River Town_ Two Years On The Yangtze Part 12

At Hami the safety management worker and I stood there watching the fruit salesmen, and I asked him about relations between the Han and the Uighurs.

"We have problems," he said. "Sometimes the guanxi guanxi is bad. Now our government helps their education, agriculture, economy, but still there are problems. It's because of the history, not today's policy. Every country has this kind of trouble-you have the same kind of problems with blacks in your America." is bad. Now our government helps their education, agriculture, economy, but still there are problems. It's because of the history, not today's policy. Every country has this kind of trouble-you have the same kind of problems with blacks in your America."

It was a good point, and I told him that I didn't think Xinjiang's troubles were America's affair. But I said that if it was a Chinese affair, it seemed strange that the violence in the spring hadn't been discussed in the newspapers in Chongqing and Fuling.

"Sichuan is too remote. Bigger cities heard about what happened here."

"What happened?"

"There were bombs," he said, shrugging. "It was like Israel."

"Does your company have any Uighur workers?"

"No. Their education level isn't high enough, and if it's not high enough, it's not safe. If their level was appropriate, we'd hire them."

"Do you speak Uighur?"

"No. You don't need it here. You always use Chinese at work and when you go shopping."

"Do you know any words?"

"I know a few. Salaam aleik.u.m Salaam aleik.u.m is 'h.e.l.lo.' And 'thank you' is..." is 'h.e.l.lo.' And 'thank you' is..."

He paused, thinking hard. He had lived in the Uighur Autonomous Region for two years. "I forget," he said at last. "But I know 'goodbye.'"

And he said it, but he spoke softly and the word was lost in the hot desert wind that swept through the station.

THE OASIS TOWNS appeared every hour or two, rising suddenly alongside the tracks and then disappearing just as quickly into the rock and dirt and sand. They weren't oases in the romantic sense: no palms or s.h.i.+ning pools of water; just concrete and dust and gla.s.s. It was as if the oases and the desert had been reversed; we would roll out of town and I would breathe a sigh of relief, unable to imagine that once these places had been inviting to travellers. The land was barren but it was also mesmerizing, and the towns had no charm. appeared every hour or two, rising suddenly alongside the tracks and then disappearing just as quickly into the rock and dirt and sand. They weren't oases in the romantic sense: no palms or s.h.i.+ning pools of water; just concrete and dust and gla.s.s. It was as if the oases and the desert had been reversed; we would roll out of town and I would breathe a sigh of relief, unable to imagine that once these places had been inviting to travellers. The land was barren but it was also mesmerizing, and the towns had no charm.

I would have been happy to continue like that for days, pa.s.sing from oasis to oasis, watching the great nothingness beside the tracks. The train was comfortable and the people friendly; I was the only waiguoren waiguoren of our car and often the other pa.s.sengers brought me food and drink-tomatoes, cuc.u.mbers, flavored ices, dried fish, beer. Occasionally somebody stopped by to talk about prices or Sino-American relations, but at last it was as if the wasteland had swallowed all conversation. Nearly everybody sat silent, staring out at the scenery. of our car and often the other pa.s.sengers brought me food and drink-tomatoes, cuc.u.mbers, flavored ices, dried fish, beer. Occasionally somebody stopped by to talk about prices or Sino-American relations, but at last it was as if the wasteland had swallowed all conversation. Nearly everybody sat silent, staring out at the scenery.

The Flaming Mountains rose to the south, red and scarred by countless ridges, and then the Heavenly Mountains came into view. Snow was streaked bright in the high peaks. It grew dark; a full moon hung heavy in the eastern sky. The train rocked westward. It seemed we'd never get to Urumqi, but I didn't care.

THERE WERE CHECKPOINTS on the Xinjiang highways where policemen with machine guns inspected all vehicles. It was unusual for Chinese policemen to handle weapons like that, and in Xinjiang they were very proud of the responsibility, fiddling constantly with the clip and the handle. They couldn't simply carry the guns on their straps-the point of having a weapon was to keep it constantly in their hands, aimed at something. It was like giving an automatic rifle to a child. I took a bus from Urumqi to Turpan, and the policeman at the checkpoint used the barrel of his machine gun to motion bluntly at the pa.s.sengers as he inspected our identification. on the Xinjiang highways where policemen with machine guns inspected all vehicles. It was unusual for Chinese policemen to handle weapons like that, and in Xinjiang they were very proud of the responsibility, fiddling constantly with the clip and the handle. They couldn't simply carry the guns on their straps-the point of having a weapon was to keep it constantly in their hands, aimed at something. It was like giving an automatic rifle to a child. I took a bus from Urumqi to Turpan, and the policeman at the checkpoint used the barrel of his machine gun to motion bluntly at the pa.s.sengers as he inspected our identification.

