he is back, this time flashlight in hand. Author, with no intention of returning to house, decides to ignore him, taking a seat again on the flagstone. For ten minutes uncle hovers over author, periodically exhorting him to return. Author refuses to budge. Tiring at last, the uncle leaves; the door to the house creaks open; it shuts behind him.
For the first time the mountain reveals its outline against the sky. The general surround seems to be brightening. Author extends his hand against the background and notes an increase in visibility. Trees begin to take on definition; the whole valley comes into focus; the sky, in blue, differentiates itself from the earth. Arising to walk the full range of his flagstones, author realizes how precarious his earlier adventure had been. In the darkness he had mistaken the margin of a rice field for a path three feet below. Suddenly, just as things seem to be improving, the atmosphere thickens. A cloud moves across the valley, enveloping it in mist. Within moments all is obscure again.
Someone coughs. Turning about, author tries to make out who it is but cannot. Through the vagueness sound two adult voices, male and female, into whose conversation a child’s voice adds its lighter pitch. The dim figures approach. Stepping aside, behind a culvert, author allows them to pass. A whiff of cigarette lingers in the air.
Within moments the cloud too has passed. A grey-green tree appears against a faintly blue background. A feathery bamboo clump sways in the breeze. As though arising out of the earth, a farmer’s house, hitherto shrouded, comes into being. A light goes on within it.
By instinct author turns about to witness a new apparition. A twenty-year-old girl is making her way down the path. “Good morning,” she says to author, pausing. “Good morning,” he replies. She initiates conversation. Author explains why he is standing in the midst of what may well be her family’s property. Calmly listening, she thanks him, resumes her course down the flagstone path and disappears into a cloud-like grove of trees.
The cock crows again, this time unanswered.
In a yet bolder venture author climbs the muddy ridge of the fan- shaped paddy overhead and continues along it. Though not a true pathway, it nevertheless conveys him to within yards of the house that, a moment ago, had seemed to emerge out of the earth. Pressing farther, he reaches a dead end, jumps to a path below and begins an ascent he has never taken before. He has lost sight of the uncle’s house and will have to navigate blindly. Again he presses forward as far as he can, traversing the ridge to another dead end.
A farmer comes into view, mounting a path below in his blue work clothes. How will he take author’s presence here? Instead of avoiding him, author meets the farmer at the juncture of the two paths. Hailing him, he engages him in friendly conversation. The farmer’s breath at 6:00 am smells of liquor.
Conversation concluded, author cedes the way to the farmer, pausing to consider how to return without retreating. He climbs a steep path amidst tall stands of bamboo, emerging with his head at the height of a paddy. Finally he sights the house toward which he has been heading. But how to reach it is not entirely clear. By a circuitous route, without knowing precisely where it leads, he arrives at a point behind the house.
A cock crows, this time in the courtyard before him.
*
It is 5:00 am. Down rain-soaked, darkened alleys lit by a single flashlight, we grope our way out of Che Wang to board the ferry for Hejiang. We huddle on deck in the dark, listening to the dirge of a woman wailing from a bridge overhead. A rowboat with lantern appears alongside us, floating in an aimless way, only the bamboo hat of the oarsman discernible. The woman is throwing large rocks off the bridge, as she sings a song of the Cultural Revolution. From the ferry a sailor yells at her. She yells back.
It is 5:30. The woman continues to sing. She has begun to bombard the ferry itself, hitting its hull, lambasting its roof. The sailor steps off the ship and mounts to the bridge to engage her. She is 27 years old. Two years ago her husband died. Formerly a schoolteacher, she has gone crazy. She yells for us all to leave. The rowboat returns to deposit another passenger. The pelting continues. “There are many crazy people in Che Wang,” says a passenger.
The madwoman descends to the river, brushing the sailor aside. Boarding the ship, she picks up a bench and threatens the passengers with it. The sailor intervenes. She tosses the bench overboard and begins to cry. The sailor attempts to console her. She tosses another bench overboard. Several people move to constrain her. No one seems to prevail.
