In the brief upheaval, I saw some unexpected beauties in this Chinese way of life. It’s striking that people aren’t afraid of each other as much as Americans are. There’s plenty of poverty, but there isn’t the abject homeless misery that one finds in American cities, and so while the poor and rich live as next-door neighbors, people here have enough in common that internal justification for malevolence is needed, and it’s rare. There’s more materialism here than I expected, but still far less than back home. People seem content with little: A man with a street-side tool shop who sells a few screwdrivers a day seems perfectly at ease. People also seem more innocent, less jaded than Americans, and it’s refreshing. But perhaps this is because they have less knowledge about the workings of their system, their government. It evokes Biblical questions about knowledge of good and evil—as if they who know become cynical, and ignorance is bliss. Americans make their own decisions about things, and at a significant level, they know. Chinese, on the other hand, are making only small decisions while the big ones come down from above, with the government playing the role of parent, or god. Many Chinese people seem to see their government the way Western fundamentalists see God: omnipotent, mysterious, never far from hand, and ready to dole out justice with wrath and impunity.
Standing under the Chinese flag, Raymond is the first to present his huàtí. He looks at me and then reads aloud from a piece of paper. His topic is wombats and kangaroos. “The diversity of Australia’s wildlife is unpara-paralleled,” he stumbles, probably plagiarizing an encyclopedia or tourist brochure. I give him a ‘C’ and tell everyone why. “You have to write and read only your own work.”
Money goes next, describing two world cuisines. “Everyone knows, Chinese food is the most nutritious in the world, and American food is unhealthy and makes you fat. But I like hamburgers. And I like ice cream too, and ice cream was invented in China. But chocolate is American…” She goes on, and it’s quite long, but to me not quite original enough for an A. B+.
Sandoh is at the lectern next, and he presents a fluent report on the history of basketball, chronicling in terse but surprisingly correct and numerous sentences the impact of Wilt Chamberlain, George Gervin, Michael Jordan, and Kobe Bryant. I give him an A, his first.
Alice reports on human rights, but her words sound like plagiarism, like she’s reading blurbs straight from some party-line newspaper. “The illogical stance of those countries championing human rights is rooted in hypocrisy.” She looks at me, and I realize that she’s trying to please me, perhaps for an easy A. I sigh and give her a B-. George steps to the lectern, and he quietly asks to change his topic to Tibet. Sensitive to the enormous controversy around the “Two T’s”—Tibet and Taiwan—I cautiously nod. He begins. “People of the Tibetan Autonomous Region are very happy today. They have modern things, like refrigerators and hospitals. They are free to progress with development and they are liberated from rule by religious people and superstitions…” Again, the party line. Still, his English is raw and sounds original. B+.
On Thursday, as Donkey is beginning his oration, there’s a knock on the classroom door. Two young men in white polo shirts enter, eyeing me, toting a camera and a tape recorder. “Would you like to be in newspaper?” one asks. Unsure what to say, I welcome them in English and smile for the camera, quietly terrified. Donkey stumbles through a description of FC Barcelona, the Catalonian soccer club. I call on Adam next, and his presentation on computers is dull and short. The good students, the ones who are usually energetic, are energized, preening and performing with the reporters in the room; everyone else has fallen silent. The crop of huàtí is disappointing—most reports are mostly dull and too short—but Jrace’s talk about New York City earns an A for her interesting coverage of the five boroughs. Iceboy earns the other A as he enthralls the classroom with a huàtí that’s on everyone’s mind: Hong Kong’s imminent return to China. The big event is just three months away, and his monologue is optimistic but nuanced with rhetorical questions.
The reporters seem unable to comprehend anything being said, and they’re already packing away their notepads and gear. They leave just as Iceboy finishes.
Jrace raises her hand, and she asks me what I think about Hong Kong.
I pause. “Chinese people should be proud to welcome Hong Kong back,” I say. “It will be a reunion for so many people and families. It will be a time to celebrate.”