The tension in the big cities was palpable; conversations with Uighurs didn't last very long before they started complaining. They complained about the number of Han migrants, and they complained about how all the good government jobs went to the Han, and they complained about the planned-birth policy, even though for Uighurs the limit was extended to two children and was imposed only in urban areas. I wasn't particularly surprised to see that the problems of the spring hadn't blown over; everything I had learned about the Chinese suggested that they would be particularly bad colonists. They tended to have strong ideas about race, they rarely respected religion, and they had trouble considering a non-Chinese point of view. One of the best characteristics of the people I knew in Fuling was that they had a powerful pride in their own culture-I had never lived in a place where the people had such a strong sense of their unique cultural ident.i.ty. Despite the self-destruction of the Cultural Revolution and the subsequent rush to open to the outside world, there was still a definite sense of what was Chinese, and I believed that this would help them survive modernization. But there was also a narrowness to this concept, and it seemed nearly impossible for a Chinese to go to a place like Xinjiang, learn the language, and make friends with the locals. In the five thousand years of their history it was striking how little interest the Chinese had had in exploration, and today that same characteristic limited them, even within their own borders. They seemed completely content in being Chinese, and they a.s.sumed that this feeling was shared by everybody else.

When the Han went to western places like Xinjiang or Tibet, their initial reaction was that the people needed to become more like the country's interior, particularly with regard to modernization, even if it came at the expense of culture. I had trouble understanding this perspective; to me it seemed that already too many beautiful places had been modernized too quickly, and I felt that the relatively untouched corners of China should be left that way. But I had never been poor, which made a great difference in the way you saw a place like Xinjiang.

Everything looked different to the average Chinese, and I had gained some sense of their perspective when my writing cla.s.s studied the American West in the fall. We discussed Western expansion, and I presented my students with a dilemma of the late nineteenth century: the Plains Indians, their culture in jeopardy, were being pressed by white settlers. I asked my cla.s.s to imagine that they were American citizens proposing a solution, and nearly all responded like the following two students: The Indians should become a part of American society like everyone else. Even though they are poor and savage, we can help them found reservations to make them civilized, and give them advanced knowledges and experiences to change their lifestyle and develop their economy. By this way, we can make them become rich and be suited for modern life. At last, the Indians can get along well with us and advance together.The world is changing and developing. We should make the Indians suit our modern life. The Indians are used to living all over the plains and moving frequently, without a fixed home, but it is very impractical in our modern life.... We need our country to be a powerful country; we must make the Indians adapt to our modern life and keep pace with the society. Only in this way can we strengthen the country.

That was the first time I realized how different our perspectives were on progress and modernization. If anything, I had presented them with an idealized version of the Plains Indians, and yet the lifestyle and culture had no appeal to my students. But like most Chinese, the majority were but one generation removed from serious poverty. What I saw as freedom and culture, they saw as misery and ignorance.

And Xinjiang, as well as Tibet, looked much the same. The Han that I met in Xinjiang couldn't understand why the Uighurs didn't appreciate China's efforts; they pointed out how backward the region had been before Liberation, emphasizing the work that had been done by the government. There was no question that this was true-the government had built roads, railways, schools. But the Chinese had failed to take the logical first step; they had never made a serious effort to understand and respect the Uighur culture, and settlers rarely learned the local language. The result was that tremendous amounts of money and work had been sunk into the desert, but with regard to improving relations much of it had been completely wasted.

I found myself oddly situated in the middle of this tension. The Uighurs disliked speaking the language of the Han, and in tourist areas some of them spoke better j.a.panese or English than Chinese. There was a certain distrust of foreigners who spoke Chinese; it was better if you used English. This was hard for me to do-all summer I had enjoyed the benefits of becoming conversational in Chinese, but now my use of the language established me as an outsider, and a politically charged outsider at that.

In addition to the language, there was a host of new cultural rules that complicated my interactions with the Uighurs. They were very different people from the Chinese I knew in Fuling-the Uighurs showed emotion, angering easily, and I found bargaining unpleasant because sometimes the routine involved a mock show of anger or disgust. I missed the even predictability of the Chinese; I was accustomed to their social rules, and I knew how they would react to the things I did and said. There was something comforting about all of those rote dialogues-the conversations about my salary, U.S.-China relations, and Da Shan. In Xinjiang I found myself gravitating to Chinese restaurants and shops, and especially I liked talking with the Sichuanese, who had migrated to Xinjiang in large numbers. After a summer on the road it was good to hear their slurred tones again-much more soothing than the Turkic trills of the Uighur tongue. And I realized that I had picked up some of that distinctly Chinese narrowness: I was also content in being Chinese, even here in Xinjiang.

