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The Chinese word for train is literally "fire cart." The Shanghai Express, though, is no coal burner. A sleek Diesel locomotive hauling 20 cars leaves from the Shanghai Station's Platform 5 for points west and north at precisely 6:30 a.m. From the engine to the rear two cars reserved for the F.F.s, the train is a vivid green with a yellow midriff stripe. The passenger takes his choice of a seat designed to accommodate two or three people on each side of a linen-spread table on which covered mugs of hot tea are waiting. The window is lace-curtained, the seats are adorned in immaculate, frilly-bottomed slipcovers. On each table there is a live potted plant, a bonsai tree or a cactus. The tea is constantly replenished by one of the white-jacketed attendants, four per car; the humid air is churned by eight overhead fans. The toilet, like all Chinese toilets except those in hotels and the better restaurants, is a hole in the floor. The cars are of Victorian design but recent manufacture. "If only we had sherry and biscuits," muses a Briton, "this could be the Flying Scotsman 40 years ago."
Plane travel for the long-legged American can be agony. CAAC, the national airline, apparently arranged its seating for friendly pygmies. Other F.F.s, half-paralyzed in flight, are resuscitated with free Chunghua cigarettes, bags of candy, and People's Kool-Aid, when what they need is a massage and a double martini. The cigarette-puffing pilot wears no uniform or cap, only the white shirt and baggy blue pants of the worker. Given decent weather, planes leave and arrive on time. The air lanes are as vacant as Wall Street on a Sunday. The airports are as empty as a cathedral on a Monday. Clearly, airports are primarily military airbases, though Peking's runways are now being widened for tourist-bearing jumbo jets. On the tarmac at Kweilin are rows of biplanes, all gassed up to fight World War I.
The Chinese are decently if unimaginatively dressed. In most cities men and women wear light shirts over dark trousers, though some city women now sport brightly printed blouses and skirts. The occasional high official may be spotted by his well-cut, gray, unbaggy Mao suit with four pockets on the tunic (lesser ranks have only two). Though the Chinese are renowned for making seductive jewelry, no man or woman in the People's Republic seems to wear any: no beads, bracelets, bangles, necklaces or rings on ear or finger. Asked why not, a pretty young interpreter snorts: "I'm not an aborigine!"
The Chinese are as enchanted by the foreign phrase as is the Westerner by their proverbs. After only one day of shepherding Americans, a thirtyish male guide has learned to say (repeatedly), "Let's get the show on the road!" Using another terminological acquisition at every opportunity, he inquires, "Are we all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?" Not all such cultural exchanges are so felicitous. On a flight from Shanghai, Mr. Liu, a Responsible Person, warns: In the event of airsickness, "please use paper bag for environmental hygiene."