Paul Theroux - To the Ends of the Earth - The Selected Travels

“Keep the wind at your back, Paul,” she said, and giggled again, delighted with her own audacity.

*She was wrong. Mao was the mover of a resolution to forbid the naming of provinces, cities, towns, or squares for himself or other living leaders (Selected Works of Mao Zedong, vol. 4, p. 380).

GOLMUD WAS HARDLY A TOWN. IT WAS A DOZEN WIDELY scattered low buildings, some radio antennas, a water tower. One of the few cars in town was Mr. Fu’s ridiculous Galant: there were some buses, but they were the most punished-looking vehicles I had seen in China — and no wonder, for they toiled up and down the Tibetan Plateau.

“Snow,” Mr. Fu said — his first word.

I had not expected this snow, and it was clear from his gloomy tone that neither had he. The snow lay thinly in the town, but behind the town it was deep and dramatic — blazing in the shadows of the mountain range.

He said, “We cannot go to Lhasa tomorrow. Maybe the day after, or the day after that, or—”

I asked him why.

“The snow. It is everywhere — very deep,” he said. He was driving fast through the rutted Golmud streets — too fast, but I had seen him drive in Xining and I knew this to be normal. At the best of times he was a rather frantic driver. “The snow is blocking the road.”

“You are sure?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see it?”

He laughed: Ha-ha! You idiot! “Look at it!”

“Did anyone tell you that the road was blocked with snow?”

He did not reply, so that meant no. We continued this sparring. The snow was bad news — it glittered, looking as though it were there forever. But surely someone had a road report?

“Is there a bus station in Golmud?”

He nodded. He hated my questions. He wanted to be in charge, and how could he be if I was asking all the questions? And he had so few answers.

“People say the road is bad. Look at the snow!”

“We will ask at the bus station. The bus drivers will know.”

“First we go to the hotel,” he said, trying to take command.

The hotel was another prison-like place with cold corridors and squawks and odd hours. I had three cactuses in my room, and a calendar and two armchairs. But there were no curtains on the windows, and there was no hot water. “Later,” they said. The lobby was wet and dirty from the mud that had been tracked in. An ornamental pond behind the hotel was filled with green ice, and the snow was a foot deep on the path to the restaurant. I asked about food. “Later,” they said. Some of the rooms had six or eight bunk beds. Everyone inside wore a heavy coat and fur hat, against the cold. Why hadn’t my cactus plants died? The hotel cost $9 for a double room, and $2 for food.

“Now we go to the bus station,” I said.

Mr. Fu said nothing.

“We will ask someone about the snow.”

I had been told that buses regularly plied between Golmud and Lhasa, especially now that there were no flights — the air service to Tibet had been suspended. Surely one of these bus drivers would put us in the picture.

We drove to the bus station. On the way, I could see that Golmud was the ultimate Chinese frontier town, basically a military camp, with a few shops, a market, and wide streets. There were very few buildings, but since they were not tall, they seemed less of a disfigurement. It was a place of pioneers — of volunteers who had come out in the 1950s, as they had in Xining. They had been encouraged by Mao to develop the poor and empty parts of China; and of course, Tibet had to be invaded and subdued, and that was impossible without reliable supply lines — settlements, roads, telegraph wires, barracks. First the surveyors and engineers came, then the railway people and the soldiers, and then the teachers and traders.

“What do you think of Golmud, Mr. Fu?”

“Too small,” he said, and laughed, meaning the place was insignificant.

At the bus station we were told that the snow wasn’t bad on the road. A Tibetan bus had arrived just that morning — it was late, of course, but it was explained that all the buses were late, even when there was no snow.

I said, “We will go tomorrow, but we will leave early. We will drive until noon. If the snow is bad we will turn back and try again another day. If it looks okay we will go on.”

There was no way that he could disagree with this, and it had the additional merit of being a face-saving plan.

We had a celebratory dinner that night — wood-ear fungus, noodles, yak slices, and the steamed buns called mantou that Mr. Fu said he could not live without (he had a supply for the trip to Tibet). There was a young woman at the table, sharing our meal. She said nothing until Mr. Fu introduced her.

“This is Miss Sun.”

“Is she coming with us?”

“Yes. She speaks English.”

Mr. Fu, who spoke no English at all, was convinced that Miss Sun was fluent in English. But at no point over the next four or five days was I able to elicit any English at all from Miss Sun. Occasionally she would say a Chinese word and ask me its English equivalent.

“How do you say luxing in English?”

“Travel.”

Then her lips trembled and she made a choking sound, “Trow.”

And, just as quickly, she forgot even that inaccurate little squawk.

Over the dinner, I said, “What time are we leaving tomorrow?”

“After breakfast,” Mr. Fu said.

The maddening Chinese insistence on mealtimes.

“We should get an early start, because the snow will slow us down.”

“We can leave at nine.”

“The sun comes up at six-thirty or seven. Let’s leave then.”

“Breakfast,” Mr. Fu said, and smiled.

We both knew that breakfast was at eight. Mr. Fu was demanding his full hour, too. I wanted to quote a Selected Thought of Mao about being flexible, meeting all obstacles and overcoming them by strength of will. But I couldn’t think of one. Anyway, a Mao Thought would have cut no ice with young, skinny, frantic Mr. Fu, who played Beethoven and wore driving gloves and had a freeloading girlfriend. He was one of the new Chinese. He even had a pair of sunglasses.

“We can buy some food and eat it on the way,” I said, as a last desperate plea for an early start.

“I must eat mantou when it is hot,” Mr. Fu said.

That annoyed me, and I was more annoyed the next morning when at half past nine I was still waiting for Mr. Fu, who was himself waiting for a receipt for his room payment. At last, near ten, we left, and I sat in the back seat, wishing I were on a train, and feeling sour at the prospect of spending the whole trip staring at the back of Miss Sun’s head.

Lhasa was a thousand miles away.

Looking toward Tibet I had a glimpse of a black and vaporous steam locomotive plowing through a dazzling snow-field under the blue summits and buttresses of the Tanggula Shan. It was one of the loveliest things I saw in China — the chugging train in the snowy desert, the crystal mountains behind it, and the clear sky above.

Mr. Fu, I could see, was terrified of the snow. He did not know its effect firsthand. He had only heard scare stories. That was why he had wanted to stay in Golmud for another week, until the snow melted. He believed that there was no way through it. But the snow was not bad.

In the first passes, so narrow they were nearly always in shadow, there was ice. Mr. Fu took his time. He was a poor driver — that had been obvious in the first five minutes of driving with him — but the snow and ice slowed him and made him careful. The icy stretches looked dangerous, but by creeping along (and trying to ignore the precipitous drop into the ravine by the roadside), we managed. For miles there was slippery snow, but this too Mr. Fu negotiated. Two hours passed in this way. It was a lovely sunny day, and where the sun had struck it, some of the snow had melted. But we were climbing into the wind, and even this sun could not mask the fact that it was growing colder as we gained altitude.