Riding the Iron Rooster

It was bad enough that they were killing the few animals they had left, but they were doing it for the stupidest reasons. But it was probably true that the most accurate epitaph for creatures that have become extinct is: It Tasted Good.

I tried to get Mr. Fang to teach me how to say, "That is merely a superstitious belief with no scientific basis to support it," but we got nowhere. He asked me why I wanted to be able to say this, and I mentioned the Chinese habit of making the lovely little Asian Barred Owlet into soup. He said there were two good reasons for that: They tasted good and they were good for your eyesight.

He was bewildered that anyone with sense should care for the life of a bird or an animal. I did not argue with him. The Chinese themselves often lived in such cramped and uncomfortable conditions that they could hardly be expected to sympathize with animals that lived the same way. Indeed, the way the Chinese lived and died bore a remarkable resemblance to their animals.

Mr. Fang surprised me further by saying, "Mr. Jiao wants to see you."

"Who is Mr. Jiao?"

"General Manager of the Urumchi Branch of China Railways."

"How does he know I'm here?"

"I told him," Mr. Fang said, and looked sad in his sea-lion way. "He wants you to eat with him."

Mr. Jiao Xi Ku was a dark, tough-looking man from the far-eastern province of Shandong. He had a short neck and a broad face, and as the evening advanced and he drank more and more Xinjiang white wine, his dark face was suffused with a kind of alcoholic blush and his eyes became smaller and very red, like two boiled berries.

We were joined by his assistant, Mr. Jie, who—because he was an underling—did not say very much. After the formalities ("We are honored to have you") I realized that this would be a large meal. The cold dishes were set out and ignored; that meant there were about a dozen more courses to come.

I asked Mr. Jiao about the railway. What were the problems in building and maintaining it? He said the worst problem was the sandstorms, the wind that often grew to force 9 or 10. A cold wind met a hot wind in the gobi and caused great turbulence. And then there were the tunnels through the Tian Shan—they had taken years to cut.

"You see, we did all this by ourselves. We had no help."

"I thought the Soviets helped," I said.

"They planned the line to Urumchi. They did the survey—but it was an aerial survey. They didn't foresee all the difficulties. And of course our friendship with them was broken in 1960."

"So you were on your own then?"

"Yes. And what made it especially hard was that they took all their materials away. The tracks, the equipment, the wood, everything. Just loaded it and took it across the border. And they took their plans, too! Rolled up their plans and went home with them. No one helped us!"

"But you stuck to the original plans?"

"We had no choice. We kept to the same route and finished the line in 1963."

I said, "The line is headed straight for the Soviet border."

"That was the idea," Mr. Jiao said. "And we're still building."

"You're going to connect the line to one in the Soviet Union?"

"Yes. At Alataw Shankou [the Dzungarian Gate]. We have built as far as Usu. There's some dispute about who is supposed to build the connecting line, but we expect it to be done by 1990."

Then Mr. Jie piped up, "There used to be a slogan, This year Urumchi, next year the border!'"

"When was that?"

"Nineteen fifty-eight."

Meanwhile, dishes of food were being put on the table, and sampled, and replaced with others. There was peppery Xinjiang chicken, and lamb, and cucumbers with red peppers, and mushrooms and white fungus, and the best dish I had in China, which was chili duck smoked in jasmine tea, rubbed with rice wine, air dried, sprinkled with scallions, steamed and then deep fried. I made a note of the name: zhang cha yazi.

"You like the duck," Mr. Jie said, noticing my greed and heaping my plate with more.

I said, "If I met someone who could make that dish I would marry her."

The two men stared at me and nodded, which was probably what I deserved for the silly remark.

To change the subject, I said, "Do Hans ever marry Uighurs?"

"Very seldom. You see, the Uighurs are afraid that if they marry outside their people it will reduce their numbers. They try to avoid it. Of course, sometimes a Uighur man marries a Han girl. But a Han man cannot marry a Uighur girl."

"What do you mean 'cannot'?"

"It is against the law. The government forbids it."

I guessed that he meant the Xinjiang Uighur government. This was an autonomous region, with its own peculiar laws and its own parliament in Urumchi.

"Anyway, they're Muslims and we're not," Mr. Jiao said.

He said that he had been in Urumchi for twenty-eight years—had come as a sort of pioneer in a voluntary Maoist scheme. I asked him whether he spoke Uighur.

"Very little," he said.