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传阅:重回江城

何伟

此时此刻,在长江深水下正进行着一次绝佳的电话采访,尽管黄德建是为数不多参与此次采访的人。作为白鹤梁水下博物馆 的负责人,如今黄德建的手机经常在130尺深的地下响起。这个博物馆是对涪陵这座小城最直观的诠释,游客们想要参观的话需要乘坐电梯才能到达底下,电梯被铁管包住,长达300尺,俯瞰它时就好像是一根巨型稻草插进了泥泞的长江底。

“这是三峡库区里耗资最为巨大的博物馆,”黄边说边接起电话。他的电话铃声很有趣,是一个女人急促的声音,在不停地重复着说 “加油,GO, GO, GO, GO!”

在 我上一次见到黄时,这里还是一片干旱的土地,这座耗资三亿四千万美元的博物馆还不存在,而且三峡水坝工程也依然在距地面280英里的长江下游中建造着。在 我还是和平部队志愿者的时候,我于1996年来到涪陵,在当地学校教书,一直到98年离开,那个时候,涪陵人口大约200,000,以中国人口标准来看, 这真的是一座小城。尽管当地人很少谈论三峡水坝,但是他们大多数都很支持这一巨大工程。该工程计划于2009年完工,对于一个已经产生翻天覆地变化的地方 来说,三峡水坝的建成无疑又将成为这个地方另一个不朽的伟业。中国改革开放起始于1978年,但是直到90年代中期,自由市场的概念才开始真正在诸如涪陵 这样的小地方盛行。当地人也逐渐适应了那些势不可挡的巨大变化,比如政府分配不复存在,房屋私有制等等。

这些天,白鹤梁让我对浩瀚时光有了一个不同的认识。砂岩地带只有在冬天水位下降时才会显现。在古代,低水位季节对于船夫来说非常危险,因此有人在白鹤梁的一边刻了两条鱼,作为测量水位的记号,以便划船者知道何时驶进浅水区和下游急流处。

当 地人把这两条石刻鱼视为好运的符号,也因此有了这样一个传统,每年石刻鱼浮现的时候,他们都要在那里刻上一条讯息。史上关于雕刻的记载最早开始于公元 763年,也就是唐朝时期。由于这一传统,最后大约有30,000多个汉字刻在这座岩石上,而且这些信息的雕刻技艺十分高超,不仅笔迹华美而且有一种咒语 般的韵律感:“水位下沉,石鱼得现,来年收割,所获必丰。”

90年代时期,进入白鹤梁要收取三块钱的门票,大概35美分,进去之后,会有 一个处于打渔淡季的渔夫划着一条摇晃的小船带着旅客游览。黄德建就曾经坐在这山脊上,裹着他那件当兵时穿的军大衣,一坐就是几小时。他会看着这山脊下的水 位,告诉你最有名的雕刻在哪里。在我上一次游览中,也就是1998年1月30日那一天,长江水位比它在公元763年第一次被测量时正正好好高了2英寸。仅 仅两英寸的高度,却花费了历史1235年,同时也让这个历经沧桑的古国借由改革开放焕发出另一番辉煌光景。

时间对这条古江似乎别有优待。 长江依然保持着它固有的生物周期,生命沿着江堤以历史的直线不紧不慢的进化演变。自然和人类这两种时间的产物,造就了白鹤梁,也给它留下了深刻的印迹。水 位下沉时,文字显现,你会发现所刻的讯息和日期都整齐地排列在岩石上。而不久之后,春天的来临使得山上的积雪融化,积雪化成的水流入江里,水位又会再次升 高。而在那时,历史的痕迹不复存在,一切都恢复如初,这条历经变迁的长河默默无言的继续奔流,仿佛什么都没有发生过。

现今,三峡水坝已经 关闭,长江不再像以前一样肆意奔淌。在涪陵周围,有一座大约3英里长190尺高的堤坝围护着它,使它免于遭到高水位水库的冲击。白鹤梁博物馆建造在这座巨 型堤坝的一边。今天黄德建带我来到这座水下宫殿,它的通道口直对着水下的白鹤梁。当我一想到我现在所站的位置和这些我正在亲手触摸的雕刻,我就一种恍如梦 境般的不可思议。但是这些雕刻上的文字似乎有着不同于今天的含义:“河流正中的城楼,永不停歇的江河”。这些冥躺在水下20英寻深的碑文到底是什么意思 呢?

当我问黄德建是否感到一丝失落时,他笑了笑。他那些裹着军大衣坐在长江边冰冷石头上的日子早已过去,现在的他穿着一套笔挺的灰色西 装。除了忙于这那些应接不暇的电话,他误把我的到访和中国中央电视台摄制组混为一谈。黄德江自豪地告诉我,“阿斯旺水坝也无法做到我们这样,因为在那里开 始建造水坝之前,埃及当局可不需要花费精力迁移它们的历史遗迹,而我们需要,所以当我来到这里时,我一点都不觉得失落,反而为我们能做到这些而骄傲,这是 一种成功,我们可以在保护白鹤梁这个重要历史遗迹不受破坏的基础上顺利建造山峡大坝。” 说完,他就转头别过电视组,不用说,他的现代咒语又响了起来:“Go, GO, GO, GO!”

