Part 2 - Running Into the Great Wall by Ken Kesey (continued) Part 1 | Home | '81 Races
Without slackening his stride, Yang pushed the book into his trouser tops and buttoned his Chou En-lai jacket over it. Not that the uncle would not know it was there, of course. He almost certainly would. Therefore it was not that he was concealing it, Yang told himself. He carried it in his belt, under his shirt, to have both hands free, for his balance. For his sprint.
Fists clenched, he pumped hard against the descending gloom, trusting the memory of his feet to avoid the rocks and ruts in the dark path. He could have run it -blindfolded, he felt, and never tripped, and even calculated his position by the sounds and smells-Gao Jian's machine sewing there to the left; Xiong-and-son's honey wagons parked in reeking rows, ready for the next day's collections; half-wit Wi snoring with his sows ... He ran harder.
He was small for his 19 years, with narrow sloping shoulders and hips, and thin, long ankles and wrists. But his thighs were thick and blocky and his upper arms very strong from the weight work at wrestling. Beneath the book his belly was as hard as a slab of carved oak. He was in good shape. He had been running home from school every night for almost four years.
With a final burst of speed he ducked beneath the curtain of acacia and into the yard of his uncle's shop. He stumbled to a stop in wide-eyed wonderment. Everything was still lit! The whole house! He gaped in surprise. Even the bulb above the false teeth-still lit! A sudden, sharp cramp spurred him into a dash again. Something had happened to his mother! Or one of his sisters! He didn't go to the gate but hurdled the mudhedge and rattled across the brick pile in a strangle of anxiety. He charged through the door and the empty front room, and stopped at last at the curtain across the kitchen. Shaking, he pulled aside the dingy batik and peered inside. Everyone was still at the dinner table, the chopsticks clean beside the best plates, the vegetables and rice still steaming in the platters. Yang blinked. Every head was already turned to him, smiling. His uncle stood, a tiny glass of clear liquid in each hand. He offered one to Yang and lifted his in toast:
"To our little Yang," his uncle declared, the big mouth beaming porcelain pride, "Ganbei!"
Everyone except Yang tossed the swallow of liquid into their mouths. He could only stand blinking as the girls tittered and the boys grinned. His mother came around the table, her eyes shining.
"Yang ... son, forgive us. We have opened your letter."
She handed him an elaborately inscribed paper with the official seal of the People's Republic embossed at the bottom.
"You have been invited to go to Beijing and race. Against runners from all over the world . . . "
Before Yang could look at his letter his uncle had refilled his own empty glass with the last of an extravagant bottle of Mao tai and was touching its rim to Yang's. "It is going to be televised by the Japanese. It will be seen all over the world and China. By millions and millions. "Ganbei!"
Yang started to drink then lowered the glass. "What kind of race?"
"The greatest kind. The longest kind-"
That must be a marathon, Yang realized. A marathon. He swallowed the strong rice liquor and felt it blaze its way past his lungs to his stomach. He had never ran a marathon, not even half a marathon. How had they picked him?
"All over the world," his uncle was saying. "'By millions and millions-!"
"Your father would have been so proud," his mother added.
Then Yang understood. The provincial chairman of sports had been a friend and colleague of his father; an old friend, and a man of honor and loyalty, if not too much courage. It was surely he that had recommended young Yang. A kind of compensation, a clean-up for things that had happened.
"He would have gone to the square and played his violin for the citizens, Yang. He would have been that proud."
Yang didn't say so but he thought that it would certainly take more than a televised footrace.
When the best student hears about
the way
He practices it assiduously;
When the average student hears about the way
It seems to him one moment there and gone the next;
When the worst student hears about the way
He laughs out loud.
If he did not laugh
It would not be worthy of being the way.
"The building housed his uncle's
denture-and-cycle repair service, as
well as his uncle's wife and their four
children, his uncle's wife's ancient
father, and Yang's mother
and three sisters."
"For decades, China has been so
shielded, so secretive, that the rest of
the world has not been able to find a
foible or flaw to hook a joke on."
The American journalists sipped their free drinks in the high rent, too low, bent double, nearly gagging, deep throat divans of the Pan American Clipper Club room, an exclusive lounge located above the lesser travelers of the San Francisco International Airport terminal Exclusive indeed. Not only did one need to know of its esteemed existence and whereabouts, one needed as well to produce evidence of acceptable prestige before gaining entry. While the journalists were not exactly first class, they were in the company of those who were. This was enough to get them to the secret door, past the doorman and into the free booze, deep divans and business chat.
"How do you visualize," a business chatter insisted on knowing, "hanging this gig on a hook? ... so it is not just another report of another dumb road race? I mean to ask what are you looking for?"
The chatter was a ranking businessman in the business that was backing the magazine that was paying for this journalistic jaunt to China, so everyone acknowledged his right to be a trifle insistent.
"The hook I have in mind," answered the first of the journalists, a large, athletic type who sported a neat beard and was the editor of said mag as well as originator of the' jaunt and felt, therefore, obliged; "is sport as d'et'ente. Remember, it wasn't really Nixon or Kissinger who initially broke through the bamboo curtain; it was the Ping-Pong ball. Who can distrust a Ping-Pong ball? This race, I believe, is intended to be an even bigger display of d'et'ente; the first international sporting event in China since before World War 11. To me, that has real meaning ...
Meaning, he really had no idea at all what to hang it on. Something had to be said, though, and while the ranking executive did have a right to ask, the right to actually know was something else.
The editor was reminded of a statement of Arthur Miller's he had read in preparation for this trip; after an extensive examination of current Chinese thought and climate and demographics, the great American playwright had concluded, "Anyone who thinks he understands China is a fool."
The second journalist, even larger than the first, allowed that he thought his angle on the event would be-he stopped, muscled his brow and lifted his eyes in a Brandoesque attitude of heavy consideration.
"Let me think a minute," he begged. He turned to the third man. "What about you, Brian? You're the photog of the team; you must have an angle in mind?"
The third American journalist was the largest of all-absolutely enormous, with big hips and big shoulders and big blue eyes, and an even more monstrous camera hanging over his belly. The device had a bulky automatic film roller on the bottom and an automatic light meter on the top that resembled an airscoop on the hood of a souped-up four-barrel Chevy drag wagon. The lens looked like something Hitler had ordered built to shell the British across the channel.
"Of course I can't really take any point pictures until my editor and writer come up with something to make a point with, can IT' was the way the third journalist avoided the question. "I can tell you this, though: I will not be a quote tourist unquote. There have been enough shots of pagodas and temples and lotus ponds to paper the Great Wall. I plan to avoid that. I want to get right into the kernel of the people and their everyday lives. Who they are, what they feel, where they shit and how they shave. The Chinese nitty glitty, that's what I'm looking for."