“My home is in the Northeast, on the Songhua River; there the soybeans and sorghum cover the hills and plains; by the green hills and blue waters, two big white poplars at the gate, a neat fenced yard, a little thatched cottage — oh, my home is in the Northeast.” — Pang Long, “My Home Is in the Northeast”
Though I went to university in the Northeast for four years, I don’t have a deep understanding of the Northeast (and still don’t), because back then I was cooped up at school and rarely left campus, ignorant of the world outside — I knew the city but not the countryside, my classmates but no one else. All I came away with was a mouthful of Northeastern-accented Mandarin (and a good deal of swearing), and a love for the Northeast’s winters.
But after I left the Northeast my accent gradually faded, and no one could tell I’d ever lived there; my memories of Northeastern winters, too, grew blurred and prettified. Many people speak of Northeasterners with fear and dislike, but I will always stand up for them.
Four years ago I’d been to Jiagedaqi once; I was on my way to Mohe and had to change trains there, so I had half a day to wander about. My impression then was that Jiagedaqi was very small — one commercial center, a few east-west avenues, Beishan Park; you could walk the whole place in two or three hours. By evening there was nothing to do, so I sat by the roadside a long while to pass the time; when night came and there was still nowhere to go, I went into the railway station early and waited there several hours before the night train to Mohe finally came.
Zuoxiao Zuzhou has two songs connected with Jiagedaqi, “The Night Train to Jiagedaqi” and “Don’t Come with Me,” though their subject is still vulgar love — the name Jiagedaqi is just borrowed. In the Greater Khingan region there are many peculiar place names, all tied to the three local ethnic minorities (the Oroqen, the Evenki, and the Daur). Jiagedaqi is Oroqen for “the place where the Mongolian pines grow.” The pines of the Greater Khingan bear pine nuts, but I’ve never once seen a pine in the south bear them.
This time I went to Jiagedaqi because, after a few boring days in Beijing, I’d decided to take a jaunt around the Northeast — not just Jiagedaqi but Mohe, Qiqihar, and Manzhouli too (in the end I went only to Jiagedaqi and nowhere else). And coming to Beijing in the first place was also for the sake of getting to Jiagedaqi. As everyone knows, I’d been at Rushan Silver Beach nearly a year and wanted a change of scene to try a different life: a place with few people, remote enough, with a good ecological environment — and my ideal place was Jiagedaqi. But before coming to Beijing I’d already done some homework, looked into things, and asked around, and found that the rent in Jiagedaqi isn’t cheap, and in winter you have to pay a lot for heating — which quite put me off. Because Rushan Silver Beach’s rent is so cheap, and there’s the sea to look at, I prefer Silver Beach.
From Beijing to Jiagedaqi there’s only one direct train, the K497 — the K stands for “fast,” though in fact it’s the slowest train of all. It leaves at 14:18 one afternoon and arrives at 14:42 the next, more than twenty-four hours, close to twenty-five. It passes through Shanhaiguan, Suizhong, Xingcheng, Huludao, Jinzhou, Tongliao, Baicheng, Tailai, Qiqihar, Fuyu (the character read “yu”), Nehe (the “ne,” not “na”), Jiusan, the Nen River, Dayangshu, and Ne’erkqi, running mostly along the edge of the three Northeastern provinces where they border Inner Mongolia, and finally entering Inner Mongolian territory (Jiagedaqi is Inner Mongolian land as well, only administered by Heilongjiang — plate code Hei P).
The moment I got on, the train was full of Northeasterners; and people who take the ordinary slow train are certainly not the rich — they’re very ordinary and very vivid Northeasterners, to look at and to listen to, and all of them love to socialize. Northeasterners might be the ceiling of Chinese sociability: every other word is “little brother,” every other word “little sister”; the men are hearty, the women blustery and unguarded — while I, at a glance, am a southerner. The snack cart on the train even sold baijiu, which I thought you’d find for sale only on trains heading to the Northeast; in the south I’ve never seen it. Two strange men made friends the moment they boarded, sitting face to face, eating peanuts and cooked meats, sipping liquor, and talking away.
