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

  “That was a long flight,” Jack said, looking around and stepping into the arrivals hall. “And I need a cigarette.”

  Political operative is one of the last professions in America where it is acceptable to smoke. Writing is possibly the other. Except in California. People there feel sorry for heroin addicts but save their loathing for smokers. With the kids I’d had to quit anyway, and once I’d convinced myself that it was okay to chew Nicorette for three years, quitting became easy.

  “I’m still doped up from the vaccines,” Jack noted.

  “I’ll bet. You made sure to get your shot for elephantitis, right?”

  “Elephantitis? You didn’t say anything about elephantitis.”

  “Did I forget that? Where we’re going, elephantitis is as prevalent as the common cold. Most men carry their balls in a wheelbarrow.”

  “Shut up. You did not say anything about elephantitis.”

  “I thought I did. But there’s nothing that can be done about it now. Just try not to…well, never mind.”

  “What? Try not to what?”

  “Breathe. It’s an airborne virus. Very contagious. But you know what? Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m starting to regret this trip already.”

  After a week or so, I suddenly found myself eager to return to the mainland. While Hong Kong had been a welcome respite, it was but an interlude to my larger trip.

  “This feels like Sydney or San Francisco,” Jack had noted earlier as we walked past the bars in Lan Kwaifung—the pub district—where Westerners in suits and rugby shirts downed their pints.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “Isn’t it great?”

  “I was hoping for something…different.”

  “Different is over there,” I said, pointing to the north and the Chinese border. “Very different. But first I thought we’d have a look at Macau.”

  “And what are we going to do in Macau?” Jack asked.

  “We’re going to gamble.”

  “Perfect. I’m unemployed. I’m in China. It only makes sense.”

  A day trip from Hong Kong to Macau will cost you three pages on your passport, all without leaving the country. At the ferry terminal in Kowloon, it’s stamp stamp stamp as you go through Customs, Immigration, and Passport Control. They are one country, China, Hong Kong, and Macau, a renowned den of vice on the western side of the Pearl River delta. But they’re not really.

  I had looked at my map, discovered that Macau lay sixty miles away, and yet my guidebook assured me that it was a mere hour away by boat. I wondered how, exactly, we were going to get there in an hour. By jet hydrofoil, it turned out. It was Stanley Ho, who for decades controlled the gambling monopoly in Macau, who had brought the hydrofoils, reducing a five-hour journey to just one. Four times married with seventeen children, Stanley Ho was the man-about-town in Macau. Before his monopoly was broken, his gambling earnings had accounted for 70 percent of the city’s income.

  As we received our ferry tickets, I discovered that Jack, inexplicably, had been upgraded to the deluxe deck upstairs.

  “How does this always happen to you?” I asked. “Is it because you are a Republican, a defender of privilege, and you are thus accorded deference and upgrades to Deluxe?”

  “Maybe they think I’m a high roller and they’re putting me in the whale section. Or they could tell that I was unemployed and they felt sorry for me.”

  We roared through the haze of Victoria Harbor, past cargo ships of every variation, past fishing boats rolling in the swell, past the last Chinese junk to remain floating in Hong Kong, then curved around the headlands of Lantau and flew past the Pearl River Delta and across the open waters of the South China Sea. It did not seem possible that one could travel so fast over water. Upon arriving in Macau, we again stood in long lines waiting to go through Passport Control.

  “You’re sure we’re still in the same country?” Jack asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe they should let the people here know.”

  Outside the ferry terminal, we were greeted by the familiar fellows offering tours, gypsy cabs, or currency exchange services at no cost to you. Absolutely free.

  “So where to now?” Jack asked.

  “The old town,” I said as we hopped into a taxi.

  Once the oldest European colony in China, Macau had been administered by Portugal until 1999 but was in reality ruled by the triads such as 14k and Soi Fung. Like the mafia, triads earned their bread through money laundering, drugs, extortion, and contract murders—in other words, the usual mob fare. Except the triads are known, even among the global gangster community, as being exceptionally violent. Car bombs were a staple of life in Macau during much of the 1990s. Indeed, the violence had escalated to such a degree that the police chief referred to the mobsters as “professional killers who don’t miss their targets.” This was actually meant to entice tourists; mobsters never miss. Trust us. So come to Macau. Have a good time.

