River Town (32 page)

Fifty hours is a long time to ride on a train without seats. For the first night Weiss and I did the best we could in the aisle, sitting on our bags, but it was impossible to sleep and always there were people coming through and bumping us. The worker in charge of our car was annoyed by the crowd, and out of spite she mopped the entire carriage three times during the first evening. In order for her to do this, all of us had to stand up and hold our luggage over our heads while she pushed at our feet with the dirty mop. She mopped at eight o'clock, ten o'clock, and midnight. Everybody grumbled but nobody resisted; in China you tolerated the bad behavior of the people who were employed to serve you, the same way you tolerated bullies and all other hassles of that sort. Or you tried to leave, which is what Weiss and I finally did, scouting out a different car where the worker seemed more reasonable. It was an improvement, but we were still standing in the aisle as the train plodded east through the desert.

It wasn't the sort of trip that inspires positive thoughts. Weiss and I discussed other Peace Corps volunteers in our group, and things they did that annoyed us, and we talked about the new volunteers who had recently arrived and how badly they would do this year. We complained about the various
waiguoren
we had seen over the course of the summer. We watched the other passengers in the car, criticizing their flaws. We discussed things we would do and eat whenever we returned to America. We reviewed the most offensive rap lyrics from the Notorious B.I.G.'s recent album, and we talked about what the Notorious B.I.G. would do on a train like this, and how his reaction would be distinct from that of Snoop Doggy Dogg. Neither of the rappers would like the train very much, we decided. At least ten times an hour I looked at my watch.

I rarely glanced out the windows, and I couldn't read. Sometimes I listened to my Walkman, but I hadn't brought enough tapes. Mostly I was too exhausted to speak Chinese, although in the afternoon I had a long conversation with a group of students who were on their way to Chengdu. But that was a very calculated effort; I figured that if they realized we were teachers they might share their seats, out of respect. Sure enough, after thirty minutes' conversation they kindly offered us a spot on the end of their bench. For the second night Weiss and I shared the seat in shifts, one standing while the other sat, but the seat wasn't comfortable and neither of us slept for more than ten minutes at a stretch.

Time crept, especially when I was standing, and to pass the evening I did something that I often did in China when things got rough. I remembered other places I had visited, thinking about what I had liked the most about them—a comfortable hotel, or a good restaurant, or the way a river wound through a green valley. I spent some time thinking about which part of the world was the perfect opposite of this particular Chinese train, and at last I decided that it was Switzerland. To distract myself I recalled some of the long hikes I had taken there, and in my mind I walked them over again. I remembered a certain stretch of the Swiss Valais where I had hiked up hard from the Val d'Anniviers, because night had been falling, and I remembered camping high above St. Luc. My clothes were damp with the effort of the climb, and I put the tent up quickly, because it was growing cold; and then I went to sleep.

The next morning I climbed the Bella Tola. It was early summer and the mountain was still snow-covered, and the ice was streaked red with Sahara sand that had been blown across the Mediterranean by the
föhn
winds. After the Bella Tola, I continued over the Meidpass into the Turtmanntal, which is the first German-speaking valley as you head east across the southern Valais. The Turtmanntal is a steep empty valley with a blue glacier trembling at its southern end, and I made camp in a meadow midway up the slope to the next pass. I arranged everything carefully, checking my tent and sleeping bag, and then I went to sleep. Always I went to sleep.

The train rocked east and south. By the last day it was as if something inside of me had snapped and I was too tired to do any more walks in my mind, not even short ones around my home in Missouri.
Passengers started getting off after we reached Sichuan, and for the last five hours Weiss and I had seats. But it was too late to do us much good and we stared ahead without speaking. We reached Chengdu in early evening, and I realized that I had just spent two days of my life standing on a train. My summer vacation was over. During the rest of my time in the Peace Corps, I never rode another train.

IN THE OLD SECTION
of Fuling City is a Catholic church, and in the courtyard of the church is a propaganda sign, which consists of four lines of four characters each:

 

Love the Country, Love the Religion
Respect God, Love the People
Throw Your Body into the Four Modernizations
Serve the Masses

 

The Four Modernizations are Industry, Agriculture, Defense, and Science; and it is difficult to see their connection to Fuling's Catholic church, which was constructed by French missionaries in 1861, and whose Masses are served by Father Li Hairou, who at eighty-three years of age is more than four times as old as the Four Modernizations.

Father Li stands well under five feet tall. Usually he wears a soft black beret atop his white-haired head. He has a long, proud nose—an Italian nose for a Chinese Roman Catholic priest. His eyes are black, and sometimes they flicker and flash and show emotion when his voice, which is low and raspy, does not. Visitors occasionally remark on his brilliant white teeth, and Father Li responds by saying that they are a species of Modernization that cost him two hundred yuan and two months of eating nothing but rice gruel. He smiles easily. He walks with a dragon-headed cane. His kidneys often hurt, as does his knee, and when these problems flare up he says the Mass in Latin, because it is quicker that way. If the pain is serious he does not say the Mass at all, but that rarely happens. He is strong, although he moves
slowly, and there is a pronounced dignity in his carriage. Most elderly people in China have this dignity, because they live in a culture where age commands unquestioned respect; and many of them, like Father Li, have an extra sense of pride that comes from not only the years but the bitter way so many of them passed. Those bitter years are what lie behind the flash in his eyes.