But things were different if I didn't say anything. I have some Italian ancestry and don't look too much different from the Uighurs, and I could walk down the street and not attract attention. Occasionally I was mistaken for a native-the Chinese sometimes asked if I was a Uighur, and the Uighurs sometimes asked if I was a Kazakh. In Fuling I was always extremely conscious of my appearance, because every day I was confronted by the ways in which I looked different from the locals, but now in these desert towns I saw people with noses and hair and eyes like mine. For the first time I realized the full importance of race, not just in the way it divided people, but also in the sense of feeling a link to those who looked like you. For a year I hadn't felt that connection, but here in Xinjiang, although the link was tenuous, it was better than nothing.

My vacation was winding down, but I had no eagerness to leave. I liked the lazy freedom of traveling, and I liked the uncertainty of my position here in Xinjiang, where I had no job and even my race was in question. It was a vague place-even time was uncertain here. All of China is on one time zone, which meant that in Xinjiang the sun didn't rise until eight or nine o'clock and it set after ten at night. Most of the people followed a more practical schedule, based on a mythical local time zone that was two hours later than the one in Beijing, but all of the government offices and state-run transportation followed the official standard time. It was the perfect symbol of the divide between the government and the governed, both of them living in the same place but going about their separate routines a full two hours apart.

Mostly in Xinjiang I liked the brutal landscapes. For three days I camped at alt.i.tudes of more than ten thousand feet in the Heavenly Mountains, and a day later I was in Turpan, where the desert basin dipped to five hundred feet below sea level and the Flaming Mountains rose north of town. Turpan was so hot that even the government couldn't control the temperature. Every day I was there, it reached forty-two degrees, 107 Fahrenheit, and it was reported as such. Shops closed during midday, so everybody could rest inside until the worst of the heat had pa.s.sed.

It was almost as hot in Hami, where my sister Angela was looking at rocks. Along with another Stanford geologist, she was employed by a Chinese state-owned oil company that had built an entire city outside of Hami. It was literally a city-schools, hospitals, shops, apartment buildings; everything was neatly laid out on well-planned streets that had been desert wasteland but four years ago. There were fifty thousand employees who worked there, all of them Han Chinese who had been s.h.i.+pped in from Gansu province. When I went to the market, people mistook me for a Uighur, because they had seen so few of the locals. The Chinese rarely left the complex; everything they needed was provided by their oil-built oasis in the desert.

And yet the city was a mirage. There wasn't much oil in Hami, at least according to Angela and her colleague, who knew the region's geology. All of it was a mystery-why had they built the city here in the desert? Why had all of these people been transferred out to this desolate place? What were they looking for? In five hundred years, would it be like the Great Wall, money and work buried in the sand? What was it about the Chinese that made them come slightly unhinged in the border regions-what inspired them to build walls, forts, cities; why did they construct Ozymandian monstrosities in the far reaches of their country? And what prevented them from actually talking with the people who lived there?

But these were mysteries that I didn't have time to untangle. I was in Hami for three short days-I stayed in Angela's hotel, along with Adam Weiss, another Peace Corps volunteer, who had met me in Turpan. And then our time was up, and Weiss and I left the city in the desert, catching a train back to Chengdu.

THE TRAIN TO CHENGDU TOOK FIFTY HOURS and I had a bad feeling about it from the moment Weiss and I tried to buy tickets. They wouldn't sell us sleeper berths at the Hami station, and all they said was that we could try to upgrade our hard seat tickets once we boarded. and I had a bad feeling about it from the moment Weiss and I tried to buy tickets. They wouldn't sell us sleeper berths at the Hami station, and all they said was that we could try to upgrade our hard seat tickets once we boarded.

School was about to start, and the train was full of college students who were returning to Sichuan. There weren't any sleeping berths left, and there weren't any open spots in the hard seat cars. People were stuffed in the aisles, sitting on their luggage, leaning against each other. The walkways between cars were packed with pa.s.sengers squatting on the floor. People sat in the sinks. It was the most crowded train I had ever seen in China.

Fifty hours is a long time to ride on a train without seats. For the first night Weiss and I did the best we could in the aisle, sitting on our bags, but it was impossible to sleep and always there were people coming through and b.u.mping us. The worker in charge of our car was annoyed by the crowd, and out of spite she mopped the entire carriage three times during the first evening. In order for her to do this, all of us had to stand up and hold our luggage over our heads while she pushed at our feet with the dirty mop. She mopped at eight o'clock, ten o'clock, and midnight. Everybody grumbled but n.o.body resisted; in China you tolerated the bad behavior of the people who were employed to serve you, the same way you tolerated bullies and all other ha.s.sles of that sort. Or you tried to leave, which is what Weiss and I finally did, scouting out a different car where the worker seemed more reasonable. It was an improvement, but we were still standing in the aisle as the train plodded east through the desert.