涪陵坐落于长江和乌江的交汇处。在90 年代中期,这个小城安谧宁静又与世隔绝。那时,这里既没有高速公路也没有铁路,大约要坐几小时的长江渡轮才能到达离它最近的大城市——重庆。当地人没有见 过外国人,所以每次在市中心吃饭的时候,我经常能招来30几个人对我的好奇张望。这里只有一座电梯,一所夜总会,没有交通灯。我认识的人当中没有人有车。 在我教书的学校里只有两部手机,而且每个人都能告诉你手机主人是谁:校园里最高职位的党政官员,书记,和一位在当时相当罕见的在私企工作过的艺术老师。

在 那个时候,涪陵师范学校只是一个三年制的大专院校,这种学位程度在中国高等教育里处于低端水平。但是我的学生却很珍惜在这里学习的机会。他们几乎所有人都 来自农村地区,没有接受过太多文化教育,许多人的父母都是文盲。但是如今,他们主修英语,这对于一个在20世纪还封闭落后的小地方来说已经是一个长足的进 步。他们的论文经常谈到低微和贫困,但是他们也对未来抱以极大希望。“我的家乡很普通,因为这里并没有著名的人事物,也没有名胜古迹。我的家乡没有什么名 人……我将来会当一名老师,我会尽全力去帮助别人传授他们知识。

“中国有一句古话叫,‘狗不嫌家贫,儿不嫌母丑’这正是我们内心的感受,所以现在我们会努力充实自我,将来报效祖国。”

我 的学生们教会了我许多事,其中一件就是来到这个小乡村的意义何在。在改革开放初期,大部分中国人都还住在山村里。而从那以后,估计大约有155百万人迁移 到城市里来。我的学生们动情地叙述了他们的亲人是如何艰难地争取到居住在城市的机会,让我看了十分心酸感动。他们也让我明白在中国贫穷并不代表什么都没 有,他们并不富裕,但是他们都很乐观,他们的未来也充满希望,看着他们你们不会把贫穷两字和他们联系在一起。

对于涪陵这个地方,人们很难 去定义它。三峡水坝原本并不可能建造在一个真正贫困的乡村——北京官方报道说建造该工程的总投资高达330,000,000美元,而一些非官方的说法则更 高。但是近些年来的贫困让当地人都乐意接受这个能给他们带来改变的契机。我所住的地方经常停电,一停就是几小时,这里对煤炭的过度依赖也使得它常年被严重 的污染笼罩,这些都让我明白为什么他们愿意倾尽所有来让这个地方发展繁荣起来。

结束了我和平部队的任务以后,我回到了位于密苏里的父母家中。在那里,我决定把我在涪陵的点点滴滴记录下来。在完成400页的手稿之后,我把它取名叫江城,并把它寄到出版社,但是几乎没有出版社肯接受它。

在90年代,中国还没有进入到大部分美国人的视野范围,有位编辑坦白地告诉我:“我们觉得不会有人想读一本关于中国的书。”但是我最终还是找到了一位出版商,而在那时我开始担心涪陵人会怎么看待这本记录他们的书。

中 国人总是对外国人如何描绘他们的国家极度敏感。哪怕是在偏僻的涪陵,我也听到过人们如何生气地批评西方国家是在书或电影里故意夸张中国的贫困,丑化中国的 形象。所以当我开始编辑书稿时,我专门发了一份草稿给我一位叫Emily的中国学生,她看完后大部分反馈都是正面的。但是在有些评价上,我可以听出她的不 满和失望,比如她说:“我觉得人们读完了你这本书之后,不会有人喜欢涪陵的。但是我没道理抱怨,因为你说的都是事实。我唯有希望随着时间的变迁,涪陵会变 得越来越好。”

既想尊重事实,又想刻画出一个处处完美的涪陵,平衡这两者似乎不太可能。我想在书中传达出我的涪陵的热爱,但是我也必须得 对它的污染、大坝以及作为一个外国人遇到的一系列问题如实描述。所以最后,我做好了我会不再受涪陵欢迎的准备。但是,我从没有想过那里会发生如此日新月异 的变化。江城于在2001初出版,而在那时,这个小城的第一条高速公路已经竣工,人们再也不用靠长江渡轮出行。两条甚至更多的高速公路建造正要提上日程, 随之而来的还有三条列车交通线。值得一提的是,因为三峡工程的原因,中央政府在这里投入了大量资金,包括对那些必须从低洼河镇迁走居民的补偿。

不 过十年光景,涪陵的城市人口就翻了双倍,原来的大专院校也升级成为正规的四年制大学,不仅有了一个新校园,也有了个新名字——长江师范大学。入学人数从当 初的2000人增长到现如今的17,000人,这也多亏了中国了高等教育在全国的大规模实行。与此同时,更多的美国人开始将视线投向中国,江城这本书意外 的成了最佳畅销读物。我听说了在涪陵出现了非官方的翻译版本,只有党政官员可以看到。但是政府对此书的评价如何,我就不得而知了。

这次重 回江城是我5年多来第一次回来,也是我第一次收到高级官员的邀请。在涪陵区政府办公室里,我在等副局长刘康忠,在他到来之前,已经有8位官员坐在那里等 待。他们坐在会议桌的一侧,我则一个人局促地坐在另一侧。我试图与他们闲聊,但是这种尝试显然失败了,气氛陷入尴尬的沉默,我意识到即使是在这样一个火速 发展的新兴城市,在某些特定时候,时间依然过得很慢。

终于,其中一位官员清了清喉咙问道,“ 你这本书已经卖了一百多万本了吗?”

这不是我所期待的问题,不过答案倒是很容易:没有。

“你们准备把它拍成电影吗?”