Another hand goes up. A girl in glasses named Angle. “But what do you think will happen for the people of Hong Kong?”
“It’s a mixed blessing,” I acknowledge. “I don’t know. But I think ‘One Country, Two Systems’ can work.”
She isn’t satisfied. “Will they have the same freedom in their newspapers?”
“Hopefully. That will depend on the journalists. You should buy a newspaper now and another in a year and compare them.”
“You’re going to be in the newspaper—you should buy one!” Donkey crows. “You’re going to be famous!”
Everyone laughs and applauds, but I can’t bring myself to smile.
The next day, on my way out of our apartment, Mr. Chen hands me another anonymous missive. I stop in the park and take a seat on a bench by the river. The letter is on plainer stationery and the handwriting is different.
About Hong Kong return to China, I remember that you said it was good for China, and you were happy. As a Chinese, I’ve the same feeling like you, because China will become stronger. But if I’m Hong Kong people, I won’t feel especially happy and I will even feel worried. Today, HK’s rich and strong can be seen by the whole world. It’s initiated by English Government and HK people. But once China takes over, will it be still rich and strong? Maybe or may be not. In the future, I really want other foreign countries to try to take over Guangzhou to see if it will become rich and strong like HK under their jurisdiction. But I still hope China will become stronger and stronger year by year.
The boldness is impressive, and I save the note. Deng’s death, along with the censored news from Hong Kong, which airs here but nowhere further into mainland China, has the local people thinking. Still, urging a foreign country to take over your city seems like a big step!
I slip the note in with my bookmark in The Search for Modern China, a scholarly tome that Byron lent to me. Opening the book, I read for several hours about this great country’s horrendous, marvelous, revolutionary history. Sun Yatsen, the well-traveled scholar from Guangzhou, led a rebel army and brought down the Qing Dynasty in 1911, but the new government, founded and guided by a group called the Kuómíntăng (Nationalist Party), failed to satisfy the millions of peasants, laborers, merchants, and scholars. The Gòngchăndăng (Communist Party) grew rapidly, inspired by socialist and communist idealism sweeping the globe. These two rivals secured power in various parts of China’s vast territory, and ideological differences between them led to overt power struggles and finally to civil war in the 1930s. A truce was called in 1937 when Japan invaded, but at the end of World War II in 1945, the civil war resumed. The Communists were led by Mao Tse-tung, and they finally won, capturing Beijing and declaring the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949. Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled to the island of Taiwan, and they set up a nation of their own there. Here on the mainland, Mao and the Communists set to work. They methodically conquered and unified virtually every land that had ever been called China, from Tibet to Manchuria. Then they went about redistributing land and modernizing the nation’s agriculture and industry. Enthusiastic implementation of communism increased productivity and ignited an exhilarating sense of self-reliance among the people. Mao ordered still more aggressive steps to organize all of China into giant communes, but this plan largely failed, and horrendous famines swept the land.
Convinced of the inherent benefit of revolution, Mao launched something new: the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution. It was 1966, and to cleanse people’s minds of old traditions, false hopes and fears, and capitalist greed, he unleashed a ferve
nt era that saw children dressed as “Red Guards” chastising and beating their own teachers, friends, and parents on account of perceived “bourgeois” or “capitalist” ideas found in, perhaps, a poem or an uncle’s foreign acquaintances. Families were forcibly split up. Urban youth were dispatched en masse to rural work camps. The government pursued this puritanical path well into the 1970s, even as exchange with the West resumed and American President Richard Nixon visited.
Meanwhile, the island of Taiwan had grown into a capitalist powerhouse, partly because of American military and financial support. Most people on Taiwan viewed their island as a separate and independent nation, while Beijing continually referred to it as a renegade province and threatened to invade at any official use of the word “independence.” Mao died in 1976, and the government immediately went in new directions with policy. Political freedoms were granted fitfully to the populace, and this led to mass movements to reform government, fight corruption, and deepen democracy. The largest of these movements were protests in the Spring of 1989 that brought millions of students and workers into city streets all across China, including at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Deng Xiaoping, who had maneuvered into political preeminence, responded cruelly to the demonstrations in Tiananmen, calling in the army’s most obedient regiments at dawn on June 4 to gun down all protestors who had not left the square.
I put the excellent book down for a moment, and I notice propaganda banners that weren’t there last week. They make use of a special word—huíguī—to refer to the handover of Hong Kong. I can decipher the phrases: “Celebrate the Glorious Victorious Return of Hong Kong!” “Long Live One Country, Two Systems!” After the international ignominy surrounding the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Beijing hailed as a major triumph its negotiations to win back the colony of Hong Kong from Great Britain.
My eyes drift to the far side of the river, where dozens of enormous billboards scream their advertisements, and it looks like capitalist propaganda facing off from one side of the water against communist propaganda on the other: China here, America there. One of the billboards features a gigantic replica of the unusual character I saw at the wedding—“double happiness”—and alongside the character, two people, one Chinese and one gwailo, are happily playing ping-pong. It’s an ad for a sports equipment company, one of China’s new large corporations, but the scene it depicts warms me. Looking at the image of harmony fills me with gratitude—to be here, to be strange and scared and lonely and lost, and yet to be learning constantly. My students and this country are learning from me and teaching me. The beauty of this almost overcomes me, and I feel a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye.
A middle-aged man in sunglasses is staring at me from another bench. He notices me notice him. “May I sit down?” he enunciates precisely. I nod, and he rises and sits beside me. He wants to know where I’m from, how old I am, how I got here, how long I’ve been in China. He finally points to a grove of trees. “Will you come to our English Corner? We want to learn a little bit by a little bit.”
I follow him and sit with his group of English enthusiasts. They’re young and old, male and female, shy and assertive. One man wants to know how to phrase past tense questions in English. An intelligent-looking woman with glasses and mittens asks me about Wang Dan, the imprisoned leader of the 1989 protests who has appeared a lot lately on Pearl TV, a Hong Kong channel.
A blade of chilly evening slices through the afternoon as I ask her first what she thinks.
“He’s a troublemaker,” an earnest young man cuts in. “You can tell that he hates China.” This is the official opinion.
“That may be true,” I say.
“He was trying to do good, but he was selfish,” the woman says.
Glancing furtively at passersby, like a teenager sharing a Playboy magazine, I hand them my book and open it to a page recounting Wang’s role as a leader in the days the people took over Tiananmen Square. They puzzle through a few sentences, then flip a few pages further, to a spread of photographs—the masses of students in the square, the statue of the Goddess of Democracy, the tanks, the hundreds of slain bodies. Everyone knows about the widespread protests that year, but none of them knew about the military onslaught and machine gun massacres that rocked Beijing. I tell them what I know as they turn the pages. The young man urges skepticism. “American books are full of propaganda.”
We discuss AIDS, which another man explains was created by the U.S. as a biological weapon, and terrorism, which occurs frequently because of “splittists” in China’s western provinces. The woman informs me that the American media often lies to the world, and I look from eager face to eager face, wondering how we might ever agree on anything.
Lu Lan and I do agree on something. We both want to climb all seventeen tiers of the ancient pagoda at the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees. It’s Guangzhou’s most famous religious site, but few visitors attempt to climb the pagoda since the red floors and stone archways grow successively smaller as you ascend. Crisp, cool, sunny air—what passes for winter in Guangzhou—inspires us as we duck so low we’re practically crawling. We emerge triumphantly on the top balcony. Catching our breath, we gaze out at the city, a sea of low metal roofs spreading in all directions, washing against tall, glassy towers in the distance.
This morning, noting the divine weather, she suggested we abandon the laboratory and pilgrimage here. The pagoda was constructed in 1097, during the Song Dynasty, she explains, but the temple itself was consecrated earlier, in the year 674, by Huineng, China’s most famous Zen Buddhist. Her English suddenly amazes me—she seems almost fluent when she’s relaxed. She looks comfortable and happy communicating with me. Her hair is in a ponytail and she’s managed to keep a fashionable orange vest and white scarf clean.
“Are there many Buddhists in Guangzhou?” I ask.
“No, this is the only temple in the city. Are you Buddhist?”
“Yes,” I say, and pause. “I’m Christian too.”
“Mm, Americans are free!” She laughs.
“Or weird.”
The wind chills the sweat on our necks as the city traffic below us honks, screeches, halts, and hurries. Standing on the millennium-old stones, we witness it all, enjoying the sensation of hovering in midair. Our eyes meet. “Yes, you are strange,” she says. Her smile bends like lightning, and my mind races.
The monks far below us begin to chant. Igniting giant hanging coils of yellow incense, they’re soon enshrouded and obscured by smoke. Tranquility emanates upward and outward from the tiny oasis. We sit on the rail, and Lu Lan tells me that several thousand years ago, five gods rode giant rams into a small fishing village. It’s our myth, she tells me. The gods, disguised as homeless vagabonds, asked strangers for lodging in the village. They were taken in, fed, and treated well, so the gods proclaimed that the village would never know famine; it would become a great city, they said, a place of abundance and prosperity. In the millennia since, Guangzhou has known weal, woe, and revolution, but never the brutal famines so frequent across most of China. The City of Five Rams, as Guangzhou is thus called, is indeed a great city today, a place of plenty, a burgeoning economic powerhouse, a fabulous hub of trade. But the fact that this temple, while remarkable, is essentially Guangzhou’s only one, seems to reveal how completely modernization is shredding the city’s history and landmarks. Today’s Guăngzhoūrén clearly esteem economic improvement over their own cultural history. Marx denounced religion as the “opiate of the people,” but Mao went considerably further and ordered the destruction of all religious establishments. Deng permitted a rebirth of Taoism, Buddhism, and Islam, but at a glacial pace, and adherents are still barred from joining the omnipotent Communist Party. We’ll all soon see what Jiang Zemin has in mind, but whatever happens, today’s Guăngzhoūrén certainly seem more interested in taking advantage of Deng’s market reforms to improve their lot financially than in reclaiming any of the city’s annihilated spiritual traditions.
On the way out of t
he temple, Lu Lan shows me how to burn incense for good luck, to touch it to my head, to bow. We each burn two sticks. Outside the temple gates, we stop at a nearby jade market, and she helps me shop for a birthday gift for my sister. We pick a bracelet of fine, pale, smooth, pure jade, and she helps me bargain, first in Mandarin, then in Cantonese, cutting forty percent off the price.
She guides us next to one of Guangzhou’s excellent seafood restaurants. With delight she orders two of her favorite local delicacies: prawns in scallions and a whole, steamed, black-scaled yellow croaker. While we await the food, she produces a copy of yesterday’s Ram City Evening Journal. Splashed on page two is a picture of me, looking confused, and an article exploring in some detail my unfortunate inability to understand my students’ Chinese. No one spoke a word of Chinese while the reporters were around, I tell Lu Lan in confusion.
The dishes arrive, lavishing our noses with sweet aromas. Before we dig in, as my mouth is literally watering, my tutor reveals a Chinese custom: A man, before eating a whole fish like this, should offer his girlfriend or fiancée the best bites from the fish’s belly; otherwise he will prove selfish and a bad provider, and the girl’s father, particularly, will look poorly upon him. She looks at the fish a moment, pointing with her chopsticks and eyeing me expectantly, teasing me to take the choicest bits of the salty white flesh. I laugh, refuse, insist she eat first, but finally I’m the one savoring the way the succulent belly flakes off the bones. She finally takes a bite too, closing her eyes, smiling at the delectable and buttery fish.
“I think they’re criticizing your tutor,” she says, gesturing to the newspaper, again wearing her teacher’s smile. “They don’t think you’re learning to speak Chinese.”
“Yes, it was poor reporting!”
Double Happiness: One Man's Tale of Love, Loss, and Wonder on the Long Roads of China Page 14