The first stop was Shanhaiguan; once past Shanhaiguan you’re beyond the Pass — the so-called braving of the journey to the Northeast — and soon inside the Northeast proper. Leaving Beijing I was very excited: entering the Northeast meant entering a secluded place. Now that I’ve lived in Shandong nearly a year, I feel I can almost enter into the experience of those who braved the journey to the Northeast. Shandong had far too many people and far too fierce competition; whenever disaster struck, the only choice was to move away — some went by way of Hebei, some by sea. I can better feel for those who went by sea; from Jiaodong to the Northeast the sea route is quicker, which is why the Dalian dialect and the Yantai-Weihai dialect are so alike. A pity that by the time we were beyond the Pass it was night and nothing could be seen, until 6:42 the next morning, when we reached Qiqihar, already in Heilongjiang, having crossed Liaoning and Jilin. Qiqihar is a big station; the train stopped thirty minutes. The Qiqihar station building is distinctive, but from the inside you can’t see it whole. Qiqihar is Daur for “natural pasture,” which is why Qiqihar’s barbecue is famous, and why it has wetlands protected for red-crowned cranes.
From Qiqihar on to Fuyu, Nehe, Jiusan, and the Nen River is the so-called Great Northern Wilderness (now called the Great Northern Granary) — a plain of nothing but black soil, exceptionally good for farming, and what meets the eye everywhere is rice, soybeans, and corn — sorghum, I suppose, is no longer grown. In September these crops are nearly ripe, turned a green-gold (not yet fully yellow), spreading a particularly warm color over the land, like an oil painting — utterly beautiful. Many southerners don’t know that the Northeast grows rice, and that it’s a staple; they know only that the Northeast is ice and snow, a wasteland. In fact the Northeast’s soil is the most fertile, its river systems well developed, and it is perfectly suited to rice. When I first went to university in the Northeast I discovered that Northeastern rice is much bigger, much whiter, and much tastier than southern rice; I think Northeastern rice is the best rice in the world — a hundred times, ten thousand times better than the rice back home. It’s not late autumn yet, so most trees are still green, only a small number turned yellow or rust-colored; there’s no riot of color yet.
Besides crops and trees, the land has many rivers — all of them, except the Nen, looking very shallow; in winter they must freeze solid. The earth washed up along the riverbanks is plainly black — black soil, true to the name. There are patches that look like marsh, mudflat, or mere, weeds all around and within; a few people sit on little stools by the water, fishing, though I don’t know what fish are in there. “Club a roe deer, ladle up a fish, and a pheasant flies into your rice pot” — and I really did see quite a few pheasants. Beside a cornfield there were two, one gray, one red — a hen and a cock, I suppose — the red one’s comb and feathers quite gorgeous. Sometimes a single gray pheasant would start up from the grass. And birds flying in the sky, sometimes a flock, sometimes a few, all black but not crows; when they took flight it made a bleak, austere picture that sent a shiver through you.
Big cities grew fewer and small villages more; row upon row of single-story houses made little settlements out on the broad farms. The houses don’t have flat roofs — unlike rural houses in North China, these have pitched roofs tiled in red, with chimneys poking up at the edges. Some are newer, not red-tiled but roofed in bright blue metal sheeting. Many others are dilapidated, unoccupied, some half-collapsed. On the outside walls of some houses the words “house for sale” and a phone number are painted in lime.
Past the Nen River the next stop is Dayangshu, an ordinary enough place name, and we entered Inner Mongolia — the Oroqen Autonomous Banner of Hulunbuir — and passed from the plains into the mountains, arriving at last in the Greater Khingan. No more rice is grown in the mountains; you don’t see a trace of it, but there seem to be a great many soybeans, in broad swaths, their leaves gone green-gold too, a lovely color. Grassland and timberland grew more frequent — sometimes like prairie, sometimes like forest. Having never been to the Greater Khingan before, I’d always thought it must be high, steep mountains; otherwise why call it a ridge at all. In fact a “ridge” is only a stretch of linked mountains, and the mountains needn’t be tall. The Greater Khingan’s mountains are not tall — all low, gentle slopes, modest in elevation and not steep, like hills. They separate the Nen River plain from the Mongolian grasslands: a plain on this side, grassland on that, and in between a mountain ridge, green with grass and thick with trees.
The sky very blue, the clouds very white, the hills very green, and the air, just to look at it, seemed fresh and fragrant; the soybeans were green-gold, the grassland deep green, rows of pines growing in the grass and flying past my eyes, the ground yellow one moment green the next, the colors shifting.
