Chapter 3: The Armies of the Dead

In the event it turned out that we had an out of date edition of the guide book written before the new Xi-An airport had been constructed. This is one of the most modern and up to date in the country which - as international airports go - puts it roughly on an equal footing with the likes of Corfu. At the airport, now being seasoned veterans of China, we were all rather blasé‚ about parting with our luggage, little realising that it would be six hours before we saw any of it again. The conducted tour of the city was brief even by recent standards, so short in fact as to be almost minimalist. The bus whirled us from site to site not only without stopping but for the most part without even slowing down enough for a photograph. Robert had now taken a back seat as our guide, replaced for local matters by a tall laconic Chinese in a smart suit, Chan, Only once did we persuade him to pause to take a picture of the scenic 'Bell Tower'. There were no such photo opportunities for the equally scenic 'Drum Tower' or the 'Big Goose Pagoda' or the 'Little Goose Pagoda'. Equally there were no photo calls for the slums or the smelly polluting smoke from industrial factories that make up most of the city. Then, after 'Lunch in a Local restaurant' where in addition to more of that bloody bean curd we had such tasty delights as chickens feet, it was off to our hotel to wait for the luggage, and wait and wait and wait. The hotel was even more impressive than the one in Beijing had been although I would have preferred a better view than the acres of rooftops from the adjoining chemicals plant. For the evening most people simply retired to the bar. Some of us international jet setters are made of sterner stuff. Chan had recommended the Tang Dynasty Cultural evening as a particularly splendid show so away we went filled with fear and trepidation after our experience at the Opera. I reasoned that I hadn't come all the way to China to not see things, and anyway how bad could it be. The answer was that far from being bad it was marvellous. Gorgeous Chinese girls in flowing shimmering costumes of crimson and gold danced in slow, stately complicated patterns. An orchestra of about twenty people performed on a variety of traditional percussion, wind and string instruments, changing from one to another with a bewildering show of multi-instrumental virtuosity. Acrobats with comical moustaches and knee-length breeches tumbled and gambolled around the stage carrying model camels on trays without ever once dropping them. Mock soldiers in uniform imitating costumes battled each other violently. More dancers, choreographed to perfection entertained us with a skill and grace that made western dancers look clumsy and slow by comparison. Two men garbed as demons with large hideous masks battled ferociously on stage, their sword play so fast and furious that it seemed impossible that they should emerge unscathed to take a bow.
I wasn't totally convinced of its authenticity, the accompanying laser show was a bit of a give away that things might have been updated, but it didn't matter. The show was magnificent, a colourful, lively and spectacular musical presentation. By the time it ended I felt as exhausted as if I had performed rather than watched.
As we waited for the bus that Chan had arranged to take us back to the hotel he seemed a little disappointed that less than half the group had come to his treat. I explained that only twenty four hours ago we had been at the Beijing Opera and as I was trying to find a tactful way to describe our opinions of it he heaved a heavy theatrical sigh.
    "Ah," he said "The Beijing Opera. I understand. It is a great pity that you saw that first. It is killing our culture in western eyes. People see that and never want to see any more. They assume that it will all be the same."
    "Do you like it?" I asked.
    "Of course," he said "It is Chinese."
but his eyes and his smile revealed that he was lying. It was nice to know that the torture was as popular with the locals as it had been with us.

Almost everywhere in China you come across attractions where photography is forbidden, especially at the more famous tourist attractions. This would be less of a problem if the postcards that are inevitably on sale were of a reasonable standard but they are not. In general they are badly composed, poorly lit and often out of focus. You ache to take out your own camera and snap a few half way decent pictures but it's a bad idea.
The problem first cropped up for us at the Shaanxi Provincial history Museum in Xi-An. It is an excellent museum, splendidly laid out in chronological order with exhibits labelled in both Mandarin and flawless English. The building is modern - it had only recently opened when I visited - and manages to adopt a classical style without any evidence of the self-conscious parody that often accompanies such efforts in the west. Inside it is cool and spacious with large well presented galleries. I usually tire quickly of history and archaeology museums but the layout combined with our brief allotted time there to prevent that happening. The only criticism was the lack of a guidebook and the ridiculously poor quality of the postcards which rendered it impossible to tell what they were actually meant to be.
