Lost on Planet China - J. Maarten Troost [144]
Meanwhile, there was a lunatic on board this slow, far too slow, train to Dandong. The landscape here in the vicinity of North Korea reminded me of the opening credits to the show M*A*S*H, and this pleased me because, of course, M*A*S*H is the very best show ever made. As the lunatic rambled and screamed beside me, I thought of Hawkeye, and what Hawkeye would do in this situation with the dangerous-looking madman. He’d probably tell him to shut up, I thought. So scratch that. Hawkeye could not help me here. I wanted to be invisible to this lunatic, the invisible laowai.
It was nighttime when we finally arrived in Dandong, and I bounced happily off the train, pleased to put some distance between myself and the crazy man. I’d splurged and found a room in a hotel overlooking the Yalu River and, across the way, North Korea. I stepped into the hotel, handed over my passport, checked in, dropped off my backpack, and stepped back out again and walked through an underpass beneath the Friendship Bridge, which spanned the distance between China and North Korea. It’s a strange, lively bridge with a laser show of green lights and strobe lights, a bridge that dances, that gets down, but only halfway—and then it dies at the halfway mark. And then there is darkness, nothing but a black void. That would be North Korea, lit only by the headlights of trucks streaming across the bridge.
I walked along a riverside park, Yalujiang Park, where groups of middle-aged people were playing hacky-sack with a feathered ball. Even though it was dark, they were able to play because there is so much light coming from the Friendship Bridge. It is a bridge in the style of Las Vegas, and the light that cascades from it illuminates everything—including people of middle years playing hacky-sack in Yalujiang Park. I stared at the enigmatic emptiness across the river. What is over there? I wondered. Where are those trucks on the bridge going? What are they bringing into North Korea? Are there not sanctions against North Korea? The little monster, Kim Jong-il, had been playing with his bombs recently. It should be quiet on this bridge, no?
I stepped into a restaurant for some Korean barbecue. There were Koreans in this restaurant. They were legal, I presumed; Chinese-Koreans, or perhaps South Koreans who had come to look at North Korea from the other side. They were most certainly not North Koreans. North Koreans who manage to cross the border hide. They stay in the darkness. And they stay hidden. Or they try to find a way to South Korea. But they do not eat in restaurants near the neon glare of the Friendship Bridge. This is because China sends them back, these escapees from North Korea, and then bad things happen to them. Bad things happen to their families. And this is because Kim Jong-il is a monster.
I returned to my hotel, this hotel overlooking the Yalu River and the Friendship Bridge and beyond that the darkness of North Korea. A Britney Spears tune was playing in the lobby. Inside the elevator, a dapperly dressed Chinese man turned to address me.
“Good evening,” he said in English.
“Good evening.”
“And you are from California, yes?”
“Uh…yeah.”
Nothing about my being suggests California, with the possible exception of a fondness for flip-flops. But this was the North Korean border in December. I was not wearing flip-flops. So this was eerie. The dapperly dressed man got off the elevator before I could inquire how he might know that I lived in California, and I was left alone to ponder this spookiness.
In my room, I sat at the window and watched the trucks rumbling over the Friendship Bridge toward North Korea. One certainly wouldn’t know there were sanctions against the regime. Not here, I thought as I viewed the proceedings from my perch above the border crossing. This was the perfect spy room. I could count trucks. I could take pictures. There was all sorts of information that I could discern from my place at the window of this hotel. Yes, I thought, there is not a finer spy room than this one. Then