Riding the Iron Rooster

But I was pleased to be here, in such a wilderness. I sat in the safety of the train and looked upon the desolation of the land with a sense of mounting excitement. In the Lop Nor Desert of Xinjiang, and in Hami and Turfan they say, "Marco Polo came through here," or "This was the Silk Road." But here in Qinghai no claim at all could be made. There was never anyone here. It was death to attempt a crossing. No one passed through. And it was always like this—just as empty.

Mr. Zhao was traveling with his father, who visited him from another part of the train. This old man sat and stared at me. I tried to speak with him, but he was deaf. He had a deaf man's bright smile. Whenever I wrote in my notebook the old man put his teacup down and pressed his nose against my notebook page, marveling at my handwriting.

At last, the mountains and hills utterly vanished and in their place there was a light brown desert. I looked closer and saw that it was all low snowdrifts covered with fine sand. Later in the day it was stony. Still later, it was dark and rubbly—but still a desert—and the brown twisted symmetry of the rubble made it seem like an immensity of dog turds.

There were stations every twenty miles, but a station here was three small square buildings, the same brown as the turdy desert, standing in the wind, with emptiness on every side, and clouds madly blowing over them.

"It is not good," Mr. Zhao said. Obviously he missed the traffic and drizzle of urban Liaoning.

"I like this place," I said.

He erupted in the short spitting laugh that in China means You must be out of your mind.

"I just wish we had some water," I said.

I asked the Head of the Train, who seemed very young, why there was no water.

"Because this is the desert."

He spoke English with a slight American accent.

"But you have boilers," I said.

"The water in the boilers is for the engine."

"Are people complaining about the lack of water?"

"You are complaining," he said, in a friendly way, "and other people are complaining, too. But I tell everyone it is a problem, and they understand."

"I don't understand."

"Because you are a foreign friend," he said, which was a polite Chinese way of saying that I was a Martian.

He said he was twenty-two. I asked him his name.

"My name is Gold Country," he said in English.

"Jinguo?" I asked.

"Yes. My father named me that because he wanted China to be prosperous."

He seemed rather ineffectual to hold such an important job—he was in complete charge of the train. But he was pleasant. He said he had not had much formal education and in fact had learned his English on the Voice of America.

Towards the end of the afternoon the rubbly desert gave way to rockier ground, and mountains appeared to the southwest. Two mountains were distinct and beautiful, and the snow was a luminous bluish color, covering the entirety of these slopes because they faced north and received no sun. They were the mountains (I could see from my map) Yagradagze and Har Sai, each of them just under 20,000 feet. They rose out of great flat snowfields, while in the foreground was rough desert and the chugging train.

"It has recently snowed," Jinguo said. "That is not unusual. It often snows heavily in March here. And in the passes it snows all year. Foreign friends like snow!"

As if in welcome a flock of eight gray cranes gathered themselves together and made off, just ahead of the train, rising and still folding as they flew, like large mechanical bumbershoots blown sideways by the stiff wind.

Golmud was hardly a town. It was a dozen widely scattered low buildings, some radio antennas, a water tower. One of the few cars in town was Mr. Fu's ridiculous Galant. There were some buses, but they were the most punished-looking vehicles I had seen in China—and no wonder, for they toiled up and down the Tibetan Plateau.

"Snow," Mr. Fu said—his first word.

I had not expected this snow, and it was clear from his gloomy tone that neither had he. The snow lay thinly in the town, but behind the town it was deep and dramatic—blazing in the shadows of the mountain range.

We were still at Golmud Station. Mr. Fu had driven from Xining, and had met me. But he was very subdued in the car.

When I asked him how he was he did not reply directly. He said, "We cannot go to Lhasa tomorrow. Maybe the day after, or the day after that, or—"

I asked him why.

'The snow. It is everywhere—very deep," he said. He did not even glance at me. He was driving fast through the rutted Golmud streets—too fast, but I had seen him drive in Xining and I knew this to be normal. At the best of times he was a rather frantic driver. 'The snow is blocking the road."

"You are sure?"

"Yes."

"Did you see it?"

He laughed: Ha-ha! You idiot! "Look at it!"

He pointed out the window. But I was not looking at the snow. I noticed that he was wearing a pair of elegant driving gloves. He never took the wheel without donning them. They seemed as old-fashioned as spats or gaiters.