Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation or How He Became Comfortable Eating Live Squid

by J. Maarten Troost

  Still, I put them on and followed the spa attendant. This was China and things were done differently here. We entered a dimly lit room where there was a bed, a chair, and a dresser. The attendant left and a young woman entered, tall and lithe, dressed in white stretch pants and a T-shirt. We exchanged nihaos and I expressed an interest in the China Massage. Not the Thai or Korean Massage. The China Massage. This was China; thus, I should have the China Massage.

  I lay down on the bed. She began to squeeze my shoulders. I was not familiar with the China Massage, but so far it was not pleasant. She kneaded my shoulders like dough. I am not very doughy, however, and neither were the Chinese, so this was bewildering, this gnashing of muscle and skin. Perhaps, I thought, it’s one of those massages that are supposed to hurt but leave you feeling better in the end. I had a Japanese friend who gave massages like that, a karate-like massage that made you wince, but then afterward all the tension just seemed to have melted from your back. Maybe the China Massage was like that too. I’d hurt now but would feel better later.

  She indicated that I should roll over, so I did. She squeezed my shoulders. She smelled nice. She moved down to my legs. She rubbed my thighs. And then her hands began to go up my shorts. My short shorts. Um, I thought. Er. I don’t think so. I turned back over and pointed to my back. Men are not complex creatures. They are biological automatons.

  Her hands returned to wringing my shoulders. Suddenly, her tongue was in my ear.

  “Make love, make love,” she suggested.

  “No, no. No make love! China Massage,” I exclaimed, startled.

  “Make love, make love,” she breathed.

  “No, no, no. No make love. Massage. Massagee.”

  She reached for her cell phone. She typed 900.

  “No, no, no. I came for a massage. Relaxing China Massage.”

  She typed 800. “Make love,” she pleaded.

  “Er…look…no! There’s been a misunderstanding.”

  750. “Make love!”

  It was all very embarrassing. I left and went to the locker room to change. And then I realized I’d forgotten my glasses. Once I’d dressed, I walked back toward the room to retrieve them. I encountered her in the hallway. There was bowing, many xie xies. Just totally embarrassing.

  What an interesting day you’re having, I thought. You found the brothel. Well done.

  11

  In the morning, I pondered the man dangling from the fifth-floor ledge of my hotel. It was a very exciting place, this hotel in Hangzhou. Clearly, this was a hotel that accommodated a wide variety of needs. There was, predictably, a large crowd below. There were also firefighters, all watching this man. Would he jump?

  Typically in China, it’s the women who jump. China has the world’s highest suicide rate among women. And it’s no wonder, really. In rural China, when a woman has a baby girl she is said to have delivered a poyatou, a worthless servant girl, instead of a dapangxiaozi, or big fat boy. As a result of the One Child policy, there is enormous pressure in rural China to produce boys, and as a consequence girls are often aborted. Though gender-based abortions are illegal in China, ultra-sound scans are readily available and doctors routinely give coded signals to their patients, nodding if it’s a boy, shaking their head if it’s a girl. And if it is a girl, very often women will terminate their pregnancy. This is not good, of course. Decreeing that half of the population will never rise above mere servitude suggested a place that had more in common with the blight of Afghanistan than with the wealth of Norway.

  And there are unintended consequences to enforcing a One Child policy in a society that diminishes women. Today, there are more then 40 million men in China who will never find wives. That’s because the women just aren’t there. They were never born. Forty million men will thus never have children of their own, will never settle down in the sociocultural arrangement that has spanned millennia—that’s 40 million men who just aren’t getting any—and yet women are still treated so abysmally badly in rural China that every year another 150,000 women go on to kill themselves, most often by swallowing pesticides. It’s baffling, frankly. One would think that in a society with such an acute dearth of women, the remaining women would be swooned over, their every need catered to, that rural China would worship all things female, and yet, evidently, that is not the case.

  I turned my attention back to this man on the ledge. Perhaps he had taken it upon himself to do what he could for gender parity in China. But did I want see how this ended? I did not. And I had an island to reach.

