China Candid The People on the People’s Republic SangYe Edited by Geremie R. Barmé with Miriam Lang University of California Press Berkeley Los Angeles London Contents Sang Ye’s Conversations with China ix Geremie R. Barmé Acknowledgments xxv Introduction: Words and Saliva 1 Sang Ye C h a i r m a n M a o’s A r k 1 A Hero for the Times: A Winner in the Economic Reforms 13 2 Chairman Mao’s Ark: One of the Floating Population 28 3 The Nondissident: A Party Man Betrayed 40 4 The Union Rep: A Worker against the Party 59 5 The People’s Deputy: A Congresswoman 73 M o o n wa l k i n g 6 Looking Ahead: The Founders of a Private Orphanage 87 7 Getting Organized: The Parents of a Stolen Child 107 8 Shine: A Prodigy 120 9 Moonwalking: A Differently Abled Young Woman 124 vii Un l ev e l P l a y i n g F i e l d 10 Consuming Habits: On the Flood of Fakes 137 11 Fringe-Dwellers: A Nonofficial Artist 145 12 The Computer Bug: The Software Pirate 157 13 Unlevel Playing Field: Confessions of an Elite Athlete 166 H e av e n’s Na r r o w G a t e 14 A Life of Sex: Dr Sex 183 15 Time as Money: A Shenzhen Hooker 195 16 Little Sweetie: A Thoroughly Modern Mistress 206 17 Heaven’s Narrow Gate: Christians Who Overcame 212 M a s t e r i n g Ne w C h i n a 1 8 An Army on the March: The PLA Means Business 223 19 Generating Income: The Reeducation of an English Professor 235 20 To the New World: Passport Protection 244 21 Mastering New China: A Capitalist with the Party’s Characteristics 252 22 Down to Earth: Reflections of a Former Red Guard 266 23 Just One Party: A Challenge from the Grass Roots 272 Pa r t i n g S h o t 24 Beam Me Up: The UFOlogist 289 25 Parting Shot: A Beijing Executioner 298 26 Days in the Life of the People’s Republic 317 List of Translators 325 Index 327 7 Getting Organized The Parents of a Stolen Child MISSING Two Children Lost, Mothers’ Hearts Broken My name is Tu Xiaofeng, and I am a teacher at No. 19 Middle School in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province. After eleven years of marriage I became pregnant, and after eight months of careful bed rest, specialist treatment, and a caesarean, I was able to give birth to a son, Yang Nan. But when he was just six years old the unimaginable happened: left unattended at the entrance to our home for less than half an hour, he disappeared without a trace. At approximately one p.m. on 7 July 1994, Yang Nan was playing with a friend, a boy by the name of Xiong Hui [4 years 10 months, the son of an employee of No. 11 Middle School], outside the dormitory building of No. 19 Middle School when both of them went missing. Yang Nan, male, six years old, approximately 111 cm tall. Shiny black hair, slight build, with a large greenish birthmark on his abdomen. He is bright and lively, speaks Mandarin, and before his disappearance attended kindergarten at the Design Institute of the Department of Metallurgy, Nanchang Municipality. Since Yang Nan’s disappearance, our whole family has been in a state of deep depression. We have done everything in our power, both physically and materially, to locate him, but to no avail. His grandparents have not been able to withstand the shock and have fallen ill, while his parents have been in constant torment; they are in tears all day, and can’t eat, drink, or sleep. Yang Nan’s father has suffered a number of chronic conditions for 107 some years, and his health has further deteriorated since the loss of his beloved son. He has fainted many times and now weighs only forty kilograms, a mere shadow of his former self. This agony has aged me too, so much so that I’m like a different person. Yang Nan’s parents are sincerely appealing to all people of conscience: If you have any clue as to the whereabouts of Yang Nan or Xiong Hui, please get in touch with us at once. We are willing to pay a reward of twenty thousand yuan, or more, for the recovery of our boy. Pity Yang Nan’s ailing grandparents and his suffering father. Sympathize with the agonies of his mother and return our beloved child to us. We will gladly compensate you for any expenses incurred. If that is not enough, we are willing to arrange to become relatives with you so that we can maintain contact and both families can share Yang Nan. We appeal to the public to offer us your hand in support and help save this shattered family! Address: No. 19 Middle School, Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, Postcode: 3300006 Tel.: [0791] 6239900 or 6238577 This announcement was carried in all of the major print-media outlets in China—both newspapers and weeklies—for months on end. Similar notices appear regularly in all of China’s newspapers, including the Chinese Red Cross press. They may be shorter, or may announce the loss of a baby or small child. For readers bedazzled by the endless good news about the latest successes of the economic reforms, or whose eyes are more easily drawn to advertisements for Japanese electrical goods, such notices—short pieces written in the blood and tears of parents—are all too easily overlooked. Perhaps it is just that they have become so common that they can no longer arrest readers’ attention. I spoke with the mother of a missing child in her apartment on the outskirts of Xi’an, capital of Shaanxi Province. The comments in brackets were made by an official who works for the Office for the Prevention of the Kidnapping and Sale of Women and Children. Our organization is a voluntary and unofficial group. We have organized ourselves spontaneously and have a specific, short-term aim: our sole interest is to find our missing children. It doesn’t matter whether they are sim108 M o o n wa l k i n g ply lost or have been kidnapped and sold; we just want them back. We have no other agenda, nor any political dimension. We are desperate parents who have lost their children. That’s why we have joined together in the hope that through our joint efforts we can get our children back. That’s why we don’t even have a real name for our group. At first we thought of calling ourselves the Fellow Sufferers’ Association, but then we felt that the expression fellow sufferer [nanyou] doesn’t really sound right, since we are victims, and especially because it usually implies that what people suffered together was a jail sentence. But then some of us began calling the group the We Love Our Children Association. That’s more accurate, and it describes who we are and what we are about. But after a while we still felt We Love Our Children didn’t feel quite right; the word children is often taken to mean just sons and could easily lead to misunderstandings.1 That’s why we agreed with the suggestion that we call ourselves the Missing Children Association. Finally we had an appropriate name. We had to band together because instances of child kidnapping in Xi’an have become so common that parents are often so reluctant to leave their children that they don’t go to work. They only feel safe when their children are right there in front of them. Even after work, they worry about letting their children go out to play, even if it’s right in front of their own building. When we started our group here in Xi’an, on average one child was going missing every week. These lost children were virtually impossible to find, since they were being sold out of town. My own daughter went missing on the way to school, which is only three hundred meters from our house. She disappeared in broad daylight. Bai Jianrong’s son disappeared at the zoo; Li Maiqin vanished from right outside their door while playing; Li Jingzhi’s son was carried off right opposite the Xi’an Municipal Public Security Bureau! Our children aren’t safe anywhere. Even at home they may be in danger, as a number of children have been kidnapped right out of their own homes. They say that the government, the Women’s Federation, and the public security bureau are all there to protect us and deal with the extraordinary level of social disorder we are experiencing, but in reality they are all equally powerless to help us find our children. We have no choice but to find inspiration in that line from the “Internationale”: “There is no such thing as a savior. Rely not on gods or emperors. We must save ourselves!” 1. In this context the Chinese for “we love our children” is aizi, the word zi meaning either child or son. Getting Organized 109 [Official: Parents who have lost children do suffer terribly. We completely sympathize, and as members of the Public Security Bureau, we are doing absolutely everything within our power to help. We have indeed saved a number of kidnapped children. During these operations some officers have been wounded; others have even lost their lives. When a child goes missing, there are two possibilities: one is that they have simply got lost, the other is that they have been kidnapped and sold. If, after a certain amount of time has elapsed, they still can’t be found, we conclude that in all likelihood they have been kidnapped. In recent years the number of such cases has increased dramatically. Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Jilin, and Heilong jiang are the provinces worst hit by this blight; the most seriously affected cities include Xi’an, though it is not the worst. The majority of “buyers” are peasant families living in Henan, Hebei, Jiangsu, and Shandong provinces. It goes without saying that these are not the most economically developed regions of the country. As for the frequency of kidnappings, all I can give you is the relative number of cases over recent years: if in some seriously affected areas there were, say, one hundred cases in 1990–91, then that increased by 100 percent in 1990–92; that is to say there were more than two hundred instances. Following this, we concentrated our energies on striking back at these criminals, and we achieved some initial successes, with 1992–93 seeing an increase of kidnappings of just a little over 10 percent. Now, as for just how many cases did occur in 1990–91, I’m afraid that is a state secret. Very well, if you insist, I can give you a vague figure to illustrate my point. For example, for the year 1990–91 in Guizhou Province, there were over four hundred kidnappings. Over a third of these involved the violent kidnapping of babies and small children.] When a member’s child goes missing, we report it to the police immediately. Then we put flyers up all over the city, at the train and bus stations, as well as at the airport. Some parents have made tens of thousands of copies. Parents who are economically better off might even broadcast their pleas on TV and have them published in the press. Some parents are actors, so before each performance they will read out the details of their lost child and appeal to the audience for help. Some have even quit their jobs and become itinerant peddlers, moving from town to town in the hope that one day they might bump into their child, or at least find some clue as to their whereabouts. We have mobilized friends and relatives throughout China to help with finding information. No matter what they discover, whether it seems reliable or not, regardless of how far they have to travel, our members will go and follow it up for themselves. We have done everything we can think of, and most of us have been more or less reduced to poverty by 110 M o o n wa l k i n g our efforts. Our common experience is that when confronted with this implacable social problem, the individual and the family are completely powerless. All of us have simply felt that we had to join forces and express our frustration to the authorities. Although our notices and flyers may not have led us to our children, at least we have found each other. In December 1988, on 10 December to be precise, over twenty parents met for the first time. We were all strangers. Our number included workers, cadres, and teachers as well as peasants; some were parents, and some were grandparents. Regardless of these differences, when anyone spoke about how they had come to lose their child and their efforts to find them, everyone wept uncontrollably. It was a room full of tears, and those tears united us as a family. The reason we got together that day was so