Riding the Iron Rooster

In Langxiang it was the low temperatures that gave me long, exhauscing dreams. The cold kept me from deep sleep, and so I lay just beneath the surface of consciousness, like a drifting fish. I offer one of my Langxiang dreams. I was besieged in a house in San Francisco, but I realized I would have to escape or I would be killed. I first fired out of the window and then ran from the front door shooting a machine gun and wearing headphones. I boarded a passing cable car—that was part of my escape route: I was now safe. President Reagan was on it, standing and straphanging. I found a seat near him and started talking to him. He told me his right ear was useless and that I should talk into his left. I was asking him whether he was having a tough time as president. He said, "Terrible." So I gave him my seat, and we were still talking when I woke up feeling very cold.

That was not the end. I went back to sleep and dreamed that I was at a Christmas party. I didn't know any of the people. It was a large and fashionable house, and the people seemed like houseguests, staying for the weekend. One man startled me: he looked like a gnome, with a tanned, leathery face, completely bald, and wearing an earring. In his hand was a small plastic model of himself, just as ugly but only six inches high, which he was giving as a Christmas present.

Nancy Reagan was at the party. Her hair was in big white rollers. She had very thin arms and popping eyes. We talked about the weather for a while, and then she said, "I have to call home"—she was too embarrassed to say "the White House." After she made her phone call, we went onto the porch, which was like a conservatory with a view of the sea. She said she had a bad ear—"My trump ear," she said, meaning she needed an ear trumpet for it. She said, "You're so lucky co come from here." When she said that I realized that we were on Cape Cod, and perhaps in an idealized version of my own house. She said pathetically, "I was so poor when I was growing up."

When she finished, I said, "I've just had a dream about the president"—and I began to describe my earlier dream within this dream.

Before I got very far, Mr. Tian banged on my door and woke me up.

"We are going to the primeval forest," he said.

We drove about thirty miles, and Mrs. Jin joined us. The driver's name was Ying. The road was icy and corrugated and very narrow; but there were no other vehicles except for an occasional army truck. When we arrived at a place called Clear Spring (Qing Yuan), where there was a cabin, we began hiking through the forest. There was snow every where, but it was not very deep—a foot or so. The trees were huge and very close together—great fat trunks crowding each other. We kept to a narrow path.

I asked Mrs. Jin about herself. She was a pleasant person, very frank and unaffected. She was thirty-two and had a young daughter. Her husband was a clerk in a government department. This family of three lived with six other family members in a small flat in Langxiang—nine people in three rooms. Her mother-in-law did all the cooking. It seemed cruel that in a province which had wide open spaces, people should be forced to live in such cramped conditions at close quarters. But this was quite usual. And it was an extended family under one roof. I often had the feeling that it was the old immemorial Confucian family that had kept China orderly. Mao had attacked the family—the Cultural Revolution was intentionally an assault on the family system, when children were told to rat on their bourgeois parents. But that had faltered and failed. The family had endured, and what were emerging with Deng's reforms were family businesses and family farms.

Kicking through the forest, I asked whether it was possible to buy Mao's Little Red Book of Selected Thoughts.

"I have thrown mine away," Mr. Tian said. "That was all a big mistake."

"I don't agree with him," Mrs. Jin said.

"Do you read Mao's Thoughts?" I asked.

"Sometimes," she said. "Mao did many great things for China. Everyone criticizes him, but they forget the wise things he said."

"What is your favorite thought? The one that you most associate with his wisdom?"

"'Serve the People,'" Mrs. Jin said. "I can't quote it all to you, it is too long. It is very wise."

"What about 'A Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party'—can you sing it?"

"Oh, yes," she said, and did so as we marched through the woods. It was not a catchy tune, but it was perfect for walking briskly, full of iambics: Geming bushi qingke chifan...