"This is known all over China," Xin said, and he explained it.
It concerned a young man Liang Shanbo and his lover, Zhu Yingtai. The plot was not unlike that of Romeo and Juliet. The lovers' families were so opposed that it was impossible for the two to meet without using a subterfuge. Liang had the clever idea of dressing up as a woman (the man playing Liang in the park used a fan to suggest this), and in this way gained access to the lovely Zhu. The romance blossoms, but both families are against the marriage. After some complications ("The plot zigzags," Xin said) they realize they cannot marry. Zhu kills herself. Liang sings a pathetic love song on her grave, and then he kills himself. The end.
The motley groups in the park in Kunming liked this one best of all. It was performed among the bamboos, and accompanied by old violinists in faded blue jackets and caps. But even the skinniest old men and the most elderly women wore animated expressions — and they were all playful. Of all the people I saw in China, they were the happiest.
The trouble with China was that it was overrun with people and — except for the occasional earthquake or sandstorm — I rarely saw examples of man's insignificance beside the greater forces of nature. The Chinese had moved mountains, diverted rivers, wiped out the animals, eliminated the wilderness; they had subdued nature and had it screaming for mercy. If there were enough of you it was really very easy to dig up a whole continent and plant cabbages. They had built a wall that was the only man-made object on earth that could be seen from the moon. Whole provinces had been turned into vegetable gardens, and a hill wasn't a hill — it was a way of growing rice vertically. Some of the ruination was not deliberate; after all, in Chinese terms prosperity always spelled pollution.
That was how I felt until I reached Yunnan. Then I saw the more familiar situation — and one I found more subtle and energizing — people dwarfed by nature, crowded by jungle, hemmed in by the elements, rained on and battered by the unpredictable tantrums of heaven and earth.
I saw such landscapes on my way to Vietnam. Kunming is only two hundred miles from the Vietnam border. Looking at a map one day, I saw a railway line leading south, and I looked for Mr. Fang to arrange for me to travel on it. Wasn't he shadowing me in order to offer Chinese hospitality? Hadn't he urged me to give him something to do? How thrilled he was when I asked him to translate for me, or commiserated with him about the spivs and the louts and said, "I blame their parents!"
But when I asked him to get me permission to take the narrow-gauge railway to the border, he turned ashen.
"It is forbidden," he said.
"The line is open as far as Bao Xiu," I said. I had checked in the railway timetable — there were two trains a day.
"But you are a foreigner."
"You said that you would help me. If you don't help me, what is the point of your being with me, Mr. Fang?"
"I will try." I knew he meant it, because he seemed very rattled: he was steeling himself to see a higher official.
That same night Mr. Fang came to me and said that permission had been granted for me to take the train south. But the line into Vietnam had been severed in 1979, so I would have to content myself with a journey about a third of the way — to Yiliang — and then come straight back. I said that was fine with me.
"Mr. Wei will go with you."
"Who is Mr. Wei?"
"You will see tomorrow."
The train left at seven in the morning: Mr. Wei was at the station. He had already bought the tickets, and before I could say anything, he was apologizing for the train — just a little one, he said, tiny coaches, steam engine, uncomfortable seats, no dining car. Mr. Wei was a small malnourished-looking man in his thirties. But he was not as sulky as he seemed — he was merely nervous. He said he hated these little trains and these jungly places.
I wanted to tell him that I liked seeing examples of man's insignificance beside the greater forces of nature. But I decided not to. I had brought a pound of peanuts (35 cents in Kunming market) and spent the early part of the trip eating those until Mr. Wei relaxed.
The French had built this line. At about the turn of the century, after they had consolidated their hold on Indochina, they decided to open up the interior. There was money to be made by selling French products in these Chinese provinces. And there was a great deal the French wanted to buy — silks, minerals, furs, leather goods, precious stones. And they had a vague idea of extending their influence into China. The railway was finished in 1910, and until fairly recently it was easier to ship goods to Kunming from Shanghai via Hanoi than it was cross-country.
Mr. Wei didn't think much of this train, but to me it was practically ideal — like the best kind of sleepy branch-line train that creaked through the countryside. Europe and America had gotten rid of them, but they still sauntered through China. People played checkers and smoked the pipes that were big lengths of bamboo that looked like drainpipes. They were all farmers — no sunglasses or platform shoes here, no Guangzhou brassieres or cassette recorders.
After a while, Mr. Wei began talking. He said, "I missed out on my education," and I knew he was referring to the Cultural Revolution, so we talked about that. "I hated it," he said. "It was bad in Kunming."
"Because they smashed the temples?"
"Not only that. They fought. One factory fought another factory. They fought in the streets — people screaming. They had sticks, they had guns. They set fires. People died."
"Hundreds or thousands?"
"I don't know. Hundreds maybe."
"Were you a Red Guard?" He was just the right age — about thirty-five now.
"No," he said, almost vehemently. "I didn't like them."
"Do you think they are bad men when you see them now, the ones who were Red Guards?"
"Now? No, I don't. They are not bad men. They weren't protecting Mao. That's what they said. Each one thought he could do a better job. That's why they fought."
"They killed people, though."
"We can't blame them for that. That is the responsibility of the leaders."
That was the usual line, and a useful one too: all the blame had been put on the Gang of Four. Having such scapegoats was probably another example of Chinese economy. What was the point in tearing the country apart when in a ritualistic way (the trial had been televised) all the blame could be put on four people who were then promptly purged.
When we had gone ten miles, Mr. Wei (whom I now realized was no lackey) relaxed and pointed out the sights. That was Running Horse Hill (Pao Ma Shan), where there was a complex of buildings called the Fire-Bury Works (Huozang Chang): the local crematorium.
"People send their dead body to the works," Mr. Wei said. "The men put gasoline on the body. They burn it. They get ashes. They put the ashes in a small box. The people take it home and put it on a desk."
"Everybody does this?"
"Most people do it. A few take the ashes to the mountains — to a Buddhist temple. But we take it home. I have my mother's sister in a box."
These burial rites of the Chinese were bad news to American entrepreneurs of the 1970s who tried to export coffins to the People's Republic. In the same fortune-hunting spirit, in the nineteenth century the Sheffield Silver Company sent vast shipments of forks and spoons to China, hoping to tempt the Chinese away from their chopsticks.
Beside the rail line were beehive huts which, when I looked closer, I saw were actually tombs. Mr. Wei said that thirty or forty years ago people were buried like that; but no more.
I saw people walking through the cool, yellow woods, and farmers on their way to market who had stopped near the railway to wash their vegetables in the ditch water — which was foul. In a shady spot a man was unhurriedly tearing open a buffalo's throat, slaughtering it. The creature was on its back, with its legs in the air, and its wounded neck was bright red, with a bib of flesh hanging down, and its blood running into the railway ditch.