Lisa See - The Interior

At ten-thirty departure had been announced, and hundreds of men, women, and children had smashed up against each other as they tried to get their tickets punched. Then they pushed through the turnstiles that led to the train platform. Once on board, an attendant-a stern-faced woman in a starched pale green shirt with red emblems on the shoulders-took Hulan's paper ticket and exchanged it for a hard plastic ticket. Hulan took her assigned seat-the middle position on a hard bench that accommodated three people. There was no air conditioning, and all but two of the windows in the car had been sealed shut. Most of those on board were going on to Huhhot in Mongolia.

By eleven the train had left the station and had rolled through the crowded environs of Beijing. Gradually the high-rises and traffic jams of the city had been left behind. Within an hour the landscape had changed. Fields spread out to the horizon. Villages appeared, then disappeared as the express chugged through the rural western counties. Soon the train began a slow but steady climb. Occasionally she caught glimpses of the Great Wall as it snaked over the hills. Then the train leveled out again, and outside the window were fields of beans, corn, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. By the time the train reached Zhangjiakounan, with its massive nuclear power plant, the land had become harsher. Along the track were piles of coal, and the stations they passed through were dingy with coal dust. Hulan saw peasants-the poorest of the poor-working land that was filled with too many minerals to sustain proper life. Most people in this area had given up farming entirely and now worked in coal and salt mines.

Hulan had tried to keep her attention on what was passing outside the window, but it had been hard. Her compartment teemed with life. Babies wailed, spat up, peed (or worse) on the floor. Men chain-smoked rough-smelling cigarettes, occasionally hawking murky sputum toward the spittoons which had been strategically placed at either end of the compartment.

But usually the men hadn't bothered to move from their seats, and horrible globs of mucus ended up on the floor with the produce, the souvenirs, and gifts that people had bought in the capital, and the toddlers and those travelers who'd had it with their hard seats and had stretched out among the bags. Most of the passengers had brought their own provisions and throughout the day pulled out fragrant-sometimes too fragrant-containers of noodles. Others got by on slivers of garlic on cold buns. Most everyone had brought their own jar for tea, and the attendant passed through the aisle every hour or so with hot water refills. As the hours ticked by, these odors had blended with those from the bathroom at the end of the compartment. Many of the passengers were rural people who'd never seen indoor plumbing before, even if it was only a hole in the floor leading straight down to the track. The combination of smells could be nauseating under ordinary circumstances but were made worse by the train's constant movement. Indeed several people had lost their meals into plastic bags or straight onto the floor in desperate dashes to the bathroom.

Hulan, still in the early enough stages of pregnancy to be sorely affected by odors of any sort, had fought her feelings of queasiness by sucking on preserved plums and sipping from a thermos of ginger tea. Dr. Du, a traditional Chinese herbal medicine doctor in Beijing and Hulan's mother's longtime physician, had recently taken over Hulan's care. However, she had been extremely skeptical of his prescriptions for morning sickness-especially the Emperor of Heaven's Special Pill to Tonify the Heart, reputed to bring strength to the blood and calm the spirit- and had made the mistake of saying so to Madame Zhang.

The next day Madame Zhang had come calling with a bag of individually wrapped preserved plums and the mixture for the tea. "Doctors! Men! What do they know?" the Neighborhood Committee director asked. "I'm an old woman and you listen to me. You put one plum in your mouth and you wait. No chewing. Just suck. When the meat is gone, you keep sucking on the pit, too. You will feel much better." With this advice Madame Zhang had given her tacit but unspoken agreement to allow the pregnancy to continue without a permit. Sitting on the train, with her bag of plums half-empty, Hulan had been glad to have them. Old wives' tale or simple placebo, Hulan didn't care, so long as the plums continued to settle her stomach.

On the train went. So much dust, grit, and coal dust had blown in from the two open windows that they were closed until the heat became unbearable and were opened again. From loudspeakers music and a constant stream of announcements had competed with the human cacophony. Traditional Chinese songs were interspersed with newer romantic ballads. But the music was a relief compared to the broadcast declarations, during which a shrill voice announced train stops, cigarettes and liquor for sale, news of the day, and political reminders on birth control, politeness in society, and the importance of increased production. Not for the first time Hulan had marveled at her compatriots' ability-willingness-to have this noise, whether in music or propaganda, intrude into their daily lives.

Hulan had made reservations at the Yungang Hotel, a so-called five-star hotel and the only establishment in Datong that attempted to cater to foreigners. Driving there by taxi, Hulan saw a grimy city filled with coal trucks. Black drifts of coal dust tufted the edge of the road. Despite the taxi driver's high hopes that Datong would become a tourist center- "We are especially popular with the Japanese because they occupied Datong during the war and like to renew their memories"-the hotel and Hulan's room were desperately dreary. Cigarette burns marred the carpet, and grimy gray curtains hung in limp shreds. Hot water ran only from seven to nine in the morning, she was informed, and the television broadcast only local news and state channels. The cavernous hotel dining room had a staff of about fifty women dressed in powder blue cheongsams who looked listless and bored. Hulan had dinner alone, while a tour group of twenty Japanese silently picked through a meal of cold canned string beans, cold meat, sauteed pork with vegetables, french fries, watermelon, and lemon cake. A Karen Carpenter song played on a continuous loop with the waitresses joining in occasionally, "Every sha-la-la-la, every wo-oh-wo-oh, every shing-a-ling-a-ling…"

By eight the next morning Hulan was back on the train and heading south another seven hours to Taiyuan. She had been fortunate enough to book a soft seat for this second day. The compartment had two sets of bunks, and each person was required to sit on his or her own bed for the duration of the trip. The man who occupied the bunk across from Hulan put a newspaper over his face, fell asleep, and began to snore, prompting another man to shout out, "Roll over! You're making it impossible for any of us to sleep." The man did as he was told, and soon the other two occupants drifted off as well. On the table by the window, a brochure extolled this train's modern virtues in quaint, imaginative English:

Dear passengers, security, polite, and hospitality are the service aim of our crew. Please remember:

1. Never speak taboo words.

2. Keep the interior of the car clean and tidy. The environment must be graceful.

3. Our food dishes are meticulously prepared and have four features-color, fragrance, taste, and shape. Moslem food is also available.

4. When you are in car, please use the complement gloves.

Under the table Hulan found a basket with the gloves, a large thermos filled with hot water, and porcelain cups with lids. When a young woman attendant came by with packets of tea for purchase, Hulan inquired if there was some way to turn down the loudspeaker. The attendant not only said that she could but offered to turn the speaker off entirely. Soon the high-pitched announcements were replaced by the gentle sighs of the sleeping men and the soothing pulse of the train moving along the track. And although this train was also bereft of air conditioning, an oscillating fan circulated the warm air. This, combined with the hot towels that the attendant brought by periodically, made this day's I journey almost pleasant.