At long last the engine starts up. Scheduled to leave at 5:30, the ferry does not push off till 6:00, waiting till daylight for the last paying passengers. As we leave the dock, the aunt departs, the uncle remaining. Though he insists on accompanying us to Chongqing, he will take us only as far as Hejiang. “If you insist on taking us farther,” companion says, “we won’t be able to visit again.” We turn about and head downriver. Acrid smoke from our own coal-burning engine hangs heavy above us.
Scheduled to arrive in Hejiang at 8:30, the ferry is twenty minutes late. We rush through the streets looking for the 9:00 o’clock boat to Chongqing, on which we have booked reservations for a sleeping compartment. We race down an alley to the water, as the boat’s horn sounds. The uncle has taken a wrong turn. We rush back to main street and down another alley, arriving just in time to see the ferry depart. The next boat does not leave till 2:00 in the afternoon. Instead we will board a train at 11:30. It will take four hours to reach Chongqing.
Unaccountably delayed, the train does not leave Hejiang until 3:00 pm.
*
“Dinner for the Honored Guests.” On our arrival in Che Wang we had been received by the district officer and the registrar, the latter a man in early middle age. As the district officer had entertained us, offering refreshments and friendly conversation, the registrar had asked more serious questions. For in her absence it was he who had taken the call by Mr. Wu from Hejiang. Tentatively the registrar explores the possibility of finding investment for a new electric plant, his assistant presenting companion with a list of three Taiwanese, asking that she contact them on her return. District officer and registrar insist that we return our last evening for dinner, that we spend the night in Che Wang before boarding the boat the next morning for Hejiang.
At 5:00 pm we arrive and again are received at city hall. The district officer seems depressed. Uncomfortable in the registrar’s presence, she gets up and leaves the room. The registrar, a more powerful person in the bureaucratic hierarchy, moves in to fill the void. He and his assistant, both college graduates in government studies, press for commitment to their project. Companion’s uncle and aunt sit uncomfortably through the interview. The family has warned us that the local officials wish to take advantage of us.
We move to a small, dark, somewhat dingy restaurant for dinner. Two large tables for eight have been set, one for the family, one for honored guests and government officials. Two chairs at the latter have been left vacant for late-arriving wives. Conversation proceeds in a brisk and friendly manner, until three of the relatives must take their leave –to re-ascend the mountain before nightfall. Companion arises to say farewell, leaves the room to accompany them to the door, where she lingers for fifteen or twenty minutes. The officials stop eating, fall silent. Author, having tired of relentless instruction in Sichuan cuisine and custom, decides to tell some jokes, only with great difficulty translating Taiwanese humor into Sichuanese terms. Turning to registrar’s assistant, author invites him to reciprocate with Sichuanese jokes. Registrar’s assistant struggles to turn local jokes into something more generally comprehensible.
On coming to table we had first been offered fresh fruit: watermelon, a delicacy imported from the North; apples from Yunnan province; local bananas. There followed well-prepared, Sichuan dishes. In the midst of eating, we are introduced to what is termed a “Sichuan custom,” to invite the guest to drink a glass of beer alone, followed by another glass, to be drunk with the host. After half an hour of this activity, we have drunk a good deal. At a prescheduled moment, the two missing wives, doctor and teacher, make their appearance. Like their husbands, the registrar and his assistant, they are both college graduates. They too insist on toasting Sichuan style. Prepared by two days of heavy drinking with farmers, author is unfazed. Companion, however, begins to wilt.
Upon her return to table the dinner breaks up, officials mingling for the first time – uncomfortably – with the aunt and uncle, who have planned to see us off in the morning and so must also be accommodated at government expense. As the officials escort us all to our hotel, a quarrel breaks out. Who will have the honor of seeing the guests off? Arriving together, we all mount the stairs to the second floor, as our hosts continue to quarrel, this time over where the guests should sleep. Amidst much confusion the district officer comes in tears to say farewell: she will not be sending us off tomorrow. Clandestinely her lovely secretary hands author her own address, hoping that we will write. At last the registrar bids us farewell. He too will not be able to see us off. Perhaps the departure time is too early, perhaps he’s decided it’s not worth it.