我说,有关于这发面的讨论但是没有太多其它进展。

“现在要把这本书拍成电影应该比较困难,”这位官员继续说。“涪陵早就不再是你住在这里时的样子。取景肯定很困难,因为你们很难找到相似的场景。

副 局长终于到了,他进来的时候,每个人都站了起来。他年约50出头,不过看起来要年轻一些,衣着讲究,黑色的头发上了发胶。他依次给他的下属们发了天子牌香 烟,然后开始了我们的谈话,他列举了一些只有在中国才能听到的数据。比如,过去五年来,涪陵的GDP值以每年20%的比率增长,政府准备到2015年为止 再接纳300,000居民。新建的工业区已经吸引了大批外国投资企业,包括那些生产汽车电瓶和电脑的公司。当地所有的出租车和公交车使用的都是天然气以减 少污染。在涪陵西区,政府正在致力于打造一个新型卫星城市,建成后,整个城市将会比我记忆中的扩增三倍。

“我们已经开始放眼看世界,” 刘说。“70年代,在我还在上学的时候,我们甚至很难和外界联系。但是中国现在已经是一个开放的国家,我们也学会用外国人的视角去看待问题。我读过你的一 些书,”他继续说道:“谢谢你的宣传(译者注:原文使用的词汇为汉语拼音xuanchuan)。”关于xuanchan这个词,比较微妙,我个人认为可以 把它理解成“宣传”,也可以理解成“鼓吹”。副局长笑着继续说,“涪陵是让美国人更好了解中国城市的极好教材。”

作家总是虚荣的希望他的 作品可以永恒,但是涪陵这个地方让我意识到文字是千变万化的。他们的含义可以随着时代和角度的变化而产生截然不同的新意义——就像白鹤梁一样,那些碑文出 现在水下博物馆时,意义都发生了改变。如今,每个读过江城的人都知道中国已经成长为一个经济繁荣的国家,三峡水坝工程也完美收工,书中的故事也有了新的发 展轨迹。我想我永远不会知道1998年的涪陵人民如何看待这本书,因为这些人已经迁走了。城市中的中国人满怀信心,外面的世界对他们来说再也不是那么陌生 遥远和害怕。生活的脚步仿佛在飞奔,回想90年代,它好似就在昨日,但如今却只存留在人们的记忆中,不过就像一张黑白照片勾起人们的怀旧的愁思。就在最近 Emily给我发了一封邮件:“时间的罅隙让这本书里所有一切都变得如此生动美丽,哪怕是那些脏乱和枯萎的花朵。”

一天晚上我和我曾经最 爱去的面馆老板黄小强、他的妻子冯小琴以及他们的家人一起吃饭。98年,当黄拿到他的驾照时,他告诉我他希望有一天能买辆车,就他们当时的经济状况来说, 这个梦想似乎是那么遥不可及。但是,今天晚上,他开着一辆崭新的黑色比迪亚汽车来接我。开到餐馆不过两个街道的距离,接着我们又驱车到他家,也只有两个多 街道的路程。车程虽然很短,但是车上的DVD播放器却一下没少用。

吃完饭之后,黄小强坚持要送我回宾馆。在路上,他告诉我他的姐夫不会说英文,就逐字逐句的查英文字典,最后花了两年时间读完了江城。“你在书里写到我那时最大的梦想是有辆车,而现在这已经是我的第三辆了!”

于是我问他现在最大的梦想是什么。我们说话这会儿,仪表板上的DVD屏幕上正放着一群身着迷你短裙的姑娘蹦蹦跳跳的唱着《爱笑的眼睛》。

“其实我没什么特别需要的了,”他最后说。“有辆车是我曾经最大的梦想。现在我已经有了。”

只 有当你深刻地在中国居住过以后,你才会发现北京上海这些大城市给中国塑造了一个多么光鲜亮丽的外表。但是这也让我第一次想到是否涪陵也会引发同样的错觉。 这座城市隶属重庆自治区,由于三峡大坝建造于这里,所以它能获得比其他地区更多的国家资金。在我的访问期间,重庆市的一把手是以做事果敢著称薄熙来。他与 警察局长王立军联手,实施了一系列卓有成效的行政手段,取缔了犯罪集团整顿了执法机关的腐败风气。作为他们打击犯罪计划的一部分,像涪陵这样的地方都建立 了一个运作透明的警察局,保证群众到访一定能得到接待。其实这根本不是什么新政治举措,但是在中国,能够做到这样确实相当不易。我访问了几个警察局,那里 都在忙着解决街头打架之类的问题。我每去一个地方,人们都在跟我谈论薄熙来的改革,我开始意识到我从来没有到过一个地方是像这里的人们一样如此赞誉他们的 政府。

但是你不用走太远,就会看到另一番景象。虽然涪陵再也不是当初那个贫困落后又封闭的小地方,但是这并不代表其它更小的地区不存在这 些问题。我以前的学生大部分都住在这些地方,他们在当地的中学高中教英语。他们的来信深刻提醒我中国发展还有很长的一段路要走:“亲爱的海斯特先生,我很 抱歉我要告诉你一个坏消息。我的家乡是位于重庆市开县的一个小乡村叫沂河。两天前,一道巨雷劈中我妻子的学校,7名学生不幸遇难,44名学生受伤。原本这 里是有避雷针的,但是学校现在无力承担购买它的费用了。”

“我一个学生的母亲在广东一个工厂里工作了10年,她上个月回到泸州,结果被 骗走了银行卡和密码……她损失了45,000元(超过7,200美元)。这是她这10年辛苦攒下的钱,原本是想用来回家盖新房子和支付她孩子大学 学费的……她回到家哭了很久很久,两天后,她想不开喝老鼠药卧床自杀了。多么可怜呐,你能想象45,000对于一位农村女人来说意味着什么吗?”