  In the old town, I felt like I could be anywhere in the colonial world of the tropics. There were stately mansions lining the narrow, curving streets and inviting porticos through which we walked past shops specializing in spices. The city radiates nostalgia. It’s an urban ode to the days when fleets from the Mediterranean ruled the world. Portuguese is still a living language in Macau, and many of its inhabitants are mixed race, something rarely seen elsewhere in China. We headed for the Protestant Cemetery, a serene enclave with chirping parrots. I am not a cemetery man myself. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that I stopped holding my breath whenever I drove past one. But if I had to choose a favorite cemetery it would be the Protestant Cemetery in Macau. This is because the finest writer in the English language is Patrick O’Brian, the author of Master and Commander and the nineteen books that followed chronicling the naval adventures of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin during the Napoleonic Era. Those books are like crack for me, and whenever I read them—and I have read them thrice—I depart this world for the HMS Surprise and a world of intrigue and adventure. Indeed, I am such a fan that my youngest son’s middle name is Aubrey. It’s a great thing being a parent, to have these little people to mold. They are canvases upon which to bestow your own whims and ambitions. You carry the name of Jack Aubrey, Post-Captain of the HMS Surprise, I tell my one-year-old. Do you think Jack Aubrey refused his peas and scorned his applesauce?

  In the spirit of O’Brian, the cemetery held the remains of many sailors who had succumbed to the trials and tribulations of the colonial era, and their headstones were suitably evocative.

  The Fort is reached

  The sails are furled

  Life’s voyage now is over

  By faith his bright chart

  He has reached that world

  Where storms are felt no more

  Erected as a token of respect by his messmates

  It could have been penned by Jack Aubrey himself.

  We then walked past the remains of the Church of St. Paul, which had been constructed in 1602 only to burn down more than 200 years later, leaving behind a haunting baroque facade, and wandered down cobblestone streets full of antiques shops to the Church of St. Dominic, where Jack popped in for a prayer, because he was now a Papist.

  “You ready now?” I asked when he emerged.

  “Hey, I’m a Catholic. It’s bingo that keeps the Vatican afloat.”

  Lovely as Macau is, we had come to gamble, to toy with financial ruin. I had only gambled twice in my life. Once, when I was stuck in Reno due to a snowstorm that had closed the road over the Sierras, where I had intended to ski, I had stayed up the entire night and better part of a day playing blackjack. And I’d won, quite possibly because I was (if my children are reading this, proceed to next page) (I mean it, Lukas) profoundly stoned at the time. A decade later, flush with our savings for a down payment on our home, I’d stopped in Las Vegas after driving cross-country. This time I lost. And I kept losing, possibly because I was sober as a judge, until finally I had to stammer
back from the table with the grim realization that sometimes you don’t win it back, and the best thing to do, the only thing to do, is to walk away. I’d decided that the neurons buzzing in my head were way too fond of gambling, so I never did it again. Until now.

  More than 25 million people a year come to Macau to gamble, most on day trips from Hong Kong or the mainland. Formerly, when Stanley Ho held his monopoly, gambling took place in smoky, dingy dens of vice. It was the anti-Vegas. But today, the plethora of new casinos are betting that the gamblers in China will want what those in Las Vegas do. Near the ferry terminal on the Cotai Strip, there were a half-dozen new theme-park casinos under construction. Everyone was there, Shangri-la, Sheraton, InterContinental, Raffles, St. Regis, all building casino hotels with swanky nightclubs and swanky stores that will happily take your winnings. This despite the fact that the vast majority of Chinese gamblers are day-trippers from Hong Kong or the mainland who rarely stay longer than a day. Still, the average table in Macau earns more than three times what a table in Vegas does, and this in a country where the average monthly wage is $150. Indeed, even now Macau already earns more in gambling revenue than Las Vegas.

