Avenue of Eternal Peace

Contents

ONE   
Crackers

TWO   
Towards the Not Yet

THREE   
The Way

FOUR   
April Fool's Day

FIVE   
All Souls

SIX   
Extraterritorial

SEVEN   
Greasing Up

EIGHT   
In Harness

NINE   
Things Fall Apart

TEN   
Travellers Among Mountains and Streams

ELEVEN   
Encountering Trouble

TWELVE   
Thorough Democracy

Postscript

Acknowledgements

Not that there are no ghosts

But that their influence becomes propitious

In the sound existence of a living man;

There is no difference between the quick and the dead,

They are one channel of vitality.

—Lao Tzu

… a country so strange that not even the air had anything in common with his native air, where one might die of strangeness, and yet whose enchantment was such that one could only go on and lose oneself forever.

—Franz Kafka

Perhaps I should tell the children

A tale.

—Yang Lian

ONE
Crackers

1

The map under glass made no sense. Wally Frith fingered the wad of notes that Mrs Gu had given him. She had been all befuddled, bespectacled smiles at the airport, as they lugged his baggage through the frozen night in search of the car. Now, in the overheated room to which she had delivered him, she presented a different face. Perched uncompromisingly on the arm of a chair, she explained the forms that the Foreign Affairs Office required him to complete.

‘Just tell me what to do,' Wally obliged.

‘No, no,' she protested, as if it were unthinkable to tell anyone what to do. ‘I need eight passport photographs. Meanwhile you will be welcome to a banquet next week. Professor Doctor Frith, thank you.'

She was gone before daylight broke, leaving him to study the map under glass on the table in front of him. His neck rucked the antimacassar of the sofa on which his body longed to doze. So this is China, he thought, reaching for the bottle of duty-free scotch. But it was too early for that. He went to inspect the bathroom, splashing his face with icy water that was unfit to drink. The mission for Day One was to procure eight passport photographs. As morning lightened he lovingly laced the old polished walking boots that in younger days had taken him over mountains in three continents. He opened the door, trekked carefully downstairs and stepped outside. The icy dust and soot tickled his nostrils. There was no green thing in sight, only the grey sky suffused with silver brightness. The buildings of Peking Union Medical College, China's leading teaching and research hospital for three-quarters of a century, were moored like galleons in the pale and frozen world. The bricks were liver-coloured and the tiles on the old rooftops slashed with scarlet woodwork. Wally pulled down the fur hat his White Russian colleague had bequeathed him, ‘from the old days', and marched forth.

When Mrs Gu came next day he was able to supply her with eight photographs of a face-the-future foreigner in a greatcoat, against a painted backdrop of the Eiffel Tower insisted on by the photographer. It was a favourite choice for newlyweds.

‘Why don't you sit down, Mrs Gu?' said Wally warmly. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?' She waved her hands dismissively, perched as before, scribbling characters.

‘I'd like to have a talk with you about what you people expect of a visiting professor at the Peking Union Medical College. I mean, I've got my research interests, and as you know there are some specialists in your institute I need to meet, but if there's anything extra you people would like of me …'

‘You must help us,' announced Mrs Gu solemnly. ‘We want your advice. Our techniques are sometimes a little … backward. We will study you.'

‘Well I'm flattered, naturally. But I'm ready to make a more active contribution.'

‘We will research you,' concluded Mrs Gu, dealing out an array of ID cards. He pointed at a calligraphic flurry embossed in gold. ‘What does this mean?'

‘Serve the people!' she exclaimed with a hoot. Chairman Mao had said it. ‘I must apologise, Professor Doctor Frith, the Director of our Medical College is still in Chicago. Your welcome banquet will be delayed until after Spring Festival. Meanwhile you should get some rest.'

Stowing further documents on her person, Mrs Gu was on her way. As Wally saw her to the door, he reminded her that he hoped, on the auspicious occasion of the banquet, to be introduced to Professor Hsu Chien Lung, whose name he had mentioned in letters. Mrs Gu gave a little grunt.

2

The days drew in as Chinese New Year approached and Mrs Gu made no further contact. There was nothing to do but pick his way grumpily across the frozen mud to the canteen three times a day. It had been his own decision to come to China, subject to the College's readiness to issue an invitation, but after the stressful weeks before departure to find himself all of a sudden at a loose end made him uncomfortable. He felt cooped up, his curiosity mounting into restlessness, but at the College there was no one around; the rooms were empty and the doors were locked. He would angrily flick the pages of his Chinese textbooks and his guidebook, then slam them shut and go out exploring.

