A Trip Down the Yhangtze River

It was Sunday afternoon and I was back once again in Chung Do. I was

slipping into another period of disquiet. The fun bit of the trip,

which had been stomping all over Tibet, had been and gone and I was now

faced with the prospect of still being in southern China and having no

idea how to get to Shanghai. The idea of living for the moment and

relishing every new experience had passed and it seemed that I existed

solely to shuffle bus time tables, flight schedules and visa

application forms.

I was feeling tired, jaded and somewhat alone, after the manic last few

weeks of being on the road with a somewhat insane Welshman. It was

strange to get back to the hotel and not have to fight for the toilet. I spent a quiet afternoon looking at maps and timetables wondering how to cover the 4000km in the cheapest manner. I was already a week late in getting back to work and was beginning to wonder if I would still have a job when I returned.

My deliberations were soon disturbed by a very bouncy and energetic

friend arriving, who within two minutes had me rushing out onto the

street in search of food. “Ahh,” she cooed, “no worry, we party then you

go home..”. Once again, she took control of my life and I became the

good, passive tourist.

Sitting in ‘our’ local restaurant, eating an amazing dish which seemed

to consist of fish bones cooked in whole cloves of garlic, peppery

chicken and drinking warm beer, I began to consider staying for a few more days. Life was easy here; I could eat well, have a translator on call 24 hours a day, and not ever have to worry about the fact that I was getting ripped off at every turn. I began to plan my excuses for not completing my trip and the lies I would tell to explain why a whole

section of China was unexplored. Then Cathy suddenly announced that

she was doing a human dissection tomorrow and would I like to watch. I

was packed and ready to leave within the hour.

For want of something better to do, I took a long distance bus to Cong

Quing. The great thing about any Chinese transport is that it is

impossible to get bored. For example, Air China flights, which are all

over land, spend an inordinate amount of time briefing you on how to use

a life jacket; on trains you have a whole posse of people dropping by

to watch you eat; and on busses you get extremely bad Hong Kong

gangster movies played at such a loud volume that everything distorts.

After the tranquillity of Tibet, this came as a real shock to my system.

From what I could gather, this particular film seemed to concern a girl

who for some reason ate a gold fish, then had the compulsion to take

all her clothes off in public places before shooting everyone. I am not sure how it ended because out of desperation I crawled under the back seat, wrapped my towel around my head and drank my rapidly diminishing supply of scotch. Luckily I had remembered the three rules of travel in developing countries:

1. Never run out of scotch

2. Never run out of scotch

3. Never run out of scotch

Chong Quing, was amazing. Within a few moments of being there, and

realising that the agency had forgotten to send someone to meet me, I

hated the place. Built on the mighty river Yhangtze, and a former

British concession, it is a maze of oppressive skyscrapers, dark foreboding alleyways, streets littered with what seemed to be years of litter and the most impressive selection of beggars, cripples, hustlers, and coolies I have ever seen.

I found a dirty greasy caf� and managed to get a cold beer. The

place was crowding in on me. I could feel the eyes of the snotty nosed

kids staring at me, the chef was busy cleaning his teeth with a huge

meat cleaver and a noisy Majong game was coming to what I expected to

be a violent finale on the street outside. I felt dirty and sticky, but had the feeling I often get just before I throw myself into another adventure.

I finally tracked down the travel agent’s office, which was in a dirty

crumbling hotel, which probably rented rooms by the half hour,

and spent the next three hours trying to explain that they had a boat

ticket for me. My patience was wearing thin, and the hot, cloying

atmosphere of the office was beginning to get under my skin. I was

tired and angry that no one knew where my ticket was, even though I had

just paid their agency a huge wad of notes. Each time I protested they

just turned the TV up louder, spat a large and unsavoury amount of

phlegm into the corner and continued applying their makeup (the women

were even worse).

Jesus, I wanted to scream, you live in a ghetto, the whole infrastructure is decaying, it’s 42 degrees outside. Do you really

need more lipstick? But, experience has taught me patience and so I

rolled my towel into a pillow, kicked off my boots, and got comfortable

for the rest of the day.

