He was young, cocky and full of himself. He boarded the minibus and sat across the aisle from me the whole way back, his bloody kill carelessly thrown on the floor beneath his seat. Worse still, he wanted to learn some English.
He shouted to Chou: ‘Hey driver. Ask the Big Nose foreigner, how do I ask my girlfriend to marry me?’
‘He wants you to tell him how to propose in English,’ translated Chou.
‘Oh that’s easy,’ I said. ‘Happy to help.’
Slowly and clearly, so that he would have no trouble remembering this one sentence for the rest of his miserable life, I enunciated to the hunter, ‘I . . . am . . . an . . . arse . . . hole.’
As we drove back through the mountains, the hunter repeated to himself cheerfully, over and over, ‘I am an arse-hole . . . I am an arse-hole . . .’
Errol was as dead as a doornail, but his beak hung open in a wry smile.
SEVENTEEN
THAT NIGHT I WAS ON A BUS TO RUIJIN, FOLLOWING MY ROUTE south as fast as possible. Ruijin was the first established centre of Chinese Communist power in the late 1920s, when Mao and his followers fled there from Chiang Kai-shek, taking advantage of its isolated position amidst the rugged mountains bordering Jiangxi and Fujian provinces. It was also one of the recognised starting points of the Long March in 1934, and wasn’t far from Yudu, where Mao An Hong had last been seen.
The headlights lit the way in front for kilometre after kilometre, until sleep mercifully overcame me for the rest of the journey. The next I remember I was being shaken in the dark by someone and then shooed out onto a wide street already busy with men pulling large wooden handcarts laden with fresh vegetables. It was still hours before dawn.
Somewhere out there was an ailing journalist, or a dead one. Either way, I had to find a bed first of all. As usual there were several cheap ones in the vicinity of the bus station. I booked into the nearest one, paid in advance and stowed the few things I was carrying in the single room.
My chief concern was getting to a phone as soon as possible. Ruijin wasn’t a big place, but it was a town nonetheless; so it had a central post office with private phone booths, from which I could call the number I’d been given. Unfortunately the person who picked up the phone at the other end couldn’t make sense of my Chinese, or didn’t want to, and kept hanging up. Stuck to the wall in my booth were various notices in Chinese, including one that advertised a private English-language school. I rang that number and spoke to a young-sounding girl by the name of Xu Qing, who was almost breathless in her excitement at having a native English speaker on the phone.
‘We, er, I, um, don’t have opportunity like this to be speaking with you,’ she said sweetly.
We arranged to meet at midday on a local bridge spanning the Mianshui River, just a short distance from the central markets. When I arrived it was teeming with teenagers in smart school uniforms cycling past on old Chinese bikes, in a hurry to get home for lunch. One of them turned out to be Xu Qing.
She was 17 and in her last year of school, studying like mad to get the necessary grades for a shot at one of the better universities. The rest of her life hinged upon this success, she said. Her parents had invested every last yuan in her future. To fail would be to fail them as well.
‘No pressure then,’ I said jokingly, and then regretted it when this clearly struck a nerve. There was every bit of pressure, she replied. Nothing in her whole short life mattered more than getting those A grades later in the year.
‘So,’ I said, ‘are you confident?’
‘Very,’ she smiled, before adding, ‘except for English.’
‘Hey, you’re good,’ I protested. But she shook her head and told me there were many who were better at conversation. That’s why she was teaching English in her spare time, in order to practise what she most needed to know. It wasn’t ideal though. Her students were often either very young children or businessmen with limited linguistic skills.
‘So I am very happy to meet you,’ she said, jumping on the spot a little.
As we walked through the markets, I explained what I needed, then showed her the name and number on the paper.
‘Wang Qiushe,’ she read, before reeling off the phone number. ‘He is a journalist?’
‘Is or was, I’m not sure.’
In a few minutes we were back at the post office and in the same phone booth as before. I pointed out her homemade sign amongst the others, then watched as she quickly scanned these before looking away embarrassed. These other signs were obviously advertising an entirely different service.