We moved on to what is certainly the most famous tourist attraction in China after the Great Wall itself - the Terracotta Army. Here the ban on photography was enforced with rather more vigour than the simple notices that had been all around the museum. The merest hint that you might be considering taking a picture resulted in the removal of the film from the camera by one of the ever vigilant guards and could result in the confiscation of the equipment. With all cameras hidden away in our bags we entered the main compound, protected from the elements inside a huge building.
Until 1974 the Terracotta Army was a forgotten undertaking. Not even the history books referred to it. It was rediscovered when peasants digging a well started to find pieces of broken statues and soon a massive excavation was under way. As it progressed an eight thousand strong army complete with horses and cavalry, chariots, and infantry, foot soldiers and generals was gradually uncovered, all smashed into fragments that had to be painstakingly reconstructed. It was originally built during the reign of Qin Shihuang, the first Emperor of China., 2000 years ago. Twenty years later it was smashed to pieces, looted and buried by the succeeding Emperor - Xang Yu. They remained underground and forgotten for centuries, a hidden part of the vast necropolis which surrounds Qin Shihuang's mausoleum, only a tiny part of which has been excavated.
The thing that I found most fascinating of all was the sheer scale of the undertaking in rebuilding it all which must rival the original undertaking of making it. Imagine eight thousand jigsaw puzzles being mixed up and then buried over a dozen acres. Now imagine trying to dig them up and assemble them without any pictures to guide you. That is the sort of task facing the Chinese archaeologists. Talking to Chan I discovered that work had almost come to a halt because of a lack of funds. An offer from Japan had been turned down partly because of the historical enmity between the two countries.
    "Perhaps," he said, " That is a good thing. The Japanese would have made it into a Terracotta Disneyland."
Naturally there is an enormous market in imitation Terracotta figures which can be purchased in sizes ranging from six inches to life size. How anyone expects to be able to get a seven foot tall Terracotta horse onto the plane let alone through customs I have no idea. There are two ways you can go about buying these souvenirs. At the local potteries they churn them out by the thousand. These are accurate, well made and properly fired replicas of actual figures. These cost a couple of pounds each. On the other hand the local peasants make even more of them. These are poor copies, unfinished and often unfired and have a tendency to dissolve if left out in the rain. In the surrounding villages virtually every home has rows of them outside for sale. More of these imitations can be found on the streets than are actually in the tombs. They can be picked up for about ten pence each.

As naturally as night follows day, the Terracotta Army was followed by lunch at a local restaurant. At every meal now we seemed to be seated on three large round tables and the company had split generally into a table for the smokers, a table for the moaners and a table for the those of us who were neither. Moaners who smoked had the luxury of choosing their mealtime companions. Mostly what was complained about was the lack of variety in the food and the choice of juice or beer rather than water to drink. It was a petty griping. Water was available if you paid for it - the juice and beer were provided with the meals - and to complain about being given Chinese food in China shows a remarkable lack of foresight in choosing to go there. There was also a small group of vegetarians who were having a very lean time. Mandarin has no word for vegetarian and the concept is almost non existent in China. When we had first met Robert at the airport in Beijing he had given us an introductory chat. Included had been some advice on the food.
    "If it walks, crawls, swims or flies", he had told us "We eat it. Do not worry though, we do not serve cats and dogs to our foreign friends."
Personally I wasn't sure about that last promise. Some of the bony pieces of meat I had eaten were suspiciously unidentifiable. I hadn't wanted to ask what they were in case I didn't get the answer I was expecting.
From the vegetarian's point of view things were much worse. The trouble was that although there is rice and that ever disgusting bean curd they are almost always prepared with meat of one kind or another and a strict vegetarian soon finds his choice is down to lots of bowls of plain boiled rice.