  In contemplating my next move, I had set my sights on Putuoshan, a very small island in the East China Sea, about thirty miles off the coast of Ningbo. The bus to Ningbo was driven by a man with a fondness for swerving and blaring his horn, which could pretty well describe every driver in China. They are insane, these drivers; mad, crazy, dangerous. They drive angry, pissed off, aggressive. Cars, buses, trucks are just tools for them to say Fuck Off. That is how they drive in China: the Fuck Off school of driving. China has just three percent of the world’s drivers, but has a quarter of all people killed each year by cars. They don’t know how to drive in China. Really. Someone needs to teach them.

  We passed a scene of rugged hills that appeared to have been chopped in half by a giant’s sword, and more power plants nestled next to black, dusty slag heaps. We progressed past a mind-numbing array of factories, big and small, new and old, until near a cluster of umbrella factories we joined a traffic jam that had gathered behind a truck accident. It was a minor accident, a mere fender bender, but rather than move the trucks to the side of the road and clear the lane, the drivers stood in animated argument, and as we finally made our way past, our bus driver yelled at them too, then resumed the speeding, swerving, and horn-blaring that made driving in China such a lively, hair-raising, really awful experience.

  In Ningbo, I changed buses and bus stations. I can say with some confidence that the part of Ningbo located around the two bus stations is hideous. It was filthy. It was, of course, teeming with crowds. Cigarettes and phlegm hurtled through the air in every direction. The buses droned by in a blue haze of exhaust fumes. Soon, however, I was joined on my new bus by four older, very chirpy Chinese passengers. They joshed and laughed, and this pleased me, because so far Ningbo was a soul-crushing dump and it felt good to suddenly be in the midst of innocent frivolity. He was funny, that old man with the blue cap and the twinkling eyes. I only wished I knew what he was talking about. But he could tell a good story, that much I gleaned. We rolled out of the city on our bus of mirth. Even the bus driver was laughing. And suddenly, the landscape had changed. It was lush and green, or rather it was lush and green in the areas that hadn’t been paved over for factories and convention centers and office towers. BUILD A FIRST CLASS EXPORT PROCESSING ZONE, said a sign. And then there were more:

  CONSTRUCT AN ADVANCED

  MANUFACTURING SECTOR

  ADHERE TO SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES AND BUILD

  AN ADVANCED COASTAL ECONOMIC ZONE

  TIDING OVER DIFFERENCES TO

  ACHIEVE BRILLIANCE

  Strange, I thought. I couldn’t decide whether Maoism was truly good and dead in China, or whether these signs represented some mutant variation of it.

  The bus stopped near a pier and I joined this elderly quartet of jocularity on board the boat to Putuoshan. It was a jet boat, an odd boat to use for ferrying people over open water that rippled with the wakes of giant containerships. It was sleek and made of metal, and it floated low in the water with a flat bottom that suggested that we wouldn’t slice through the waves as much as fly over them. Unsurprisingly, the attendant on board handed out plastic barf bags, leading to another burst of mirthful joshing among the four travelers. Whatever meds they were on, I wanted some. On the shoreline, there was frenetic building: new factories, office towers, apartments, bridges. Huge containerships were being loaded with shoes, computers, televisions, sweaters, hats, mittens, toys that may or may not have lead, tables, chairs, and
everything else.

  We zoomed over the water, each ripple sending us into the sky. The water spray was brown. There were hundreds of fishing boats. On a television screen at the front of the boat, there was a short movie about Putuoshan, home of Guanyin, the bodhisattva of compassion, otherwise known as the Goddess of Mercy, and as the DVD turned to traditional music, the grandmas next to me sang along, which I found very endearing. These are fun people, I thought, these oldsters on the boat to Putuoshan. Soulful people. I wanted to hang out with them, have dinner. But I didn’t speak Chinese and they didn’t speak English. I had asked.

  It was dusk when we finally arrived on the island. It was raining lightly, so I put on my windbreaker, heaved my pack onto my back, and started walking. Immediately, I had good feelings for Putuoshan. As I walked up a rain-slicked road, the surroundings reminded me of a village in Japan. I have not been to a village in Japan, but had always imagined it might be like this: tidy, orderly houses with happy families cleaning fish, laying out clams in buckets of water, waving kindly to passing strangers.

