An old woman got on the train at one of the many small stations. She had a little girl with her, and then a younger woman joined her. She had a baby slung on her back.
We fell into conversation — Mr. Wei translating their rustic Yunnanese dialect. It seemed that the young woman had given birth to a little girl. But she and her husband were disappointed. They decided to take the drastic step of having another child. As soon as the woman became pregnant she was fined 1000 yuan, a penalty called a fa kuai; but she paid up willingly in the hope that the child would be a boy. It was indeed a boy.
These were the poorest people imaginable — lined faces, threadbare clothes, cracked hands, and wearing bonnets and broken slippers. And this woman had stumped up what was for most city dwellers a year's wages to have a second child. (The fact that the second child in China is nearly always a boy leads many people to conclude that female infanticide is quite common.)
"The city people don't have extra children," Mr. Wei said. "They are happy with one. But the country people want more children — to help them with their farming and also to look after them when they are old."
The one-child policy was instituted in 1976, and seemed to work well, although the population has continued to grow at unanticipated rates. The fear these days is that there will be a great number of old people in China at the end of the century — a sort of mushroom effect; and that the one-child family will create a nation of small spoiled brats. Already there is a creature in China which has appeared for the first time in vast numbers: the fat, selfish little kid with rotten teeth, sitting in front of a television set, whining for another ice cream.
The train was traveling in a narrow groove cut just below the summit of these pretty hills, and buttresses had been built to prevent landslides. They hadn't worked. Man was insignificant here. Nature gave him a very hard time. Well, that was the way of the world, wasn't it? It was unnatural that other Chinese people had turned a dramatic landscape into a cabbage patch.
Mr. Wei said that he had managed to get a few years' education in the technical institute in Changsha. His Cultural Revolution job had involved mending boxcars in a factory in Kunming. He said he hated the work and was no good at it. He had always wanted to go to university and he had spent all those years holding a welder's torch and cursing.
I said that I planned to go to Changsha myself and wanted very much to visit Mao's birthplace, Shaoshan, near that city. Had he been there?
"I went ten years ago. In 1976." He made a face.
"What did you think?"
"I didn't like it," he said. "It is not good for the people. It is a bad place."
"But Chairman Mao was born there."
"I know," he said, enigmatically.
"Wasn't he a good leader?"
"Mao did harm. The Cultural Revolution delayed our development. Shaoshan is not a good place."
He told me that with such solemnity that I was determined to go there.
"Which Chinese leader do you respect the most?"
"Deng is not dead yet, so he might make mistakes. Better to mention a dead one. Zhou Enlai is liked by many people."
"Do you like him?"
"Yes. Very much."
"Where is his village?"
"It is Huai'an, in Jiangsu Province" — far away, in the east, some distance north of Shanghai.
"What do you think of Zhou's village?"
"In my heart I like it. I would like to go there."
"Why do so many people respect Zhou?"
"Because he worked hard for the Chinese people."
"Isn't Deng Xiaoping working for the Chinese people?"
Mr. Wei frowned. "As I said, he is not dead yet. There is still time for him to make mistakes."
As the sun climbed towards noon and the foliage thickened by the tracks, the landscape became tropical — bamboos and bird squawks. And some houses came into view. They were not Chinese houses. They were stucco, with green shutters and heavy verandahs — just the sort of houses that you see in the French towns of Vietnam. I had seen such houses in Hue and Da Nang and in the back streets of Saigon: it was French government housing, for the colonial officers — in this case, railway personnel. It was so strange, this touch of Frenchness, deep in the hills of Yunnan, still intact — still lived in — after almost a century.
And that was Yiliang. A sign at the station said, the people's railway is for the people (Renmin Tielu Wei Renmin).
"I am hungry," I said.
"You cannot eat here," Mr. Wei said.
What?
Before I could complain, he rushed me out of the coach and onto the platform. My feet had hardly touched the ground before I was on my way back to Kunming — I was still breathless when we were under way. I had scarcely seen Yiliang. And I had wanted to stroll around the old French town, look into the houses, talk to the people, loiter in the market.
Mr. Wei said he had just been following orders. It was Mr. Fang who explained. I had insisted on taking this train, although the train was off limits to foreigners. Foreigners were not allowed in the deep south of Yunnan because it was a security risk — the Chinese were fighting the Vietnamese on the border. But Mr. Fang had explained that it was the train I was interested in, not the towns. And so the railway authorities had said that, as long as I did not stop in any of the towns to look around or eat, I could take the train. But at a certain stage of the journey I had to stop and be spun round and sent straight back to Kunming, without looking left or right. That was how I took the train without violating the law. It was a very Chinese solution.
11: The Fast Train to Guilin: Number 80
The young girl and boy entered the railway compartment holding hands, which was very unusual. But they had a Chinese explanation.
"We got married this morning," the boy said. "We are going to Guilin for a few days."
Honeymooners! He was in his twenties — very thin, rather furtive, but stylishly dressed in a leather jacket and pointy shoes. She wore a dress. In a train a dress was just as unusual as hand-holding. It was blue satin, with a fringe of lace, and though it matched strangely with her yellow ankle socks and red shoes, the hemline was high enough so that I could see her legs. It was not their shapeliness that interested me, it was their very existence. Women's legs are a rare enough sight in China for them to be a complete novelty.
"Do you want me to go into a different compartment?" I asked. "I'd be glad to."
"Why?" the boy said.
"So that you can be alone."
"We can be alone up here," the boy said, flinging his bag on the upper berth and hoisting his bride on the one opposite.
And there they sat until long after we left Kunming Station. It was late evening, about nine, and this was perhaps their first night together. It was certainly their first as man and wife. Was I sincere in saying that I'd be glad to leave them alone in the compartment? Of course I wasn't. I was trying to get the measure of this place; but it's bigness often baffled me. I needed luck in trying to uncover the truth, which was why I looked into women's handbags when they opened them just to see what was inside; and opened drawers in people's houses, and read their mail, and searched their cupboards. When a man took out his billfold, I tried to count his money. If a taxi driver had his sweetheart's snapshot pinned to his dashboard, I scrutinized it. If I saw someone reading a book or magazine, I noted down the title. I compared prices. I copied down graffiti and slogans that I saw on walls. I got people to translate wall posters, particularly the ones that gave the sordid details of a criminal's career (these details were set out and advertised just before the doomed man was shot). I memorized the contents of refrigerators, of travelers' suitcases, I remembered the labels in their clothes (White Elephant tools and Pansy brand men's underwear and Typical sewing machines stick in my mind). I searched brochures for solecisms and collected Rules of the Hotel for Guests (example: "Guests may not perform urination in sink basin"). And just for the record, I asked endless pestering questions. So, really, would I willingly pass up a chance to spend the night with a honeymoon couple?