by Xinran Xue
To tell the truth, I am a little nervous about visiting today's Chinese web pages – the lure of these places really is too great! Leaving aside the fascinating anecdotes, the information on cultivating the body and the sex, the dazzling variety of lifestyle advice, and looking only at the exposed secrets of history, the analysis of the great works of the ancients and of international points of conflict… as soon as you dive in you can easily lose yourself in all those "nobody can say for sures".
The first example: China's territory. The People's Republic of China has a land area of approximately 9,600,000 square kilometres, which makes it the third largest country in the world after only Russia and Canada (forty-two times the size of the United Kingdom). It is divided into four directly governed cities, twenty-three provinces, five autonomous regions and two Special Administrative Zones, and the capital is Beijing. China's territory spans forty-nine degrees of latitude stretching from latitude 53°30' north to 4° north, a distance of 5,500 kilometres from north to south. At its easternmost point, Chinese territory begins at 135°05' east, with its westernmost point at 73°40' east, a distance of 5,200 kilometres from east to west, spanning sixty degrees of longitude, with a time difference of more than four hours. This is a national "definition", the only thing which is recognised to be the same amid all the various "differences". Different Chinese official websites give different figures for other things: www.china.org.cn states that it borders on fifteen countries by land, and China's sea areas have an area of approximately 4,730,000 square kilometres, with about 5,400 islands and islets distributed throughout. But www.gov.cn maintains that China's sea area is about 4,700,000 square kilometres, containing 7,600 islands, and that China shares a land border with fourteen nations, and has eight neighbours by sea.
The second example: it is said that at the end of 2005 China's population was 1,306,313,812, and that it has 668 cities, of which 13 have a population of 2 million or more, 24 have a population of 1 to 2 million, 48 have half a million to a million, 205 have a population of 200,000-500,000, and 378 less than 200,000. But on 11 November 2005 the head of the Chinese Construction Ministry said that in less than ten years' time the number of China's megacities of over a million people would already have increased from 34 to 49. No matter which figure is correct, they all imply that in eight years China will have more than ten new megacities! Will these fifteen megacities come from an increase in the non-agricultural population? Will they be capable of absorbing the increase in population? Are housing, traffic, schools, social plans in general, medical protection and green spaces being developed at the same speed? Will the original inhabitants and the newcomers be able to get along and live together side by side? My research teams were unable to find any material with figures on the subject, plans for development or anything of that kind.
The third example: on 18 February 2004 at 20:31 GMT, 04:31 Beijing time, China's Xinhua News Agency released the news that Wu Yi, China's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Health, met Gao Yaojie, a doctor from China's Henan province. Gao Yaojie is a retired obstetrician who was subjected to many years' official harassment for exposing the truth about the AIDS situation in that province, and was refused permission by the government to travel to the United Nations to receive the Jonathan Mann Award for health and human rights. It is said that when Wu Yi and Gao Yaojie met, all local officials, including the head of the province, were ordered to leave the room, leaving only the two women behind. Wu Yi told Dr Gao to drop all formalities and speak freely, and the meeting lasted for three hours. But even after this highly significant meeting, the government still did not allow Gao Yaojie to collect her prize; it was not until early 2007 that the Chinese government notified the UN that Gao Yaojie was about to begin her journey to receive the award. Why could not even a dialogue with the Deputy Prime Minister get the doctor the support she deserved? And what had eliminated the obstacles set up by the local government after that? Could it be possible that the local government had become an entrenched power in its own right? If not, how could a single-party Chinese government permit a local government to undermine China's international image in that way? Could it be that Henan's AIDS situation had progressed so far that it frightened the central government? Or had three years' delay had a beneficial effect on the treatment of AIDS in Henan? If so, why had the Chinese media, whose "sole duty is to utter praise", not reported it? As I understand it, by the end of 2006, Henan province had stated that it has 11,844 cases of AIDS, but medical workers and experts say that the number of Aids carriers in Henan province may have reached 1 million.
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 rectific
ation" 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 foreigners 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 d
oor 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: