Riding the Iron Rooster

The free market (ziyou shichang) allows anyone to do business and keep the profits. This was one of Deng's reforms, and it is the reason why factory workers are often very cross—and why they demand high bonuses and complain about inflation. The street traders in the free market can quite easily earn five times a factory worker's salary, and after an informal survey of the hawkers and traders in various Peking markets, I figured their monthly earnings to be between 500 and 700 yuan—enough to buy "The Big Three."

One market woman told me, "What people used to want were a bicycle, a radio and a gas stove. Now the Big Three are a refrigerator, a cassette machine and a color television."

Some of the markets are operated by retired factory workers who simply want a friendly place to go during the day. They say things like, "I've always been interested by old beads and pots," and they have the flea-market mentality that is familiar to anyone from Cape Cod. They love talking about the bits of peculiar junk they've accumulated and, being pensioners, are not really doing this for a living. These traders are not to be confused with the people who have been doing business in the same place for years—the specialists in birds, or fish, or herbs. In most Chinese cities, the Bird Market is a specific location and may have been unchanged for hundreds of years.

Flea market seemed to me an appropriate comparison, since that was how most people pronounced it. I saw an opium pipe on one little stall. It was about eighteen inches long, with a silver bowl and a jade mouthpiece.

"That's a genuine old piece. Forty yuan and worth every bit of it. Take it away."

"I'll give you twenty," I said.

"Listen, if you weren't with this Chinese man I would have written '120' on a piece of paper and said Take it or leave it.'"

"All right, twenty-five."

He pretended he hadn't heard me. He said, "The interesting thing about this pipe is its mouthpiece. See how strong it is?" He banged it against the tabletop. "A man would ride his horse with this hanging by his side. If he saw a thief, or if someone attacked him he would bop him on the head with it. See, use it like a club—bop! bop!"

"Thirty."

'The bowl is real silver. This is a hundred years old. I've been collecting these pipes my whole life. I worked in a shoe factory. I'm retired! I don't even have to sell you this pipe, but you're a foreigner and I want to do you a favor."

"Thirty is my highest offer."

'This is an antique, comrade. It's a collector's item. It's a pipe. It's a weapon. Take it."

"Okay, thirty-five."

"Fine. It's yours. Shall I wrap it up? Here," he said, taking out an old copy of The People's Daily and folding the pipe into it. "Serves two functions. Wrapping paper and afterwards you can read it."

I had stopped at that free market on my way to the bathhouse. Because of what Mr. Zheng had told me about the inconvenience of bathing, I had inquired and found out that Peking was full of public bathhouses—about thirty of them, subsidized by the government. They are one of the cheapest outings in China: for 60 fen (16 cents) a person is admitted and given a piece of soap, a towel and a bed; and he is allowed to stay all day, washing himself in the steamy public pool and resting.

The one I found was called Xing Hua Yuan. It was open from 8:30 in the morning until 8:00 at night. Many people who use it are travelers who have just arrived in Peking after a long journey and want to look presentable for their friends or relatives—and of course who don't want to impose on them for a bath.

The beds were in little cubicles, and men wrapped in towels were resting or walking around talking. It was like a Roman bath—it was social, the scalded Chinese, pinkish in the heat, were sloshing themselves and yelling at each other in a friendly way. It was also possible to get a private room, for about double the ordinary rate.

I was thinking how Roman and Victorian the bathhouse looked (there was a Women's bathhouse next door), how useful for travelers and bathless residents, how like a club it was and how congenial, when a homosexual Chinese man enlightened me.

"Most people go there to take a bath," he said. "But it is also a good place to go if you want to meet a boy and do things with him."

"What sort of things?"

He didn't flinch. He said, "One day I was in Xing Hua Yuan and saw two men in a private room, and one had the other one's cock in his mouth. That sort of thing."

A few days later I was walking down the street, and a young Chinese girl approached me and said hello. She fell into step next to me and before we had gone thirty yards she slipped her arm into mine and off we went, like a pair of old-fashioned lovers.

She was leading the way. I liked not having the slightest idea of what was going to happen next.

At first 1 thought she might be lame, because she had caught hold of me and held on tightly. But she was walking very briskly.

"Where are we going?" I asked.