  Now it was growing dark and it was beginning to rain harder. I found my target hotel, and as I didn’t have a reservation, I steeled my mind for the ensuing bargaining, determined to get as close as I possibly could to the mythical, fabled, and ever-elusive Chinese Price.

  “No standard room. Only executive suite,” said the assistant manager, who had been called over to deal with the laowai who didn’t plan ahead. Executive suite, I mulled. A bold opening move.

  “I have no need for an executive suite,” I explained. “Perhaps you have me confused with Zhengrong Shi,” I said, referring to the richest man in China, who had made billions in solar power. “I am only a traveler. I simply need a roof over my head.”

  A standard room could be arranged, possibly. It would be trouble, but perhaps arrangements could be made, solutions found. Another assistant manager had to be called. And now the bargaining began in earnest. The calculator was brought out. We parried. Spectators formed around us.

  “Would you accept this price?” I offered.

  No, no, no, they said. This was a three-star hotel. See—look. There are our three stars. Your price is a two-star price.

  “But I have stayed in official, certified by the People’s Republic of China, four-star hotels for less than that price.”

  The crowd murmured. Who was this mysterious laowai?

  I had stayed at only one four-star hotel, the Grand Hyatt in the Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai, and as I recalled the grim tally of my bill, I can say quite confidently that it wasn’t a two-star price. But in China, white lies are perfectly acceptable in the game of bargaining.

  Would I then accept this price? It is far lower than the standard rate, as you can see.

  “Thank you for working with me. I am hopeful that we can come to a satisfying resolution. But that price? That is the price for a rich man. I am not a rich man. I am just a traveler. I am here to learn about China. I wish to understand China. I have a deep respect for Chinese culture.”

  The audience nodded approvingly, and this pleased me, because when haggling in China, it’s important to have the crowd with you. By now, the manager had come out herself. She had taken control of the calculator.

  “Will you accept this price?” I said, tapping in a number.

  “I will have to sleep in the streets for the remainder of my trip, but this is the best I can do.”

  She could not. No one had ever stayed in this hotel for that price.

  “I am very sorry,” I said. “I shall try the next hotel. Thank you for your time.”

  And I turned, and I made my way through the spectators, who had swelled five deep, and walked for the exit, and as I opened the door, I suddenly found my arm yanked by the manager. Yes, okay, she said.

  “Xie xie,” I said, feeling exultant.

  After depositing my bag, I made my way down a hallway, past a sign on a door that informed me that just behind resided the curiously named Department of S and M, and wandered into the hotel restaurant. As usual, I was the solitary diner at a table for twelve. All restaurants in China have tables for twelve. Very often, they only have tables for twelve, and this was such a restaurant. My table was in the center of the room and every other table was crowded with Buddhist monks in saffron robes. There were female monks too, I noticed, though somewhat belatedly, since every monk, the women included, had shaved their heads. They had come here because Putuoshan is considered holy. Or perhaps they lived on the island; of the three thousand people inhabiting Putuoshan, I had read that one thousand of them are monks.

  The menu was in Chinese only. There were no translations, no pictures, and so I indicated to the waitress that I was amenable to anything she suggested. Perhaps seafood. Yes, sea-food. I was on an island and I desired to dine upon the bounty of the sea. Whereupon she returned with Whole Jellyfish Head. Intriguing, I thought. I had not known that jellyfish had a part of their being that could discernibly be called a head. The victuals on my plate looked like diseased muscle tissue and managed to be both crispy and gelatinous at the same time.

  Next there was shrimp, salty and deep-fried. And a platter of spinach. It was, as I had feared, far too much food. Restaurants in China, as the tables suggest, are not meant to be enjoyed alone. Dining out is a group activity and servings are sized accordingly. As I picked at my Whole Jellyfish, the waitress brought the next course, a large glass bowl capped by a plate. She set it before me. She removed the plate. Out leapt a squid. And then another. And another. There were three squids flopping about before me. The waitress quickly returned the plate to its place atop the bowl and decorously removed the rogue squid from the table.

