To the Ends of the Earth

In Langxiang it was the low temperatures that gave me long exhausting dreams. The cold kept me from deep sleep, and so I lay just beneath the surface of consciousness, like a drifting fish. In one of my Langxiang dreams I was besieged in a house in San Francisco. I ran from the front door shooting a machine gun and wearing headphones. I escaped on a passing cable car—President Reagan was on it, strap-hanging. I was asking him whether he was having a tough time as president. He said, “Terrible.” We were still talking when I woke up feeling very cold.

I went back to sleep. Mr. Tian banged on my door and woke me up.

“We are going to the primeval forest,” he said.

We drove about thirty miles, and Mrs. Jin joined us. The driver’s name was Ying. The road was icy and corrugated and very narrow, but there were no other vehicles except for an occasional army truck. When we arrived at a place called “Clear Spring” (Qing Yuan), where there was a cabin, we began hiking through the forest. There was snow everywhere but it was not very deep—a foot or so. The trees were huge and very close together—great fat trunks crowding each other. We kept to a narrow path.

I asked Mrs. Jin about herself. She was a pleasant person, very frank and unaffected. She was thirty-two and had a young daughter. Her husband was a clerk in a government department. This family of three lived with six other family members in a small flat in Langxiang—nine people in three rooms. Her mother-in-law did all the cooking. It seemed cruel that in a province that had wide open spaces, people should be forced to live in such cramped conditions at close quarters. But this was quite usual. And it was a family under one roof. I often had the feeling that it was the old immemorial Confucian family that had kept China orderly. Mao had attacked the family—the Cultural Revolution was intentionally an assault on the family system, when children were told to rat on their bourgeois parents. But that had faltered and failed. The family had endured, and what were emerging with Deng’s reforms were family businesses and family farms.

Kicking through the forest, I asked them whether it was possible to buy Mao’s little red book of Selected Thoughts.

“I have thrown mine away,” Mr. Tian said. “That was all a big mistake.”

“I don’t agree with him,” Mrs. Jin said.

“Do you read Mao’s Thoughts?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” she said. “Mao did many great things for China. Everyone criticizes him, but they forget the wise things he said.”

“What is your favorite thought? The one that you associate with his wisdom?”

“ ‘Serve the People,’ ” Mrs. Jin said. “I can’t quote it all to you, it is too long. It is very wise.”

“What about ‘A Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party’—can you sing it?”

“Oh yes,” she said, and did so as we marched through the woods. It was not a catchy tune, but it was perfect for walking briskly, full of iambics: Geming bushi gingke chifan …

Meanwhile I was bird-watching. It was one of the few places in China where the trees were full of birds. They were tiny flitting things, and very high in the branches. My problem was that I could only use my binoculars with bare hands, so that I could adjust the focus. The temperature was in the minus thirties, which meant that after a few minutes my fingers were too cold to use for adjustments. Yet even in this bitter cold there was birdsong, and the whole forest chattered with the tapping of woodpeckers.

“Mr. Tian, can you sing something?” I asked.

“I can’t sing Mao’s thoughts.”

“Sing something else.”

He suddenly snatched his woolly cap off and shrieked:

Oh, Carol!

I am but a foooool!

Don’t ever leave me—

Treat me mean and croool …

He sang it with extraordinary passion and energy, this old Neil Sedaka rock-and-roll song, and when he was done he said, “That’s what we used to sing at Harbin University when I was a student!”

Cherry Blossom

A YOUNG CHINESE WOMAN SMILED AT ME AS I STEPPED onto the platform at Dalian. She was very modern, I could see. Her hair had been waved into a mass of springy curls. She wore sunglasses. Her green coat had a fur collar—rabbit. She said she had been sent to meet me. Her name was Miss Tan.

“But please call me Cherry.”

“Okay, Cherry.”

“Or Cherry Blossom.”

It was hard to include those two words in an ordinary sentence. “What is the fare to Yantai, Cherry Blossom?” But I managed, and she always had a prompt reply, usually something like, “It will cost you one arm and one leg.” She had a fondness for picturesque language.

She led me outdoors and as we stood on the steps of Dalian Station, she said, “So what do you think of Dalian so far?”

“I have only been here seven minutes,” I said.

“Time flies when you’re having fun!” Cherry Blossom said.