River Town_ Two Years On The Yangtze Part 2

Acting transformed them entirely-in cla.s.s they could be painfully shy, but drama changed all of that. Every gesture was overblown, every emotion overdone; they were incorrigible overactors, and after growing accustomed to their shyness it was strange to watch them shout and cry on the bare stage of the cla.s.sroom. Sometimes I thought that perhaps it had something to do with the influence of traditional Chinese opera, in which the action is exaggerated and stylized, but more likely it was simply a release in a society where emotions were rarely open. Regardless, it was a strange experience to watch them perform; they were half-recognizable, like the play itself, and both the students and Hamlet Hamlet became something new in my eyes. became something new in my eyes.

Roger played the dead king's ghost, a writhing, howling spirit in a brightly painted cone-shaped Chinese emperor's crown that he had made of papier mache. In any performance of Hamlet Hamlet it is the ghost that sets the tone for the play, and so it was with Roger in his imperial crown-a touch of China in the cla.s.s's Denmark. it is the ghost that sets the tone for the play, and so it was with Roger in his imperial crown-a touch of China in the cla.s.s's Denmark.

In the second scene, Hamlet went before Gertrude and Claudius, who were played by Jane and Sally. Romance was always a knotty issue for my students; even the most casual public contact between s.e.xes was taboo, and to play a wife or a girlfriend was too embarra.s.sing for most of the female students. Often they simplified it the way Jane and Sally did, by making the couple the same s.e.x, because in Fuling it was common for friends to be openly affectionate with each other. And so Sally stroked Jane's hair, and Jane fondled the other girl's arm, and then, realizing that Hamlet was glaring at them, Sally said imperiously, How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

And Hamlet-played by Barber, a nervous misnamed boy in thick gla.s.ses and a cheap tan suit-replied, Not so, my lord. I am too much in the sun.

Jane ran her hand along Sally's thigh. Both of them were pretty girls, their long hair brushed smooth like black silk. Barber scowled. Languidly Jane pressed close against Sally, and then she purred, Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off,And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.Don't continue to be sad for your father,You know that every man must die.

They wrote most of the dialogue themselves-the language of the play was too difficult and they used only the most famous lines, writing the rest in colloquial speech. Hamlet's Act III soliloquy was performed by Soddy, the cla.s.s monitor, who stood alone in front of the cla.s.s and said, To be, or not to be: that is the question:Whether it's better to do nothing and suffer,Or whether I should struggle against ClaudiusAnd end these troubles. To die, to sleep-No more-and by sleeping to end all ofThese terrible problems! To die, to sleep-To sleep-perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub....

He was a big kid with a lazy eye from the countryside of northern Sichuan, and the other students called him Lao Da Lao Da-Big Brother, a nickname from Hong Kong gangster films, a term of respect that reflected Soddy's authority. But despite his high position in the cla.s.s hierarchy, he was a relatively poor student. His writing was fine, but his spoken English was bad and he had no confidence in cla.s.s. Rarely did he speak out or answer questions.

I had never understood why the students respected Soddy so much until the day he stood in front of us and played Hamlet. His English was still poor-he stumbled over the soliloquy, and some of it was unintelligible. But that didn't matter, because now his talent was suddenly palpable; it was as if he had reached out and caught hold of his gift in the palm of his hand, turning it over once or twice, holding it as surely as he held our attention. He was slow, deliberate. He paced the room, and in his movements there were traces of Sichuan opera-a cloak folded just so over the crook of his arm; a wooden stool laid on its side and used as the focus of his wanderings, until he made a palace of that simple prop. But mostly his voice was perfect-he controlled the pace and tone of his speech, the way Hamlet's emotions rise and ebb like a hot uncertain sea. And Soddy knew how to use both noise and silence, to shout in frustration and then let the words resound in the cla.s.sroom that he cleaned every week. He paced restlessly; he crouched on the stool; he buried his head in his hands; he roared and shouted; he kicked at the chair; and suddenly he was silent-and then, after the silence was complete, he said, quietly, Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,And thus we want to do somethingBut our thoughts prevent usAnd lose the name of action- He was Hamlet and he was Lao Da; Lao Da; there was no longer any question in my mind. The students watched with rapt attention and at the end they applauded madly. For the rest of the year, whenever I looked at Soddy, at his square jaw and his c.o.c.keyed gaze and his dark peasant's complexion, I saw the Prince of Denmark. That was exactly what Hamlet would have looked like in the countryside of Sichuan province. there was no longer any question in my mind. The students watched with rapt attention and at the end they applauded madly. For the rest of the year, whenever I looked at Soddy, at his square jaw and his c.o.c.keyed gaze and his dark peasant's complexion, I saw the Prince of Denmark. That was exactly what Hamlet would have looked like in the countryside of Sichuan province.

IN THE OTHER CLa.s.s'S PERFORMANCE, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern marched before the king, kowtowed until their foreheads nearly grazed the floor, and stood there holding hands while they listened to Claudius's instructions. In Sichuan it was common for male friends to hold hands like that-and certainly you would want to hold somebody's hand if you were being sent off unknowingly to your death. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern marched before the king, kowtowed until their foreheads nearly grazed the floor, and stood there holding hands while they listened to Claudius's instructions. In Sichuan it was common for male friends to hold hands like that-and certainly you would want to hold somebody's hand if you were being sent off unknowingly to your death.

They loved the characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Some of them were annoyed by Hamlet, and they found Ophelia pathetic, but everybody loved Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They loved their hapless prying and they loved their demise, the way the servants are tricked into carrying their own death warrants to the King of England. That was a good touch by Shakespeare-another bit of China in the Bard's Denmark. It was a little like Miao Ze in the Chinese cla.s.sic The Romance of the Three Kingdoms The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, who betrays his brother-in-law Ma Teng in order to win the graces of the powerful Cao Cao. But Cao Cao, after killing Ma Teng, turns to the expectant Miao Ze and says, "A man so faithless does not deserve to live," and promptly executes him and his entire family in the public square. Or maybe it was like Mao's general Lin Biao, who had tried to turn the Cultural Revolution to his purposes but in the end became one of its victims. In any case, my students knew Rosencrantz and Guildenstern-they had seen those characters many times in many ages. Even today you could sometimes still find them in the cadres' offices.

