Lost on Planet China: One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation

by J. Maarten Troost

  “You know what?” I said to Jack. “I’m actually feeling kind of content right now. It’s not often that you feel the love in China. China, as you’ve probably noticed, isn’t the warmest place on Earth. And so to be here, in some village in the middle of a lake in Yunnan Province on a clear day, and to be offered a plate of tomatoes, gratis, just as a kindly gesture to a visitor…it makes me happy.”

  “Well, good,” Jack said. “It’s about fricken time.”

  15

  There are many places in the world I wished I’d seen thirty years earlier, but none more so than the town of Lijiang, nestled in the shadow of the Himalayas, in a lush valley beneath the looming majesty of Jade Dragon Mountain. It was here, in the 1920s and ’30s, that the idiosyncratic Dr. Joseph Rock, a brilliant botanist, established his well-stocked base. He was born in Vienna but had moved to Honolulu in 1907, where he had found his calling in the study of plants. Possibly suffering from island fatigue (something I could totally understand), Dr. Rock made his way to Yunnan Province and arrived in Lijiang in 1922. He was no mere backpacker, however. He had taught himself Chinese at the age of thirteen, and brought gold plates to dine upon, opera records, and a bathtub that he insisted porters carry over mountain passes. His perambulations in the region around Lijiang, under the auspices of his nemesis, the National Geographic Society, led to his magnum opus, The Ancient Na-khi Kingdom of South-West China, memorably described by the travel writer Bruce Chatwin as perhaps the most eccentric publication ever produced by Harvard University Press.

  It was, in fact, Bruce Chatwin who had put Lijiang on my mental map. He is sometimes described as a travel writer; at other times, more unkindly, as a fabulist. When I read his work, back in my teens, I didn’t care to make the distinction. Perhaps he wrote about a world as he wished it to be, but what a world. His essay about finding himself caught up in a coup in Africa remains for me the ultimate evocation of cool sangfroid. In the 1980s, he visited Lijiang and wrote a memorable essay about Dr. Ho, a Taoist healer, spinning a tale of love and magic and a history that never ends. So it was with uncommon enthusiasm that I boarded the bus for the journey into the high hills of Yunnan and the fabled town that some believe was the inspiration for the mythical Shangri-la.

  “So, Lijiang,” said Jack, trying to muster enthusiasm for the six-hour bus journey. “And what can we expect to find in Lijiang? More hippies? Maybe some anarchists? Crackheads?”

  “We’ll be visiting the Naxis.”

  “Naxis?”

  “Uh-huh. Naxis.”

  “Well, okay. Let’s party with the Naxis. Will the Israelis be joining us too?”

  Naxi is actually pronounced Na-khi, but we did not know this then. Descendants of nomadic Tibetans who had settled in the verdant valleys and soaring mountains of northern Yunnan, the Naxis are the predominant minority in Lijiang. It is a matriarchal society wherein men are relegated to the status of useless dolts, henpecked ninnies, or, if they’re lucky, dreamy slackers, which is good work if you can find it. In any event, such an arrangement seemed profoundly un-Chinese, and this, too, seemed in need of observation.

  The bus was crowded, and we crossed the flat farmland alongside the blue waters of Erhai Hu on a two-lane road without an emergency shoulder, which would be unremarkable except for the fact that the road, this narrow slab of cement, was elevated ten feet above the farmland, presumably to deter farmers and animals from wandering across it. And naturally, this being China, there wasn’t anything like a guardrail. Passing a truck, with no room for error, while oncoming traffic was barreling toward us at seventy miles an hour, is one of the more uniquely terrifying experiences I’d yet encountered. The drive was essentially one long cardiac event, and I tried to calm myself by watching the Bai farmers in their fields, hundreds of men and women, threshing wheat by hand. On a small television screen that rested above the driver, we were treated to a long loop of martial arts films and highlights from the Bruce Willis oeuvre. I had always wondererd what the movie Die Hard might sound like dubbed into Chinese. Fortunately, I now had the opportunity to hear Yippeekaya Motherfucker spoken in Mandarin. This pleased me to no end. Clearly, my threshold for entertainment is low, which is a good thing because it was a long bus ride.

