Riding the Iron Rooster Read online

  But afterwards, I heard that his wife had been rather cross with him. She had been listening the whole time.

  She said to him, "If we have any criticisms or doubts about the current policies we should keep them to ourselves and not talk to foreigners about them."

  There is a Chinese conundrum. If a place has a reputation for being beautiful, the Chinese flock to it, and its beauty is disfigured by the crowd. If a train is very fast, like the Shanghai Express from Peking, everyone tries to take it, and it is impossible to get a seat. The same is true for restaurants: the good ones are jammed. And hotels. Reservations are unthinkable, and the worst of it is that you are sometimes laughed at for ever believing that you had a chance: the Chinese can be extremely rude in turning you away—the Chinese elbow is very sharp.

  This conundrum is constant in Shanghai. For example, Shanghai is known to be a city of sidewalks—wonderful for pedestrians, an excellent city for perambulating. Therefore, everyone walks; and the mobs are impenetrable.

  None the less, if you push—as the Chinese do—it is possible to walk around Shanghai. Long ago, the Chinese overcame the natural human horror of being touched. The crowd reduces your progress to a shuffle, but it seemed to me that anything was preferable to a Shanghai bus.

  Following Comrade Ning's suggestion I walked to Suzhou Creek and looked at the Spiritual Civilization sign—Cling to The Four Beauties. Then I walked farther, to the docks, a tangled, greasy, busy place of warehouses and the storerooms that the Chinese call godowns, and little indoor factories of tinsmiths and lock-makers and box-assemblers and rope-twisters. I came to the Shanghai Seamen's Club, a venerable building with teak-wood paneling and art-deco lamps and fluted cornices and a serviceable billiard room. It was a big old building and covered with soot, but it was attractive in a gloomy and indestructible way.

  Inside, among the souvenirs and seamen's necessities like gloves and twine and sunglasses and slippers, there was political crap and propaganda about Chinese soldiers fighting in Vietnam, but masked as "Frontier Guards in South China." I noted down the captions. Comrade Hu Yaohang was wielding his writing brush [photo of Politburo member posing with big writing brush] to write a few words calling on the officers and fighters of the frontier guards "to be able to wield both the pen and the gun to make our country and people rich"-, and under a different photograph, showing five soldiers squinting at some bushes, All officers and fighters of the "Heroic Hard Sixth Company" rendering battle achievement in defending Laoshan battle.

  I had a beer and kept walking and thought: These people were giving us a hard time over Vietnam? They were still fighting the Vietnamese—and probably getting their asses kicked, because nothing is more indicative of a war going badly than valiant propaganda like this. If a country shouted that it would fight to the last drop of blood that usually meant that it was ready to surrender; and in China, as a general rule, you could regard nothing as true until it had been denied. Anything officially denied was probably a fact.

  I continued walking, across the metal bridge in front of what had once been Broadway Mansions, and over the creek to Huangpu Park, on the Bund, where the rest of the 1920s buildings still stood. I fantasized that there were certain cities in the world that could only succeed by becoming gross parodies of what they were—or of what people expected them to be (like a tall person who has no choice but to learn basketball), and that Shanghai was one of them.

  The sign on the gate of the park gave a historical note: This park was guarded by police of the International Settlement and Chinese wen refused admittance. To add insult to injury the imperialists in 1885 put up at the gate a board with the words "No Admittance to Dogs and Chinese." This aroused among Chinese people popular indignation and disgust which finally compelled the imperialists to remove the board.

  In another place the popularity of the park was remarked on: Admissions total over 5 million a year. On holidays it sometimes has a sight-seer density of 3 persons to the square meter. In Chinese terms this crowd-praise was wonderful: in the West, people are stifled by a crowd, but in China they feel propped up, and only the worthiest attractions have millions of visitors.