we could make a collective approach to the provincial government and appeal for aid. We ended up establishing this support group. The secretary general of the provincial government, Song Haiyuan, met with us. Before he even had a chance to open his mouth, one of us cried out: “Be our benefactor! Save our children!” Then they knelt down in front of him, and we all followed suit. He was obviously very moved, and he pleaded with us to stand up. “Your concerns are our concerns,” he told us. “We will do everything we can to coordinate efforts being made to help find your lost children.” He certainly sounded sympathetic, but in retrospect we realized that he was treading very carefully. He emphasized the need to “coordinate efforts”; he spoke of helping us “find” our “lost children.” He said nothing about the criminals who were stealing our children for profit. What particularly annoyed me was his line that “your concerns are our concerns.” What’s that supposed to mean? This appallingly lawless state of affairs is the government’s responsibility, after all, not ours. After that, a journalist wrote a news story reporting that we had all found new strength and hope after meeting with the secretary general. It claimed that we all felt the government had our concerns at heart. What a load of nonsense. I certainly didn’t feel any of the strength or hope that reporter was talking about. After leaving the provincial government headquarters, we went to the provincial public security office. The person who met with us there also offered his sympathies but immediately discouraged us by saying that the situation was very complex and that we couldn’t expect any results in the short term. Then he asked us: “Are your children lost, or were they kidnapped? Now, if they just went missing, then that’s the jurisdiction of the Third Bureau; but if they were kidnapped, that’ll be a matter for the Sixth Bureau.” Getting Organized 111 How could we possibly answer? If they were simply lost, how was it that after all the extraordinary lengths we had gone to, we couldn’t find them? But, of course, we had no proof that they had been kidnapped either. That didn’t matter, he told us; the smallest clue would be sufficient. But we didn’t have any leads. If we had, we would have followed them up ourselves. [Official: Of course, for the parents of lost children this is an impossible question; but from the perspective of the public security system, it is a rational division of labor. They can’t just lump everything together. In Xi’an, for example, these cases are handled with the utmost seriousness. The Third Bureau issued a nationwide appeal for support, and the Sixth Bureau followed up every lead related to its criminal investigations. Unfortunately, none of these efforts have had the desired outcome, although, as the old saying has it, “Though nothing has happened, it is not for the lack of will.” In our job, no matter how much you do, how much you might care, if you don’t get results, no one will appreciate you.] A few days later we went to the provincial Women’s Federation, where we were met by the chairperson and the head of the Department for the Protection of the Rights of Women and Children. They too were sympathetic, but all they could suggest was that they would speak to the provincialgovernment and public-security people on our behalf. They did, but nothing came of it. After the New Year we repeated this round of visits, and they all told us they would do what they could, that they’d look into it and make representations on our behalf to their superiors. That’s when we began to lose all hope. All we could do was support each other and try to look after ourselves. The first time we took to the streets was on 8 March 1989, International Women’s Day. There were only fifty or so of us, all parents of missing children. We didn’t want to create any disturbance, but we had no other choice. It was the only way we could focus attention on our plight, in particular to make the government realize the extent of child abductions. We also hoped to alert parents to the need to be vigilant, to warn them to protect their children so as to avoid the tragedy we had all suffered. It really shocked people to see how many people had had their children go missing. Because the media didn’t report kidnappings, many people simply hadn’t realized how many children had disappeared in Xi’an. They couldn’t believe that such incidents were occurring in broad daylight in a socialist nation like China. We marched for over an hour and covered about two kilometers. As we walked, many parents who hadn’t lost children joined our ranks tearfully with their own children. 112 M o o n wa l k i n g Our slogan was: “Keep an eye on your kids.” Our banner read: “Save the children, protect your kids” and “Children aren’t merchandise.” We also handed out leaflets with the details of our missing children. By the time we reached the provincial-government headquarters, they had set up a police cordon outside to maintain order. An official asked us to go inside, or rather invited us into the reception area and spoke to us one by one. The basic tenor of his remarks was that we should present our grievances to the government directly and not resort to these methods. But we had gone directly to the government. For the sake of our children and so that the central authorities could be made aware of this horrifying trade in kidnapped children, we even traveled to Beijing. The first time was in March 1991. Our delegation consisted of eight parents whose children had been kidnapped. First off we went to the Reception Center for Complaints and Appeals to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council. Yes, that’s what it’s called: the party and the government share the same space. We were received by a man in his forties who was wearing a suit. He kept his hat on throughout the interview. —Where are you all from? —Xi’an. —And how many of there are you? —Eight altogether. —And what’s your business? —Our children were all kidnapped. —Go see the Ministry of Public Security. They are the relevant governmental instrumentality. We can’t help you here. —We’ve come to Beijing especially to inform the central government of our plight. Child abduction in Xi’an is an extremely serious problem. —I’m aware of that, and also the fact that you staged a demonstration. Speak to Public Security. —The situation in Xi’an is disastrous. Please take a look at these documents that we’ve prepared. —If you have any extra copies, you can leave one with us. Then I suggest you go to the Ministry of Public Security. Getting Organized 113 Right next door to this reception room was a Reception Center for the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress. We thought we might as well go in. Again, we were greeted by a man in his forties. —Where are you from, and what business do you have? —We’re from Xi’an, and our children are missing. —Missing? All eight of you have lost children? —We’re not the only ones. We have here the names of forty-eight families who have had children stolen. This is a list of the people in our support group. —That serious? Have you been to the Reception Center for Complaints and Appeals to the Central Committee of the CCP and the State Council? —Yes. —Very well, then. I suggest you now go to the Ministry of Public Security. —We’re not here to try and deal with any single case of kidnapping. What we want to do is inform the Standing Committee about the dire situation in Xi’an. We have come all this way; the least you could do is give us an opportunity to talk to you. —Very well. Come back at 1:30 this afternoon. At the appointed time we were received by two people, a man and a woman. We sent two representatives to talk with them, our main point being that the instances of kidnapping were so frequent that the authorities had to take urgent action. The discussion was fairly general, and when we’d finished it was obvious that they were in sympathy with our situation. They undertook to make a thorough report to their superiors but concluded with the following words: “You really do have to go to the Ministry of Public Security. They’re the ones in charge of cases like this.” So we went to the Ministry of Public Security, where we had a dialogue with six people. The upshot of all of this was: “We will report the information you’ve provided us to our superiors. However, you will have to refer to your local authorities for the actual resolution of these cases.” The whole exercise had proved to be incredibly instructive. We all real- 114 M o o n wa l k i n g ized that the earth is round; after all that agonizing effort, we ended up right back where we started. We had done everything we could, and we had achieved nothing. Our children were still missing. According to the Constitution, “marriage, families and children are protected by the state.” The law clearly states there is a crime called “abuse of the freedom of citizens and their democratic rights.” The Decision on the Strike-Hard Campaign against Wrongdoers passed by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress is even more explicit: “The ringleaders of gangs who engage in kidnapping or are guilty of serious crimes related to kidnapping will be sentenced to death.” With all these laws and stipulations to protect us, why are so many children still being stolen and sold? The problem is that there are laws, but they are not adhered to. I simply cannot accept that this plague of kidnapping—in particular that involving children—cannot be brought to a halt. I believe that if they caught some of the people doing it and executed them—shot a whole lot of them—then the others wouldn’t be game to carry on. [Official: Things are not quite that simple. She does not appreciate the difficulties we encounter in the legal process. It is precisely because we must act within the law that we cannot simply execute all the people we catch who are engaged in the trade in children. In actual practice, these would be our biggest headaches: in the first place, there’s a difference between selling children and simply kidnapping them. According to a 1983 decision of the National People’s Congress, “those guilty of extremely serious cases of trafficking in human beings can be sentenced to death.” Now, that covers the selling of children, but not kidnapping; that’s a crime dealt with in Article 184 of the Criminal Code: “Those guilty of kidnapping children under the age of fourteen from their families or legal guardians will be imprisoned or detained for a period up to but not exceeding five years.” In reality these people are clever, and they have divided the trade up between those who specialize in kidnapping children and those who sell them. In one year, over a hundred and fifty traders were arrested in Gaotang County in Shandong alone. Not a bad catch, eh? But all of them were either kidnappers or sellers; no one did both. That means that after going through due process, not one of them was executed. Second, how do you determine what an “extremely serious case” is? The lack of any fixed standard makes for a really confusing situation. The crime might be the same, but it is judged differently depending on where you are. Is selling five people serious? Or is it only three? Or is it only “serious” when the victims are Getting Organized 115 injured? What kind of injury counts as “serious”? The same crime will be viewed very differently in different places—and it’s particularly difficult in “disaster areas” where people are extremely worked up about the issue. Ironically, if there are too many cases in one area you tend to see people getting lighter sentences. Third, it is extremely difficult to take legal action against people who buy the children. Trafficking connotes a two-way exchange; there is a seller and a buyer. Naturally, if you can control the buyers, then there won’t be any market for the goods. In 1991 a presidential decree was issued that stated: “Those who purchase or detain kidnapped women and children are to be sentenced to up to but not exceeding three years’ imprisonment or detention.” Prior to this decree, buyers could only be