Eventually, after what could have been 4 hours, or 4 months, an

impatient and foul tempered girl gestured for me to follow and lead me

down a flight of crumbling stairs to an underground carpark. I could

just make out her snarling features as she stopped in a pool of light

and moved closer to me.

I was already writing my obit. “Missing in action, presumed to now have a supporting role in a new Chinese car park.” Grabbing my arm she began to whisper in my ear. At first the words were muffled and I thought for a second she was either about to try to seduce me or mug me. All things being equal, I hoped it was the latter. She tried again, “You give me 100 dollars, I give you 1st class cabin”. Instantly, as my friend had shown me, I got it down to a packet of cough sweets and 20 dollars. Only

later was I to know this was about the best business deal I had ever

made.

An hour later, I was still standing on the docks arguing with the agent to the whereabouts of my ticket. By this stage I was pretty fed up and resigned myself to another long wait. I amused myself by wondering how many new diseases I would contract if I fell in the river, but was greatly relieved to see that the chances of malaria were pretty slim.

It was almost dusk when I was finally led over the creaking duck boards to my cabin. My private cabin, which if you ignored the inch of water on the floor, was rather nice, and even had a proper toilet. Relieved, I went in search of a beer and some company.

On the top deck was a party of Americans. In need of some company, I

went over and introduced myself. For the next few days I was sucked

into their group, made to drink huge amounts of beer, taught how to

speak American and taught how to play Ma jong. The next few days as we

cruised down the Yangtze passed by in a happy haze of beer and banter.

Retrospectively (and I am looking at my slides as I write), I am glad I

was only concerned about where the next cold beer was coming from as

how the boat remained afloat is a mystery.

The highlight of the trip was meant to be the three gorges, which are

scheduled for flooding in a few years. As I had slept almost solidly

through the rest of the trip, I thought that I had better make an effort

and get up on deck as we passed the gorges. I had read a lot about the

gorges and the words most commonly used were “stunning”, “one of

natures wonders”, “awesome” and so on. The Americans seemed to agree

with this and as we passed through the first gorge there seemed to be

lots of whoops, hell yeah’s and hi-fives., which I can tell you from an

Englishman’s point of view was all highly embarrassing.

Personally, I found the gorges pretty boring and definitely not worth

all the fuss. For me, the boat was much more interesting, a closed

community of people 90% of which seemed to spend their entire time

jostling to get the best position on the top deck to spit. I quickly found out that standing on the lower decks was a hazardous pastime. However, I must be honest and say that I slept through the best gorge after a mammoth drinking session which left me incapacitated for the best part of a day.

Again, with more than a touch of sadness, it was time to say goodbye and

our cruise was over (I am proud to say that the boat had finally run

out of beer at this stage and we were reduced to drinking Chinese

poison). Once ashore I jumped into a taxi, showed the driver the name

of my hotel and was once again bouncing through what looked like a war

zone. My driver seemed to be leading me down a series of ever decreasingly pleasant alleyways until he pulled up outside a decaying hotel. Two short skirted women, whom I guess weren’t the receptionists, wandered over.

“This is not my hotel” I told the driver.

“No better hotel – much cheaper,” he grinned.

“And I suppose the women are extra?” I asked, my patience at

breaking point.

“Ahh, I get them for you at knockdown price.”

I got out the car and tried to get my bags from the locked trunk of the car, but the driver was adamant that this was the best hotel for me and

refused to give me my bags. He was trying to drag me into the place,

and shouting in Chinese at me. I began to get a bit worried as I was

in the middle of nowhere and he was getting more and more stressed. At that moment a car suddenly pulled round the corner and as we were parked in the middle of the road, slammed on his breaks to avoid hitting us. I was relieved to see it was another cab.

