Traveling in China

...And, indeed, I saw evidence that individuals were treated in a demeaning fashion The crowds that surrounded us were chased away by the police or by our guides with unnecessary harshness Patients m hospitals were dealt with like objects in museums--their legs or arms would be raised for our benefit and then dropped I suppose it is not clear from my comments that I had a very pleasant trip There were some boring moments from time to tune, and some oppressive sights But overall, despite my preconceptions, I felt that by my presence in China, by seeing and smelling the place, I acquired a more realistic understanding of what is going on there Peter Kenez is a National Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and an associate professor of history at Santa Cruz...

...A SENSE OF DEJA VU Traveling in China BY PETER KENEZ The average American visitor to China is not very average He tends to be a professor of Asian affairs, a member of a radical organization, a well-known journalist, or a President of the United States Even so, among those who have toured that country recently, I must count as something of an oddity For I was predisposed to be hostile, because I traveled with unusually heavy ideological baggage I regarded China as a poor and backward nation that had made great strides in economic development at an enormous cost in freedom When I crossed the border it was with trepidation Three weeks later, when I returned to Hong Kong, I felt relieved In a sense, my feelings had little to do with reality Nothing actually threatened me in China, and on a rational level I understood this perfectly well But my emotions were responding to more than the situation at hand I had grown up in Hungary and spent a year in the Soviet Union The institutions I saw and the propaganda I heard during my Asian journey made me recall that past all too vividly Because of my experiences in other Communist countries, I believe I was able to understand Chinese society, including its jargon, better than many of my traveling companions Nonetheless, a strange and exotic place leads one to search for the familiar, that which can be fitted into an already existing world view, and I may have made the mistake of thinking I understood more about China than I really did Quite possibly, superficial similarities made me overlook great differences I arrived in China as one of 16 from the Unversity of California at Santa Cruz The group included men and women in equal proportion, representatives of three races, faculty members, students and workers Since our tour had been arranged by Leftist students, the pro-Chinese view dominated But even the most radical individuals were reasonable and intelligent, and I felt no unfriendliness from them whatever, though it was evident to everyone that my opinions rarely coincided with theirs The Chinese took excellent care of us We traveled first-class from beginning to end, and were always accompanied by more people than was necessary, despite the fact that the greatest hindrance to the development of the Chinese tourist industry is the lack of interpreters not the lack of hotel space (we frequently stayed in half-empty hotels) Characteristically, the Chinese prefer to accommodate a small number of people in a fashion that seems proper to them rather than accept a horde of tourists they feel they cannot handle adequately At the border we were met by two English-speaking guides who remained with us for the entire three weeks, and who were important sources of information throughout In addition, we were regularly welcomed in the cities we visited by representatives of the local China Travel organization, three, four, sometimes five interpreters joined us at each stop The quality of the interpreters varied Those who had learned English before 1949 in English-language schools were better trained than the younger products of the foreign-language institute And the guides who worked in Shanghai and Peking had a greater command of the tongue than those who were stationed in provincial cities Obviously none said anything that could be considered deviationist, yet there were great differences among them Some were ebullient, some reserved With some, one sensed the presence of an intelligent and reasonably well-informed person, with others, it was hard to see the human being behind the mask In Canton, when I asked a guide if he had been shocked to learn that Nixon was coming to China, he answered no, because the foreign policy of China has been consistently peace-loving After that exchange, I had no desire to converse with him again (Other guides readily admitted that they had found Nixon's visit surprising ) The hotels were reserved exclusively for foreigners, and while most looked like products of the Stalinist era--monumental and monumentally ugly--they were not uncomfortable Rooms were large and, in Canton and Shanghai, air-conditioned Our finest residence was the hotel in Shanghai, a magnificent building constructed in the '20s by the British Its beautifully wood-paneled llth-floor conference room provided the setting for a defense of proletarian cultural policies, and in its elegant dining room we saw shaggy members of the American Radical Union sitting one table away from a dozen crew-cut executives of the Boeing Company, who had just delivered twenty 707s A trip to China abounds with such ironies Our worst hotel was in Canton Built in the style of a Florida motel, with an inner court that featured a cement tree as decoration, it could not have been more than two years old But the walls were already crumbling, and the paint was peeling, the light bulbs were so weak that it was impossible to read in the rooms I suppose Stalinist architecture fits China better than Florida modern The food