reeducated through criticism. Although now there is a legal sanction, there are still problems. For example, what if the kidnappers never told the buyers that they were taking possession of kidnapped women or children? They might claim that these children were born outside the quotas permitted by the family-planning policy. Of course, an adult woman or an adolescent would be able to speak out on her own behalf, but what about little babies who can’t defend themselves? Thus, often the buyer really wouldn’t know where the child came from. Another possibility is that prior to the kidnapper’s being arrested, the buyer might claim that they were never told that the child was stolen, so that when a case comes to trial, you can’t legally prosecute them. So there are two loopholes for buyers. If they’re good at stonewalling, they can easily get out of three years’ detention. Thus the threat of imprisonment is not all that effective in practice. Fourth, we are seriously underfunded and understaffed. Traders in human beings work all over the country, and although the actual cases may be fairly straightforward, there are lots of complex leads to follow up. According to the law, you have to obtain all the evidence of an alleged crime within two or three months following the arrest of a suspect, and that’s a real problem. The procuracy isn’t interested in your practical difficulties; if your investigations haven’t been completed within the stipulated time, then the suspect is released. Fifth, regional protectionism often makes it difficult to recover a stolen child. The police are constantly coming into conflict with the local people in the place where the child is located. All right, let’s forget it. I’ll come straight out and say it: What actually happens is that the police often come into conflict with local party committees and governments. There have been cases where these local overlords have trashed police vehicles and beaten up or even killed police officers. Quite frankly, all too often we feel just like these parents do—that we are chasing our own tails and never getting anywhere.] 116 M o o n wa l k i n g Anyway, that was the upshot of our efforts at petitioning the Center. Thereafter, some people decided to appeal directly to society as a whole and try to get some public sympathy for our cause. They wanted to stir up public outrage at these barbaric crimes so that pressure could be brought to bear on the authorities. They began getting signatures from people working in various departments, factories, mines, and schools for a petition. Most people were sympathetic, so they soon had tens of thousands of signatures; a lot of people even wrote a few words on the petition to express their outrage. What happened after the petition was presented to the government? Silence. We weren’t directly involved in organizing the petition; we just didn’t have the time or energy. Regardless of whether the appeals were directed at Beijing or at local authorities, the whole aim of the exercise was to get the government to take this matter seriously, and to act sternly, rigorously, and quickly to strike out at these traders in human beings. The key was to bring enough pressure to bear on the authorities. Naturally, if they had been elected democratically, they would have been more responsive; but they are not from among us. They were not elected by the people who sign petitions. If they sense pressure on them, then they respond; if not, then they go to work as usual, completely untroubled. As long as they don’t engage in corruption, they will be regarded by the party as good cadres. That’s why I said earlier we are a spontaneously formed, temporary, voluntary, and unofficial organization. Our sole aim is to find our children. If you still think we are a lobby or pressure group, then you’re wrong. I’d never even heard the expression lobby group until we formed our organization and someone told me that’s what we really are. But we aren’t. In the first place, we can’t bring any real pressure to bear on the authorities. Second, we don’t have any political program or agenda; nor do we wish to make trouble. Some people do think we want to stir things up; they regard any street demonstration as troublemaking. But that’s their problem. Since people think we are a lobby group, I thought I’d better look up the term. The dictionary defines such expressions in the context of Westernstyle politics. It goes without saying that the political setup in China is quite different, so the term really has nothing to do with us. That’s why we have nothing to do with the concept. As I see it, lobbyists negotiate with members of parliament or congress who then may act on their behalf or bring pressure to bear on the government through parliament. We might try lobbying the National People’s Congress in Beijing, but don’t be fooled by Getting Organized 117 the superficial similarities between them and parliamentarians. Our congressmen and -women act rather differently. They won’t even see us. When we went to the capital, we didn’t get to meet a single member of the NPC. The functionaries who did deign to speak to us chorused, “Go to the Ministry of Public Security and your local authorities.” Although we enjoy universal suffrage and every citizen has democratic rights, in reality our vote doesn’t threaten them. Another thing I’d like to mention is something that many of us have discovered since losing our children. We have learned how complex our society really is. We have finally realized that in our socialist country, although there are people who are sympathetic and who have a strong sense of decency, there are also many vile creatures who have fed off our agony, people who can’t even be called human beings. Many of us have been cheated. After putting out our flyers and pleas, many of us have received letters from people telling us that they had clues as to the whereabouts of our children. These people said that they’d like to help, but since they themselves were destitute, they’d want to be paid for their information. And that was the most direct form of deceit. There have been cases where someone claims that they know where your child is but dare not tell because they’re scared of the kidnappers. They arrange a rendezvous with you and promise they’ll secretly take you to where your child is. The place is invariably a station or a wharf in another town. You arrive in a strange place where you don’t know anyone, and they get you to pay them some money for traveling expenses and then take you off to buy tickets. Then, before you know what has happened, they’ve lost you in the crowd. Or there are people who lure you to some out-of-the-way place to rob you, knowing full well that since you’ve come to find your child, you’re sure to have some cash on you. Then there are those who claim they’re practitioners of qigong or that they have supernatural powers, or pretend they have connections with the kidnapping ring. They too try to rip you off. Some pretend to be part of the mafia. They call up claiming that they have your child and say that unless you pay a huge ransom they’ll kill the kid. I’ve been cheated three times. It’s not that I didn’t have my doubts, but even when you’re suspicious, you have to go and check out a lead, just in case it’s the real thing this time. [Official: What’s even worse is that some cheats pretend to be working for us. They claim that the child has been found in some other place and offer to pick the kid up and bring him back to Xi’an. Then they spin some line about how 118 M o o n wa l k i n g the family that the child has been with has spent thousands of yuan to buy the child, plus all the money they’ve had to fork out on feeding and clothing him and whatnot. To ensure a trouble-free trip and the safe return of the child without argument, they suggest that the parents cover the buyer’s expenses. Of course the parents agree. Even if it means they have to sell everything they have, they get the money together somehow. Then, when they’re on the way to get the child, the cheat will find a way to steal the money. This might not be the right time or place to mention it, but there’s another type of situation that involves parents hiding their own children with friends or relatives and then reporting them missing or kidnapped. They make a big show of it and get us involved so that we expend a huge amount of effort searching for the missing child. What the parents really want to do is get around the onechild policy and have a second child, a fat and healthy baby boy. They don’t dare flout the family planning law openly, so they do this instead.] One. Although we have done absolutely everything in our power, we have only recovered one child so far. It might only be one, but all I can say is that at least we have found one. Maybe in the future we’ll find another, and then another. Maybe not. Even if we never find another child, at least we have found this one. Do you understand what I’m saying? My profession? I’m an accountant. Some people believe there must be some complicated story behind the loss of a child, there must be more to it than we let on. But there isn’t. One day she went off to school as usual, with her satchel on her back. It was a badly made satchel; the school made them all buy one. It was less than a year old, and it was already falling to pieces. She simply never came back. Getting Organized 119 14 A Life of Sex Dr Sex She works in the Garden of Eden, Beijing. All of the employees wear white coats, like doctors in hospitals, including the part-time shop assistants. Many of them are out-of-towners with strong Hunan or Anhui country accents. They haven’t had a chance to acquire the polite hypocrisy of city folk yet, and they ask all customers the same question: “Are you going to buy that?” They get paid according to how much they sell. She was wearing a white coat as well, and leaning on the counter that featured blow-up girl dolls and massage paraphernalia. She had a long chat with the friend who had taken me there to make the initial introduction and then suddenly seemed to notice me. “You’re doing oral history, so does that mean you want to record me? Do you want me to speak in English or Chinese?” I was a barefoot doctor in the Cultural Revolution. You know, someone whose skills were pretty much limited to applying mercurochrome to whatever injury was presented to me. When I came across cases of syphilis, I didn’t know what it was, so I treated it like it was some allergy-related dermatitis. I didn’t know a thing about sexually transmitted diseases. I was sent back to the commune to practice after just a month-long “red doctor class” at the county health bureau. It’s what they called a “daring induction” into on-the-job training. It wasn’t until many years later that I discovered, no, that I realized how many cases of venereal diseases I’d seen then, gonorrhea in particular. I’d treated them as though they were ordinary urinary-tract infections or children’s conjunctivitis. In the 1960s China claimed it was the one country in the world that had completely eradicated venereal diseases. 