Keeping up appearances (From St Albans & Harpenden Review)

Keeping up appearances

2:13pm Wednesday 18th September 2002 in

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THE ingenuity of man, some of it perverse, never ceases to amaze me.

Travelling up the Yangtze in China past sheer cliffs, our attention was drawn to various chiselled pathways and holes.

These were made for people to walk along, or insert poles and build a platform in order to stand on and pull the boats upstream.

The mind boggles at the weight of the rope, let alone the boat, but at least it had a profitable purpose.

Less understandable was the man who many, many years ago, became a trendsetter when he turned to his family and told them when he died, he wished to be placed in a coffin and it should be inserted into a specially carved niche in the rock-face above the river.

"Whereabouts dad?" inquired, what I imagine would have been, a shocked son in times BC.

"Well, roughly 30 yards from the top and 30 yards from the bottom," came the astounding reply.

Now, having established I have no head for heights, I cannot conceive anyone actually agreeing: "Well, if that's what you want dad, that's what we'll do."

I would have wondered why his coffin could not have been ceremonially launched into the river as had been the case for hundreds of years before.

But that is what they did thousands of years ago. By some amazing means, the relatives were lowered down the cliff, and they then carved a niche big enough to hold a coffin.

The coffins have been removed in more recent times, but you can still see the niches and other instances where they bored holes into the rocks, inserted beams and placed the coffin on a platform.

There are models of these cliff cemeteries and examples of the science involved at one of the museums we visited from the ship.

Our days on board started with extremely early breakfasts, about 6.30am to 7am.

There was a daily excursion, lunch, and the afternoons included various demonstrations in the main bar/dance hall, which featured things Chinese, such as kite-flying, tai chi, painting, pearl-fishing, Chinese medicines and language.

But, throughout the cruise, the main appeal lay in the sights and sounds by the Yangtze and not least our fellow travellers, some of whom seemed ill-suited for cultural trips.

When looking at an area of excavation, covered by upright poles, rafters and some corrugated iron, one American woman looked at the roof and said in all seriousness, as she touched the four-by-two in reverence: "Well they were really quite advanced in those times, weren't they?"

Later, when climbing steps up what was quite plainly labelled the Lookout Tower over the dam, an American asked: "Why are we climbing these steps?"

"And these are the leaders of the free world," the Hyacinth Bouquet-look-alike observed none too quietly.

One American lady, dressed in a baggy windcheater, was slight yet while her hands and neck suggested she was the wrong side of 60, her face plainly hinted that she must have been, more than once, subjected to cosmetic surgery.

Standing behind her in a queue for the coach, she turned and remarked to me, with a heavy New York accent, that it was very hot despite our being unable to see the sun clearly.

In doing so, she took off her windcheater and displayed considerable evidence to suggest she had undergone cosmetic surgery below the neck as well, for she possessed mammaries of such a size, it was a wonder her fragile back could support them without snapping.

She was one of four American ladies who played mah-jong regularly, morning and afternoon on the poop deck.

"Did you see that blonde New York woman?" I asked my wife, still stunned by the feat of physical engineering.

"Yes," she answered. "She is the only one of those four who has decent nail extensions. All the rest of them are ridiculous."

"Quite so," I replied, making a mental note to study their nails next time round and also registering once again the fact men and women are two different races.

Six of us, chosen at random it seems, were allotted the same table at which to eat our breakfast, lunch and dinner.

There was a gay couple from the New Forest, who were conveniently named Peter and Lee (as in the old pop group), a one-armed New Zealand pharmacist, Bob, who had a tendency to indicate he had done everything, been everywhere and knew more than Einstein, and his wife, Bev, who was disabled by a stroke, but still able to get round the world in her capacity as an international orchid judge.

Occasionally she would delight me by interrupting her husband, as he held forth, saying in broad Antipodean accent: "You know nothing about it, Neil."

I found one piece of his advice useful, however. I had a minor problem with my big toe and I had managed to locate some ibuprofen in Shanghai but the inflammation continued after the pills were exhausted.

"Definitely gout," said the New Zealander, despite my protestations that I had not indulged in alcohol on the trip, and so I set off to see the Chinese doctor on the cruise ship who proscribed ibuprofen and a massage.