We broke our return to Xi-An only twice, the first time at the Huaqing Hot Springs which bear a suspicious resemblance to another temple. By now we were already beginning to get a little bored with temples. They are crowded and ornamental and there is a large 'Hello Market' nearby. Their main point of interest is that they were the scene of the arrest of Chiang Kaishek in 1936.
The second stop was for our compulsory visit to the friendship store. Everyone groaned and no-one wanted to leave the bus. Chan looked perplexed.
    "You must come in." he said "You do not need to buy anything or even stay for very long but you must come in. It is part of my job."
He gave an apologetic shrug.
    "They count to make sure that I have taken you all there. It looks bad for me if you do not come."
Because he had been such a polite and courteous guide and we didn't want to cause him any trouble we all dutifully trooped off the bus, into one door, out of the other door and back onto the bus for him. Five minutes later we were back in the bus heading for our hotel and an early night. The flight on to Guilin was at five a.m. and the guidebook was suspiciously silent on the subject of its airport.

The plane, a small narrow bodied jet on which the faint but unmistakable logo of Aeroflot could still be seen through the inadequate 'Air China' repainting, approached Guilin in the mid morning. In the bright sunlight it looked a gorgeous place. The strange conical mountains rose from an impossibly green plain like the Molehills of the Gods. When we landed it was at an airport that seemed to be military rather than civil. Chan had handed us back over to Robert at Xi-An airport and now, as we trooped down the steps onto the runway we were met by our local guide for Guilin, Hector. Like Chan he was tall and thin but that was where the resemblance stopped. He was slightly shabbily dressed and had a broad goofy grin that never left his face for the whole of our time in his city. Parked near the chain link fence was a bus which could easily have been mistaken for a derelict. Hector led us to it, proudly proclaiming it to be the best in the city. We climbed aboard, leaving our luggage behind, and drove on to yet another lunch in yet another local restaurant. This one was magnificent. It would have shamed the standards of Chinese restaurants in any capital city in Europe. The interior was cool and air conditioned. The furnishings and decor were all of elaborately carved wood. We grouped around the highly polished tables and were served by immaculately uniformed and deferential waiters.
We were also the only people in the whole enormous dining room. The impression was that it had opened solely for our visit.
At the hotel our luggage hadn't turned up. By now we should have learned the lesson but still no-one had thought to pack anything as sensible and practical as a spare T-shirt into their hand luggage. As it was 90 degrees and we had exploded into soaking perspiring sponges the moment we had left the plane we were in need of a change of clothes. Robert checked us in while Hector went back to the airport to find out where our changes of clothes had all gone. There was just time for a quick shower to get rid of some of the sweat and cool down before climbing back into the dirty clothes and heading out to the Reed Flute Caves.
Guilin is in the heart of the China that people imagine, the China of rice paddies, toiling peasants in coolie hats, buffalo drawn carts on dirt tracks with ragged mountains silhouetted in the background and thin wispy clouds in a perfect blue sky. The town itself is nothing very special. It is rather seedy and shabby. The hordes of visitors, both Chinese and foreign, have resulted in a thriving but rather tacky tourist boom.
The drive out to the Reed Flute Caves though was so perfect that we insisted on half a dozen stops to take pictures of the mountains reflected in the water of the paddies. None of the workers in the fields showed the slightest interest as twenty people lined up on the road to take their photograph. I supposed that it was such a common occurrence that they scarcely even noticed it any more.
We reached the caves and found that they were extremely busy. Crowds of people were waiting to be admitted. We joined them and queued for over an hour in the small concrete waiting area which had no shade and nowhere to get a drink. The sun was even hotter now that it was at its afternoon zenith and we were all feeling as if we were on the verge of heat-stroke when we finally stepped into the cool dark interior.