183 That, as it turned out, was complete nonsense. Now the authorities are a bit more realistic, and they admit that STDs have reached virtually epidemic proportions. When I went to study in America, I was astounded to learn how strictly medicine was controlled, even the right to write a prescription. They require very high qualifications for their doctors and pharmacists there. I’d never even heard of such a system; in China it was simply nonexistent. After a month of study, a barefoot doctor was qualified to write prescriptions, though maybe not for every kind of drug. We were also allowed to do just about anything short of taking up a scalpel, though if you were brave enough, you could have a go at cutting someone open as well. Things are a bit better these days, but the system for approving medical qualifications is still pretty haphazard, and even then it’s only really enforced in the big city hospitals. They’re a kingdom unto themselves, and they reign supreme within their own walls. But just go outside the gate and you’ll find the streets full of advertisements promising cures for everything, including cancer and venereal disease. Not one of the so-called doctors behind the advertisements has even the most rudimentary qualifications. Some are probably illiterate into the bargain. And this is a major city. In most county townships, health bureaus have their rules and regulations, which means medical practitioners don’t actually have to have graduated from medical school to prescribe treatment. Of course, the situation in the villages is even worse. China’s got to be the most lax country in the world with regard to the regulation of pharmaceuticals. So long as you’ve got the money to pay for them, you can go into any pharmacy and buy antibiotics, hormones, contraceptive pills, and whatever else you fancy. Take what you want; you’re your own doctor. Technically, you need a prescription for some medicines, but that’s just a formality. The in-house doctors will offer enthusiastic service, and since their income goes up in proportion to the pharmacy’s profits, they’ll write out a script for whatever you want. They’ll be happy to offer free advice on top of it: one bottle of tranquilizers only contains one hundred pills, so you might as well buy two at the same time; the more the merrier. You really are your own doctor. You’d think that with all this competition—including the street quacks—genuine medical practitioners would have a hard time. But that’s not the case at all. Take us, for example. We operate as a sexual-health clinic, with a focus on tonics and contraceptives, and a sideline in other health-care items that may or may not be related to 184 H e av e n ’ s N a r r o w G a t e sexual or reproductive health. We’re a business, a medical clinic, and a pharmacy; or, if you prefer, not solely a business, a clinic, or a pharmacy. While we’ve had occasional hassles over ideological issues in the past, we now enjoy as much latitude as you could want. To be quite honest, although the quality of Chinese-made sexual medicines and aids is not particularly high, and in some cases the medicines are totally ineffective, virtually no one complains or demands their money back. When it comes to anything related to sex, people are too embarrassed to kick up a fuss. They feel they’d lose face if they came in and said: “Look, I used your medicine but I still couldn’t get an erection.” They’d rather cope with the fact that they’ve been had, write it off as bad luck, and forget about it. Some sex shops only trade in bogus medicines, for both men and women. Now, we’re not like that at all, but we know that there are a lot of crooks out there underselling our quality products with their rubbish. When other people sell crappily made sex aids, it hurts our business, too. But we’re operating in a very large, albeit special market, so there’s lots of room for everyone. I never thought I’d end up studying medicine. When I was little, I dreamed of being a pilot. Lots of girls wanted to be pilots, even though at the time there were probably only a handful of female pilots in the entire country. One of them came and spoke at my school. She told us how Chairman Mao had sent her up into the blue sky. I’d just started primary school, and the minute I heard her talk, I decided that when I grew up I wanted to fly a plane, too. To fly MiGs, Soviet-made planes—I must have been really brave! The Cultural Revolution began when I was in my second year of high school. Overnight, the kids at school organized themselves into combat teams.1 Some of my closest friends formed one, too, and we all headed off to Beijing. To us, making revolution was like a game. When we got back to Guangzhou, we roamed around, keeping up with the action. We went out to protect the Trade Fair; we opposed people who were pretending to be revolutionaries but were really plotting to bring back the old order; we also supported the Hong Kong people against the British imperialists and got involved in the Hundred-Day Armed Struggle.2 We were there through all of it. It was incredibly good fun. When 1969 rolled 1. That is, rival Red Guard factions that fought with each other in the name of defending Mao Zedong Thought and saving the revolution from revisionism. 2. Major ideological struggles in Guangzhou, some of which resulted in violent conflict. A Life of Sex 185 around, the city leaders had had enough of us, so we were all packed off to the countryside. We were supposed to unite with the workers and peasants and reform our political thinking there. Conditions in the villages were incredibly primitive. We had to fetch our water in buckets, and we only had small kerosene lanterns to read by. Following a day of hard labor, we’d huddle around the feeble light to study the works of Chairman Mao, pretending that we were trying to reeducate ourselves. But it was hell. Our only link to the outside world was the radio, but it was a struggle even to get batteries. They were so precious to us that when they ran out we’d lay them on the doorstep in the hope they’d soak up some sunlight and revive. After a day of sun baking, they’d work for a few minutes before going flat again. The next day we’d repeat the routine. The climate of northern Guangdong Province, where I ended up, was really peculiar. Most of the time it was overcast. The East was red all right, but the sun never seemed to rise.3 We became desperate. It wasn’t as though there was anything else to do at night, either. So I know everything there is to know about batteries. The worst brands were Red Guard and Beijing; they’d give up after just a few days, and they leaked out muck as well. They could damage your radio if you weren’t careful. The best was Eveready—a hangover from the “old society”—but they were extremely hard to find. It was amazing that they didn’t change the brand name during the movement to “Destroy the Four Olds.”4 It was pretty funny too, because it was a classic sexual double entendre: “Take me now, I can do it anytime.” Eveready— get it? People were always carrying on about the evils of sex—how bad it is, how dirty. For years you couldn’t even talk about it. You did it, of course, but you weren’t supposed to discuss it. But here was this naughty brand name right in front of us, and no one ever cottoned on. How ridiculous is that? Things have changed a lot in recent years. Now we’ve got Girlfriend brand tissues, Concubine liquor, Night Fragrance underwear—sex is everywhere you look. I had what they called a good attitude. That meant I didn’t shrink from 3. “The East is red, the sun has risen” is the first line of the Maoist anthem “The East is Red.” 4. An attempt to eradicate all vestiges of the prerevolutionary and revisionist past in the early phase of the Cultural Revolution. Red Guards generally took the call to wipe out “the old ideas, culture, customs, and habits of the exploiting classes” as an excuse to destroy the physical evidence of the past, from shop signs to cultural artifacts. 186 H e av e n ’ s N a r r o w G a t e hardship or complain, and I obeyed the cadres’ orders. That’s how I got recommended for training as a barefoot doctor. They could have made me an accountant, a storeroom attendant, or childcare worker for all I cared—so long as I didn’t have to slave in the fields all day, I was happy. By then my ideals had come crashing down to earth, and I’d learned to be pragmatic. For two years I worked as a barefoot doctor. This earned me a recommendation for university study. At the time there were no entrance exams; everything depended on your class status and support from the poor and lower middle peasants.5 I waited two years for a chance to go to university, but I wasn’t too hopeful because my family was classified as middle-class; I was Little Miss Bourgeoisie. But things changed a little in 1973. The medical schools began enrolling experienced barefoot doctors, and there was a quota for people they considered educable despite their class background. That’s how I became a “worker-peasant-soldier” student.6 I was at Guangdong Medical College when they arrested the Gang of Four in 1976. My former classmates, who were still down on the farm undergoing rural reeducation, tried to escape to Hong Kong by trekking over the mountains or even swimming. I was busy studying, learning how traditional Chinese herbs like isatis root could prevent encephalitis and pneumonia. In 1981, I passed the exams for overseas study. Then everything changed for me. I spent the next six years in America becoming a genuine doctor. I got a higher degree in clinical medicine and decided to return to China to serve my country. Of course I thought about staying there. I don’t think any Chinese person who’s gone abroad hasn’t considered staying. Both the standard of living and the conditions for research are far better in America. You’re asking me about politics? Do you really think someone like me has anything meaningful to say on the subject? Certainly it’s a crucial issue. There it’s up to you to create optimum living conditions and a good work environment for yourself. If they’re not that good, you can only blame your own incompetence or lack of opportunity. Here, it’s all out of your control. You can try to keep out of politics, but politics won’t leave you alone. America isn’t the only place that’s different from 5. Everyone was assigned a class status depending on their family background; the poorer the better. Those who came from a superior, “exploiting” class, as this woman did, were barred from college or only allowed to attend university if recommended by representatives of those with “good” class backgrounds. 6. That is, a student supposedly with a worker, peasant, or soldier pedigree. A Life of Sex 187 China in this regard. Throughout the capitalist world, politics is conducted on a more mature level, more openly—a lot more openly—than in China. It’s a bit like sex. I’m not claiming that either politics or sex is entirely healthy or particularly clean in the West, but at least they’re both regarded as normal activities; they’re not repressed like they are in places like China or the Islamic countries. Normality is an ideal in itself. You can’t judge sex or politics by the standards of hygiene or healthiness. Is oral sex hygienic? Hardly. And that’s just too bad, since it is both normal and enjoyed by a lot of average people. It enhances sexual pleasure, and that’s not a bad thing. I decided to return despite the inferior conditions in China. I’m not claiming that I’m possessed of lofty ideals or an advanced ideology. Measured by Chinese standards, my ideology isn’t very progressive at all. I returned because I was on a scholarship, and my visa specified that I had to leave upon the completion of my studies. I couldn’t change to another type of visa there. Many Chinese people will go to extreme and undignified lengths just to stay on in the United States. Some even go into hiding. Not me. My specialty is obstetrics. There’s not a huge demand for people with higher degrees in that field; most obstetric staff in hospitals are midwives and nurses. Now, I know that what I’m about to say goes against popular wisdom, but personally I don’t believe women are all that suited for this kind of work. Assisting at births requires a lot of physical strength. There’s blood everywhere, and there’s more noise and stress than you’d get flying a plane. Women aren’t suited for the job, either psychologically or physiologically. I know if I was having a baby, I’d want a male doctor, someone with a cool head and strong hands. I say if because after having seen so many births I have no desire to go through all that myself. I think it’s the same everywhere—female obstetricians would be the professional women least likely to want to have children. Even less, say, than ballerinas. It’s not just giving birth; it’s all that nurturing and education as well. Too much trouble, if you ask me! It was easier to do research work in 1987. You had more freedom to choose your own field of study and the direction of your research. Now, except for the areas specifically targeted as priorities by the government, there’s no money available for research at all, not one