Last Chance to See - Douglas Adams [72]
“Then, of course, there’s all the sewage, the chemical and industrial waste and artificial fertiliser that’s being washed into the Yangtze, poisoning the water and poisoning the fish.”
“So,” I said, “what do you do if you are either half-blind, or half-deaf, living in a discotheque with a stroboscopic light show, where the sewers are overflowing, the ceiling and the fans keep crashing on your head, and the food is bad?”
“I think I’d complain to the management.”
“They can’t.”
“No. They have to wait for the management to notice.”
A little later I suggested that, as representatives of the management so to speak, perhaps we ought to try to hear what the Yangtze actually sounded like under the surface—to record it in fact. Unfortunately, since we’d only just thought of it, we didn’t have an underwater microphone with us.
“Well, there’s one thing we can do,” said Chris. “There’s a standard technique in the BBC for waterproofing a microphone in an emergency. What you do is you get the microphone and you stuff it inside a condom. Either of you got any condoms with you?”
“Er, no.”
“Nothing lurking in your sponge bags?”
“No.”
“Well, we’d better go shopping, then.”
By now I was beginning to think in sound pictures. There are two very distinctive sounds in China, three if you count Richard Clayderman.
The first is spitting. Everybody spits. Wherever you are you continually hear the sound: the long-drawn-out, sucking, hawking noise of mucus being gathered up into the mouth, followed by the hissing launch of the stuff through the air, and, if you’re lucky, the ping of it hitting a spittoon, of which there are many. Every room has at least one. In one hotel lobby I counted a dozen strategically placed in corners and alcoves. In the streets of Shanghai there is a plastic spittoon sunk into the pavement on every street corner, filled with cigarette butts, litter, and thick, curling, bubbly mucus. You will also see many signs saying NO SPITTING, but since these are in English rather than Chinese, I suspect that they are of cosmetic value only. I was told that spitting in the street was actually an offence now, with a fine attached to it. If it were ever enforced, I think that the entire economy of China would tilt on its axis.
The other sound is the Chinese bicycle bell. There is only one type of bell, and it’s made by the Seagull Company, which also makes Chinese cameras. The cameras, I think, are not the world’s best, but the bicycle bells may well be, as they are built for heavy use. They are big, solid, spinning chrome drums and have a great resounding chime to them which you hear ringing out through the streets continuously.
Everyone in China rides bicycles. Private cars are virtually unheard of, so the traffic in Shanghai consists of trolley buses, taxis, vans, trucks, and tidal waves of bicycles.
The first time you stand at a major intersection and watch, you are convinced that you are about to witness major carnage. Crowds of bicycles are converging on the intersection from all directions. Trucks and trolley buses are already barreling through it. Everyone is ringing a bell or sounding a horn and no one is showing any signs of stopping. At the moment of inevitable impact, you close your eyes and wait for the horrendous crunch of mangled metal but, oddly, it never comes.
It seems impossible. You open your eyes. Several dozen bicycles and trucks have all passed straight through one another as if they were merely beams of light.
Next time you keep your eyes open and try to see how the trick’s done; but however closely you watch you can’t untangle the dancing, weaving patterns the bikes make as they seem to pass insubstantially through one another, all ringing their bells.
In the Western world, to ring a bell or sound a horn is usually an aggressive thing to do. It carries a warning or an instruction: “Get out of the way,” “Get a move on,” or “What the hell kind of idiot are you, anyway?” If you hear a lot of horns blowing on a New York street, you know that people are in a dangerous