  Lijiang is situated above 8,000 feet, and as we climbed into the hills I began to notice an increase in soldiers and military garrisons. Traditionally, this area of China was the frontier. But the soldiers, of course, are not in Yunnan to guard against an invasion from the Republic of Myanmar. China has the largest army in the world and there’s only one reason, of course, to maintain an army of that size: to keep the Naxis in line. And the Bai. And the Tibetans. And the Uyghurs. And anyone else who might have subversion on their mind. According to the Chinese government, there are three evil forces in the world: terrorism, separatism, and extremism. It’s a broad group of evil forces and it gives the government a lot of leeway.

  Despite the soldiers, however, the scene was an Arcadian paradise. There were forested mountains. There were the farmers threshing grain and people selling apples by the side of the road. There were wood-beamed farmhouses with yellow corn drying in the sun. Now and then we passed donkey-led wagons and the peculiar three-wheeled tractors that looked like choppers on steroids. I couldn’t imagine leaving a farm in Yunnan for an urban cesspool like Guangzhou.

  I was lost in my reverie when the man across the aisle asked me where I was from. “My name is Tam,” he said.

  Tam was from Beijing, where he worked as an engineer designing medical supplies. Or at least, that’s what he used to do.

  “I quit my job last week.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes. Beijing is too big, too dirty. Everything is about money now. I don’t want to live that way. I want to live in the mountains under a blue sky. I can get a job anywhere.”

  Tam’s wife and young son had remained behind in Beijing. The nuclear family, as we know it, wasn’t the norm in China anymore, as the booming economy had been scattering families to the wind. Not so long ago, it had been nearly impossible to obtain residency permits outside one’s place of birth. True, political realities might have taken you someplace new. Mention to the wrong person that you’re going to spew your bean-curd milk if you have to read the Little Red Book one more time and soon you might find yourself farming stones on the barren steppes of Inner Mongolia. But like Judy in Dali, longing to be a housewife in Dalian, Tam was part of the new vanguard of Han Chinese moving westward. True, most were hunting for business opportunities. But Tam, and I sensed he was hardly alone, was moving to the west for lifestyle reasons, searching for his own private California.

  “That sounds like a good plan,” I offered. I understood; I’m usually first in line for the escapist bus. “That’s great that you can do that in China today.”

  “Yes. There are many changes in China.”

  “All for the good?”

  Tam shrugged. “China is very complicated. Everything is changing, but the politics remains the same.”

  “Yes, it strikes me as odd,” I said, pleased to have met someone so open with his opinions. “I wasn’t in China thirty years ago, but I suspect that the China of today looks vastly different. And yet the government remains stuck in another era.”

  “We need more democracy,” Tam agreed. I hoped, for his sake, that there wasn’t a government goon on board. “Today, maybe 500 officials have a say in government. But the people have no say.”

  “Yes. It’s not right.” And now I hoped for my sake there wasn’t a government goon on board.

  “People are very worried.”

  “As they should be.”

  “They think the government will start a war.”

  War? How now, what’s this about war? War with who? Should I be digging bunkers in California?

  “Er…what war?” I hesitated. “With America?”

  Tam looked at me oddly. “No. Not America. With Taiwan.”

  “Ah…Taiwan.”

  Te
chnically, of course, the U.S. has indicated that it would go to war with China should it ever attack Taiwan. Indeed, China was seen to be preparing for it by confronting the technological advantages of the U.S. China had been testing weapons that could take out satellites. They’d hacked into the Pentagon. But there couldn’t be more than twelve people left in the U.S. who could muster any enthusiasm for an apocalyptic war with China over Taiwan. Of course, those twelve people probably all had jobs at the White House.

  “So do you think it likely that there will be a war between China and Taiwan?”

  Suddenly, I rocketed against the seat in front of me. The bus slid across the roadway, the tires shrieking. We were heading directly into the path of a chopper-tractor that had unwisely chosen that moment to make its turn onto the road. The bus screeched to a stop mere inches from the other vehicle. The bus driver emitted a well-deserved harangue at the tractor operator, who remained stoically perched atop his machine.

