A Brief Introduction to the Lost River

It took me four months to finish the first draft. I have no reason to write so fast. No contract, no deadline to rush me. I could have taken my time and enjoyed my long-lost American life. But every day, I start writing early and collect late. Memory drives me to speed up my writing, because I am worried that I will lose the immediacy of life in Fuling. In addition, the future also drives me: I want to record my impression of a city that is about to face great changes.

In the past twenty years, this sense of change-persistent, relentless and overwhelming-has always been the characteristic of China. It's hard to believe that China once gave people the opposite impression: according to Leopold von Ranke, a German historian in the19th century, China is a "nation that will never stagnate". Now, this is the most incorrect statement. One of the challenges faced by writers is that the pen can't keep up with the pace of change. On the first page of "The Lost River", I wrote:

Fuling has no railways and has always been a poor place in Sichuan Province, with poor road conditions. If you want to go anywhere, you can only take a boat, but you probably won't go anywhere.

However, when this book was published in 200 1 year, a highway leading to Chongqing had been built, almost no one went to Fuling by boat along the Yangtze River, and a railway trunk line was under construction. Fuling is thriving, and immigrants from low-lying towns that will eventually be submerged by the Three Gorges Dam have stimulated its development. Huang Jia, the operator of the small noodle restaurant where I used to eat, has opened an Internet cafe. The students I have taught are scattered all over the country: Tibet, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Wenzhou. But-a never-ending book-did not mention this.

1999 After I returned to China in the spring, I went to Fuling at least once a year. Thanks to the expressway, it is much easier to go to Fuling now than before. My new life as a writer in Beijing enables me to travel freely. I often go to Fuling and then go down the Yangtze River to the core of the Three Gorges.

In the two years since I joined the Peace Corps, the Three Gorges Dam seems to have been an abstract concept, a vague promise and a distant threat. But every time I go back, it becomes more specific. By 2002, the immigrant cities had made great progress, and the landscape was clearly divided into the past and the future. Near the river bank, there are almost no signs of improvement in ancient riverside towns and villages. Although other parts of China are being built at the same time, it is meaningless to build anything where the river is bound to rise. The authorities allowed these low-lying towns and villages to decline until everything was abandoned: broken bricks, dirty tiles and dusty streets. The doomed town contrasts with the new town, which is made of cement white tiles and stands high on the hill above the river. Whenever I take a boat to the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, I can see at a glance the evolution history of landforms in a series of horizontal banded structures: dark villages along the Yangtze River belong to the past, sections of green farmland that will be submerged by reservoirs, and clusters of white buildings looking forward to the future above.

My last trip before the completion of the dam was in the autumn of 2002. A friend and I took tents and sleeping bags and hiked along the ancient road dug on the cliff by the river nearly a hundred years ago. The weather is fine and the scenery on the road is breathtaking. Sometimes we are high above, and our cliff falls vertically into the river below 30 meters. Every time I walk, I think: this will be the last time I see this path.

We are heading for the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, and we are in no hurry. After walking on the path for a week, we visited the riverside town that was being demolished. Wushan, the old city, has just been demolished. I walked in the ruins, and scavengers picked up anything that could be sold: bricks and wires, grass and wood, nails and window frames. A group of people gathered around a bonfire, surrounded by a building of broken walls. Then, I recognized a half-ruined sign: they camped in the lobby of Hongqi Hotel, where I 1997 lived when I first went to the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

All my favorite riverside towns are in different stages of destruction. The big factory has disappeared by a quarter, Peicheng has only left memories, and Daxi has entered history. Sometimes, I pass by a village after being searched by scavengers. In silence, I looked at everything left behind. In Daxi, I saw a framed photo of Mount Fuji with a large cherry blossom in the foreground. In the Qing Dynasty, I passed a red chair with a thick cushion, an old basketball frame and a broken stone tablet, the inscription on which was completed in the last century. A house with its roof and windows removed still has a bolted door. I bought mineral water from a couple in Peicheng. The temporary shed where they live is made entirely of selected doors and window frames. Maybe this is a Taoist riddle: what does it mean to live in a room made up of doors?

By Fuling, most of the old city has been demolished, the newly-built residential areas are crowded on the high hilltops, the huge dikes of the city are almost completed, and the teachers' college on the other side of the Wujiang River is expanding and changing. Retired veteran cadres, new cadres are more open to foreigners. A few years ago, when Adam and I arrived in Fuling, Albert, the first friendly young man who greeted us, is now the head of the English Department. When I visited him in his office, he took out the hardcover book I gave to the school a year ago.