在 我的游览期间,我的15名学生为了一次重要的重聚回到了涪陵。他们互相告知了自己的最新情况。有一些就像他们的同代人一样迁移到离家很远的地方。有几个住 到了沿海新兴城市,有一个在印度做生意,还有一个成了西藏地区的党委官员,负责宣传工作(正如我上文所说的,这xuanchuan两字看你如何理解了)。 此外,他们当中的一位女同学这些年一直在主持一个很受欢迎的广播节目。另一位男同学经历颇丰,被学校辞退后,后来先是在青藏高原上玩越野赛车,接着又开起 了出租车公司,现在成了一名百万富翁。还有一名学生因为贪污受贿而身陷牢狱。除此之外,有一位来自贫穷山村的孩子,他当时给自己起了一个令人印象深刻的英 文名“William Jefferson Foster”,他如今凭借辅导那些东区富裕工厂主的孩子们英语而有了一个相当不错的生活。Emily现在在涪陵的一所小学工作。她告诉我他的表哥——那 个曾经住在我学校的公寓但是高中就辍学的孩子——在那段日子里,他做过花匠。参与了很多园艺建造,后来得到很多承包合约,紧接着又参与到房地产中,现在他 的拥有超过1,600,000的资产。

比起他们物质生活的变化,他们在心态思想上的转变更让我印象深刻。在学校里,老师告诉我,如今的大 多数的大多数学生都是来自新兴中产阶级,思想相对而言更加成熟老练。有一天晚上,我在学校有一个讲座,进行到提问环节时,一位大一新生站起来问我,“你觉 得中国可以在民主自由这两点上超过美国吗?”在我还在涪陵当老师那会儿,可没有学生敢在公开场合如此大胆地问这种问题。我给他的回答圆滑又诚实:这得取决 于你和你们这一代人。

我也发现新一代中国人对剖析他们自己的社会更为感兴趣。Emily告诉我,他的表哥或许在物质上得到很大满足,但是 她觉得金钱并没有让他更快乐。William注意到他的小辈们迁移到离家更近而不是离沿海城市更近的地方,这其实表明了中国内陆地区的逐渐繁荣。 William和她的妻子最近决定违反计划生育政策要第二个孩子。他在是参加完一个朋友的葬礼后做出了这个决定的。这个朋友只有一个孩子。“我不得不帮他 的儿子一起抬棺材,”William说,“那个场景让我不禁去想等到我们都不在了,我的女儿就一个人孤零零的,那可怎么办。我想有个兄弟姐妹总归会好 点。”

William的同学Mo Money——另一个也给自己起了特别英文名的贫穷孩子——在重庆的一所精英学校当老师,同样取得了不俗的成绩。但是他对于城市生活的无情压力感到很矛 盾。“生活竞争太激烈了,”他说,“我觉得中国正处于一种特殊的时代,目前我们正处于物质欲望极其膨胀的时期,我们不觉得这是错误的追求,只是当其他国家 在中国之前走这一阶段时,中国人或许会批评他们,就像过去许多人都在批评美国资本主义,但是现在我们也在资本化。”

在涪陵,我搭乘着我另 一名学生的全新SUV沿着长江驱车而行,他叫Jimmy。我记得以前坐船的话要两天才能绕完,但是现在行驶在这条美丽的新公路上仅仅需要三个小时。我们经 过云阳和奉节,接着又到达新吴山。老城位于长江的下游很远的地方,而新建的地方呈现出一派欣欣向荣的面貌。不过在过去几年里,这个地方遭受了数次山崩,有 些人认为是水库里常年不断的水蒸发改变了当地的气候特征。学生们定期传来噩耗:“洪水侵袭了我们的学校,甚至淹到了我们教学楼的2楼。在这次洪水之前也有 两次大的洪灾。现在越来越多的人开始质疑三峡水坝工程。因为自从它开始建造起,重庆和四川就成了自然灾害的频发地。

“我想告诉你因为三峡水坝的建造,我们家会搬到别的地方去。我不知道我的村子会搬到哪里去……我们知道政府让我们搬走是因为山崩,但是他们表面上都说这是为了我们有更好的未来。”

就 在我这段旅程结束不久之后,中国国务院就颁布了一个令人惊讶的声明,坦率承认了三峡水坝的确在“环境保护,预防地质灾害以及重置社区安定方面带来了一些亟 待解决的问题。” 国务院表明相关部门正在采取新的安全措施,不过这也提醒了所有人,三峡水坝并未真正完工而且永远不会。老长江的周期性洪灾依然潜伏在平静的水库表面下。

2012 年3月,中国几十年来最大的政治丑闻在重庆爆发。薄熙来,王立军这两个曾受广泛赞誉的风云人物突然受到共产党的严肃清查并且遭到一系列重大罪行的指控。王 立军在四项罪名上被判有罪,包括滥用私权和收受贿赂。而薄熙来则被起诉了一长串的罪名,从“严重受贿到不正当男女关系,”而据官方政府报道,薄熙来的夫人 ——谷开来,更是在震惊中外的英国商人被杀一案中被判谋杀罪名成立。