After Dayangshu comes Ne’erkqi (the “ne” as in Nehe); Ne’erkqi is Oroqen for “mountain.” Below the station sign there’s pinyin and another script I couldn’t identify (Manchu?). After Ne’erkqi comes Jiagedaqi — but before reaching Jiagedaqi there’s one more stop (where the train doesn’t stop), called Baihuapai, because there’s a township nearby named Baihua. Baihuapai, of course, isn’t called that for nothing: white birches really do grow here in profusion, and you can see them from the train, row after row of white birches flickering past, their white bark as if painted on; someone who’s never seen a white birch would think it unreal, but it really is that white.
Arriving at Jiagedaqi, I put my jacket on before getting off — no need to think twice, it would be cold outside — and everyone on the train put their jackets on too. Off the train and out of the station, not one person in shorts or short sleeves was to be seen. Facing the station exit was a north-south avenue called Xing’an Avenue; walking north along it brings you to the foot of Beishan Park, where four signboards stand on the hill bearing four big red characters, “Pearl of the Forest Sea.” On a small plaza at the foot of the hill stands a bronze statue of a man on horseback; on its pedestal is written “Tuoba Gui.” Tuoba Gui was a Xianbei, the founding emperor of the Northern Wei. The Greater Khingan is also called the Greater Xianbei Mountains — the cradle of the ancient Xianbei people.
Jiagedaqi is a very, very small city: about 5.5 kilometers wide east to west and 2.5 kilometers north to south, made up of five main east-west roads (from south to north: Shiji Avenue, Qianjin Road, Renmin Road, Shengli Road, and Chaoyang Road), while many small north-south streets (Dongdao Street, Xidao Street, Weidong Avenue, Hongqi Avenue) carve the town into blocks — east-west ones are called roads, north-south ones streets. The liveliest spot is the Central Mall, where there’s a pedestrian street lined with shops and, at its head, plenty of barbecue. On this street is the only KFC in the whole Greater Khingan region — a pity it was being renovated and wasn’t open. Two children passing by were discussing it: “KFC has competitors now — it needs to get itself in better shape.” I looked across from the KFC and there was a Wallace; not far down the street was a Dicos — those must be KFC’s competitors. The street has many fur shops, which isn’t surprising this far north — it’s so cold everyone has to wear fur, dressed up like grand ladies, like rich tycoons.
On Dong’er North Street there were many people selling farm produce and mountain goods from ground stalls — vegetables, fruit, and forest products; no meat. Vegetables go without saying; as for fruit, there were even plenty of big watermelons, and I wondered whether anyone eats watermelon in such cool weather. The most common forest product was a Northeast specialty called guniang — like a lantern, a berry with a husk around it and a yellow, cherry-like fruit inside — sold cartload after cartload. There were also people selling pinecones and pine nuts; I only glanced a moment longer at a pretty pinecone, and the woman selling it was already calling out, “Little brother, take some!” Walking north along Dong’er North Street brings you to the entrance of Beishan Park, from where you can go in to stroll and look around.
Probably because it was the weekend, there were many young people and children on the streets, far more than at Rushan Silver Beach; this was more like a city, whereas Rushan Silver Beach is countryside through and through, where you rarely see a young person. The young people were all good-looking — the boys tall and handsome, the girls fair and slim, and stylishly, brightly dressed, no less than in a big city. Northeasterners, so long as they don’t speak, give off an air of cool, aloof beauty. The moment they speak it’s ruined — the Northeastern dialect is simply too funny. The city is so small that I suspect everyone on the street knows everyone else.
The city has few high-rises; almost all are walk-ups, and they’re not new either — most of the outer walls are painted yellow, which makes them look even more weathered. Some buildings’ facades are even done up in a Western style, with plenty of columns, arches, domes, and spires, as if you were in Russia. The residential compounds are all open, without walls or railings — you can come and go as you please. On the wall at the entrance to the compound were pasted advertisements for houses for sale. On the windows of many apartments, too, are stuck “house for sale” notices with phone numbers below, facing the road so you can see them just by looking up.