Those strange conical mountains are limestone and they are pitted with caverns filled with the weird stalagmite and stalactite formations that are always a feature of limestone. We went down the steep path that had been flattened inside and entered an enchanted fairyland. Coloured spotlights in dozens of hues and shades had been cunningly hidden among the rocks to illuminate the various features and formations, casting gargantuan multicoloured shadows around them. For more than an hour we followed the path. At the very lowest point of the cave system was a vast natural hall with a perfectly still underground lake that reflected the gorgeously lit roof as if it were a polished mirror. I had never seen anything like it and even now, years later, when I have been in cave systems in many parts of the world, even in the mighty Carlsbad caverns, it still remains the most wonderful of them all. Purists will disagree, saying that what I found so entertaining was the light show, that the caverns themselves were much less spectacular than others, that to appreciate the natural beauty would have been better than the art and artifice of the Reed Flute Caves. I don't care. Even if it was the lighting that made the place wonderful it was, nevertheless, wonderful.
Back at the Hotel there was still no luggage. There was however an extremely harassed Hector. Our bags, he said, were safe. Unfortunately the reason that they were safe was that the authorities at the airport had impounded them. He was negotiating for their release. It wasn't an uncommon problem. All that was needed was a sufficiently large bribe and we would get everything back. Meanwhile we should eat dinner, have a few drinks and a sound nights sleep and wait until morning.
Because I had known we were coming to this area where, because of the watery swampy terrain and the general climate there was a large risk of malaria I had been taking anti-malarial drugs. There are a variety of these appropriate to different areas and different malarial strains. I was taking the common combination of proguanil and chloraquin. Like all drugs there are drawbacks and side effects. Whenever I took my weekly chloraquin tablet I was sick and nauseous for a whole day. I took my tablet almost as soon as I woke, swallowing it quickly with a gulp of water as if that might somehow mitigate the effects. A wave of nausea washed over me.
Outside the door to my hotel room I discovered my suitcase, returned sometime during the night by Hector. I pulled it inside, fighting the urge to be sick, and heaved it onto the bed. The locks were open and broken, clearly having been forced. Inside though everything seemed to be present. I didn't know whether to be pleased or insulted that none of my things had been worth stealing.
I selected some clean clothes from the jumbled together mess in the case and got ready to attempt breakfast. By the time I reached the dining room I felt dreadful. The sight and smell of breakfast unleashed a fresh assault from my quivering stomach. I forced down a glass of juice and retreated to my room. Today was to be a boat trip down the River Li. It looked as if I might have to miss it and spend the day in a darkened room. I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes.
An insistent knocking at the door woke me. I looked at the clock. I had had about two hours extra sleep. The knocking proved to be Robert, checking up on whether I wanted to take the boat trip or not. I was still feeling ill but the immediacy of the problem had receded so I decided to go after all.
Down at the docks there wasn't one boat there were dozens, a flotilla that looked like a re-enactment of Dunkirk. The boats were all of the same design, square and blocky with an interior lower deck with tables and seats and a flat canopied upper deck where we could stand and watch the riverbank go by. Even here the dedicated shoppers could get their entertainment as a couple of small trinket stalls had been set up on the deck selling items of jewellery.
The convoy moved out and the combination of the fresh air and the lovely day started to blow away my sickness. I was glad I had come.
Out on the river the commorant fishermen were at their business. They fish with trained cormorants, slipping a noose around their necks to stop them swallowing their catch. I watched one release his bird into the air. It hovered for a few moments then swooped down to skim the surface rising again a moment later with a large fish in its talons. It circled back to the boat it had come from to deliver its catch and receive its reward.
We drifted lazily down the river through a magnificent landscape. It was tranquil and serene and a perfect change of pace from the frantic sightseeing that had filled the days until now. At the back of the boat was a kitchen where, in what did not look to be the most hygienic conditions, cooks were busy preparing our lunch. We ate inside the boat and considering the cramped conditions in which it had been prepared the meal was excellent. For once even our perpetual complainers could find no fault.
