Riding the Iron Rooster

I passed the Sichuan People's Hospital one day, walking on the outskirts of Chengdu. It was a busy place, or perhaps I had gotten there during visiting hours; anyway, a great number of people were coming and going. Fruit and vegetable stalls had been set up across the street from the hospital, where people could buy presents for the patients. But among those stalls were a half a dozen medicine men, selling potions that ranged from the outright quackery of antlers and birds' bills and snakeskins, to herbal remedies that were accepted in many Chinese hospitals. It was an appropriate place for the quacks, and they apparently operated on the assumption that if someone was not happy with his treatment at the state hospital he could supplement his medicine with lizards and powdered deer antlers.

Mr. Fang followed me everywhere, in his hesitant way, hanging back apprehensively, and smiling when I caught his eye. But it was always a smile of fear.

I walked past a family-planning poster—a large billboard near the center of Chengdu. It showed a Chinese leader welcoming the birth of one baby girl (the parents handing it over for approval). The slogan underneath said, China Needs Family Planning.

When I turned around and addressed Mr. Fang, the poor man yelped. Then he recovered himself and laughed. His laugh said Sorry for screaming!

"That man looks familiar," I said. "Is that Zhou Enlai?"

"Yes. It is Zhou."

"Why him on a family-planning poster?"

"People like him. People respect him."

"Why not Mao Zedong?"

"On a family-planning poster!" Mr. Fang said. He was right to find it absurd. After all, Mao had encouraged the Chinese to breed like rabbits. "Not so good," Mr. Fang said.

I asked him whether people had a more respectful attitude towards Mao or Zhou these days.

"For myself, I prefer Zhou. And I think many others do, too. But 1 cannot speak for them."

"Why do you prefer Zhou, Mr. Fang?"

"He was honest. He was a good man. Also during the Cultural Revolution he suffered much."

"Was he criticized?"

"Not in public, but within. It was worse. People know that."

Before I set off again, I said, "Mr. Fang, why don't you go back to the hotel and rest? It's not necessary to follow me."

"It is the Chinese way," Mr. Fang said.

The parks in Chengdu attracted the newer sort of Chinese youth.

Observe the young couple entering People's Park in a suburb of Chengdu one June afternoon. The first thing that strikes you about the man is that he does not look anything like the man in the family-planning poster. He is smoking a king-size cigarette—it dangles from his lips—and in his hand he has a suitcase-style cassette recorder and radio, and the screechy music (probably a Hong Kong tape) thumps against it and drowns conversation and frightens the dusty starlings. The fellow wears a T-shirt saying Cowboy, and the motif on the shirt is a long-nosed man in a ten-gallon hat. He also wears tight blue jeans and platform shoes with womanish high heels. His hair has been professionally curled—the Canton fashion spread to Shanghai and has recently reached Chengdu. He wears sunglasses. He swings his radio and puffs his cigarette.

His girlfriend (if she were his wife he would not be trying so hard to impress her) wears a pink dress. It is light and fluttery. She might have made it herself. She also wears the nylon knee socks that younger women favor, and high-heeled shoes, and sunglasses with rhinestones on the frames.

This is their day off. They are spending it in the park. Later on they will look for a tree and hide behind it for a session of old-fashioned smooching. The parks and the boulevards are full of such couples. They are the new people in the People's Republic—the inheritors. But their motto is Get it while you can.

I asked Mr. Fang whether he had seen them. He said he had. He was very disapproving of these youngsters.

"It is the fault of the Cultural Revolution," he said. "They saw that it was a disaster. For that whole time there was disruption. No one obeyed. That is why, now, these young people have no manners, no discipline and no ideas."

"You sound angry, Mr. Fang."

He did not reply. He laughed—a sharp stuttering and explosive laugh that meant he was very angry.

He had said he disliked modern Chinese stories. He meant he was out of sympathy with them. Who were these spoiled brats and spendthrifts who appeared in the pages of Beijing Literature and Harvest and Monthly Literary Miscellany? Actually they were just the sort of youngsters you saw every day in the public parks, trying to be cool, which meant mimicking Western ways—sunglasses, curled hair, platform shoes, knee socks, flared trousers, blue jeans, transistor radios, earphones, and for a lucky few, motorcycles. The girls even had to have a fancy brassiere, probably the most superfluous garment in China.