The play ended in a flurry of swordplay and kung-fu kicks, Laertes and Hamlet and Claudius involved in what could have been the climax of a Hong Kong martial arts film, until at the end only Hamlet and Horatio crouched in front of the cla.s.s. They were played by Vic and Lazy, both of them dressed in cheap Western-style suits, and before their scene they carefully spread newspaper across the floor so the Prince could die without getting dirty. The cla.s.s giggled-but then the scene began, and Lazy leaned against the wall and held the dying Hamlet, and everybody hushed.

Lazy cradled him close, like a child, and yet the contact was natural because Chinese men were allowed to touch each other in that way. Hamlet groaned, tried to speak, coughed out his dying words; Horatio stammered farewell and rocked his friend tenderly in his arms. The cla.s.s was silent, watching. The actors were small men and alone on the floor they looked even smaller, crouched below the peeling paint and the dusty blackboard. Hamlet coughed again and said, I cannot live to hear the news from England,But I support Fortinbras. He has my dying voice.So tell him that-the rest is silence.

And so Hamlet died-and for a moment I almost forgot that I was in a cheerless Chinese cla.s.sroom, and that Horatio was in fact a peasant's son who liked to sleep and called himself Lazy, holding Hamlet tenderly and saying softly, sadly, Lazily, Good night, sweet prince,And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

THE LATE-AUTUMN MISTS fell over White Flat Mountain and the cla.s.srooms grew colder. They weren't heated-few public buildings in Fuling were-and finally I took to closing the door when I taught. The students started wearing coats, scarves, gloves; their fingers swelled with chilblains and their ears turned red. I could see their breath in the cold crowded room. We read Swift, Wordsworth, Byron. The verses resounded with sweet regularity as we recited them aloud-iambic puffs of steam rising toward the ceiling. Outside, the unmetered wind blew hard from the Yangtze. Beneath their desks the students stamped their feet in the cold. fell over White Flat Mountain and the cla.s.srooms grew colder. They weren't heated-few public buildings in Fuling were-and finally I took to closing the door when I taught. The students started wearing coats, scarves, gloves; their fingers swelled with chilblains and their ears turned red. I could see their breath in the cold crowded room. We read Swift, Wordsworth, Byron. The verses resounded with sweet regularity as we recited them aloud-iambic puffs of steam rising toward the ceiling. Outside, the unmetered wind blew hard from the Yangtze. Beneath their desks the students stamped their feet in the cold.

They begged me to a.s.sign another Shakespeare play, and at last I did, partly to keep warm. I summarized Romeo and Juliet Romeo and Juliet and they played it. Soddy and his cla.s.smates built a balcony out of desks, an unstable tower upon which Lucy stood bravely while Soddy courted her from below. Five scenes later, Grace gave Juliet's soliloquy as she prepared to take the Friar's sleeping potion. Her family was against her, and Romeo had been exiled, and in the middle of the scene Grace began to cry. She was a beautiful, lively girl, one of my favorite students because she always spoke her mind without fear of embarra.s.sment. Chinese girls weren't supposed to be like that-but Grace didn't care. On the day she played Juliet her long black hair was pulled back smooth past her shoulders, and her eyes shone bright with tears, and her breath came out white in the cold cla.s.sroom. and they played it. Soddy and his cla.s.smates built a balcony out of desks, an unstable tower upon which Lucy stood bravely while Soddy courted her from below. Five scenes later, Grace gave Juliet's soliloquy as she prepared to take the Friar's sleeping potion. Her family was against her, and Romeo had been exiled, and in the middle of the scene Grace began to cry. She was a beautiful, lively girl, one of my favorite students because she always spoke her mind without fear of embarra.s.sment. Chinese girls weren't supposed to be like that-but Grace didn't care. On the day she played Juliet her long black hair was pulled back smooth past her shoulders, and her eyes shone bright with tears, and her breath came out white in the cold cla.s.sroom.

A few days earlier, when they had been preparing the play, I had noticed one boy standing apart from his group. His English name was Silence Hill. "I am always silent," he had explained back in September, when I first asked him about his name. But he wrote beautifully, a thoughtful young man from a village of 250 people, and he always had a soft smile on his worn face. On the day that I noticed him standing alone, he was smiling and staring fixedly at the text of the play. I asked him what he was looking at, and without a word he pointed at two of Juliet's lines: My only love, sprung from my only hate!Too early seen unknown, and known too late!

"Do you understand what that means?" I asked, thinking he had a question.

"Yes," he said. "I think it's very beautiful."

I paused and looked at the lines again.

"I think you're right," I said, and for a moment neither of us said anything. Together Silence Hill and I stood there looking at the poetry.

RAISE THE FLAG MOUNTAIN.

THE MOUNTAIN HAS TWO NAMES, Peach Blossom Mountain and Raise the Flag Mountain, and it rises green above the college and the junction of the rivers. In spring and fall and winter, the peak often fades into the river-valley fog, and in summer, when the days burn bright under a violent sun, the groves of peach trees near the summit seem to s.h.i.+ver in the heat.

The blossoms appear in late March or early April, two brief pink-flowered weeks that give the mountain its first name. But almost n.o.body in Fuling calls it Peach Blossom Mountain, although the origins of the other t.i.tle are even more fleeting-a single instant during the nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion, when China's history came to Fuling, marched up the mountain, and then moved on. This was perhaps the only time when Fuling was close to the center of China's affairs, and after more than a century the echo still remains, the mountain's name a memorial to a strange and violent revolution.

