River Town (29 page)

“I'm Catholic.”

“
Chabuduo
, “he said. “That's almost the same as our Christianity. Most of it is the same but you believe more in
Mali
.”

He was right about Mary being a sticking point, but nevertheless he seemed happy to meet me. His name was Luo and he invited me to come back later, so I could meet his son and grandchildren.

The Luos lived on the main street, in a traditional
siheyuanr
, an old brick complex organized around a central courtyard. Now there were seven branches of the family living there, all of them named Luo, and the buildings had not changed much in centuries. In the old man's home they still slept on a traditional
kang
, an old-fashioned brick bed that was heated by coal in the winter.

He told me that his ancestors had been Qing Dynasty soldiers sent north from Xi'an in the 1700s to fight the Mongols beyond the wall. They were posted here to keep the foreigners at bay, but their descendants came under foreign influence anyway—missionaries had converted the old man's parents before Liberation. A simple cross hung above his old
kang
, a curious conjunction of relics.

The old man's son was named Luo Xiaolei; he was in his mid-forties and he edited a local literary magazine. His daughter had just graduated from the Chinese department of Yulin Teachers College. They were friendly, well-educated people, and during the week I spent in Yulin I went to their home every day. Often they served me a late breakfast, and after eating we would sit with tea and watermelon in the shade of their living room.

Luo Xiaolei had spent five years in prison during the Cultural Revolution, because he was an intellectual and a Christian, and his father had been exiled to ten years of labor in a remote part of the desert. The old man didn't say much about that experience, except that the work was difficult and served no purpose. That was often the way people described their exiles—the wasted time was the worst part.

I found it easy to speak openly with the Luos, because their experiences had made them skeptical, and because soon I would leave this place. That was the best part of traveling—I wasn't really accountable for things I did and said; I could wander off with anybody and talk about anything I wanted. It wasn't like living in Fuling, where people
kept track of me and there was always the knowledge that I still had another year left in the river town. There were many good things about having a home in China, but that was one of the drawbacks.

One afternoon, Luo Xiaolei asked me what I thought about teaching in China, and I realized that it was a difficult question.

“Mostly I like it very much,” I said, “and especially I like the students. I think they respect teachers more than we do in America. I teach literature, and that's also good; my Chinese students like poetry more than most American students do. But I don't like the political system in the college. It's hard to explain—sometimes this system affects the students. Many of their ideas are very
xia'aide
—narrow.”

Teacher Kong had taught me that word near the end of the semester, and it summarized the difficult aspects of Fuling. Luo Xiaolei nodded. “Probably they aren't used to
waiguoren
yet,” he said. “In remote parts of China you know that we have not had very many.”

“I know, but there are other problems, too. Their books are bad, and sometimes what they study isn't true.”

I asked his daughter, who was sitting with us, if they studied Confucius in the Chinese department of her college.

“No,” she said.

“But you study Marx?”

“Yes.”

“It's the same way in Fuling. My students read Shakespeare and Marx, but they don't read Confucius. Those are foreign ideas, and Confucius is part of your culture, but nobody studies him anymore.”

“Did you study Marx in college in America?” she asked.

“Yes, but only a little. Many college students do in America, because he's a philosopher.”

“What do they think of Marxism in your America?”

“Most people think it is interesting, but it's not very…” I was groping for the word and she knew what I was thinking.

“
Shiyong
, “she said. “Useful.”

“Right. It's not very useful.”

“I agree,” she said. “I think it's a waste of time. Most of the politics we study are a waste of time.” She flipped her hair away from her face and looked across the room at her father. He was thinking of
something else, and then he smiled when he realized that his daughter expected him to respond. He was a gray-haired man with round glasses and his eyes were bright with memory.

“No,” he said. “Marxism is not very useful.” And his own father, who was sitting in the shadows eating watermelon, said nothing at all.

 

I FOLLOWED A REGULAR ROUTINE IN YULIN
, visiting the Luos during the morning and eating at a small restaurant in the afternoon. The restaurant had good dumplings, along with cheap local beer, and the owner was the sort of tough no-nonsense woman who could often be found in places where men went drinking after work. She teased me about my accent, which she said was half foreign and half Sichuanese, and whenever other customers came into the restaurant she announced my vital information: nationality, age, Chinese name,
danwei
, and salary. Usually the customers remarked the lowness of my salary and bought me a beer. To maintain my dignity, I explained the nature of the Peace Corps, and how we had come to build friendship between America and China rather than make money, which invariably inspired the customers to buy me another beer. I tried to cover the third round, usually without success. After that we would shake hands warmly and say something about the improving relations between our nations, and I would return to my hotel and sleep until it cooled to evening.

On my last day in Yulin, two men in their late twenties came into the restaurant and began buying me drinks. One of them was named Wang and the other was Zhao. They said I could call them Comrade. It was Friday and they had just finished working the morning shift in a nearby factory.

Each of us finished two beers quickly, and during the next beer the two men began to turn red and tell stories about Chinese history. Comrade Wang told me about Emperor Yu, who had been the first to control the floods of the Yellow River. This was a story I had studied in my textbook, which was fortunate because Comrade Wang's version frequently became entangled in the local dialect. I kept nodding and acting as if I understood, and periodically Comrade Zhao would interrupt him:

“Speak Mandarin! He's not going to understand if you speak the dialect!”

Comrade Wang would nod and speak a few sentences in Mandarin, and then he would drift back toward the dialect as Emperor Yu made more heroic efforts to build dikes and levees along the Yellow River. The gist of the tale was that Emperor Yu had worked so hard that although he often passed the doorway of his family home, he never had time to stop and visit. It was a hell of a project, controlling the Yellow River.

