Riding the Iron Rooster

And when he said that, I realized what it was that was bothering me. It was that everything he said reminded me of Animal Farm; and the fact that the book was a fable of totalitarianism only made Mr. Liu's images worse. He had described a living example of the moment in that book when oppression is about to overtake the farm. There is terror and confusion at the unexpected sight: It was a pig walking on his hind legs. And Orwell goes on, "Yes, it was Squealer. A little awkwardly, as though not quite used to supporting his considerable bulk in that position, but with perfect balance.... And a moment later, out from the door of the farmhouse came a long file of pigs, all walking on their hind legs..."

I was thinking of this as Mr. Liu was saying, "... and lions and tigers, and the only performing panda in China."

He said that the animals and the acrobats often went on tour—even to the United States. Many of the acrobats had worked in the United States. In 1985, a deal was made whereby Chinese acrobats would join Ringling Brothers Circus for a year or two at a time. In the first year there were fifteen, and in 1986 there were twenty hired-out Chinese acrobats working in America.

I asked Mr. Liu about the financial arrangement.

"I don't know exactly," he said, "but Ringling Brothers Circus pays us and we pay the acrobats."

"How much does Ringling Brothers pay you?"

"About two hundred to six hundred dollars a week, depending on the act. For each person."

"How much do you pay the acrobats?"

"About one hundred yuan."

Thirty bucks.

Talk about performing pigs! I wondered how long people would be willing to allow themselves to be treated as exportable merchandise. For some it was not long: the very week I had the conversation with Mr. Liu a man playing the role of an acrobatic lion disappeared in New York. Months later he still had not been found.

On my last day in Shanghai I tried to figure out what it was that I hated about big cities. It was not only the noise and the dirt and the constant movement—the traffic and the bad tempers; the sense of people being squeezed. It was also the creepy intimation of so many people having come and gone, worked and died; and now other people were living where those had died. My impression of wilderness was associated with innocence, but it was impossible for me to be in a city like this and not feel I was in the presence of ghosts.

This became a strong feeling of mine in Chinese cities. I kept thinking, Something awful happened here once, and I shuddered. It was probably a feeling that was enhanced by the refusal of the Chinese to talk about ghosts, since they were officially forbidden to discuss such ludicrous things. In the same way, the Chinese allow people to practice religion providing they don't talk about it; but no one who has any religious belief is admitted to the Chinese Communist Party—that is one of the Party's basic rules.

Shanghai seemed haunted to me. It was full of suggestions and whispers of violence. It was a city in which irrational murders had been committed—not just in the narrow, brown rooms of tottering buildings, but in the streets and alleys, and even in the parks and flower gardens. In the end I was impervious to its charms, and it became a rather diabolical place in my imagination. Or was it that the Shanghainese were very articulate and told such harrowing stories?

I heard some terrifying stories at Fudan University, and that campus was full of ghosts. It did not, at first glance, have the look of a place of learning. From the outside it looked like a Chinese factory—the same scrubby hedge and sharp fence, the same yellow walls and guarded gate and adjoining settlement of dusty half-built buildings, the barrackslike teachers' quarters and the villagey huts nearby, housing tailor, laundry, vegetable-seller, butcher, noodle shop and bicycle-mender. It all had the doomed and arbitrary appearance of a Chinese factory town, developed on impulse, unplanned and built on a shoestring, cutting every corner possible.

But this was a slightly misleading impression, because inside the hedges and walls it was shady and orderly, and even a little sleepy—or perhaps reflective—and as if to indicate the seriousness of their intentions, the students had, not long ago, vandalized their forty-foot statue of Chairman Mao. They had scratched out the motto on the plinth that had once read Long Live Chairman Mao!