  We walked to the Wynn Macau, a top-end resort in the Vegas style with a golden facade and dancing fountains built by the famed casino magnate Steve Wynn. Frankly, I wasn’t convinced that the Chinese were yearning for a Vegas-type experience. Not yet. Gambling is technically illegal in mainland China, so when the Chinese come to Macau they come with a mission. Gambling is the be-all and end-all of the trip, and I thought it highly unlikely, indeed deeply un-Chinese, that someone would take their winnings and blow it on overpriced jewelry and furs, rather than ply it into the family business back on the mainland. Nevertheless, there were crowds of gamblers swarming around the casino floor. There was a strange vibe among the tables, something dark and menacing. Perhaps it was the metal detectors and the mandatory bag check and the plethora of security guards that led me to expect an imminent raid by some triad displeased by their new competition for gamblers. Most Chinese play baccarat, and we stood alongside a table, quietly amazed to see a man in peasant garb pull out a fat wad of 100-yuan notes.

  Jack’s game of choice was roulette, so we set off to find a table.

  “Isn’t that the game with the worst odds?” I asked him.

  “Yes, but when you win, you win big.”

  “I think this reveals something about your character.”

  “All or nothing, baby.”

  We finally found a roulette table, and as Jack laid his bets he explained the game to me.

  “I didn’t understand any of that,” I said. “All I see is that you’ve just lost about $100 in a fraction of a minute.”

  “Yeah, well…but when you win, you win big.”

  Jack played a few more rounds, and just as the carnage was getting interesting, we decided that now might be a good time to head to the lounge, drink an overpriced Coke, and observe the action on the floor. I had, of course, witnessed hundreds of people in a casino before, mindlessly dropping coins into slot machines. They don’t play for money in America. It’s true. The big payout is incidental to most gamblers. It’s the numbness they’re after. Not so in China. No one had that look of glazed stupor often found in American casinos. The Chinese were nothing if not engaged over the baccarat tables. They yelled. They smoked. They bet. But no one seemed to be having any fun. And this is why I suspected that a Macau reborn as the Las Vegas of Asia wouldn’t quite work. The expensive nightclubs would fail. The Piaget watches would remain unsold. Because gambling isn’t fun in China. It’s business, and no one takes business more seriously than the Chinese.

  “You know,” Jack noted, “this place kind of creeps me out.”

  “Agreed. Let’s get out of here.”

  We moved on to the Sands, one of the first new casinos to open after the monopoly was busted. It had more of a Reno feel; the flash was ersatz.

  “I’m getting a better vibe here,” I said. “I think I’m more of a Reno kind of guy.”

  “Not sure I’d admit to that if I were you.”

  I found a blackjack table with a low minimum bet, while Jack wandered off in search of another roulette table. Soon, I was in the zone, that thoughtless place, reacting to numbers, calculating odds, playing systematically, and resisting those moments when I get a really good feeling that now would be an excellent time to throw it all in. A couple of hours later, Jack appeared.

  “How’d you do?” he asked.

  “I’m up…let’s see, about 4,000 Hong Kong dollars. You?”

  “I won a couple of hundred bucks.”

  “Let’s do something really insane and quit while we’re both ahead,” I suggested. “The likelihood of both of us being ahead has got to be so infinitesimally small that we best run.”

  With an hour to kill before the ferry returned us to Hong Kong, we settled in a lounge to watch a cabaret show with dancers in sparkles and spandex and cowboy hats.

  “See?” Jack said, watching the dancers. “Everyone still wants to be just like us. Even the Chinese.”

  It was time to take Jack to see the real China.

  13

  It was a swift transition. One moment we were in Kowloon discussing real estate with a taxi driver. “Those buildings there. Eighteen thousand dollars for one square foot. Too much money. In Hong Kong, no money, no honey.” So true. And then, after a perfunctory stroll through Immigration in the sleek and modern Kowloon train station, we boarded a train that whisked us through Hong Kong’s Northern Territories, a hilly and wooded expanse speckled with sudden bursts of high-rises, and suddenly we found ourselves in the bustling border city of Shenzhen.

