The fourth example: in recent years, from both inside China and abroad, the calls for the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government to re-evaluate and officially define the Cultural Revolution have been getting louder and louder. Increasingly, the ruling party is starting to face angry recriminations for its unfairness and weak government, and their toleration and willingness to overlook Mao Zedong's crimes. However, in May 2007 I read on a Chinese official website:
24 June 2005: Official Almanac of the People's Republic of China
The "Cultural Revolution", which lasted from May 1966 to October 1976, resulted in the gravest setbacks to the Party, the nation and the people since the founding of the People's Republic. This "Cultural Revolution" was instigated and led by Mao Zedong. The course of the "Cultural Revolution" can be divided into three parts:
From the start of the Cultural Revolution to the Party's Ninth Plenary Congress in April 1969. The guidelines and policy of the "Ninth Plenary" were erroneous in ideology, policy and organisation.
From the Central Ninth Plenary to the Tenth Plenary Conference of the Chinese Communist Party in August 1973. The Tenth Plenary continued the Ninth Plenary's "leftist" errors, and made Wang Hongwen Deputy Central Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen combined in the Central Politburo to form the "Gang of Four", further increasing the strength of Jiang Qing's counter-revolutionary group.
The "Tenth Plenary" to October 1976. In early October 1976, the Central Politburo, carrying out the will of the Party and the people, smashed Jiang Qing's revolutionary clique, and put an end to the disaster of the "Cultural Revolution". Hua Guofeng, Ye Jianying, Li Xiannian and others played an important role in this. As to the "Cultural Revolution", the major responsibility is Mao Zedong's. However, at the end of the day, Mao Zedong's errors are the mistakes of a great proletarian revolutionary.
I am baffled: how can the government "repudiate the Cultural Revolution and accept the mistakes of Mao Zedong" as part of the official almanac of national history, and yet not allow the media to embark on a full-scale condemnation of the Cultural Revolution? The government still refuses to delete or make cuts in the description of relevant records in school textbooks, and forbids the publishing of literary works on related topics. Does the constitution of a "democratic republic" allow this garbled, out-of-context history, and this emperor-like avoidance of history? Perhaps the government's silence is for the sake of those peasants who still believe that Mao Zedong is "the red sun"? Throughout the history of imperial China, many changes of dynasty began with peasant rebellions.
On 15 May 2007, just before I left China, I tried, as I had many times before, to open the Chinese web page of the BBC news, but once again I failed. I hope the day will come soon when I can read the news in my homeland: that will be a sign of China's bravery, and its courage to join the rest of the world.
On 10 August 2007 I got an email from a friend in a Chinese news work unit: the radio station where I used to work, Radio Jiangsu, had been singled out by the central government for punishment. Eight radio stations had ceased broadcasting in Jiangsu province alone, and over two hundred radio stations up and down the country had been shut down with no warning. The reason the high-ups had given was that they had been "moving too quickly, developing in ways that do not conform to recognised standards". As I understand it, this is a "political rectification" that took place countless times before 1980, but never again since then. In their discussions on the Internet, my fellow journalists held a variety of opinions. Some said that there was actually a point to this rectification: without it, people for whom the radio, which had enjoyed a mere twenty years of opening up, was a window on the world would have been destroyed by the "rubbish guidance" it was producing. Some considered that this rectification was a retrograde step for China's news, believing that the laws of the natural world and the "survival of the fittest" would assure a healthy development for China's news if it was left to itself. Others maintained that this was an "immunisation" for freedom of the press, in preparation for the relaxing of Chinese media controls for the 2008 Olympic Games. One old journalist even said that it was because of the Seventeenth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, which was to be held in November 2007: "There's always rectification before a Party congress, every time, it's standard practice." I thought that a sign of social progress was the news teaching the people to be more aware of the law, not acting as a tool of the government.
In today's China, the taxi drivers have been one of my best sources of relatively up to date and comparatively genuine public opinion. They have seen and learned much in the broad streets and narrow alleys, and they have come to the best understanding of these "huge changes and renewals", as they constantly modify their routes amid the endless succession of traffic jams. Every time I've come back, chatting and debating with them and listening to their cursing and jokes has been a necessary lesson for me on China's newest developments.
These are some of the complaints that I heard from a group of taxi drivers in April and May 2007:
– In Beijing, a thirty-ish male taxi driver discussing Taiwan and the mainland:
Is Taiwan easier to govern than the mainland? Quite so! Had Chiang Kai-shek got more of what it takes than Mao Zedong? I don't believe it. Could Chiang Kai-shek have taken on the mainland? Impossible, he only knew how to cook food on the peasants' wood-burning stoves, holding the foreigners' cookery books in both hands – the peasants would never get a taste of it! Our Mao couldn't make peasant food, but he knew how to help peasants steal food from rich people's kitchens. Who would the peasants follow, if not him? If someone was to stand up and say to you: Follow me, I'll write off the debts that have crushed your family for generations, you'd go along with him! Debts are like leopards and wolves, taxes are like tigers – who'd be willing to live with unpaid debts?! Chinese peasants can't read or write, but they all know about title deeds, they all understand that one debt paper can crush a whole family to death! When we'd just been liberated, Mao Zedong burned all the records of their debts, and let them breathe again – of course they were going to work like donkeys for him! Now the officials just aren't as clever as Old Man Mao; if they keep on the way they're going, on making life hard for the peasants, then they'd better watch out!