The Great Taiping Rebellion was started in the mid-1840s by Hong Xiuquan, a poor man from Guangxi province who, frustrated by failing the Chinese civil service examination four times, decided that he was the Son of G.o.d and the younger brother of Jesus Christ. After that, things happened very quickly. By 1851, Hong Xiuquan was leading twenty thousand armed followers, and he declared that he was the Heavenly King of a new dynasty. His soldiers let their hair grow long, fought without fear of death, and believed a sort of b.a.s.t.a.r.dized fundamentalist Protestantism that was based loosely on foreign missionary tracts. In 1853, they captured the eastern city of Nanjing, calling it their New Jerusalem, and in time Hong Xiuquan ruled almost half of China.

The Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace-Taiping Tianguo-was opposed to opium, foot binding, prost.i.tution, gambling, and tobacco, and it had some support from the Chinese peasants, who had no affection for the corrupt Qing Dynasty rulers. But Hong Xiuquan and the other revolutionary leaders lacked the vision and experience to run a country, and power tempted most of them into luxury and infighting. They began to acquire the trappings of the dynasty they hoped to overthrow: robes of yellow silk, hordes of sycophants, endless concubines. But they were still too powerful to be defeated by the Qing, and the Taipings held Nanjing even while engaging in increasingly b.l.o.o.d.y internecine power struggles.

Hong Xiuquan's greatest general was s.h.i.+ Dakai, who was known as the Wing King, Lord of Five Thousand Years. Of all the original leaders, he was the most capable, and his disillusionment with the Taiping infighting finally pushed him to leave Nanjing in 1857. Leading 100,000 soldiers, he embarked on a military campaign that spanned six years and foreshadowed the sweeping troop movements of the Communist Long March. His Taiping army zigzagged across eastern and southern China, arriving eventually at the Yangtze River valley. In time they came to Fuling, where s.h.i.+ Dakai and his soldiers marched up the long even slope of Peach Blossom Mountain, and there, at the summit, they raised the flag of the Heavenly Kingdom.

FROM THE SUMMIT of Raise the Flag Mountain, all of Fuling can be seen on a clear day. But in the fall, when the seasonal rains and mists sit heavy above the rivers, there are days when the view is blocked by clouds, and the city across the Wu is nothing but sound: horns and motors and construction projects echoing up through the heavy white fog. Sometimes the mist will stay for days or even weeks. But then something clears the valleys-a s.h.i.+ft in temperature, a stiff breeze-and suddenly the view opens. of Raise the Flag Mountain, all of Fuling can be seen on a clear day. But in the fall, when the seasonal rains and mists sit heavy above the rivers, there are days when the view is blocked by clouds, and the city across the Wu is nothing but sound: horns and motors and construction projects echoing up through the heavy white fog. Sometimes the mist will stay for days or even weeks. But then something clears the valleys-a s.h.i.+ft in temperature, a stiff breeze-and suddenly the view opens.

Southward the mountain falls away steeply to valleys of terraced cropland, and near the Wu River the land is broken by the settlements of the East River district: the college, looking small with the distance; the ceramics factory, its stacks spewing yellow dust into the air; the long concrete pier and the old ferries that traverse the Wu. The river lies slack, like a long thin bolt of gray silk unrolled between the hills.

In the mist the city looks dirty and old, its buildings flung carelessly across the hills, and it also looks big. Seen from ground level it is impossible to gain perspective on Fuling's size, but from Raise the Flag Mountain the scale of the city is suddenly apparent. The gray buildings are piled off far into the horizon, past the distant needlelike spire of the Monument to the Revolutionary Martyrs. And yet by Chinese standards it is a small city-a town, really-and all around the jumbled buildings the mountains are green and impressive.

But none of them is truly wild. The view from Raise the Flag Mountain extends for perhaps six miles in every direction, and in that range nearly every inch of useful soil is under cultivation. The same is true for the mountain itself: the peak is an orchard, a garden, an enormous farm lying on its side, the slope broken into steps and terraces that turn the hillside into level land.

Peach and orange groves are planted along the summit, where the mountain is too steep for terracing. A bit lower, the slope decreases and the peasants have carved the land into short shelves for vegetables-cabbage, potatoes, soybeans, radishes. Even lower, the terraces broaden enough for grain crops, and now in the fall it is almost time to plant the winter wheat. The peasants will sow the crop in November and December, and between every two or three rows they will leave a s.p.a.ce of two feet. In March, two months before the wheat is harvested, they will plant corn in the s.p.a.ces between the rows. No land is wasted, and nothing is rushed or delayed; everything has its season, and every season rests on the simple work that the peasants do with their hands.

Farther down the mountain, the rice paddies were harvested weeks ago; now the fields are dry, and yellow stubble pokes up from the dirt. Most of the paddies sit in the low valley of the mountain's southern flank, where the land flattens enough to be shaped into broad sweeping terraces that can hold water. Of all the mountain's crops, rice has the most intricate routines. It is sowed in March, planted densely in seedbeds, and then the following month the green shoots are uprooted and moved by hand to flooded paddies. In July and August, the crop is harvested and threshed, and the dry paddy can be used for vegetables or winter wheat. And so the cycle continues, season after season, year after year, and sometimes a single plot of land will see a full year's crops: rice to vegetables, vegetables to wheat, wheat to rice once more.

The lower mountain is cut by a dusty road near the Wu River. Below the road, the hillside falls away steeply, but even this floodland is used for winter potatoes and mustard tuber. The small plots continue all the way to the rocky banks of the Wu, where an old rusted boat approaches the junction of the rivers. The craft's low front deck is empty of cargo, and from the cabin flutters a red Chinese flag. The boat reaches the Yangtze, spinning to face the river's flow. Its motor wheezes. For an instant it pauses, fixed by the current-below the mountain, in front of the city, caught in the junction of the two rivers. Then the propeller catches hold of the fast-moving Yangtze and the boat putters upstream.

s.h.i.+ DAKAI AND HIS MEN followed the river valley west from Fuling. They marched past Chongqing and Luzhou, and then they left the Yangtze and entered the mountains of western Sichuan. By now it had been years since the march began, and in Nanjing the Heavenly Kingdom was in shambles, and finally the brave expedition became a retreat. followed the river valley west from Fuling. They marched past Chongqing and Luzhou, and then they left the Yangtze and entered the mountains of western Sichuan. By now it had been years since the march began, and in Nanjing the Heavenly Kingdom was in shambles, and finally the brave expedition became a retreat.