It wasn't the sort of trip that inspires positive thoughts. Weiss and I discussed other Peace Corps volunteers in our group, and things they did that annoyed us, and we talked about the new volunteers who had recently arrived and how badly they would do this year. We complained about the various waiguoren waiguoren we had seen over the course of the summer. We watched the other pa.s.sengers in the car, criticizing their flaws. We discussed things we would do and eat whenever we returned to America. We reviewed the most offensive rap lyrics from the Notorious B.I.G.'s recent alb.u.m, and we talked about what the Notorious B.I.G. would do on a train like this, and how his reaction would be distinct from that of Snoop Doggy Dogg. Neither of the rappers would like the train very much, we decided. At least ten times an hour I looked at my watch. we had seen over the course of the summer. We watched the other pa.s.sengers in the car, criticizing their flaws. We discussed things we would do and eat whenever we returned to America. We reviewed the most offensive rap lyrics from the Notorious B.I.G.'s recent alb.u.m, and we talked about what the Notorious B.I.G. would do on a train like this, and how his reaction would be distinct from that of Snoop Doggy Dogg. Neither of the rappers would like the train very much, we decided. At least ten times an hour I looked at my watch.

I rarely glanced out the windows, and I couldn't read. Sometimes I listened to my Walkman, but I hadn't brought enough tapes. Mostly I was too exhausted to speak Chinese, although in the afternoon I had a long conversation with a group of students who were on their way to Chengdu. But that was a very calculated effort; I figured that if they realized we were teachers they might share their seats, out of respect. Sure enough, after thirty minutes' conversation they kindly offered us a spot on the end of their bench. For the second night Weiss and I shared the seat in s.h.i.+fts, one standing while the other sat, but the seat wasn't comfortable and neither of us slept for more than ten minutes at a stretch.

Time crept, especially when I was standing, and to pa.s.s the evening I did something that I often did in China when things got rough. I remembered other places I had visited, thinking about what I had liked the most about them-a comfortable hotel, or a good restaurant, or the way a river wound through a green valley. I spent some time thinking about which part of the world was the perfect opposite of this particular Chinese train, and at last I decided that it was Switzerland. To distract myself I recalled some of the long hikes I had taken there, and in my mind I walked them over again. I remembered a certain stretch of the Swiss Valais where I had hiked up hard from the Val d'Anniviers, because night had been falling, and I remembered camping high above St. Luc. My clothes were damp with the effort of the climb, and I put the tent up quickly, because it was growing cold; and then I went to sleep.

The next morning I climbed the Bella Tola. It was early summer and the mountain was still snow-covered, and the ice was streaked red with Sahara sand that had been blown across the Mediterranean by the fohn fohn winds. After the Bella Tola, I continued over the Meidpa.s.s into the Turtmanntal, which is the first German-speaking valley as you head east across the southern Valais. The Turtmanntal is a steep empty valley with a blue glacier trembling at its southern end, and I made camp in a meadow midway up the slope to the next pa.s.s. I arranged everything carefully, checking my tent and sleeping bag, and then I went to sleep. Always I went to sleep. winds. After the Bella Tola, I continued over the Meidpa.s.s into the Turtmanntal, which is the first German-speaking valley as you head east across the southern Valais. The Turtmanntal is a steep empty valley with a blue glacier trembling at its southern end, and I made camp in a meadow midway up the slope to the next pa.s.s. I arranged everything carefully, checking my tent and sleeping bag, and then I went to sleep. Always I went to sleep.

The train rocked east and south. By the last day it was as if something inside of me had snapped and I was too tired to do any more walks in my mind, not even short ones around my home in Missouri. Pa.s.sengers started getting off after we reached Sichuan, and for the last five hours Weiss and I had seats. But it was too late to do us much good and we stared ahead without speaking. We reached Chengdu in early evening, and I realized that I had just spent two days of my life standing on a train. My summer vacation was over. During the rest of my time in the Peace Corps, I never rode another train.

THE PRIEST.

IN THE OLD SECTION of Fuling City is a Catholic church, and in the courtyard of the church is a propaganda sign, which consists of four lines of four characters each: of Fuling City is a Catholic church, and in the courtyard of the church is a propaganda sign, which consists of four lines of four characters each:

Love the Country, Love the Religion Respect G.o.d, Love the People Throw Your Body into the Four Modernizations Serve the Ma.s.ses

The Four Modernizations are Industry, Agriculture, Defense, and Science; and it is difficult to see their connection to Fuling's Catholic church, which was constructed by French missionaries in 1861, and whose Ma.s.ses are served by Father Li Hairou, who at eighty-three years of age is more than four times as old as the Four Modernizations.