‘Prostitutes,’ she said a little coyly. ‘I . . .’
I interrupted her, suddenly realising she might think I wanted more from her than help finding the journalist.
‘Let’s just speak to Wang,’ I said apologetically.
She immediately brightened up and dialled the number. What followed was a long conversation in which Xu Qing sounded quite forceful, and yet polite, as though she were speaking with someone beneath her in life’s social ranking. Midway through she took out a pen and paper from her schoolbag and made some rough notes. There followed a lot of nodding and sounds of agreement before the phone was put back on its cradle.
Xu Qing at her school, Ruijin
‘So,’ she said, mentally arranging the facts. ‘Wang Qiushe is in Ruijin Hospital, but he has cancer of the . . .’ She felt her neck with her fingers.
‘Throat?’
‘Yes, the throat — and cannot speak. His mother has given us permission to visit him though. She will organise it with the hospital for noon tomorrow.’
‘You did all that with one call? You’re incredible, Xu Qing.’
‘I told her you were an important Western journalist from a large international news organisation,’ she said, rather guiltily.
‘Which one?’
‘Oh. Just the BBC.’
Somewhat ironically, it wasn’t the first time I had ended up using the BBC as a cover. In Afghanistan, a group of Hezbollah had incorrectly assumed the same and had therefore been willing to smuggle me across the border from Iran. When I’d found out their mistake, it had been too late to tell them and so I’d just gone along with it.
‘So, what now?’ I asked.
‘I’m late for class, but I will meet you at the bridge tomorrow. It’s a holiday, so no school.’
With that, she smiled and ran out the post office door trailing her schoolbag. But before going much further, she stopped and looked back.
‘Would you like to come with me?’
It took me all of two seconds to decide and say yes.
Xu Qing’s school was in a built-up area surrounded by high walls and security guards who checked my shoulder bag before letting me through. Her next class was Chemistry and the room was upstairs along an exterior walkway. We passed other classrooms where students had their heads down on their tables, sleeping.
‘Xu Qing,’ I called out, as we half walked, half ran past her startled schoolmates on the walkway. ‘You’re bound to do better in your grades than these guys, they’re not even awake in class!’
‘Silly. Class hasn’t started yet. They’re just napping like cats.’
She then described a school day that began at seven in the morning, went through to midday, started again at 2 p.m. and ran until 5 p.m. then resumed after dinner for further study from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. My kids had it easy by comparison, I told her.
‘Really?’ she said. ‘What times do they study?’
‘From 9 a.m. until 3 p.m., with an hour off for lunch.’
She laughed. ‘In a month when the exams are closer, that’s our normal weekend.’
My arrival in Chemistry unwittingly caused a chain reaction. Sleepy heads popped up from their resting places one after the other, as the class took note of Xu Qing’s new friend. Soon the female teacher was having a hard time getting everyone seated. I apologised for arriving unannounced and offered to leave at once, but she insisted I stay. Indeed she let me take over
half her class time with a not-so-brief rundown on where I was from and what I was doing in China — and at Ruijin State High School. When it came to fielding a question about Chemistry, however, I gave up and ruefully took a seat at the back to listen until the bell went.
It was fascinating to watch these typical Chinese students work with such determination to succeed. But I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of person would develop from such a gruelling routine and potentially suffocating parental expectations. Then again, how would my children hope to compete on the job market if they were to come across a horde of workaholic, highly motivated Chinese? As always, when China sets its mind to doing something, it is done on a grand scale, which in turn gives it enormous momentum. On the other hand, was our quieter, more easygoing way of doing things going to produce happier, more well-rounded individuals? In my mind I flicked through the stories I’d read of Asian students finding the pressure too much and taking their lives. In China, suicide is the fifth leading cause of death, and the leading one amongst the young. The country’s huge population means the statistics always seem overblown but, nonetheless, an estimated 287,000 people kill themselves annually — one every two minutes. Ten times that number are unsuccessful attempts. That puts China near the top of the world’s national suicide rate table.