薄熙来和王立军现在被描绘成了中国政坛几十年来最罪恶滔天的不法之 人。但是很多重庆人民却很不希望看到这一领导班子的下台。一个学生告诉我,在这桩丑闻发生初始,有早期报道称王立军将会被降职来负责教育,她所在的重庆院 校的老师都很担心,因为多年来他们一直都挪用学生的午饭钱,现在老师们都害怕王立军来了之后会对学校进行一番彻底的整顿。我的学生们都认为,腐败这一问题 是各个地方的共性,只是程度高低,每个地方都不可避免,但是至少薄熙来和王立军的确为重庆做出了贡献。“王立军给了老百姓安定,而薄熙来则给了我们希 望,”她写道,“他们的确不完美,但是他们也的确干了实事做出了贡献。”

最后,王立军并没有被降职,而是被判以15年有期徒刑。我的学生告诉了我午餐贪污费用的最新情况:“在确信王立军不会再回来以后,我们收到了额外的款项。

我 旅行的最后一站是在巫山,在这里我拨出了我8年后拨打的第一个中国电话。我并不指望有人能接:这发展如此迅速的的发昂,很难得有人长久的用一个号,但是黄 宗明接了,很快我坐上了他的船。宗明和他的哥哥宗国都是渔民,在三峡大坝第一阶段工程完工时,我目睹他们搬离原来的家,那一天是2003年1月。也是在那 一周,三峡工程一期的蓄水淹没了整个区域,我确信这对兄弟的生活从此发生了不可逆转的改变。

但是现在我却发现他们是我认识的人当中唯一几 乎维持原样的人。政府对被迫搬迁到在长江支流——大宁河岸边的新住户作出了拆迁补偿,但是这对兄弟还是喜欢睡在船上,就像以前一样。他们还是自己做舢板, 着装还是一如既往的邋遢,对去其他地方旅行也没有任何兴趣。宗明不喜欢所有的陆地交通,他从未坐过火车。

今天,他们的船沿着因有着小三峡而著名的大宁河向上行驶。在我上一次的游览时,急流的地方还是浅滩,而现在貌似平静的水面其实有300多尺深,新的海湾和入口取代了从前的农田。我问宗明对于大坝的看法。他说,“这条江还是以前的好看。”

这就是他所想说的全部——我听过最言简意赅的评论。这对兄弟告诉我在急流位低,流速又快的上游区,还是可以打到很多鱼。于是我们坐上船往上游方向驶去。我静坐在船内,看着这片伟大的流域,想象有一个永恒的咒语,念作:天时永保泰平,渔产甚为丰裕,江河万古奔流。

 

Return to River Town

In 1996 a Peace Corps volunteer arrived in Fuling, a sleepy town on the Yangtze, to teach English. He went back recently to find the landscape—and his former students—transformed.
By Peter Hessler

There is excellent cell phone coverage at the bottom of the Yangtze River, although Huang Dejian is one of the few people who know this. He’s the director of the new White Crane Ridge Underwater Museum, and today his phone rings constantly at a depth of 130 feet. The museum is the strangest sight in the city of Fuling—visitors enter via a 300-foot-long escalator encased in a steel tube, like a massive straw dipped into the muddy Yangtze.

“This is the most expensive museum in the Three Gorges region,” Huang says, answering his phone again. The ringtone is a woman’s voice that urgently repeats the phrase “Jia you—go, go, go, go, go!”

The last time I saw Huang, this was all dry land, and the $34 million museum didn’t exist, and the Three Gorges Dam was still under construction 280 miles downstream. I lived in Fuling from 1996 to 1998, when I was a Peace Corps volunteer at the local college. Back then the population was around 200,000, which was small by Chinese standards. Most people strongly supported the dam, although they didn’t talk about it much. It was scheduled for completion in 2009, which seemed an eternity in a place where so much was already happening. In China the reform era had begun in 1978, but it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that free market ideas started to have a major impact on smaller cities like Fuling. Locals coped with overwhelming change: the end of government-assigned jobs, the sudden privatization of housing.

In those days the White Crane Ridge gave me a different perspective on time. The strip of sandstone emerged only in winter, when the water level dropped. Low-water season was treacherous for boatmen in ancient times, and somebody carved two fish into the side of the ridge. They served as a gauge, allowing pilots to anticipate the shoals and rapids downstream.

Locals associated the stone fish with good fortune, and it became a tradition to mark their annual emergence with a carved message. The earliest dated engraving was from A.D. 763, during the Tang dynasty, and eventually more than 30,000 characters decorated the sandstone. The calligraphy was stunning, and messages had the rhythm of incantations: “The water of the river retreats. The stone fish are seen. Next year there will be a bumper harvest.”

In the 1990s admission to the ridge was three yuan, about 35 cents, which included a ride on a rickety sampan manned by an off-season fisherman. Huang Dejian used to sit on the ridge for hours, wrapped in a surplus People’s Liberation Army overcoat. He would note the water level and tell stories about the most famous carvings. During one of my last visits, on January 30, 1998, the Yangtze was exactly two inches higher than it had been at the time of the first inscription in 763. Two inches in 1,235 years—that put the changes of the reform era in a new light.

Time moved differently on the river. The Yangtze remained a creature of cycles, even as life along the banks marched to the straight line of history and progress. And both kinds of time, natural and human, intersected at the White Crane Ridge every year. The river retreated; the words emerged; the messages and dates lined up neatly on the rock. And then the spring snowmelt would come, and the water would rise, and all that history would disappear once more beneath the timeless river.