Finally the river was under control and Comrade Wang sat back and drained his beer. They were buying bottles and our table was full of empties. One of the many good things about small Chinese restaurants was that they never cleared the bottles until you left, which meant that passersby could glance over and see how much damage you had done by two in the afternoon. There was big face in that and today we were doing fine.

“Did you understand the story?” Comrade Zhao asked. “You didn't understand, did you? He kept speaking our dialect!”

I said that everything was clear, reciting the version from my textbook.

“You see?” Comrade Wang was triumphant. “He understood all of it!”

There was a sudden need to show me Comrade Wang's investment down the street, and the owner agreed to hold our table until we returned. They were both big men, and I walked between them, the three of us stumbling unsteadily over the cobblestones. We passed Mr. Luo's stand and I waved. I had no idea where we were going, or what the investment was—that was all they said, that we were going to see Comrade Wang's investment. It was a hot afternoon and after the beer we were sweating as we walked down the street.

We entered a doorway and climbed a narrow flight of stairs. On the second floor there was a big room and a single girl in roller skates was spinning around the hardwood floor.

“This,” said Comrade Wang, “is my investment.”

Proudly he looked out over the roller rink, and then he went over to the concessions area and talked with the worker.

“The investment was too much,” Comrade Zhao whispered mournfully, once Comrade Wang was out of earshot. “He had to borrow too much money. He'll never pay it back!”

I could see that Comrade Wang was telling the worker something about me and I strained to hear.

“They don't have enough people coming,” Comrade Zhao whispered. “And last night there was a fight and some glass was broken. He's going to lose so much money!”

Comrade Wang returned with roller skates and presented them to me. “Here,” he said. “You skate. Now. For free.”

I stuttered, explaining that I didn't know how to roller-skate. “Of course you know how!” said Comrade Wang. “It comes from your country!”

I told them that I had a hurt leg, and they offered to take me to a doctor. There was one down the street, Comrade Zhao said, and Chinese medicine was very effective. I explained that I knew the benefits of Chinese medicine, because a Chinese doctor had told me to sit down as much as possible and avoid activities like roller-skating. After many polite offers and protests, we solved the problem by going back to the restaurant, sitting down, and having another beer. They didn't seem offended; Comrade Wang was pleased that he had been able to show me his investment. The empties were still on the table.

We finished another round and Comrade Wang looked me in the eye.

“He Wei,” he said, using my Chinese name. “The only other time I saw an American was on Mount Emei, and I didn't have a good impression. He was very fat, and he was telling people to do things for him. “Do this! Do that!” He had workers carry him up the mountain, like he was a great landlord. But you're different—before I met you, I thought that all Americans are bad, but now I know that's not the truth.”

I was touched, and I felt guilty that I had lied about seeing the doctor. But it was a Chinese type of white lie and probably that made it all right. I thanked Comrade Wang and we toasted each other.

“Also, that American on Mount Emei was very white,” he said. “His skin was so white and bad-looking! But you're actually a little yellow—you look more Chinese. Your skin is much better than his!”

 

EVERYTHING WENT WELL
that summer. I studied at a college in Xi'an, where the classes were not too difficult, and the city had plenty of good parks where you could buy a cup of tea and chat with the locals. Every day it was thirty-five degrees Celsius (ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit). Supposedly the government had a policy that if the temperature reached thirty-seven degrees everybody was given the rest of the day off, and so they always announced the official temperature as thirty-five. Often I rode a friend's bicycle over to Xingqing Palace Park, where I'd get a cup of tea and ask the workers what the temperature was.

“Thirty-five degrees,” they'd say, fanning themselves with newspapers.

“What was the temperature yesterday?”

“Thirty-five degrees.”

“How hot do you think it'll be tomorrow?”

They'd roll their eyes and tell me to go drink my tea; it wasn't much of a joke to them. China was perhaps the only country in the world where the government controlled the temperature, although two years later the Beijing weather stations finally started announcing the temperature as it actually was. Local newspapers hailed this development as an important step toward telling citizens the truth, and perhaps it was: today the temperature, tomorrow the full report on the Tiananmen Square massacre. But the government also made it clear that the policy of giving a day off was merely a myth, so the new temperatures didn't result in any vacations. It just meant that you knew exactly how hot it really was.

Xi'an was the hottest thirty-five degrees imaginable and at night I had trouble sleeping, but even with the heat everything went well that summer. My sister Angela, who was a graduate student in geology at Stanford, had been sent out to a summer project in Xinjiang, the province in the far west of China. She spent a week with me in Xi'an and together we saw the historical sights of the city. I always told people that she was helping China find oil in Xinjiang, while I was a volunteer English teacher in Sichuan; this pleased everyone and they gave us special treatment. The worker at the terra-cotta warriors museum was so inspired that he let us in for the Chinese price, waiving the
waiguoren
surcharge, because of the good work we were doing for China.

Angela flew out to her project, and a week later I finished my
studies and caught a train to Xinjiang. It was a forty-eight-hour trip along the old Silk Road, through the deserts of Gansu and Xinjiang provinces, and I had always liked long train trips and big empty landscapes.

I traveled hard sleeper, which I considered to be the most enjoyable class on a Chinese train. Hard seat was a nightmare, a crush of peasants and migrant workers; soft sleeper was too much in the other direction, cadres and overfed businessmen and
waiguoren
tourists. Hard sleeper cars weren't uncomfortable—everybody had a berth—but the tickets were cheap enough for travelers who considered themselves Old Hundred Names, the common people. Old Hundred Names were always easy to talk with, especially on trains, where they chatted lightly, drinking their tea and eating instant noodles.