To the Ends of the Earth

Looking toward Tibet I had a glimpse of a black and vaporous steam locomotive plowing through a dazzling snow-field under the blue summits and buttresses of the Tanggula Shan. It was one of the loveliest things I saw in China—the chugging train in the snowy desert, the crystal mountains behind it, and the clear sky above.

Mr. Fu, I could see, was terrified of the snow. He did not know its effect firsthand. He had only heard scare stories. That was why he had wanted to stay in Golmud for another week, until the snow melted. He believed that there was no way through it. But the snow was not bad.

In the first passes, so narrow they were nearly always in shadow, there was ice. Mr. Fu took his time. He was a poor driver—that had been obvious in the first five minutes of driving with him—but the snow and ice slowed him and made him careful. The icy stretches looked dangerous, but by creeping along (and trying to ignore the precipitous drop into the ravine by the roadside), we managed. For miles there was slippery snow, but this too Mr. Fu negotiated. Two hours passed in this way. It was a lovely sunny day, and where the sun had struck it, some of the snow had melted. But we were climbing into the wind, and even this sun could not mask the fact that it was growing colder as we gained altitude.

We passed the first range of mountains, and behind them—though it was cold—there was less snow than on the Golmud side. Mr. Fu began to increase his speed. Whenever he saw a dry patch of road, he floored it and sped onward, slowing only when more snow or ice appeared. Twice he hit sudden frost heaves, and I was thrown out of my seat and bumped my head.

“Sorry!” Mr. Fu said, still speeding.

I sipped tea from my thermos and passed cassettes to Miss Sun, who fed them into the machine. After a hundred miles we had finished with Brahms. I debated whether to hand her the Beethoven symphonies, as I listened to Mendelssohn. I drank green tea and looked at the sunny road and snowy peaks and listened to the music, and I congratulated myself on contriving this excellent way of going to Lhasa.

There was another frost heave.

“Sorry!”

He was an awful driver. He ground the gears when he set off, he gave the thing too much gas, he steered jerkily, he went too fast; and he had what is undoubtedly the worst habit a driver can have—but one that is common in China: going downhill he always switched off the engine and put the gears into neutral, believing that he was saving gas.

I am not a retiring sort of person, and yet I said nothing. A person who is driving a car is in charge, and if you are a passenger you generally keep your mouth shut. I had an urge to say something and yet I thought: It’s going to be a long trip—no sense spoiling it at the outset with an argument. And I wanted to see just how bad a driver Mr. Fu was.

I soon found out.

He was rounding bends at such speed that I found myself clutching the door handle in order to prevent myself from being thrown across the seat. I could not drink my tea without spilling it. He was doing ninety—I could not tell whether the dial said kilometers or miles per hour, but did it matter? And yet if I said slow down, he would lose face, his pride would be hurt, and wasn’t it true that he had got us through the snow? It was now about noon, with a dry road ahead. At this rate we would get to our first destination, the town of Amdo, before nightfall.

“Play this one, Miss Sun.”

Miss Sun took the Chinese cassette of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. She rammed it into the machine and the first few bars played. The sun was streaming through the windows. The sky was clear and blue, and the ground was gravelly beneath the gray hills. There were snowy peaks to the left and right of us, just peeping over the hills. We were approaching a curve. I was a little anxious but otherwise very happy on the highest road in the world, the way to Lhasa. It was a beautiful day.

I remembered all of this clearly, because it was about two seconds later that we crashed.