To the Ends of the Earth

“The imperialists—Russia, India, the United States. It didn’t matter which one. They were going to kill us,” Wang said, and rolled his eyes. “So we had to make bricks for the war effort. Ninety bricks a month for each person. But my parents were old, so I had to make their bricks. I used to come home from the unit, write my essay ‘Why I Like Western Music,’ and make bricks—I had to deliver two hundred seventy a month. And they were always asking me about my hole.”

“Your hole?”

“The Shen wa dong—Dig Deep Holes edict. That was for the war, too. Everyone had to have a hole, in case of war. Every so often the Red Guards would knock on your door and say, ‘Where is your hole?’ ”

He said there were bomb shelters all over Shanghai, which had been built on Mao’s orders (“for the coming war”), and of course they had never been used. I asked him to show me one. We found this subterranean vault—it was just like a derelict subway station—on 1157 Nanjing Road, and it had been turned into an ice-cream parlor. The fascinating thing to me was that it was now obviously a place where young folks went to kiss their girlfriends. It was full of Chinese youths locked in the half nelson they regard as an amorous embrace. The irony was not merely that these kids were making out and feeling each other up in a place that had been built by frantic and paranoid Red Guards in the 1960s, but also that it was now called the Dong Chang Coffee Shop and owned and operated by the government.

I was talking to Wang one day about my trip through the Soviet Union when I mentioned how the scarcity of consumer goods there meant they were always pestering foreigners for blue jeans, T-shirts, track shoes, and so forth.

“That never happens in China,” I said.

“No,” Wang said. “But that reminds me. About three years ago there was a Russian ballet dancer at the hotel in Shanghai. I went to see the ballet—fabulous! And this dancer was very handsome. I recognized him, and he smiled at me. Then he pointed to my track shoes and pointed to himself. He wanted them, I understood that. They were expensive shoes—Nike, cost me fifty yuan. But I don’t care much about money. We measured feet, side by side. Exact fit. I don’t speak a word of Russian, but I could tell he really wanted those shoes.”

“Did you sell them to him?”

“I gave them to him,” Wang said, and frowned at the triviality of it. “I felt sorry for someone who just wanted a pair of shoes. It seemed sad to me that he couldn’t get them in his own country. I took them off and walked to my office barefoot! He was really happy! I thought: He’ll go back to Russia. He’ll always remember this. He’ll say, ‘Once I was in China. I met a Chinese man and asked him for his shoes, and he gave them to me!’ ”

A moment later, he said, “You can get anything you want in China. Food, clothes, shoes, bicycles, motorbikes, TVs, radios, antiques. If you want girls, you can find girls.” And then in a wide-eyed way, “Or boys—if you want boys.”

“Or fashion shows.”

“They have fashion shows on television almost every week,” Wang said. “Shanghai is famous for them.”

I asked him what the old people made of these developments—hookers and high fashion in a country where just a few years ago foreign decadence was condemned and everyone wore baggy blue suits.

“The old people love life in China now,” Wang said. “They are really excited by it. Very few people object. They had felt very repressed before.”

Performing Animals

ON MY WALKS IN SHANGHAI I OFTEN WENT PAST THE CHINESE Acrobatic Theater, a domed building near the center of the city. And I became curious and attended a performance; and after I saw it—not only the tumblers and clowns and contortionists, but also the man who balanced a dinner service for twelve on a chopstick that he held in his mouth—I wanted to know more.

Mr. Liu Maoyou was in charge of the acrobats at the Shanghai Bureau of Culture. He had started out as an assistant at the Shanghai Library, but even at the best of times things are quiet at the city library, since it is next to impossible—for political reasons—for anyone to borrow a book. The librarian is little more than a custodian of the stacks. He jumped at the chance of a transfer and joined the Bureau of Culture, and he accompanied the Chinese acrobats on their first tour of the United States in 1980.

“We call it a theater, because it has an artistic and dramatic element,” Mr. Liu said. “It has three aspects—acrobats, magic, and a circus.”

I asked him how it started.