Riding the Iron Rooster

One of the pitfalls of long journeys is the tendency of the traveler to miniaturize a big city—not out of malice or frivolity, but for his own peace of mind. Confronted with a stony-faced and charmless Chinese city I tried to simplify it and make it interesting to me. Changsha was a good example of that. I knew it had several universities, a number of technical institutes, hospitals and medical schools—most Chinese cities were equally well equipped. They are a tribute to China's determination to be self-sufficient, healthy and literate. And such projects and institutions are seen as so necessary that the Chinese cannot understand why African and other Third World countries indulge themselves in meretricious enterprises like luxury airports or super highways. The Chinese are contemptuous of showy projects and regard aid recipients who spend money this way as pathetic and backward. On the whole, the Chinese are baffled by people who are unwilling to make sacrifices. That is admirable. But it is very tiring constantly to be subjected to Chinese sacrifice. After the twentieth hospital and fortieth university campus, I began to give them a miss.

So Changsha was rather more than Maoist memories and the two-thousand-year-old pickled woman; but the rest was not compelling. I found it hard to distinguish the hotels from the colleges and the hospitals from the prisons. Chinese architecture, which is all-purpose and excruciating, makes it almost impossible to tell these places apart. One of the most common experiences a foreigner has in China (outside of the three or four major cities) is of waking in a dreary room, seeing the water-stained ceiling, torn curtains, dented thermos bottle and rotting carpet and not knowing whether he is a student, a guest, a patient or a prisoner.

That is changing. I met four men from the Hunan Provincial Tourism Bureau in Changsha, and when one of them—Mr. Sun Bing—said, "We are the Selling and Marketing Department of this outfit," I was convinced it was changing fast.

"We want foreign friends to know what a wonderful province this is," Mr. Li said.

"Because of Chairman Mao?"

"Not only that," Mr. Zhang said. "Our great secret is Wuling Yang."

"Another politician?"

"A region. More beautiful than anything in Guilin."

"Limestone hills?"

"Of course, but better shapes," Mr. Sun said. "More interesting. Bigger. Plus woods and birds."

"And minority people," Mr. Chen said.

"Very colorful minority people," Mr. Sun added. "Altogether a most attractive package."

Rap on, I thought. I loved this. Four new Chinese, selling their province's scenic wonders. And again I thought, The Chinese wake up quickly.

"People know nothing about this now," Mr. Zhang said. "It is a secret. No one goes there."

"Why not?"

"Because there is no hotel. But one is being built. And when it is, this region will be famous all over the world."

Mr. Li said, "Hunan is a lovely province. People must know it better. We compete with other provinces, but we have everything: Until now visitors did not come here to look at the scenery, but they are starting to."

And saying this he led me to a table, where we had a long meal of Hunanese dishes—the best food in China, in my opinion. This banquet consisted of frogs' legs, turtle, duck, tripe, sea cucumbers (which are actually sea slugs), soup and vegetables—no rice, no noodles: that sort of stodge was for people with cruder palates. I knew that it was a blatant attempt to win my approval, and I was touched by their innocent belief in the dynamics of feasting the foreign devil. The Chinese can be deeply unsubtle, stage-managing a bowel-shattering banquet before asking a favor. Or is that subtle? Anyway, they have found that it works. But I would gladly have praised the hills of Hunan without a third helping of frogs' legs.

Until now visitors did not come here to look at the scenery, Mr. Li had said. How true. They had come as pilgrims, first to walk the 120 kilometers west to Shaoshan, and then—after the railway line was built in the late sixties—to take the strangest train in China. They had come believing the Cultural Revolution slogan, 'The sun rises in Shaoshan" (Taiyang cong Shaoshan shenggi), which was a metaphor for Mao Zedong's having been born there. The Chinese had once named themselves "Shaoshan" in Mao's honor, and I ran into at least one Li Shaoshan.

In the sixties there were several trains every hour. Now there is one train a day. It leaves at six in the morning from Changsha and arrives three hours later at Shaoshan. It returns to Changsha in the evening, just an old puffer on a forgotten branch line that had outlived its purpose.