One evening, in thermal underwear and armed with map, he managed to find his way through a zigzag of alleyways to a recommended restaurant. The outside walls were as liverish as everything else, but through its doors came an irresistible hubbub. Large circular tables were packed with people whose eyes swam and faces flamed in the bliss of food and drink. He knew the mood—from Hong Kong, Boston, Sydney. Packed! He could hardly peel off his greatcoat without demolishing the pyramids of dishes piled to the brink of every table. A table for one, he asked. The waitress scowled. To eat alone on a feast day was a misfortune against nature; the unwieldy foreigner was immediately engulfed.

All about lay the trophies of jubilant and unabashed feasters: duck heads, fish spines, orange shrimp shells and waxy chunks of winter melon. Bottles and glasses clinked. Plates tipped rich fatty juices to the floor. Wally drank beer and his face flushed. Those around him passed little cups of fiery spirits and threw sweets. At the place of honour a bride in traditional jacket of red satin glowed like red wax beside her proud spotty bridegroom. Friends and relations stuffed themselves.

A member of the party placed a huge handful of sweets in front of the outsider, who beamed his thank-yous.

Then the man opposite drew his breath and stuck the tip of a penknife into his throat. When he pulled the knife away, the skin showed the merest dent; the blade had refused to penetrate.

‘
Qigong
,' he yelled and Wally applauded. Taking upon himself the role of intermediary, another young man who spoke some English explained the theory and nature of ‘the breathing power'. By exerting the
qi
it was possible to increase the body's resistance at a particular point. Wally asked where the man had learned the technique, and the intermediary translated, ‘from childhood!' When Wally asked if he would teach him, the man shook his head and laughed. ‘China's secret,' he joked, meaning it. And the intermediary went on to list the feats of
qigong
: causing rain to fall on drought-stricken farmlands, making tumours wither, causing men to fly through the air. His young eyes glowed with enthusiastic irony. When Wally asked his name, the young man said Ying, which means Eagle.

After another round of toasts and fire liquid the diners leaned back in their chairs like the fat pink pigs that symbolise prosperity. One of the fattest lost his balance and sank to the floor, pulling down a couple of dishes. A youth at another table got to his feet and blared a mad speech about Chinese heroes of today who would dare anything. Then he sprayed beer foam across the room onto a woman's bared shoulders and tempers flared into rowdy pitching of half-eaten buns and hurling of soda pop, and the staff joined in, shouting about law and order. It looked set for a brawl as Wally extricated himself. His head was whirling like a pinwheel, and the chaos made him euphoric, since outside was a grey wall, and another wall, and another wall, in mighty order; and a bottle, bouncing against him, smashed in his wake.

The street outside was dark except for a hazy emanation of sky through crisscross boughs. The cold nibbled at Wally's hot face, and he stumbled with a floating sensation, as if he were a pelican about to lift off. The bulky coat, the muffling darkness, the frozen air and the obscure shapes of frames and recesses had, for him, an essential Chineseness that he suddenly loved. He felt enfolded by the long empty street. Taking a few steps, he was fumbling with his clothing behind a tree trunk when the tree spoke. ‘Where are you going?' A pale moon of a face materialised.

‘Uh!' sputtered Wally.

‘Where are you going, sir? I am Eagle.'

‘Yes yes. Taking a leak—' No time to explain the idiom. He straightened his coat as Eagle led him by the arm towards a black and massive wall showing left and right through the gloom, lit here and there by dim balls of lamplight.

‘The Forbidden City,' said Eagle.

Under a stone bridge the moat lifted from its casing a huge ice block studded with frozen apple cores. Rising up in front like a giant overlord was the locked Gate of Divine Pride, as Eagle tugged Wally sideways around the bottom of the Palace wall. A burst of fireworks crazed the musty orange sky. Or were they explosions burning in Wally's head from icy blasts of oxygen? Eagle giggled oddly. Otherwise the silence was massive. The patched-together houses, dwellings of former petitioners to the Emperor, hung over the moat like stalactites. High over their heads a gatehouse bloomed. Nothing was as black as the wall.

