Part 19 (1/2)
”How much does a car cost?”
”It depends. Usually more than ten thousand dollars.”
”So he must have a lot of extra money from his salary, especially since she works, too. In his letters he doesn't say very much about money.”
”Well, I think they probably have expensive rent, you know. The living expenses in America are very high, especially in New York.”
”His wife's father bought them a house. So probably they can save a lot of money, right?”
I wasn't exactly sure what they were getting at, but it seemed they were just curious to find out what the man's life was like in America. They asked how one acquired American citizens.h.i.+p, and they asked what it was like to teach in America. We talked a little about politics, and Mr. Xu asked me what I thought about the Taiwan issue.
Sitting there with the stack of envelopes, I couldn't have been thrown a more loaded question. I replied that I had never been to Taiwan and thus I didn't understand it.
”What do most Americans think about it?” he pressed.
”Most Americans also don't understand the problem very well. I think mostly they want things to be peaceful.”
”They think Taiwan is a separate country from China, don't they?”
I was glad to see that at least we had s.h.i.+fted the p.r.o.nouns-whenever I was on uncertain ground I tried to make it ”their America” rather than ”my America.” That was a small but crucial distinction, but still I found it difficult to respond to his question.
”Most Americans think Taiwan is like a separate country,” I said. ”It has its own government and economy. But Americans know the history and culture are the same as the mainland's. So maybe they think it should return to China, but only when the people in Taiwan are ready. Most Americans think this problem is much more complicated than Hong Kong.”
My response seemed to satisfy him. I considered asking him about his brother, but I decided that it was safest to talk about it with Teacher Kong some other time. Instead I asked Mr. Xu what Fengdu had been like in the past.
”When Mao Zedong was the leader,” he said, ”everything was bad. We couldn't talk to a waiguoren waiguoren like you. In those times there wasn't any freedom and there were no rights at all. But after Deng Xiaoping started the Reform and Opening, then everything started to improve. Things are better now.” like you. In those times there wasn't any freedom and there were no rights at all. But after Deng Xiaoping started the Reform and Opening, then everything started to improve. Things are better now.”
It was similar to what I heard so often from people in Sichuan, although Mr. Xu's opinions on Mao were much more blunt. He had a poster of Deng Xiaoping in his apartment, hanging prominently above his television.
ON THE WAY ACROSS THE YANGTZE, Xu Hua told me that she knew how to drive an automobile. We were riding an old battered ferry to the southern bank, where they were constructing Fengdu's New Immigrant City. The conversation had been about some other topic when suddenly Xu Hua told me that she knew how to drive.
I had lived in Sichuan long enough to be impressed. ”Is that for your job?”
”No,” she said. ”I studied it in my spare time.”
”Just for fun?”
”Yes. It's my hobby.”
”That must be very expensive. I know it's expensive in Fuling.”
”It's much more expensive in Xiamen-it costs six thousand for the training course. But I think that someday I'll be able to buy a car, so I wanted to learn how to drive now. It's like your America-don't most people in America have cars?”
”Yes. Even students do-I bought one when I was in high school.”
”You see? Here in our China the living standard is rising so quickly, and eventually the people will be able to have their own cars just like you do in your America.”
The ferry wallowed slowly across the heart of the Yangtze. I had a brief but terrifying vision of Fuling's traffic in twenty years. Xu Hua kept talking.
”I want to go to your America,” she said. ”New York, especially. Maybe someday I'll go there on business for my company.”
We were close to the sh.o.r.e now and I could see an enormous sign that had been erected for investors:
The Great River Will Be Diverted What Are You Waiting For?
The New City Open District Welcomes You
Three months earlier, the river had been diverted into a man-made channel beside the construction site of the future dam at Yichang. The diversion was the first tangible sign of progress on the dam, and it had been televised live all across China. I had watched part of the coverage, which turned the newly bent river into a celebration of nationalism: construction workers waved their hard hats and cheered while a military band played ”Ode to the Motherland.” President Jiang Zemin and other politicians gave speeches about the glories of modernization and the success of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. It was a foggy day and fireworks echoed through the misty hills.
