AIRMAIL - HONG KONG DIARY:

One toke over the line, sweet Jesus,

One toke over the line

Sittin' downtown in a railway station,

One toke over the line

Waitin' for the train that goes home, sweet Mary,

Hoping that the train is on time

Sittin' downtown in a railway station,

One toke over the line...

Recently, your profiteering Professor found himself in a brand-spanking new but deserted train station in Southern China’s Fujian Province. The just-completed station on a brand new bullet train line serves as the southern terminus for a route between Xiamen and Fuzhou, two medium-sized cities of about five million souls each.

This was an unscheduled stop, a detour in an otherwise tight travel business itinerary wherein a missed connection can cause a cascade of scrambling moves down the road. In this case, my flight from Hong Kong to Xiamen was sufficiently delayed to cause me to miss a van pick-up for transit to a meeting with clients in Quangzhou, a small city of about two million souls at midpoint of the bullet train line.

When my flight finally arrived at Xiamen airport, I flagged a cab, thrust a note toward the driver with ‘bullet train’ scribbled in Mandarin characters by the airport help-desk staff and sped across town to the station. There, I purchased a US$3.25 one-way ticket for an 83-km train trip and settled down with a snack to wait 3-hours in the cavernous second-floor ‘Waiting Area’ for a 21-minute transit.

Now, three hours of quality waiting in a brand-new Waiting Area should provide ample time for reflection on yet another China trip nearing its merciful end, once the can’t-miss meeting in Quangzhou took place. And I must admit I was curious about the bullet train experience, so I began to imagine myself falling into some sort of iron-horse reverie of anticipation.

Alas, reflection is a rare commodity in China today, especially on my various profiteering trips. And sure enough,there was an acrid stench to the air that drove from my mind all thoughts of anything but the local near-beer (‘Sedrin’) and the soy-coated peanuts (‘Thundernuts!’) that were, at that very moment, locked in mortal combat for bragging rights to hegemony over my digestive tract.

The source of this malodorous stench: A toothless worker in peasant PJ’s and sandals was darting through the station with a coffee can and a bristle brush, slapping industrial-strength grout – most likely tar, by the smell - onto the shiny new mullions that girded the hall. A dab here, a broad stroke there, tarry top notes everywhere. The station, designed after a typical Fujian province country house except with really big windows and seating for thousands, was clearly brand new but clearly not quite completed. Was this scheduled maintenance, or a long-overdue final touch? And was it the fumes from the unholy admixture in that coffee can that kept a permanent grin on my buddy’s face? If so, perhaps I should have scored a toke or two.

Did I mention that the brand new station was built smack-dab against a stone quarry, replete with cranes and other heavy earth-moving equipment? There was a constant low background rumble punctuated by occasional explosions while open fires and rock fissures spewed smoke and primordial gases enough to rival that grout.

I should further mention that I was, at times, the only person waiting in a Waiting Area designed to accommodate up to 40,000 travelers a day during China’s peak holidays such as New Year, National Day and Autumn Festival. Oh, every so often an ancient nai-nai would appear with a slack-jawed grandchild to gape at the vaulted ceiling buttressed by brushed aluminum totems of Chinese technology – oh those mullions! – and to themselves no doubt muse on the current state of public transit in China, not that they were going anywhere in particular on that day. They were there just for the vicarious experience, much as Americans would go to the airport back in the day to watch takeoffs and landings. And as a special bonus, they got to watch a disgruntled guilo, aka me, glumly toss Thundernuts! down his gullet as he eyed the Departures board with dwindling confidence. Yes, it was a fine day indeed to visit a new train station.

So there I jolly well was, wasn’t I? And why? Just as it was back in the Stone Age at the very dawn of profiteering, I was chasing after the great herds for sustenance – in this case a group of buyers who had made the elusive van connection and gone on ahead of me. And the prospect of a sales meeting between buyer and supplier without Professor’s guiding hand? The proverbial Kiss of Death, at least to my share of the deal. Sans moi: mort subite. That’s French for ‘No way, Jose’. So there I dutifully waited three hours for a 21-minute hurtle past houses, farms and fields at 250-km/hour to Quangzhou, City of Polyresin.

