Lost on Planet China: One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation (32 page)

“Yes, I think there will be a war,” Tam went on, nonplussed. “We have a one-country, two-systems relationship with Hong Kong. It should be the same with Taiwan.”

Ah. Though a democrat, Tam too was a nationalist.

Several hours later, we rumbled into the outskirts of Lijiang, which I was disappointed to discover was made up of the usual collection of dirty low-rise apartments and shops. Chatwin, I thought, you’ve been making things up again, haven’t you? True, we were surrounded by stone mountains capped with snow. And the lush terrain beyond the town itself was enchanting. And looking at a map, one would think we’d fallen off it. But Lijiang, at first impression, was just another Han Chinese city, an uninspired place, dusty and run-down.

We hopped off at the bus station, put our backpacks on, and started walking. “I know a place where you can get a room for 80 yuan,” Tam offered.

This sounded good, we thought as we passed the obligatory hulking statue of Chairman Mao, who here had been immortalized with a
Deutschland über alles
salute. How could anyone find this charming? I wondered. But then we walked past the Yulong Bridge and Waterwheel and entered a maze of cobblestone streets and small canals that wound their way through the town center alongside timeless wooden buildings. It was, in fact, a lovely place, and fully deserving of its status as a World Heritage Site—a status, frankly, that I found regrettable since, as was quickly apparent as we approached the center of town, Every Damn Tourist in China, all of them, 300 million possibly, was in Lijiang on this Tuesday afternoon. Seriously. It has been said before. Often. But China is
crowded.

Nevertheless, it was clear why we had all come here. A major earthquake had struck in 1996, doing considerable damage to Lijiang, except for the old town, which was largely constructed with wood. Here at last was someplace venerable, a place hidden in a high valley in Yunnan, far away from the destructive gaze of Beijing. Until recently, that is. The moment Lijiang was declared an official UNESCO World Heritage Site, the gold rush was on as thousands of Han Chinese made their way to this corner of Yunnan Province to earn their living as proprietors of tick-tacky souvenir emporiums. True, there were still Naxis in Lijiang attired in traditional blue aprons and sheepskin capes, and as they lured Chinese tourists into restaurants or encouraged them to join in on the traditional dancing in the village square, they seemed more like the hired help than the guardians of an ancient culture.

Today, tourism was the business of Lijiang, and also, strangely, the building of doors. On every corner, men were sanding doors, finishing doors, scuffing doors. As far as I could tell, there was no apparent need for these doors. Every doorway had a door. So this was mysterious.

After weaving our way through a twisting alley, Tam led us to a modest guesthouse with an appealing courtyard. I went ahead and coughed up the extra dollar for a room with a “river view,” and was pleased to discover that this river was, in fact, a six-inch stream.

We thanked Tam for directing us to the guesthouse. But I was still curious about something. “Tam, could you do me a favor and ask the owner why, exactly, every man in Lijiang seems to be making doors?”

Tam exchanged a few words with the owner, then turned back to us. “Some months ago, there was a very rich foreigner, he thinks an American, who paid a lot of money for an antique door. So now everyone is making antique doors.”

If there’s a market niche anywhere, the Chinese will fill it. Do you need a very old door? No problem. The Chinese will make you a very old door. Good quality. Brand-new very old door. Special price for you.

After dropping off our packs, we joined thousands of other zombie-like tourists crowding the lanes behind umbrella-toting tour guides and found our way to a pleasant restaurant overlooking one of the canals. We had invited Tam to come along. Jack, possibly forgetting that he was in China, bravely ordered the sausage.

I turned to Tam. “So which part of the animal do you think they reserve for sausage around here?” I asked.

“I don’t care,” Jack said. “As long as it’s not a dog.”

“You don’t eat dog?” Tam inquired.

“No dogs,” Jack confirmed.

“You must try to be more open-minded,” Tam said.

“He is open-minded,” I assured him. “He’s eating a sausage in China. For a
laowai
, this is a very brave, open-minded thing to do.”

Afterward, Jack lit up a smoke, and because I had prepared for this just-in-case-I-felt-like-smoking moment, I reached for the stash of Nicorette I’d brought to China. “You don’t smoke?” I asked Tam, who alone among us did not seem to crave nicotine.

“No,” Tam said. “In China today, smoking is for the blue-collar or the poor. In an office, no smoking. If you go outside to smoke, instead of doing your work, you are seen as very weak.”

As we talked, we were soon joined by our waitress. She was, evidently, a genuine Naxi and not a Han woman dressed up like a Naxi, like many who had been lured to the money-making possibilities of Lijiang. She was friendly and affable, and now that we had a genuine Chinese person beside us, I asked Tam if he could translate.

“In Naxi society, it is the women who are the bosses, yes?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said through Tam. “I am the boss. I tell the man what to do. If I want a man, he comes to me. If I want him to go away, he goes away.”

I had read about this earlier. In Naxi society, there is what is called the
azhu
system, which as far as I understood is similar to the Friends With Benefits system we have at home. A woman is free to choose her lovers and discard them as she pleases. Men provide support for any children they might sire, but otherwise paternity is insignificant. The child belongs to the mother.

“You know what she is, don’t you?” Jack said as we paid the bill. He grinned. “A Femi-Naxi.”

