Riding the Iron Rooster

"It's all been broken up into geti hu."

Single-unit households, that is: every family for itself, or the family business.

"Is it working?"

"Yes, much better than before."

"So if I go out there and ask the people how things are, they'll say, 'Wonderful.'"

'That is correct."

I said, "How will I know they're not trying to impress me? Maybe that's a trick, too."

"No, no, no," this Chinese man said. "Nowadays, people tell you what is in their hearts. They are not afraid anymore."

"But they swore to me that the model commune I saw was running perfectly."

"What did you expect them to say?"

That was a good point. Why should they belittle it to a foreigner, especially when it was such a loss of face to do so?

"That commune was so large," my Chinese friend said, "that a person had to take a train to see the head of the committee."

"Is that a figure of speech?"

"Yes. It is a joke."

For uninteresting reasons I was unable to visit the commune and compare my impressions with what I had seen in 1980. What I remembered best was visiting the woman who had the big dusty television (with a red shawl over it: cloth television covers are still very popular in China), and listening to her spiel about this being a workers' paradise, and then going outside and watching children feeding white ducks in a green creek. But I swore that the first chance I got I would visit a commune and look at it closely for changes.

The changes were obvious in Canton. For one thing it was full of tourists. Some of these people were extremely elderly and infirm. They said they were looking forward to the Great Wall.

"Is there wheelchair access on the Great Wall?" they asked each other. "Is there a ramp? Is there Disabled Parking? Is there a Handicapped Entrance?"

It amazed me that people so frail should have risked being so far from home. But they were confident and curious, and I admired their pluck.

On the other hand, Canton was one of those places in the world where the hotels are so good and so all-encompassing that a guest need never leave: all the shops, events, colorful clothes, rugs, restaurants and everything else are right there in various parts of the air-conditioned building. And it is one of the facts of life in China today that the hotels are as great a tourist attraction as any of the temples or museums.

People went to Canton for many reasons, but the most interesting one I heard was from seven skinny youths who had come from Hong Kong to go tenpin bowling.

I didn't laugh. Brainlessly banging cannonballs down a varnished ramp and watching the pins go bopping seemed like fun to me. It was a hot afternoon, and Canton was a big screechy place.

I loitered at the bowling alley but didn't play. I met an American named Barton, an oilman, who was supervising the drilling of wells. Were they offshore? He didn't say; he was rather circumspect, rather Chinese in fact, as if he suspected me of being engaged in industrial espionage.

Barton had been in Canton for four years, and before that had been in the Persian Gulf, which he had hated. But he hated China, too—his test wells had not paid off, though some others had. And the oil price was so low it hardly seemed worthwhile looking. It was certainly proving expensive. He told me several things I had not known—that China was a huge oil producer, that it had a surplus because there were so few motor vehicles in China (and the power plants and most of the trains were fueled by Chinese coal), and that China exported crude oil and gasoline to the United States. (Gasoline and fireworks are China's biggest exports to the U.S.)

The shrinking oil-exploration schemes had meant a cutback in Barton's mode of life, though. His wife and children lived in Hong Kong. The family used to get together twice a month. Now they met only once a month. It was pretty tough, Barton said, but necessary.

"I've got two kids to put through college. I need this job, I need the money—all the gweilos here do."

Most of the expatriates used that expression when they referred to themselves. It was south China and Hong Kong self-mockery and meant "foreign devil."

"I was offered a job in Singapore," he said. "It was also oil related. I probably should have taken it, but that place is too strict. I can't stand Lee Kuan Yew. He's a shit. They can have him. I'll take Dung any day."

Barton laughed the phlegmy, fruity laugh of the chain-smoker.

"Know what we call Lee Kuan Yew? Hitler-with-a-heart. Har! Har!"

As someone who had had his own problems with "Harry" Lee, I thought this description was funny and apt. And I was also struck by Barton's seriousness.