River Town (13 page)

Teacher Wang began to tell a long story. It was about a pedicab and he told it in Sichuanese while Teacher Sai translated. The story moved slowly and I was too drunk to listen carefully. My gaze wandered across the table until I found myself looking at the little man who had come with Teacher Wang. I had forgotten entirely about him and now he smiled. He said something, but I couldn't understand; he was a dialect speaker and in any case the
baijiu
had not improved either of our language abilities. Finally he concentrated very hard, pronouncing four Mandarin syllables clearly.

“
Sha shi bi ya
,” he said.

“I'm sorry,” I said in Chinese. “What did you say?”

“Sha shi bi ya.”

I shook my head and he repeated it a few more times, gesturing as if he were reading a book. Finally something clicked in my mind.

“Shakespeare?” I said.

He laughed and gave me the thumbs up.
“Di gen si.”

“Dickens?”

He nodded and laughed again.

“Ma ke tu wen.”

“Mark Twain.”

Slowly we made our way through Melville, Norris, O'Connor, and Cheever. It took me a long time to guess Norris and Cheever. There wasn't anything else that we were able to talk about and I never learned the little man's name, although he was able to communicate that he especially liked the Norris novel
McTeague
, which is perhaps the only great American novel about a dentist. Nowadays hardly anybody in America reads Norris but there was at least one fan along the Upper Yangtze.

Teacher Wang finished with the pedicab story. Even though I had missed most of it I could gather that it was about a time when he was very drunk and spent half an hour negotiating with a pedicab, only to realize that he was already in front of his hotel. All of the men laughed at the story. Listening to its translation reminded them that Teacher Sai was still there.

“Drink,” said Party Secretary Zhang, pointing at Teacher Sai's cup.

“I can't.”

“Drink.”

“I can't.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Drink.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Miss Sai!”

“Miss Sai!”

Finally he shuddered through another shot. It was clear that the banquet was breaking up, and Teacher Wang held his cup up to Adam and me. We raised our glasses.

“To books,” I said.

But Teacher Wang had something else in mind. He spoke to me, seriously now, and Teacher Sai translated.

“Mr. Wang,” he said, “wants you to write something for the college magazine.”

Our cups were frozen above the table.

“What do you mean?”

“He wants you to write an article about literature.”

“American or English? And how long?”

They discussed this quickly. Our three cups were still in midair; it was without question the most favorable instant for a request.

“American is better,” said Teacher Sai. “Only about ten thousand words.”

I caught my breath. “I don't know American literature well enough for that,” I said. “Tell him I can do either Elizabethan poetry or Charles Dickens, because that's what I studied at Oxford. Or Shakespeare. But otherwise it would be difficult. I don't have many notes here.”

There was another discussion. My arm was growing heavy. Teacher Wang nodded.

“Dickens,” said Teacher Sai. “Ten thousand words.”

We drank the shot. The
baijiu
was starting to taste dangerously foul and I shuddered after it was down. A good banquet was like a good short story: there was always a point, but you didn't quite understand it until the very end. Now I realized why we had been invited tonight, but I wasn't resentful; at least now I knew how a Sichuanese literary journal recruited new material. The table bullied Teacher Sai for a few more minutes and then all of us staggered out.

 

I HOPED THAT EVERYBODY
would forget about the promised essay, but within a week the quiet reminders started. I delayed, explaining that I was busy with teaching, but then I began to receive messages about Teacher Wang's impending deadline. Finally I sat down and wrote what he wanted, which was an essay about Dickens' relationship to political reform.

I wrote it as quickly as possible. I argued that Dickens was essentially a middle-class figure who liked writing about social problems not
because he wanted revolutionary change, but rather because these subjects made for good creative material. I knew the Marxists wouldn't like this approach, so I added a line that accused Dickens of being a Capitalist Roader. I liked being able to use that term in a literary essay. Otherwise the article was not very enjoyable to write, and I loaded the descriptions in order to jack up the word count. Teacher Sai had to translate it into Chinese. For a solid week he struggled with the damn thing, coming into my office with questions about my inflated prose, holding his head in his hands.

 

ON THE SECOND DAY
of January, the city of Fuling held a road race in the center of town. It was the Twenty-second Annual Long Race to Welcome Spring, and all of the city's schools and
danwei
, or work units, competed against each other. Two weeks before the race, Dean Fu asked if I would run on the college team. He was obviously nervous, because it hadn't been long since the problems of the faculty basketball tournament.

“You must understand,” he said, smiling uncomfortably. “There will be many peasants and uneducated people. They don't know anything about sportsmanship, and perhaps some of them will be rough. Also, in twenty-one years they have never had a foreigner in the long race. They welcome you to participate, but I think it will be different from in America.”

I could see that Dean Fu thought it would be simpler if I didn't run, and I knew he was right. For a while I considered not taking part, because the basketball tournament had been a low point in an otherwise good semester. All of the difficult parts of my life were already public; there wasn't any reason to seek out more crowds.

But there are no referees in running, and it is not a contact sport. There would be crowds but I figured that at least I would be moving. It couldn't be much different from a race in America—and even if it was, I was curious to see what it was like, at least once. I told Dean Fu that I wanted to participate.

He explained that every runner had to have a physical exam, and a week before the race I visited a doctor in the college infirmary. It was a low tile-roofed building next to the croquet court, one of the old
structures on campus that remained from the pre-Cultural Revolution days when the college had been a high school.

The doctor checked my pulse and blood pressure. After each test he smiled and told me that I was very healthy, and I thanked him. Then he led me to a side room where a dirty white box-shaped instrument hung on the wall. Dean Fu said, “Now you will have a chest X ray.”

I stopped at the entrance to the room. “I don't want to have a chest X ray,” I said.

