30 December 2021

Travel Journal: People's Republic of China, 1980 – Part 3

 

[In the third installment of “Travel Journal: People’s Republic of China, 1980,” I finish my stay in Shanghai and recount my visits to Suzhou (formerly Soochow), famous for its gardens, and Wuxi.  Readers who are just joining this thread are strongly recommended to go back to Parts 1 and 2 (24 and 27 December) before reading the journal entries below because I identify and explain things as they come up and seldom repeat those comments in later installments.]

Shanghai/Suzhou [Soochow] – Thursday, 25 December (Christmas Day)

Today started with a Chinese breakfast.  Very similar to their other meals, but an interesting change from our routine.

[What I meant by “similar to their other meals” was that a Chinese breakfast consists principally of the same dumplings and dim sum dishes that one might eat at lunch or dinner.  They don’t serve the larger dishes we’re accustomed to seeing on menus for lunch or dinner, but there’s only one dish that’s exclusively a breakfast food: congee. 

[Congee is a hot rice gruel that’s essentially flavorless until you add an assortment of ingredients.  The most common one my little group found was a shredded dried meat, usually pork I think, with a slightly salty taste.  (I later learned that this is called rousong, but we didn’t learn that while we were traveling.)  The congee we were served was always the watery gruel, but I understand that it can also be made as a thicker porridge.

[All the other foods served at the breakfasts we had during this trip were the same as dishes we also had at other meals.  Few countries, by the way, distinguish between breakfast foods and lunch or dinner foods.  Mexico, for instance, really only has one distinctly breakfast offering—huevos rancheros—while everything else served at the morning meal is the same food served at other mealtimes.  Breakfast in Scandinavia is similar, with smoked fish or eel a common selection.

[Britain and cultures derived from there—such as the U.S. and Canada—are really the main ones in which breakfast is different from other meals (which is why the term “English breakfast” is used in Western Europe to indicate a meal of, say, eggs and sausage, instead of a “Continental breakfast” of coffee or tea, toast or a roll, and jam or cheese).]

We visited a workers’ residential area and saw their living quarters (and a lovely retired couple who answered all our questions), their kindergarten (trot out the kids!) and hospital (including an acupuncture treatment).  It was all self-contained, and about 50 years behind our standards, but obviously comfortable enough and far better than pre-revolution. 

The quarters were two rooms, both bed-sitting rooms, that shared kitchen (and probably bath) facilities with four other such quarters.  The couple’s two remaining children lived with them (the other three are married and living elsewhere).  The set-up is “garden apartments” not unlike Plittersdorf [the U.S. diplomatic compound in West Germany where my family lived in the mid-’60s when my father was attached to the embassy in Bonn].

[Note that the notorious “one-child policy” of the PRC didn’t start until 1979, one year before my visit to China.  That’s of course why this couple could have had five children and still be spotlighted this way for foreign tourists.

[We knew going in, of course, that this family and this compound was carefully selected, perhaps even prepared in advance, for viewing by foreign visitors.  I’m sure that the couple with whom we spoke had been rehearsed and prepped as well and were undoubtedly carefully monitored.  We would have a couple of similar experiences like this on this tour.

[A further comment on my remark that the accommodations we saw were “far better than pre-revolution”: All through the trip, another frequent comment by my traveling companions was how poor everyone around us seemed and how primitive were their circumstances.  By Western standards, that was true. 

[Without commenting on the political situation in the PRC, my response was that comparing 1980s China to 1980s U.S. or Western Europe is really misleading.  The comparison should be to the conditions in the Republic of China in 1949 and how much had changed in the people’s living conditions since then.  I thought—and still think—that, political repression and social regimentation aside (the Cultural Revolution, 1966-76, had only just ended), the standard of living for most Chinese people had improved considerably.

[I can’t attest to whether the ordinary Chinese in 1980 felt that the trade-off of better living conditions compensated for the lack of personal freedom and civil liberties.  I don’t know about today, either—though the Tiananmen uprising nine years after my visit and the current unrest in Hong Kong strongly suggest that if the exchange was ever seen as an improvement, it isn’t any longer.]