But here in Fengdu the November celebration seemed far away. We disembarked and headed up the sandy bank, walking beside mustard tuber fields and piles of trash. We climbed to a row of peasant homes. The homes were poor and there was a heavy smell of night soil as we pa.s.sed. The path climbed steeply, winding between more flimsy huts. Xu Hua and the other women were dressed nicely, in high heels and bright clothes, and they moved slowly through the mud. At last we crested the hill, pa.s.sing through a final cl.u.s.ter of peasant homes, and spread before us was the entire new city of Fengdu, sprawling half-constructed in the mist.
Ever since I first arrived in China, this was what I had been expecting to find someday. All of the cities I had seen were to a large extent construction projects-even Yulin, the ancient city in northern Shaanxi province, had its share of scaffolding and building crews. Fuling changed every month: new buildings sprouted like a forest of fresh white tile and blue gla.s.s, and then a month later the buildings aged prematurely as coal stains started creeping down from the roofs. Everywhere in China, people were building; the cities were growing, changing ent.i.ties, more alive than the countryside; and I always imagined an entire nation rising at once, a China locked by scaffolding rather than the Great Wall.
And now in Fengdu that image had finally become reality: an entire city was being constructed literally before my eyes. There were streets, sidewalks, apartment buildings, businesses-all started; none finished. You could guess only vaguely where the new Fengdu was going, but mostly you could tell that it was going very quickly, and nothing would stop it. Indeed, if it was stopped at this moment, it would be completely worthless. Here in the forgotten heart of China I had found the perfect metaphor of the entire country's development.
Today there was little work being done and the construction site was quiet. But it wasn't empty-crowds of people had come across the river from Fengdu to see their new city. Most of them were well-dressed, the way Chinese looked when they went to spend a day at the park. The men wore neat suits and the high-heeled women stumbled over the rough dirt streets, giggling and splas.h.i.+ng mud onto their stockings. They stared at the scaffolding and the enormous piles of dirt that bordered the intersections. The half-built streets bristled with propaganda signs:
The Development Relies on the Immigrants, the Immigrants Rely on the Development!
The People Build the Peoples City, If It Is Built Well, the City Will Serve the People!
We stopped on what would someday be the main street-Pingdu Road-and Xu Hua used her cell phone to call a friend in Xiamen and wish her a happy birthday. Among the new buildings there were still a half-dozen peasant homes, small and resolute in the shadow of their towering neighbors. Chickens wandered down side alleys. Potato fields were squeezed between the construction sites. A few graves still remained, their white tomb decorations hanging limp in the mist, paying homage to the ancestors who lay in the earth below this rising city.
The majority of the peasant homes had been removed and now the people lived in a couple of apartment buildings that had been nearly finished. The ex-peasants sat at tables in the middle of the construction site, drinking tea and playing mah-jongg. I asked Teacher Kong what the peasants would do now, and he said that most of them helped with construction work and waited for the factory jobs that would be given to them once the city was built. In the meantime, like the ex-peasants whom I had seen in the resettlement area behind Fuling Teachers College, they seemed perfectly content to drink tea and play mah-jongg while the city rose around them.
We took photographs in front of an enormous sign that showed the street plan for the new city. The two younger women liked my baseball cap, and they took turns wearing it for the pictures. Xu Lijia spent a roll of film there, mostly for photos of her sisters in cla.s.sic xiaojie xiaojie poses: shoulders pushed back, head angled seductively, a soft smile and flirty eyes. For all of the pictures they wore my dirty old Princeton cap. In the background was the sign and the scaffolding and the piles of dirt. We hiked back down to the ferry, through the potato fields and the thick river mist, and Teacher Kong asked, ”So, what do you think of the New Immigrant City?” poses: shoulders pushed back, head angled seductively, a soft smile and flirty eyes. For all of the pictures they wore my dirty old Princeton cap. In the background was the sign and the scaffolding and the piles of dirt. We hiked back down to the ferry, through the potato fields and the thick river mist, and Teacher Kong asked, ”So, what do you think of the New Immigrant City?”
In truth I had never before seen anything even remotely like it: an entire new city, dozens of dislocated peasants playing mah-jongg, future flood refugees strolling through the construction site as if it were a park. The question was unanswerable, and so I answered in the same way that I did to all questions of that sort.
”I think it's very good,” I said.
BACK IN FENGDU we caught a cab on the docks. I was heading to the bus station, and we would drop off the women along the way. we caught a cab on the docks. I was heading to the bus station, and we would drop off the women along the way.