It is wrong to see a country in a bad mood: you begin to blame
the country for your mood and to draw the wrong conclusions.
the country for your mood and to draw the wrong conclusions.
Mood is just what makes reading Paul Theroux so appealing. This is the second of his epic railway travelogues I've read (the other was The Old Patagonian Express) and I'd be ready to ride his train again.
Theroux is an exemplary traveler. He's quiet and attentive. He keeps a low profile. He's respectful and curious enough to learn the history, geography, and language of the places he visits. He gives himself ample time to soak in the ambience and does not put himself on a fixed itinerary, thereby allowing himself the flexibility to move fast when it suits him and stay put when he needs to regenerate and give his mood some time to regain its equilibrium. He does not travel with a camera. Rather, he focuses his keen and poetic observations into his writing, which is vivid, understated, and good-humored without being sugarcoated. One fellow Western traveler suspects he is a spy, a job for which Theroux might indeed be well-suited given his sharp eye and ability to pump locals for information. Bur far from spook-y, he comes across as someone who is fair-minded, empathetic, and sensible with a broad enough perspective on place and people to make his anecdotes, dialogues, and word-images hang together in such a way that a large, enlightening, and understanding portrait of a culture emerges.
In this case the culture is China in 1986/7. Mao's Cultural Revolution is an unpleasant memory, the traces of which have been all but erased from the landscape and consciousness of the people. The Chinese are shifting from the "one for all" edicts of Maoism and rushing to reconcile personal advancement using the tools of capitalism with inhabiting a nominally communist country. Individual ambition has supplanted ultracomformist dogma. Western styles of music and dress are creeping in and "import/export" is the mantra of an army of college business majors. It is also the time of the pro-democracy student protests in Tiananmen Square and elsewhere. It's a marked change from Theroux's previous visit a decade earlier to which he frequently refers for comparison and it is surely a far cry from what China must be like today in 2009 when it is rare to find a consumer good not stamped MADE IN CHINA.
Theroux takes his time wandering the eternally protean China. Riding slow and slower trains of varying quality he encounters a broad spectrum of Chinese, from stoic and disdainful Party apparatchiks in blue Mao suits to ebullient youth who take Anglicized nicknames and speak in streams of American idiom. These encounters are the most revealing aspect of the book. Theroux is knowledgeable enough about China then and now to make the conversations interesting for his interviewees, and while he is above all respectful he is not too shy to press for honest opinions about touchy subjects.
He can also be witheringly funny, as shown in this early scene when still in England embarking on the transcontinental rail journey just to get to China. He is with a large tour group from whom he is trying to withhold his identity as a famous travel writer: "When I looked around this train I realized that I was one of a large group and that I did not know any of these people. All I had to go on were their faces. But faces say a great deal. Theirs certainly did. The sight made me very apprehensive."
As someone who enjoys privacy and writing on trains, I can sympathize with this apprehension of being stuck with a bore. And I would hate to be that bore to Paul Theroux, so it's a great simple pleasure to be able to ride beside him vicariously. Perhaps even more than being someone I'd want to travel with, Theroux is the informed, observant, and laconic traveler I aspire to be.
*
Get it at your local library, bookstore, or, if all else fails, amazon.com
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