After lunch at the Peace Hotel [built in art deco style in 1929 on the Bund; opened as a hotel after the revolution under its current name in 1956], we drove to the train and left for Suzhou, an hour away [66 miles west].  A very comfortable and luxurious car took us to our next stop. 

After our arrival, we took a quick tour of the city (after a stop at the hotel), including Tiger Hill Garden, site of an ancient (1,020 years old) pagoda [Yunyan Ta, aka: the Leaning Pagoda], a royal tomb [King Helü of Wu (birthdate unknown; reigned: 514-496 BCE); ancient state of Wu includes present-day Suzhou and Wuxi], and several legends and myths.

[Some of the legends:

⠂ three days after King Helü’s burial, a white tiger appeared squatting on the hill, thus giving the hill its name

⠂ Sword-Testing Rock, a rock in two pieces, was supposedly cleaved cleanly by a legendary sword of extraordinary sharpness

⠂ Spring of Simplicity and Honesty first appeared as a spring to an exhausted monk carrying water up the entire length of the hill

⠂ after the burial of King Helü, his son and the successor of the throne of Wu, ordered the murder of some 1000 craftsmen who were involved in his father’s burial in order to conceal the exact location of the grave

Though the garden is not in bloom, the layout is beautiful, with pavilions and marvelous ponds and rock outcroppings.  (Suzhou is renowned for its gardens.)

[Though we visited in the winter and the famous gardens were bare of flowers and the greenery was sparse, the traditional design of these gardens—each one is different, but there are commonalities—is interesting.  First of all, they are mostly former private gardens, owned by wealthy homeowners before the revolution.  Since they were private, many are walled in—they’re not visible from the street like European gardens on estates and private homes; you can’t walk by and just stop and look. 

[As you’ll hear, the houses attached to the gardens all have windows looking out onto the gardens—and the windows frame a view that strongly resembles many traditional Chinese paintings.  That’s not an accident; it’s living art, and both the house and the garden were carefully planned to achieve this effect.  Even bare of greenery and flowers, the appearance is artistic.

[One of the ubiquitous elements on the garden designs are the almost monolithic stones, aesthetically laid out among the flowers and plants.  Most are irregular vertical columns of varying heights, like natural abstract sculptures.

[The thing is, I learned, that they’re not really “natural.”  They’re not carved, per se, either.  They’re created by the garden designers by taking the huge rocks and submerging them in the waters of the sea or a river and letting them sit there for years, or however long it takes, till they erode into the intricately gnarled and pocked pillars displayed in the gardens.  They’re not so much “carved” as “cultured,” like pearls.]

Next, a brief stop at the local Friendship Store and shopping street which doesn’t compare to Shanghai in any sense.  Then back to the hotel for dinner. which also didn’t compare to Shanghai.  I arranged some wine and cookies for the group to celebrate my birthday, which went over big.

[I had actually tried to get a cake for the birthday celebration, but as you’ll read shortly, cake-baking isn’t common in China and our hotel couldn’t accommodate it.  Hence the cookies.  The wine, of course, was Chinese—which is a little different from European wine.  It’s mostly sweet, like Western dessert wine, and it’s frequently made from fruits other than grapes, such as plums. 

[(European wines, especially French, are imported, and European-style wines are now produced in China.  Both developments really got underway after the increase of Western visitors began in the ’80s as the PRC opened up to more Western influences.  Curiously, beer, which wasn’t an indigenous drink in Asia, was brewed there since the 19th century.  Beer-brewing was either introduced by the British in the areas Great Britain colonized, such as India and Burma, or imported from Germany by other countries that invited German brewmasters to teach them the craft.  That’s why Asian beers are indigenous versions of European beer.)]

Early this morning, I wandered with the Cooperbergs to watch the tai chi exercises.  [It was common for many Chinese to get up early and do tai chi in large groups or individually in nearby parks.]  We walked through a market, already in full swing at 7 a.m.  (The Chinese get up and go to market at 5:00.  They also go to bed early.)

