An Emotional Return - Overland Into Yunnan

China Delight

Don't even consider it, don't try, it will never work. There's nothing you could say that would make me regret the day I decided to leave everything behind and come to China. I'll never look back, I'd never even think about changing my mind. There isn't a day when I don't wake up in this country, anywhere in this country, and not thank whatever it is responsible for the fate that brought me here. Whether it's wrapped up early walking through the morning snow in Shenyang, watching the succession of mountains folding into each other on the ferry from Chongqing, or standing on an overpass watching the endless procession of engines in the hot Beijing night, that mood that comes down upon me is something more than enjoyment, it is quite simply some kind of innocent joy. I am totally and fundamentally delighted to live here in China and there's nothing you could say to take away my enthusiasm.

You could talk about the bureaucracy, the food you don't like, your hygiene issues, the cigarettes or whatever it is that bugs you about this place. It couldn't mean less. You try coming from a city like I was brought up in, a sterile paradise, and see how it feels to be released into this great cultural flux of corruption and hope, where even the dust on the soil is glorious. You watch as the grizzly old farmer with sun-blacked skin turns in his unwashed vest and old trousers and looks up towards you, and between his teeth he slurs out his ancient tongue, gold characters of Chinese embroidered on red silk. You take a breath, and try to tell me that being allowed to see this place is something short of privilege.

I'll tell you something - the year I spent in a Chinese University was the most valuable experience I've ever had in my life, and the certificate I was presented with my greatest ever personal achievement. After leaving this country I couldn't think of anything else than to return. It took me two years until I made it.

Towards the Chinese Border

I came overland, a route I'd been dreaming of taking ever since I began to be interested in China. I started in Singapore and travelled by train and bus through countries that have been under the influence of China for centuries, marvelling at the impact of these hundred cultures upon each other, the tribes of South East Asia all caught up in the virulent transmission of civilisation from border to border. During these months, there wasn't a day when I didn't feel the excitement that I was coming ever closer to the Chinese border.

I could have dropped to my knees when I saw it. I'd arrived early morning at the Lao Cai station in North Vietnam, just four kilometres from Hekou, the city on the Chinese side of the border. I'd come so far by train and bus that I decided to take the last short road on foot. The unforgiving sun threw its heat mercilessly on my hair and arms with inhuman gravity, my bags were heavy and the air dry and full of dust. Footstep by footstep, I quietly made my way past the last charming homes and wide garage shop fronts of Vietnam. Then, at the crest of the road, I saw clearly, for the first time in twenty-four long months, the familiar layout and architecture of a Chinese city - Hekou. There above the bridge at the river's edge, at the tip of a great white arch, two Chinese characters I knew all too well - ZHONG GUO - China.

How could I have not been moved? China has been part of my life for so long now, how could I feel anything less than relief to return at last? I hurried through the exit procedures, took my last steps in Vietnam, and walked across triumphantly to the Chinese border station.

An officious looking woman greeted me at the door in Mandarin, and I could have kissed her. The writing all made sense, the casual remarks of the patrol guards rang clear and comprehensible. I joked with a few police and waited for the stamp of approval on my visa - and then I was through the gate and back in the Middle Kingdom. I should have kissed the ground, but I just sat on the stairs and looked out over Hekou in childlike delight.

Hekou, like most border towns, is modest in scale. Most of the developed streets are right at the border crossing, and everything else is really based on trade with Vietnam - offices and warehouses of companies that export Chinese produce Southwards. Projects are underway to extend the inhabited areas of the town, and there's a lot of earth being shifted on the riverbank facing the border, and a good number of apartment blocks under construction. Many people I spoke with were also fluent in Vietnamese and had high hopes for financial success in trade with China's developing neighbour.

The Break Down Bus

Close to the border station (about 5 minute's walk on the immediate left of the doorway into Hekou) is a long-distance bus terminal with frequent buses bound for Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, of which Hekou is one of the Southernmost cities. I found a bus leaving within half an hour for less than a hundred yuan, and very soon was on my way through Yunnan's tropical banana groves and untamed forests. The little TV set at the front of the bus was showing some Chinese pop music videos, and I watched intently, not having realised much I'd missed those songs.

The guy sitting next to me started singing along and I joined him, as if we were at the back of a school bus. Song Bin was a young lad from Zhejiang trying to make his way in his uncle's plastics business based in Shanghai and exporting products through Hekou into Vietnam. He'd been in Hekou for just a few weeks, but had decided to stay for good, and was travelling back to Shanghai to collect his belongings. He told me that Hekou has a great atmosphere of development, and that the Vietnamese trade market was set to boom, creating get-rich-quick opportunities for earlycomers. His economic fantasies are based on solid fact: many international trade markets opening since China's reform of the 1980's have exploded in impossible wealth for investors, and given the rapid improvements in the standard of living I noticed in the Chinatown parts of Saigon and Hanoi back in Vietnam, the prospects did look good.

The trip from Hekou to Kunming is supposed to take around nine hours. It's a bad road, and the buses that take you there, from the look of the assortment parked waiting in the Hekou Long Distance Station, are in pretty bad shape. Forty minutes after we set out, the bus parked at the side of the road and a pair of amateur mechanics leapt from the front seats to take a look at the engine. I stepped down from the bus and sat in the shade with the other passengers - the air conditioning inside just didn't make any difference when the bus was standing still - and looked out over Yunnan's countryside. It didn't bother me that it took over an hour for them to replace the flimsy rubber bands on the engine wheels. What did unsettle my mood somewhat, however, was the fact that there was a large pile of these bands in the compartment space behind the driver's seat, as if this kind of breakdown was not only anticipated but frequent. Even more depressing was the comment I overheard from one of the mechanics the second time the bus had to pull over - he glanced across at his partner as he tightened one of the nuts and said, "these ones sure aren't as good as the last ones we tried". I couldn't help but smile - there's something inexpressibly Chinese in the casual acceptance of the exceedingly annoying.

The bus would break down no less than seven more times on the journey, making the so-called nine hour trip to Kunming last a total of sixteen hours. It didn't bother me in the slightest. The road is fantastic - edging up the increasingly steep bank side of the river, the roadway passes over Goliathine feats of Chinese engineering as you approach the mountain pass into Kaiyuan, an enormous mountaintop city shaped in brick and stone and stretching across a vast valley. I had a Hui vegetarian dinner there - pumpkin vine roasted in garlic and cheap, cheap beer - and rose my glass with Song Bin and the fellow passengers I'd befriended: thankyou, thankyou, thankyou that I am back in this country, that I have the chance once again to be in the place I was born to love, to travel one more time here, in China. Thankyou.