"You might as well treat yourself to a massage in China where at least they have a massage culture," my wife suggested.

That evening, I found myself having my big toe massaged and my groin prodded. Then this little Chinaman turned me on my side, climbed up on the bed, placed his toes firmly into my calf and started bouncing up and down on it.

This went on for some time and I reflected on characters in Galsworthy, Trollope, Dickens and history who were plagued by gout but did not find the necessity of having a Chinaman bouncing on their calf.

I suppose, it would have been a dead give-away, had they been so spotted, with a Chinaman perched above them, and a wisecrack would have been forthcoming such as: "Been over-indulging in the port again, Bishop?"

The fact is my toe improved after two massages and did not trouble me again.

The cruise was coming towards an end. Irma Krebbs, the gravel-voiced woman who sounded Russian-German, would constantly come on the speaker in our cabin, clearing her throat to remind us that this or that was going on in the Yangtze Club on deck four. I imagined she had been working for the KGB in a Russian coal-mining community and been give this posting as a sinecure but, in reality, her life was almost as bizarre. She was a Swiss-German who lived in Florida and worked the season in China.

One evening, there was some bunting adorning the ceiling of the dining room and, at the end of dinner, Irma rose to her feet, cleared her throat and pointed to the bunting.

"Dis is dare for a reason," she informed us, explaining that two on board were celebrating their birthday that night.

"De vurst is Oliver Phil-eeeps," she announced and I nodded in confusion and embarrassment at the loud applause.

I was given a birthday cake with candles and there was still more clapping all round. My wife denied involvement and eventually we deduced they had made their announcement on the basis of a passport inspection when first reporting for the cruise.

It was confusing because it was not actually my birthday, for that had occurred nine days earlier but I was later told, by those who know China well, that I was wise in not protesting my innocence publicly because it would have caused "massive loss of face for the staff".

Loss of face is to be avoided at all costs, in every walk of life in China, not least in politics. For instance, while we celebrate the escape of a warship in the Yangtze Incident, the Chinese say it signalled the end of gunboat diplomacy.

I suspect it is a similar situation with Chairman Mao. He proved himself an able and inventive general, and a good walker to boot, achieving "liberation" in 1949 and founding the People's Republic, but while I am told his theories based on "Karl Marx with Chinese Characteristics", are laudable, in practice he was a disaster.

Collectivism did not work, his Great Leap Forward resulted in the worst famine in recorded history with 30 to 45 million dying, and the subsequent calamity of the Cultural Revolution, which brought poverty and heartbreak to so many families, suggests he found it easier to overthrow a regime than run one successfully.

I am not a lover of totalitarian, repressive regimes so accept my viewpoint may be coloured. It is also true to say you cannot simplify or sum up a political career in a few sentences but, as you may deduce, I am not an admirer of Chairman Mao, whose statues are to be found in every city. However, even the Chinese have been educated now to understand The Infallible One was in fact only 70 per cent right and 30 per cent wrong.

I should imagine it is the first step towards accepting the fact that revered Mao was at best incompetent, by firstly absorbing the official version that he made a few mistakes, so mitigating the loss of face at discovering they had been led by a dumbo for years.

Another of his errors was to encourage the Chinese to breed like rabbits in order to provide future soldiers a policy that is now in hard reverse with all couples limited to one child and fined if they have more.

This in turn may reduce the population but China now faces the Little Emperor Syndrome, in that the country will soon be populated by young men and women who have been spoilt and indulged as the only child.

Whereas they keep knocking out children and paying the fines in farming communities in the hope of having a boy to carry on the work, in cities, girls are proving popular babies.

This is because the established custom is for the man to support his parents and in-laws in their old age, but with so many only children, the essential Chinese collectivism of family units may be put further in jeopardy in the future.

In this respect, I enjoyed reading of an American Peace Corps teacher who would frequently refer to the fact Mao was 67 per cent right or that he was 35 per cent wrong, in order to see the hands shoot up.

He would be corrected by the students who know the proportions are official and learned by rote: 70 per cent right and 30 per cent wrong.