Suzhou – Friday, 26 December

We had an interesting visit to the local middle school (equivalent to our high school).  It serves a select group of students from all over Suzhou who study all the regular high school subjects, including English and some Russian.

We had a session in an English class and one of our group was asked to read from their lesson book.  Then one of the classes (a third-year English class) read back.  They still teach a slightly British English – most of the teachers are Chinese who were taught English by British missionaries before ’49.  We also were coerced into singing for the music class.  Bu hao!  [‘Not good.’]

[I mention the prevalence of British English as the form most common abroad in the years I lived in Europe in my post on “Franglais,” posted on 1 July 2020, and “Going to a Swiss International School,” Part 1, 29 April 2021.  1980 in China was still a time of transition between British English and American English—which had already become the standard in Europe by then—due, I submit, to its decades of being closed off to foreign influences.  The Cultural Revolution had only ended in 1976 and Deng Xiaoping’s Open-Door Policy began just two years later.

[A New York Times article of just two years before I took my trip explained this lack of fluency in English:

If China is opening its doors to an influx of tourists, it will have to produce a new crop of foreign language experts to serve as their guides.  Considering the xenophobia of the Chinese and the near destruction of their educational system in the “black decade” of the Cultural Revolution, which started in 1966, this would be no mean feat.

. . . .

Few of the guides had been taught by natives of English‐speaking countries; most of their instruction had been through written texts, radio broadcasts and films made in China. Several maintained they read The New York Times, Time, Newsweek and The Economist at their library but their spoken competence and their tunnel vision of the world indicated that their claims were exaggerated or that copies of those publications were heavily censored (Marylin Bender, “The Visitor’s China Is Separate,” New York Times 30 July 1978, Sec 10 (“Travel”): 11; https://www.nytimes.com/1978/07/30/archives/the-visitors-china-is-separate-china-the-tour-visitors-separate.html).

[Bender (1925-2020) was a journalist and author who’d worked at the New York Journal American, the New York Times, and Business World.  At the time of this article, she was a former reporter and editor for the Times and was a contributing editor of Esquire magazine.  She was traveling in China with her family on one of the Pan Am tours I mentioned and her experiences in 1978 aligned with mine in 1980—with the exception that our guides, two years later, spoke more fluent English than hers apparently did.]

Next, a stroll through one of Suzhou’s many gardens, Fisherman’s Garden [Wangshiyuan], once the garden of a private villa.  Again, a lovely layout that must look gorgeous in spring.

[Fisherman’s Garden is the smallest among the four most famous classic gardens in Suzhou.  The garden was built during the Song Dynasty (960-1279) as part of a mansion in use until the 1860’s.  It later became the residence of an imperial transportation minister and was given its present name.]

The cold here is astounding.  Not so much the temperature, which is no worse than New York, but there is no heat in public places (or private homes, either).  The schoolrooms were freezing!  They say they are used to the cold, but the evidence is otherwise: their hands are white, and they cluster together all “scrunched” up against the cold.

A statistic given earlier was that the #1 killer of China is respiratory disease.  Between the cold and the dust, it’s easy to see why!

[A couple of additional observations:  When we toured the various factories, it was very obvious that the work areas were unheated.  Even in the plants that made fine hand-crafted products like the ceramics factory and the jade factory, the workers took breaks to warm their hands over charcoal—or possibly peat—braziers.  They couldn’t wear gloves because the work was too delicate.

[Before we toured any factory, we always had a “briefing.”  These happened in a sort of conference room near the shop floor and we were always served hot tea (in those wonderful covered cups).  Even if we didn’t want to drink the tea, just holding the gaiwan, the lidded cups, was a comfort.

[At the schools, however, the students wore gloves with open fingertips—to keep the hands warm while still allowing the children to grasp pens and pencils.  Even in Beijing, further north, there was no glass in the windows!

