The sky was the color of ashes. For a few minutes the sun appeared, materializing into a perfectly round but very dim orange, like an old light bulb that is about to blow. It hung there and then trembled and withdrew into the rags of cloud.
The train was still very noisy. A man was shouting — he wasn't angry, just carrying on a normal conversation. It occurred to me that this is how many prisons must be. The voice of authority was always barking over the loudspeaker, there was always a crush of people, never any privacy. It made travel in China a strange experience for anyone used to silence and privacy.
As we approached Peking, the frozen fields and furrows were emphasized by the snow, and in the coal yards beside the line, men were hacking at coal piles with picks and shovels. The snow wasn't deep — just a few inches of hard-packed stuff, because of the high winds. And then in the distance, through the smoky air, I could see the cranes and derricks of the rising city.
Because it is a flat, dry, northern city, at the edge of Mongolia, Peking has beautiful skies. They are bluest in the freezing air of winter. China's old euphemism for itself was Tianxta, "All Beneath the Sky" — and, on a good day, what a sky! It was limpid, like an ocean of air, but seamless and unwrinkled, without a single wavelet of cloud;endless uncluttered fathoms of it that grew icier through the day and then, at the end of the winter afternoon, turned to dust.
Thinking it would be empty, I went to see the Great Wall again. Doctor Johnson told Boswell how eager he was to go to China and see the Wall. Boswell was not so sure himself. How could he justify going to China when he had children at home to take care of?
"Sir," Doctor Johnson said, "by doing so [going to China] you would do what would be of importance in raising your children to eminence. There would be a lustre reflected upon them from your spirit and curiosity. They would be at all times regarded as the children of a man who had gone to view the Wall of China. I am serious, sir."
The Wall is an intimidating thing, less a fortification than a visual statement, announcing imperiously: I am the Son of Heaven and this is the proof that I can encircle the earth. It somewhat resembles, in intention, the sort of achievement of that barmy man who gift wrapped the Golden Gate Bridge. The Wall goes steeply up and down mountainsides. To what purpose? Certainly not to repel invaders, who could never cling to those cliffs. Wasn't it another example of the Chinese love of taking possession of the land and whipping it into shape?
Anyway, the Wall was not empty. It swarmed with tourists. They scampered on it and darkened it like fleas on a dead snake.
That gave me an idea. "Snake" was very close, but what it actually looked like was a dragon. The dragon is the favorite Chinese creature ("just after man in the hierarchy of living beings"), and until fairly recently — eighty or a hundred years ago — the Chinese believed dragons existed. Many people reported seeing them alive, and of course fossilized dragon skeletons had been unearthed. The dragon was a good omen and, especially, a guardian. It is one of China's friendliest and most enduring symbols. The marauding dragon and the dragon-slayer are unknown in China. And I found a bewitching similarity between the Chinese dragon and the Great Wall of China — the way it flexed and slithered up and down the Mongolian mountains; the way its crenellations looked like the fins on a dragon's back, and its bricks like scales; the way it looked serpentine and protective, undulating endlessly from one end of the world to the other.
On the way back from the Wall I decided to stop at Peking University, where there had been student disruption. The campus was at the edge of the city, in a parklike setting, with pines and little man-made hills and a lovely lake. The lake was frozen. Skinny, panting students, with red cheeks and bobbing earflaps, slipped and skated on the ice.
I watched them with an American teacher named Roy who said, "They do have grievances. They want to believe what they read in the papers and hear on the news. At the moment, they get it all from the VOA and BBC. They want to trust their own government — and they don't. They want to believe that the reforms that have begun with Deng are going to continue."
There were three theories to explain the sudden student discontent. One: that, as Roy said, the students really did have grievances. Two: that the government was divided and the students were being used by the liberal elements to test the conservatives. Three: that the disruptions were the work of conservative elements who wanted to discredit the liberals.
I was persuaded that the students had demonstrated on their own initiative. Their grievances were genuine bur muddled.
"They were really frightened," Roy said. "They didn't think they'd be arrested, but some were. They didn't think the police would push them around — but the police beat some of them and abused others. They know that if it happens again they will be arrested and not released. That scares them. It means they'll be kicked out of the university."
"The right to demonstrate is written into the constitution," I said.
"Sure, but it requires five days' notice, and the students have to submit their names in advance," Roy said. "So the government will know exactly who the ringleaders are."
The students were going around and around on the ice, shrieking and skidding.
"There won't be any more demonstrations," Roy said. "They're too scared. But it was interesting. They tested their freedoms and discovered they didn't have any."
The students would not tell me their names — well, who could blame them for being suspicious? They stood on the ice of Weiming Hu and became circumspect when I changed the subject from the weather to their discontent.
One boy told me he was "a small leader." He said he was a philosophy student and had been in the demonstration as well as its aftermath, when about 500 students had returned to Tiananmen Square and held a vigil from the night of January first until the early morning of January second, when the news came of their fellow students' release from police custody.
"Our teachers support us but they are afraid to say so," he said. "Officially they are said to condemn us. But the government misreports everything. They said there were three hundred students in the first demonstration when there were actually three thousand."
I said, "Do you think this repression is an effect of socialist policies?"
"I am not allowed to answer that," he said. "But I can tell you that the trouble with a lot of Chinese students is that they don't have a will to power."
Perhaps he was quoting Nietzsche from his readings in philosophy. And then I asked whether he thought that the students were too frightened, as Roy had said, to hold any more demonstrations.
"There will be more," he said. "Many more."
A moment later he was gone, and I talked with other students. They were jolly, frozen-faced youngsters on old, floppy skates. To ingratiate myself with them I borrowed a pair of skates, and seeing me fall down and make an ass of myself, they became very friendly. What did I think of China? they asked. How did American students compare with Chinese students? Did I like the food? Could I use chopsticks? What was my favorite city in China? They were goofy and lovable, with crooked teeth and cold, white hands. When I asked them whether they had girlfriends they averted their faces and giggled. They did not seem like counterrevolutionaries.
I had repeatedly requested a High-Level Meeting — that is, a chance to talk with an important government official. In the past my request had done nothing more than make certain people suspicious. What was I doing in China? they demanded to know. They had asked me for my itinerary. Using an extremely clever if somewhat fanciful Chinese technique for ensnaring awkward visitors, they insisted that I was too important to travel alone and so stuck me with Mr. Fang. He had gone back to his desk in Peking: he did not know that I was still in China. Now I was traveling on my own.