High tech and hot pot, p.17
High Tech and Hot Pot, page 17
8:27 PM
The following message arrives on my screen: “Hello, I’m a red taurus from Thailand, glucose replenishment liquid chini. Welcome in China! Time have, to go to Henan to play? To my house?” The sender laughs warmly.
8:28 PM
He opens a briefcase and passes me two cans, one of Red Bull and one with “Energy Chinese Enhanced Energy Drink” on it. I now understand the first part of the message: he sells energy drinks.
8:30 PM
A cell phone photo is taken of two men: a drinks dealer with a wide grin on his face and a foreigner with a donated can. On the label: “Thaland Red Bullbeverace Company.”
8:32 PM
It springs to my mind that the “play,” which is wan in Chinese, from the message could be translated with erotic connotations. Will my trip end in a visit to Henan? Stay tuned.
8:35 PM
On the Energy Chinese Enhanced Energy Drink there is a picture of a famous actress. I joke that she is my Chinese girlfriend and trigger a fit of laughter lasting more than one minute among the listeners.
8:39 PM
An until then uninvolved listener slaps me on the shoulder and laughs. Party in car 17.
9:34 PM
The Red Bull dealer says good-bye with a handshake and a message that my cell translates as: “Man, keep your security on the streets.” He then goes to the door with his briefcase.
9:36 PM
The train stops at Liupanshui, population almost 3 million. Never heard of it.
9:49 PM
Ticket inspection. The conductor looks at my ticket, then at me, then at my ticket, and then again at me.
10:11 PM
If a train compartment were a drum kit, then the snoring sounds would be the bass drum and the slapping of playing cards on the table the snare. I try to sleep.
12:13 AM
Stop at Xuanwei, population 1.3 million. Never heard of it. The car empties considerably. Only seven passengers holding out.
2:49 AM
The conductor walks down the aisle announcing, “Qujing, Qujing,” which is the next stop, in a loud voice. Population 5.9 million. Never heard of it. Dammit, awake again.
4:03 AM
Soothing piano music is coming from the train’s speakers. SOOTHING PIANO MUSIC! At four in the morning!
4:08 AM
Legal question: Can I sue pianist Richard Clayderman for bodily harm, even though it wasn’t his decision to play “Ballade pour Adeline” three times in a row on a Chinese slow train?
4:33 AM
The train stops. “Kunming!” shouts the conductor. Too early, I think, as according to the schedule it should arrive at 5:05. Nonsense! I was mixing up arrival and departure times.
4:40 AM
Good news: the station here is not crowded at this time of day. Bad news: I’m suddenly being followed by a young man with a bundle of bills in his hand.
4:46 AM
If I speed up, he speeds up, too. When I slow down, he slows down. Always about ten feet behind me, even outside the station.
5:01 AM
Only by crossing to the other side of the street do I shake him off. I will never discover what he wanted from me. I get into a brand-new shuttle bus to the airport to fly to Baoshan. I’m back in the future.
TENGCHONG
Population: 620,000
Province: Yunnan
THE MASTER’S VOICE
To: Bo
Morning! Just landed
From: Bo
Hello! Tell me when you are on the bus!
To: Bo
Er. Is it really 100 miles from the airport to Tengchong?
From: Bo
Which airport are you at?
To: Bo
Baoshan
From: Bo
BO FROM TENGCHONG could quite easily have told me at which airport I was supposed to land. His online profile says he lives in Baoshan, but on arrival I notice on the Tencent map that it is almost a hundred miles to the arranged meeting place, and that it apparently takes one day, fourteen hours and two minutes to get there. Big shock. Only then do I notice that the “on foot” setting is on. By car, it takes two hours and fifteen minutes.