[A side consequence of the respiratory problem in China was that, in the cities, there were spittoons on the corners of the sidewalks.  Whenever we were walking along the streets, we could constantly see and hear pedestrians hawking up phlegm.

[The effects of the cold, which would get even more pronounced as we traveled north to Beijing, began to be noticeable in Shanghai (average December temperature: high: 52°/low: 38° – comparable to Sacramento, California).  China is so vast that Hong Kong and Canton are sub-tropical (68°/59° and 71°/54°, respectively – New Orleans and Miami) and still relatively warm in late December, while Nanjing and Beijing (50°/33° and 39°/21°) are like the northern U.S. (Richmond, Virginia, and Portland, Maine).

[When I noticed the increasing cold as we traveled toward Beijing, and knowing we were heading eventually for the Great Wall, where the temperatures were even lower—the average highs at this time of year were below freezing—I bought some extra layers of clothing when we reached Nanjing.  (Later, when we reached Wuxi, the other groups of our tour who’d started in the north clued us in on the temps at the Wall.)]

After lunch at the hotel, we visited the [Suzhou] Embroidery Research Institute [established in 1957], actually a factory [staffed by specialized experts including senior craftsmen and highly qualified artists] for silk embroidery and tapestry weaving.  The process was interesting, particularly the two-sided embroidery.  They have eye exercises to keep the embroiderers from going blind.

Thence to the West Garden [Xiyuan] Temple, a Buddhist temple built on the grounds of a formerly private garden.  The temple contains several clay statues of Buddha, several gods, guardians, and 500 disciples.  It is still in use today as a working temple.

[The Xiyuan Temple was founded in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), was destroyed and then became part of a large classical garden.  The garden belonged to a senior government official during the Ming Dynasty.  When he died, his son donated the garden to the monastery.]

Our next visit was to the Lingering Garden (Liu Yuan), formerly the East Garden [Dong Yuan], owned by the same man who originally owned the West Garden.  It is one of the largest in China (ca. 8 acres; Washington Square Park in Manhattan is about 9¾ acres), and the second largest in Suzhou.

[Lingering Garden was commissioned in 1593 CE by a Ming Dynasty official who was impeached and later exonerated.  It’s celebrated for its artistic way of dealing with the spaces between the buildings of various styles of architecture.]

The layout of each garden is breathtaking, even without greenery and flowers.  The zig-zag patterns of the paths and bridges are designed to keep the view changing and the many vistas from windows and doorways resemble the paintings seen all over China.

There was even a bonsai garden with thousands of potted dwarf trees.  Tea was served in one of the open pavilions off the bonsai garden.

The guides, particularly the local ones, are extremely knowledgeable and affable.  They are willing to answer any question and really seem to know their facts, even about areas outside of their fields.  The national guide, Mr. Chang, knows many of the sites, too, and has been very helpful.

The same has been true of hosts and workers or students at the facilities we visit.  No question has yet been avoided or unanswered.  There is no question that they are all very proud of their cities and country – and not without reason.

Tonight we went to a traditional Chinese opera [Yue opera].  A Shanghai women’s troupe played an old opera about a Han Dynasty [202 BCE-220 CE] story (part of a two-part opera).  Though the place was unheated and [the performance was] three hours long, I found it fascinating.

The hand-gestures and body positions were highly stylized and the costumes were magnificent.  Having read the synopsis beforehand, I was able to follow the story reasonably well.

[I don’t remember the opera anymore—I apparently didn’t save that synopsis, or it’s been lost in the ensuing decades—but the type of opera is unique.  Yue opera is based in Shanghai (though there is an indigenous form, Shanghai opera, which is overshadowed by Yue), and dates only from the early 20th century, the waning days of the Qing Dynasty.

[What makes Yue opera unique is that traditional Chinese opera, such as Beijing opera (often still called Peking opera), the dominant form of the art, is performed entirely by men.  Yue is performed by women.  All the regional forms of Chinese opera are sung in the dialect of their home districts.  Beijing opera is sung in Mandarin, and Shanghai opera, for instance, is sung in Shanghainese; so is Yue opera.