– In Beijing, a male taxi driver and former Red Guard who has just been refused a tourist visa to the USA:
Are those foreigners being fair, punishing a country's citizens for the opinions of a political party, denying them the freedom to travel and see the world? It's like punishing my son and making him admit his errors over the beating, breaking and stealing I did back when I was a Red Guard! Is that fair? Are the British being punished for supporting slavery? Do the Americans get punished for massacring the Indians? Are the French punished for their role in enslaving North Africa? Are the Spanish punished for plundering Latin America? Are the Dutch punished for what they did to the North Americans? Are the Italians or the Turks punished for allowing the conquests and massacres of ancient times? God hasn't been punished for sending down a flood to drown the human race either, has He? Mao Zedong and the Communist Party are the deadly enemies of Britain and the US, but who do they think they are, trying to punish us with their foreign visas? What country has ever refused Communist Party leaders a visa when they go off on their state visits? Why do those free, democratic Western countries treat our common people like a joke?
– In Nanjing, a female taxi driver:
My niece is studying abroad in Germany. She told me on the phone that the foreigners over there say that Chinese are too greedy for territory. Who have we ever attacked? You say we've attacked Tibet? Vietnam? Korea? What about it? They were all just the same once. What developed countries in the world today haven't attacked other smaller or weaker countries? Which of them hasn't stolen China's wealth? First they fill their own pockets, then they turn round and accuse other people of having dirty hands, it's a joke! Those foreigner
s dare call us greedy for territory? That American Bush has used his power to stir up chaos in the world, there's violence everywhere, and he calls it "anti-terrorism"? I've heard that the weapons those terrorists are using were all made in America! Where have all the decent people gone, how come nobody's tried to put a stop to their violent ways? I told my niece, don't you listen to foreigners who believe bad words about China, they all bully the weak but fear the strong!
– In Shanghai, a very young male taxi driver, of about twenty:
Going to Britain to study for two years was really disappointing. Everyone in my family had wanted me go to America, but I thought America didn't have enough history or culture; besides, my grandfather said that in Shanghai the British had a better reputation than other countries. There are a lot of old houses in Shanghai that were built by the British and French in the twenties and thirties, and even some of their old servants say that the British treated their maids better than other people. You know, in the past many schools and foundling hospitals in Shanghai were built and run by British religious societies. So I thought that if the people were so good and kind when they went abroad, they would be even better to foreigners in their own country. But I was disappointed. Really very disappointed! My Master's there was like I'd been put in a studying machine, not a breath of human life, just timetables, reading lists, students doing all their research together, teachers who barely showed their faces . . . The school allocated all the Chinese students rooms together, there was nobody to help you get involved with the local way of life, and by the time I'd finally learned how to integrate myself into British society, my visa had run out, so they didn't even give me a chance to put it into practice. After I came back I was very depressed; when I saw Britain on the TV I'd suddenly get struck by "Britain feelings", I thought I really did have feelings for the place. But once I'd calmed down and thought about it for a while, wasn't that just mawkish sentimentality? Those Brits don't take us Chinese seriously! Perhaps they still see us as the "losers" of the Opium War. Am I taking it too much to heart? But I really couldn't bear it. When I first came back I joined a British company, but before I'd been there a month I left to find work as a taxi driver, I was looking for a bit of equality and self-respect in the river of cars and traffic. Why did I walk out? I had a British head manager just before I quit, and when he spoke to you his voice was as cold as a freezer. We're all people, what gives you the right to be so high and mighty? Isn't it just that China's a bit more backward than the old-brand empires? Sometimes I really want to write an email to my old supervisor, saying: We're young and vigorous now, we may be a little bit naive and ignorant compared to you Brits, but the future belongs to us! Why haven't I written it? I'm afraid they'll be sick with rage!
"Words heard on the road" have always been a part of my social education, lessons that give me food for thought.
– Wangfujing bookshop, Beijing, 18 April 2007:
SON: Daddy, what are these dolls for?
FATHER: They're called the Olympic Dolls, they're the mascots for the 2008 Olympics.
SON: Why do they look like that? What country are they from?
FATHER: Um . . . "world citizens", maybe? I think this must be "bringing China in line with the international community".
SON: Oh . . . I get it, our Olympic mascots are the cousins of the foreigners' Transformers!
*
– Starbucks coffee house, next door to the presidential palace in Nanjing, 4 May 2007:
CHINESE-SPEAKING FOREIGN CUSTOMER: Gosh, what a beautiful building.
