Bound for Vietnam (18 page)

By nine o’clock in the morning I had transported myself to the comfortable Wuzhou bus station down by the river. When it was time to go, I tramped down a flight of stairs to the waiting bus. It was neither deluxe nor airconditioned, as I had been promised, but it was a big improvement on the standard of comfort provided by some of the other local buses. My bags were heaved up in front with the driver, who was hemmed in with luggage by the time we left.

At the scheduled departure time and with the bus only three-quarters full, we set off. I thought this was great, but I cheered too soon. We drove two doors further down the street and pulled into the rear of another bus depot where fifteen immense rolls of carpet, various large boxes, bundles and baggage and five passengers, complete with their breakfast and several bottles of Chinese whisky, waited. This band of hopefuls looked as though they had every intention of getting all their cargo, as well as themselves aboard. Weighty discussions with the driver ensued. Eventually he dismounted and, going to the rear of the bus, opened a small freight door that gave access to the row of seats across the back. Then, with an extraordinary amount of shouting from everybody concerned and about forty five thousand spectators, the driver and passengers pushed the stuff in. Sweating and straining they man-handled some of the rolls of carpet across the back seats, stacking them up to the roof and obliterating any chance the driver had of seeing out of the rear window. Each roll required a preamble of five minutes of shouting and screaming before it was stowed. When all but six rolls of carpet were finally aboard, I thought, Well done! But they hadn’t finished, not by a long shot. They dragged the rest to the front of the bus, hauled it in and filled the aisle. Then they put the bags and bundles on top. Lastly the passengers clambered up. Three of them sat on top of the mountain in the middle of the aisle; the other two got down on the only half square metre of floor left vacant and had a picnic with their breakfast noodles and bottles of spirit. They seemed quite unperturbed that this procedure had taken forty minutes and we were now running late.

It took another hour to leave Wuzhou behind. At first we drove along cliffs that looked down into the river, then we were on tortuous country roads among the now familiar terraces of rice paddies. Even though there was no sun and a greyish-blue haze of pollution persisted the countryside was attractive. The peridot green of rice in the foreground, behind it sugar cane, with its lovely apple green stalks and bamboo-like flutey spikes, and in the background the blue mountains.

The bus progressed slowly, still collecting passengers. I should have known better than to think that this would not happen just because I was on a classier sort of bus. When all the seats were filled, people sat on top of the carpet in the aisles; one girl leaned her head on the seat of the man in front of her and almost pushed him off it. He moved over to accommodate her. Another carpet dweller practically sat on top of the bloke in the seat in front of him. But no one seemed to think this behaviour was objectionable.

At least on this bus trip the group of men who sat around me did not smoke. In fact, they kept opening windows and telling the smokers off! Apart from the young doctor I had met on the ship from Dalian, they were the first Chinese men I had encountered who did not smoke. Sitting next to me was a middle-aged man who wore glasses with lenses as thick as the bottoms of Coke bottles. We had a limited conversation in which he told me that he and his two companions, a young man and woman, were teachers. He asked if I was one too. I hoped this was because I looked intelligent.

We stopped for lunch at a small wayside place where the locals were greatly intrigued by me. There were only two other women on the bus, and I kept a watchful eye on them, following them wherever they went in the hope that I might be led to a loo. Finally I hit the jackpot. The women went down some stairs that went underneath the roadhouse.

As I descended the stairs I was delighted to see a row of five big pink faces look up at me, while ten bright, beady eyes drank me in with unblinking fascination. They belonged to beautiful young adult pigs as fat as butter, with healthy pointed ears and lively stupid grins. The pigs were housed under the same roof and very close to the family’s sleeping quarters, but in a spot with much more light. I am very fond of pigs. Breeding them and keeping them as pets changed my misconceptions about them. I now know that they are intelligent, clean, loving and affectionate. It made my day to see those cheery little souls.

Later this day our bus was halted by roadworks in a village where a street market was in progress. We stopped beside the meat section, and judging by the amount of trotters present, the meat was mostly pig. Slabs of bloody animal flesh, exposed and covered with multitudes of flies, lay directly on the wood of dirty old trestles and was being handled by passers-by. They picked it up, played with it, put it down and moved on.

Hours passed in the bus as we climbed gradually towards the mountains, I knitted, read and refrained from drinking too much. There had been one stop for relief a few hours after lunch. The driver pulled the bus up beside a field of sugar cane and all the men dashed into it. There was no way I was joining them. Not only for reasons of decorum– it
was
broad daylight – but also because sugar cane is a notorious harbourer of vermin and I had just read that millions of reptiles resided at the snake farm near Wuzhou. One million a year are sent from there to the tables of restaurants all over China, Hong Kong and Macau. Working out that they had to get those snakes from somewhere around here, I decided that there was no way I was putting my bottom anywhere near the ground in this district. I let the men have the sugar cane all to themselves.

The bus was equipped with a video machine, but thankfully we were not subjected to the usual Kung Fu film. Of all the unlikely items, we were shown an Asian beauty contest. The female contestants were dazzling, but they all looked the same, like clones of Joan Collins straight out of
Dynasty
. Like over-dressed Barbie dolls weighed down with masses of gaudy jewellery, with hair that resembled fairy floss that had been glued into solid shapes with litres of spray, and faces that were plastered with pounds of paint, they wore clothes that were pure soap opera; brilliant coloured shiny material bountifully covered with glitter. In the talent section, the contestants were brought forward to perform like monkeys. One danced the tango, one sang and one did a bit of karate. It was the sort of degrading affair that feminists condemn, and in this case I would have agreed with them.

I imagined that we would stop for another meal towards evening, but as it began to get dark we started climbing very steep hills and there was no village in sight. The bus ground on, up and up, passing other broken down or overturned buses along the way. We had almost reached the top of the mountain chain and I was congratulating myself on choosing a superior sort of bus, when a tremendous, clattering crash reverberated underneath us. It sounded as though something very big had fallen off the bus. We stopped and after half an hour of much shouting and carrying on with flash-lights, the driver climbed back in and we started off again very slowly. Now we had no headlights and in total darkness we were descending downhill extremely steeply, with the driver braking often as if he could not see what was ahead. I prayed fervently that what had fallen off the bus was in no way connected with the brakes or steering. Careering along in this uncertain, but precipitous manner, we zoomed down a long way, until we came to one of the many toll gates that were found on these roads. Here we shuddered to a final sickening halt. With the help of all the available men, the bus was pushed to the side of the road, and we were left sitting there in the frigid black of night.

After about an hour, a small local bus came along. My schoolteacher friend went out to look at it and came back indicating that I should go with him. I had no idea where, but it was now raining heavily and anything seemed better than spending the night on a mountainside in the freezing cold. Half of the other bus passengers got up and left, so I followed. My friend had saved me a seat in the new bus and I was poised in mid-air, with one foot on the step, when a man shoved me aside and knocked me over. I went down in the mud, in a tangle of bags. This man wasn’t being intentionally rude, he just didn’t think. When he heard me shriek as I fell to the ground, he turned around, dusted me off and helped me onto the bus. Then, to add insult to injury, a conductor arrived and made me pay another fare.

Bumping along towards Nanning at the thirty kilometres an hour that was the maximum speed this latest conveyance could muster, I had plenty of time to be grateful to it, boneshaker though it was. Although it sounded like a sick chaff cutter, it was transport and it seemed to be going in the right direction. I looked out of the window but could see nothing. We were now on a small back road and outside there was only an inky void.

When we reached Nanning, I discovered that the teachers had decided to take me under their wing. Looking at my map, they agreed that the Airport Hotel I pointed to would be suitable. Ignoring my assurances that I would find it myself, they carried my bags to a taxi and the young woman came with me. At the hotel I tried to pay the taxi fare, but the girl, who was going to continue on in it, refused to take any money. I was absolutely floored by the kindness of these people.