cent. So, as a researcher in the Medical Research Institute after I came back to China, I decided to focus my work on what interested me most—female sexuality. It’s a topic that goes hand in hand with sociology, so, to take a line from the novelist Wang Shuo, before I knew what was going on I found that I’d 188 H e av e n ’ s N a r r o w G a t e become a folk sexologist.7 I’m a big reader of novels, and I always read a few pages before falling asleep. Wang Shuo’s novels are very entertaining, though a bit too phallocentric for my taste. He’s even more contemptuous of women than contemporary Chinese society is as a whole. We just don’t seem to be able to face up to the fact that Chinese women are also just women, people, not just baby machines or incubators for female illnesses. This is the conclusion of the first stage of my research, the part that relates to the broader society. I don’t think the medical conclusions of my research would be of much interest to the general readership. Too technical. And I’m not prepared to discuss specific cases. I’ve got to protect my intellectual property until I’m ready to publish my case histories and statistical research. However, I can tell you that extreme domestic violence, sexual perversions, impotence, abnormal sexual psychology, ignorance, and the horrific treatment of homosexuals in China are all far more pervasive than I had ever imagined. I was also completely surprised by the number and complexity of the cases. I haven’t actually reached any real conclusions yet, particularly with regard to the medical and scientific aspects of female sexuality. What I’ve managed to do over a few short years couldn’t possibly have any immediate practical applications in clinical medicine. But it’s certainly proved what I’ve always known: that those reports that there’s a magic cure for frigidity, the one that claims that through a simple surgical procedure they can allow women to experience orgasms so intense they’ll scream like a stuck pig, are unbelievable. They simply don’t stand up to examination; like most aphrodisiacs, they claim a ninety-something percent success rate, but then they would, wouldn’t they? My research doesn’t really have any clinical applications, and it doesn’t fall within the ambit of the government’s research plans. It’s certainly not aimed at developing some new drug. If it was, pharmaceutical companies would leap at the chance to invest in my work, no problem at all. But things being as they are, it’s a case of sorry, no money for you. No one is willing to put a cent into the kind of research I’m doing. So if I refer to “this stage” of my research, it’s not a theoretical stage, just an unavoidable one. 7. Wang Shuo was a Beijing novelist who came to fame in the late 1980s, when he published both satirical fiction and maudlin love stories. His original line was, “Before you know what’s going on, you find that you’ve become a writer.” He later became noted as a screen and TV writer as well as an occasional literary critic. A Life of Sex 189 Anyway, this is where I’ve ended up. Our store is part of a chain. We have branches in lots of cities, though a few other outfits have been pirating our name. We’ve brought lawsuits against them. I’m just a shop assistant, really. What you see is what I do every day. I provide consulting services for the customers. Part of it is recommending the various products sold here, but I don’t exaggerate their effectiveness. I certainly wouldn’t advise anyone to buy China-made Indian Miracle Oil for instance, or God of War rings (which don’t do a thing for you), or Superman condoms. If I did, then I’d be going against my medical code of ethics. What I will do is give advice about contraception to people having premarital sex, give out information on how to get an abortion, reassure people on issues such as whether masturbating to orgasm will affect your memory, suggest medicines suitable for older people, advise paraplegics on how they can make love, and so on. These are areas within the range of my professional competence. I help people attain pleasure for its own sake and have more fulfilling sex lives. It’s a philanthropic enterprise; and it’s a job that brings me personal satisfaction. It also provides a lot of original material for my research. And it brings in money. I need the money. I’m still plugging away at my research, and recently I was able to hire two university students to work part-time categorizing my case histories and compiling statistics. I left my state job voluntarily. My field of interest was outside the national plan. They didn’t cut off my salary or anything, but I thought it would be better to search out other opportunities. It wouldn’t have been difficult to switch to some topic that was targeted for funding. Some people might be content to work at something they don’t really believe in just for the sake of a full rice bowl and a guaranteed job till retirement, but I wanted to pursue my interests. There were several choices open to me. The most profitable would have been to work in pharmaceuticals, developing new medicines. The pharmaceutical companies are more than willing to fork out money for research into cure-alls for sexually transmitted diseases. You’ve seen those wretched doctors in the TV ads saying things like: “Just one application and your dirty little secret is no more.” One application? That sort of thing simply eliminates the symptoms while allowing the disease to take root—and then you’re really in trouble. Another road to easy money is selling so-called cures for impotency: Golden Gun Power Pills — Stick-’Em-Up and Keep-’Em-Up, A Man’s Most Precious Treasure, that sort of thing. But money isn’t my only concern. So I chose to work here in this shop. I don’t need to make any immediate decisions about my future. For 190 H e av e n ’ s N a r r o w G a t e now I’m enjoying access to all these case studies, free of charge. It would be a real shame to waste such an opportunity. The worst you can say about me is that having returned from America, I’ve got big ideas and the will to carry them out, or that having gone to all the trouble to get an M.D., it’s a shame to waste it on the business world. In fact lots of people think my job is shameful, as though the instant that sexual medicine leaves the confines of a hospital or research institute, it becomes a harmful, corrupting force. They act as if I’m abetting prostitution or something. I don’t care what they say. The truly shameless ones are those sanctimonious hypocrites. They tell you to control yourself by taking cold showers, or try to keep people’s sexual behavior in check by telling them scary stories. If that doesn’t work, then “beat the dog behind closed doors.”8 Practice self-reliance—not only can you feed and clothe yourself, you can even achieve orgasm on your own.9 It’s all right so long as no one finds out what you’re up to. Now, in my book, that’s shameless. I’ve always advocated a more open attitude and the legitimization of sexual services and shops like this in China. If you ban the sex industry, it just goes underground. The best approach is to welcome it into society and allow it to serve the people openly. All the people. It’s a good thing, since it gives people sexual choices. It is not in conflict with all the official ideological campaigns promoting the “Five Teachings and Four Beautifuls” or defending China against Western “peaceful evolution.”10 Sex shops have existed in China for some years now. They started out selling sex aids and aphrodisiacs, though recently they’ve taken a more professional direction; so we have sex chain-stores like this one. For the moment, the authorities employ a policy of peaceful coexistence. They don’t encourage us, but they don’t stop us either. So long as we pay our taxes, they turn a blind eye to where the money comes from. Who knows how things will 8. Masturbate. 9. A parody of a famous Yan’an-period Maoist exhortation for people to work with their own two hands to produce enough to eat and wear and thus frustrate the wartime blockade of the Communist bases. 10. Five Teachings and Four Beautifuls [and Three Loves] (wu jiang si mei [san re’ai]) was a campaign launched in the early 1980s to promote civility, hygiene, and political rectitude. “Peaceful evolution” connotes the supposed United States–led Western strategy to quietly subvert Chinese culture and politics and turn the People’s Republic into a bourgeois democracy. A Life of Sex 191 work out—there’s an economic and political side to everything. Anyway, so far, so good. Maybe in terms of the big picture they find it expedient to let us keep going. Heaven only knows. Generally speaking, apart from underground porn, most of which is of very poor quality, there’s nothing you can get in the West that you can’t find in our shops, whether you’re talking about sex aids or medicines. Among the items we can display openly are this Big Mouth inflatable woman and batteryoperated vibrators and dildos, including this one with its G-spot and clitoral stimulators. The larger models are for vaginal insertion, and the narrower ones for the anus; they can twitch, vibrate, or wiggle. In America, you can only get some of these things by mail order or in out-of-the-way shops in red-light districts. Then, on top of that, there are our very own Chinese national treasures, sexual aids that you simply can’t find in your Western red-light districts, like secret prescriptions from the imperial court and folk medicines that have been handed down from generation to generation, as well as newly developed drugs that combine Western pharmaceuticals with Chinese herbal ingredients. Now all that’s left to do is for them to take the final step and make it all legal. What’s the point of keeping things shady and ambiguous? We don’t trade in erotica. We don’t sell pornographic literature or videos. That’s for the street-stall hawkers. Possession or sale of that kind of thing is against the law in China—but if you look at it from a scientific standpoint, there’s no reason why pornography shouldn’t be given some kind of legal status, so long as it’s kept out of the hands of underage readers. It’s just a tool. The women in the magazines are sexier than men’s wives; they don’t talk back, or secretly look through their wallets, or have bad breath. So what if men fantasize and masturbate over them? How is that going to undermine socialist ideology? The negative side of pornography is that it demonstrates a lack of respect for people, particularly women. It doesn’t respect sexual science either. They call it unsocialist, but in fact it’s equally anticapitalist. The authorities are a lot more afraid of peaceful evolution, and that’s what’s really behind their antiporn campaigns.11 They also say porn is detrimental to the healthy development of the next generation. That’s a medieval way of thinking, a hangover from Confucian dogma that you ought to segregate the sexes completely. They’d be far better off legislating an age limit. The legal age for marriage in 11. During antipornography campaigns (saohuang yundong ), which are a regular feature of life in China, contraband political and religious materials are also confiscated and destroyed. 