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Train Interlude
The squat, squarish clock on that railroad station, half-silhouetted people on the upper turquoise level peering out the window, the young couple struggling to carry a fat duffel bag between them, her side almost scraping the concrete of that wide plaza with its banners, curbs and crowds—these were what I saw first. Coming closer and closer to the red banner beneath the pagoda roof, I entered the waiting hall entrance at last. An openmouthed little boy slept lengthwise on his parents' laps. Every seat was occupied, and the aisle between seats was filled with shouting and pushing. An official who wore a red shoulder sash shining with yellow stars stood on a chair and began to bellow. Then we all swarmed to the first checkpoint where each ticket got punched. Up the fecal-smelling stairs in a river of shopping bags, smiles, bad breath and razor-sharp elbows, we poured along the walkway over many tracks of red and blue and squealing trains, then descended to the platform for the Shenyang line, alongside of which we flowed. From beneath car number four there came a sudden stink of rancid soy sauce. Stern railroad officials of both sexes were stationed every few cars. Men were loading cabbages from a half-rotten cart into car number six. Bilge gushed out the side of car number eight.
And so I took my place amid the hard sleepers (six per niche, the corresponding number for the soft sleepers had been four), everyone literally climbing the walls to stow their boxes, suitcases and plastic bags of toilet paper, of sweets and noodles. A fat lady was already breaking out her teapot; her family was settling in, stretching their feet across the aisles; the children clapping their hands to the Chinese guitar music on the loudspeaker; the engineering student from Xi'an sitting by the window with his bottled water, cheerfully resigned to the 25 hours ahead.
At the exact scheduled departure time of 11:32 a.m., the train began to move. A girl of about 19 was sitting in the facing berth. Dripping with moisture from head to toe, she fanned herself and played with the hem of her gray skirt. Another girl in a white tank top that read "Li Ning Tennis Game" sat down beside her. This girl preferred to go by her English-language name, which she spelled "Merody." She wore white socks with multiple blue Snoopy emblems on them. With a very tiny spoon she refreshed herself from a jar of baby food. "Delicious," she explained.
A product of the Maoist one-child policy, she hoped by the time she married her boyfriend, which would be in about six years, to be permitted two babies, who ideally would turn out to be a boy and a girl. She loved American music and the Internet, her cell phone kept ringing. This very sociable girl was soon happily playing cards with the nine-year-old boy from the upper berth. She rhapsodized about the beauties of Harbin City on subzero winter nights, when ice sculptures of animals were electrically illuminated from within. Long tunnels and terraced green hills meanwhile occupied the view until twilight. Melody laughingly complained about the rice we both bought from the aisle vendor,"like a stone," she said. She and the girl in gray were both students beginning their two-month holiday. Leaning close together on the bunk, they whispered and chattered, Melody pressing the toes of her puppy socks into the other girl's thigh. Now the sky was yellow in the west, and the train smelled of cigarette smoke. In the corridor, two plump schoolgirls in blue miniskirts stared dreamily out the window over their untouched watermelon slices. And all night the train rocked and creaked peacefully, going as it seemed sometimes forward, sometimes back. At 10 they turned out the lights. I dreamed that I was riding atop a train with my father somewhere on the American prairie. We were actually standing on the train, which was so long that we couldn't see the end of it. And this beautiful dream was interrupted by something no less beautiful, for Melody began speaking in her sleep, in Chinese of course, and in a voice of richly languorous strangeness. Her knees were drawn up in a pyramid beneath the white comforter, and the night light shone on her forehead, cheeks and nose. She spoke again, in a voice as seductively inhuman as an ancient oracle's.
Then came morning and afternoon, the landscape drier now, the cities redder and grayer than they had been. There were many cornfields and it was cooler. In mid-afternoon we arrived at Shenyang.
By repeating "Dandong" in various sad and comical intonations I succeeded in buying a ticket (for what class I had no idea), then ascended a grand air-conditioned escalator and entered the waiting hall, whose floor was literally ankle deep in garbage and which stank of vomit. A platoon of blue-uniformed, yellow-gloved ladies stolidly swept up everything before my eyes.
Now came a four-hour soft-seat ride through increasingly lovely country with a temperate mountainous feel, everybody in the car laughing merrily at my vain attempts to master the tonal ups and downs of the Chinese word for delicious. A handsome young man, whose personal motto was "rebels never die," sang me the Beatles song Let It Be; a shy, sallow computer science student finally acceded to my request and delivered herself of a Chinese tune in a surprisingly luscious voice; and then it was my turn, so I sang them a bluegrass ballad. The computer student's temporary companion, who was majoring in English and coming home from Xi'an on holiday, got up for a moment to use the toilet, and at once a froglike character in dark sunglasses darted into her place, his black eye sockets angled unceasingly in my direction. He sat in silence for half an hour, listening to everything we said. When I finally complimented him on his wristwatch, it turned out that he spoke perfect English. He was the first North Korean I had ever met, and a fascinating, guarded, tormented, and ultimately rather likable man. If I asked him, for instance, whether it was hot or cold in Pyongyang, he forcibly changed the subject, not wanting to compromise that important military secret. At the same time, he did not mind sharing his deep knowledge of history from a Communist perspective. In the end, he and I parted friends. I now wanted more than ever to see the Chinese-North Korean border, and it came to me that if Nanning emblematized development and Xi'an the classical past, then perhaps in Dandong I ought to make my researches into the situation of a minority—the Koreans—within the overwhelmingly Han culture of China. In Japan, Koreans suffer such bigotry that they often try to pass under Japanese names. As for China, her actions against the Tibetan religious élite have certainly tarnished her name. How were the Koreans being treated?
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