Riding the Iron Rooster

Now we call him "Mr. Foreigner, Sir!

"

We weep over the departed but smile when

a new wife takes her place.

Ah, the affairs of the world are like

the turning of a wheel.

Because of a prior arrangement, and because foreign travelers are assigned to hotels, I was at the Yan Xiang Hotel, paying 160 yuan ($53) a night. Mr. Peng was in what he called a Chinese hotel—it didn't have a name, it had a number—for which he paid 3 yuan (75 cents) a night. This was not unusual. There are Chinese prices and foreigner's prices, a double standard that is applied in restaurants and shops; to entrance fees to museums and exhibitions; on buses, in taxis, planes and trains. On the average, a foreigner is required to pay three or four times more than a Chinese person. An American of Chinese extraction who has lived in Boston since birth and speaks no Mandarin is not classified as a foreigner: overseas Chinese are another category. Businessmen and official visitors are yet another class, with certain privileges.

It is impossible to come across these complicated class distinctions and not feel that in time they will create the kind of conflicts that led to the Cultural Revolution. Mr. Peng said maybe—because the average wage (100 yuan a month) was still too low, bonuses too irregular, and for the first time in its history The People's Republic was experiencing inflation.

"But I hope it won't happen," Mr. Peng said. "I think revolution is destructive."

"If there hadn't been a revolution in China, your life would have been rather different."

"Maybe better, maybe worse," he said.

I said, "But can't you say that you've lived through an interesting period of history?"

"Just a little bit of it. Chinese history is enormous. The Cultural Revolution was hardly anything."

In The House of Exile, Nora Wain writes, "I asked what war this was. Shun-ko's husband answered, 'It is not a war. It is just a period. When you are adequately educated in Chinese history you will comprehend. We have these intervals of unrest, sixty to a hundred years in length, between dynasties, throughout the forty-six centuries of our history.'"

Mr. Peng had not been a Red Guard. He was in his early teens during the Cultural Revolution, but he had resisted joining the unit. It had not made him popular.

"To show that I loved Chairman Mao I had to engage in the demonstrations. But my heart wasn't in it. It was regarded as wonderful to wear an armband that showed you were a Red Guard. And the best thing was to be the leader of your Red Guard unit."

"Who was the leader at your school?"

"A boy called Wei Dong—he gave himself the name, because it's a way of saying 'Defender of Mao Zedong,' He was a very important boy. He knew all the slogans. He made us say them. It was a strange time. The whole country was in a state of revolution."

"What happened to Wei Dong?"

"I see him now and then. He is completely changed. He is a teacher. He has children. He's an ordinary worker. That's the worst thing to be—it's so hard. He has very little money and no respect. No more speeches or slogans. No one blames him for what happened, but no one is interested in him either."

"Don't you think anything was achieved in the Cultural Revolution?"

"No. And a lot was lost. We wasted time. Mao was muddled. His brain was tired. Zhou Enlai could have saved us from it, but he let Mao lead. We really trusted Zhou, and that was why the Qingming Festival in 1976 was a real event. Thousands of people showed up to mourn him. It was spontaneous. But we didn't know what to do. Tiananmen Square was full of people feeling very confused."

"When did you stop feeling confused?"

"When Deng took over and did away with portraits and opened China's doors," Mr. Peng said.

"Maybe this is just one of those short periods in Chinese history."

"I hope it's a long period," Mr. Peng said.

Bette Bao Lord, the wife of the American ambassador to China, is a great deal better known than her husband both in America (where her novel Spring Moon was a best-seller) and in China (where the book is being made into a movie). The name Winston Lord was so patrician that it seemed more that of a character in a certain kind of women's fiction; but not Bette Bao Lord's. Her novel was rightly praised as an accurate portrayal of a family caught in the crosswinds of Chinese history. It was set in a period that Mrs. Lord observed firsthand. It seemed wonderfully symmetrical that, having been born in China and educated and raised in the United States, she had recently returned to China as the ambassador's wife.

With less than a day's notice from me, she arranged a lunch-party for sixteen people. When I met her this seemed less surprising. She did not strike me as a person to whom anyone had ever said no.