Now that the dam is closed, the Yangtze no longer falls anywhere near the old levels. To protect against the high water of the reservoir, Fuling has surrounded itself with a dike that is nearly three miles long and 190 feet tall. The White Crane Ridge Museum is set into the side of this massive concrete wall. Today Huang Dejian takes me to the underwater viewing gallery, where portholes face the submerged ridge. The scene is dreamlike: I recognize places where I once stood and engravings that I touched. But even familiar words seem to have a new meaning: “Pillar Rock in Midstream,” “The River Runs Forever.” What’s the significance of these inscriptions now that they lie 20 fathoms deep?

Huang Dejian smiles when I ask if he ever feels a sense of loss. His days of sitting on a cold Yangtze rock are long gone, and so is the People’s Liberation Army overcoat; today he wears a neat gray suit. In addition to handling the constant phone calls, he’s juggling my visit with that of a China Central Television film crew. “They weren’t able to do this at the Aswan Dam in Egypt,” he tells me, noting that Egyptian authorities had to move relics before they were flooded. “It makes me proud. I don’t have any feeling of loss when I come here; I feel like it’s a success. We were able to build the Three Gorges Dam and also successfully protect the White Crane Ridge.” And then Huang heads off to the television crew, and his cell phone rings its modern incantation: “Go, go, go, go, go!”

Fuling sits at the junction of the Yangtze and the Wu Rivers, and in the mid-1990s it felt sleepy and isolated. There was no highway or rail line, and the Yangtze ferries took seven hours to reach Chongqing, the nearest large city. Foreigners were unheard of—if I ate lunch downtown, I often drew a crowd of 30 spectators. The city had one escalator, one nightclub, and no traffic lights. I didn’t know anybody with a car. There were two cell phones at the college, and everyone could tell you who owned them: the party secretary, the highest Communist Party official on campus, and an art teacher who had taken a pioneering step into private business.

In those days Fuling Teachers College was only a three-year institution, which placed it near the bottom of Chinese higher education. But my students were grateful for the opportunity. Nearly all of them came from rural homes with little tradition of education; many had illiterate parents. And yet they majored in English—a remarkable step in a country that had been closed for much of the 20th century. Their essays spoke of obscurity and poverty, but there was also a great deal of hope: “My hometown is not famous because there aren’t famous things and products and persons, and there aren’t any famous scenes. My hometown is lacking of persons of ability … I’ll be a teacher, I’ll try my best to train many persons of ability.”

“There is an old saying of China: ‘Dog loves house in spite of being poor; son loves mother in spite of being ugly.’ That [is] our feeling. Today we are working hard, and tomorrow we will do what we can for our country.”

My students taught me many things, including what it meant to come from the countryside, where the vast majority of Chinese lived at the beginning of the reform era. Since then an estimated 155 million people have migrated to the cities, and my students wrote movingly about relatives who struggled with this transition. They also taught me about the complexities of poverty in China. My students had little money, but they were optimistic, and they had opportunities; it was impossible to think of such people as poor. And Fuling itself was hard to define. The Three Gorges Dam could never have happened in a truly poor country—Beijing reports that the total investment was $33 billion, although some unofficial estimates are significantly higher. But memories of recent poverty helped make the dam acceptable to locals, and I understood why they desired progress at all costs. My apartment was often without electricity for hours, and over-reliance on coal resulted in horrible pollution.

After finishing my Peace Corps assignment, I returned to my parents’ home in Missouri and tried to record that moment in Fuling. After completing a 400-page manuscript—I called it River Town—I sent it out to agents and publishers, nearly all of whom rejected it. In the 1990s China hadn’t yet entered the consciousness of most Americans. One editor said frankly, “We don’t think anybody wants to read a book about China.” But I eventually found a publisher, and that was when I began to worry about how locals would respond to the book.

The Chinese had always been extremely sensitive about how their country was portrayed by foreigners. Even in remote Fuling, I heard people speak angrily about books and films that they believed had emphasized Chinese poverty. When I began editing my manuscript, I sent a draft to a student named Emily, and most of her responses were positive. But sometimes she sounded a note of disappointment: “I think no one would like Fuling city after reading your story. But I can’t complain, as everything you write about is the fact. I wish the city would be more attractive with time.”

The balancing act seemed impossible. I wanted to show my affection for Fuling, but I also needed to be honest about the pollution, the dam, and the problems I sometimes had as a foreigner. In the end I accepted the possibility that I wouldn’t be welcomed there again. But I hadn’t imagined how fast the place would change. By the time River Town was published in early 2001, the city’s first highway had been completed, rendering the Yangtze ferries obsolete. Two more new highways would follow, along with three train lines. Because of the Three Gorges project, large amounts of central government money flowed into Fuling, along with migrants from low-lying river towns that were being demolished. (All told, more than 1.4 million people were resettled.) In the span of a decade Fuling’s urban population nearly doubled, and the college was transformed into a four-year institution with a new campus and a new name, Yangtze Normal University. The student body grew from 2,000 to more than 17,000, part of the nation’s massive expansion in higher education. Meanwhile, Americans began to take new interest in China, and River Town became a surprise best seller. I heard that an unofficial translation was commissioned in Fuling, with access limited to Communist Party cadres. But I never learned how the government reacted to the book.

This is my first visit back in more than five years, and it’s the first time I’ve been invited to meet with a high-level official. At the Fuling District Government office, I wait for Vice-Director Liu Kangzhong, who has been preceded by an entourage of eight officials. The men sit in a line along one side of a conference table; I am alone on the other side. My attempts at small talk are unsuccessful. The room falls silent, and I realize that even in a Chinese boomtown there are moments when time moves very slowly.