One of the things about visiting China is that everyone wants to talk to you. Everyone wants to practice their English because the people who speak English have a much better chance of being given the best jobs. The girl who struck up a conversation with us on the boat had a long way to go. Her English consisted, as far as I could tell, of 'Yes', 'No' and the numbers one to ten. We spent half an hour making do with this limited vocabulary and a lot of smiling and laughing and hand gestures in a surreal conversation where she tried to guess the ages of everybody in the group and to pair us off as couples. The conversation illustrated the difficulty of judging unfamiliar ethnic groups. Every one of her guesses of our ages was way off, too low by anything up to twenty years. When my turn came to guess her age I was confident that I would be more accurate.
    "Eighteen." I guessed.
She giggled and indicated that she was thirty two. I was astonished. I would have sworn that she couldn't yet be even in her twenties.
Once the conversational possibilities had been exhausted I wandered back out onto the deck and stood for the rest of the ride in the prow watching the world, all thoughts of the morning's nausea gone.

It seemed that there were many things that were going to be common to our wanderings wherever we went in China - the local restaurants, the people striking up conversations and the cultural shows. In Guilin there was another of them. Of the two I'd seen already I'd hated one and loved the other. What would the Guilin version be like. We went off to the hotel where it was taking place and had our dinner there while we watched it. It was colourful enough but was one of the weirdest cultural shows I have ever witnessed. It consisted mostly of dancing but there was no perceptible Chinese element to it. The opening dance was, as far as I could tell, a Cossack dance. This was followed by what appeared to be a Red Indian rain dance and the show stopping finale was a perfectly choreographed replica of the Chimney Sweeps dance from Mary Poppins. In the interval I had another unlikely encounter that left me chuckling for the rest of the evening. I had found out in conversation with Robert that most, if not all, of the jobs in China are state controlled. The employer is always the government and as a consequence the job you end up with can be determined by the whims of the particular government officials with whom you have dealt. At the break in the show I went to the toilet and was standing in the urinal happily going about my business when I felt something at my feet. I looked down expecting to see a cat or a dog, perhaps even a rat. What I saw was a wizened old main kneeling at my feet polishing my shoes and taking the chance that my aim might not be perfect enough to miss him. I was astonished. What should I do, I wondered. I pretended that he wasn't there, carried on until I had finished, zipped myself back up and turned to leave. He leapt to his feet, scurried across the room and opened the door for me. I reached into my pocket automatically to tip him, forgetting that tipping is illegal in China, and he backed away waving his hand in a gesture of refusal. On my way back to my table I realised that he had probably been allocated that job, polishing shoes in a men's urinal, and I wondered who exactly in the local government offices he had annoyed to be given such a degrading and menial task. It certainly seemed that upsetting anyone in a position of power might be a bad idea.

For once our flight out of a city was in the afternoon instead of the ridiculous early hours of the morning. I decided to make the most of my time and go for an early morning walk around Guilin. Until now I had had no opportunity to wander around on my own and get a feel for the country. I set off from the hotel and looked around Guilin. It wasn't a very pretty place. It's tourist facade had been pasted onto a plain and grimy town like too much make up on an old woman. For the first time I began to get an impression of how alien a culture this is to westerners. It should have felt familiar. After all the people were doing all the things we would see if we walked around our own market towns at that hour. Traders were setting out their stalls, shops were opening up and putting out their signs. People were setting out for work. Nevertheless it all felt wrong. The sounds of the traders talking were wrong - to western ears Chinese doesn't sound like a language at all, it's swooping rhythms sound more like music. The typical smells of the city were wrong, the architecture was wrong. It was a strange experience. I walked for an hour before deciding to return to the hotel. On my way back a teenager on a bicycle halted beside me and dismounted to walk beside me, starting a conversation as he did so. I was happy to chat to him and after the usual opening pleasantries - exchanging names, finding out where I came from and what I thought of China he turned to me and asked earnestly
    "I hear Paul Gascoigne injure his knee. How it affecting game ?"
It was probably the most random and unexpected remark that has ever been addressed to me. Unfortunately I am the rare breed of Englishman who doesn't follow football so I couldn't really help him out with it. Disappointed by my inability to answer him he wished me well remounted his bicycle and rode away.