  Well, I thought. Well, well, well. And what am I to do with a bowl of live squid? CLANK CLANK went the plate, as squid after squid made sad, desperate attempts to flee. I slouched down to peer at them through the bowl. It was like having my own personal aquarium. There were a dozen or so, swimming and flopping, bewildered to find themselves in a bowl on a table in a restaurant. They looked like the peculiar offspring of a shrimp mated with an octopus. I flagged down the waitress and asked her to help me out here. What is it that I was meant to do? How, exactly, does one eat live squid with chopsticks? She indicated that I was to eat them by hand. I simply had to rip the head off the squid, tear its shell off, dip it into a vinegar-y sauce, and then enjoy this fine example of fresh seafood from Putuoshan.

  “Ah…” I said. “Xie xie.”

  I pondered my squid. Could I do this? Could I, in a room of Buddhist monks who presumably were vegetarian, murder a squid? Could I take life away with the mere snap of a finger? Would it completely mess up my karma for the rest of my days? Was I a squid murderer?

  Yes, I was.

  In the years to come, tales would be told in the squid community of the epic carnage that occurred one dark and stormy night in a restaurant on an island in the East China Sea. Among the squid, it was said that this monster, this laowai from the West, found it difficult, initially, to eat them. His first victim, little Jimmy, squirmed out of his grasp and leapt back into the bowl, and there he remained for a long while as the laowai considered his course. But determination overtook him, and after little Jimmy had been disposed of—the cruel decapitation, the torturous peeling of skin, the body dipped in vinegar—the remaining squid were quickly subjected to a gluttonous blood-lust. The laowai decided that he liked his squid fresh, and methodically, efficiently, mechanically, he emptied the bowl, until finally nothing remained but a pile of squid heads with wet, black eyes staring blankly up at him. He then sat there contentedly picking his teeth with a toothpick, satisfied to have crossed this culinary Rubicon.

  The new day began with sheets of rain and tempestuous winds. A squall had descended upon us. But this was fine. I like weather. I am intrigued by weather. Across the narrow road from my hotel were a few small shops where I bought an umbrella and an orange plastic anti-rain sheet that I draped over myself.

  I had come t
o Putuoshan because, even after the beaches of Qingdao, I had been overcome by a serious case of urban fatigue and an island somewhere off the Yangtze delta in the East China Sea had seemed like an excellent cure. Putuoshan is a very small island; I could walk from end to end in an hour or two. But it is not an island for speed walking. It is an island for lingering. There are pagodas and gardens and warrens of alleys where shops sell dried fish and the joss sticks, or incense, that burn inside every temple. And there is greenery. Eighty percent of the island is forested, a verdant tangle composed of 1,800 ancient trees, including camphor trees, which are special, though I’m not entirely sure why.

  It is said that in the year A.D. 916 a very naughty Japanese monk sought to steal a statue of Guanyin, the bodhisattva of compassion, from the Chinese mainland and abscond with it back to Japan. It’s endless, really, the mischief of the Japanese in China. Guanyin, however, did not wish to go to Japan. And so when storms terrorized the young monk as he sailed back home, she appeared to him in a dream and informed him that if he would just leave the statue on Putuoshan he might live to see another day. Otherwise, it was Davy Jones’s locker for him.

  Putuoshan thus became an important sight for those of the Buddhist persuasion, and its most prominent landmark is a hundred-foot golden statue of Guanyin built in 1998 that overlooks the harbor. Indeed, the summit of Mt. Putuoshan, a small hill really, is considered to be one of the four sacred mountains in Buddhism (not to be confused with the five sacred mountains of Taoism, such as Tai Shan). Over the years, the island acquired a strong monastic tradition, and there are several prominent temples such as the Puji Temple, which is where I soon found myself, drenched despite the anti-rain gear. Inside was a large golden Buddha. They are the friendliest-looking deities I know of, Buddhas—there is just something about the big potbelly that encourages levity. You cannot imagine them smiting an idolater with a lightning bolt. Inside, monks and worshipers lit joss sticks and did their devotions. Two mothers stood nearby, teaching their slit-pants-wearing youngsters how to bow and pray.