Bound for Vietnam by Lydia Laube Read Free Book Online Page A

towns lined the riverbank and more grim chimneys belched smoke from dark forbidding factories. In one town a ferry, with a truck leaning precariously sideways on its slanting deck, was being pushed across the river by a tug. We gave it a couple of blasts on the hooter to get it out of the way. Just past the town a large solitary farmhouse owned a quiet stretch of riverbank. Steps led down from the house to its dunny, a box on stilts conveniently positioned over the water.
    Although the traffic on the river had been lighter since Wuhan, a slow, steady procession of sampans and barges with loads of logs, sand, building materials and coal passed us. Sometimes three or four barges were joined together side by side and pushed upriver by a tug that was secured between them. The barges had two double-storeyed edifices roosting on their bows. One was the engine room, the other the cookhouse and bedroom. A particularly decrepit, unpainted and rusty old barge went by. The housewife (or bargewife) sat on deck on a wooden stool peeling vegetables. The husband came to the door of the cookhouse and threw his washing water overboard from a white enamel basin.
    The river here was still at least two kilometres wide – I could see only one bank, which had greenery on it that looked like bamboo – but the water was flatter, there were no white caps, and it was the colour of dark milky tea. It did not agree with my hair and I sincerely hoped I was not drinking it. But I probably was: I had to use the hot water provided by the boat’s urns for tea and noodles, and all our boat’s refuse, like everyone else’s, went straight into the river.
    Later our boat tied up at a pontoon on the riverbank of Yeoyang. I ventured onto the shore to buy supplies of nuts, seeds, fruit and noodles. I thought the nuts and seeds were awful, until I saw someone else eating them and realised that you don’t eat the outer husks. You spat them out in true Chinese fashion, preferably on the floor. This improved the taste considerably!
    The next day was still cold and the sky was leaden and misty. The river was now the colour of dishwater – a pale ash-brown– the washing up after a mud pie party. When I woke, we were anchored at Shashi, another sombre industrial town. Shortly after Shashi the banks of the river came close enough for me to be able to see rice growing on them. In places the banks had been cut and reinforced with stones to form dykes. Another bank further up protected neat and pleasantly green villages that were surrounded by pine trees. Grazing cows dotted grassy banks where now and then I saw the odd peasant digging. These were the first real villages I had seen, as opposed to small ugly towns.
    Although the Jade Vessel was very similar to the Yangtze Star , much to my sorrow there were no plastic grapes in the sitting room. But it did have two classes of dining room, the posher of which I fronted to sample the fare. In the long wait for my food to be sent up to the ritzy dining room, I watched a man drink a bottle of Chinese whisky and down a large bottle of beer as a chaser. When the food did arrive it turned out to be the same food that was available downstairs; not very good, just colder after its travels. I had chicken that had been machettied into clumps, splintery bones and all, but it was a change from the fruit and noodles I had been existing on.
    Out on deck, nailed to the front of the wheel-house, I noticed the boat’s emergency equipment – a big axe and a crowbar. The fire-fighting apparatus consisted of a row of red buckets that served only to decorate the prow; they held at most half a pail of old rusty water. There were no life boats or jackets –we swam or sank.
    Gliding under a long bridge, we began passing between slight hills that rose on both sides of the now narrowing river. Gradually the hills increased in number and size until they were rounded mountain bosoms that rose straight up from a rocky base at the water’s edge.