  “Yes, I think there will be a war,” Tam went on, nonplussed. “We have a one-country, two-systems relationship with Hong Kong. It should be the same with Taiwan.”

  Ah. Though a democrat, Tam too was a nationalist.

  Several hours later, we rumbled into the outskirts of Lijiang, which I was disappointed to discover was made up of the usual collection of dirty low-rise apartments and shops. Chatwin, I thought, you’ve been making things up again, haven’t you? True, we were surrounded by stone mountains capped with snow. And the lush terrain beyond the town itself was enchanting. And looking at a map, one would think we’d fallen off it. But Lijiang, at first impression, was just another Han Chinese city, an uninspired place, dusty and run-down.

  We hopped off at the bus station, put our backpacks on, and started walking. “I know a place where you can get a room for 80 yuan,” Tam offered.

  This sounded good, we thought as we passed the obligatory hulking statue of Chairman Mao, who here had been immortalized with a Deutschland über alles salute. How could anyone find this charming? I wondered. But then we walked past the Yulong Bridge and Waterwheel and entered a maze of cobblestone streets and small canals that wound their way through the town center alongside timeless wooden buildings. It was, in fact, a lovely place, and fully deserving of its status as a World Heritage Site—a status, frankly, that I found regrettable since, as was quickly apparent as we approached the center of town, Every Damn Tourist in China, all of them, 300 million possibly, was in Lijiang on this Tuesday afternoon. Seriously. It has been said before. Often. But China is crowded.

  Nevertheless, it was clear why we had all come here. A major earthquake had struck in 1996, doing considerable damage to Lijiang, except for the old town, which was largely constructed with wood. Here at last was someplace venerable, a place hidden in a high valley in Yunnan, far away from the destructive gaze of Beijing. Until recently, that is. The moment Lijiang was declared an official UNESCO World Heritage Site, the gold rush was on as thousands of Han Chinese made their way to this corner of Yunnan Province to earn their living as proprietors of tick-tacky souvenir emporiums. True, there were still Naxis in Lijiang attired in traditional blue aprons and sheepskin capes, and as they lured Chinese tourists into restaurants or encouraged them to join in on the traditional dancing in the village square, they seemed more like the hired help than the guardians of an ancient culture.

  Today, tourism was the business of Lijiang, and also, strangely, the building of doors. On every corner, men were sanding doors, finishing doors, scuffing doors. As far as I could tell, there was no apparent need for these doors. Every doorway had a door. So this was mysterious.

  After weaving our way through a twisting alley, Tam led us to a modest guesthouse with an appealing courtyard. I went ahead and coughed up the extra dollar for a room with a “river view,” and was pleased to discover that this river was, in fact, a six-inch stream.

  We thanked Tam for directing us to the guesthouse. But I was still curious about something. “Tam, could you do me a favor and ask the owner why, exactly, every man in Lijiang seems to be making doors?”

  Tam exchanged a few words with the owner, then turned back to us. “Some months ago, there was a very rich foreigner, he thinks an American, who paid a lot of money for an antique door. So now everyone is making antique doors.”

  If there’s a market niche anywhere, the Chinese will fill it. Do you need a very old door? No problem. The Chinese will make you a very old door. Good quality. Brand-new very old door. Special price for you.

  After dropping off our packs, we joined thousands of other zombie-like tourists crowding the lanes behind umbrella-toting tour guides and found our way to a pleasant restaurant overlooking one of the canals. We had invited Tam to come along. Jack, possibly forgetting that he was in China, bravely ordered the sausage.

  I turned to Tam. “So which part of the animal do you think they reserve for sausage around here?” I asked.

  “I don’t care,” Jack said. “As long as it’s not a dog.”

  “You don’t eat dog?” Tam inquired.

  “No dogs,” Jack confirmed.

  “You must try to be more open-minded,” Tam said.

  “He is open-minded,” I assured him. “He’s eating a sausage in China. For a laowai, this is a very brave, open-minded thing to do.”

