Below Belief

The afternoon brings with it the news that the antics of yesterday caused more than just damage to the captain’s pride. The boat has been damaged irreparably and we are to limp into the next port, Fengdu, at half speed to decant to a new boat. To make things worse, using our interpreters we discover the second boat has no 2nd class rooms available and instead we are given a refund and told to find another boat for ourselves.
At 4pm we leave the boat and are saved the bureaucratic trouble of trying to find another boat by as strange a group of people as you could imagine. First there is Peter, a hugely successful but now retired, 69 year old Hong Kong business man who looks not a day older than 50. He speaks Chinese, Cantonese, Japanese, English and Korean and possesses an incredible and inspirational talent : people around him do anything he wants. Llew and I know a good thing when we see one so we agree to join his party, happy in the knowledge our lives will be made easy for a while. Second in the party is Patrick, a mad Chinese-Briton who seems to be part Welsh and served in the Hong Kong Royal army. He has the wackiest sense of humour I can imagine and starts discussing Welsh rugby songs with Llew. Third is a nameless Cantonese man who speaks English with a Nottinghamshire accent and used to own a Chinese restaurant in Grantham. The triplet are accompanied by three girls aged not much older than us. One seems to be a tart picked up by the restauranteur in Canton and apparently difficult to shift: he’s since caught tonsillitis from her. The other two are friends of the ex-soldier and seem intent on doing as much pointless souvenir shopping as they can.
Despite their weirdness, it is fun to be with them and it is soon Peter who takes centre stage in our exploration of Fengdu, the ghost city. Very quickly after arriving we have given up the immediate prospect of finding a boat and are installed on a private tour of the city, organised on spec, with a bus and a cable car to take us up the mountain. At the top are temples to ward off the devil. We are taken past statues of mythical demons – plenty of fire and brimstone – as well as the ubiquitous Chinese tat-stalls. After passing the bridge of helplessness and the bridge of ‘if you pass here you will become rich’, where I trip up the steps… we are soon walking up the stairway to hell itself. Inside, the legends and myths of hell are not far removed from our own. The Chinese have 18 levels of hell, all unpleasant and portrayed in rather graphic if somewhat seedy, detail.
Finally, we are granted a meeting with Satan himself who turns out to be a rather smart looking statue in gold with a neat moustache and distinctly lacking in the horns, fangs, talons and trident departments. In fact I can’t help noticing the rather ironic similarity between him and the Chinese Budda. We pay him homage anyway and walking slowly down the steps back to the living world, realisation dawns that on this trip we really have now been to hell and back. We retire to a Chinese restaurant having found our ferry departs at 8pm. Peter is on top form here too, ordering a multitude of tasty dishes and ensuring that warm beers are replaced with cold ones, dirty dishes are replaced with clean ones and the chicken dish is sent back when it proves to be too bony.
I am inspired by this man who says all those things people like me would say if only they didn’t dare cause a fuss. Our dogged guide is still with us, smoothing over any problems and clearly being tipped very nicely. We end up waiting for a delayed ferry in a seedy karaoke bar. It is walking to this bar through the muddy backstreets of this lively town in the pouring rain that I suddenly see China as it really is.
There are barbers shops and old men having their hair cut, families together eating in rooms open to the street, women and babies playing in the street. The special thing is everyone is smiling, says hello and seems pleased to see us as we stroll by with our packs. For a moment we seem to be not the tourists we obviously are, but just humans like they are and a part of their lives. They’re just happy to see us enjoying their country. China, despite all its problems, is about families, teamwork, living together and just getting down to life.
Karaoke is definitely something which should be outlawed. Forget censorship of the press, censorship of singing should be mandatory here. The girls, obviously well-practised, give it a try and spend hours crooning into an echoing microphone singing loud Chinese-pop. It’s all a bit samey and out of tune. Llew and I only narrowly escape singing thanks to the fact they have no English words. On the ferry, when it finally arrives at 10.30pm, and after a surreal trek across wet and moonlit pontoons, it transpires there are no 2nd class rooms on this ferry either. No problem, says Peter who moves in with relentless bargaining with the Captain to get us an upgrade to uncommon 1st class accommodation for half the price. If I am anything like as active, arrogant, persuasive or inspirational as Peter is when I am 69 (not to mention still young-looking), I will be monumentally impressed.
This man is God and we now have a two berth cabin with English TV showing ‘Allo ‘Allo. Unbelievable. A couple more beers, a shower and then glorious sleep.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 1997 at 1:56 pm and is filed under China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.