Three of us went to Moscow: Da Sun, Huang the interpreter and I. The reason Da Sun took me instead of Da Li to the trip was, probably, that he needed a lackey for his stay in Moscow, and Da Li, although a very shrewd and able businessman, was not a good candidate for that role. We took the train from Beijing to Moscow. It was a one-week ride.
The train consisted of many four-person compartments. Outside the compartments was a hallway. We stayed in one such compartment in the train. The forth guy was from Beijing, portly, eloquent, and easy to get along with. He was obviously one of those that were called Dao Ye, which was just a derogatory term for businessmen. He had two huge bags, each more than a meter high and half a meter wide. He was shouldering one of them on his back, and pulling the other along when he first stepped into the compartment.
With a been-there, done-that air he carried himself around. He had a very definitive opinion of the things in the world, and he felt very good about what he was doing.
He said, “I make good money doing what I do. I don’t want to go to America, just to stoop my body and perch my ass in the air to wash the dishes for Americans.”
At midnight at the border of China and Mongolia the train stopped. We had to get off the train because they needed to change the wheels. The Chinese and Russian trains ran on a different gauge of track and required wheels of different size. We spent a few hours in the small station. But we were not bored. This well-lighted station was quite something. There were so many Chinese peddlers. They hawked around enthusiastically their clothes, gifts, food and drinks. You had to stand close to a peddler to hear what he was saying: it was so noisy. We met a very young and cute Chinese girl who, with a band on her neck, carried a big box of beers on her abdomen. She sold us some beer, and ran to other passengers as soon as we paid. She seemed to be excited, and determined to cash in on this late night crowd. I felt sorry for her. She should be having a sweet dream in her bed at home at this time, such a young and pretty girl that she was.
Ours was a very long ride. At daytime we saw endless forest of birches. Russia is a country of birches, as much as Canada is one of maples. In the evening the four of us played poker before we went to sleep.
The Beijing guy and I were smoking cigarettes at the joint of two cars. He told me that he had been on many trips to Russia and he had been selling Chinese-made leather jackets to the Russians.
He said, “The Russian police are really bad. They will stop you and search you and your bags for no reason. They will mess up all your stuff. You have to give them some money to be left alone.”
There were many stops on our way to Moscow. Right before a stop the Beijing guy warned us to put our money and passport in a safe place. He said, “Some Russian thieves might get on the train and steal your stuff, and some desperate ones might rob you at knife point.” I was not worried about being stolen: I had my passport in the pocket of my shirt, and a few hundred dollars in a pocket on my boxers. During the 20 minutes stop, some Russian peddlers stopped by our compartment to sell some food and drink. They seemed sullen and depressed. I thought about their happy and excited Chinese counterparts in the border town.
There were some young Chinese in the train, four of them in the compartment next to ours. I talked to one of them in the hallway, a young girl who seemed to be of the type that finished high school but failed the college entrance exam. She told me that they were language students. They were going to study Russian in Moscow. They were would-be interpreters. There was a tremendous need of Russian interpreters because of the booming Sino-Russian trade.
Our poker game was interrupted one evening by some knocks on the door of our compartment. It was the conductor, with a guy in police uniform. They needed to inspect our compartment and our luggage. The conductor pointed to the Beijing guy’s two huge bags, and declared that they seemed to be overweight. The Beijing guy said he was willing to pay a fine, and handed some money to the conductor. The conductor and the police left.
One day when we were looking out of the window, the vista suddenly changed from mountains and plains adorned by birches to something breathtakingly huge, pure, majestic and boundless. It was Lake Baikal. It was all iced over. The shining surface was imposing and awe-inspiring. Tears were coming to my eyes when the white, reticent and noble lake under the blue, clean and clear sky flashed by. The image of me lying inside the freight car, under the canvas, in the dark, on top of boxes of apples suddendly came to my mind. How trifling and ignoble my life is!
The Russian economy was in a dismal shape in 1993. When we arrived in Moscow, one US dollar can be exchanged for 700 Rubles. When we left a few months later it was 900 Rubles for a dollar. There were long lines of people waiting in front of the bread stores. The Russian breads were different from Chinese ones: some bread was as long as your arm. There were many kiosks selling stuff on the sidewalk. When I stopped by some kiosks to buy cigarettes, the sellers asked me to pay with US dollars. They had no faith in their own money.