[The stories of most Chinese opera are varied and include heroic tales from the past, folktales, romances, and comedies.  (There are even modern operas that tell heroic stories of the communist revolution of 1949.)  Yue operas are mostly romances and love stories and there’s little of the dazzling acrobatics and martial arts that are common to Beijing opera; the emphasis is on singing.  Yue opera is the second most popular form of Chinese opera, after Beijing—even though Mandarin and Shanghainese are not mutually intelligible.

[This visit to China was before I first studied Asian theater (an NYU course in 1983 taught by the late James Brandon (1927-2015) from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa).  I went on to take further courses in Asian theater, including Beijing opera, and even went to Honolulu for a 1988 summer program on Kabuki Brandon taught that included a three-week residency by the Grand Kabuki company that was touring western North America, with a side trip to Honolulu.]

Suzhou/Wuxi – Saturday, 27 December

On our way to the train for Wuxi, we paid a visit to the 400-year-old [Ming Dynasty] North Temple Pagoda, a seven-story pagoda, restored during the Ching [Qing] Dynasty, 200 years ago.

[The North Temple Pagoda (also known as Beisi Pagoda) is located in the Bao’en Temple in Suzhou.  At a total height of 249 feet, the tower rises nine stories (not seven; I guess I didn’t count the levels myself).  Each story is encircled by eaves, balconies, and banisters of wood, while the base, built in an octagonal shape, and outside walls are brick and the balustrades are stone.]

Wuxi by train is less than an hour from Suzhou [31 miles northwest].  Upon arrival, we took a short bus tour of the city and visited a clay figurine factory (one of the area’s traditional crafts, dating back some 1,000 years). 

After lunch at the hotel [Hubin Hotel] , we set out again for an elementary school attached to a teachers’ college, a silk-weaving factory, and the main shopping area of Wuxi.  This is obviously the least sophisticated town of the trip, and I suspect they have not seen many Western tourists here yet.  (Though the department store did sell softballs and baseballs!)

We had a special banquet tonight here at the hotel, with representatives from the CITS regional branch (Nanking [Nanjing]) and the hotel, as well as out national guides, Mr. Chang and Mr. Shi, and the area CITS boss, Mr. Yang, who have accompanied us from Canton.

The meal was outstanding in both quality and variety, and each dish was served in a most elegant fashion.  (Even each napkin was folded in a different artistic way.)  A fellow [Norman Weinstein and his wife, Cherna] at our table runs a Chinese cooking school in Park Slope [Brooklyn: The Hot Wok] (and at the New School) and he was able to identify most of the dishes by ingredients, though most were new to him, too.

[The 28-story Hubin (sometimes written ‘Hu Pin’) Hotel was opened in 1978, just two years before my trip to China.  It’s located in the Binhu District on Lake Li (Lihu or Leehu).

[Unlike our Shanghai banquet (see 24 December, Part 2), which was essentially an elaborate Western meal (the specialty of Shanghai chefs), the Wuxi banquet was Chinese cuisine:

Hors d’Oeuvre[s]
Six Side Dishes
Shrimp Meat in Shape of Palace Lantern
Fried White Baits in Cellophane
Pigeon Eggs and Mushrooms
Banana Fritters
Double Tastes Ravioli
Braised Chicken Wrapped in Lotus Leaves
Wuxi Spareribs
Chinese Cabbage in Chicken Oil
Soup of Stuffed Glutens in Terracotta Steam Pot
Milk Custard with Cherries
Fruit

[I’m afraid you’ll have to make out what the English translations really mean—I can’t remember the specifics of the meal and I don’t read Chinese.  All I can attest to, as I said above, is that the meal was wonderful as far as taste and appearance was concerned.] 

I’m still overwhelmed by the cordiality of our hosts and guides – though I realize it is mostly government policy, much of it is genuine and natural.  In no other country have I been made to feel so welcome or had the feeling that there is genuine interest in us and our country and pride in theirs and its many accomplishments. 

Tomorrow’s trip to the commune should be very enlightening and interesting.

