Riding the Iron Rooster

It was a very hot day in May, and the whole town shimmered in the heat. Christmas decorations (holly, tinsel and strings of tiny lights) had been put up in the station and in the hotel. The train was shunted into the shed to have its wheels changed. But it was not just the wheels—the whole undercarriage was unbolted and replaced, Chinese-style, by hoisting the train, looping it with cables and pulling it apart until ninety tons of cast iron were swinging back and forth.

The arrival of a train was something of an occasion. There were only two trains a day, but they tended to carry some foreigners—people with money to spend or hard currency to exchange. These passengers were either leaving China or just arriving—in any case, a little unsteady and anxious. The Chinese, seeing an opportunity, offered them food and souvenirs. No Chinese destination is complete without a restaurant, and the Chinese do not consider that they have visited a place until they have eaten there. So Erlian had a hotel with a big dining room, and eight-dish meals were served to the train passengers, who ate gratefully and with a sense of relief: China was tidier than they had imagined, and if the rest of it was no worse than this they might even end up liking it.

Bud Wittrick said, "Aw, it's great. They're friendly, they're warm..."

He meant that the Chinese knew how to scuttle around and pour tea. They knew how to be polite, but that did not keep them from staring at our big noses and our huge flapping feet. This fascination—or perhaps horror—was mistaken for affection; and every grimace was interpreted as a Chinese smile.

The Westbetters waved at three passing Chinese. The Chinese fluttered their fingers in imitation.

'They're waving back at us!"

Which was worse—hearing right-wing tourists curse the Russians, or hearing them gush about the Chinese? No one cared about the rotten political systems, but only whether the people smiled at them or not. In a simple and clumsy way the Chinese knew how to manipulate these visitors, but it was so obvious it was like children making friends with other children.

I walked around for three and a half hours, waiting for the train to return with new wheels.

A plane went overhead, flying west in the clear sky. With glasses of Krug champagne in their hands, the First Class passengers were studying the menu: parfait of pheasant and goose liver, smoked salmon mousse and fresh squid salad, and a frisée salad with smoked duck julienne, followed by turbot with prawns and apples, roast rack of Iamb, or crab leg and prawn ragout, and someone was saying, "How is the quail breast today?"

Down here in Inner Mongolia, an old man squatted holding a bowl against his nose and flicking rice grains into his mouth with chopsticks.

If any of the passengers in the plane looked down, they saw nothing more than a light brown land, yellower where the grass was. It was practically all empty space, but I did not know then that empty space is the rarest landscape in China.

We set off again, to cross the plains. It was a long hot afternoon, with only the merest glimpse of people or animals. I saw camels grazing, and herds of horses, and sparrow hawks. At the railway stations with Mongolian names—Qagan Teg and Gurban Obo—the buildings were frugally built but freshly painted, with tiled roofs and flared eaves. Chinese travelers were lined up in an orderly way on prearranged spots as the train pulled in, but when the train stopped the people broke ranks and began fighting for the doors. They were dressed differently from the way I had remembered: fewer blue suits, more color and sun hats, sunglasses and bright sweaters, some women in skirts. All of this was new to me, and I wanted to see more; I was glad that I had come. Towards dusk there were hills in the distance, the limit of the province of Inner Mongolia and the beginning of Shanxi.

That provincial border is marked by a section of the Great Wall. We clattered along the Wall for a while and then, in darkness, passed through it. The Wall is broken and sloping and piled up here—a muddy-looking heap of brown bricks and rubble. We had arrived at the big brown city of Datong.

The Chinese guide said, "We were going to put you up at the Datong guest house, but it is not very clean these days. Now, only Chinese people stay there."

We were taken to the locomotive works, which was one of those Chinese factories that is so self-contained it is like a city. It was formerly a commune; it had schools and a hospital and stores, and a wall around it. It had a hotel, The Datong Locomotive Works Hotel, and that was where we stayed.

After all those weeks of getting there, China seemed shabby and busy and orderly, with great crowds of people, and glaring lights and the sharp smell of burning coal. It seemed odd for a place seemingly so battered and depleted to have such a buzz.