In the course of further WeChat conversations, Bo proves to be pretty fond of telling me lots of things that don’t really help me. Between a number of emojis crying tears of joy and cute animal GIFs, he explains that the nearest airport to Tengchong is called Tuofeng, A friend of his from Taiwan made the same mistake, and strangely enough, the Couchsurfing site automatically selected Baoshan as the region’s name as the friend was trying to type in his home city. Incidentally, it is very easy to mix them up, as Tengchong is part of Baoshan.
After all that has been cleared up, Bo finally comes up with some information: I have to take a cab to the bus station, then a two-and-a-half-hour bus journey, and he will meet me at my destination.
• • • • • •
BO LIVES IN a lovingly refurbished historical building, two stories, wooden walls painted light red and a little inner yard with a half-open kitchen. There are potted plants everywhere; I had almost forgotten the harmony of Far Eastern decorative elements.
“Before I moved here, I lived in Suzhou, but in a big city I can’t be creative,” Bo says. “Everyone’s just chasing money, power and success.”
The thirty-nine-year-old is wearing a slightly oversized orange North Face fleece jacket and glasses with rectangular frames. He has straight hair to his ears with the hint of a part. Bo speaks slowly, often embellishing a sentence gradually with details and minor adjustments until it contains the essence of his thoughts. The formulation of a statement like “Plenty of work has gone into the house, but I enjoy doing it. Still, it looks better in photos than in reality” can be drawn out to take a couple of minutes. At the end of a successfully completed thought, he usually laughs bashfully. Under normal circumstances, I would find a conversation with him somewhat lacking in appeal, but here, surrounded by so much haste and efficiency, Bo’s long-winded and rambling but ingenious formulations are as beneficial as a retreat in a monastery.
He quit his job with an IT firm four years ago and now doesn’t need a permanent office for his work translating patents and programming. He is a Buddhist and has discovered peace here that he missed elsewhere.
“There are a few problems, but the advantages outweigh them,” he says, or that is the gist at least; he used ten times the number of words necessary.
When he first moved here three years ago, the landlord used to visit him every day. “He wanted to see whether I was a decent person, whether I was doing things right. ‘You should leave the door open here and speak to the neighbors; otherwise, there will be whispering.’ The people thought I was rich because I came from the big city. My life here is much less anonymous, and it takes a while to get used to that.”
Strolling along the pleasantly skyscraper-less streets, I, too, feel not very anonymous. Much more often than usual I am greeted by passersby, schoolkids in their tracksuit uniforms and jade sellers. Jade is this city’s most important economic asset, imported from Myanmar. The border is only a few miles away. Enormous stores present the green, shimmering treasures in glass display cabinets, the prices cheaper than in the rest of China: small brooches for around a thousand dollars, polished precious stone tabletops for thirty thousand. Tengchong feels like a small town, and with 600,000 inhabitants, by Chinese standards it is actually relatively small.
In front of a Vero Moda clothing store, a young woman in red linen pants, a gray linen blouse and a baseball cap approaches me. She wants to know where I come from, what I’m doing here and whether I’m interested in teaching English because, at the moment, they are looking for foreign teachers.
“I’m only here for two days,” I tell her.
“Oh, that’s too short,” she says. “Can we still have a chat?”
“About what?”
“Some things. My name’s Xiao Hu.”
She gathers three plastic bags of clothing from her moped, then leads me to a lobby with an elevator and presses four, which has a “KTV” plaque right next to the button. A karaoke bar is not exactly a typical place for an innocent chat. I decide to be careful and prepare for a quick getaway.
We get out of the elevator and she guides me to a couple of seats not far from reception, where you can book karaoke rooms or tickets for the movie theater next door. We sit down and I ask Xiao Hu what she does in Tengchong.
“I am part of a group with a master who teaches us about Chinese culture.” She speaks quickly, almost racing, as if the next sentence wants to overtake the previous one.
“A religious group?” I ask.
“Not totally, but there are elements of Buddhism, Christianity and the teachings of Confucius. Master is coming soon. It’s his birthday today and he is celebrating a little.”