Wuxi – Sunday, 28 December

The commune was less interesting than I had expected.  Because it is the off-season, no one is working in either the fields, or the fish hatchery, so the only real work is in the machine factory that the commune owns. 

We did see a worker’s home, very new (’76) and very comfortable by Chinese standards.  It was built by the owner and his family and they own it – no rent is paid.  We chatted with the lady, a 57-year-old woman who works in the silkworm-breeding team of the commune (also out-of-season now).  She was very charming and open about her life, which she points out is far better than anything before the revolution.

At our briefing, the administrator of the commune explained the government of the complex.  It’s a representative administrative council that makes all the rules governing the commune.  (Each commune has its own rules, which may vary greatly from one to the next.)

The council members are elected by each team, each brigade, and the commune itself, and are answerable to the members.  Again, it was obvious how proud they are of the progress the place represents.

After lunch, we departed for a boat ride around Lake Tai [Taihu], an 860-square-mile fresh-water lake that provides Wuxi with recreation, beautiful scenery, and fresh fish.  It’s the fourth largest such lake in China, and because of its current, never freezes, and so provides fresh fish, shrimp, and crabs (in season) all year.

The boat ride provided us with a magnificent view of the lake and its 100 small islands.  With the junks and sampans against the hills and pagodas dotting the shore and the lake itself, this is what old China looks like in the art and in our imaginations.  Again, I wish we had come in the spring so as to see the view at its very best.

On our way back to the hotel, we walked through Li Garden [Liyuan or Leeyuan], beside Lake Li [Lihu], an arm of Lake Tai, which backs onto the hotel grounds (a small part of the garden actually belongs to the hotel).  Though not as graceful as the gardens of Suzhou, it was nonetheless picturesque with its “rockeries” and pavilions and small pagodas artistically placed along the shore of the lake.

[Li Garden is named after Fan Li, a senior minister of the state of Yue who retired to his hometown after conquering the state of Wu (473 BCE).  (Yue and Wu were ancient Chinese states that existed from about 771 BCE to 214 BCE; Wu is modern-day Suzhou.)  One day he went boating on what was then called Wuli Lake with one of the most renowned beauties in ancient China, the legendary Xi Shi (Lady Shi of the West, ca. 7th to 6th century BCE).  Afterwards he decided to name the lake after himself, calling it Li Lake, or Lihu.

[With water on three sides, the garden is divided into three sections: man-made hills representing mountains, a long dike, and the Four Seasons Pavilions.  Leading through Liyuan, the stone path feels somewhat like a maze, but was designed to highlight various views of the lake.]

After dinner, during which the A and B groups caught up with us and filled us in on some of the things to come, there was a film in the hotel, a Chinese cartoon based on an old legend of the Monkey King (the same legend as one of the Peking opera pieces in New York).

It was pretty good animation (done in Shanghai), but I couldn’t keep my eyes open; I decided to bag it.

[The Monkey King, known as Sun Wukong in Mandarin Chinese, is a mythical figure who’s one of the main characters in the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West and many later stories and adaptations.  He’s a trickster who possesses supernatural powers that he uses in his adventures.

[The animated film we saw may have been Havoc in Heaven (1963), made by Shanghai Animation Film Studio.  I don’t recall the film anymore, but this is a well-known and popular Monkey King film that tells the same foundational legend as the Beijing opera, detailed below, that was performed in New York City shortly before I traveled to China.

[Monkey Makes Havoc in Heaven is a classical Beijing opera that was part of a repertoire of the Performing Arts Ensemble of the People’s Republic of China that played at the Metropolitan Opera House in July 1978.  It’s one of the most popular Chinese operas (which was still recovering from the Cultural Revolution), dating to the late Qing Dynasty.  (The Qing Dynasty is a very long period stretching from the mid-17th century to the early 20th; even “late” doesn’t really pinpoint a creation date for Havoc in Heaven, but my best guess is that it was first staged around the turn of the 20th century.]