Father Li stands well under five feet tall. Usually he wears a soft black beret atop his white-haired head. He has a long, proud nose-an Italian nose for a Chinese Roman Catholic priest. His eyes are black, and sometimes they flicker and flash and show emotion when his voice, which is low and raspy, does not. Visitors occasionally remark on his brilliant white teeth, and Father Li responds by saying that they are a species of Modernization that cost him two hundred yuan and two months of eating nothing but rice gruel. He smiles easily. He walks with a dragon-headed cane. His kidneys often hurt, as does his knee, and when these problems flare up he says the Ma.s.s in Latin, because it is quicker that way. If the pain is serious he does not say the Ma.s.s at all, but that rarely happens. He is strong, although he moves slowly, and there is a p.r.o.nounced dignity in his carriage. Most elderly people in China have this dignity, because they live in a culture where age commands unquestioned respect; and many of them, like Father Li, have an extra sense of pride that comes from not only the years but the bitter way so many of them pa.s.sed. Those bitter years are what lie behind the flash in his eyes.

For more than half a century, Father Li has been a priest in Fuling. Anywhere in the world that is a long time to be a priest. In Fuling, fifty years of priesthood is an eternity.

LI HAIROU'S GREAT-GRANDFATHER was converted to Catholicism by French missionaries in the early 1800s. The Li family lived in Dazu, not far from Chongqing, and Li Hairou was the second son of a shopkeeper. At eleven he was sent to a French-run parochial school in Chongqing, and then in Chengdu he studied to be a priest. He learned French and Latin, and, like the other young seminary students, he dreamed of studying in Rome. Others were sent to Italy, but Li Hairou stayed, becoming a priest in 1944, at the age of twenty-nine. Three years later, he was sent to Fuling-remote, undeveloped, a distant backwater of a poor province. Perhaps in another age it would have been a quiet post. But the midcentury was a time when nothing in China was quiet, when the War of Resistance Against the j.a.panese was followed by the Civil War and Communist Liberation, and these were struggles that touched almost everybody in the Chongqing region. Li Hairou's older brother died during the wars, and his younger brother, having found himself on the wrong side of Liberation, fled to Singapore, where he married and became a teacher. But Father Li stayed in Fuling, serving the three thousand paris.h.i.+oners, working with the two French priests who lived in the area, waiting for the ripples of revolution to make their way down the Yangtze Valley. And then the French were gone, and the ripples came to sh.o.r.e, and Father Li had to wait no more. was converted to Catholicism by French missionaries in the early 1800s. The Li family lived in Dazu, not far from Chongqing, and Li Hairou was the second son of a shopkeeper. At eleven he was sent to a French-run parochial school in Chongqing, and then in Chengdu he studied to be a priest. He learned French and Latin, and, like the other young seminary students, he dreamed of studying in Rome. Others were sent to Italy, but Li Hairou stayed, becoming a priest in 1944, at the age of twenty-nine. Three years later, he was sent to Fuling-remote, undeveloped, a distant backwater of a poor province. Perhaps in another age it would have been a quiet post. But the midcentury was a time when nothing in China was quiet, when the War of Resistance Against the j.a.panese was followed by the Civil War and Communist Liberation, and these were struggles that touched almost everybody in the Chongqing region. Li Hairou's older brother died during the wars, and his younger brother, having found himself on the wrong side of Liberation, fled to Singapore, where he married and became a teacher. But Father Li stayed in Fuling, serving the three thousand paris.h.i.+oners, working with the two French priests who lived in the area, waiting for the ripples of revolution to make their way down the Yangtze Valley. And then the French were gone, and the ripples came to sh.o.r.e, and Father Li had to wait no more.

"In the 1950s," he says, "first there was trouble because Catholicism was considered Foreign Teaching. Later, during the Great Cultural Revolution, there was more trouble because they were Destroying Superst.i.tion-but that was later. At first they were trying to stop Foreign Teaching, and so after Liberation I was sent out to the countryside. That was in 1953. I was sent to the north of Fuling, about seventy miles away. The conditions were terrible. Often there wasn't enough to eat, and many people in China starved. That was the time of the dagongfan dagongfan-the communal meal. They had one pot, and one person would put in some radishes, another person put in some rice, another person put in some other vegetables. But there wasn't enough for everybody to eat. It was the same with the Great Leap Forward-that was a huge mistake. Those were both Chairman Mao's ideas. He didn't understand economics the way Deng Xiaoping did. What Chairman Mao liked was revolution; he liked struggle. People became poorer, and the poorer you were, the more you were controlled."

