Riding the Iron Rooster

"It almost didn't," Mr. Lan said. "In 1967, the Red Guards burst in and splashed paint everywhere. They completely covered the windows and these marble walls with paint—it was black paint. You couldn't see anything of these decorations. The job was so big and expensive that it took ten years to clean up. It was only finished last year."

Quite a way up that street I came to the Shanghai Municipal Foreign Affairs Office, where I had an appointment with the chief of the Propaganda Division—such was his title—Mr. Wang Hou-kang, and his assistant, Miss Zhong.

"A very nice house," I said, in the palm court of this mansion.

"It belonged to a former capitalist."

He then told me that there were 164 joint ventures with 20 countries. I expressed surprise, but didn't ask any more questions, because I had been told by wiser minds that most of these joint ventures were still in the discussion stage; and it would have been embarrassing to Mr. Wang if I had asked him how many had borne fruit—the number of joint ventures in operation was very small.

Because I had been bucking the traffic all day, I said, "Do you think that Chinese people will ever own their own cars?"

"Very few will. And not for pleasure but business. What we want to do is make cars and sell them to other countries. The export market—that's what interests us."

I asked him what changes had struck him since Deng Xiaoping's reforms had taken effect.

"Magazines are more colorful—more open. More picturesque, I can say. And there is the writing."

"About politics?"

"No, about sex. Before, people never wrote about sex, and now they do."

Miss Zhong said, "Sometimes it is very embarrassing."

"People dare to express themselves through stories," Mr. Wang said. 'That is new. And people can engage in discussions without being labeled 'rightist' or 'counterrevolutionary' or 'bourgeois' if they said certain things."

"So no one calls anyone a paper tiger anymore?"

'There are still paper tigers. Paper tiger is more a philosophical concept," Mr. Wang said.

We talked about money after that. He said, 'Things have certainly changed. Take me for example. I earned ninety-two yuan a month in 1954 and did not get a salary increase until 1979."

"But did prices rise in the years when your salary didn't change?"

He laughed. I had not said anything funny. But there are many Chinese laughs. His was the one that meant: You are asking too many questions.

The subject of clothes was not contentious.

Mr. Wang said, "After Liberation, people cherished simple clothing. They identified the blue suits and the blue cap with revolution. People wore them and felt like revolutionaries. They were sturdy clothes and they were cheap—people felt thrifty wearing them. They made people equal."

"Why have they stopped wearing them?"

"By and by, some people wanted to wear more colorful clothes. But they were afraid. There was an idea prevailing that if people wore colorful clothes they would be part of the bourgeoisie." He laughed. His laugh meant: I don't believe that myself. "They remembered the Red Guards who used to go out with scissors. They cut your cuffs if they were too wide or too narrow. They cut your hair if it was too long."

"Do you think that will come again?"

And I saw the marching Red Guards, with their long scissors and their fiendish grins, marching down Nanjing Road, on the lookout for flapping cuffs or flowing locks. They raised their long scissors and went, Snip-snip! Snip-snip! I realized that a passionate and crazed teenager with a pair of scissors is much scarier than a soldier with a rifle.

Mr. Wang said, "I think the answer is definitely no."

"You seem pretty sure," I said.

"Yes, because the Ten Years' Turmoil"—that was the current euphemism—"went so far. It was so big. So terrible. If it had been a small thing it might return. But it involved everyone. We all remember. And I can tell you that no one wants it back."

The wisest thing that anyone can say is "I don't know," but no one says it much in China, least of all the foreigners. The exception to this in Shanghai was Stan Brooks, the American consul general. He had a steady gaze and was not given to predictions or generalizations. He was from Wyoming and had been in China off and on since the 1970s, when Mao's intimidating bulk still influenced all decisions and turned most of his colleagues into lackeys.

"I called them 'The Whateverists,'" Mr. Brooks said, basing it on the Chinese term fanshi (whatever). "Their view was that whatever Mao said about this or that was correct. Some members of the politburo have paid the price for being Whateverists."