Finally one of the cadres clears his throat. He says, “Have you sold a million copies of your book yet?”

This wasn’t the question I expected, but it’s easy to answer: No.

“Are they making a movie about it?”

I say that there has been some talk but nothing more.

“It would be hard to make a movie of that book,” he says. “Fuling looks completely different from when you lived here. They wouldn’t be able to find places to film that looked like it did in those days.”

Everybody stands up when Vice-Director Liu arrives. He’s in his early 50s but looks younger, a fine-featured man with gelled black hair. He distributes a round of Emperor cigarettes to his entourage, and then he recites the kind of statistics that you hear only in China. For the past five years Fuling’s GDP has grown at an annual rate of 20 percent, and the city plans to add another 300,000 residents by 2015. A new factory district has attracted more than three dozen foreign-invested firms, including several that produce battery cells for cars and computers. All local cabs and buses now run on natural gas, in order to reduce pollution. To the west, the government is building a new satellite city, which will be three times as large as the Fuling I remember.

“We’ve opened our eyes,” Liu says. “When I was in school in the 1970s, we couldn’t communicate with outsiders. China has been an open country for a while now, and we have a sense of what foreigners think. I’ve read some of your book.” He continues: “Thank you for giving us xuanchuan.” The word can be translated in different ways; sometimes it means “publicity,” and sometimes it means “propaganda.” Vice-Director Liu smiles and says, “Fuling is a good example of a Chinese city for Americans to know about.”

The writer’s vanity likes to imagine permanence, but Fuling reminds me that words are quicksilver. Their meaning changes with every age, every perspective—it’s like the White Crane Ridge, whose inscriptions have a different significance now that they appear in an underwater museum. Today anybody who reads River Town knows that China has become economically powerful and that the Three Gorges Dam is completed, and this changes the story. And I’ll never know what the Fuling residents of 1998 would have thought of the book, because those people have also been transformed. There’s a new confidence to urban Chinese; the outside world seems much less remote and threatening. And life has moved so fast that even the 1990s feels as nostalgic as a black-and-white photo. Recently Emily sent me an email: “With a distance of time, everything in the book turns out to be charming, even the dirty, tired flowers.”

One evening I have dinner with Huang Xiaoqiang, his wife, Feng Xiaoqin, and their family, who used to own my favorite noodle restaurant. In 1998 Huang acquired his driver’s license and told me he hoped to buy a car someday, which seemed impossible with his limited family income. But tonight he picks me up at my hotel in a new black Chinese BYD sedan. Huang drives exactly two blocks to a restaurant, and then we drive exactly two more blocks to his family home. These journeys may be short, but they provide ample time for Huang to make full use of his dashboard DVD player.

After dinner he insists on chauffeuring me back to my hotel. He tells me that his brother-in-law, who doesn’t speak English, used a dictionary to read River Town. He went word by word; it took two years. “In your book you wrote that my biggest dream was to have a car,” Huang says. “And this is the third one I’ve owned!”

I ask him what his biggest dream is now. On the dashboard screen, girls in miniskirts bounce to a song called “The Smiling Eyes of Love.”

“There’s nothing else I really need,” he says at last. “Having a car was my big dream. We already have the important things now.”

When you live in the Chinese interior, you realize how Beijing and Shanghai create an overly optimistic view of the country. But this is the first time I’ve wondered if Fuling might inspire a similar reaction. The city is under the jurisdiction of Chongqing Municipality, which receives more funding than other regions because of the dam. At the time of my visit, the top Chongqing official is Bo Xilai, who is known for having national ambitions. Along with his police chief, Wang Lijun, Bo has orchestrated a well-publicized attempt to crack down on crime and reform a corrupt police force. As part of this project, cities like Fuling have erected open-air police stations where officers must be available to the public at all times. This is hardly a new idea, but in China it feels revolutionary. I visit a few stations, which are busy handling the kind of problems that in the past often flared up as street fights. Everywhere I go, people tell me about Bo’s reforms, and I realize that I’ve never been anywhere in China where people speak so positively about their government.

But you don’t have to travel very far to hear a different story. Poverty and isolation no longer characterize Fuling, but smaller cities and villages still face these challenges. Most of my former students live in such places, where they teach English in middle schools and high schools. Their letters remind me how far China still has to go: “Dear Mr. Hessler: I am sorry to tell a bad news. My town is called Yihe in Kaixian County in Chongqing. Two days ago, a big thunder hit my wife’s village school. It killed 7 students and wounded 44 students … There used to be lightning rod … but the school can not afford it.”

“One of my students’ mothers worked [in a factory] in Guangdong for 10 years, she came [back] to Luzhou last month. She was cheated out of her bank card and code … She lost 45,000 yuan [more than $7,200]. This was the money she saved in the past ten years. She wanted to use the money to build a new house and get prepared for her kids to go to college … She went back home and cried for many days, and two days later, she ate mouse poison and died in bed. What a bad things. It is hard to imagine what 45,000 means for a country woman.”

During my visit, about 15 students return to Fuling for an impromptu reunion. They give updates on the classmates who, like so many Chinese of their generation, have migrated far from home. Several live in coastal boomtowns, and one does trade in India. Another is a Communist Party official in a Tibetan city, where he’s in charge of xuanchuan. (“Publicity” to some, “propaganda” to others.) One woman hosted a popular radio show for years. Another man got fired from his teaching job, drifted out to the Tibetan Plateau, started a cab company, and became a millionaire. One student is in prison for corruption. William Jefferson Foster, a kid from a poor village who gave himself an impressive English name, has earned an excellent living by teaching English to the children of wealthy factory owners in the east. Emily now works in a Fuling elementary school, and she tells me about her cousin, a high school dropout who used to live in my building on campus. In those days he worked as a gardener. He subsequently went into construction, then contracting, then real estate; and now he has assets worth more than $16 million.