Father Li is sitting in his office, a small dark room next to the church. As in so many Chinese sitting rooms, the decorations are a mystery of quirkiness: an empty aquarium, a plastic Donald Duck, a small statue of Mary, a slightly smaller figure of Santa Claus, a talking digital clock that announces the hour in Mandarin. But by far the strangest decoration, hanging on the wall across from Father Li, is a large photograph of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.

The black-and-white picture features the two men smiling over cups of tea. The chairs of both men are reclined, and the scene would not be out of place in a Sichuan teahouse. But the photograph is from near the end of Mao's life, when Deng Xiaoping had already suffered more than his share of troubles from the old man's policies, and undoubtedly there were emotions in this meeting that the camera missed. And there are certainly feelings in Father Li's heart that are not reflected in the simple and careful way that he speaks about the past. But there is a spark in his eyes as he glances up at the photograph, and then he shakes his head and continues his story.

"In the countryside I didn't have my vestments. I didn't have a Bible. I had nothing-all I had was a rosary, so I said the rosary three times a day. I returned to Fuling in 1955, but I didn't come back to the church, because it was closed down. I couldn't be a priest anymore, so I was sent down to work on the docks. My job was cleaning-mopping, sweeping, cleaning the docks. I made twenty-four yuan a month. It wasn't enough, you know.

"Often I said Ma.s.s for myself. We weren't allowed to have a church, but I could say Ma.s.s alone. But once the Great Cultural Revolution started, I couldn't even do that. The Red Guards turned the church into a sock factory, and they always watched me. I wasn't in jail, but I was constantly guarded, and the Red Guards made me do many things. Often I wore the High Hat while they criticized me, and they'd force me to kneel down and bow like this"-he dips his white head and gives a short laugh, the way he often chuckles when he remembers the Cultural Revolution. "They'd march me through the streets with a sign that said: 'Down with Imperialism's Faithful Running Dogs!' I'd wear the sign like this, in front and in back, with big characters on it."

He traces the ten characters on the surface of the low table in front of him, stroke by stroke, dipping a finger into his tea. This is a common Chinese habit when speaking with foreigners-because many characters have the same sound, a conversation will sometimes pause as the speaker writes a word in order to clarify the meaning for the waiguoren waiguoren listener. They write them in the air, on the palm of their hand, in tea water on a table; and to watch a Chinese person do this is to realize how unique the written language is, and how its words are truly shapes-not just sounds, or collections of letters, but tangible things that are handled and touched. And in this case the words are so tangible that they were once worn in public. But Father Li says nothing more about that; he merely traces his ten characters on the table, and the hot water steams and evaporates, and the words disappear. listener. They write them in the air, on the palm of their hand, in tea water on a table; and to watch a Chinese person do this is to realize how unique the written language is, and how its words are truly shapes-not just sounds, or collections of letters, but tangible things that are handled and touched. And in this case the words are so tangible that they were once worn in public. But Father Li says nothing more about that; he merely traces his ten characters on the table, and the hot water steams and evaporates, and the words disappear.

"For three years it was particularly bad," he says. "Especially for three months. During those three months, I had four Red Guards watching me all day, and five times each day they took me out on the street for demonstrations."

His visitor asks what year that was, and Father Li pauses, muttering softly as he stares into s.p.a.ce. But the date will not come to him, and at last he shakes his head. "I can't remember for certain," he says. "But that was the worst time. During the struggle sessions, the Red Guards used to throw things at me-fruit, or other hard things. All of them were students-they were children. They thought it was fun."

He is not smiling now. Something in his eyes has hardened, and he points up at the picture of Mao. "It was his idea," Father Li says. "His mistake. When Deng Xiaoping came to power it was different, but during the Great Cultural Revolution it was terrible. I was never injured very badly-that wasn't the problem. The problem was that I didn't get much to eat. Every day they gave me only two bowls of rice gruel. Many priests in China died during that time. Most of them died because they got sick; we didn't have enough to eat, and all day long we couldn't rest. In Chongqing there were many who died."

Again he pauses to count, but this time the number comes to mind easily. He is thinking of old friends, men he studied with, prayed with, and suffered with, and because of that his memory is clear. But still there is a long pause before he responds. Perhaps in his mind he sees their faces, the way they died and the way he nearly died. His eyes are distant as he remembers, and then he speaks again.

"Six," he says. "In Chongqing there were six priests who died."