There follows a monologue about how her life has improved since she met the “Master.” Previously, she had often been ill, with bad skin and pimples that neither Chinese nor European medicine had helped. But things have improved greatly since she started following the Master’s teachings. She believes that he has special powers and can sense other people’s thoughts and emotions. “We live in a pretty house, and the training takes ten years.”
Then, from around the corner, here he comes: the Master. He is a chubby little man in track pants, a T-shirt and leather sandals. His face glows as if he has been drinking. Xiao Hu gives him the plastic bags and he goes behind an empty counter at the other end of the room and proceeds to change.
“On your birthday you can get into KTV and the movies for free, and even get a complimentary foot massage. That’s what he’s doing today,” she reveals.
He comes back dressed in linen clothes similar to hers. He asks me whether I am the new English teacher from Colombia, and Xiao Hu replies no for me. Then he tells me, in his hoarse, deep voice, that they have to be going now.
“Can I scan your WeChat number?” asks Xiao Hu. “Maybe we could see each other again.”
I hold up the QR code on my cell, and then the Master and novice go on their way.
• • • • • •
“OH, I KNOW the group,” says Bo when I tell him of my encounter back at home. His inner courtyard is like an island of peace, hidden between side streets, two hundred yards from the main road. “They wanted to recruit me once. I had a talk with the Master, but he didn’t really impress me.” He pours two cups of Fujian tea. “I have met many religious men, and sometimes, in their presence, I have really sensed something. In Tibetan monasteries, for instance. He, however, spent most of the time talking about himself in that artificial deep voice. And he said I would find a woman quickly if I joined his group.” He laughs shyly; Bo has had a girlfriend for years. But he can understand how the Master finds his followers. “China’s greatest religion is money. Everything revolves around it, and that’s just the way the government wants it. But many people feel that something’s missing and they are searching for meaning.”
The government in Beijing views beliefs of all varieties with mistrust, even if the main religions are no longer forbidden, as they were in Mao’s times. People who are only interested in earning money don’t start revolutions, whereas people pursuing ideas and wisdom are more likely to develop doubts about socialism. They fear parallel power structures that could challenge the state, which is why monks, priests and imams have to register with the government and acknowledge the government’s policy of “Sinicization of Religions,” which coerces various beliefs into toeing the party line. The Falun Gong sect was outlawed because the authorities feared subversive tendencies.
In practice, most Chinese people see spirituality pragmatically rather than dogmatically—a prayer to a Buddhist statue does just as little harm as a donation to a Taoist monastery, a small family altar to ancestors, a lucky amulet or advice from a roadside palm reader.
Bo believes in the power of tranquility: a minimum of furnishings, feng shui, clear-cut lines and withdrawal to the inner self. In the evening, he lights joss sticks and plays the guqin, a plucking instrument with seven silk strings that rests on a stand in front of the musician. The title of the piece is “The Still and Clear Fall Night,” which consists of long drawn out sounds, plenty of pauses for breath and floating tones. Every played phase seems to be working towards the next pause. Proof of virtuosity lies not in playing quick tone sequences but in creating a greater impact through the timing of the pauses.
“In Chinese art, the emptiness of the various shades of white in a painting are just as important as the rest of the picture. They create space for the imagination,” says Bo, as the last notes fade away and the room returns to silence.
• • • • • •
THE NEXT DAY I meet Xiao Hu on a street corner with a propaganda poster of the Communist Party. “Civilization Warms a City” is written on it in Chinese, Burmese and English. A few yards away there is a Buddhist temple. State and religion—competing ideologies, vying for obedience.
Xiao Hu has an electric scooter with tiny wheels and a back seat that isn’t even a foot above the road. I have to tuck my knees under my chin to be able to ride.
“This scooter is really too small for foreigners,” she says, and zooms off.
The extra weight seems to be causing her problems, as she snakes along and at the intersection brakes more severely than necessary.
