‘Is it really?’ Danny asked innocently, eager to learn from these old-timers’ experience.
‘For sure,’ Sandy replied, ‘it stops you from ever getting there!’
That evening Jack took us through a recognizably ‘downtown’ area of Peking where there was a certain amount of night life, and turned into a theatre where we were to see a show of acrobats. The theatre was shabby and so was the audience; the sets were grubby, the costumes worn and tatty – holes in the tights and missing sequins – the music and lighting were hamfisted, the magicians were embarrassing with their transparent tricks … Against this shoddy and cut-rate backdrop shone an incomparable display of dance-juggling-contortion-tumbling-gymnastics.
We sat transfixed, hooked to every impossible development. Allen Fyffe reflected that if these near-children ever took up rock climbing, they’d be tackling 6b routes inside a week. The acrobats had that ideal combination of strength, balance, muscular control, nerve and absolute concentration. Like climbing at its most extreme, what we saw transcended the physical and became pure expression, devoid of practical value. In the finale, the whole troupe built a pyramid of themselves, an inverted pyramid resting on one person’s headstand on a chair tilted back on two legs, each branching out higher on each other’s legs, arms, shoulders, heads, backs … If we were to climb our mountain, that is the way it would be done.
Bob So far China has made a very good impression on me, and I found the fantastic, relaxed ability of the acrobats to be inspiring in its accomplishment. At first sight this does seem to be a much more equal society than Western or other Asian ones – there seems to be no grinding poverty, and if there are fat cats then the material signs of them are few. The people are obviously worked hard, but the cheerfulness and tranquillity that is seen in many faces, and the wonderful performances of tonight, make it hard to accept that they are really crushed under the iron heel of socialism!
Next morning we boarded a four-propellered Ilyushin to fly across China to Chengdu, the capital of Szechuan province in southern China. It was a bright, sunny morning and the Expedition was in high spirits. Mal as usual appeared immersed in a book, but was taking in the feel of the conversation round him: anecdotes, jokes, teasing, planning, discussion – yes, we were beginning to pull together. You can’t force people to become a team, only let them. He’d keep a low profile as long as possible. What worried him more were the fragile logistics of the minimal oxygen plan …
Through much of the Expedition, Mal will be reading, lying in his tent, or sitting smoking with his headphones on. And though he will seldom show it except by a now habitual crease across his forehead, there is scarcely a minute when he is not thinking, anticipating, calculating, worrying. He is ageing several years in the course of a few months.
The Szechuan countryside round Chengdu was a mild, green world of order and fertility. Flat fields of rice, rape, beans, lettuce, divided by irrigation channels, hedges and trees. Half-timbered, almost Elizabethan farmhouses hid in clumps of willows; piglets, hens, ducks and goats scratched in the yards. Poplar trees lined the road to Chengdu, where children waited for the bus home from school. There were little outdoor cafés in village squares, old faces placid behind cigarettes, young men playing badminton in a farmyard, two neighbours leaning to talk over a hedge, mothers cycling leisurely home with babies strapped to their shoulders, rosy-cheeked children standing on the saddles behind their fathers. After the winter bleakness round Peking, this seemed a land where it was always spring. An idyll glimpsed from a bus window, of an ordered, organic, peace-filled rural world that was at once lovely and unlikely in the late afternoon haze and mellow setting sun.
Jon looked for the credits to Hornby Model Railways; Bob with his leftish sympathies was gratified by this vision of human, tranquil well-being.
Entering Chengdu at twilight, and more acres of building sites where hundreds of men and women worked with pick and shovel, mixed concrete by hand, excavated earth in baskets on their backs. Stone masons straddled blocks of grey stone, we could see the hammers rise and fall and straight lines emerge from shapeless rock. ‘These are serious people,’ Sandy commented. Serious but not solemn as they remake, reshape this vast country. They work steadily, patiently, often 10 hours a day on a six-day week. They have an absolute guarantee of work, housing, education and medical care; when they retire, their pension will be paid in full by the State. We laugh because their Western-style clothes, shops, buildings, technology are 30 years behind us, but deep down we’re impressed and slightly intimidated by their sense of common purpose.
The downtown centre is lively with small private stalls selling furniture and books, food and toys and clothes. Our hotel is at once swish and half-built. We walk along a gangway in mid-air to enter the plush hangar of a dining room. Acrylic blankets, plastic table lamps, Bakelite telephones, the ubiquitous rose-painted vacuum flasks of boiling water, the tea caddy and handleless cups, pastel-coloured Formica. Across the street, near the only statue of Mao we’ve seen so far, is an empty lot scheduled for building more workers’ apartments and hotels. In it stands a 100-foot-high sculpture in white concrete, in a pure Art Nouveau style: perched on the rim of a colossal wheel, as on the lip of a breaking wave, a man and a woman gaze heroically forward, one hand shading the eyes.
‘What’s that about?’ Sandy asks at my elbow.
‘The future, I should think.’
We stand on the balcony as the light fades. Old-fashioned dance music is playing somewhere, two watchfires are burning the last of the rubbish in the empty lot. The flames light the statue and their smoke obscures it. Here they believe in the future. They believe in it so much they may make it come true, like Malcolm’s expedition. But our sense of purpose extends only to our personal lives and this self-created drama we’re entering. That is how it feels as Sandy and I stand silently in the cool night air until the fires burn down and Jack calls us for the evening meal.
The food that night was more unagreeable than usual, and featured as its highlight ‘1,000-year-old eggs’. ‘So what’s this egg like?’ Allen asked.
‘Um … indescribable,’ Jon replied.
‘That’s not what I wanted to know,’ Allen returned firmly, pushing back his cap.
‘Well, that’s all I can tell you, mate,’ Jon volleyed back, then added ‘In climbing terms you could describe it as “interesting”.’
But Allen had been playing these games for years. ‘You mean, at the limit of your abilities,’ he retorted with just enough stress on ‘your’ to make and win the point, and just enough humour for it to be conceded with honour. For once Jon had no reply and could only shake his head and laugh. It looked as though he’d finally met his match in verbal sparring, and his respect increased for Old Man Fyffe – not that that would stop him from trying again later.
Mal was unwinding in the short break between his responsibilities in Peking and in Lhasa. When after three Green Leaf beers he picked up and swallowed whole a brown putrified egg, it signalled the beginning of a Session. The tired and sensible began to drift away. ‘Get it down your necks!’ Jon urged the remainder. He was in high good humour, the good-time ringleader, drinking and partying late at every opportunity. ‘Well, when there’s this many climbers, you don’t feel the same responsibility and pressure on you to perform.’
That night, after a few more beers were downed, Jon told Mal that he and Tony had agreed that their likely role on this expedition would be that of early revvers who would probably burn out quite quickly. This fatalistic attitude upset Malcolm. ‘Look, Jon, if you’re smart enough to realize you might rev early on and burn out, why not be smart enough not to?’
‘That’s just the way we are mate. We’ll do our bit and then others can take over.’ The argument heated up, with Liz, Andy Nisbet and myself as spectators. Liz was tense in empathy with Mal; Andy knew he was of necessity of the ‘slowly-slowly’ school and wondered if he’d be able to make