SERVER: Isn't it? It used to be part of the presidential palace in the republican era.
CUSTOMER: Why haven't they made it into a museum?
SERVER: That would be a waste of resources, wouldn't it? Then this house couldn't be used to make money.
CUSTOMER: It's a real pity, using such a beautiful building as a coffee house!
SERVER: No it's not. What we're doing here is allowing the best-quality goods in the world to mingle with Chinese traditional culture.
*
– Train from Nanjing to Shanghai, 7 May 2007:
GIRL A: How do you know that your dad has a lover?
GIRL B: I bumped into them, yuck, they were all over each other.
GIRL A: Did you tell your mum?
GIRL B: What would be the point? She said it herself a long time ago, all men eat what's in their bowl while eyeing up what's in the wok!
GIRL A: Not necessarily, not my dad.
GIRL B: That's because you don't know. My mum says, what man with money doesn't keep a mistress these days?
GIRL A: So what're we going to do when we have men?
GIRL B: If they can keep lovers, so can we!
*
– Ladies' toilets, Shanghai Hongqiao Domestic Airport, 11 May 2007:
MANAGER: Why is this paper dispenser so loose?
CLEANER: I thought that it would make it more convenient for the customers.
MANAGER: You can't do that, it has to be tight, or it's easy for the customers to pull out a lot all at once, and we're the ones who have to pay for it. Have you wiped down all the pictures?
CLEANER: Yes, all of them, even the new ones they've just hung up. It's just that one over the soap dispenser, there's a mark on the man's face, I can't get it off.
MANAGER: Don't you scrub that off, I put that tape over the man's eyes myself. Whatever were they were thinking of, hanging a picture of a man in a ladies' toilet? How come the floor in that cubicle isn't shiny?
CLEANER: I've just mopped it.
MANAGER: Not hard enough, you should mop the floor until you can see the face of the person in the next toilet!
*
When I heard this, I congratulated myself that there was no one in the cubicles on either side of me; I could hardly imagine performing my private natural functions "face to face" with my neighbours.
*
– Zhengda Shopping Centre, Shanghai, 12 May 2007:
YOUNG WOMAN: This brand's no good!
YOUNG MAN: It looks really great on you.
YOUNG WOMAN: What do you know about it? Nobody takes this brand seriously, I'll crash and burn in the interview, for certain!
YOUNG MAN: Well, can't you wear that one from Next?
YOUNG WOMAN: That brand's too old-fashioned – as soon as the boss sees it he'll know that I'm behind the times.
YOUNG MAN: Things are really expensive here, and money's tight for me this month.
YOUNG WOMAN: So do you really love me?
YOUNG MAN: Of course I love you!
YOUNG WOMAN: Do you? Then you couldn't let me show up in clothes that aren't even brand names and lose face in front of a foreign boss, now, could you?
*
– Shanghai Pudong International Airport, 15 May 2007:
MAN A: Aren't you going to buy her that necklace?
MAN B: It's too expensive. I can't very well claim the money back at my work unit.
MAN A: Get the attendant to write you two receipts, one for books, one for souvenirs, and that'll be the end of the matter!
MAN B: That brain of yours is good for something, anyway!
MAN A: Oh, we all do it. You tell me, are there a hundred honest officials in our China, officials who've never used public funds to pay for private expenses?
MAN B: Officials who've never claimed on expenses? A hundred? Not that many.
*
On 16 May 2007 I was in the departure lounge of Shanghai International Airport, reading a Chinese newspaper and waiting for the plane for New Zealand, where I was going to start the launch tour for my fourth book, Miss Chopsticks. The main headline in the papers was still the China Petroleum and Gas Group's discovery of oilfields of up to 1 billion tonnes in the Tanhai area of the Bohai Gulf: apparently the Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, had been "too excited to sleep". This reminded me of the worries Mr You had mentioned in his interview, that China's future strength and economic staying power would be determined by its oil suppli
es.
The most noticeable pictures in the illustrated part of the news were of the Chinese stock market, full of beaming faces after a series of rapid rises, juxtaposed with the gloomy faces of car salesmen; people were putting all their funds into the stock market. Many of the stock owners' faces were worn by the years, but the car dealers were all healthy young people who looked tasty enough to eat. By the side of a group of photos of ostentatious and extravagant "International Labour Day" marriage ceremonies was an old woman's face, full of grief and rage – another 91-year-old woman in Jiangxi province had made public her humiliating status as a Japanese "comfort woman". The old lady in the photograph looked agonised: why did they humiliate so many of us girls, and how can they still not admit it?
I put down my newspaper, and a song that was being played on the loudspeakers drifted into my ears. This song, "Dyed with my Blood", was written for the soldiers who died in the China–Vietnam War in the 1980s, and it had been forgotten by many people, before international politics had once again painted it with fresh colour: