River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze

by Peter Hessler

  I had to admit it was true—there was nothing wrong with Wang Yumei’s skin. And I thought that if you could somehow pipe Yulin’s water down to Fuling you would without a doubt have the most beautiful women in China, and perhaps in the entire world, because of the mountains and the rivers and the deep well water of the desert town.

  After lunch we went across the street to a Buddhist temple so that Guo Xiaoqin, who was the only unmarried woman in the group, could have her fortune told. As we entered, the priest and a young man were screaming at each other. The priest had given the young man a bad fortune, after which he had refused to make a donation, and in the resulting argument the young man had knocked over some things in the temple and the priest had hit him. The priest, who was in his sixties, stood in the center of the courtyard, shaking his fist. The young man was with a friend who held him back while he screamed obscenities. It was very hot now, and the women and I sat in the shade of a side temple, waiting for the argument to end.

  As far as public disputes went, it was average, consisting of two acts. The young man was dragged out of the courtyard by his friend, but then he fought his way free and stormed back into the temple, where he and the priest screamed at each other for another five minutes. It was clear that the young man had no interest in hurting the priest, and certainly it was too late to change his fortune; he was simply saving face, and his friend laughed as he pushed him back toward the exit. After they were gone, we waited until his shouts trailed off into the distance and it was clear that there would not be a third act. Some of the public disputes I had seen in Fuling had so many acts that even the stick-stick soldiers got bored and wandered off.

  The argument wasn’t a particularly auspicious omen for fortunetelling in this temple, but Guo Xiaoqin, who was twenty-six years old and clearly felt that time was an issue, decided to continue. The priest collected himself, prayed, and told the woman to kowtow three times before the altar. He struck a gong as she bowed, and then he gave her a tube filled with wooden sticks. She shook the tube until one of the sticks rattled free, and the priest looked at the number and interpreted the fortune. He said that she would be married soon, perhaps within the year, and everybody sighed with relief. Wang Yumei gave the priest ten yuan. He smiled as we left.

  We walked down the road to the Red Cliff Gorge, where Daoist and Buddhist temples, some of them more than thirteen centuries old, had been carved into the sandstone cliffs. In the center of the gorge a river flowed clear between sandy banks. We took off our shoes and waded through the shallows, and then we sat in the shade. Across the river a group of six young peasants had come to have a picnic. They were men and women in their early twenties, and after lunch they splashed in the river, the women screaming as the men chased them up and down the sandy gorge.

  “Do you have places like this in your country?” Wang Yumei asked. I tried to imagine having a reunion with my friends in America and picking up a random foreigner and spending the day with him, simply out of curiosity and kindness.

  “No,” I said. “It’s not quite the same as this in my country.”

  I DIDN’T WANT TO LEAVE YULIN. The hotel was fine and, despite the heat of the days, the nights were desert-cool and there was never any problem sleeping. The mornings were pleasant, and every day I woke up early and watched the traffic on the main street. Old men swept their shopfronts, and women dragged milk carts along the main street, and the night soil collectors headed past on their way out to the countryside. Junkmen pulled wagons, thumping little hand drums to attract sales. Horse-drawn carts delivered coal to the small restaurants, and the sun rose bright above the tiled roofs of the buildings, and slowly the dusty city grew hot.

  The main street passed beneath three Ming Dynasty towers, and nearly all of the other buildings on the street dated to at least the Qing Dynasty. Yulin’s ancient city wall was still intact, rising twenty feet above the buildings. I had never seen such a well-preserved old town in China, and yet there weren’t any other foreign tourists in the city.

  Every day I watched the morning street until it started to become hot, and then I’d buy some yogurt and find a shaded restaurant where I could eat steamed rolls and try to read a newspaper. One morning I bought my yogurt from an old man who became very excited, gesturing for me to wait while he ran back home. He returned with an old Chinese book, which he handed to me without a word.

  I opened it and tried to read the first page. Some of it was unclear but I could get the general idea—something about the start, earth and water, light and dark. The man waited patiently while I read. I made my way through the rest of the page, and then I realized what I was reading. I looked up at the old man.

  “Are you Christian?” I asked.

  “Yes!” He beamed and shook my hand.

  “Where is this Bible from?”

  “Our friends from Sweden gave it to us,” he said, and I figured they must have been Lutheran missionaries. I told him that I had lived in Sweden as a child, which pleased him. He asked if I was also Christian.

  “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.