The army followed the banks of the Dadu, a mountain river in western Sichuan whose water runs green with glacial melt. The river had seen great battles before-critical campaigns were pitched there in the Three Kingdoms Period, sixteen centuries earlier. And now the Qing government forces were in close pursuit, hoping to trap s.h.i.+ Dakai and his men in the narrow valleys. The year was 1863.

They paused for three days on the banks of the river to mark the birth of s.h.i.+ Dakai's son. The rituals were elaborate, because the boy was a prince in the Heavenly Kingdom-the son of the Wing King, the Lightning of the Holy Spirit, the Lord of Five Thousand Years. But the Heavenly Kingdom was already fading into history, and s.h.i.+ Dakai's five thousand years would be cut short. The delay at the Dadu proved fatal; the Qing army cornered the rebels, and s.h.i.+ Dakai surrendered after making sure that his five wives and children had been put to death as painlessly as possible. He begged his captors to execute him instead of his faithful followers, whose ranks had already shrunk from the original 100,000 to two thousand men. The Qing commanders listened patiently to s.h.i.+ Dakai's request, and then they ma.s.sacred the Taiping troops and dismembered the Wing King, slowly.

Seventy-two years later, Mao Zedong led his Communist forces to the same river during the heart of the Long March. The Kuomintang was on the verge of destroying the Red Army, and the lessons of history taught Mao not to delay. His troops moved steadily northward, until at Luding they came to an ancient iron bridge across the Dadu that was well defended by Kuomintang forces. The situation appeared hopeless.

Thirty Red soldiers volunteered. Under machine-gun fire they crawled across the bridge, hand over hand, iron link by iron link, and against all odds they succeeded in capturing the enemy gun nests. The entire Communist army crossed the river victoriously, having survived what turned out to be the most critical battle of the Long March. Later that year, eight thousand of Mao's men, all that remained from an initial force of eighty thousand, finished their trek in northern Shaanxi province. They established a base and steadily grew in power, conquering the nation village by village, province by province; and in every town they spread their doctrine, which was a sort of b.a.s.t.a.r.dized Marxism based loosely on the Soviet model. Fourteen years later, in 1949, Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China.

The Communists opposed opium, foot binding, prost.i.tution, and gambling, and they had a great deal of support from the Chinese peasants, who had no affection for the grasping landlords and the corruption of the Kuomintang. But Mao lacked the vision and experience necessary to run a country effectively, and power inspired him to build a cult of state-wors.h.i.+p around his image. The leading cadres began to acquire the luxurious trappings of the corrupt reign they had over-thrown: great mansions, hordes of sycophants, endless concubines.

But even in the late 1990s, as stories of corruption are rife and the country's economy quickly privatizes, the official view of history holds steady. The Communist vision of the past idealizes peasant revolts like the Great Taiping Rebellion, until even a remote place like Fuling has a stone statue of s.h.i.+ Dakai in the public park. Some aspects of the movement, in contrast, have been allowed to fade-Chinese history books say little about the Taipings' strange brand of Christianity, and many students in a place like Fuling don't know that Hong Xiuquan believed himself to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ. But students know that he was a peasant revolutionary, and that Mao succeeded where Hong Xiuquan failed. Such echoes are seen as evidence of legitimacy rather than signs that Chinese history, like the land, sometimes follows a pattern of cycles.

The Dadu River runs south to Leshan, where it enters the Min River under the sightless gaze of the largest carved Buddha in the world. The Min flows southwest to Yibin, where it enters the Yangtze, and from there the river runs west and north for three hundred miles until it pa.s.ses the green terraced slopes of Raise the Flag Mountain. Today there is no flag on the rounded peak. The two-named mountain looms large above the river, its solid bulk recalling the words that the Sichuan poet Du Fu wrote more than a thousand years ago: The state is shattered;Mountains and rivers remain.

CHAPTER THREE.

Running IN THE MORNINGS I often ran to the summit of Raise the Flag Mountain. As I ran, I studied the propaganda signs along the route, although at the beginning there wasn't much about them that was recognizable. There were three signs on the road out to the mountain, and to me they looked like this: I often ran to the summit of Raise the Flag Mountain. As I ran, I studied the propaganda signs along the route, although at the beginning there wasn't much about them that was recognizable. There were three signs on the road out to the mountain, and to me they looked like this: I finished my runs back in the center of campus, not far from the teaching building, where a stone wall served as a backdrop for an inscription of three-foot-high characters: That was how Chinese appeared in my first few months. I arrived in Fuling able to recognize about forty characters, all of them simple: people, middle, country, above, below, long, man, woman. There hadn't been time for more; the Peace Corps had given us an intensive course during our two months of training in Chengdu, but the emphasis was on learning enough spoken Mandarin to function. We had to study written Chinese on our own, and until I got to Fuling I simply hadn't had enough time.

I came to Sichuan because I wanted to teach, but I also had two other motivations: I thought the experience would make me a better writer, and I wanted to learn Chinese. These were very clear goals, but the way to achieve them was much less obvious. I hoped the writing would take care of itself-I would keep my eyes open and take notes, and eventually, when I felt I was ready, I would start to write. But Chinese was a different matter altogether and I had never undertaken something like that before.

