Riding the Iron Rooster

High Party officials—secretaries, directors and deputies longed to get a room or an apartment in Qingdao and spend the rest of their days in the sea air with its snap and tang. It was perhaps a bourgeois dream, but who could blame them? It was more a town than a city. It was not heavily industrialized. The weather was lovely most of the year—pleasant in the summer, bracing in the winter. There was only the occasional typhoon, but it was obvious that Qingdao was able to withstand such storms. It was not a congested place. It was almost unique among Chinese towns for having a unity of architectural style—it just so happened that it was German and not Chinese unity, but so what? That was the luck of its youth and the fact that it had been planned and built in such a short time. It wasn't the centuries-old accretion of monuments, pagodas, ruins, factories, apartment blocks, political boondoggling and bad ideas that made up the average Chinese city. It was not only a pretty place—the familiar and absurd its strongest features—but it was manifestly prosperous. Yantai was not a patch on it. It looked well-to-do. Its food was excellent—fresh seafood, Shandong vegetables. Its beaches were clean. There were plovers strutting on them. And those old folks you took to be members of the cleanup brigade, grubbing around the rocks and poking in the sand, stuffing sea urchins and black kelp into their bags, were actually market traders who were selling this stuff to eat; but the result of their gathering left the beaches of Qingdao bright and tidy. No wonder the Chinese wanted to retire here.

I walked around, wishing I could stay longer. Generally speaking, it was not an ambition I had very often in China. I would visit a place and get hold of it, and after three or four days I would want to let go and move on. The Chinese themselves were always telling me that I should go here or there—see this garden or that pavilion. In Qingdao they said, "You should go to Mount Tai"—the holy mountain on the east of the peninsula. But I was happy in beautiful, breezy Qingdao, and it was a bonus that after dark it looked slightly nightmarish.

It had been perfectly placed on the shore, taking full advantage of the cliffs. With the sea in front, and the apple orchards behind it, and the heavy industry well hidden, it seemed well planned. It also had a number of colleges and universities; it had several technical schools and an oceanographic institute. So, in addition to the vacationers and retired people, it also had a great number of students.

Qingdao was one of the pleasantest Chinese cities for walking in—I guessed that that had been part of the scheme to make it habitable. I met students on my walks. I asked them everything and I justified my interrogations by the observation about Confucius in the Analects: "When The Master entered the Grand Temple he asked questions about everything."^*

There had been no demonstrations here. One girl said, "A few years ago I would have demonstrated, but now I have too much to lose. The government would destroy me."

She was twenty-one and was about to become a student teacher. She shrugged when she told me that, as though it was not quite what she had wanted.

"Is there anything wrong with being a teacher?" I asked.

"No. It's good work. But, you know, factory workers earn more than teachers because they get bigger bonuses."

Another girl said, "I feel old"—she was twenty-two. And she explained, "It is as if my life is all decided and mapped out. Nothing unexpected will happen. I will graduate. I will get an M.A. The government will say that I must become a teacher. I will spend my life that way."

"What would you do if you had your choice?"

"I would travel—not necessarily to foreign countries," she said. "I would wander, just wander, in China. Have you noticed that no one wanders here? No one is open-minded and aimless. Everyone has a purpose. But I would go here and there, talking to people, and I would choose out-of-the-way places, like Gansu and Xinjiang."

The male students I talked to were much less adventurous than the women; much more conventional. The women seemed a little giggly, but that was only shyness. They could be very direct.

"When did you first feel old?" one asked me.

I answered truthfully. "When I was six or seven, in the first grade. And then when I graduated from high school. And when I turned thirty. Since then I have felt fairly young—that is, until you asked me that question."