"You can see that many people have read this book," he said. The cover of the book has been damaged and covered with tea stains; The upturned corner has been difficult to flatten, and the fingers turning over the book have left dirty gray marks. In my hand, this book looks heavy, like a handmade product. How can I possibly write a book that looks so old?

To some extent, the pace of change seems to make it easier for local people to accept this book, because the world described in this book has become very far away. My Chinese tutor, Kong Ming, finished reading this book in the summer vacation because he didn't speak English very well, and read it word by word with a dictionary. He told me that he smiled when he read many parts that evoked good memories. During my visit to Fuling, when school officials hosted a banquet for me in a local restaurant, they made fun of my description of the old banquet. "We don't want you to drink too much!" A cadre said, "You mentioned in the book that we forced you to drink too much."

"It's not a big problem," I said.

"Of course we don't want to do that again!" Another cadre said. But another man interrupted him. "Would you like some more white wine?"

In those days, I wandered around the city and visited my old friends. At the bank, I stopped to see Qian, who was the only beautiful young woman I "dated" when I lived in Fuling. It was a short episode, because after dating for an hour, I found out that she was married. Now that she has a two-year-old child, she said something that I will definitely say every time I go back to Fuling.

"You don't recognize me?" She asked, "I am much fatter than before."

I said, "You look exactly the same as before."

A character in the book has become fat. What should the author do? "You look fine," I said, and then I said nothing more.

When the first phase of the Three Gorges Dam was completed, the gate was finally closed and I returned to Wushan. It was in June 2003, in the library, I published an article describing a family's reaction to the rising of the river. They waited as long as possible to harvest vegetables before the river rose.

July 2003.

At six o'clock in the evening, Zhou finally moved the TV, a desk, two tables and five chairs to the pumpkin patch by the roadside. I set up a brick column by the river. On the new Wushan map, this water area is called Dihu Lake. However, these maps were printed before the appearance of lakes. In fact, the water is muddy brown, and the so-called lake is actually an entrance to the Yangtze River. In the past week, this entrance rose behind the Three Gorges Dam. The next time Zhou Ji 'en came out of his bamboo shed, he carried a wooden cabinet on his back. He is a short man with a beautiful wife and two young daughters. Until recently, they lived in Longmen village. This village is not on the new map. Next, a friend of Zhou introduced Zhou's battery clock. Like my watch, the clock says six thirty-five. The water around the brick column has risen by five centimeters.

Watching the river rise is like tracking the progress of the short hand of a clock: it is almost imperceptible. There is no visible water flow, no rushing sound, but every hour, the water rises15cm. This change seems to come from the inside, and to some extent, it is a mystery to every activity on the shrinking river bank. Beetles, ants and centipedes radiate from the river in droves. After the water surrounded the brick column, a group of insects frantically climbed to the top of the main column and fled desperately when their island was flooded.

For more than a week, water has been rising at the rate of15cm per hour. These details attracted me until I adjusted the focal length of the camera and reduced the lens: I watched the bugs on the brick column for minutes. When it was all over, I boarded the boat and left Wushan. The river has turned into a lake.

I haven't been back since. This is not my plan, and I'm not sure why I postponed it. Maybe it's because I want to finish my second book, but I'm worried that revisiting my old place will distract me. Or, maybe the invariance of the Three Gorges Dam makes me feel sad.

However, I can see the danger of nostalgia for a foreign country, especially when this place was once called the hometown of a "forever stagnant nation". If you feel sad when you see a landscape that has changed beyond recognition, then you will feel even more sad when you stay in a place that will not change. My former student William? Jefferson? After graduation, Foster left his remote hometown. Like more than 100 million farmers in China, he became a migrant worker. He went to a prosperous city on the east coast and became an English teacher in a private school. One year, after visiting his parents on holiday, he wrote me a letter about his hometown. William's generation has almost gone, and his village looks lifeless.

Back home, everything is the same, the road is still bumpy, and people are getting old. I feel very sad because I can't find any acquaintances or friends I used to know.

For most people in China, if they don't choose frequent changes, they can only choose poverty, bad roads and slow boats. As a foreigner, I learned to love Fuling from 1996 to 1998, so I am grateful for the opportunity to leave records in those two years, and I miss the place I know very much. But I am also grateful, because most Fuling people are very optimistic about the future. It will be a pleasure to sail on the Yangtze River again, although the ancient river has become a memory.

-2005 10 in Beijing