BUT FATHER LI is not a bitter man, which is probably why he has lived so long. He does not complain about today's Communist Party, and he seems sincere when he says that its policies are fine; indeed, things are infinitely better than they once were. The church is in reasonably good repair, and it is granted tax-free status by the government, which also provides Father Li with a living stipend of two hundred yuan a month. The priest is allowed to say Ma.s.s again, and his paris.h.i.+oners can attend without hara.s.sment. Weekday services are in Latin while Sunday Ma.s.s is in the dialect. is not a bitter man, which is probably why he has lived so long. He does not complain about today's Communist Party, and he seems sincere when he says that its policies are fine; indeed, things are infinitely better than they once were. The church is in reasonably good repair, and it is granted tax-free status by the government, which also provides Father Li with a living stipend of two hundred yuan a month. The priest is allowed to say Ma.s.s again, and his paris.h.i.+oners can attend without hara.s.sment. Weekday services are in Latin while Sunday Ma.s.s is in the dialect.

On the average Sunday there are about fifty wors.h.i.+pers, mostly women, all elderly. Rarely is there anybody under forty years of age. There are no weddings or baptisms in the church-only funerals.

There are, of course, plenty of rules. Missionary work is illegal in China, and official connections to Rome are not allowed-a point of contention that, having strained relations between China and the Vatican for five centuries, is unlikely to be resolved easily.

"We can recognize the Pope personally," explains Father Li. "In our minds, in our faith, we can recognize him. If we didn't recognize him, how could you call us Catholic? Every day we pray to him. But there's no economic guanxi guanxi with Rome-they don't give us money. And also there's no political connection with them, and the Pope can't come to China. He would like to come but he can't, because right now he recognizes Taiwan. If he recognized China instead, then he could come. But even now there are priests in China who have visited Rome to see him. This year the Pope went to Cuba, and it had been many years since he had last been there. That visit went very well, too. So maybe in the future he'll also make it to China." with Rome-they don't give us money. And also there's no political connection with them, and the Pope can't come to China. He would like to come but he can't, because right now he recognizes Taiwan. If he recognized China instead, then he could come. But even now there are priests in China who have visited Rome to see him. This year the Pope went to Cuba, and it had been many years since he had last been there. That visit went very well, too. So maybe in the future he'll also make it to China."

These are distant issues, and Father Li seems far more concerned about the problems he faces here in Fuling. He worries about his aging paris.h.i.+oners, and he worries about the serious shortage of clergy in Sichuan, which has but seventy priests for 120 churches. He also worries about money, because his paris.h.i.+oners are too poor to give much support, and foreign a.s.sistance has diminished since his younger brother died in Singapore five years ago.

But he doesn't worry too much, because such concerns seem minor compared to everything that he has seen in the past. He has seen the War of Resistance Against the j.a.panese, the Civil War, and Liberation. He has seen, personally, the campaign against Foreign Teaching and the campaign to Destroy Superst.i.tion. He has seen the old French-built church turned into a sock factory. He has seen ugly words draped over his shoulders. He has seen the church reopen back in 1981, and on the first Sunday he saw fewer than twenty nervous people come to Ma.s.s. Now the Fuling area has more than a thousand Catholics, even if rarely there are more than fifty at a given service, and for an old priest like Father Li there is a great deal of satisfaction in seeing that much. Others weren't so fortunate.

But still it seems strange that in his office he can look up and see the photograph of Mao Zedong, who made a three-decade hole in Father Li's life as a priest. It is not uncommon for Sichuanese victims of the Cultural Revolution to have a poster of Deng Xiaoping on their walls, because he suffered as they did, but very few of them display pictures of Mao. Perhaps for Father Li there is a political reason-maybe he does it to appease cadres, the way somebody is appeased by the Four Modernizations sign in the courtyard. In China, many officials see religion as subversive, particularly the Catholic Church, and perhaps the photograph is intended to put their minds at rest.

Father Li often looks at the picture. While talking about the trials of the past, he glances at it repeatedly, and every time there is the sudden flash in his eyes, as if something about the photograph holds his memories together. At the end of his story, he looks at it once more. Again he points a steady finger at Mao.

"All of that was his idea," he says. He pauses, still staring at the picture, whose smiling figures give no sense of what "all of that" entails: the broken church, the cruel and violent children with their red armbands, the lost years and the lost friends. Then the priest says, simply, "Because of that, we don't respect him."