“Good one. Very good.”

Tam expressed his need for an afternoon nap, and so Jack and I wandered on through the enchanted streets of Lijiang, enchanted streets that could hardly be seen through the teeming crowds. Not so long ago, Lijiang was an idyllic hamlet with a unique culture, the sort of place I would have been very happy to spend weeks in, retracing the footsteps of Rock and Chatwin. But, as yet another consequence of China’s leap into the global economy, there are now 1.3 billion potential Chinese tourists. And when more than a billion people set their sights on something, invariably they crush it. There was little to do but give in, and soon we walked into a souvenir emporium specializing in leather, where Jack bought a cowboy hat. Every Chinese tourist in Lijiang wore one.

Eventually, we stopped at a café that overlooked the whimsical black-tiled roofs of the old town. In the distance, Jade Dragon Mountain pierced the swirling clouds that floated near its top. We ordered something to drink and sat back to appreciate the easy-listening sounds of Queen—not “We Are the Champions” Queen, but obscure Queen. A fan’s Queen.

Jack arched his eyebrow. “It’s not surprising, is it? You just knew that the Naxis would be into Queen.”

“Actually, I thought tonight we’d go to the Naxi Music Academy to listen to some traditional Naxi music.”

“You know what that’s going to be, don’t you?”

“No, what?”

“Wagner.”

It wasn’t Wagner, of course, though the musicians were probably of the same era. The Naxi Orchestra is the local equivalent of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in New Orleans. They’re not the spryest bunch, most are in their eighties, but they are very cool with their wispy mustaches and long, flowing beards. The band was led by a charismatic man who spoke English.

“I am seventy-three, but look much younger. Happy spirit, but hard life. Twenty-one years in prison.”

His name was Xuen Ke, one of the Three Eccentrics of Lijiang, according to the locals, together with the Dr. Ho, immortalized by Chatwin, and He Zhigang, an armless calligrapher who paints with his mouth in a park next to a portrait of Prince Charles. Xuen Ke continued to talk. And talk some more. And then some more. Mostly, he spoke in English, which I thought was interesting since the vast majority of the audience was Chinese, and they sat there, impatiently tapping their feet and generally looking really, really annoyed.

“We hate that word—minority. We prefer tribe,” the bandleader said. And then he introduced the music. “And so the theme of this song is anger or hate.”

It was a little ditty about Kublai Khan, sung by a chorus of women. It was a very moving song, very powerful, and when it finished, I, too, felt anger and hatred, and wished only to set out on the warpath. But Xuen Ke toned the atmosphere down by introducing a song played during the Yi Torch Festival. It consisted of a girl playing a small mouth instrument, and as I listened to these trippy, warbling sounds, I thought this must be what ancient techno sounded like. This was followed by a Tibetan man, a former hunter who kissed the amulet around his neck and sang, a cappella, a gripping song about a friend.

“He sing from the heart,” Xuen Ke went on, “not from the face like Chinese pop singers. We hate them. This man only a grade-three education from mountain school. But his singing a Ph.D.”

I liked Xuen Ke. There was a cheekiness to him. He ended the performance with some sage advice. “Don’t eat the fish from the lake, or the heart of the animal. And don’t drink beer or spirits. Then smoking no problem.”

“So what did you think?” Jack asked me afterward.

“I’d be very curious to know what he said to the Chinese audience members. I mean, twenty-one years in prison for being a Naxi. I’d say he has cause to be just a trifle pissed off with the Han Chinese.”

“That’s the Chinese Chinese?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there sure are a lot of them here.”

All wearing cowboy hats like Jack. Yes, Lijiang was now very touristy and very Chinese. True, there were many who were Naxi. But most seemed to be employed to be the cute supplicant minority, with young women in traditional dress stepping out of the restaurants to do a dance on the canals at five-minute intervals. Ten kilometers to the north in the town of Baisha, Dr. Ho’s home had become an extremely popular stop on the tourist trail.

We had dinner on a second-floor balcony, overlooking the hordes of visitors. And then, below us, through the bustling crowds, three young, very dirty pilgrims were lying down, touching their foreheads to the street, standing and bowing, repeating this devotional rhythm again and again, as they made their way forward through a crowd that pointed and laughed. They were Tibetan Buddhists on pilgrimage to the Yufeng Temple, a small lamasery outside of Lijiang.

“So,” I said to Jack after the Tibetans had passed. “Are you feeling rested? Ready to do some hiking?”

“I’m not entirely convinced this is a good idea. The thought of marching into the wilderness in some remote corner of China with you kind of scares me.”

“It’ll be fun. Trust me.”

“Okay. Now I’m really worried.”

16

A
week earlier, somewhere in the hills above Dali, it had occurred to me that hiking the high trail above Tiger Leaping Gorge might be a little challenging. This is because I was apparently traveling with the world’s laziest man. Jack and I had gone to look at the Zhonghe Temple, perched upon Zhonghe Shan, a lofty eminence riddled with Bai cemeteries. It’s above 7,500 feet, a good hike. But we did not hike up this mountain. From Dali we had taken the
chairlift.
Where we stepped off, there stood a sign pointing us to a café 100 meters upward.