The new mind-sets impress me even more than the material changes. At the college, teachers tell me that today’s students, most of whom come from the new middle class, are more sophisticated. One evening I give a lecture, and during the question-and-answer session a freshman stands up and asks, “Do you think that China will ever be able to surpass the United States in democracy and freedom?” When I was a teacher, no student would have dared to ask such a thing in public. My answer is diplomatic but honest: “That depends on you and your generation.”

I also find that educated Chinese seem much more interested in analyzing their own society. Emily tells me that her cousin may be rich, but she’s noticed that money hasn’t made him happier. William observes that his younger relatives now migrate to destinations close to home rather than the coast, a sign that China’s boom is moving inland. William and his wife recently decided to violate the “planned birth” policy by having a second child. He made this decision after attending a funeral of a man with only one child. “I had to help his son lift the casket,” William says. “It made me think about what happens when we’re gone and my daughter is alone in the world. It’s better to have a sibling.”

His classmate Mo Money—another poor kid who gave himself a bold English name—has succeeded as a teacher at an elite school in Chongqing. But he’s ambivalent about the relentless pressure of urban China. “Life is so competitive,” he says. “I think this is a special stage for China. The Chinese may have criticized other countries when they went through this—there was so much criticism of capitalist America in the old days. But now we are going through the same thing.”

From Fuling I hitch a ride down the Yangtze with a student named Jimmy, who has a new SUV. I remember when this journey took two days by riverboat; now it’s a three-hour drive on a beautiful new highway. We pass the resettled cities of Yunyang and Fengjie, and then we arrive in new Wushan. The old town sites lie far beneath the Yangtze, and these fresh-built places appear prosperous. But in the past few years the region has suffered from landslides, and some believe that the constantly evaporating reservoir water has changed weather patterns. Students periodically send jarring updates: “Flood has come into our school, and it also came to the second floor of our teaching building. There were two big floods before this one. Now more and more people are doubting the Three Gorges project. Since it established, Chongqing and Sichuan have been natural disaster area.”

“I want to tell you that my old family will be moved to somewhere because of the Three Gorges project. But I don’t know where our villagers’ homes will be … people here know it is because of landslide, but the government says it is for our good future.”

Soon after my journey, China’s State Council issues a surprisingly blunt statement admitting that the dam has “caused some urgent problems in terms of environmental protection, the prevention of geological hazards, and the welfare of the relocated communities.” The council says that new safety measures are being taken, but it’s a reminder that the Three Gorges Dam isn’t truly finished and never will be, and that the cycles of the old Yangtze are still alive somewhere beneath the surface of the reservoir.

In March 2012 China’s biggest scandal in decades erupts in Chongqing. Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun, once so widely praised, are suddenly purged from the Communist Party and accused of a spectacular series of crimes. Wang is found guilty of four offenses, including abuse of power and taking bribes. Bo is charged with a long list of offenses, ranging from “taking massive bribes” to “inappropriate sexual relationships,” according to the official government news source. His wife, Gu Kailai, is convicted of the most shocking crime of all: the murder of a British businessman.

Across China, Bo and Wang are portrayed as the nation’s worst villains. But many people in the Chongqing region are sorry to see the officials go. One student told me that in the early stages of the scandal, when preliminary reports said that Wang would be demoted to handling municipal education, teachers in her Chongqing school became worried. For years they had embezzled money from the students’ lunch fees, and now they feared that Wang would clean up the schools. As far as my student was concerned, corruption was endemic at all levels, but at least Bo and Wang had made some changes. “Wang gave people a sense of safety and Bo gave us hope,” she wrote. “They were not perfect, but they really did something.”

In the end Wang did not receive the demotion; instead he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. My student updated me on the dirty lunch fees: “We got the extra money when it was confirmed that Wang wouldn’t come back.”

My last stop is Wushan, where I call a number for the first time in eight years. I don’t expect success: In fast-changing places no one keeps a phone number for long. But Huang Zongming answers, and soon I’m sitting on his boat. Zongming and his brother Zongguo are fishermen; I watched them move out of their homes in June 2003, when the first stage of the dam was completed. During that week the Yangtze flooded the entire district, and I felt certain that the brothers’ lives were being irrevocably changed.

But now I discover that they are the only people I know who remain virtually the same. The government paid for a new house on the banks of the Daning River, a Yangtze tributary, but the brothers prefer to sleep on their boats, as they have done all their lives. They still make their own sampans, and their clothes are just as dirty as ever. They have not been anywhere interesting. Zongming, who dislikes all land transport, has still never ridden a train.

Today their boat cruises up the Daning, famous for its Little Three Gorges. The rapids were shallow at the time of my last visit; now the placid water is more than 300 feet deep, with new bays and inlets that cover former farmland. I ask Zongming what he thinks of the dam. He says, “The river looked better in the old days.”

And that’s all he has to say—the simplest analysis I’ve heard. The brothers tell me there’s still good fishing upstream, where the rapids are low and fast. We head in that direction, and I imagine one final incantation: The weather will be perfect, the fish abundant. The river runs forever.

 
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