That night I wondered what would become of him. But of course it was very obvious. If he went into business and made some money he would prosper in a small way and raise a one-child family. He would not use expressions like Serve the people. He would regard himself as an intellectual (zhishi fenzi), the grandiose term the Chinese use for anyone who does not work with their hands. If he was self-employed, as he wanted to be, he would probably work hard. On holidays he would visit hotels like mine, where they had "holiday specials" — Christmas banquets, New Year's parties ("free hats, favors, racket-makers") and a "New Year's Day Champagne Brunch Buffet" at 28 yuan a throw.
One of the worst aspects of living in brisk, dictatorial China is that you seldom have an accurate idea of what is really going on. It is not that the Chinese government is inscrutable. Lazy travelers and visitors love Chinese mysteries, but the Chinese are quite knowable. And Chinese bureaucrats are among the most scrutable and obvious on earth. And yet anyone must find the Chinese média obfuscatory and unforthcoming. The Chinese people manage to keep abreast of events by depending on telepathy and whispers, and by the politburo hyperbole: if a high official is said to have a cold he's likely been fired; if he is "convalescing" he has been exiled; and if he is "extremely ill" he is about to be murdered.
And liberal does not mean liberal or open-minded. The connotations of the term, which is based on the Chinese characters for freedom (ziyou), are entirely negative, implying license or licentiousness. A Chinese official and most American Republicans would agree on what the word liberal implies. For Mao it was a term of abuse.
Meanwhile, the fuss over the students had not died down — the government was still ranting. But there was no public defiance. The Chinese had that squinting wind-in-the-face expression that they assumed when they were at their most resigned. No one on earth is more silent than a silent Chinese. I asked my usual provocative questions, but made little headway. I was sure a power struggle was in progress, because the eighty-three-year-old Deng Xiaoping had still not named his successor.
A Hong Kong student at Canton Station told me, "The government has denied that there is any problem."
"Then there must be a problem," I said. "Never believe anything in China until it has been officially denied."
We were waiting for the Peking Express on this humid winter night in Canton. It was said to be one of the best trains in China. It was the old Huguang Railway line. This was a thirty-six-hour trip — two nights on the train, which went 1500 miles, passing through five provinces, bisecting China from bottom to top and crossing the Yangtze River at Wuhan.
Some visitors to China laugh when you tell them you're taking a two-day trip on a train, and then they are delayed for five days at a Chinese airport, waiting for the fog to lift. Everyone who takes a plane in China has an airplane tale of woe.
The only bad moment the train passenger has is on the platform, when the other passengers are boarding. Which ones will be in your compartment? It is a much more critical lottery than a blind date, because these people will be eating and sleeping with you. I had seen lepers on trains, and bratty children and, on the way to Guilin, a man traveling with five parrots and no cage.
I watched the people boarding. The old woman in the padded jacket, carrying a lunch tin — some pungent stuff in there, chicken-foot stew, Cantonese cow tendon, and highly prized rotten eggs wrapped in seaweed. There was a spiv in sunglasses with a radio, a man with three suitcases and a crate of bananas; a salesman with his case of samples — rubber bungs, probably; three ornery mustached men wearing high-heeled shoes; a small family — haggard father, mother with pin-curl perm, and spoiled child snatching at things that moved. The harassed spiky-haired student; the fat-faced Party hack in the Mao suit; the secret drinker with swollen eyes; the pretty girl traveling with her dragonlike grandmother; the plump boys in new eyeglasses from Hong Kong; the physics prof on his way to a conference; the loud-voiced Chinese-American who speaks only a few words of Cantonese but uses them on everyone; the middle-aged Japanese couple, looking wrinkle-proof but anxious; the students returning from overseas loaded with duty-free presents, Western clothes and a musical suitcase; the skinny, smiling and lovably ineffectual-looking soldiers of the People's Liberation Army — it is impossible to feel threatened by soldiers whose uniforms are four sizes too big.
I was assigned to a compartment with some salesmen. One was the Chinese version of Willy Loman, and another was a frisky man who smiled too much and said, "I'm in machine tools," just as his American counterpart would do. There was a third man who was practically invisible, reminding me of how the Chinese to a large extent have perfected the art of living at close quarters.
Mr. Yeo, the machine-tool man, admired my sweater ("Nice one. Good quality. Very warm. You'll need it in Peking") and was full of direct questions: "You're — what? About thirty-five? Any children?"
He handed me an envelope of pemmican, as a sort of get-acquainted gift, shared his tea with me, and accepted a chocolate bar in return. I thought he might be exhaustingly friendly, but he slept through most of the trip and snored loudly. The Willy Loman character also slept a great deal, but woke at four in the morning and did lazy calisthenics, wagging his head and slapping his forearms. He was in feedstuffs and cereals. His luggage — both boxes and suitcases — filled the luggage shelf. He was very solemn except when I caught his eye. Then he broke into a laugh and gave me a broad smile. His laugh was urgent and meant: No questions, please! As soon as he turned away he frowned. That was also very Chinese.
The first night there was a tremendous amount of snoring in our compartment. From time to time it woke me with its flapping wind. It was louder than the clanging wheels of the train. But I slept soundly the rest of the time and didn't get up until nine.
The train was so cold that morning the windows were streaming with condensation. I shaved in cold water — but it was always cold — and in midmorning we arrived at Changsha, where I had been some months before on my way to Mao's birthplace. It had been steamy and dismal in the summer. In the winter it was smoggy and brown and much uglier. The words a Chinese city had acquired a peculiar horror for me, like Russian toilet, or Turkish prison, or journalist's ethics. In the cold rain of winter, with the cracked and sooty apartment houses, the muddy streets, the skinny trees and dark brown sky, Chinese cities are at their very worst.
But this city was the signal for the attendants to stoke the fires, and as soon as the coach was reasonably warm the passengers threw their clothes off and clomped around in plastic shoes and wrinkled pajamas. They propped themselves in the draft between the coaches and brushed their teeth. Some practiced t'ai chi in the corridors.
The dining car was crowded at lunchtime. Although there were no tourists on the train and everyone wore old clothes — shouting and spitting and blowing smoke into each other's faces — they were also flinging money around. I guessed that they were mainly Cantonese, on this profitable business route: Guangdong was a producer of goods and Peking a lucrative outlet. These scruffy passengers were all in business. The man next to me paid almost 20 yuan for a meal for himself and his wife. Call it five bucks and it doesn't seem much; but for a Chinese it was nearly a week's pay. He was a grizzled man with matted hair. He smoked and ate at the same time — chopsticks in one hand, cigarette in the other. His small boy did not eat. This little irritant dug out all the toothpicks from the plastic holder and threw them on the floor; then tipped over a glass of water; and then began smacking an ashtray against the table and squawking. He was about five or six. His father laughed at this obstreperousness — very un-Chinese. But that was not the only uncharacteristic behavior in this rowdy train. It was also full of drunks, and not only beer drinkers, but also old men getting plastered on the rice wine they had brought with them.