192 H e av e n ’ s N a r r o w G a t e China has to be the highest in the world, twenty for women and twenty-two for men. So why not take this as a standard and set the legal age limit at, say, twenty. That’d do, wouldn’t it? Give people a chance to take responsibility for their actions. They have the right to vote; give them the right to choose as well. The authorities could demonstrate that they have confidence in the people. They can’t treat everyone like children forever. Some policies aimed at effecting a higher degree of social control are actually quite dangerous. For instance, in the case of sexual assault, they urge women to fight their assailants with all their might, regardless of the consequences. And they’re overzealous in enforcing the laws against prostitution, so much so that they often jail both the prostitute and the client. They treat people with sexual deficiencies, like exhibitionists and peeping Toms, as though they were major criminals. I could name a lot of other examples. This sort of heavy-handed treatment often brings about the opposite result from what’s intended. It can only lead to a continual increase in serious, violent sexual assault and the burgeoning of a criminal sexual underground. That will make society even less stable. If society is unstable, the whole state apparatus is built on shifting sand, so how can the regime be stable? It doesn’t create a very solid foundation for the nation or political authority, does it? My husband says I’ll never grow up, that I’m living in a fantasy world. But he leaves me alone and doesn’t interfere. He figures I am what I am, and nothing he can do will change me. He’s a doctor in a hospital. The situation in hospitals has gone downhill in recent years. It’s very corrupt, and a lot of doctors are on the take. The patients all slip them bribes for better service. He’s a follower of Sigmund Freud, and he thinks he can understand me by using all those theoretical platitudes. According to his analysis it’s because I never achieved my childhood dream of becoming a pilot that I’ve become obsessed with self-fulfillment, I’m always looking for trouble. He says, “If you want to go out and cause mischief, feel free. Ideally nothing will happen, and the worst-case scenario is that you’ll be picked up by the police. I promise I’ll take food to you in jail. I wouldn’t mind; I’ve always wanted to see what it’s like on the inside.” I’d love to sit Jiang Zemin and the other leaders down and give them a lecture on sex. Really! I’m not joking. Zhongnan Hai isn’t the Garden of Eden.12 12. Zhongnan Hai (the Middle and South Seas) is the government and party compound, located in a former imperial villa complex by a group of lakes in the center of Beijing, from which the People’s Republic is ruled. A Life of Sex 193 Anyway, they’re just people like the rest of us. Besides, they’ve got a tradition of inviting guest lecturers. Never mind whether it makes any impression or not; as the old saying goes, “The ruler must be courteous to the wise.” All I ask is that they listen. You have your prescriptions, I have mine. If mine is right, take my medicine; if not, then I don’t want a cent for my advice. How about that? My husband says the party will never take any notice of me. He’s more practical than I am. He thinks that what I’m doing falls outside all the categories. It’s neither fish nor fowl; not really medicine, not really pharmaceutical research, and not really sociology, either. He thinks my idea of lecturing the leadership is a pipe dream and mocks me: “If the party listened to you, it would be like in The Three Kingdoms, where Zhou Lang comes up with what he thinks is a brilliant plan and ends up losing both his wife and all his troops.” That’s what he’s got out of watching the TV serialization of Romance of the Three Kingdoms every night. Anyway, it’s all talk. If I were the authorities, I wouldn’t let me in there to make mischief either. It’s a pity, though, mainly because I wouldn’t get to use my opening line: “Although you are all leaders of the party and the country, and have all raised children yourselves, our first lesson today goes back to the basics of sexual knowledge—what is a man, what is a woman . . .” When people say that freedom of the press and sexual liberation are safety valves for the release of antisocial energies, it seems to make sense, but it’s not the whole story. Our nascent sexual awakening is just the first wave. The Chinese people are finally realizing their humanity, though not in the sense that’s understood by the party or the state. If they can’t accommodate what is happening, then the people themselves need to develop an awareness of human rights, and that may well begin with an awareness of the rights of women, as well as a heightened environmental consciousness, then concern about ethnic issues, and regional consciousness. All of these things will nudge the society as a whole towards a true awakening, and once that happens, there’ll be no turning back. So I sincerely believe that women’s rights, the environment, and ethnic and regional conflicts will be far more important in forcing China to reform than the events in Tiananmen on 4 June 1989. This may well be the crisis point that ushers in a new, more enlightened age. 194 H e av e n ’ s N a r r o w G a t e 15 Time as Money A Shenzhen Hooker Shenzhen South Cinema is screening a film in which Jackie Chan, China’s Rambo, is lying in wait for some gutless American. Outside the theatre, prostitutes, “wild chickens” in local slang, solicit anyone who pauses on their turf even for a moment. Shenzhen was the first of China’s Special Economic Zones, a model for the Deng era. Over the decades it has also boasted the fastest-growing population and the highest rate of inflation of any city in China. Shenzhen was a legend in its own time. It spawned the first wave of government officials and red capitalist comrades who could “travel by plane, have foreign sweethearts, spend Hong Kong dollars, and earn Chinese people’s currency.” It’s still legendary today. You know what they say: “If you never work in Beijing, you’ll never know how paltry your own position is; if you never go shopping in Shanghai, you’ll never know how poor you are; and if you don’t go chasing after Hainan girls, you’ll never know how little stamina you have.” From a Shenzhen perspective that’s nonsense, something only someone with no experience would say. If you come to Shenzhen, you’ll realize you’ve got no status and no money—and you’ll fall down on the last front as well. She was wearing a yellow nylon top, a black imitation leather skirt, and white Goldlion brand socks with the tops folded down. You want to talk? Why not buy a ticket and we’ll go inside. We’re all struggling; no one wants to be lonely. Our karma’s brought us together. Come on, treat me to a film. It won’t ruin you. Where do you think I’m from? Hengyang, Hunan province. My family 195 lives in the city. My dad works in the municipal government; he’s a cadre. A lover’s booth will only cost you eighty yuan; that’s the official price, it’s posted over there. I don’t get a cut or anything. Besides, I can see that you are no mere laborer, sir; you’re a white-collar worker, a big manager in a company. Eighty yuan is nothing to you. Invite me to see a film, just to keep me company. It’ll make both of us happy, okay? Eighty yuan is small change to someone like you, like ten yuan would be to me. It’s nothing. The police won’t take any notice of us. Just sweethearts seeing a film together, healthy entertainment, outside their jurisdiction. Every major hotel is surrounded by a cordon of whores; there’s more than enough to keep the police busy. They get set quotas for how many wild chickens they need to round up; so long as the quotas don’t go up, they leave us alone. We’re not exactly big business; it’s not really worth the trouble. Come on, let’s go in. Give me a hundred yuan and I’ll buy the tickets. The twenty yuan change can buy me an ice-cream. I won’t ask for any more after we’re inside. I’ve said one hundred up front, and that’s it. If you have a good time and want to give me more, that’d be very nice. If you don’t have a good time, you don’t have to give me any extra. I won’t complain. We were meant to meet. It’s up to you whether you give me more or not. You’ll soon find out how good I am. I’ve got a great body, satisfaction guaranteed. I work this cinema every day. It’s no scam. I guarantee you’ll be satisfied. This is Shenzhen after all. The first place to have an open door; we’ve got the most experience when it comes to trade and fair play. We have professional ethics, too. You want to go somewhere else to talk? Where? It’s too dangerous hanging around the hotels. I don’t want to go there. They’re swarming with police, and the local mafia is in there as well—they don’t like you bringing your own girl in. If you don’t take care of things beforehand, you might get past the cops, and you’ll be fine, but the girl could land in big trouble. Bars and cafes are even worse. They’ve got their own hostesses to look after the customers. I operate out of this cinema, and that’s it. It’s no good trespassing on someone else’s turf and stealing out of their rice bowl. If you don’t want to see a film, all right, treat me to a meal, then. There’s a Vietnamese restaurant above the cinema. Take me there. It won’t cost too much. This is Shenzhen. Here, time is money. If you want my company, you want me to have a meal with you, then you’ve got to pay by the hour. Cash in advance, no exceptions. It’s nothing personal, but I’ve come across men 196 H e av e n ’ s N a r r o w G a t e who get the service first and then do a runner. You’ve got to pay sooner or later, so you might as well do it up front. Thank you. Sorry to be like this. That’ll do just fine. If you need extra service, we can talk about that later, but this will cover everything for now. Shenzhen is in Guangdong Province, so everyone speaks Cantonese. You have to speak it, even if you’re not that fluent. The clients don’t always understand Mandarin, and if they’re unhappy they’ll make trouble. A hooker’s a hooker. Who cares? Doesn’t worry me. In this business you have to have some street smarts. I can read people pretty well. You just want to have a chat, a few laughs, write a book, just give me a tip. That’s fine. So long as the police don’t get me, I don’t care what you write. Hong Kong people have taken pictures of me. So I’ve done that, too. If they don’t catch you at the time, you’re safe. Yes, I really am from Hengyang. It’s not easy for us Hunanese girls here in Shenzhen. We’ve only got a few choices—this cinema, Spring Breeze Road, or Happiness Street. It’s not too bad over on the streets, you work out of the hairdressing salons, while we work the streets. All of us are hookers just the same. There’s a hierarchy, though: Big Whites, Shanghai girls, girls from the northeast, then the girls from Sichuan. . . . Big Whites are brought in from Russia. My friend says they can earn several thousand Hong Kong dollars in just one night. You earn according to the pecking order; girls in the salons and us only make two or three hundred a pop. You might do several guys a day. Depends on your luck. The girls there have a harder time than us, but they’ve got more opportunities. They have to split their money with their pimps, though. We have to be out in the open, but we get to keep everything we earn. Most of the girls who work this theater do it part-time. They’re moonlighting, like me. I work days on an assembly line. I couldn’t really tell you all the things we make. It’s always changing. They’re all circuit boards, all different sizes, for TVs and computers. The supervisor tells us what they’re called, but I can’t really remember. My job is to slot in the components. The pay is okay as long as I do it right. I don’t really care what they’re called. It’s hard work, though. If you don’t mess it up, you can earn over a thousand a month. That’s not much by Shenzhen standards, but it gets me a Shenzhen ID. If you don’t have one, the border guards can make big trouble for you every time you come back after a visit home. It’s not like I come here every night after work. Sometimes I do other things, like see friends, go shopping, have a meal with people from my Time as Money 197 hometown, whatever. This is Shenzhen; you’ve got to have other interests, and sometimes you have to take a break. You can’t spend all your time just working, eating, sleeping, and going to work again. So I don’t necessarily come here every night, though I’ll usually stop by just to check out what’s happening. With luck, I can earn more in one night here than I get in a month at the factory. But that sort of opportunity doesn’t come along every day. It’s only happened once or twice. But most nights I’d get at least a hundred. I’m not boasting. Really, it’s never less than a hundred. I’m willing to work hard at it, so I can earn good money. This is Shenzhen. Things have been wide open here for a long time. If you work hard and the price is right, you can’t go wrong. Some girls do