We lived in a building where many Chinese stayed, most of which were Chinese merchants selling clothes, shoes, and toys made in China. No kitchen was available in each individual apartment. There was in each floor one public kitchen where everybody cooked. I stayed in a two-bedroom apartment, with two guys in each bedroom. Da Sun and Huang stayed in one bedroom; I stayed in the other with Qiu, a guy from northeastern China, one year younger than me. He sported a hairdo very popular among the unemployed young men in my hometown, almost bald on the side and the back, and on top of his head the hairs jutted out over his forehead. Sunglasses and trench coat were his favorite gears. When he got himself dressed up before he went out he reminded me of those mafia figures shooting out in Hong Kong movies. He was not going to gun down anyone though; he was going to sell clothes in the market with his uncle.
Many a day Da Sun and Huang went out on their business adventures. I would buy groceries and have dinner ready when they came back. I spent a lot of time with Qiu. One day Qiu said, “Brother, let me show you something really good.” He took out a magazine from under his mattress. It was a Russian porn magazine and it was the first porn magazine I had ever seen. On the cover was a nude woman on all fours, like a dog. She was all smiles, her mouth open, and her tongue protruded out. There were cum on her tongue. Qiu laughed and said, “Do you like it, big brother?” It left an indelible impression on my mind.
One evening I was reading A Farewell to Arms in the public kitchen. Qiu was watching TV in our bedroom, and I could not read there. A Chinese woman walked in to cook her dinner. Her name was Ling. She was a clothes merchant from Harbin.
Obviously she did not have much education. You can tell that from the way she talked. She was blunt talking, almost to the point of being rude, and not sophisticated in many matters. I liked her though, much more than those college-educated but disingenuous women. I went grocery shopping with her many times, because she could speak everyday Russian phrases, which I could not. She sold clothes in the market, and bargained with her Russian customers. As a buyer she did not mince bargaining words either: once she argued bravely with a Russian guy when we were buying his fish.
Qiu and Ling were off work one day, and they said they would show me around. I had not ventured far away from our apartment building. Downstairs I bought a pack of Marlboro with US dollars from a kiosk. When we were leaving the young Russian guy came out of the kiosk to talk to me- Ling acted as my interpreter. This guy took out a one hundred US dollar bill, and asked me to tell if it was real. I held the bill up against the sun, saw the watermark, and told him that it was real in my opinion. He thanked me.
“What made him think that I could detect counterfeit money?” I said.
“You are a rich guy, buying Marlboro with US dollars.” Ling said.
We took the Moscow metro to go to the Red Square. Some stations of the metro had very ornate designs of socialist themes. Many Russians in the metro car were reading, holding a book with one hand, and something else with the other hand to keep steady. They seemed a more civilized people than the Chinese I encountered in Beijing subway.
Unlike the Time Square in NYC, Red Square was a real square. On one side of the square was the Kremlin wall, above whose notches many towers stood, and at the foot of which there were many bronze plaques with names and small sculptures. Some prominent Soviet Russian figures were buried there. There was a granite structure against the Kremlin wall: it was Lenin’s tomb. Both the tomb and the Kremlin wall were red. There were many pines alongside the Kremlin wall overlooking the red square, and a few pines stood in front of Lenin’s tomb, which looked austere and monumental. We watched the honor guards changing shift. Each of them was wearing a blue uniform and black boots, left hand holding a rifle, right arm swayed wide, legs kicked into the air. It was quite something to behold.
Near the Kremlin wall was the beautiful Saint Basil’s Cathedral. It was located at the southeast end of Red Square, just across from the Spasskaya Tower of the Kremlin. Against the blue sky and the white clouds the bight-colored onion-domes looked so inviting and exotic, something I had only seen in a fairy tale picture.
Along the eastern side of Red Square, facing the Kremlin wall was the façade of a shopping mall area called Katai-gorod. We walked around in the mall. I fell in love with something immediately I saw it. It was a matryoshka doll, a set of dolls one inside another. It was so cute. For a few thousand Rubles I bought one for my parents. I thought about buying another one for Kate, but decided against it. The courage to buy her a gift I possessed not. I recalled the pain of taking my gift back from her hand and it made me shudder.