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Chinese Life ON SUNDAY MORNINGS in Fuling I went to eight-o'clock Ma.s.s. I had gone to Ma.s.s alone during the spring of my first year, but now in the fall I went with Noreen Finnegan, who was one of the new Peace Corps volunteers sent to Fuling. There were two of them-Noreen and Sunni Fa.s.s. It felt strange to have suddenly doubled the population of in Fuling I went to eight-o'clock Ma.s.s. I had gone to Ma.s.s alone during the spring of my first year, but now in the fall I went with Noreen Finnegan, who was one of the new Peace Corps volunteers sent to Fuling. There were two of them-Noreen and Sunni Fa.s.s. It felt strange to have suddenly doubled the population of waiguoren waiguoren, and neither Adam nor I knew exactly what to think about the change. We were comfortable with our routines of the first year, and our relations.h.i.+p had always been easy-we were very close, but at the same time we had always been able to spend time apart. There were sections of the city and the college that each of us had carved out for himself, and we didn't interfere with each other's routines.

In a small place like Fuling it doesn't take long to feel possessive about the city. Neither Adam nor I had ever seen another waiguoren waiguoren there, apart from friends who had come to visit us, and our contact with the Peace Corps was minimal. Two administrators had made visits during our first month of service, but after that we were left alone. Fuling was far from the Peace Corps headquarters in Chengdu, and none of the administrators liked taking the Yangtze boats, which were slow and dangerous. Back in the spring, two of the Fuling boats had collided near Chongqing in a particularly bad accident, killing more than a dozen people, and several times on the river I saw abandoned boats that were in various stages of sinking. I was always careful to pa.s.s these stories along to the Peace Corps, so they'd be less inclined to visit. It was simplest if we were left alone, and for the most part we were. there, apart from friends who had come to visit us, and our contact with the Peace Corps was minimal. Two administrators had made visits during our first month of service, but after that we were left alone. Fuling was far from the Peace Corps headquarters in Chengdu, and none of the administrators liked taking the Yangtze boats, which were slow and dangerous. Back in the spring, two of the Fuling boats had collided near Chongqing in a particularly bad accident, killing more than a dozen people, and several times on the river I saw abandoned boats that were in various stages of sinking. I was always careful to pa.s.s these stories along to the Peace Corps, so they'd be less inclined to visit. It was simplest if we were left alone, and for the most part we were.

But now there were four of us, and for a while I worried about the change. In the end, though, it didn't have much of an effect. Life was slightly different in the college, but the city was big enough to swallow four waiguoren waiguoren without any trouble. And for the first semester Noreen and Sunni were very similar to Adam and me at the beginning; they were sh.e.l.l-shocked by the pressures of downtown Fuling, and neither of them spent much time away from campus. without any trouble. And for the first semester Noreen and Sunni were very similar to Adam and me at the beginning; they were sh.e.l.l-shocked by the pressures of downtown Fuling, and neither of them spent much time away from campus.

Noreen's parents had immigrated to New York City from Ireland, which was one reason she went to Ma.s.s on Sundays. When she first mentioned that her father had been an Irish potato farmer, Mr. w.a.n.g, who was the waiban waiban representative, became very excited. "So your father was a peasant!" he said. representative, became very excited. "So your father was a peasant!" he said.

Noreen didn't know what to think about that. "Well," she said, "he was a farmer in Ireland."

"But you said he was poor, right?"

"Well, yes."

"So he was a peasant!"

"Uhm, I guess."

"My parents were also peasants! Most of your students in this college are peasants!"

Noreen knew little about cla.s.s background in China, and she asked me how one should react when people said your father was a peasant. But in Chinese there isn't really a word for farmer-people who worked the land are nongmin nongmin, literally "agricultural people," and in English it is usually translated as "peasant." In some ways this is an inaccurate translation, calling to mind feudal Europe, but also a term like "farmer" fails to convey the negative connotations that are a.s.sociated with working the land in China. Roughly 75 percent of the population is involved in agriculture, and the divide between these people and the urban Chinese is one of the most striking gaps in the country. City dwellers in a place like Fuling can recognize a peasant at a single glance, and often they are victims of prejudice and condescension. Even the world for soil-tu-can be applied to people as a derogatory adjective, meaning unrefined and uncouth.

But so many of our students were from rural families that these prejudices weren't strong on campus. In a cla.s.s of forty-five there were usually fewer than ten who had grown up in any sort of small city, and these cities tended to be even more remote than Fuling. Very few of the students had much money, which meant that it was rare to see either the sn.o.bbishness of privilege or the sensitivity of coming from a lower-cla.s.s background. When I asked my students what their parents did for a living, almost always they responded, in English, "My mother and father are peasants."

At the beginning these responses embarra.s.sed me, because the students used this feudal word in such a matter-of-fact way. Once I asked a freshman about his family, and he said, "My father is a peasant, and my mother is a sweeper."

"I'm sorry, I didn't understand. What does your mother do?"

"She is a sweeper."