it cheaper than that; they’re mostly junkies who need money for the next fix. You can have them for fifty a pop, sometimes twenty. I haven’t heard of anyone doing it for less than twenty; that’s how much the cheapest bag of heroin costs around here. But whatever you do, stay away from those girls. You can’t get quality goods at that price. Junkie whores are filthy; they’ve got AIDS. I haven’t really counted, but I suppose I’m here at the Shenzhen South Cinema over a dozen, maybe twenty nights a month. It doesn’t matter if I’ve got my period. This is Shenzhen. It’s not like where I come from, where they use pads, and you’ve got blood everywhere. They’ve got tampons here; you just stuff one in your hole and off you go. It’s dark in the theater, and they can’t tell. If they can, well, they’ve already had their go, so I’m hardly going to hand them their money back. But I look after myself. My body is my capital. I don’t work on the one or two days when my period is at its heaviest. You know how it works. The cinema doesn’t want to know what’s going on in the lovers’ booths. All they care about is turning a profit. They set up booths so that people can grope. If they tried to control what you did in there, they wouldn’t make any money. Anyway, it’s me that’s being groped, not them, so why should they care? Once someone has paid, they can feel as much as they like. Or we can go somewhere else and have sex. But that has to be arranged beforehand and paid for in advance. That doesn’t happen every night. It’s not that easy to turn tricks at the Shenzhen South. Most of the guys who turn up here are workers, or people on business from the inland provinces. They’re all pretty tight with their money. They can’t bear to spend all that money on a fuck, so they usually settle for a hand job. You only get twenty back from a hundred when a ticket is eighty yuan. Twenty’s not enough for a grope. Are you sure you want to hear all this? 198 H e av e n ’ s N a r r o w G a t e Once you do, you won’t want to come back. I’ve got to pay my rent tomorrow. Four of us share a room, and we pay three hundred each. It’s far too expensive. I have to earn three hundred today; if I don’t I’ll be out on my ear. So after dinner, we should still go into the cinema. . . . Thank you. That’s the same as I’d get for “seeing a movie.” First I give them twenty yuan worth. When we sit down, I lean against them and cuddle and kiss them on the mouth. Before you know it, their hands are all over me. You sure you can put this stuff in your book? Are you into writing pornography, you know, books they sell underground? Anyway, then I guide their hand under my top, and let them feel my tits. I’ve got a good body. You can see how good my capital is even when I’ve got clothes on. My tits stand up without a bra. They’re not the kind that turn into little flat bags the second the bra comes off. I’m not kidding. A few strokes of my breasts and the guys get all excited, and want to move down. I say: “Don’t! Please don’t touch me there!” But they’re all hot by now, and are dead set on going further. That’s when I tell them they’ve got to pay more: “For a hundred, you can touch me anywhere you want. Just one hundred.” I breathe hard and everything, like I’m real excited, and I keep talking to get them going though I still won’t let them into my pants: “Come on, only a hundred, please, hurry up, please, do it to me. I can’t stand it, please hold me, I want your fingers inside me, I want them up my cunt, please.” If they won’t fork out any extra, I just get up and go. This is Shenzhen. They’re not going to chase after me. Anyway, they’ve copped a feel. Why would they bother? My tits are real. I’m not kidding. They’re naturally this big. Some of the other girls have big ones too, but they’re fake. They were like little potatoes before the operation. Now when you feel them, they’re hard and heavy. This is Shenzhen; things opened up here long ago, and people know how to have fun. I can earn twenty yuan in ten minutes. That’s sort of all right. Some are happy to pay extra, and then I let them finger me. You know, we’re both sitting down, and I squeeze my legs together, so their fingers can’t get in too deep. They can only feel the lips of my cunt. Some horny bastards will force their way inside, and it’s like four or five fingers isn’t enough, they want to shove themselves right up there. I pretend I can’t stand it: “The pain is killing me. Stop or I’ll scream.” That scares them. If I don’t threaten them, they’ll stick their whole hand up my hole and start playing with my cervix. In fact, I’m real loose down there. I’ve got a big mouth, and as you know, that’s a sign that a girl has a big hole. When I had an abortion, the doctor Time as Money 199 at the Shenzhen Hospital said I was big. This is Shenzhen. You can have an abortion if you can pay for it, no one gets uptight. So long as you haven’t actually had a kid, a loose cunt is good for men. If your cunt is too tight, they come before they’ve really enjoyed themselves. It’s no fun, like guys sticking it up each other’s assholes. There’s only so much liquid in a prick, and once it’s spent, that’s it, game over. It’s like you don’t get full value from it. Guys who really know how to screw, they love women with loose cunts who haven’t had kids, because you can fuck for a longer time. They like to fuck me for ages and ages, until the bed is soaked in my juices. They only come when they’re good and ready. And then, as you know, some want to start all over again. But if they’re not fully hard, they’ll never get it into a tight cunt. It drives them mad. When that happens, other girls have to use their mouths to get the guy hard enough, then he rams it into her cunt as soon as he can, and in a few moves he’s shot his load a second time. It’s a real drag. But my cunt is loose and wet, and I can take a soft prick inside and make it hard. It’s more of a turn-on for them than using your mouth, and I can make the second fuck last even longer than the first. I’m not kidding, I’m a really good fuck. I’ve got a better body than other girls, both upstairs and downstairs. Stick your finger up me and see how big and wet my cunt is. I’m already creaming my pants, I’d like to fuck you that much. Don’t worry, we’ll just sit a bit closer. The waitress won’t be able to see what’s happening under the table. Don’t you want a little feel? I promise I don’t have any diseases. If you want to do it for real, we don’t have to use a condom. . . . Do you believe in fate? You only meet people whom you’re destined to meet. Let’s get out of here. The waitresses’ll get fed up if we sit here too long. They know I’m a hooker, but they don’t quite know how to get rid of me. Let’s take a walk. You can buy me a little present. Spend a little money on me—you won’t miss it, it’s nothing to you. Look—even this late, there are hookers out waiting for customers. It’s not easy working this strip. There’s less than a hundred of us. Just a few dozen really. Going in, scoring twenty yuan, coming out again. . . . I don’t let them keep their fingers up me forever. I wait till they’ve got such a hard-on that they can’t stand it, and then I ask if they want to go somewhere to fuck. Guys from the inland are penny-pinchers, and they won’t spend extra for a fuck. The workers who’ve been in Shenzhen a few years know the ropes, so when they want a fuck they go straight to the barbershops, saunas, or brothels. It’s safe and cheap. They only come to the cinema for cheap kicks; they check out a 200 H e av e n ’ s N a r r o w G a t e film, have some tea, get a hand job, and go. Men can’t argue with their pricks. It’s their prick that doesn’t want to say goodbye. But if I let them, they’d just keep at it till the film’s over, or till they’ve ripped my cunt apart. As you know, this is Shenzhen. Time is money here. So if they say they don’t want a screw, then you have to get the waterworks going so you can finish up as soon as possible. I make out that I’m so turned on that I’m about to come: “Yes, yes, just like that, shove it up me, oh, yes, that’s it, way inside.” While I’m talking I work their cock as hard as I can, and they come in a minute. A guy who’s just come goes soft faster than his prick. Once the prick’s nodded its head, I don’t have to say a thing, they’ve already pulled their hand away. I can stay or go—it doesn’t matter. It’s all over within half an hour. I’ve made my hundred yuan and can go out and score again. It’s not tiring, either. I’m fit. Fucking them doesn’t tire me out at all. When they stick it inside, I fake an orgasm. I squeeze my legs and use the lips of my cunt to grip the root of their cock. The faster they come, the sooner I can get on to the next job. I’m not kidding, I can’t come even without a condom. Men are useless. If I want to come, I have to do it myself. It’s not just men. My girlfriend can’t quite get it right either, and I end up seething with frustration. But when I masturbate, I can get off in an instant. It’s like dying for a few minutes; it’s bliss. My friend is the opposite to me. She has an orgasm every time a guy fucks her. She doesn’t have a proper job, works full-time in a brothel. She’s so tired out by it that she’s really skinny, and her complexion’s gone all dark. What can she do? We’re all in it for the money. So she’s just got to put up with it. We see each other all the time. Every time we get together, she wants me to play with her. Hooking is a business, you sell your cunt to men for money. But it’s different with friends, it’s just fun. Helps you relax and feel good. It’s our time off, after all. Women have to have their fun somehow. You’ve got to try everything—why not? If you don’t count my regulars, tricks are usually guys from the inland here on business. They don’t know where to go for fun. The cinema is right in the city center; they come down here and have a look around, have a feel, and, “Wow!” they think to themselves. “Here’s this real big-breasted chick. If I don’t do it with her I’ll regret it.” Sometimes I can borrow someone’s apartment, but it’s often not convenient. That doesn’t mean I’m going to let them go. We can do what you and I were doing—wander around a bit. This is Shenzhen. It’s not hard to find a place to do it outside. There’s always some corner of a building, or maybe by the railway tracks. I lift up my skirt, and they don’t even have to take off their pants. All they have to do is whip Time as Money 201 out their cock and we’re in business. They can stand and enter me from behind too. I squeeze hard and they’re done in a few minutes. If that’s not good enough for them, I know some clothing-stall owners who’ll let me use their changing room for a small commission. What else can you do? You know, I wouldn’t miss a chance to turn a trick. It seems to make a big difference to men if they come in my hand or my cunt. It’s all the same to me; the only difference is the extra two hundred yuan I get for my cunt. It’d be a shame to let that go. It’s not like that with regulars. They love my breasts and what’s between my legs, and they find it hard to get me out of their mind once they’ve had me, so they’re always bringing money my way. They really know how to screw, too. I lie on the bed and open my legs, and before we’ve even begun my hole’s wide open, loose and wet and warm. They stick their prick into my big cunt and thrust away; they don’t come for ages. They love it. After a while, I mount them and let them play with my breasts, and give them my juices to taste. . . . All of that takes time, so you definitely need someplace to go. The flat I use is rented by a friend of mine. It’s over there, third building to the left, fourth window, the one with the fluorescent light on. When that light’s on, it’s a signal that no one’s at home. If they’re at home, they leave a regular light on, or it’s dark. I’m not kidding, there really isn’t anyone at home. Let’s go up there and hang out for a while. It’s fine, don’t worry. We’re friends now, aren’t we? If you feel like it, just give me a bit more money. If you don’t, that’s okay too, we can still go up. We can talk up there. No difference, really. Since we’ve come