It’s all very well to try to produce armies of talented teenagers, but at what cost? And of course, whereas in the West youngsters usually have brothers and sisters to lean on as well as their parents, kids like Xu Qing are usually only children, part of the ‘Little Emperor’ generation created by China’s ‘one-child’ rule. Moreover, their mothers and fathers work so slavishly to bring in the money needed to pay for the best education that they are not always available to their children. Grandparents are often entrusted with the role of counsellor, but there is no question on which an 80-year-old can offer any wise words that would be relevant to a teen.
Later, after school was finished for the week and night had fallen, Xu Qing and a few of her classmates, still in their navy blue and white-shirt uniforms, took me to a KFC for dinner. The group included Dong, who looked like an Asian popstar in his mirror shades, plus Huang and Chang, two pretty girls. It was Dong’s birthday and we sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to him in the time-honoured tune. I asked if this was normal and Chang said ‘Of course’, but she didn’t know where or how the tune had originated. I suggested they Google it and no one had heard of that name either. China, it seemed, had its own state-controlled search engine, called Baidu. I’d never heard of that and made a mental note to look it up when I got home.
‘So what do you guys do in your spare time?’ I asked.
They looked at each other, seeing who was going to go first.
‘Computer games,’ proffered Dong eventually. He was definitely the coolest of the group.
‘Computer games also,’ said Chang, who was clearly trying to impress Dong.
Huang chipped in enthusiastically as well: ‘Me too.’
Chang dropped her jaw in disgust, as if to say ‘Since when?’, and Dong did his best not to notice.
Xu Qing stayed well out of it. She had no time for adolescent games. She was all business.
‘If I can get into a big university, I’d like to be a writer too,’ she said, gesturing towards me.
‘What would you write?’
‘Romantic fiction.’
Huang put her hand to her mouth to hide a smirk. Xu Qing gave her a withering sideways glare and hit back immediately:
‘About a girl who loves a boy, who loves someone else.’
She looked pointedly at Dong, then at Huang.
Ouch, I thought. Xu Qing wasn’t messing around. I noticed Chang was the one smiling now, although the ‘boy’ in question was still admiring his reflection in the glass of the restaurant.
Huang got up and went to the bathroom in a huff, while Chang did her best to get Dong’s attention. It was going to be a challenge. Clearly Dong fancied Dong more than anyone else.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘good luck with that. It’s not an easy job. Are there many established romance authors already in China?’
‘Zhang Xiao San. I like her books. The women in her stories are strong and independent. They want equality in love,’ she announced in a voice raised a notch above its normal sweet tone.
‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’
Xu Qing glanced in Dong’s direction and, so that the others couldn’t hear, leant forward across the table, moving her plate of chicken nuggets to one side with the back of her hand.
‘I don’t like boys,’ she whispered matter-of-factly. ‘When I am ready, I will take a man.’
She pushed the plate in my direction.
‘Nugget?’ she asked.
Xu Qing was becoming a force to be reckoned with. But then Chinese women are often in the driving seat when it comes to relationships, and more besides. If Mao’s Communism had achieved anything for women in the twenty-first century, it had helped them break free of the shackles of chauvinism. Indeed, before Mao, women were taught obedience to men and were not allowed to occupy prominent positions in community or political groups. Following the Revolution, however, all that changed, and suddenly women’s groups sprang up to denounce the old thinking and carve out a new place alongside their male counterparts, rather than beneath them.
Slightly fortuitously, a refreshed Huang returned just then and the group decided to go and hang out by the local fountain, which had been decorated with colourful underwater lights for the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. This is a time when families get together and, as a result, the town was busy with parents fussing over their only children. I grinned at one such kid and she promptly started screaming in terror.
What was she seeing? A Western devil, a thing of nightmares to come? Was I stirring up trouble with my very presence?
‘I think it’s time I went,’ I proposed.
‘You’re trouble,’ Xu Qing smiled, with eyes that twinkled just a little too mischievously.