  But that was not for me. I walked on and took shelter in a cool building beyond the Bund that had stained-glass windows—not a church, but a bank or counting house, because the windows showing Burne-Jones-like maidens were labeled Truth and Wisdom and Prudence. The foyer had a dome and a vaulted ceiling and onyx pillars, and a black marble floor. I thought: This is just the sort of place that would have had the shit kicked out of it during the Cultural Revolution.

  To test my suspicion I asked a man—Mr. Lan Hongquan—who worked there. It was now a government office.

  I said, "Isn't it amazing that this place survived the Cultural Revolution."

  "It almost didn't," Mr. Lan said. "In 1967, the Red Guards burst in and splashed paint everywhere. They completely covered the windows and these marble walls with paint—it was black paint. You couldn't see anything of these decorations. The job was so big and expensive that it took ten years to clean up. It was only finished last year."

  Quite a way up that street I came to the Shanghai Municipal Foreign Affairs Office, where I had an appointment with the chief of the Propaganda Division—such was his title—Mr. Wang Hou-kang, and his assistant, Miss Zhong.

  "A very nice house," I said, in the palm court of this mansion.

  "It belonged to a former capitalist."

  He then told me that there were 164 joint ventures with 20 countries. I expressed surprise, but didn't ask any more questions, because I had been told by wiser minds that most of these joint ventures were still in the discussion stage; and it would have been embarrassing to Mr. Wang if I had asked him how many had borne fruit—the number of joint ventures in operation was very small.

  Because I had been bucking the traffic all day, I said, "Do you think that Chinese people will ever own their own cars?"

  "Very few will. And not for pleasure but business. What we want to do is make cars and sell them to other countries. The export market—that's what interests us."

  I asked him what changes had struck him since Deng Xiaoping's reforms had taken effect.

  "Magazines are more colorful—more open. More picturesque, I can say. And there is the writing."

  "About politics?"

  "No, about sex. Before, people never wrote about sex, and now they do."

  Miss Zhong said, "Sometimes it is very embarrassing."

  "People dare to express themselves through stories," Mr. Wang said. 'That is new. And people can engage in discussions without being labeled 'rightist' or 'counterrevolutionary' or 'bourgeois' if they said certain things."

  "So no one calls anyone a paper tiger anymore?"

  'There are still paper tigers. Paper tiger is more a philosophical concept," Mr. Wang said.

  We talked about money after that. He said, 'Things have certainly changed. Take me for example. I earned ninety-two yuan a month in 1954 and did not get a salary increase until 1979."

  "But did prices rise in the years when your salary didn't change?"

  He laughed. I had not said anything funny. But there are many Chinese laughs. His was the one that meant: You are asking too many questions.

  The subject of clothes was not contentious.

  Mr. Wang said, "After Liberation, people cherished simple clothing. They identified the blue suits and the blue cap with revolution. People wore them and felt like revolutionaries. They were sturdy clothes and they were cheap—people felt thrifty wearing them. They made people equal."

  "Why have they stopped wearing them?"

  "By and by, some people wanted to wear more colorful clothes. But they were afraid. There was an idea prevailing that if people wore colorful clothes they would be part of the bourgeoisie." He laughed. His laugh meant: I don't believe that myself. "They remembered the Red Guards who used to go out with scissors. They cut your cuffs if they were too wide or too narrow. They cut your hair if it was
too long."

  "Do you think that will come again?"

  And I saw the marching Red Guards, with their long scissors and their fiendish grins, marching down Nanjing Road, on the lookout for flapping cuffs or flowing locks. They raised their long scissors and went, Snip-snip! Snip-snip! I realized that a passionate and crazed teenager with a pair of scissors is much scarier than a soldier with a rifle.

  Mr. Wang said, "I think the answer is definitely no."

  "You seem pretty sure," I said.

  "Yes, because the Ten Years' Turmoil"—that was the current euphemism—"went so far. It was so big. So terrible. If it had been a small thing it might return. But it involved everyone. We all remember. And I can tell you that no one wants it back."

  The wisest thing that anyone can say is "I don't know," but no one says it much in China, least of all the foreigners. The exception to this in Shanghai was Stan Brooks, the American consul general. He had a steady gaze and was not given to predictions or generalizations. He was from Wyoming and had been in China off and on since the 1970s, when Mao's intimidating bulk still influenced all decisions and turned most of his colleagues into lackeys.

  "I called them 'The Whateverists,'" Mr. Brooks said, basing it on the Chinese term fanshi (whatever). "Their view was that whatever Mao said about this or that was correct. Some members of the politburo have paid the price for being Whateverists."

  I said that I had been amazed by changes in China—not just superficial changes, such as clothes and traffic, but more substantial ones—the way people talked about politics and money and their future, and the way they traveled. They had only been allowed to travel for the past five years, and now they went everywhere—in fact, a lot of them wanted to travel outside China and never come back.

  "We have visa problems with some of those people," Mr. Brooks said. "They go to the States to study and they get jobs and stay on. Thousands will never come back to China."

  "You must have guessed that China would change," I said, "but did you imagine that it would look like this?"

  "Never," he said. "I had no idea. We could see that a new phase was opening up, but we weren't expecting this."

  "Weren't there political scientists writing scenarios or projections?"

  "Not that I know of. If they were, they certainly didn't foresee this. It took everyone by surprise."

  And Mr. Brooks's view—also very sensible—was that since this hadn't been foreseen it was impossible to know what would follow it.

  "We are witnessing China in the middle of turbulent passage," he said. "No one can put his hand on his heart and say what is going to happen next. We just have to watch closely and wish them well."

  But over dinner—and now there were twelve of us at the consulate dining table—the subject of Chinese students staying on in America came up.

  "Excuse me," said a thin elderly man, clearing his throat. This was Professor Phan, formerly a member of the History Department at Fudan University in Shanghai.

  There was an immediate silence, because these were the first words the professor had spoken; and the suddenness of his soft voice made everyone self-conscious.

  "My children saw the Red Guards humiliate me," he said, in a gentle and reasonable way. "Can you blame them for choosing to stay in Minnesota?"

  And then Professor Phan was the only one eating, while the rest of us gaped. He had speared a small cluster of Chinese broccoli—he was unaware that he had become the center of attention. He seemed to be talking to the woman on his left.

  "I was in prison for six years, from 1966 to 1972," he said, and smiled. "But I tell my friends, 'I was not really in prison for six years. I was in for three years—because every night when it was dark and I slept, I dreamed of my boyhood, my friends, the summer weather, and my household, the flowers and birds, the books I had read, and all the pleasures I had known. So it was only when I woke up that I was back in prison.' That was how I survived."

  There was another silence while he ate what was on his fork; and then he saw that everyone was listening.

  He said that he believed that Nixon's visit to China had something to do with his release, because some of the people accompanying Nixon in 1972 showed an interest in political prisoners and had asked to visit prisons.

  "Usually we got one thin slice of meat a week. If the wind was strong it blew away. But just before President Nixon's visit we started to get three pieces. The prison guards were afraid that he might visit and ask how we were being treated."

  Professor Phan had studied at Queen's College, Cambridge, and had lived in England from 1930 to 1939. There was a shyness in the way he spoke that made his intelligence seem even more powerful, and he had a slight giggle that he uttered just before he said something devastating. He seemed about seventy-five, and I had the feeling that though prison had aged him it had also in a way strengthened him. I should say this was a frequent impression I had in China, of former political prisoners. Their hardships and isolation, and even the abuse they suffered never seemed to have weakend them. On the contrary, they were tougher as a result, and contemptuous of their captors, and not only strong in their convictions but also outspoken.

  In that respect, Professor Phan was typical, but not less impressive for that. He giggled softly and said, "Americans have no cause to fear the Chinese—none whatsoever. The Chinese are interested in only two things in the world—power and money. America has more power and money than anyone else. That is why the Chinese will always need the friendship of America."

