To the Ends of the Earth

“But since you asked,” I went on, “I am very impressed with what I see in Dalian. The people are happy and industrious, the economy is buoyant, the quality of life is superb. I can tell that morale is very high. I am sure it is the fresh air and prosperity. The port is bustling, and I’m sure the markets are filled with merchandise. What I have seen so far only makes me want to see more.”

“That is good,” Cherry Blossom said.

“And another thing,” I said. “Dalian looks like South Boston, in Massachusetts.”

It did, too. It was a decaying port, made out of bricks, with wide streets, cobblestones, and trolley tracks, and all the paraphernalia of a harbor—the warehouses, dry docks, and cranes. I had the impression that if I kept walking I would eventually come to the Shamrock Bar and Grill. It was also Boston weather—cold and partly sunny under blowing clouds—and Boston architecture. Dalian was full of big brick churches that had probably once been called St. Pat’s, St. Joe’s, and St. Ray’s—they were now kindergartens and nurseries, and one was the Dalian Municipal Library. But reform had come to Dalian and with it such businesses as the Hot Bread Bakery and the Hong Xing (Red Star) Cut and Perma.

“And also men hurry to Hong Xing to get a perma,” Cherry Blossom said. “They go lickety-split.”

The streets looked like Boston’s streets. Never mind that the main thoroughfare in Dalian was called Stalin Road (Sidalin Lu). It looked like Atlantic Avenue.

At the turn of the century the Russians had schemed to make Dalny (as they called it; it means “far away” in Russian) a great port for the tsar’s ships. It was valuable for fighting the Japanese, because unlike Vladivostok it would not freeze in the winter. After the Russo-Japanese war, when the Japanese flew kites in Dairen (as they called it)—each kite saying THE RUSSIANS HAVE SURRENDERED!—this port city was handed to the Japanese. They simply completed the Russian plan for turning what had been a fishing village into a great port. It prospered until the Second World War, and when the Japanese were defeated the Russians were given the city under the Yalta terms. The Russians remained until well after the Chinese Liberation, when the Chinese renamed it Dalian (“Great Link”). I liked it for its salt air and seagulls.

“What desires do you entertain in Dalian?” Cherry Blossom said.

I told her that I had come here to get warm after the freeze in Dongbei, the northeast. And I needed a ticket on the ship that traveled from Dalian across the Bohai Gulf to Yantai. Could she get that for me?

“Keep your fingers crossed,” she said.

She vanished after that. I found an old hotel—Japanese pre-war baronial—but I was turned away. I was accepted at the dreary new Chinese hotel, a sort of Ramada Inn with a stagnant fish pond in the lobby. I spent the day looking for an antique shop, and the only one I found was disappointing. A man tried to sell me a trophy awarded to the winner of a schoolboys’ javelin competition in 1933 at a Japanese high school. “Genuine silver,” he whispered. “Qing Dynasty.”

The next day I saw Cherry Blossom. She had no news about my ticket.

“You will just have to keep your hopes up!”

We agreed to meet later, and when we did she was smiling.

“Any luck?” I asked.

“No!” She was smiling. And with this bad news I noticed that she had a plump and slightly pimply face. She was wearing an arsenic-green wool scarf to match the wool cap she herself had knitted in the dormitory (she had four roommates) at the Working Women’s Unit.

“I have failed completely!”

Then why was she smiling? God, I hated her silly hat.

“But,” she said, wiggling her fingers, “wait!”

She had a sharp way of speaking that made every sentence an exclamation. She reached into her plastic handbag.

“Here is the ticket! It has been a total success!”

Now she wagged her head at me and made her tight curls vibrate like springs.

I said, “Were you trying to fool me, Cherry Blossom?”

“Yes!”

I wanted to hit her.

“Is that a Chinese practical joke?”

“Oh yes,” she said, with a giggle.

But then aren’t all practical jokes exercises in sadism?

I went to the Free Market—open since 1979. Every sort of fish, shellfish, and seaweed was on display—a pound of big plump prawns was roughly $4, but that was the most expensive item. They also sold squid, abalone, oysters, conch, sea slugs, and great stacks of clams and flatfish. The fishermen did not look Chinese; they had a flatheaded Mongolian appearance and might have been Manchus, of whom there are five or six million in this peninsula and in the north. The market gave me an appetite and that night I had abalone stir-fried in garlic sauce: delicious.

Cherry Blossom said that foreign cruise ships stopped in Dalian in the summer. The tourists stayed for half a day.

“What can you see in Dalian in half a day?”