We retreated and found a quiet place to sit and talk. Dong had suddenly developed an interest in things other than his perfectly coiffed image, and started up a conversation about cars. He wanted to know if I had seen the new Lamborghini, a car that could do 0–100 kilometres per hour in 3.4 seconds, he said. The girls rolled their eyes, but he wasn’t about to give up.
‘One day I will drive across China in one,’ he boasted, adjusting his sunglasses so that they perched on the end of his nose before coolly pushing them back again with his middle finger. I told him he might need a Land Rover rather than an Italian sportscar, as beyond Gansu province — a halfway point of sorts for his intrepid journey — there were few main roads as such. The idea that the rest of China might not be as civilised as the part he lived in perplexed him greatly. He’d never been outside Ruijin before.
‘You’ve been there?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Qinghai, Gansu, Xinjiang. In fact you might find even the Land Rover a bit useless in the Taklimakan Desert. Camels are better there.’
The ridiculous thought of Dong on a camel made the girls squeal with delight. For a moment his veneer of sophistication weakened, but then his confidence returned anew when I said he could be something of a Lawrence of Arabia figure, swathed in white, flowing robes and with a curved sword in his belt.
He nodded in a suave manner as he smiled.
‘I like,’ he said finally. ‘Have you ridden a camel?’
‘A long time ago,’ I replied. ‘They’re uncomfortable, noisy, disgusting animals that will spit in your face if you’re not careful, but there is no better beast of burden for crossing the sandy wastelands of western China. Cheaper than a Lamborghini too.’
The idea of spitting camels seemed to spoil Dong’s romantic notion of travel and the conversation then took an off-road detour of its own as the girls started to ask about my life — who was I married to, for example.
‘Libby is a classical pianist and music teacher,’ I sa
id.
This really impressed them, to the point that they huddled in closer to hear more. I described her lovely blue eyes and blonde hair and how I was the luckiest man alive to be with someone as beautiful as she.
‘When she plays, people passing in the street sometimes stop outside our house to listen.’
The girls thought this was amazing, a world away from their own lives, as indeed it was. Looking around at the multitude of people who packed the small square, and at the eager faces of Xu Qing and her friends, I did feel a little homesick. I’d come so far and travelled so many thousands of kilometres over such a long time, and part of me yearned to be done with this madness, this insanely ambitious journey. Compared to my quest, the idea of Dong crossing China in a Lamborghini didn’t seem so far-fetched after all.
Nevertheless, things were looking up. I was feeling more than optimistic.
‘You know what?’ I said to Dong.
‘What?’
‘Go get your Lamborghini. Start driving west and don’t look back.’
Dong rose theatrically to his feet and punched the air.
‘Yeah!’ he proclaimed. ‘The Asian Lawrence of Arabia.’
Huang and Chang swooned with unbridled teenage delight.
EIGHTEEN
WARD THREE OF THE RUIJIN PEOPLE’S HOSPITAL WAS THRONGING with orderlies in blue smocks and well-dressed visitors carrying Moon cakes. Tethered to a mobile intravenous drip, a bare-chested geriatric patient looked on, with a fag in his mouth.
I found the room we were looking for and opened the door quietly. Inside were six beds; all were empty save for one. By the window lay our journalist, seemingly dozing, with a small blackboard on his chest on which he’d been writing. His neck was swathed in bandages and he looked awful. For a moment I thought we should leave him be, but Xu Qing tugged at his pyjama sleeve and he came to with a start.
Wang Qiushe had aged considerably and looked quite different from the photograph I had seen. His cheekbones protruded from his face and his eyes had burrowed into their sockets, as if they were trying to hide. Despite his ill health, however, he still managed to smile and greet us with a nod of his head, as if we’d just popped by his house for a glass of tea. I carried two wooden chairs over and placed one on either side of his bed. Xu Qing made the introductions and explained why we were there, based on the detailed briefing I had given her, and while she spoke his eyes looked me up and down.
A Boy of China Page 18