On our way back to the apartment building, Qiu proposed that we go see a movie. So we went to a cinema. The movie was called Emanuel, a soft porn movie with French dialogues and Russian subtitles, neither of which I understood. Neither did Qiu and Ling. They only knew some business vocabularies in Russian. But we all understood the actions in the movie. When we got out the movie, Qiu fondled his crotch area and said, “It is so hot today.”
Ling said, “Living abroad is plain good. You can’t see this kind of movie in a cinema in China.”
Calling home from Moscow was a big deal. There was nowhere to make an international call near our apartment building. I had to go to a 24-hour post office near Red Square to call my parents. There was a five-hour difference between Moscow and China. I called my family at 2 AM a few times, when it was 7 AM in China. On one of my nightly calling trips Qiu said he would go with me; he needed to call his family too. We left the apartment building at about 11 PM, and took the metro to Red Square. When we walked out of the metro station a guy was playing accordion at the exit, a hat at his feet with some coins in it.
When we got to the post office it was still early, so we decided to take a nightly tour of the Red Square. One our way we saw a Russian guy, mumbling and stumbling, with a wine bottle in his hand. He seemed to be engrossed in some serious debate with himself. He staggered by with an intense odor of vodka.
We walked on the Red Square. It seemed deserted: there were not many people in the square. Lights projected on them, the Kremlin towers and the Saint Basil’s Cathedral stood solemnly in the night, in the company of the towers of the State Historical Museum. The Ruby star on top of the Spasskaya tower was shining tenderly, warmly and quietly. I looked up to the beautiful thing under the sky. You are like my heart, lonely and ardent, eager to love and to be loved.
There were some ladies idling in the square. Their faces looked so white in the moonlight. They were hookers; we were told so by some Chinese that knew the town. We walked by a lady. She was a very beautiful blonde, tall, wearing Jeans, smoking a cigarette. She stared at us when we sauntered by. Her stares were inquiring and expecting. Qiu suddenly set his mind on something, and told me that he was not going to call his parents that night. He walked up to the girl and started a conversation. When I was leaving the Red Square, I saw them two take off together. He was taking the girl back to our apartment.
I walked back to the post office. There were huge windows on the side of the post office facing the street. In the office by the window there was a row of chairs. I sat on one chair and watched the traffic on the street. A Lincoln limo stopped by the curb, like a shining Behemoth. Stepped out a nicely dressed guy with two tall sexy girls, each clasping one of his arms. There was a dancing house right across the street from the post office. The music was really lively. The curtains were on in the dancing house, so I could see nothing inside. But I imagined the wiggling, sweating bodies inside the house. It must be really fun.
I called my parents at 2 AM. My mother inquired after my life. She sounded worried. I said that I was doing very well, I was safe and sound, and I just didn’t like the Russian food. After the call I got back to my chair. There was nowhere to go. The Moscow metro stopped at 1 AM, and would start at 5:30 AM. So I had to stay in the post office for another few hours before I could catch the train home. In the mean time Qiu must be having a good time with that Russian girl. Da Sun and Huang must be sleeping - maybe not, if Qiu made too many noises.
I did not like Huang. He was such a showman. When we were going somewhere he talked vulgarly loud with some Russian passers-by for some trivial questions, when Da Sun and I dumbly stood by. When the three of us were having a drink in the apartment – all three of us liked drinking – his face gradually became red, sweat oozing out of his forehead. Excited and garrulous he became. He spoke at once Chinese and Russian, and enlightened us of the meaning of the Russian words that came out of his mouth. His chubby face exuded the satisfaction that this was something only he knew. He was so vain.
What is Kate doing now? She must be sending out nicely worded applications, a good tran, and strong recommendation letters to some US universities. Maybe she got admission offer already. Then she must be applying for passport and US visa. She must be very busy right now, unlike me, sitting on a chair behind a window in a post office in Moscow, watching the traffic on the street.
I got back to my apartment at 7 AM. Qiu walked out of the bathroom, wiping his dick with a towel. The Russian girl had left. He said he gave his dick a thorough wash because he did not want to get venereal disease.
We left Russia three months after we embarked on the adventure. When we were boarding the train, the Russian police searched the passengers. It seemed that there were very strict rules in Russia about how much money a foreigner could take out of the country. The police asked some Chinese to take off their shoes to see if there was money in it. They did not ask them to take off their underwear, which was a good thing, because many Chinese merchants put their hard earned money in the pockets of their underwear.
