To the Ends of the Earth

He invited me to attend Mass, and out of politeness I said I might, but I knew I wouldn’t. I had no business there: I was a heretic. And I was often annoyed by westerners who, although they never went to church at home, would get the churchgoing bug in China, as an assertion of their difference or perhaps a reproach to the Chinese—as if religious freedom were the test of China’s tolerance. Well, it was one test, of course, but it was exasperating to see the test administered by an American unbeliever. So I didn’t go to church in China, but sometimes when I saw a bird in the grass I dropped to my knees and marveled as it twitched there.

The Red Guards and the Violinist

THERE WAS A STYLISH, YOUTHFUL-LOOKING MAN NAMED Wang whom I met one day in Shanghai. It turned out that we were both born in the same year—the Year of the Snake (but Wang used the Chinese euphemism for snake, “little dragon”). He was so friendly and full of stories that I saw him often, usually for lunch at the Jin Jiang Hotel. He was a sensitive soul, but had a sense of irony, too, and said he had never been happier than when he was walking the streets of San Francisco on his one trip to America—he hinted that he was eager to emigrate to the United States, but he never became a bore on the subject and did not ask me for help. He was unusual, even in Shanghai, for his clothes—a canary-yellow French jacket and pale blue slacks, a gold watch, a chain around his neck, and expensive sunglasses.

“I like bright clothes,” he said.

“Could you wear them during the Cultural Revolution?”

He laughed and said, “What a mess that was!”

“Were you criticized?”

“I was under arrest. That’s when I started smoking. I discovered that if you smoked it gave you time to think. They had me in a room—the Red Guards. They said, ‘You called Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, a crazy lady.’ She was a crazy lady! But I just lit a cigarette and puffed on it so that I could think of something to say.”

“What did you say?”

“The wrong thing! They made me write essays. Self-criticism!”

“Describe the essays.”

“They gave me subjects. ‘Why I Like Charles Dickens,’ ‘Why I Like Shakespeare.’ ”

“I thought you were supposed to say why you didn’t like them.”

“They wouldn’t believe that,” he said. “They called me a reactionary. Therefore, I had to say why I liked them. It was awful. Six pages every night, after work unit, and then they said, ‘This is dog shit—write six more pages.’ ”

“What work did you do?”

“Played the violin in the Red Orchestra. Always the same tunes. ‘The East Is Red,’ ‘Long Live the Thoughts of Mao,’ ‘Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman,’ all that stuff. They made me play in the rain. I said, ‘I can’t—the violin will fall apart.’ They don’t know that a violin is glued together. I played in the rain. It fell apart. They gave me another one and ordered me to play under the trees during the Four Pests Campaign—to keep sparrows from landing in the branches.”

The other three pests were mosquitoes, flies, and rats.

“That’s absurd,” I said.

“We painted Huai Hai Lu—that’s more absurd,” Wang said.

“How can you paint a street?” I asked—the street he named was one of the main thoroughfares of Shanghai.

“We painted it red, out of respect for Chairman Mao,” Wang said. “Isn’t that stupid?”

“How much of the street did you paint?”

“Three and a half miles,” Wang said, and laughed, remembering something else. “But there were stupider things. When we went to the work unit, we always did the qing an [salute] to Mao’s portrait on the gateway. We’d hold up the Red Book, say, ‘Long Live Chairman Mao,’ and salute him. Same thing when we went home. People would make things in Mao’s honor, like a knitted Mao emblem, or a red star in needlepoint, and put it in the special Respect Room at the unit—it was painted red. That was for Mao. If they wanted to prove they were very loyal, they would wear the Mao badge by pinning it to their skin.”

“That must have impressed the Red Guards,” I said.

“It wasn’t just the Red Guards—everyone blames them, but everyone was in it. That’s why people are so embarrassed at the moment, because they realize they were just as stupid about Chairman Mao as everyone else. I know a banker who was given the job of fly catcher. He had to kill flies and save their little bodies in a matchbox. Every afternoon someone would come and count the dead flies and say, ‘One hundred seventeen—not good enough. You must have one hundred twenty-five tomorrow.’ And more the day after, you see? The government said there was going to be a war. ‘The enemy is coming—be prepared.’ ”

“Which enemy?”