  Afterward, Jack lit up a smoke, and because I had prepared for this just-in-case-I-felt-like-smoking moment, I reached for the stash of Nicorette I’d brought to China. “You don’t smoke?” I asked Tam, who alone among us did not seem to crave nicotine.

  “No,” Tam said. “In China today, smoking is for the blue-collar or the poor. In an office, no smoking. If you go outside to smoke, instead of doing your work, you are seen as very weak.”

  As we talked, we were soon joined by our waitress. She was, evidently, a genuine Naxi and not a Han woman dressed up like a Naxi, like many who had been lured to the money-making possibilities of Lijiang. She was friendly and affable, and now that we had a genuine Chinese person beside us, I asked Tam if he could translate.

  “In Naxi society, it is the women who are the bosses, yes?” I asked her.

  “Yes,” she said through Tam. “I am the boss. I tell the man what to do. If I want a man, he comes to me. If I want him to go away, he goes away.”

  I had read about this earlier. In Naxi society, there is what is called the azhu system, which as far as I understood is similar to the Friends With Benefits system we have at home. A woman is free to choose her lovers and discard them as she pleases. Men provide support for any children they might sire, but otherwise paternity is insignificant. The child belongs to the mother.

  “You know what she is, don’t you?” Jack said as we paid the bill. He grinned. “A Femi-Naxi.”

  “Good one. Very good.”

  Tam expressed his need for an afternoon nap, and so Jack and I wandered on through the enchanted streets of Lijiang, enchanted streets that could hardly be seen through the teeming crowds. Not so long ago, Lijiang was an idyllic hamlet with a unique culture, the sort of place I would have been very happy to spend weeks in, retracing the footsteps of Rock and Chatwin. But, as yet another consequence of China’s leap into the global economy, there are now 1.3 billion potential Chinese tourists. And when more than a billion people set their sights on something, invariably they crush it. There was little to do but give in, and soon we walked into a souvenir emporium specializing in leather, where Jack bought a cowboy hat. Every Chinese tourist in Lijiang wore one.

  Eventually, we stopped at a café that overlooked the whimsical black-tiled roofs of the old town. In the distance, Jade Dragon Mountain pierced the swirling clouds that floated near its top. We ordered something to drink and sat back to appreciate the easy-listening sounds of Queen—not “We Are the Champions” Queen, but obscure Queen. A fan’s Queen.

  Jack arched his eyebrow. “It’s not surprising, is it? You just knew that the Naxis would be into Queen.”

  “Actually, I thought tonight we’d go to
the Naxi Music Academy to listen to some traditional Naxi music.”

  “You know what that’s going to be, don’t you?”

  “No, what?”

  “Wagner.”

  It wasn’t Wagner, of course, though the musicians were probably of the same era. The Naxi Orchestra is the local equivalent of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in New Orleans. They’re not the spryest bunch, most are in their eighties, but they are very cool with their wispy mustaches and long, flowing beards. The band was led by a charismatic man who spoke English.

  “I am seventy-three, but look much younger. Happy spirit, but hard life. Twenty-one years in prison.”

  His name was Xuen Ke, one of the Three Eccentrics of Lijiang, according to the locals, together with the Dr. Ho, immortalized by Chatwin, and He Zhigang, an armless calligrapher who paints with his mouth in a park next to a portrait of Prince Charles. Xuen Ke continued to talk. And talk some more. And then some more. Mostly, he spoke in English, which I thought was interesting since the vast majority of the audience was Chinese, and they sat there, impatiently tapping their feet and generally looking really, really annoyed.

  “We hate that word—minority. We prefer tribe,” the bandleader said. And then he introduced the music. “And so the theme of this song is anger or hate.”

  It was a little ditty about Kublai Khan, sung by a chorus of women. It was a very moving song, very powerful, and when it finished, I, too, felt anger and hatred, and wished only to set out on the warpath. But Xuen Ke toned the atmosphere down by introducing a song played during the Yi Torch Festival. It consisted of a girl playing a small mouth instrument, and as I listened to these trippy, warbling sounds, I thought this must be what ancient techno sounded like. This was followed by a Tibetan man, a former hunter who kissed the amulet around his neck and sang, a cappella, a gripping song about a friend.