Could this nocturnal wasteland really be the northern capital, navel of the universe, seat of Heaven's Mandate? Was it from here that astronomers threw nets across the sky, imperial gardeners produced blood-red peonies with golden stamens, hieratic opera singers electrified the air, women grew contorted for beauty, and men cut off their balls for power? Reverberated the gong to the limits of the four seas? Imperial puppets turned to clay … Born again as ‘Beijing' in the official romanisation of New China's standard language, a tongue no one spoke, the city of ghosts had been repossessed by peasants, soldiers and officials rising to the surface of the great Chinese ocean. City of devastation, ring roads, high-rise and infernal dust, trial and error, whims put into praxis, it was a masterwork in the stripping of human dignity. Yet here at its heart was the other masterwork of Time waiting monumentally in shadow. Time's two masterworks, stripping down and building up. Wally peered in alcoholic reverie into the massive stony gloom that he and his companion followed like homunculi, until the silence was broken by the brassy wail of a lone tenor saxophone. A snake of sound crept from a crevice in the wall, growing from strange disharmony into something that he found impossibly familiar. He froze, as in a haunting, and began to moan in a flat baritone accompaniment, until the tune metamorphosed, and he was left mouthing the words
You-izz You-izz
while the sax curled into oriental discords and was lost in the night. He welcomed the pressure of Eagle's arm through several layers of clothing. He disliked needless suspicion. Between cramped houses, and the suggestion of voices and moving forms, the path narrowed along the moat, and a few stars peeped through the overhead haze.

‘Where are you going?' asked Eagle.

‘Where are you taking me? I should be getting home. Do you know where we are?'

They crept like rats along the wall.

‘If you want to see a demonstration of real
qigong
, I can take you to the Spring Festival fair.'

‘Now?'

‘Please tell me your address and telephone.'

They made a pact to meet again, like errant knights of the Shaolin temple, and, crossing a bridge, emerged abruptly into a lighted street that ran into the megalomaniac thoroughfare of Changan, the Avenue of Eternal Peace, where a taxi lay in wait.

3

Enforced Chinese idleness offered an alternative route to damnation. At home pressure of work, the ceaseless encounters with colleagues, staff and concerned persons, covered over his isolation. Here his only distractions were provided by the Chinese textbooks and the medical papers he had brought for reassessment, some sane, but mostly nutty stuff—excepting those marvellous papers of more than forty years ago by Hsu Chien Lung. To his surprise he found himself taking advantage of the half-price Happy Hour offered by a foreign hotel on New Year's Eve. He was sitting in a corner of the Western-style bar enjoying the raucous talk of a weary, informed group of expatriates when an American woman called to him.

‘Hey, stop listening to our conversation. Or else come and join us!'

He moved over and they made room for him without interrupting their argument.

‘Power is what it always was,' a sharp English voice was saying, ‘only now they've hired a team of publicity consultants. The modern Emperor gets no buzz from tiled pavilions, silk tat, dragon walls. He likes his court nice and modern—revolving restaurants on every skyline, a satellite station in the backyard, the secret police computerised and the nukes in place. It takes a lot of dollars. So the old boy's worked out his cosy charade of openness to keep the foreign payola rolling in. But cut my tongue out.'

At which the chesty American woman exclaimed, ‘You mean you don't believe in the Reforms?' She was Dulcia, a script editor with Central TV. Once she had worked in the provinces educating the peasants with faith and care. She and her husband Cray had been drawn to repressive societies, he to the Soviet Union, she to China. She won out and they came to China as glossy, jogging, all-American specimens. When Cray moved on to Moscow, Dulcia decided to stay. She was like a queen bee in China, Liberty with a sweatband, offering the Chinese personal freedom at the end of her Yellow Brick Road. If she cried, sometimes, for a home, she clung to her belief that the only true home was in that magic land of being yourself.

Stirred by the woman's performance, and her tight cleavage on which, at that moment, he could have laid his head, Wally shouted a round of drinks. The Englishman, whispering with cherry-red lips, leaned forward to ask what the newcomer was doing in China. Wally explained vaguely that he was on a research project, and the talk quickly turned to health and illnesses round the table.

‘I'm not a general practitioner,' Wally protested. But people never believed him. He asked the Englishman, Clarence, what he did.

‘I am a camera,' Clarence blinked. ‘Agency photographer. Can I have your number?'

‘Hey, here's my card,' said Dulcia jumping in. ‘You're new to Beijing, hey Doc? I can introduce you to some people. There's a guy from Central TV, he's having an exhibition of his painting. He's doing some powerful stuff. Abstract. Real black. We still don't know whether the authorities will close it down.'