China’s cluster industry phenomenon is in full display in Quangzhou, once described by Marco Polo as the greatest port in the world and a frequent embarkation point for Zheng He, the famed eunuch commander of China’s 14^th century Treasure Fleet. Ships from India, Africa, the Malays - and some say beyond - routinely docked there.

Details are murky about what transpired after Marco returned to Venice, but in the late 20^th century Quangzhou (pronounced Chen-Joe) embraced the production of polyresin figurines, statuary and other giftware as an outgrowth of a long-standing tradition of stone carving and porcelainware molding. Today, the grit of stone powder and sanded resin dust is almost palpable in the air all around town, which, for modern China, is a reasonably well laid-out affair with some rarely seen tree-lined streets. There is even some global retail presence, with the likes of Polo (Ralph, not Marco) and Aquascutum on offer. Or so the signs say.

But as ever in China, aspiration eventually meets reality. I stepped off the bullet train onto a gleaming platform and into a labyrinthine series of gleaming Waiting Areas (also empty) that led me, finally, outside and into the sweaty embrace of your basic third-world transportation system: dozens of cabbies. In full throat they shouted for the attention of the arriving train’s sole guilo as they jostled me and jockeyed for position. I took a vice grip to my baggage and gathered it around me, and did what any guilo does, all over the globe: I shouted back.

I began to bellow ‘Chen-Joe Hotel!’ into the crowd that now swarmed around me in a ragged circle, until one enterprising hack finally stepped forward and, with meaningful eye contact, repeated my cry. We did a comical call-and-response – ‘Chen-Joe Hotel? Chen-Joe Hotel!’ – along with some pantomime to rival Marcel Marceau (or at least Harpo Marx) until we developed the necessary level of trust needed to enter into an agreement over a US$4.50 cab fare. Under my watchful eye went my bags into the cab’s trunk, and into the cab’s fetid back seat went I.

Dear reader, need I tell you that my plucky hack had no idea what I had been saying, or if he did he had no clue as to the Quangzhou Hotel’s location? No, I don’t, and no, he didn’t. Forget that said august hostelry is a landmark property situated at the very center of town. Then again, who knows how ‘hotel’ plays out in Mandarin? For all I know, it meant ‘pull-over-and-call-a-friend-for-directions’, which is exactly what he did. As he shouted into his mobile phone, two old women materialized from the darkness of a deserted streetscape to gawk at the guilo in the back seat of a cab stopped at random alongside their favorite spot to squat and watch traffic. What fun, and such good fortune! I gave a courtly wave, but kept the window rolled up.

I finally called my English-speaking contact with whom I was to meet the next day, himself on the last leg of a 950-km bus trip back to Quangzhou for the meeting. All was finally resolved, and I was delivered to the hotel minutes later. So in the space of one very long day, I had traveled from a current global nexus (Hong Kong) to a faded former version of itself, in all possible manner of conveyance (save rickshaw) including a bullet train that seemed to take me back in time at 250-km/hour. And said bullet train ride cost less and took less time than a meandering taxi fare.

A great man once mused: ‘How can you be in two places at once, when you’re really nowhere at all?’ How can China have (this just in) the world’s second-largest economy and retain so many vestiges of still-developing countries?

The disconnect between old and new within China is vast, as it is between China and its neighbors, friends, enemies and trading partners. But it is as if this great lurching puzzle of a country is of such astonishing scale that its sheer mass drags the past along with its present into the future. Bullet trains notwithstanding, the peasant still works with coffee can and bristle brush. And the Emperor still looks on, if in different clothes. And monuments are still erected to celebrate the essential value of Chinese culture, be they dams and train stations to move the masses or forbidding cities and great walls to hold back the hordes.

The western mind reels trying to grasp for logic in the face of the stunning dichotomies present in China. And that grout. Both mind and stomach are still reeling, but oh! - those mullions!

Who do you love?

I hope it's me

I've been changing, as you can plainly see

I felt the joy and I learned about the pain

that my mama said

If I should choose to make it part of me

Would surely strike me dead, and now I'm

One toke over the line, sweet Jesus,

One toke over the line

Sittin' downtown in a railway station,

One toke over the line

Waitin' for the train that goes home, sweet Mary,

Hoping that the train is on time

Sittin' downtown in a railway station,

One toke over the line.

Michael Brewer, Thomas Shipley