Li took Sun with him to drive the Jeep. They had headed out of the city on the Badaling Expressway, past countless developments of pastel-painted luxury apartments with security-gated compounds and private pools. Built to meet the demands of the new bourgeoisie.
The sun was dipping lower now as they neared the tombs. The mountains had lost their definition, and looked as if they had been cut from paper and laid one over the other, in decreasing shades of dark blue, against a pale orange sky. The road was long and straight, lined with tall, naked trees with white-painted trunks. The roadside was piled high with bricks and stacks of golden corn stalks. They passed a peasant on a bicycle, a large parcel in his basket, his daughter on a makeshift seat over the rear wheel. Perhaps he had spent his hard-earned cash on a Christmas present for his Little Empress.
Off to their left, Li saw a large white scar cut into the shadow of the hills. It interrupted his silent thoughts. ‘What the hell is that?’ he asked Sun.
Sun screwed his eyes against the setting sun and glanced in the direction of Li’s gaze. ‘That’s Beijing Snow World,’ he said.
‘Beijing what?’
‘Snow World. It’s an artificial ski slope. At least, it’s real snow artificially generated. Guaranteed not to melt till the spring.’ He glanced at Li. ‘Haven’t you heard of it?’
Li shook his head. He felt like a stranger in his own country. A ski slope! ‘Who in the name of the sky goes skiing in China?’ he asked.
Sun shrugged. ‘The new kids on the block out of Beijing. The sons and daughters of the rich and successful. It’s pretty neat.’
Li was amazed. ‘You’ve been there?’
‘Some friends took me out when I first got here.’ He grinned. ‘I guess they thought I’d be impressed, a country bumpkin up from the provinces.’
‘And were you?’
‘You bet.’ They were approaching the turn-off. ‘You want to see it?’
Li glanced at his watch. There was time. ‘Let’s do it.’
A long, newly paved road took them down to an elaborate black and gold wrought-iron gate between two low, white buildings with steeply pitched red roofs. Hawkers were selling fruit and vegetables and tourist trinkets off the back of bicycle carts, stamping their feet in the cold, grim expressions set in the face of a meagre trade. Sun parked the Jeep among the hundred or so private vehicles outside the gate, and went into the right-hand building to buy them visitors’ passes. Li stood listening to western elevator music being piped through speakers mounted on every wall. He could see, through the gate, lampposts lining a long walkway up to the main building, speakers dangling from each one. The air was filled with their music, pervading every tree-lined slope, reaching perhaps into the very graves of the emperors themselves.
He fished in his pocket to find his purse when Sun emerged with their tickets. ‘How much do I owe you?’
But Sun waved him aside. ‘I think I can afford to stand you a ten yuan ticket, Chief.’
Attendants in red ski suits let them through the gate. The walk up the cobbled walkway took them to a long, green-roofed building. It was warm inside, with large restaurants off to left and right, floor to ceiling windows giving on to views of the ski slope itself. The one to the left was still doing late business, groups of wealthy young men and women in fashionable ski gear gathered at round tables, picking over the debris of their meals, draining the last of their beer. The other restaurant was empty, and Sun led Li through it to a café at the far end. It, too, was deserted, apart from a young woman behind a polished wood counter. She wore the Snow World uniform of dark grey trousers and a dark waistcoat over a white blouse. They ordered tea from her and sat by the window.
Li looked out in astonishment at the dozens of skiers gliding down the shallow slope, then queuing to be dragged back up again on a continuous pulley. At the far side, screaming children sitting in huge inflated tyres flew down a separate run, while a motorised skidoo plied a non-stop trade for goggle-eyed thrill seekers up and down a deserted slope off to the right. He watched as a novice, a young girl togged up in the most expensive of designer ski wear, tried to propel herself along the flat with her ski sticks. She looked clumsy in the great plastic boots that were clipped into her skis, and she ended up sitting down with a thump, severely denting her dignity. There was nothing very sophisticated about any of it, but it was a brand new China experience for Li. ‘Do these people actually have their own skis?’ he asked Sun.
Sun laughed. ‘No, most of them hire everything here.’
‘How much does it cost?’
‘About three hundred and sixty kwai for a day’s skiing.’ Half a month’s income for the average Chinese.
Li looked at Sun in astonishment. ‘Three hundred and sixty…?’ He shook his head. ‘What an incredible waste of money.’ He had only been in America for little over a year, but somehow China had changed hugely in that time, and he felt as if he had been left behind, in breathless pursuit now of changes he could never catch. He glanced at Sun and saw the envy in the young man’s face as he looked out at these privileged kids indulging in pursuits that would always be beyond his pocket. There were only ten years between them, but the gap was almost generational. While Li saw Beijing Snow World as something invasive and alien to his country’s culture, it was something that Sun clearly aspired to. On the other side of the glass, a young woman walked past with two tiny white pet dogs frolicking at her heels. One of them wore a pink waistcoat.
Sun laughed. ‘That’ll be to keep it warm. She must be going to eat the other one first.’
The setting sun had become a huge red globe and was starting to dip below the line of the hills. Li drained his tea and stood up. ‘Better go,’ he said.
It was twilight as they drove into Dalingjiang. The village square was a dusty, open piece of broken ground where the men of the village sat on well-worn logs lined up against the wall of the now crumbling production team headquarters of the old commune. Several village elders were gathered in the dying light, smoking pipes and indulging in desultory conversation. A rusty old notice board raised on two poles had nothing to announce. Nothing much happened any more in Dalingjiang. They watched in curious silence as the Jeep rumbled past. Along another side of the square, were the logs laid out for the women. But they were empty.
Sun pulled up at the village shop, a single-storey brick building with a dilapidated roof and ill-fitting windows. Corncobs were spread out to dry over the concrete stoop. The door jarred and rattled and complained as Li pushed it open. A middle-aged woman behind two glass counters smiled at him. He flicked his eyes over the half-empty shelves behind her. Jars of preserves, Chinese spices, soy sauce, cigarettes, chewing gum. Under the glass were packets of dried beans, cooking utensils, coloured crayons. Crates of beer were stacked under the window.
‘Can I help you?’ the woman asked.
‘I’m looking for the home of Lao Da,’ he said. ‘Do you know him?’
‘Of course,’ said the woman. ‘But you won’t be able to drive there. You’ll have to park at the end of the road and walk.’
She gave him instructions and they parked the Jeep further up the dirt road and turned off through a maze of frozen rutted tracks that led them between the high brick walls of the villagers’ courtyard homes. There were piles of refuse gathered at the side of the larger alleys, stacks of red bricks, sheaves of corn stalks for feeding the donkeys. Dogs barked and bayed in the growing darkness, a scrawny mongrel beneath a piece of corrugated iron growling and whining at them as they passed. A donkey looked up with interest from its evening meal, and a cackle of hens ran off screaming from behind their chicken wire. The air was filled with the sweet scent of wood smoke, and they saw smoke drifting gently from tubes extending horizontally from holes in the side walls of houses. There were no chimneys on the roofs.