The train consisted of many four-person compartments. Outside the compartments was a hallway. We stayed in one such compartment in the train. The forth guy was from Beijing, portly, eloquent, and easy to get along with. He was obviously one of those that were called Dao Ye, which was just a derogatory term for businessmen. He had two huge bags, each more than a meter high and half a meter wide. He was shouldering one of them on his back, and pulling the other along when he first stepped into the compartment.
With a been-there, done-that air he carried himself around. He had a very definitive opinion of the things in the world, and he felt very good about what he was doing.
He said, “I make good money doing what I do. I don’t want to go to America, just to stoop my body and perch my ass in the air to wash the dishes for Americans.”
At midnight at the border of China and Mongolia the train stopped. We had to get off the train because they needed to change the wheels. The Chinese and Russian trains ran on a different gauge of track and required wheels of different size. We spent a few hours in the small station. But we were not bored. This well-lighted station was quite something. There were so many Chinese peddlers. They hawked around enthusiastically their clothes, gifts, food and drinks. You had to stand close to a peddler to hear what he was saying: it was so noisy. We met a very young and cute Chinese girl who, with a band on her neck, carried a big box of beers on her abdomen. She sold us some beer, and ran to other passengers as soon as we paid. She seemed to be excited, and determined to cash in on this late night crowd. I felt sorry for her. She should be having a sweet dream in her bed at home at this time, such a young and pretty girl that she was.
Ours was a very long ride. At daytime we saw endless forest of birches. Russia is a country of birches, as much as Canada is one of maples. In the evening the four of us played poker before we went to sleep.
The Beijing guy and I were smoking cigarettes at the joint of two cars. He told me that he had been on many trips to Russia and he had been selling Chinese-made leather jackets to the Russians.
He said, “The Russian police are really bad. They will stop you and search you and your bags for no reason. They will mess up all your stuff. You have to give them some money to be left alone.”
There were many stops on our way to Moscow. Right before a stop the Beijing guy warned us to put our money and passport in a safe place. He said, “Some Russian thieves might get on the train and steal your stuff, and some desperate ones might rob you at knife point.” I was not worried about being stolen: I had my passport in the pocket of my shirt, and a few hundred dollars in a pocket on my boxers. During the 20 minutes stop, some Russian peddlers stopped by our compartment to sell some food and drink. They seemed sullen and depressed. I thought about their happy and excited Chinese counterparts in the border town.
There were some young Chinese in the train, four of them in the compartment next to ours. I talked to one of them in the hallway, a young girl who seemed to be of the type that finished high school but failed the college entrance exam. She told me that they were language students. They were going to study Russian in Moscow. They were would-be interpreters. There was a tremendous need of Russian interpreters because of the booming Sino-Russian trade.
Our poker game was interrupted one evening by some knocks on the door of our compartment. It was the conductor, with a guy in police uniform. They needed to inspect our compartment and our luggage. The conductor pointed to the Beijing guy’s two huge bags, and declared that they seemed to be overweight. The Beijing guy said he was willing to pay a fine, and handed some money to the conductor. The conductor and the police left.
One day when we were looking out of the window, the vista suddenly changed from mountains and plains adorned by birches to something breathtakingly huge, pure, majestic and boundless. It was Lake Baikal. It was all iced over. The shining surface was imposing and awe-inspiring. Tears were coming to my eyes when the white, reticent and noble lake under the blue, clean and clear sky flashed by. The image of me lying inside the freight car, under the canvas, in the dark, on top of boxes of apples suddendly came to my mind. How trifling and ignoble my life is!
The Russian economy was in a dismal shape in 1993. When we arrived in Moscow, one US dollar can be exchanged for 700 Rubles. When we left a few months later it was 900 Rubles for a dollar. There were long lines of people waiting in front of the bread stores. The Russian breads were different from Chinese ones: some bread was as long as your arm. There were many kiosks selling stuff on the sidewalk. When I stopped by some kiosks to buy cigarettes, the sellers asked me to pay with US dollars. They had no faith in their own money.