in, why don’t we fool around? You know, I believe in fate. It’s a matter of luck. If you won’t fool around, then I won’t have done any business tonight, and that’s bad luck. If I hadn’t come out to work it wouldn’t matter, but I did, so if I can’t find a man I’ll be out of luck for a few nights. It’s true. I won’t be able to get any customers. What do you mean I’m superstitious? This is Shenzhen. Everyone’s superstitious here, except the party secretary and the mayor. They believe in revolution. They know what’s going to happen tomorrow and the day after. They know where their money’s coming from. I’m not kidding. It might not matter much to you, but if you won’t do it with me then it’s really going to bring me bad luck. . . . It’s no fun talking about this. It’s the same for everyone; we’re all in Shenzhen for the money. We’re all working our fingers to the bone, you know that’s true. I can see that. You don’t need me to tell you. I’ve been doing this for three years now. It was simple, really. There were 202 H e av e n ’ s N a r r o w G a t e ads from Shenzhen in our local press for female workers, aged eighteen to twenty-one, middle-school graduates. I fit the bill on both counts, so I came. At first I was really timid. I worked hard for the boss all day, and at night I sat in our crowded dorm watching TV. It didn’t take long for me to realize that, well, you know, this is Shenzhen, and I’d never get rich just working in a factory. The girls who get rich become either the mistresses of Hong Kong businessmen or hookers. All you have to do is drop your pants, and you can make more in one night than you do in ten days at the factory. No one told me what was what, but I could see for myself. This is Shenzhen; the door’s been wide open for a long time. Women can only sell their bodies when they’re young. If you can make a buck, who cares about the rest? I know I’m a dark-skinned country girl, not suited for work in the big hotels. I could never compete with Shanghai girls with all their foreign languages, or those tall girls from the northeast. But as for the hicks from the provinces, with their mini-potato boobs in plastic bras, even they charge two or three hundred yuan for a lay at one of the barber shops. I’m a natural with my equipment: big jugs and a big cunt. I won’t be young forever, so why should I let all this go to waste, and not make it work for me? If a woman doesn’t earn, she’s losing out. I’m not joking. You’re not young forever, and a woman loses out if she’s not earning. Counting from now, if I work for three years I’ll be twenty-six. I won’t get such good money after that. If you’re selling ginger, the older the better; if you’re trading in pussy, sell it young. Men like it young and tender; the younger it is, the more you get for it. Men love saying “Fuck your mother!” [cao ni ma], but if you really offered them your mother, they wouldn’t be interested. They’d rather fuck you. Besides, you know, if you’re twenty-six or -seven when you return home, even if you’ve got a bit of money, it’s going to be hard to find a good husband. They like to marry early where I come from. If you’re still unmarried at twenty-five, you’re considered a hopeless old spinster. No one wants you. Besides, men are smart; once they know my age and how long I’ve been in Shenzhen, they’d never believe I’m clean, that no one’s fucked me already. All right. You’re pretty sharp. So I’m not actually from Hengyang, I’m from a mountain village near there in Hengshan County. Once I’ve saved two hundred thousand, I’m going back home. I’m not kidding. I’ll do it this year. I’ve got over a hundred thousand stashed away already. I don’t flash my cash around in Shenzhen. It’s not safe. Of course I’m going back. Why wouldn’t I? This is Shenzhen. Everything opened up here too early. Two Time as Money 203 hundred thousand is peanuts to people here. You can’t rely on friends here, either. Sure, we’re sitting in my friend’s flat, but, you know, it’s a pretty casual thing. Women can’t trust other women. You could get hauled in by the cops; you could earn enough and leave, if you’re lucky; you could become some rich man’s mistress, though that really just means prostituting yourself for a few more years. However you look at it, no one can stay in this game for long. This is Shenzhen. Men take on mistresses like they raise birds. The bird is good to look at, and it’s fun. But a cunt’s a cunt. If you’re going to be a mistress, if you want to be a concubine, you’ve got to be more than just a good fuck—you’ve got to be able to handle yourself in company. I know I’m not classy enough for that. My body is my capital, men just love to fuck it, they get what they pay for, and when it’s done, it’s done. I’m not really someone they could exactly take out in public. Who’d keep someone like me? As my friend says, you could dress me up like a movie star, but I’d still be a streetwalker from the countryside. I’m still pretty rough, outside and in. There’s nothing I can do about it. I am what I am. So I’ve got my goal of two hundred thousand, and when I’ve made that much, I’m going home. I’m not going to work any more, either. I’ll be a changed character. I’ll find myself a good man, settle down, and have his child. I’ll give him the money and let him look after things. I’ll be proper and well-behaved, the way a woman is supposed to be. Everyone knows I came to Shenzhen with nothing to my name. They’ll know I’ve made a fortune in just a few years, and I’ll be a hot property. It shouldn’t be too hard to find a reliable man. With that kind of money I could open a restaurant or a small shop. Once I’ve got a man, I’ll discuss it with him. It’s a big decision, so he should be the one to make it. I think a restaurant would be good. Doing business in the village at Hengshan, you could make a lot out of the tourists.1 City folk don’t buy anything from little shops, but they need to eat. You’d earn heaps with a restaurant. That won’t be a problem, either. I can take care of it real easy. I just won’t tell my man, that’s all. It’s Shenzhen; here you cross the river by feeling the stones.2 It’s not such a big operation, repairing the hymen; it only takes a 1. Hengshan in Hunan Province is one of the five sacred mountains of China and a major tourist destination. 2. Deng Xiaoping declared that the capitalist-style experiment of creating “socialism with Chinese characteristics” was like “crossing the river by feeling the stones,” that is, a process of trial and error. 204 H e av e n ’ s N a r r o w G a t e few stitches. I’ll get it done before I leave. Five hundred yuan and I’ll be a virgin again. Give me a big hug, will you? The way I’d hug myself. You know, if we hug each other before parting that counts as fooling around, and that’ll bring good luck to both of us. If you come back, give me a call. If you can’t reach me, you’ll know I’ve gone back home. Time as Money 205 18 An Army on the March The PLA Means Business We met in the sumptuous but tacky restaurant of the hotel he managed at a naval port on the island province of Hainan in the South China Sea. He was a captain, but as it was Sunday he was in civvies, including an oversized T-shirt favored by international tourists that read “I’ve climbed the Great Wall.” We talked in the hotel restaurant, the walls of which were decorated with photographs of the Communist Party leaders, Hong Kong red capitalists, and assorted international travelers who had “inspected the work of our hotel,” “given direction” to the hotel management, or simply spent the night. We weren’t interrupted, and for a man with over a thousand people under his command, he seemed far more relaxed than the average hotel manager. Look, the situation is like this: every operation has to make money any way it can. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an enterprise or a government organization, the standard of success in our society today is whether you can pull in the bucks. Money equals efficiency. If you can find money, anything is possible; without it, you aren’t going anywhere. It’s the same for the armed forces; after all, we’re not living in a vacuum. Nowadays, on top of the traditional seven bare essentials for setting up a household when you marry—kindling, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and tea—you’re expected to provide the latest necessities, too: tobacco and alcohol, not to mention a house and a car. Even a senior officer like myself can’t afford to cruise around in a jeep all day. You’re not going to find a fortune lying around in the streets waiting to be picked up. As for the slogans like “Support the Army, Love the People,” they only apply on the five public 223 holidays every year. The rest of the time it’s a case of: if you want something from me, flash me some cash. If that’s the way it works, you’ve got no choice but to get in there and make some money. I’m not saying that we wouldn’t survive if we only relied on the state. Although they say the military budget is shrinking every year, it still stands somewhere between twenty and thirty billion yuan. You could do a lot worse than count on that kind of blue-chip business. At least you know you’re not going to starve. The party has never said it won’t take care of its troops. There’s always a potential threat—a new world war or counterrevolutionary rebellion at home—and, as long as these two threats exist, the authorities would be stupid to cut off the military. The rationale behind maintaining a standing army is that there are those rare occasions when you’re really going to need it. As long as the army’s there to clear up the mess, things’ll be fine. Twenty to thirty billion is enough to keep us fed and clothed, but the big question is, how well are they going to look after us? Is anyone going to put up with subsistence level? No way! Everyone wants a decent standard of living, and why should we be any different? People seem to think that soldiers aren’t like other people. They think we should keep up with the old revolutionary traditions of hardship and deprivation. All I can say to that is, get real. Now I couldn’t say whether it’s right or proper for the government to call on the army to get involved in business and go off into the marketplace in our uniforms. It doesn’t seem rational, but the question we have to ask ourselves is, what would happen if we didn’t? We’re not living in rational times; we have to face reality, and the facts of the matter are that the army needs money to do things, and we can’t do anything without it. This is more the case for us than most. Now, our unit has an excellent reputation, so you’d think we’d be doing very well with generals popping in and out all day. To tell you the truth, we’ve been little more than a nonprofit organization. Our style of management was even more hidebound than that of units at the bottom of the chain of command. We needed to get out there and find investments more than anyone. That’s why I just said I can’t expect you to really understand what I’m saying, because you haven’t had the personal experience. In the old days, we could expect a steady stream of gifts and offerings from our subordinates. “This 250 kilos of prawns is from our recent major production activities. Please divide it up among the comrades in command, logistics, and the pol- 224 Mastering New China itics departments.” These days the game is completely different. The lines of command are very clear, and the guys below have sussed out who has the real power. Now they divide the prawns or scallops or whatever into small parcels and take them straight to the home of the commander who can actually be of use to them. No need for the comrades to divvy it up among themselves anymore. I’m not saying there wasn’t a measure of selfish calculation in the past, but back then it was also to do with comradely sentiment and the desire to build up your networks. Now it’s purely about connections and getting what you want out of other people. All consideration has gone out the window. It’s the same in local commands as well. Back then, the commanders would present the units ...
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