[The third part of “Travel Journal: People’s Republic of China, 1980” is the last post of 2021; Part 4 will be published on Sunday, 2 January.  It will cover our stay in the city of Nanjing (formerly called Nanking) and the start of our stop in the capital of the PRC, Beijing (previously known as Peking).  Part 4 is the next-to-last installment of my travel journal for the People’s Republic.]


27 December 2021

Travel Journal: People's Republic of China, 1980 – Part 2

 

[Here’s the second installment of “Travel Journal: People’s Republic of China, 1980.”  I’ll be covering my arrival in the PRC from Hong Kong (then still a British colony) and my visit to Canton (now Guangzhou) and the start of my visit to Shanghai. 

[The start of my travel in the People’s Republic introduced a number of experiences that became typical of the tour of China in the period.  These include, among others, the hotel experience and facts and practices surrounding how we ate while touring the country.  (We had our first official banquet in Shanghai.)

[As I said in the afterword to Part 1, I’ll be posting the installments of “Travel Journal: People’s Republic of China, 1980” every three days; the next part will be published on Thursday, 30 December.  It covers the end my trip to Shanghai and the visits to Suzhou (formerly called Soochow) and Wuxi.

[Readers who are just starting this journal are strongly urged to go back and read Part 1 (posted on 24 December) before picking up with Part 2.  Many things won’t make a lot of sense if you miss my explanations and introductions in previous entries.]

PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

Canton [Guangzhou] – Monday, 22 December

Change of plans – we’re staying overnight in Canton.  [Canton, or Guangzhou as it’s now called, was a city of 5 million in 1980, the capital of Guangdong Province.]  We were supposed to leave right away for Shanghai.

[I’m surprised I didn’t record the explanation of this comment.  What happened was that, as a consequence of our tour group being one of the first which any ordinary traveler could join—just plain tourists—it was simply larger than the CITS guides could handle in one bunch (there were 93 of us!).  The decision was to split the IPTIC group in three, approximately 30 in each group.  (I was in group C.)

[Originally, the plan was to take the train from Hong Kong across to Guangzhou, the only access point between the West and the People’s Republic (until direct flights into the PRC were permitted in a year or so), then travel north immediately to Shanghai, almost 900 miles away, and work our way north to Beijing and then back to Guangzhou and see the city before taking the train back to Hong Kong again.

[Now, a third of the initial group would follow that itinerary, another third would go directly to Beijing, and the last third—mine—would start in Guangzhou and work north to Beijing before returning to Guangzhou to cross the border by rail into Hong Kong.]

The train – or rather the trains – to Canton were grueling.  Hong Kong to the border was slow, but steady.  Then the walk through customs.  First Hong Kong, which was relatively fast; then PRC!  The train was delayed, and we were disappointed for lunch again – too many people to feed in the station, so box lunches on the train.  And what a lunch – inedible.  I can’t wait for a real Chinese meal!

[As the only route into and out of the People’s Republic, the Kowloon-Canton Railway (KCR) was busy and crowded.  Foreign tourists and Hong Kongese essentially had to travel this way until the PRC opened to visitors a little more.

[The train’s southern terminus (i.e., in Hong Kong) is in Hung Hom, an area of Kowloon in the southeast of the peninsula.  Owned by the Hong Kong government, the line takes passengers the 21 miles to Lo Wu, in the New Territories on the border between Hong Kong and mainland China, about 90 miles southeast of Guangzhou. 

[At Lo Wu, we had to change trains to the China Railway (CR), which connects to all the routes to stations in the PRC and even beyond (Lo Wu is the terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway through the Soviet Union into Europe)—except that Lo Wu and its train station is a restricted area and passes and documents are required to go beyond the border. 

[As accredited tourists with CITS on our way to Guangzhou, we crossed the border—after negotiating the Hong Kong customs—walked across the footbridge to the People’s Republic customs, went through that rigmarole, and boarded the CR train to Guangzhou.

[That box lunch, by the way, was some kind of cold chicken, a drumstick, as I recall, probably roasted—but who could say?  As I said, it was inedible!  Bu hao!  (‘Not good.’)]