  A quarter century ago, Shenzhen had been little more than an anonymous fishing village. In the 1980s, however, Shenzhen became the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, China’s first foray into the exciting world of capitalism. Comrades turned into entrepreneurs, communes became factories, and tirades against the imperialists of the West gave way to trade with the world. In 1992, Deng Xiaoping, during his tour of southern China, is said to have proclaimed, “To get rich is glorious.” It’s quite likely Deng Xiaoping’s most famous quip, and one can understand why. It’s not, typically, the sort of thing often heard spoken by Communists. There’s a disconnect between Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains! and To get rich is glorious. And yet no one actually heard him say it. No one. There is no record anywhere of Deng Xiaoping expressing these words. Nevertheless, Deng Xiaoping never countered the widespread belief that he’d uttered this paean to the veneration of wealth, and the expression—To get rich is glorious—became a whipsaw moment in China. To get rich was now desirable. It was permitted, encouraged. It had been officially sanctioned by the head honcho of the Chinese Communist Party. And what had started as a tepid stream toward capitalism became the tsunami that continues to this day. Except, of course, they don’t call it capitalism in China. It’s called Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. To which the Chinese say, Who cares what it’s called? I can be rich, gloriously rich.

  While Shenzhen is indeed richer than it was before—far richer—it is still, frankly, a dump. True, from the train platform we could see a skyline of cranes and glittering skyscrapers, but everything else built over the past twenty years had already become decrepit and forlorn. The Chinese are said to venerate the old. Perhaps this is true when speaking of people, but it doesn’t apply to buildings. Still, there were millions of people now occupying these apartments. Most were women attracted to the region for the factory jobs, but more than a few had come to serve as girlfriends, professional and otherwise, to the wealthy businessmen crossing the border from Hong Kong. I had surmised from the daily offers for messagees and night ladies that every city in China had a thriving sex industry, but the one in Shenzhen had been deemed such a threat to public welfare that the government undertook a shaming campaign, rounding up the city’s prostitutes and forcing them to march through crowds of peop
le who hurled abuse and scorn upon the women, a tactic last seen during the Cultural Revolution. Within months, however, the prostitutes were back. They might not become gloriously rich, but they’d at least divest the rich Hong Kong johns of some of their wealth.

  The train continued its journey onward. We passed rubble. Lots of rubble. It really is quite amazing how much rubble there is in China. “It doesn’t feel like San Francisco anymore,” Jack observed. “This is more like Tijuana.”

  As we traveled on from Shenzhen to Guangzhou, we passed vast numbers of factories and crossed over pools of still water bearing wholly unnatural chemically-induced colors. We rumbled past enormous mounds of trash and the ever-present piles of rubble. We began to think of a new slogan for China.

  “China—A Giant Pile of Crap,” I offered.

  “China—It’s Chinastic!”

  A short while later, we arrived in Guangzhou. Jack knew someone who knew someone who knew someone in Guangzhou, and this alone had seemed like a good reason to visit. Also, I did not want Jack to be lulled by Hong Kong, to think for a moment that Chinese cities are anything other then bastions of swirling mayhem, and invariably, as expected, and as I had explained to Jack’s disbelieving ears, after passing through Immigration, we experienced the assault upon the senses that is contemporary China. In the hallway, we were quickly surrounded by aggressive men yelling, Taxi taxi! Tour and hotel operators shouted at us. People clapped their hands in our faces. Laowai! Laowai! Beggars thrust their hands before us. Money, money! Touts marched beside us. Make love Chinese girl. The policemen looked stupendously bored. “No, Jack,” I said to him when he moved to accept a ride with a gypsy cab. What was he thinking? Jesus. This is a train station in China. These are vultures, these people who linger here.

  And then there was the taxi line, a long, snaking length of people—people who pushed, who jostled, who spat out wads of phlegm and clouds of smoke, people who cut in line, goddamn it. I am not the sort of person prone to going postal, but if ever it did happen, it would be in a line in China.