“I never learned how to ride this thing. You don’t need a license for it,” she explains. “I have no idea about the rules of the road.”
As if to prove this, she cuts across the road and carries on riding in the left lane of oncoming traffic but without causing much of an outcry, as many people do the same here. We stop at a park with lots of greenery, fastidiously clean tarred pathways and political slogans on colorful wooden panels that resemble the instructions on fitness trails. The twelve core socialist values are written on red displays, always with two keywords paired together: “Patriotism” above “Engagement,” “Prosperity” above “Democracy.”
Xiao Hu tells me about her training with the Master. “For the first three months you just relax. You learn to relax, to have healthy sleep, not too much and not too little. I had sleeping disorders when I came to him,” she says. Again, she speaks so fast, as if she has three or four thoughts on her mind at once and has trouble getting them across in the given time.
“Master gave me forty-eight hours of recordings of his voice,” she continues. “I listened to his wisdom, and finally, I found peace of mind. His voice has great power. Even if you don’t understand all of what he says, his voice can heal illnesses. It even works on animals. No snake or spider would ever come into my room when I was playing the recording.”
The park is on a hill, and two joggers puff by. “No Smoking” signs hang from the lampposts and, right next to them, are poles with surveillance cameras and red-and-blue police lights. I wonder whether they blink as soon as someone lights up? In China, anything is possible.
But there is also something for the digital overseers to look forward to: “Twice a week, Master and I come here with a mic and a speaker and we sing karaoke together,” says Xiao Hu. She never uses the definite article when mentioning the leader of the sect. “When I was new to the group, I spent almost every minute with Master. I couldn’t be away from him without feeling unsettled. Only after a year did it get better.” She feels privileged because she was accepted into the group. “He has taught thousands, but only thirteen followers are allowed to live with him here. A stroke of good fortune. Recently, I wrote a letter to UNESCO and recommended him for the Nobel Peace Prize. I haven’t had a reply yet.”
I ask if I can meet him and she sends him a text message.
We arrive at a Buddhist temple with a viewing terrace. She goes inside to pray, and I stay outside to look at the city. Tengchong is surrounded by green hills with a lake in the middle. A couple miles to the north, a replica of it is being constructed, the Chinese logic being: two lakes means the potential for twice as many tourists, so why not? Many residents have been forced to move as their old lodgings had to make way for the bulldozers. In a couple of years, a new express railway line will be completed to bring even more tourists here, to the jade stores, the volcano parks, the hot springs, the traditional villages (a pretty one called Xia Qiluo and one that is, unfortunately, too touristy called Hechun) and the memorials to the Second Sino-Japanese War. In the city center there is a quaint Mao museum, with propaganda posters, Little Red Books in all shapes and sizes, and pictures of Marx and Engels on the wall. Mao, the great hater of religion, is still revered almost religiously in some areas, especially in rural districts, where many Chinese people still keep pictures of him as lucky charms.
“What makes the teachings of the Master so compelling?” I ask Xiao Hu.
“Unconditional love,” she says. “Even when he is punishing you, you know that he loves you. You cry, but you feel safe with him.”
“What kind of punishments?”
“You will find out for yourself when you come back and spend more time with us.”
Xiao Hu’s cell phone rings, and she speaks in an excited voice. Almost simultaneously, I receive a text message.
From: Bo
I just want to give you some advice: don’t meet the Master. I think the group is banned by the government and members are sent to prison.
To: Bo
I will be careful, thanks!
Xiao Hu ends her conversation. “Master says we can speak to him now. Coming?”
“Sure.”
“We have to hurry. I’ll leave the scooter here. Hopefully, we can find a cab quickly.”
She types frantically into her Didi app and looks left and right with pursed lips. “Why is it taking so long?” she asks, jigging from one foot to the other, her eyes alternately on her app and on the street. After three minutes, a black cab pulls up for us. “Kuai dian—quick,” she says to the driver.