  It was clear that he was speaking with the ultimate cynicism, a bleak despair. He giggled again and called Mao "the Old Man," and he repeated something that Mr. Brooks had said to me, about Mao being like a feudal emperor.

  "In prison we had to read the Old Man's speeches," Professor Phan said, and smiled sweetly. "Four volumes. Sometimes they made us recite the speeches, and if you got a word wrong the guards would become very angry and you'd have to start all over again. Apart from that we did nothing. We sat on the stone floor all day, like animals. I longed to go to bed and sleep and dream of the past."

  Someone said, "What was your crime, Professor?"

  "My crime? Oh, my crime was listening to the radio—American and English-language broadcasts."

  After dinner I accompanied him home—he did not live far away, and it was a pleasant summer night.

  'This humiliation you spoke of—"

  I didn't quite know how to begin; but he knew what I was asking.

  He said, "One night, in September 1966, forty Red Guards showed up at my house. Forty of them. They came inside—they burst in, and there were both men and women. They put me on trial, so to speak. We had 'struggle sessions.' They criticized me—you know the expression? They stayed in my house, all of them, for forty-one days, and all this time they were haranguing me and interrogating me. In the end they found me guilty of being a bourgeois reactionary. That was the crime. I was sent to prison."

  "What was the sentence—the length, I mean?"

  "Any length. I had no idea when I would be released. That was the worst of it."

  "Forty Red Guards—that's very scary. And they were at your house for almost six weeks! Did you know any of them?"

  "Oh, yes. Some of them were my students." He gave the same gentle giggle and said, "They are still around," and disappeared into his house.

  On my walks in Shanghai, I often went past the Chinese Acrobatic Theater, a domed building near the center of the city. And I became curious and attended a performance; and after I saw it—not only the tumblers and clowns and contortionists, but the man who balanced a dinner service for twelve on a chopstick that he held in his mouth—I wanted to know more.

  Mr. Liu Maoyou at the Shanghai Bureau of Culture was in charge of the acrobats. He had started out as an assistant at the Shanghai Library, but even at the best of times things are quiet at the city library, since it is next to impossible—for bureaucratic reasons—for anyone to borrow a book. The librarian is little more
than a custodian of the stacks. So Mr. Liu jumped at the chance of a transfer and joined the Bureau of Culture, and he accompanied the Chinese acrobats on their first tour of the United States in 1980.

  "We call it a theater because the performance has an artistic and dramatic element," Mr. Liu said. "It has three aspects—acrobats, magic and a circus."

  I asked him how it started.

  "Before Liberation all the acrobats were family members. They were travelers and performers. They performed on the street or in any open space. But we thought of bringing them together and training them properly. Of course, the Chinese had been acrobats for thousands of years. They reached their height in the Tang Dynasty and were allowed to perform freely."

  Mr. Liu said this with such enthusiasm I asked him how he felt about the Tang Dynasty.

  "It was the best period in China," he said. "The freest time—all the arts flourished during the Tang era."

  So much for the Shanghai Bureau of Culture, but he was still talking.

  "Before Liberation the acrobats were doing actions without art form," he said. "But they have to use mind as well as body. That's why we started the training center. We don't want these acrobats to be mind-empty, so after their morning practice they study math, history, language and literature."

  He said that in 1986, 30 candidates were chosen from 3000 applicants. They were all young—between ten and fourteen years old—but Mr. Liu said the bureau was not looking for skill but rather for potential.

  "We also have a circus," he said. "Also a school for animal training."

  This interested me greatly, since I have a loathing for everything associated with performing animals. I have never seen a lion tamer who did not deserve to be mauled; and when I see a little mutt, wearing a skirt and a frilly bonnet, and skittering through a hoop, I am thrilled by a desire for its tormentor (in the glittering pants suit) to contract rabies.