We lived in a building where many Chinese stayed, most of which were Chinese merchants selling clothes, shoes, and toys made in China. No kitchen was available in each individual apartment. There was in each floor one public kitchen where everybody cooked. I stayed in a two-bedroom apartment, with two guys in each bedroom. Da Sun and Huang stayed in one bedroom; I stayed in the other with Qiu, a guy from northeastern China, one year younger than me. He sported a hairdo very popular among the unemployed young men in my hometown, almost bald on the side and the back, and on top of his head the hairs jutted out over his forehead. Sunglasses and trench coat were his favorite gears. When he got himself dressed up before he went out he reminded me of those mafia figures shooting out in Hong Kong movies. He was not going to gun down anyone though; he was going to sell clothes in the market with his uncle.
Many a day Da Sun and Huang went out on their business adventures. I would buy groceries and have dinner ready when they came back. I spent a lot of time with Qiu. One day Qiu said, “Brother, let me show you something really good.” He took out a magazine from under his mattress. It was a Russian porn magazine and it was the first porn magazine I had ever seen. On the cover was a nude woman on all fours, like a dog. She was all smiles, her mouth open, and her tongue protruded out. There were cum on her tongue. Qiu laughed and said, “Do you like it, big brother?” It left an indelible impression on my mind.
One evening I was reading A Farewell to Arms in the public kitchen. Qiu was watching TV in our bedroom, and I could not read there. A Chinese woman walked in to cook her dinner. Her name was Ling. She was a clothes merchant from Harbin.
Obviously she did not have much education. You can tell that from the way she talked. She was blunt talking, almost to the point of being rude, and not sophisticated in many matters. I liked her though, much more than those college-educated but disingenuous women. I went grocery shopping with her many times, because she could speak everyday Russian phrases, which I could not. She sold clothes in the market, and bargained with her Russian customers. As a buyer she did not mince bargaining words either: once she argued bravely with a Russian guy when we were buying his fish.
Qiu and Ling were off work one day, and they said they would show me around. I had not ventured far away from our apartment building. Downstairs I bought a pack of Marlboro with US dollars from a kiosk. When we were leaving the young Russian guy came out of the kiosk to talk to me- Ling acted as my interpreter. This guy took out a one hundred US dollar bill, and asked me to tell if it was real. I held the bill up against the sun, saw the watermark, and told him that it was real in my opinion. He thanked me.
“What made him think that I could detect counterfeit money?” I said.
“You are a rich guy, buying Marlboro with US dollars.” Ling said.
We took the Moscow metro to go to the Red Square. Some stations of the metro had very ornate designs of socialist themes. Many Russians in the metro car were reading, holding a book with one hand, and something else with the other hand to keep steady. They seemed a more civilized people than the Chinese I encountered in Beijing subway.
Unlike the Time Square in NYC, Red Square was a real square. On one side of the square was the Kremlin wall, above whose notches many towers stood, and at the foot of which there were many bronze plaques with names and small sculptures. Some prominent Soviet Russian figures were buried there. There was a granite structure against the Kremlin wall: it was Lenin’s tomb. Both the tomb and the Kremlin wall were red. There were many pines alongside the Kremlin wall overlooking the red square, and a few pines stood in front of Lenin’s tomb, which looked austere and monumental. We watched the honor guards changing shift. Each of them was wearing a blue uniform and black boots, left hand holding a rifle, right arm swayed wide, legs kicked into the air. It was quite something to behold.
Near the Kremlin wall was the beautiful Saint Basil’s Cathedral. It was located at the southeast end of Red Square, just across from the Spasskaya Tower of the Kremlin. Against the blue sky and the white clouds the bight-colored onion-domes looked so inviting and exotic, something I had only seen in a fairy tale picture.
Along the eastern side of Red Square, facing the Kremlin wall was the façade of a shopping mall area called Katai-gorod. We walked around in the mall. I fell in love with something immediately I saw it. It was a matryoshka doll, a set of dolls one inside another. It was so cute. For a few thousand Rubles I bought one for my parents. I thought about buying another one for Kate, but decided against it. The courage to buy her a gift I possessed not. I recalled the pain of taking my gift back from her hand and it made me shudder.