That was one reason I had decided to come to China with the Peace Corps, because I knew they would try to teach me the language. Their Chengdu training course had been excellent; the cla.s.ses were small and the teachers experienced, and it had been easy to make progress. In Fuling, though, language study was my own affair. The Peace Corps would pay for tutors, but I had to find them myself, and I had to decide which textbooks I would use and how I would structure my studies. It was a daunting task-essentially, I had to figure out how to learn Chinese.

For the first few weeks, Dean Fu searched for tutors who could help Adam and me. He was as lost as we were-he had never known a foreigner who was trying to learn the language, and I suspected that secretly he felt the project was hopeless. Waiguoren Waiguoren couldn't learn Chinese-everybody in Fuling knew that. Our students found it hilarious that we even tried. They would ask me to speak a little Chinese, or write a character or two, and then they would laugh at my efforts. At first this didn't bother me, but quickly it became annoying. They thought I was dabbling in the language when in fact I was serious: I knew that studying Chinese was one of the most important things I could do in Fuling. So much depended on knowing the language-my friends.h.i.+ps, my ability to function in the city, my understanding of the place. couldn't learn Chinese-everybody in Fuling knew that. Our students found it hilarious that we even tried. They would ask me to speak a little Chinese, or write a character or two, and then they would laugh at my efforts. At first this didn't bother me, but quickly it became annoying. They thought I was dabbling in the language when in fact I was serious: I knew that studying Chinese was one of the most important things I could do in Fuling. So much depended on knowing the language-my friends.h.i.+ps, my ability to function in the city, my understanding of the place.

I also wanted to learn Chinese out of stubbornness, because as a waiguoren waiguoren you weren't expected to do that. Such low expectations had a long tradition; even as late as the early 1800s it had been illegal for a Chinese to teach the language to foreigners, and a number of Chinese were imprisoned and even executed for tutoring young Englishmen. This bit of history fascinated me: how many languages had been sacred and forbidden to outsiders? Certainly, those laws had been changed more than a century ago, but China was still ambivalent about opening to the outside world and language was still at the heart of this issue. In good conscience I could not live there for two years and not learn to speak Chinese. To me, this was as important as fulfilling my obligations as a teacher. you weren't expected to do that. Such low expectations had a long tradition; even as late as the early 1800s it had been illegal for a Chinese to teach the language to foreigners, and a number of Chinese were imprisoned and even executed for tutoring young Englishmen. This bit of history fascinated me: how many languages had been sacred and forbidden to outsiders? Certainly, those laws had been changed more than a century ago, but China was still ambivalent about opening to the outside world and language was still at the heart of this issue. In good conscience I could not live there for two years and not learn to speak Chinese. To me, this was as important as fulfilling my obligations as a teacher.

But this need wasn't nearly as obvious to everybody else. Dean Fu took a long time finding tutors, and perhaps he was hoping that we'd forget about it. We didn't need Chinese to teach, after all, and we already knew enough to buy groceries and eat at local restaurants. That should be adequate, people figured. In some respects, we were seen as English-teaching machines, or perhaps farm animals-expensive and skittish draft horses that taught literature and culture. We were given cadres' apartments, and we had our own Changhong-brand color televisions with remote. Our bedrooms were air-conditioned. Each of us had a good kitchen and two beautiful balconies. Our students were obedient and respectful. It didn't matter that, even as we were given all of these things, the leaders also gave quiet instructions to our colleagues and students that they should avoid a.s.sociating with us outside of cla.s.s. Waiguoren Waiguoren were risky, especially with regard to politics, and in any case we didn't need close friends in the college. We could teach during the day and return to our comfortable cages at night, and, if we needed friends.h.i.+p, we always had each other. They even gave us telephones so we could call Peace Corps volunteers who lived in other parts of Sichuan. were risky, especially with regard to politics, and in any case we didn't need close friends in the college. We could teach during the day and return to our comfortable cages at night, and, if we needed friends.h.i.+p, we always had each other. They even gave us telephones so we could call Peace Corps volunteers who lived in other parts of Sichuan.

Some of the more insightful students sensed that this did not make a full life. In his journal, Soddy wrote me a short note, politely addressed in the third person: Pete and Adam come to our college to teach our English without pay. We are thankful for this behavior. But we are worried about Pete and Adam's lives. For example: Pete and Adam know little Chinese, so they can't watch Chinese TV programmes. I think your lives are difficult. I want to know how you spend your spare time.

It was a good question. My teaching and preparation time rarely took much more than thirty hours a week. I ran in the mornings, and sometimes I went for walks in the hills. Adam and I played basketball and threw the Frisbee. I wrote on my computer. I planned other diversions for the future-subjects I wanted to cover in cla.s.s, possible travel destinations. Mostly, though, I knew that there was plenty of exploring to be done in the city, but at the beginning this was the hardest place of all to open up.

Downtown Fuling looked good from my balcony. Often I'd gaze across the Wu River at the maze of streets and stairways, listening to the distant hum of daily life, and I'd think about the mysteries that were hidden in the river town. I wanted to investigate all of it-I wanted to go down to the docks and watch the boats; I wanted to talk with the stick-stick soldiers; I wanted to explore the network of tangled staircases that ran through the old part of town. I longed to figure out how the city worked and what the people thought, especially since no foreigner had done this before. It wasn't like living in Beijing or Shanghai, where there were plenty of waiguoren waiguoren who had discovered what the city had to offer. As far as foreigners were concerned, Fuling was our city-or it would be once we figured it out. who had discovered what the city had to offer. As far as foreigners were concerned, Fuling was our city-or it would be once we figured it out.

But once I got there it didn't look so good. Partly this was because of the dirt and noise; the main city of Fuling was an unbelievably loud and polluted place. There wasn't as much heavy industry as in other parts of China, but there were a few good-sized factories that spewed smoke and dust into the air. The power plant on the banks of the Wu River burned coal, as did all of the countless small restaurants that lined the city's streets, and automobile emissions were poorly regulated. In winter the air was particularly dirty, but even in summer it was bad. If I went to town and blew my nose, the tissue was streaked with black grease. This made me think about how the air was affecting my lungs, and for a while I wondered what could be done about this. Finally I decided to stop looking at tissues after I blew my nose.