everywhere--on trains, in communes, in hotels, and in restaurants --was uniformly excellent Each meal was a feast--five or six different dishes would be served at lunch, and at least as many at dinner, our beer glasses were constantly being refilled Appropriately, we had our most remarkable repast at a restaurant called the "Peking Duck," where China Travel gave a banquet in our honor on our last day in the capital We ate in an upstairs room reserved, no doubt, for tourists The dinner was constructed around the theme of the duck, and was perfectly balanced, loving attention was paid to the smallest detail Afterward we went to shake hands with the chef, apparently a ritual that is organized for every visiting group, for the cook welcomed us to his kitchen and promptly explained how the main dish had been prepared A duck is roasted on a fire of fruitwood, the only wood that gives no smoke A small hole is then made in the bud so that the insides can be removed Finally, the duck is filled with boiling water to tenderize the meat Daily sightseeing, planned by our guides and the local tourist offices after consultation with us, generally filled the entire day, and very often the evenings, too We were taken to schools, kindergartens, factories and communes, we talked to the editorial board of a Shanghai newspaper and to city planners in Sian, we visited a so-called May 7 cadre school in which administrators are reeducated through physical labor and the reading of Marxist classics, we saw four "cultural performances " These tours proceeded according to a strict pattern After being met by members of the revolutionary committee, we were obliged to listen to an introductory talk by our host I should note that every lecture room, whether in a hospital, a factory or a school, looked remarkably like every other lecture room, and even the pictures on the walls were arranged in the same order--on one side Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, on the other Mao (At no time was the face of Stahn missing Marx, Engels and Lenin simply do not appear without him ) Next came the walk around the hospital, school or factory, the most interesting part of the visit, and this was invariably followed by a question-and-answer period, sometimes lasting for two or three hours However, not all of our inquiries would be answered Occasionally, the Chinese had trouble grasping what we were saying, not so much because of translation problems but because our concerns and interests were so far removed from theirs The city planners in Sian, for example, did not understand what we meant when we asked if everyone was anxious to move out of his old house to take a new apartment To them it was utterly unthinkable that someone might prefer to stay in an old building Though I never had the feeling our informants were telling outright lies, I frequently found it difficult to accept their statements as genuine Evasion and dissembling, I believe, were common The chief engineer of the Loyang tractor factory, the largest in China, professed not to know the total tractor production of the country Later, as we were walking through the plant, a guide turned to us and remarked "All the machines here were made in China " The comment puzzled me, since I had noticed that approximately halt of the machines in the previous room were Czech- or Soviet-made When I asked him about this, he explained that he had m mind only the tractors in the room we were inspecting at that particular moment In the same factory a question about workers' incomes was raised The head of the revolutionary committee declared that the lowest-paid laborer earned approximately 50 yuan a month, whereas the highest-paid received about 100 But these figures, it transpired, did not include the salaries of cadres, some of whom earned as much as 270 yuan a month It was essential to frame questions precisely On very rare occasions our hosts would refuse to respond to a question directly Asked about production figures during the Cultural Revolution, the guides at the tractor factory would say only that "in those years the total production did not increase " Presumably, their answer--or more accurately, their lack of one--was a euphemism for saying that the Cultural Revolution had caused an absolutely disastrous drop in production I assume we were shown the sights usually presented to foreigner, and that we saw very little that had not been especially prepared and organized for us We had to walk through the Shanghai pioneer palace rather quickly, for instance, to make way for another group of tourists waiting behind us "Spontaneity' was often organized for our benefit At a commune outside of Sian our hosts kindly invited us for lunch, divided us into groups of tour, and took us into their homes It turned out that exactly the same elaborate meal had been served in each house Still, despite the careful attention the Chinese gave to structuring tours and planning spontaneity, they did not prevent us from taking walks on our own--either in the evenings when nothing else was scheduled, or early in the morning before breakfast We were even permitted to skip the prepared program if we chose, and spend the day wandering around the streets Unfortunately, private walks created such sensations that some of us felt constrained from trying to tour the cities alone The Chinese have seen very few foreigners and stared at us wherever we went Children followed clapping and blocking traffic Adults would call out friends from their houses to look at us In Chengchou, while we spent about an hour and a half inside a pagoda, a large crowd gathered outside and waited to catch a glimpse of us as we walked the few steps to our bus The crowds were neither hostile nor friendly--simply curious But if unscheduled excursions