For more than half a century, Father Li has been a priest in Fuling. Anywhere in the world that is a long time to be a priest. In Fuling, fifty years of priesthood is an eternity.

 

LI HAIROU'S GREAT-GRANDFATHER
was converted to Catholicism by French missionaries in the early 1800s. The Li family lived in Dazu, not far from Chongqing, and Li Hairou was the second son of a shopkeeper. At eleven he was sent to a French-run parochial school in Chongqing, and then in Chengdu he studied to be a priest. He learned French and Latin, and, like the other young seminary students, he dreamed of studying in Rome. Others were sent to Italy, but Li Hairou stayed, becoming a priest in 1944, at the age of twenty-nine. Three years later, he was sent to Fuling—remote, undeveloped, a distant backwater of a poor province. Perhaps in another age it would have been a quiet post. But the midcentury was a time when nothing in China was quiet, when the War of Resistance Against the Japanese was followed by the Civil War and Communist Liberation, and these were struggles that touched almost everybody in the Chongqing region. Li Hairou's older brother died during the wars, and his younger brother, having found himself on the wrong side of Liberation, fled to Singapore, where he married and became a teacher. But Father Li stayed in Fuling, serving the three thousand parishioners, working with the two French priests who lived in the area, waiting for the ripples of revolution to make their way down the Yangtze Valley. And then the French were gone, and the ripples came to shore, and Father Li had to wait no more.

“In the 1950s,” he says, “first there was trouble because Catholicism was considered Foreign Teaching. Later, during the Great Cultural Revolution, there was more trouble because they were Destroying Superstition—but that was later. At first they were trying to stop Foreign Teaching, and so after Liberation I was sent out to the countryside. That
was in 1953. I was sent to the north of Fuling, about seventy miles away. The conditions were terrible. Often there wasn't enough to eat, and many people in China starved. That was the time of the
dagongfan
—the communal meal. They had one pot, and one person would put in some radishes, another person put in some rice, another person put in some other vegetables. But there wasn't enough for everybody to eat. It was the same with the Great Leap Forward—that was a huge mistake. Those were both Chairman Mao's ideas. He didn't understand economics the way Deng Xiaoping did. What Chairman Mao liked was revolution; he liked struggle. People became poorer, and the poorer you were, the more you were controlled.”

Father Li is sitting in his office, a small dark room next to the church. As in so many Chinese sitting rooms, the decorations are a mystery of quirkiness: an empty aquarium, a plastic Donald Duck, a small statue of Mary, a slightly smaller figure of Santa Claus, a talking digital clock that announces the hour in Mandarin. But by far the strangest decoration, hanging on the wall across from Father Li, is a large photograph of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.

The black-and-white picture features the two men smiling over cups of tea. The chairs of both men are reclined, and the scene would not be out of place in a Sichuan teahouse. But the photograph is from near the end of Mao's life, when Deng Xiaoping had already suffered more than his share of troubles from the old man's policies, and undoubtedly there were emotions in this meeting that the camera missed. And there are certainly feelings in Father Li's heart that are not reflected in the simple and careful way that he speaks about the past. But there is a spark in his eyes as he glances up at the photograph, and then he shakes his head and continues his story.

“In the countryside I didn't have my vestments. I didn't have a Bible. I had nothing—all I had was a rosary, so I said the rosary three times a day. I returned to Fuling in 1955, but I didn't come back to the church, because it was closed down. I couldn't be a priest anymore, so I was sent down to work on the docks. My job was cleaning—mopping, sweeping, cleaning the docks. I made twenty-four yuan a month. It wasn't enough, you know.

“Often I said Mass for myself. We weren't allowed to have a church, but I could say Mass alone. But once the Great Cultural Revolution
started, I couldn't even do that. The Red Guards turned the church into a sock factory, and they always watched me. I wasn't in jail, but I was constantly guarded, and the Red Guards made me do many things. Often I wore the High Hat while they criticized me, and they'd force me to kneel down and bow like this”—he dips his white head and gives a short laugh, the way he often chuckles when he remembers the Cultural Revolution. “They'd march me through the streets with a sign that said: ‘Down with Imperialism's Faithful Running Dogs!' I'd wear the sign like this, in front and in back, with big characters on it.”

He traces the ten characters on the surface of the low table in front of him, stroke by stroke, dipping a finger into his tea. This is a common Chinese habit when speaking with foreigners—because many characters have the same sound, a conversation will sometimes pause as the speaker writes a word in order to clarify the meaning for the
waiguoren
listener. They write them in the air, on the palm of their hand, in tea water on a table; and to watch a Chinese person do this is to realize how unique the written language is, and how its words are truly shapes—not just sounds, or collections of letters, but tangible things that are handled and touched. And in this case the words are so tangible that they were once worn in public. But Father Li says nothing more about that; he merely traces his ten characters on the table, and the hot water steams and evaporates, and the words disappear.

