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| by Carla King | Packing and Peking |
PACKING LIST Ural toolkit black jeans 2 sleeveless shirts black running tights 2 pr hiking socks sunscreen Wordless travel book PowerBook 1400cs/166 flannel sleeping bag liner Gifts: mag lights |
22 April 98 China Air is the name of the airline I'm flying to Beijing and China air is so polluted right now, says Teresa, that I should bring a supply of surgical masks to wear while I'm outside the climate-controlled confines of her apartment in Capital Mansion. So I add it to my packing list, even though I have spent a good part of the past two days attempting to pare it down. Nothing seems dispensable. Yesterday I tried to walk by Acorn books in San Francisco but as usual it drew me in amongst its shelves of musty used volumes. The China section revealed itself to me and I quickly had in my arms four books I absolutely couldn't do without. Simone de Beauvoir's The Long March: A Book on China stands out. How did I miss the fact that my old hero, author of The Second Sex, philosopher, feminist and partner to Sartre, had been to China and found it of enough interest to write a book two inches thick? The table of contents reveals de Beauvoir's organized mind: she deconstructs the country in chapters: Peking, The Peasants, The Family, Industry, Culture, and so forth, and writes about it if it were a single personage, much the way she deconstructed Western women in The Second Sex. (A book which, by the way, a number of men have thanked me for recommending. Suddenly, they say, they understand women!) I read big chunks of The Long March on the plane since the China Air hostess has told me that the use of the computer is forbidden at all times, not just during take-off and landing. So is, apparently, keeping my windowshade raised. "There is nothing to look at yet," she says apologetically as she shuts it firmly. But there is. I am following the white tips of large waves until they die and merge again with the blue Pacific sparkles like an endless neat pile of blue Christmas tinsel. The Peking of de Beauvoir's time is a drastically different place than the Beijing of mine. There are no private cars or taxis, she reports, only trolleys, busses, and pedicabs. The hutongs are tranquil alleyways where children play undisturbed. They sound lovely, nothing like the crowded traffic jammed one-way shortcuts I saw last fall. But that was over 40 years ago, when even New York city must have been tranquil in comparison. We land at dusk and roll in next to a terminal under construction. Sparks from welders' torches cascade through the center of the building giving it an eerie, magical quality in the fog. In the airport lobby I hear my name called. It is Susan Shuck, one of the group who rode to the wall last autumn, dressed for business in IBM blue and pulling a neat little suitcase on wheels. What a happy coincidence. Suddenly I no longer feel a complete stranger. We embrace, she lets me use her cell phone, and then she is swept into the rush of passengers running to board. "Back in two days," she calls, and is pushed away. I ride the moving sidewalk to baggage claim, where am the last to claim my luggage. There are no carts left so I drag them out by the customs officials who don't bother to look at me much less ask for a peek, then I take a deep breath and burst out into the public part of the airport.For there is no other way to do it but to bulldoze through impatient masses straining to glimpse their loved ones soon to arrive from abroad. First stop, the exchange desk. A man with a newspaper hovers nearby, barely concealing his interest in my affairs. I immediately don't like him, the way he pretends not to watch. "Who is he?" I mime to the bank clerk. "Driver," she mimes back. I can never get used to this complete lack of privacy. It is worse in Italy, I remind myself. And Dakar. The driver wants 300 for a ride to Capital Mansion. I laugh and he asks "how much, then?" One hundred, I say, and he scoffs and walks away. "The meter taxis cost 120," says the blue uniformed hotel information clerk. Then she sees a friend and asks me to wait. Everyone in business has a friend, and her friend, a hotel driver, could take me for 120 yuan. He's a skinny young guy with a ready smile despite horribly ridged brown teeth. I like him, and so we drag my bags to his car. He's so thin and he smokes so much that he has trouble hauling his half of the big gray bag with the tools and books in it. I wonder for a moment if he's sick, but conclude that he simply doesn't get any exercise. We're both sweating from effort and humidity by the time we reach his car only 200 feet away, a very clean white Toyota with black and white checkered seat covers. We are quickly on the freeway, more quickly than I remembered from last time and I wonder if they've added even more asphalt since I was here last fall. It is dark, and the air is warm. He rolls down his window a little and offers me a Marlboro. "No thanks," I say. "You know, Americans don't smoke much any more." "America!" he shouts, leaning into the steering wheel. " I like Michael Jackson! Also... " he laughs a little and concentrates on forming his words. It is an effort that comes more from his gut than his head and finally he expels it all in a burst: "Also I like Michael Tyson!" With this he takes his hands off the wheel and throws a few punches in the air. That begins a conversation, but he is the type of driver who cannot talk and drive at the same time. The few other vehicles on the road at this time of night honk at him for driving so slowly, but he doesn't even notice. At least he's not one of those maniacal tailgaters I've seen in Beijing.He drives so slowly that by the time we arrive at Capitol Mansion I have mastered the words and intonations for North South East West, have been corrected on my pronunciation of Chang Jiang, learned that there is 1 car for about every 10 people in Beijing ("a 1 with 7 zeros!"), and that even though Beijing is a very safe city that outside Beijing there are bandits who rob people at knifepoint -- "but NOT inside Beijing!"
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