Noise was even more impressive. Most of it came from car horns, and it is difficult to explain how constant this sound was. I can start by saying: Drivers in Fuling honked a lot. There weren't a great number of cars, but there were enough, and they were always pa.s.sing each other in a mad rush to get to wherever they were going. Most of them were cabs, and virtually every cabby in Fuling had rewired his horn so it was triggered by a contact point at the tip of the gears.h.i.+ft. They did this for convenience; because of the hills, drivers s.h.i.+fted gears frequently, and with their hand on the stick it was possible to touch the contact point ever so slightly and the horn would sound. They honked at other cars, and they honked at pedestrians. They honked whenever they pa.s.sed somebody, or whenever they were being pa.s.sed themselves. They honked when n.o.body was pa.s.sing but somebody might be considering it, or when the road was empty and there was n.o.body to pa.s.s but the thought of pa.s.sing or being pa.s.sed had just pa.s.sed through the driver's mind. Just like that, an unthinking reflex: the driver honked. They did it so often that they didn't even feel the contact point beneath their fingers, and the other drivers and pedestrians were so familiar with the sound that they essentially didn't hear it. n.o.body reacted to horns anymore; they served no purpose. A honk in Fuling was like the tree falling in the forest-for all intents and purposes it was silent.

But at the beginning Adam and I heard it. For the first few weeks we often complained about the honking and the noise, the same way we complained about blowing our noses and seeing the tissue turn black. But the simple truth was that you could do nothing about either the noise or the pollution, which meant that they could either become very important and very annoying, or they could become not important at all. For sanity's sake we took the second option, like the locals, and soon we learned to talk about other things.

I realized this in early November, when a college friend of mine named Scott Kramer came to visit. For five years he had lived in Manhattan, and yet the noise in Fuling absolutely stunned him; he heard every horn, every shout, every blurted announcement from every loudspeaker. When he left, we took a cab from the college to the docks, and Kramer, who worked on Wall Street and had a mathematical turn of mind, counted the honks as our driver sped through the city. It was a fifteen-minute ride and the driver touched his contact point 566 times. It came to thirty-seven honks per minute.

If Kramer hadn't been counting, I wouldn't have noticed, and I realized that I had stopped hearing the horns long ago, just like everybody else in town. In fact, Kramer was the only person in the whole city who heard them, which explained why he was so overwhelmed. The entire city had been honking at him for a week.

For me it wasn't the same, and after a month or so the discomforts of Fuling weren't important enough to deter me from going into town. Despite the noise and the pollution, it was still a fascinating place, and I still wanted to explore its corners and learn its secrets. But the language was an enormous problem, and in the beginning it made the city frustrating and even frightening.

Mandarin Chinese has a reputation as a difficult language-some experts say it takes four times as long to learn as Spanish or French-and its characters and tones are particularly challenging to a Westerner, because they are completely different from the way our languages are structured. In Sichuan, things are further complicated by the provincial dialect, which is distinct enough that a Chinese outsider has trouble understanding the locals in a place like Fuling. The variations between Mandarin and Sichuanese are significant: in addition to some differences in vocabulary, Sichuanese slurs the Mandarin reflexive sounds-sh becomes becomes s, zh s, zh becomes becomes z z-and certain consonants are reversed, so that the average person in Sichuan confuses n n and and l l, and h h and and f f. A word like "Hunan" becomes "Fulan." The Sichuanese tonal range is also shorter, and most significant, two of the four Mandarin tones are reversed in Sichuan. If Mandarin is your starting point, it seems that the entire language has been flattened and turned upside down.

In addition, Sichuan is an enormous province where lack of development, particularly with regard to road and rail links, has resulted in vast regional differences. The Chengdu dialect is distinct from that of Chongqing, which is also different from that of Leshan, and so on. The town of Fengdu is less than thirty miles downstream from Fuling, and yet occasionally the residents of these places have difficulty understanding each other. At a Fuling restaurant, if you want the dish known as hundun hundun in Mandarin-translated in English as "wonton"-you have to ask for in Mandarin-translated in English as "wonton"-you have to ask for chaoshou chaoshou, but if you go another thirty miles to Fengdu you'll have to call it baomian baomian. Or, more accurately, baomin baomin, because the folks in Fengdu slur the ian ian sounds. sounds.

The result is a h.e.l.l of a mess that I hadn't expected. I came to China hoping to learn Chinese, but quickly I realized there was no such thing. "Chinese" was whatever it took to communicate with the person you happened to be talking with, and this changed dramatically depending on background and education level. Educated people usually could speak Mandarin, especially if they were from the younger generation-the walls of our cla.s.srooms had enormous signs that commanded: "Use Mandarin!" But the vast majority of Fuling's population was uneducated and functioned only in the dialect. It made going to town a frustrating experience, because even the simplest conversations were difficult, and it also made my goal of learning Chinese seem impossible: I couldn't imagine learning both Mandarin and Sichuanese in two years. In fact, all I needed to do was improve my Mandarin, which would naturally enable me to handle the dialect, but in the early months I didn't know that. It seemed that I was in hopelessly over my head, and every trip into town was a reminder of that failure.

And Fuling was a frightening place because the people had seen so few outsiders. If I ate at a restaurant or bought something from a store, a crowd would quickly gather, often as many as thirty people spilling out into the street. Most of the attention was innocent curiosity, but it made the embarra.s.sment of my bad Chinese all the worse-I'd try to communicate with the owner, and people would laugh and talk among themselves, and in my nervousness I would speak even worse Mandarin. When I walked down the street, people constantly turned and shouted at me. Often they screamed waiguoren waiguoren or or laowai laowai, both of which simply meant "foreigner." Again, these phrases often weren't intentionally insulting, but intentions mattered less and less with every day that these words were screamed at me. Another favorite was "h.e.l.lo," a meaningless, mocking version of the word that was strung out into a long "hah-loooo!" This word was so closely a.s.sociated with foreigners that sometimes the people used it instead of waiguoren waiguoren-they'd say, "Look, here come two h.e.l.los!" And often in Fuling they shouted other less innocent terms-yangguizi, or "foreign devil" da bizi da bizi, "big nose"-although it wasn't until later that I understood what these phrases meant.

