Riding the Iron Rooster

I wanted to see Harbin at its most characteristic: in the middle of winter, frozen solid. It is in the far northeastern province—part of what used to be called Manchuria. Now it is Heilongjiang, Land of the Black Dragon River. The Russians refer to the river as the Amur. It is one of the disputed frontiers between the two countries, and over the past twenty years has been the scene of armed conflict as well as low farce—the Chinese soldiers provoking incidents by dropping their pants and presenting their bare bums northward, mooning the Soviet border guards.

The train I took was going on to the border town of Manzhouli and then into Siberia to connect with the Trans-Siberian. I took it because it was the quickest way to Harbin, and also because I wanted to see who was continuing into the Soviet Union. In the event I discovered that very few people were crossing the border. It is the most roundabout route to Moscow, and no one ever goes to Vladivostok.

I left Peking on a cold afternoon, the train traveling through a landscape of black and white—trees and light poles and furrows set into relief by the snow. The countryside looked like a steel engraving, and it grew sharper and fresher, for the dusty snow of Peking gave way to a snow of intense brightness in the clearer air of the Chinese hinterland. It was exciting to be heading north in the winter, and I intended to keep going, beyond Harbin to the forests in the north of the province. I had been told there was wilderness there—real trees and birds.

Three swarthy Hong Kong Chinese joined me in the compartment. They said they were cold. They wore thick nylon ski suits that screeched when they walked or moved their arms, and the noise of the rubbing fabric set my teeth on edge. This sleeping car was all Hong Kongers in screechy ski suits. They had traveled nonstop from Kowloon. They had never before been to China, had never seen snow; their English was very poor—and yet they were colonial subjects of the British Crown. They did not speak Mandarin. Like most Hong Kongers I had met, they were complete provincials, with laughable pretensions. Was it the effect of colonialism? They were well fed and rather silly and politically naive. In some ways Hong Kong was somewhat like Britain itself: a bunch of offshore islands with an immigrant problem, a language barrier and a rigid class system.

"Going skiing?" I said.

They said no—they had picked these ski suits up at a cut-price department store in Causeway Bay.

They were looking out of the window at a fat woolly sheep that was nibbling at a hank of brown stubble it had found sticking out of the snow. The sheep glanced up and stared back at them.

What did they think of China so far?

"It's thirty years behind," one said. This from a person who lived in one of the last colonies on earth. In a political sense Hong Kong had hardly changed since the time of the Opium War.

"Thirty years behind what?" I asked.

He shrugged. It was probably something he had read.

"Do you think there's any difference between a Chinese person here and one from Hong Kong?"

"Oh, yes!" several of them said at once, and they were incredulous that I should ask such an ignorant question. But I pressed forward nonetheless.

"Can you recognize a Hong Kong person when you see one?"

"Very easily."

"And a person from the People's Republic?"

"Yes," he said. And when I asked for details, he went on, "The Chinese here have rough faces."

"What sort of faces do Hong Kong people have?"

"Gentle."

He said the way they talked and dressed were dead giveaways. Well, even I knew that. The Hong Kongers were either overweight or else stylishly skinny. They yelled a lot and wore brand-new clothes and trendy eyeglasses. They fancied themselves up-to-date, and they believed in the myth of their modernity. They were often all elbows, very impatient and demanding. They fussed over each other, they were philistines. A great number of their traits were the result of being British colonials. The colonial system really is paternal in an almost literal way. By treating the people like children it turns into a messy family, and some of the children are favored, others become spoiled brats, and still others delinquents and rebels.

I did not bore my compartment-mates with this reflection. I simply sat there wondering why they didn't take off their ski suits.

One of them was engrossed in a palmist's manual. Before dinner, he read my palm.

"That is your star line," he said. "Notice it is connected? You are very emotional. That is your life line. You will live to be about eighty or eighty-five."

"Tell me more."

"I cannot," he said. "I am only on chapter five." And he went back to his manual.

Dinner in the big steamy dining car was a noisy affair. At first it was full of Hong Kongers, but they hated the food, found it uneatable, and left in a huff. There were about forty of them altogether on the train. They screeched back to their compartments and stuffed themselves with chocolate cookies.