“For three years it was particularly bad,” he says. “Especially for three months. During those three months, I had four Red Guards watching me all day, and five times each day they took me out on the street for demonstrations.”

His visitor asks what year that was, and Father Li pauses, muttering softly as he stares into space. But the date will not come to him, and at last he shakes his head. “I can't remember for certain,” he says. “But that was the worst time. During the struggle sessions, the Red Guards used to throw things at me—fruit, or other hard things. All of them were students—they were children. They thought it was fun.”

He is not smiling now. Something in his eyes has hardened, and he points up at the picture of Mao. “It was his idea,” Father Li says. “His mistake. When Deng Xiaoping came to power it was different, but during the Great Cultural Revolution it was terrible. I was never injured very badly—that wasn't the problem. The problem was that I
didn't get much to eat. Every day they gave me only two bowls of rice gruel. Many priests in China died during that time. Most of them died because they got sick; we didn't have enough to eat, and all day long we couldn't rest. In Chongqing there were many who died.”

Again he pauses to count, but this time the number comes to mind easily. He is thinking of old friends, men he studied with, prayed with, and suffered with, and because of that his memory is clear. But still there is a long pause before he responds. Perhaps in his mind he sees their faces, the way they died and the way he nearly died. His eyes are distant as he remembers, and then he speaks again.

“Six,” he says. “In Chongqing there were six priests who died.”

 

BUT FATHER LI
is not a bitter man, which is probably why he has lived so long. He does not complain about today's Communist Party, and he seems sincere when he says that its policies are fine; indeed, things are infinitely better than they once were. The church is in reasonably good repair, and it is granted tax-free status by the government, which also provides Father Li with a living stipend of two hundred yuan a month. The priest is allowed to say Mass again, and his parishioners can attend without harassment. Weekday services are in Latin while Sunday Mass is in the dialect.

On the average Sunday there are about fifty worshipers, mostly women, all elderly. Rarely is there anybody under forty years of age. There are no weddings or baptisms in the church—only funerals.

There are, of course, plenty of rules. Missionary work is illegal in China, and official connections to Rome are not allowed—a point of contention that, having strained relations between China and the Vatican for five centuries, is unlikely to be resolved easily.

“We can recognize the Pope personally,” explains Father Li. “In our minds, in our faith, we can recognize him. If we didn't recognize him, how could you call us Catholic? Every day we pray to him. But there's no economic
guanxi
with Rome—they don't give us money. And also there's no political connection with them, and the Pope can't come to China. He would like to come but he can't, because right now he recognizes Taiwan. If he recognized China instead, then he could come. But even now there are priests in China who have visited Rome
to see him. This year the Pope went to Cuba, and it had been many years since he had last been there. That visit went very well, too. So maybe in the future he'll also make it to China.”

These are distant issues, and Father Li seems far more concerned about the problems he faces here in Fuling. He worries about his aging parishioners, and he worries about the serious shortage of clergy in Sichuan, which has but seventy priests for 120 churches. He also worries about money, because his parishioners are too poor to give much support, and foreign assistance has diminished since his younger brother died in Singapore five years ago.

But he doesn't worry too much, because such concerns seem minor compared to everything that he has seen in the past. He has seen the War of Resistance Against the Japanese, the Civil War, and Liberation. He has seen, personally, the campaign against Foreign Teaching and the campaign to Destroy Superstition. He has seen the old French-built church turned into a sock factory. He has seen ugly words draped over his shoulders. He has seen the church reopen back in 1981, and on the first Sunday he saw fewer than twenty nervous people come to Mass. Now the Fuling area has more than a thousand Catholics, even if rarely there are more than fifty at a given service, and for an old priest like Father Li there is a great deal of satisfaction in seeing that much. Others weren't so fortunate.

But still it seems strange that in his office he can look up and see the photograph of Mao Zedong, who made a three-decade hole in Father Li's life as a priest. It is not uncommon for Sichuanese victims of the Cultural Revolution to have a poster of Deng Xiaoping on their walls, because he suffered as they did, but very few of them display pictures of Mao. Perhaps for Father Li there is a political reason—maybe he does it to appease cadres, the way somebody is appeased by the Four Modernizations sign in the courtyard. In China, many officials see religion as subversive, particularly the Catholic Church, and perhaps the photograph is intended to put their minds at rest.

Father Li often looks at the picture. While talking about the trials of the past, he glances at it repeatedly, and every time there is the sudden flash in his eyes, as if something about the photograph holds his memories together. At the end of his story, he looks at it once more. Again he points a steady finger at Mao.

“All of that was his idea,” he says. He pauses, still staring at the picture, whose smiling figures give no sense of what “all of that” entails: the broken church, the cruel and violent children with their red armbands, the lost years and the lost friends. Then the priest says, simply, “Because of that, we don't respect him.”