On our way back to the apartment building, Qiu proposed that we go see a movie. So we went to a cinema. The movie was called Emanuel, a soft porn movie with French dialogues and Russian subtitles, neither of which I understood. Neither did Qiu and Ling. They only knew some business vocabularies in Russian. But we all understood the actions in the movie. When we got out the movie, Qiu fondled his crotch area and said, “It is so hot today.”
Ling said, “Living abroad is plain good. You can’t see this kind of movie in a cinema in China.”
Calling home from Moscow was a big deal. There was nowhere to make an international call near our apartment building. I had to go to a 24-hour post office near Red Square to call my parents. There was a five-hour difference between Moscow and China. I called my family at 2 AM a few times, when it was 7 AM in China. On one of my nightly calling trips Qiu said he would go with me; he needed to call his family too. We left the apartment building at about 11 PM, and took the metro to Red Square. When we walked out of the metro station a guy was playing accordion at the exit, a hat at his feet with some coins in it.
When we got to the post office it was still early, so we decided to take a nightly tour of the Red Square. One our way we saw a Russian guy, mumbling and stumbling, with a wine bottle in his hand. He seemed to be engrossed in some serious debate with himself. He staggered by with an intense odor of vodka.
We walked on the Red Square. It seemed deserted: there were not many people in the square. Lights projected on them, the Kremlin towers and the Saint Basil’s Cathedral stood solemnly in the night, in the company of the towers of the State Historical Museum. The Ruby star on top of the Spasskaya tower was shining tenderly, warmly and quietly. I looked up to the beautiful thing under the sky. You are like my heart, lonely and ardent, eager to love and to be loved.
There were some ladies idling in the square. Their faces looked so white in the moonlight. They were hookers; we were told so by some Chinese that knew the town. We walked by a lady. She was a very beautiful blonde, tall, wearing Jeans, smoking a cigarette. She stared at us when we sauntered by. Her stares were inquiring and expecting. Qiu suddenly set his mind on something, and told me that he was not going to call his parents that night. He walked up to the girl and started a conversation. When I was leaving the Red Square, I saw them two take off together. He was taking the girl back to our apartment.
I walked back to the post office. There were huge windows on the side of the post office facing the street. In the office by the window there was a row of chairs. I sat on one chair and watched the traffic on the street. A Lincoln limo stopped by the curb, like a shining Behemoth. Stepped out a nicely dressed guy with two tall sexy girls, each clasping one of his arms. There was a dancing house right across the street from the post office. The music was really lively. The curtains were on in the dancing house, so I could see nothing inside. But I imagined the wiggling, sweating bodies inside the house. It must be really fun.
I called my parents at 2 AM. My mother inquired after my life. She sounded worried. I said that I was doing very well, I was safe and sound, and I just didn’t like the Russian food. After the call I got back to my chair. There was nowhere to go. The Moscow metro stopped at 1 AM, and would start at 5:30 AM. So I had to stay in the post office for another few hours before I could catch the train home. In the mean time Qiu must be having a good time with that Russian girl. Da Sun and Huang must be sleeping - maybe not, if Qiu made too many noises.
I did not like Huang. He was such a showman. When we were going somewhere he talked vulgarly loud with some Russian passers-by for some trivial questions, when Da Sun and I dumbly stood by. When the three of us were having a drink in the apartment – all three of us liked drinking – his face gradually became red, sweat oozing out of his forehead. Excited and garrulous he became. He spoke at once Chinese and Russian, and enlightened us of the meaning of the Russian words that came out of his mouth. His chubby face exuded the satisfaction that this was something only he knew. He was so vain.
What is Kate doing now? She must be sending out nicely worded applications, a good tran, and strong recommendation letters to some US universities. Maybe she got admission offer already. Then she must be applying for passport and US visa. She must be very busy right now, unlike me, sitting on a chair behind a window in a post office in Moscow, watching the traffic on the street.
I got back to my apartment at 7 AM. Qiu walked out of the bathroom, wiping his dick with a towel. The Russian girl had left. He said he gave his dick a thorough wash because he did not want to get venereal disease.
We left Russia three months after we embarked on the adventure. When we were boarding the train, the Russian police searched the passengers. It seemed that there were very strict rules in Russia about how much money a foreigner could take out of the country. The police asked some Chinese to take off their shoes to see if there was money in it. They did not ask them to take off their underwear, which was a good thing, because many Chinese merchants put their hard earned money in the pockets of their underwear.
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