The stresses piled up every time I went into town: the confusion and embarra.s.sment of the language, the shouts and stares, the mocking calls. It was even worse for Adam, who was tall and blond; at least I had the advantage of being dark-haired and only slightly bigger than the locals. For a while we adopted the strategy of going into town together, thinking that between the two of us we could more easily handle the pressure. This was a mistake, though, because adding another waiguoren waiguoren only increased the attention, and after a month of that we started making our trips solo. Finally, as the fall semester wore on, we did everything possible to avoid going to town. When I did go, I wore headphones. That was the only way I could handle it; I listened to the loudest and most offensive rap music I had-Dr. Dre, Snoop Doggy Dogg, the Beastie Boys-and it was just enough to drown out the shouts as I walked down the street. It made for surreal trips downtown, listening to Snoop rap obscenities while I dodged the crowds, but it kept me sane. only increased the attention, and after a month of that we started making our trips solo. Finally, as the fall semester wore on, we did everything possible to avoid going to town. When I did go, I wore headphones. That was the only way I could handle it; I listened to the loudest and most offensive rap music I had-Dr. Dre, Snoop Doggy Dogg, the Beastie Boys-and it was just enough to drown out the shouts as I walked down the street. It made for surreal trips downtown, listening to Snoop rap obscenities while I dodged the crowds, but it kept me sane.

And so Soddy's question remained: How do you spend your spare time? When I finished teaching I would sit at my desk, which looked out across the Wu River to the city, and I would write: While I wrote, I p.r.o.nounced the word over and over, as carefully as I drew it: "Xue xue xue xue xue xue xue xue xue xue xue xue xue xue xue xue xue xue xue xue."

I would write the same character about a hundred times total, and then I would think of ways in which it was used: xuexi, xuesheng, xuexiao xuexi, xuesheng, xuexiao. I would write it on a flash card and put it on a stack that grew steadily on my desk-between five and ten a day, usually. I listened to language tapes and reviewed the text that we had used during Peace Corps training. I flipped through the flash cards. By early October, when Dean Fu finally found two Chinese tutors, I had learned 150 characters. The signs on the way to Raise the Flag Mountain were still unintelligible, but the one in the center of campus had changed slightly:

Teaching[image] People People,[image] People, People, [image]People, Environment[image] People People

OUR TUTORS were Kong Ming and Liao Mei, and we came to know them as Teacher Kong and Teacher Liao. They taught in the Chinese department, and neither of them spoke any English. They had never known a were Kong Ming and Liao Mei, and we came to know them as Teacher Kong and Teacher Liao. They taught in the Chinese department, and neither of them spoke any English. They had never known a waiguoren waiguoren before. Dean Fu had been unable to find tutors who spoke English, and at last we told him it wasn't important. We wanted to get started and we knew that Chinese department teachers had good Mandarin. before. Dean Fu had been unable to find tutors who spoke English, and at last we told him it wasn't important. We wanted to get started and we knew that Chinese department teachers had good Mandarin.

Teacher Kong was a short man who wore gla.s.ses and smelled of Magnificent Sound cigarettes. He was thirty-two years old, and he taught ancient Chinese literature. By Chinese standards he was slightly fat, which meant that by American standards he was slightly thin. He smiled easily. He was from the countryside of Fengdu, which was famous for its ghosts-legend said that spirits went to Fengdu after death.

Teacher Liao was a very thin woman with long black hair and a reserved manner. She was twenty-seven years old, and she taught modern Chinese. She smiled less than Teacher Kong. Our students, who also had some courses in the Chinese department, considered Teacher Liao to be one of their better instructors. She was from the central Sichuan city of Zigong, which was famous for its salt. Every city and small town in Sichuan claimed to be famous for something. Fuling was famous for the hot pickled mustard tuber that was cured along the banks of the rivers.

That was essentially everything we knew about Teachers Kong and Liao for months. We also knew about their Mandarin, which was very clear except for a slight Sichuanese tendency to confuse the n n and and l l sounds. Other than that we knew nothing. To us they were like Chinese-teaching machines, or perhaps farm animals-a sort of inexpensive and bored draft horse that corrected bad tones. And to them we were very stupid sounds. Other than that we knew nothing. To us they were like Chinese-teaching machines, or perhaps farm animals-a sort of inexpensive and bored draft horse that corrected bad tones. And to them we were very stupid waiguoren waiguoren from a country whose crude tongue had no tones at all. from a country whose crude tongue had no tones at all.

My first tutorial with Teacher Liao was scheduled for two hours, but I lasted less than sixty minutes. I went home with my head reeling-had a human being ever compressed more wrongness into a single hour? Everything was wrong-tones, grammar, vocabulary, initial sounds. She would ask me a question and I would try to process the language to respond, but before I could speak she was answering it herself. She spoke clearly, of course, and it was also true that during that hour not a word of English had been spoken. That was what I wanted, after all-a Chinese tutor. But I couldn't imagine doing that for seven hours a week and maintaining my sanity, and I looked at the pathetic stack of flash cards on my desk and thought: This is hopeless.

