Lost on Planet China - J. Maarten Troost [143]
But there would be more. We drove by cages of lions, leopards, cheetahs, jaguars, and baby tigers, all gathered around another cage with a bird inside, a stork, a very nervous stork, and then we were taken to a concrete walkway, where we could walk just above an enclosure of tigers. We ambled past a baby tiger, lethargic and sleepy as it dozed upon a tiger skin. For an extra 30 kuai we could pet it. On the walkway sat a woman in a uniform with a crate of live chickens before her. One of my fellow tourists approached her with some money. The woman dipped her hand inside this crate of chickens and took one out, tying it by its feet and attaching it to a four-foot stick, before handing it to him. The man took the fishing pole with the dangling chicken, squawking and ill-disposed, and lowered it out over the tigers, taunting them. He dipped it a little lower. A tiger leapt up and shredded a wing. The chicken wailed. Oh, the fun we have in China. He lowered the chicken again. A tiger shredded a leg. The chicken screamed. Everyone laughed. Because this is funny in China. Slowly, painfully, piece by piece, the chicken was shredded into oblivion. Finally, I approached this woman in the uniform and bought a chicken myself. She attached it to the fishing pole and I was ready now to fish for tigers. I took this shrieking chicken, flung it over the side, and reached down and watched a tiger quickly shred it to pieces.
And why, one may reasonably ask, did I do that?
I did it for the chicken.
24
The lunatic paced up and own the aisle, screaming. There was a crazy man on board this train to Dandong, walking up and down the aisles of the hard-seat car, yelling at all the devils around him. There were only a handful of people on this train to the last stop in China before North Korea. And there were devils. What would he make of the foreigner, the laowai?
I had boarded this train in Shenyang, a grim industrial city south of Harbin in Liaoning Province, a city notable for having one of the finest statues of Mao I’d yet seen, a monument that reflected the very apogee of Socialist Realism. But I had not lingered in Shenyang. Nothing about Shenyang encouraged lingering, and I’d boarded the slow train to Dandong. It had been a full train in Shenyang, and I sat in hard-seat class next to two workers who kindly shared an orange with me. It was moments like that, gestures of unexpected graciousness, that offered the yin to the yang of traveling in China, which is often difficult and exasperating, the yang of Chinese travel that was now manifesting itself as a deranged maniac stomping about the train. I sat and peeled my orange, marveling that there were, in fact, oranges way up here in northern China in December, and tried to ignore the man’s ranting. The train rumbled through the brown hills, stopping at every hamlet on the way, discharging passengers until only a handful remained. I had spent so very much of my time in China traveling—finding tickets, queuing among people who did not queue, flying on planes piloted by teenagers, rumbling on crowded buses, my guard ever up as I passed through train and bus stations where one moment of absentmindedness would lead to robbery or worse. It was nearly over, this trip of mine. I would go to Dandong, and then a night train to Beijing, and I would fly home and see my family, my wife, my boys, these boys who were probably men now. It had been a long trip. There is so very much to see in China. There is so very much that must be seen. I had traveled thousands and thousands of miles across this vast country. And I’d still seen little, all things considered. What is here cannot all be seen by one man. Not in a lifetime. And what you saw yesterday is always different today, and it will be different again tomorrow. Everything