were difficult and embarrassing, they were also extremely worthwhile When the weather is warm, the Chinese live in the streets--cooking, eating, performing morning exercises, playing cards and doing the wash In the evenings one can peek into curtainless houses and see families crowded into tiny rooms, dimly lit by naked bulbs It was only on these walks that one gained any understanding of how the people lived Interestingly, I became somewhat inured to poverty Canton was the first city we visited, and it appeared to be appallingly poor Yet as we traveled on, each city seemed less and less depressing At first 1 thought this was due to the fact that the north is richer than the south, but returning to Canton at the end of our trip, I found myself thinking the city was not all that bad To be sure, a brief trip to China does not qualify one to comment upon complex topics like equality and freedom under Communism Nonetheless, one inevitably comes away with impressions that are relevant to the discussion of these subjects The achievements of the Cultural Revolution in bringing about equality are extraordinary, and go further than I could have imagined I am not referring, I must immediately make clear, to an equitable distribution of power There is no doubt in my mind that a very small number of people make the crucial decisions, and that elections are meaningless formalities We asked the chairman of one commune's revolutionary committee how often elections were held, and he could not even remember the length of his own tenure Obviously, he was not worried about losing to a rival candidate What I do mean is that external manifestations of status have been eliminated, and that differences in lifestyle between the elite and the common people have been vastly reduced The most impressive instance of this phenomenon was cited to me by an anti-Communist Canadian businessman who travels frequently to China He said that he is usually met at the airport by the head of a foreign trade organization who takes him into the city in a company car Upon arriving at the hotel, the chauffeur drives to the garage and the Chinese executive bicycles home No one is allowed to use the car for nonofficial business The distribution of income likewise reflects China's philosophy of egalitarianism Higher salaries customarily depend on seniority, and workers receive no financial reward for good performance or productivity Visiting the house of a commune brigade leader and the houses of simple commune members, I was impressed to find that the degree of material comforts available were about the same, although the brigade leader had 2,000 people working under him Everyone in my group was fascinated by the Chinese practice of periodically sending intellectuals and administrators to do physical labor Engineers and factory directors work one day out of six at the bench, journalists, tourist guides and others in similar positions do term work four months every two years We could not find out who decides what work the factory director or intellectual will perform when he is away from his office According to some of our informants, an historian in a village does nothing more onerous than writing a history of the commune, according to others, intellectuals are expected to participate in hard labor The point of physical work is not to contribute to production, but to improve character Students employed in factories during the summer do not take workers' jobs away they perform some sort of auxiliary labor As our guide described his own experiences in a village the previous summer, one could only feel sorry for the poor animals that had been entrusted to him As for the lack of freedom, I found this even more unendurable than I had anticipated I am not talking about people tearing the secret police, or informers lurking everywhere A tourist can have no way of knowing if these things are common My concern here is only with the possibility of searching for the truth I was unprepared for the extreme narrowness of the discussions, and the limits placed on subjects, facts and events that could be openly mentioned China, in this regard, is a caricature of the Soviet Union during the 1930s and '40s There, too, facts did not become facts until they received official recognition Nevertheless, in the worst days of those decades Pravda found room for topics other than Ping-Pong tournaments Not even Stalin would have disdained the people to such a degree as to announce a meeting of the Party Congress two days after it had adjourned The plays I saw m Peking and Sian were so primitively didactic that one could not imagine them on the Moscow stage at any time To call them examples of agitprop would only dignify them (I was told some improvement has taken place, if not in quality at least in numbers From 1966-71 six dramas were produced in the entire country, this year there were over 15 ) Moreover, public verbiage was thinner and slogans were emptier than the propaganda of Russia's most repressive period We heard the phrases "revolutionary line of Mao" and "capitalist roader Liu Shau Chi" many times a day I must admit that I had little patience with this kind of thing and quickly became irritated I remember asking a little 9-year-old what she liked to do in school most Incredibly, she answered that she enjoyed dancing and reading the works of Chairman Mao At a meeting of the Red Guard, no doubt put on for our benefit, one teenager said that she "came to school, even when ill, because she wanted to serve the people " The "cultural workers" of Sian told us that they do not sing unhappy songs, because there are no unhappy people in China Freedom is connected to human dignity, for how can a man have a sense of dignity if he cannot choose his place of work or his residence...