The Airport Hotel was in the main street of town, but the name written in Pinyin outside it was not Airport, but CAAC. Another trap for travellers in China is that sometimes a guidebook will give you English translations that are not the same as the hotel’s version of them. This hotel belonged to the notorious airline, but I did not hold that against it. From the street its façade was imposing, but the foyer strongly resembled a public lavatory. Once again the receptionist spent a long time examining my visa. It seemed difficult for her to understand the extension that had been added, or whether I was legally permitted to stay, but eventually she decided that I was.

I was directed to a room on the sixth floor. At least, so far, the lift was working. For a mere twenty dollars I had a room with everything my heart could desire, including plumbing leaks, and hot water from an instant electric heater. I even had a door that opened on to a long narrow balcony that ran the length of the building and was entirely caged in with iron bars so that no one could climb in or out. All the rooms had balconies, but I wondered for what purpose they had been intended. Their enclosing walls were too high to see out. Their only function that I could see was to house a washing line. But, as it was still spitting with rain, the covered balcony was a boon. Although I was dead tired I washed some clothes and went to bed feeling virtuous. It was great to hang my washing out in the open again.

My room had a wonderfully comfortable bed, the only decent pillow I had come across in China, lights that were in the right places and even a television that worked. I was supplied with numerous comforts such as shoe cleaner, soap and toothpaste, but no towel. And no key. I was still not that trustworthy. And bliss, the place was quiet at night. To make up for this lapse I was shocked awake at seven in the morning by some terrible shrieking. The propaganda machine was at work and the message was piped through a loudspeaker in the public square. In Nanning, however, perhaps to soften you up for the blow, it was always preceded by Beethoven’s winsome ‘Für Elise’ played at top pitch.

In the dim light of a drizzly morning I looked over the wall of my balcony. Down below on one side I could see into the yard of a large bus station and on the other into the backs of tiny apartments. A grotty view.

As I walked out of the hotel I saw was a young girl of about twenty dressed in simple worker’s clothes standing against a wall. A giant cardboard placard hung on a rope around her neck. It reached all the way down her body and out past her shoulders and was covered with Chinese characters. By her dejected look I guessed that she had done something wrong and this was her punishment. It made me feel sick to see her shamed in this cruel manner. When I first saw the unfortunate sinner, only a couple of people had stopped to look at her, but the second time a large crowd had gathered and one little old woman in a Mao suit was bent over in front of the girl reading every word of the placard aloud. I felt very sorry for her.

The Airport Hotel was conveniently central and I could walk to most places I wanted to visit. I had read that there was a train to Dhongxing, the village near the border crossing into Vietnam, so I went to the railway station first. It was at the far end of the main street and could be safely reached by a massive underground walkway which was filled with vendors’ stalls. I thought this was a marvellous idea. You were provided with entertainment, as well as the definite advantage of getting across the square without being killed. Emerging from the underpass, I found myself at the foot of an extensive flight of steps that led up to the railway station. Here I was accosted by a mob of beggars who looked like gypsies. One woman pushed a little boy about three years old at me. I could see that he was a sweet child under the dirt. She said, ‘
Loala
,
loala
,’ and seemed to be telling him to ‘get the foreigner’. He seized hold of my pants and hung on desperately as though his life depended on it. I did not want to give money to the woman, but I was afraid the child might be punished if he was not successful. I saw more beggars in Nanning than I had elsewhere and I was frequently solicited for money. Apart from the people from ethnic minority groups who haunted the railway station most of the beggars were old people.

At the ticket-office some helpful workers, with the aid of the phrasebook, told me that no trains ran to or near the village of Dhongxing. They said there was a bus and took great pains to direct me to the bus station. For once I had no problem finding my way. I was living next door to it. If the phrasebook was right, the bus I needed left at three the afternoon after next.