第1章A原文

CHAPTER ONE

Back to the Cradle

In the early mornings, when the old go through their taiqi routines - boxing, sword and spear - in beautiful slow motion, the sun rises up sullen and red over the heads of peasants, cycling into town along the mud track that becomes Hedong Donglu with their reed panniers full of produce to sell. Eggs carefully packed with straw, strings of garlic, cabbages and spring onions. Food shacks are set up, and their families of tables and chairs are spread along the pavement. There soybean soup is served to the children and young couples _ still rubbing eyes from their sleep and slurping loudly. Up and down the street people do plodding exercises as they beat out the early morning chill.

As the sun rises, housewives come into town with blue and red plastic baskets, out to buy fresh for the day's lunch. All shouting to each other across the street and arguing over prices. Country girls in faded padded cotton jackets come to look at the bright factory-made clothes, too expensive for them to buy, while city girls cycle past on mountain bikes from Shanghai, wearing frilly clothes in dayglo yellows, pinks and greens. Men sit comparing their motorbikes, or squat under a tree playing chess. As the sun grows hotter the old people come out of their courtyard houses to sit by the road with their walking sticks? Ancient women hobbling on their bound feet and old men with wispy white beards smoking their fags: basking like lizards in the sun, till it sets again at the opposite end of Hedong Donglu, silhouetting the post office tower and the new Communist Party offices, when they hobble back to their burrows.

Neither Guillin, with its mythical peaks, nor Hangzhou's delicate temples and lakes are more truly Chinese than Yuncheng, and this short stretch of Hedong Donglu.

In those first days as I cycled into town past the bicycle repair man - a small man with a bald head like burnished copper, huddling under a thatched awning and looking for punctures by dipping tires in a bowl of dirty water-then the scale of it all hit me. I had travelled across the world to China, and had landed here, into this street and into the lives of these people.

On our first afternoon in Yuncheng we were summoned to an exclusive side room in the teachers' canteen for our customary welcoming banquet. All the notables of the college were there and we were given hasty introductions to the people we had met at the station. They were the Dean, Wu Xiao Shan - hello - and the President’s Office men, Mr Cao, Mr Zhang, and Mr Lu - hello! The President's Office, as we were soon to find out, was the administrative heartbeat of the college. It was hard to know what exactly they did _ they always claimed to be terribly busy, but seemed to spend large amounts of time absent or asleep. But when we really needed their help they seldom let us down ?

Dean Wu was a fifty-five-year-old man with a never-ending cigarette stub in between his yellowed fingers. He had spent two years in England just before the Cultural Revolution, when he had been recalled to China? He still remembered his old landlady's address in Sheffield.

'Mr and Mrs Williamson/ he told us. 'They had a house at 113 Everet Street. My landlady was very kind to me. They had a little son, and I used to play with him. You know he taught me much English. Surely! I was playing with a toy and he said to me, ‘‘Can I have it please?" - ''Can I have it please?"' In Chinese we would say, "Give it to me/! He taught me all about English manners. He was a very good teacher. Surely!

Mr Cao was a much younger man, from a different generation 

to Dean Wu. Dean Wu was responsible for our teaching in the college, and Mr Cao - our Waiban - was responsible for everything else. Every foreigner working or studying in China has a Waiban - a "Foreign Persons Officer* and Cao - as ours, was our official keeper - accountable he didn't speak a word of English. He beamed at me as we shook hands, and didn't let go, so that we were locked together smiling and nodding for some time. Mr Zhang was a tall well-educated man, with impeccable manners. When he spoke, to tell an anecdote or a fragment of Chinese history, then everyone listened, and remained silent until Dean Wu had finished translating for us.

At the banquet they were all quick to tell us what made Yuncheng such a special place.