Riding the Iron Rooster

Mr. Zhong put his face against his tea cup, everted his pale lips, and whooshed at it. I had taken a dislike to him very early in the discussion—as soon as we were introduced, in fact—because he was a person whose banter sounded to me like a reprimand. I had left some papers in my room and he had said, "Don't get lost!" and "Don't disappear!"

"You are very generous to offer to look after me, but I can manage alone," I said. "I may not want to talk to anyone. And I don't want any of your kind assistance."

There followed a rapid conversation in Chinese, Mr. Fang doing most of the talking. I had been fascinated by his sea lion's face, his sorrowful eyes and down-turned mouth. He spoke with insistence and authority, and he had seemed very intelligent when he had been listening.

Fattish and insolent-looking Mr. Zhong went on slurping his noodles and sucking his tea as Mr. Fang spoke. One of Mr. Zhong's slurps was actually a form of reply. I decided that he looked brattish and spoiled, and I guessed that he had been a Red Guard, from the way he nagged.

He said quietly, "Mr. Fang says he will go with you."

"Why?"

"Because he does not speak English."

"I don't want to walk around with him either," I said, imagining Mr. Fang breathing down my neck.

"He will simply sit," Mr. Zhong said.

"But in another compartment," I said, "because I would like to meet other people."

"He will occupy another compartment," Mr. Zhong said.

"If he doesn't talk to me, and he doesn't walk around with me, and he doesn't travel in the same compartment," I said, "I don't understand why he wants to come with me."

'To make sure you are comfortable. Hospitality. You are our guest. Ha-ha!" Mr. Zhong's shouting laughter was cruel and accusing.

I said, "Mr. Fang is head of the department. He is obviously very busy. He has a desk, a chair, and work to do. He has to write reports. He has a family—right? Wife? Children?"

'Two females."

"Okay. So wouldn't it be a lot more convenient if he didn't come with me? I can hire local guides—it's cheap enough."

"Perhaps. But this is the Chinese way."

Mr. Chen was becoming anxious. He signaled to me with his eyes, Enough, no more, leave off.

That was how I came to be traveling with this small, silent man on the train to Hohhot. The fact was that the authorities had gotten wind that I was traveling in China, and afraid that I would snoop and that I'd rat on them afterwards, they stuck me with Mr. Fang. Interestingly, this episode was probably the most irritating thing that happened to me in China, and they could have made me very happy if they had decided not to haunt me in this way and attempt to obstruct me with this nannylike official.

When we were alone on the train and rolling through Hebei Province and its endless rice fields, I asked Mr. Fang in Chinese whether he spoke English.

"Not well," he said in Chinese, and it was then that he divulged his fluency in Russian. He had taught Russian literature and language at a technical college in Peking.

"Evgeny Onegin," he said. "Pushkin. Chekhov. Gogol. Dostoyevski."

"Turgenev. Tolstoy," I said, and he nodded. "Bulgakov. Mayakovsky."

Saying these names was like holding a conversation. But it was a short conversation. I had made a thing about not wanting to sit around talking English, and so they had called my bluff by sending this Russian speaker.

I was grateful that I had been spared Mr. Zhong. I had not wanted to travel with any official, but at least Mr. Fang was a gentle soul. He offered to carry my bag, and then he offered to heave it into the luggage rack; I said I could manage. His own bag was very small. Because the Chinese don't own much, they travel light. And Mr. Fang's bag contained a large book and not much else.

"Pushkin?" I said.

He laughed and showed me. It was an English-Chinese Dictionary. I tried to look up a few obscene words, but there were none in it. I riffled the pages and saw a word, a definition, and a sample sentence in italics: Because of the calumnies of the enemy, Lu Xun was compelled to fight harder.

It was a twelve-hour journey to Hohhot, but this was a long-distance train, going on to Lanzhou, so we left at midnight. We were joined by two jolly Cantonese who were going to Datong to change trains for the Taiyuan line. They were going, they said, to Pinghe, to an open-cast mine—one of the largest in China.

I looked on the map.

"I can't find Pinghe."

"It's not on the map yet."

That was another Chinese conundrum—that they could build cities faster than they could print them on maps, and build railways quicker than they could show them with black lines.

'The whole province of Shanxi is a coal seam," one of the men said. Heavy equipment was his specialty. He said that two thousand men were digging and that there would be coal being produced soon.

"What sort of a place is Pinghe?"