Riding the Iron Rooster

In my dream the train stopped at a station in a darkening landscape among leafless trees. It was a big wooden building, not like any I had seen, with high rooftops and balconies. I knew this was not my destination and yet I got off the train and went inside the place. The walls were whitewashed, there were potted palms here and there, and the tracks went across the lobby—two or three platforms near the ticket windows. I found this very confusing.

"What station is this?" I said, meaning to make a note for my diary.

A Chinese man said, "Ask the people here."

There were workers in greasy overalls, hammering the tracks. They were black—or rather, half Chinese, half black.

Someone near them said, "This station was built by the British."

None of the black workers spoke English. In Chinese one of them said, "Zhe shi shenme difang Kong Fuzi."

This made no sense to me. I looked closely at the men. They were like the blacks in old Hollywood movies, light skinned, with pale eyes and a penetrating gaze.

I realized that I had been there too long and that my train was leaving. I became panicky. Some tourists blocked my way. A stout woman confronted me.

"Are you Paul Theroux?"

"No," I said, and slid past her.

I went in the wrong direction, to Track Seven. My train was on Track Five. I ran back and forth.

One of the tourists was laughing at me, and another said, "The British named this station after Confucius."

In the nick of time I caught my train, and I woke up perspiring in the rocking berth. It was midnight. The coal smoke and clanging at the window was the coal smoke and clanging from my dream.

The train arrived in Changsha before dawn. The wide streets were hot and dark. Mr. Fang was just behind me, murmuring.

"What's wrong, Mr. Fang?"

"Trains!" he said, and he laughed. At that hour of the morning it was a terrifying laugh. He made the noise again and said, "Trains!"

He was weakening.

It was not only the train that bothered Mr. Fang; it was also Changsha itself. The city was associated in the minds of all Chinese with the memory of Chairman Mao. Mao had been born nearby, at Shaoshan. He had been educated here. He had taught school here. He had helped found the Communist Party in Changsha, and had given speeches and recruited Party members. Changsha was his city and Hunan his province. For years and years, whenever the Chinese had permission to travel they came here in a pious way, in homage to Mao, and they finished the tour by journeying to Shaoshan.

Mr. Fang was sick of Mao, sick of political talk, disgusted with political emblems and songs. He was not interested in the Party either. He wanted to get on with his job—he had work to do in Peking. It would have been the height of rudeness for him to say that he was sick of following me around on this trip, but I knew he was at the end of his tether. He groaned when we boarded trains these days, and his cry of Trains! at Changsha Station convinced me that he was on the point of surrender.

Another train and more Mao: that was Fang's nightmare.

His distress put me into a fairly good frame of mind. And I was glad to be here. All along I had intended to visit Mao's birthplace and interrogate the pilgrims. No one seemed to have a good word for Mao these days; but what did they think in Changsha?

"He made very few mistakes, and the mistakes were very small," Mr. Ye said, showing me the Mao statue at the birthplace of Chinese communism. The statue was gigantic—Mao in an overcoat and cap, waving.

"Are you proud of him?"

"Yes!" Mr. Ye said defiantly. "We are proud of many things he did."

Mr. Shao said, "Most of the Chinese people are proud of him. A few don't agree."

"Deng Xiaoping called him a great man!" Mr. Ye protested.

I said, "Shall we go to the Mao Museum?"

"It is closed," Mr. Shao said.

"Really? Why is it closed?"

The men fell silent, and their silence meant: Don't ask.

"What about the middle school where Mao taught?" I said.

Mr. Ye frowned and said, "It is ten kilometers from the city. We can drive by it, but we cannot go in. It is not very interesting."

People used to make pilgrimages here!

"I suggest we go to the Hunan Museum of History," Mr. Shao said. "There is a woman in it who is two thousand years old."

She lies naked in a Lucite coffin filled with formaldehyde, her face is hideous from decay and dissection, her flesh is pruney white and her mouth gapes open. She died in the Han Dynasty after eating a watermelon. The seeds taken from her stomach are on view. Indeed, her stomach is on view—all her internal organs are in jars. The Chinese throng this museum for much the same reason that, as a schoolboy, I used to go to the Agassir Museum at Harvard. I was fascinated by the pickled head of a gorilla in a big jar and the way one of his jellylike eyes had come loose and floated to the top of the jar. Horror-interest.