Wandering the streets, doing my city walk, I saw quite a few signboards of public institutions: the Greater Khingan Broadcasting and Television Station, the Jiagedaqi People’s Hospital. Outside one building I saw five signboards hanging: the Civil Affairs Bureau, the Bureau of Letters and Visits, the Veterans Affairs Bureau, the Healthcare Security Administration, and the Human Resources and Social Security Bureau. At the door of the next building hung more than ten more: the Health Inspection Bureau, the Bureau of Lawyers’ Affairs, the Petitions Legal Service Center, the Petitions Dispute Mediation Center, the Office for Collecting Public Suggestions, the Health Commission, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the Federation of Literary and Art Circles, the Northern Lights literary magazine, and the Red Cross — a sign of how small the city is and how concentrated its offices are. At a bend in the road I also saw the Marriage Registration Office of the Jiagedaqi Civil Affairs Bureau, its roller shutter pulled down for the weekend — no marriages today.
There are plenty of eateries on the street, but they’re all empty. I saw many barbecue places and cold-noodle shops, and noticed the old Weidong Cold-Noodle Restaurant, which someone had mentioned online; but I didn’t want cold noodles, so I just glanced in and found they sold dog meat — dog-meat cold noodles. Seeing a dog-meat restaurant in the Northeast needn’t shock you or become a matter of principle, because right alongside are donkey-meat and mutton places. There were also many Yunnan crossing-the-bridge rice-noodle shops; I don’t know why Northeasterners love them — because it’s cold? There were plenty of malatang shops too. I was a little hungry but didn’t know what to eat; then I saw a Jeonju bibimbap place and felt like rice, so I went in — and strangely the lights weren’t on, the waiter was playing on his phone, and I was the first customer of the day, so the owner hurriedly told the waiter to turn on the lights and welcome this rare and honored guest.
The New Century Plaza must be the only square for amusement the people of Jiagedaqi have. Earlier, while it was still light, not many people had come out to enjoy it. The plaza had many vendors: grilled sausages, cotton candy, little electric cars and trampolines and a roller coaster for children, and ring-toss (throwing plastic rings to snare a prize). There were especially many ring-toss stalls, nearly a dozen, and the owners were all young — is it easy money or what? Some old men were walking laps around the plaza to exercise, and some sat on the chairs nearby staring into space. After dark, a great many came to dance in the square — one group here, one group there — though I saw no one doing the yangge; it was all popular, energetic dancing, the younger ones dancing fiercely, the older ones slowly, and the plaza was lively. But standing outdoors a while, you felt a chill. Some old fellows neither danced nor walked but sat on the plaza steps watching, a cardboard box under their backsides.
I wandered about the plaza too, watching them dance, only feeling colder and colder. It looks lively here, the business seems to flourish, but I can’t figure out what they live on (I’ve never had a head for economics). There’s only agriculture and services here, and city people don’t farm — so where does their money come from? On the train there was an older fellow who’d worked in a forestry farm; he said that after they banned logging he went to Beijing to work, doing renovations, cement work, and now he’s come home to rest because he hurt his arm. I looked up Jiagedaqi’s population: only a hundred thousand or so, the most populous county-level district in the Greater Khingan region; Mohe has even fewer, only fifty or sixty thousand. And the population here keeps shrinking — the birth rate falls and people flow away. What will they live on in the future?
Never mind — I can’t figure it out either; if I could figure out such matters of state and the economic situation, I wouldn’t be flat broke. I can only observe, watching quietly, using my own limited capacity to understand this complicated world. Think too much and your head starts to ache.
I’d also meant to go to Mohe, Qiqihar, and Manzhouli, and to save money I’d deliberately booked night trains — sleeping on the train at night so I wouldn’t have to stay over in any city, and wandering a city by day to see what it was like. But once I’d set out I found it was simply too tiring: to wait for the night train from Jiagedaqi to Mohe, for instance, I’d have to sit for hours doing nothing in Jiagedaqi’s shabby old railway station — and I’d been to Mohe before and needn’t go again, while Qiqihar and Manzhouli, I imagine, would be much the same. Mostly, though, I just felt too tired, couldn’t take it; I only wanted to lie flat. So I refunded all my train tickets and rebooked a night train to Harbin, arriving in the big city of Harbin in the morning.
In the afternoon of September 8, 2023, I took the train to Jiagedaqi; on September 10 I returned to Beijing.