The new driver got out and began to argue fiercely with my driver, who

was now jabbing me with his finger to reinforce his point. The whores

were obviously enjoying the show and had squatted down for a better

view; out of the darkness a crowd of tramps had appeared.

The new driver seemed to be winning but still my bags were locked in

the cab. Finally, after one jab too many, I pushed the first driver as

hard as I could and screamed at him “Give me my F***ing bags!” This

seemed to do the trick and he dejectedly opened the car and tossed my

bags into a conveniently placed pile of shit.

I had just checked into my hotel when a friend called me and ten

minutes later I was sipping scotch in a swanky hotel on the other side

of town. Although it was late, we decided that we had to check out the

local nightlife and wandered off to the first bar we could find. I

should have realised that I was on a roll and should not been suprised when I suddenly found myself sipping a warm Mexican beer surrounded by teenage soldiers. One rather dumpy sergeant girl began to lecture me on my own personal role in the embassy bombing and seemed on the verge of renouncing me as a running dog of the evil West when the DJ began to play an All Saints record and she suddenly whipped a pen from her jacket and asked me to write the lyrics down.

We made our excuses and left…

All this excitement had made me hungry so we stopped at a streetside caf� for a meal. It was 3:30am and the local hair dressers were doing a brisk business. We declined the live toad stew, or the bucket of slithering eels, but I was tempted by the crayfish which seemed to be scuttling about quite vigorously. We settled for some chilly fish, which only left us running to the toilet for two days afterwards.

A few days later I finally arrived in the fabled city of whores (as my

guide book describes Shanghai) and checked into a swanky hotel. I

needed the luxury of black marble bathrooms and silk sheets by now.

A friend had already arrived and had left me a note about her latest

bowel movements, which seemed par for the course. We met up for some

sightseeing later, which once again turned out to be an interesting

experience as we were promptly kidnapped by a taxi driver.

We had asked to go to our hotel which should have been

a ten minute drive. Almost an hour later, when we were on a motorway

miles away from everywhere, we began to get a bit concerned.

“Do something,” Emila kept whispering to me, and then began to mutter

something about “Bloody English” under her breath. I was a bit worried

because our driver, who seemed to be trying to stuff whole garlic

plants into his mouth, was clearly taking us miles out the city and was

totally unresponsive to any of the normal stimuli which excite the

average Chinese, such as smokes, money or candies and seemed more

concerned with chewing and breathing fowel swelling fumes at me. Each

time he took a breath, I tried to sink lower in the seat. I had a

vision of him dumping us in the middle of nowhere and demanding shit

loads of money from us. “Help,” Emilia was whimpering between drags on

her Chinese cigarettes which she lit with her musical Mao lighter.

Eventually, after much sobbing from the back seat and my attempts at grabbing the wheel and thrusting a map at the driver we pulled up at a badly lit hotel in the middle of nowhere. “Run”, I said to Emila, as I really thought that things were out of control, and we covered the 100

yards to the hotel reception in record time, almost kicked the bemused

security guard aside and ran into the lobby screaming “Help!”. Our taxi

driver was in close pursuit demanding to equivalent of the

national debt of the Philippines.

By this time I was trying to climb over the desk to grab a phone and call the police, Emila was screaming at the taxi driver and a crowd had gathered round and had begun to place bets on the outcome. I was, probably for the first time on this trip, a bit scared about if I could deal with the situation. Across the reception I could see a cab driver beckoning us towards his cab, and for want of a better solution, I grabbed Emila’s hand and pushing past our original driver, who was now foaming at the mouth, and made a bash for the door. It wasn’t until we

were back at our hotel did she speak to me again. “Bastard”, was all

she would say.

A few days later it was time to leave and I must admit it was with an

equal mixture of sadness and relief that I boarded a boat bound for

Osaka. I spent the next two days sleeping and drinking beer. The boat,

which had a capacity for 333 people, had just 15 passengers. A most

enjoyable and relaxing end to my travels was swiftly ruined when I

arrived at Osaka and was promptly arrested…”Welcome home”, I

thought….