Chang River

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Writer and editor Simon Winchester had the rare opportunity to travel the length of the Chang (Yangtze) River. In the excerpt below, he reflects at the end of his journey.

I reached into my pocket for the little prayer block that the monk had given back in Dêgê—I had hoped, I think, that I might imprint a few good thoughts on the waters and send them scurrying down to sea level. But it was not there: I had left it behind, carelessly. It was back in the army base. In any case, I told myself, for me to do such a thing was more than a little out of character: I was no Buddhist, I had no real idea what sentiments had been inscribed on the wood, and would feel plagued that I had performed some disingenuous act, just for the symbolic sake of it.

So instead I got out a cigar. A friend had given it to me in Hong Kong. The Mandarin Hotel had imported a Cuban maestro from Cohiba in Havana, and had set him to work hand-rolling cigars in a corner of the hotel lobby. My friend had bought two for me, for some exorbitant sum. One, he said, was to be smoked at the start of the Yangtze journey, and the second was to be savored in the mood victorious if, and only if, I reached the headwaters. This battered and somewhat stale object that I pulled from my jacket pocket was the very one.

I straightened it as best I could and listened to it: there was the slightest crackle of a few stale leaves, but not too much—it seemed to have kept most of its supple softness, and it might not be too bad. So I tilted my head out of the breeze and lit it slowly and carefully, then blew a cloud of pure blue smoke out into the chilly air.

Once, a few weeks back, this had been a grand cigar; now, old and tired from its journey, it had just a hint of its glory: in any restaurant it would have been sent right back. Out here, though, it was the best smoke I could ever, ever imagine. And so I sat there in a state of utter contentment, listening to the gurgling of the stream, listening to the lone Tibetan behind me marshaling the yaks from a herd that had been scattered in the storm, and listening to the soughing winds. They began to pick up again, and they started to scatter the grass and riffle the calm surface of the river waters once more.

Source: Simon Winchester. (1996) The River at the Center of the World: A Journey up the Yangtze and Back in Chinese Time. New York: Holt, 393–394.