“It's no problem,” said Dean Fu, smiling. “It's very safe.”

“I don't want a chest X ray,” I said again, and I looked at the dirty box and thought: Especially I don't want
this
chest X ray. “Why is it necessary?”

“Everybody in the race must have one. To make sure they are healthy.”

“Everybody?” I asked, and he nodded. I asked how many people would be running.

“More than two thousand and five hundred.”

“And all of them must have a chest X ray before they can run?”

“Yes,” he said. “That is the rule. It is very safe.”

It struck me as a ludicrous notion—that a city with a per capita income of about forty American dollars a month would require a chest X ray from each of the 2,500 participants in a four-kilometer road race. I had my suspicions about what was really happening: some administrator in the college was probably worried about me dropping dead in the middle of the race, and they wanted to cover their tracks. It was always Dean Fu's job to convey such commands to the
waiguoren
, and occasionally he served as a filter as much as a translator. It was a lousy job and I always felt sorry for him when I sensed that this was happening, but there was nothing to do about it except try to find a tactful solution.

We were at an impasse. Dean Fu could see that I was serious about refusing to have an X ray, and I knew that he couldn't simply back down and say that the procedure wasn't in fact required. We stood there for a moment, the doctor watching expectantly. Finally I told Dean Fu that I would go to my apartment and call the Peace Corps office in Chengdu.

I tried to call but the medical officer wasn't in. I sat in my bedroom for ten minutes, reading a book, and then I returned to the infirmary.

“I'm very sorry,” I said, “but the Peace Corps told me I can't have a chest X ray. I don't know what we can do about this.”

“It's no problem,” Dean Fu said. “I just talked to some of the people in charge of the race, and they said it is fine if you do not have an X ray. They will give you an exception because you are a foreigner.”

I thanked him and apologized for the hassle, and he apologized back. Both of us shook the doctor's hand. He walked us to the door, smiling and waving as we left.

 

THERE WAS NO SCHEDULED TIME
for the race to start. The runners assembled in a disorderly mob at the starting area, and at nine o'clock the cadres began their speeches. The race would begin whenever the speeches finished, and the officials droned on and on while the starting line repeatedly broke and surged. A small section would make a false start and the rest of the crowd would react, and then the police would call everybody back. I tried to jog in place to stay warm, fighting with my elbows to keep position.

The starting line was spread across a massive construction site where a new public park was being built. The entire left side of the line headed directly toward a six-foot drop—a small, crumbling cliff. On the far right was a narrow dirt road that provided the only safe exit for the runners, but it was so close to the start—less than forty yards—that it would be impossible for the crowd to funnel in such a short distance. And even for the runners who did make it safely, the course immediately took a ninety-degree turn that would claim more victims.

Without question it was the most dangerous starting arrangement I had ever seen in a lifetime of racing. I was tempted to pull out, partly for my safety but mostly because I wanted to be able to watch the disaster from the perspective of a spectator. Rob Schmitz, another Peace Corps volunteer, was visiting us that week, and he and Adam took their cameras and gleefully waited across the road.

The college team had staked out a spot on the right side of the line, directly in front of the exit. Most of them were physical education students, and usually we were the best team in the race, along with the Taiji medicine factory. All of us squeezed together, waiting for the start. It was a cool morning and the winter smog hung low over the city.

Five minutes passed, then ten. The cadres kept talking, and the police were having trouble holding everybody back. Either they were going to start the race or it was going to start itself, and finally one of the cadres must have realized this. He fired the gun.

It was China. Chaos, noise, adrenaline; fear and surprise and excitement; a mass of bodies, everybody yelling, horns sounding, the earth pounding; all of us running madly, arms outstretched to clear room; legs pumping, dashing, sprinting, trying to keep the back kick low to avoid being tripped; some runners shouting as they stumbled over the cliff, others skidding around the first turn, dodging the few unfortunate ones who fell and skidded below the rush of legs. The seconds slid past, each moment an eternity of concentration and effort. We flew down the street in a wild charging mob, hit the second turn, and headed west on Xinghua Road.

The course began to climb uphill. The scene was still shaky with adrenaline but I realized that the eternity of the start was over, and that I was no longer a part of the starting mob. After the beginning of a race there is always that moment of disengagement, when the euphoria of being a part of something massive is over and you realize that you are alone, and that you have your own race to run.

I slowed down. Suddenly I felt tired; the adrenaline evaporated and everything slipped into focus. I checked myself—no scrapes, no bruises; no memory of exactly how I had made it safely off the line. I glanced around me. I was in the lead pack, a group of perhaps fifty, and the others were also settling in after the rush of the start. We were climbing steadily now and the pace was slowing. I felt my legs come back to me, the numb excitement replaced by the rhythm of a long hard run—steady steady steady steady, up on my toes as the hill steepened. Police cars rolled their lights in front of the pack. Far ahead, groups of school kids were trying to cheat, jumping into the race with a lead of a hundred yards, but the cops pulled them out as they drove past.

The entire first half was uphill, and by the time I took the lead, perhaps two minutes into the race, I could see that the others were finished. It was a varied field—college students and
danwei
workers and a few athletes who clearly could have been good runners with more training—but all of them were done. Quickly I slipped ahead.

To lead any big race is a strange feeling. People speak of the loneliness of running, but I've always felt that the sport is lonely only in the races, and especially when the pack breaks and you find yourself alone in front. In the pack you usually feel some solidarity with the other athletes, even though you are still competing, but in front there are no illusions. That's when the race becomes a chase—one man against the rest of the field—and I've always felt that this is the loneliest feeling in the world. And it's even lonelier when you are the only foreigner in a field of more than two thousand, and all along the course spectators are calling out
“Waiguoren, waiguoren, waiguoren.”
Out-of-country person, out-of-country person, out-of-country person.