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Dandong
So in Dandong, gazing into a pot of boiling water into which my waitress was busily chopsticking white squid (they were prettily arranged in a circle on a white plate, with their little legs all pointing inward)—not to mention the mussels and the bacon-like strips of raw beef which were also swimming in that table aquarium—I decided to meet all the Koreans I could.
Accordingly, the next day I set out for the Yalu River, pausing first for a coffee with a shy elementary school teacher who, smiling rapidly and ecstatically while clenching her fist in embarrassment, told me that Chairman Mao was the greatest, the most perfect leader of all time. My next task was to exchange pleasantries with the ricksha driver who patiently dogged me for block after block, hoping to obtain my patronage. He wasn't as easily disappointed as his colleague, who after following me for only two blocks had exclaimed in a fury, "AIIIIIIEEEEEEE!" Nonetheless, I also declined to be this second driver's passenger. So I strolled through Dandong, which was rich with its own moments of Chinese slowness. Here on the sidewalks men were playing the checkers-like game called xiang qi, whose huge wooden counters are inscribed in red and green. Here stood two waitresses, almost perfectly immobile, in gold-embroidered red kimonos in the doorway of a Beijing duck restaurant. Above them were three narrow wooden panels beautifully painted with forest-waterfall scenes ... But then it was time for another just-completed building's grand opening, so earsplitting fireworks spiralled and smoked from all four corners of the tower's roof, the crowds laughing, covering their ears. Not far away a new hotel had just opened; they had hired a pretty singer to shrill into a microphone. This was the Chinese context, this incessant building and hammering. At last I had come to the park called Ya Lu Jiang Gong Yuan Zhuan Ma (and here my ricksha driver finally gave up on me). Once again it was all silent, the children's carousel horses and tanks disdaining to revolve around the red and white missile pole, everything as frozen as those two waitresses; and right ahead of me the wide, gray and mucky Yalu River, in which I saw first of all a grassy island, one of seven given to North Korea by Chairman Mao in 1962. And then, beyond the motor sampans, the far bank presented me with the very un-Chinese spectacle of a vast factory whose smokestacks were not smoking.
The merchants who traveled to North Korea kept telling me that there were fewer and fewer products to be gotten on the other side. I asked them what would happen if I crossed the border with them, and a man said, "They'll arrest us and ask us to pay big money, maybe 2,000 yuan."
Through a military-quality telescope rented to me by an old lady for one yuan, I saw two North Koreans slowly hauling a heavy wheelbarrow load of earth, one pushing, one pulling, and then from behind the mothballed factory a trainlike whistle sounded, who knew for what. I had expected the border to be extremely militarized, but the most belligerent objects I saw that day were the toy tanks and fighter planes made out of rifle shells in the park. A speedboat took me within 16 meters of the North Korean shore, where lethargic sentries or sailors waved slowly at me from decrepit junks, and a man stood waist deep in the river with his back to me, imperturbably bathing. Along a concrete embankment, uniformed schoolchildren all in a row sat dangling their legs. Passing beneath the bridge which Americans had destroyed during the Korean War, I persuaded the pilot to move slightly closer, and no one cared.
Back in Dandong there was a North Korean restaurant whose manager, somberly pretty, sat down with me amid her perfect bowls of bibimbab. She said that Chinese were very friendly to her and to all ethnic Koreans, indeed, this was what I inevitably heard.
"What do you think of Chairman Mao?"
"Great."
"And Kim Il Sung?"
"Also very great," she answered patiently.
"Why is North Korea so poor?"
"I don't know, because I don't know the policy of North Korea."
"Do you want to live there?"
"Although North Korea is my homeland, when I was one I came here, so I love it here."
"Why do you love it here? What is your favorite thing about China?"
"Money," she said with a big smile. "Without money, you can do nothing."
She said that in the countryside about 100 kilometers from here was a town called Kuan Dian where many North Koreans lived, so the next day I took a taxi to their place of cool gray sky and green-clad gorges. The corn was very high here, and on the outskirts of the place, where the straight dirt road was walled on either side, more corn peeped over the tops of those walls. These were sometimes stone and sometimes brick, each one the guardian of its red-roofed Korean house, in whose barren courtyard the housewife stood in her loose, floral-print pajamas while her children played in the dirt. I interviewed several Koreans here, and a few more back in Dandong. Since the answers were invariable, except for that of one old man who had no use for either Kim Il Sung or Chairman Mao, I will content myself by telling you about one house in this part of town, a district whose name is Bao Shan Cuen, and whose population is 600 Koreans and 30 Chinese. This house had many windows giving onto a yard of sand and gravel, so that for me the feel was of a home in a Canadian Arctic town. "We have lived here for all our lives, from our grandfather's grandfather's time," said my hostess, a 23-year-old bride named Jin Ying Ai. "This area belonged to Korea long ago. But after the war, some ancient war, the Yalu River divided Korea and China. We don't know exactly when, there are many stories about this."
Her husband was Chinese. I asked her whether she had experienced any problems from this mixed marriage, and she said, "The food they eat is different. Chinese love the rich food. They love to eat porridge. Koreans want to eat only rice. Also, Koreans like to eat spicy food, and Chinese do not."
"Do your husband's parents treat you well?"
"Very well."
"Is your heart a Chinese heart or a Korean heart?"
"I think I am a Chinese person, although I know the Korean language."
"Which leader is No. 1, Chairman Mao or Kim Il Sung?"
"Chairman Mao is No. 1."
This girl, narrow-eyed and somewhat immobile of face, said that she had never been to North Korea, but her parents had, although getting the authorization had not been easy. They had told her that North Korea had great poverty, and "near the center" great wealth. "They got very tired since they had to bring food to their relatives and then they had to bring back fish and cooking pots, which are very cheap in North Korea. Maybe they won't go back again."
"What defines Korean character, in your opinion?"
"Just to get food and to work and work. The first memory is to work."
"And what defines a Chinese?"
"Earning money."
"Are you familiar with the Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an?"
"Yes."
"How do you feel about them?"
"I am very proud. And China has a Great Wall. Of that I am also proud."
"Korea also has a great history, I believe. Which aspects of your homeland's achievements are you proud of?"
"In China, the history books do not say much about Korean history, so I don't know."
She showed me a photograph of her wedding ceremony, the first one, the Korean one, which had been held here at her parents' house. She was wearing the traditional hambok, and on the table before her, amid all the other gustatory treasures, lay an immense fish, "drunk and quiet," as she put it, in a vessel of wine. My Chinese interpreter clapped her hands at this, laughing heartily. It was a Korean detail, like the way one removed one's shoes before entering the house. But this young woman had bought into the superiority of the Chinese way. It may be of interest that during the course of these interviews my interpreter, who was a very friendly and good-hearted person, never expressed any interest in learning even the Korean hello or thank you, because she did not need to. The Koreans always spoke perfect Chinese. Here, as elsewhere, the Han culture had triumphed. The Koreans were perfectly assimilated.
And so I returned to Dandong just in time for another explosion of fireworks in honor of an apartment tower's opening.
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