Riding the Iron Rooster

He said he had a lot of catching up to do, because he had spent so much time during the Cultural Revolution doing useless things. 1 asked him to be specific.

"School was suspended most of the time. But sometimes there were classes. We would go to school and criticize this one. Then we would criticize that one. We criticized Confucius. We criticized Laozi [Lao-tzu]. We criticized the teacher. If a teacher was bad we called them bourgeois and made them write confessions. Then we went home. It was a waste of time. But I didn't take it seriously."

I tried to picture a schoolroom full of red-hatted little beasts and brats menacing their teacher. It was very easy to imagine. And of course "criticize" in Chinese is a euphemism for many things. A women in the English Department at Fudan University walked with a cane as a result of criticism by Red Guards—she was kicked and beaten for advocating the reading of the bourgeois feudalist William Shakespeare. But times had changed. This same woman had just been a faculty adviser on a student production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Shanghai Shakespeare Festival in the spring of 1986.

The advantage for a Chinese person in learning English is that he can circumvent a great deal of official obstruction. Many books that are banned in Chinese are available in English. Leroy said that he had read 1984 and Animal Farm. I expressed surprise because Professor Dong had told me Orwell was neican, restricted. But Leroy didn't know this—didn't even know there were Chinese translations, because the translations were banned.

"What do you think of 1984?" I asked.

"It is like China today. Like certain parts. Like Tibet. And it is like Shanghai sometimes."

I said I thought the book was about fear and uncertainty, but when I pressed him for examples he became evasive, and not wishing to interrogate him I let the matter drop. He knew about the erotic classic Jin Ping Mei but did not know it was available to scholars or indeed that the book was circulated. For him, the book was part of the oral tradition, a lot of raunchy stories that people whispered to each other.

I asked him what changes in Shanghai had made the greatest impression on him. He said the difference in the way people dressed was the most obvious one, but that people's attitudes had also greatly altered—in thinking for themselves and in their expectations. He said I should see the free market and especially the sort of money-making work that people now did at home, such as tailoring, mending pots, fixing washtubs. And giving lessons: English lessons, music lessons, or dressmaking lessons. For 20 yuan you could be taught to sew by an established tailor—that was the going rate for about two months of twice-weekly lessons. There had never been any reason to learn to make clothes before because everyone wore the same factory-made clothes—the one blue cotton suit.

"But the biggest difference is that we can all get jobs now. In the past if you didn't have a job you stayed at home. The government gave you nothing, and you had to take money from your parents. Now everyone can find something to do. There is plenty of work."

I wished him well in pursuit of the job at the Sheraton, and I continued walking to test what he had said about people working at home. It seemed to be true that most people were toiling away at something or other to earn extra money—sewing, making pots, mending shoes, fixing umbrellas, selling homemade clothes. This sort of free-lancing was unheard of until about 1980. And the free market was also brisk, with small traders hawking vegetables, eggs, pet food, clocks, old watches, used eyeglasses, and birds they had snared.

A bloody revenge movie was showing in Shanghai. It was called Mister Legless and the hero of the title was shown on a poster in a wheelchair blowing the head off the man who had maimed him. Chinese were milling around and fighting for tickets, which they said were very scarce. All movies were popular and violent ones the most popular of all—Rambo had recently been shown to packed movie houses all over China.

An old man with a red armband was denouncing someone on the sidewalk, and when I inquired I discovered this man to be parr of the Anti-Spitting Brigade—there was a widespread campaign against spitting going on. I approved of that, but Chinese spitting is not half as bad as Chinese throat clearing: the hoick that can be heard for fifty yards and that sounds like the suction on a monsoon drain. After that, the spitting itself is rather an anticlimax.

Back at the English Corner in the park—which had a festive club-like atmosphere—I met Doctor Qin, who told me he was a psychiatrist.

I said I had been under the impression that there were no psychiatrists in China—certainly no universities had departments of psychology. And were there mental hospitals?