For a solid month it looked that way. I was too self-absorbed to even imagine what it was like from the other side, but later I realized that it was even worse for my teachers. They weren't under threat of execution for teaching the sacred tones to a waiguoren waiguoren-that law, at least, had been changed since Qing Dynasty days. But theirs wasn't an enviable job. First of all, we underpaid them. This wasn't intentional; Adam and I had been given wrong information about the standard rate for tutors. Teachers Kong and Liao, of course, were far too polite to set us straight, which meant that for the entire first year they worked for two-thirds of what they deserved. Even worse, though, they were underpaid for seven weekly hours of boredom and frustration. The lessons in the book were simple-taking a train, going to a restaurant-and yet I botched everything, and they had no idea how to steer me in the right direction. How do you teach somebody to speak Chinese? How do you take your knowledge of ancient poetry and use it to help a waiguoren waiguoren master something as basic as the third tone? master something as basic as the third tone?

We were all lost, and that failure seemed to be the extent of our relations.h.i.+p. Other Peace Corps volunteers had tutors who spoke English, so at least they could chat together after cla.s.s. They heard about their tutors' families; they ate dinner together; they became friends. My tutors didn't seem like real people-it was months before I learned that Teacher Liao was married and that Teacher Kong had a son. Here the language problem was compounded by the fact that at the beginning they were somewhat cagey and distant; they had never known a waiguoren waiguoren before, and they weren't at all certain how to approach us. before, and they weren't at all certain how to approach us.

Chinese teaching styles are also significantly different from western methods, which made my tutorials even more frustrating. In China, a teacher is absolutely respected without question, and the teacher-student relations.h.i.+p tends to be formal. The teacher teaches and is right, and the student studies and is wrong. But this isn't our tradition in America, as my own students noticed. I encouraged informality in our cla.s.ses, and if a student was wrong I pointed out what she had done right and praised her for making a good effort. To them, this praise was meaningless. What was the point of that? If a student was wrong, she needed to be corrected without any quibbling or softening-that was the Chinese way.

I couldn't teach like that, and it was even harder to play the role of student. Actually, this became worse after my Chinese cla.s.ses started to feel productive, which happened more quickly than I expected. The characters in my book's lessons had always been elusive, odd-shaped scratches of black that drifted in and out of my head, calling up arbitrary allusions that were misleading. They were pictures rather than words: I would look at[image] and think of K-mart, and the twenty-seventh radical- and think of K-mart, and the twenty-seventh radical-[image] reminded me of the letter B, or perhaps an ax hanging on a wall. reminded me of the letter B, or perhaps an ax hanging on a wall.[image] looked like a man doing jumping jacks. looked like a man doing jumping jacks.[image] was a marching spider carrying a flag across the page. I stared so long at those odd figures that I dreamed about them-they swarmed in my head and I awoke vaguely disturbed and missing home. was a marching spider carrying a flag across the page. I stared so long at those odd figures that I dreamed about them-they swarmed in my head and I awoke vaguely disturbed and missing home.

But at a certain point it was as if some of the scratchings stood up straight and looked me in the eye, and the fanciful a.s.sociations started slipping away. Suddenly they became words; they had meaning. Of course, it didn't happen all at once, and it was work that did it-I was studying madly in an effort to make the cla.s.ses less miserable. But I was so busy that I hardly had time to realize that progress was being made.

One day after more than a month of cla.s.ses, I read aloud a paragraph from my book, recognizing all of the characters smoothly except for one. I sat back and started to register the achievement: I was actually reading Chinese. The language was starting to make sense. But before this sense of satisfaction was half formed, Teacher Liao said, "Budui!" "Budui!"

It meant, literally, "Not correct." You could also translate it as no, wrong, nope, uh-uh. Flatly and clearly incorrect. There were many Chinese words that I didn't know, but I knew that one well.

A voice in my head whined: All of the rest of them were right; isn't that worth something? But for Teacher Liao it didn't work like that. If one character was wrong it was simply budui budui.

"What's this word?" I asked, pointing at the character I had missed.

"Zhe-the zhe zhe in in zhejiang." zhejiang."

"Third tone?"

"Fourth tone."

I breathed deeply and read the section again, and this time I did it perfectly. That was a victory-I turned to Teacher Liao and my eyes said (or at least I imagined them saying): How do you like me now? But Teacher Liao's eyes were glazed with boredom and she said, "Read the next one." They were, after all, simple paragraphs. Any schoolchild could handle them.

It was the Chinese way. Success was expected and failure criticized and promptly corrected. You were right or you were budui budui; there was no middle ground. As I became bolder with the language I started experimenting with new words and new structures, and this was good but it was also a risk. I would finish a series of sentences using vocabulary that I knew Teacher Liao didn't expect me to know, and I would swear that I could see her flinch with unwilling admiration. And yet she would say, "Budui!" "Budui!" and correct the part that had been wrong. and correct the part that had been wrong.

I grew to hate budui budui: its sound mocked me. There was a harshness to it; the bu bu was a rising tone and the was a rising tone and the dui dui dropped abruptly, building like my confidence and then collapsing all at once. And it bothered me all the more because I knew that Teacher Liao was only telling the truth: virtually everything I did with the language was dropped abruptly, building like my confidence and then collapsing all at once. And it bothered me all the more because I knew that Teacher Liao was only telling the truth: virtually everything I did with the language was budui budui. I was an adult, and as an adult I should be able to accept criticism where it was needed. But that wasn't the American way; I was accustomed to having my ego soothed; I wanted to be praised for my effort. I didn't mind criticism as long as it was candy-coated. I was caught in the same trap that I had heard about from some of my Chinese-American friends, who as children went to school and became accustomed to the American system of gentle correction, only to return home and hear their Chinese-minded parents say, simply, budui budui. That single B on the report card matters much more than the string of A's that surrounds it. Keep working; you haven't achieved anything yet.

And so I studied. I was frustrated but I was also stubborn; I was determined to show Teacher Liao that I was dui dui. Virtually all of my spare time went to studying Chinese, and the stack of flash cards on my desk grew rapidly. By the first week in November I knew three hundred characters. I had no clear idea what I was shooting for-I had a vague goal of reading a newspaper, which would require between two and three thousand. But mostly I knew that I needed more knowledge than I had, and I needed it quickly.