The train ride was long, but comfortable enough.  We arrived ca. 3 p.m. and had a bus tour of Canton.  We met our local guide, Yü, and our national CITS guide, Mr. Chang.  Miss Yü is really wonderful – speaks excellent English and is very knowledgeable and pleasant.

We stopped at the Memorial Park for the Martyrs [of the Guangzhou Uprising].  A pretty layout, but unimpressive flora.

[The Guangzhou Uprising of 1927 was a failed insurrection of the Communist Party of China (CPC) against the Kuomintang (KMT – Chinese Nationalist Party, ruling party of the Republic of China on the mainland, 1911-49) in the city of Guangzhou.  The uprising occurred on 11 December 1927, but it was suppressed at the cost of more than 5,700 communists dead.  The park commemorates the uprising and the casualties.

[The park, 26¼ acres (L.A.’s MacArthur Park is 35 acres), opened in 1957 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the uprising.  The door in the stone wall was engraved with the text “Guangzhou uprising martyrs cemetery” by China’s first premier, Zhou Enlai (1898-1976; in office: 1949-76).  Among its monuments and memorials, the park contains a mausoleum for the uprising’s martyrs.

[The park is landscaped with a small lake, walkways, and iconic arched Chinese bridges among cypress, pine, and willow trees.]

The people really do stare as we have been told.  Even more than in Russia [I’ll mention this in the upcoming journal of my 1965 trip to the Soviet Union; it also came up in Part 5 of “Going to a Swiss International School,” 11 May 2021].  But they seem to enjoy our visits  They smile and laugh a lot – perhaps some joke about the funny round-eyes, but they seem good-natured and happy.

Dinner at Bei Yuan Restaurant, presumably the second-best in Canton.  Not impressive, though good enough.  Disappointing first taste of native Chinese cuisine – especially in Canton, renowned for its food and restaurants.

[This was our introduction to not only Chinese cuisine in the PRC, but how it was served to groups like ours—fairly large numbers.  The restaurants and hotel dining rooms all served us “family style.”  In other words, each dish was brought to the table in a large bowl or platter which was passed around by the diners.  (We didn’t order the food; the menu was always pre-selected.)  The tables were all for 10 or 12 people; smaller groups and individuals would be seated with strangers.

[I learned a few things about the way Chinese eat that I never knew before.  First, they don’t customarily have soup as a first course; it always came at the end of the meal.  I developed a theory to explain this, but I didn’t confirm it.

[The soup we got during the whole trip was always a clear broth—either chicken or fish broth; sometimes there were a few vegetables or other food bits in it—nothing as large as a wonton—but we never saw any thick soups like hot-sour soup or chicken-corn soup.

[Except for breakfast, the Chinese don’t usually drink tea with the meal.  It, too, came after the food.  The common beverages to accompany a meal were beer—usually Tsingtao (named for Tsingtao, or Qingdao, in eastern Shandong Province on the Yellow Sea coast, where the brewery is located)—or a sort of pink soda that tastes like bubble gum.  (I never got a name for this drink because I never actually drank it; I went with beer once I learned that that was the preferred drink among adults.  It was a new practice I brought home with me as well; I drink beer with almost all Asian cuisines now.)

[My ad hoc theory about why the Chinese have soup and tea after a meal instead of before or during: Traditional Chinese cooking is mostly steamed or fried in oil—and the cooks don’t spare the oil (another complaint from my tour companions).  The broth that seemed to be common and the tea are essentially hot water.  I think they’re drunk after the food as a way to cleanse the system of the excess oil.  No one confirmed this and I never looked it up anywhere, but it makes sense to me.

[Cantonese food was the dominant style of Chinese food in the U.S. until the latter part of the 20th century when Szechuan and Hunan cuisine was introduced.  Most Chinatowns were Cantonese by culture in those days; Hong Kong (which was historically part of Guangdong Province before becoming a colony of the United Kingdom) is also culturally Cantonese.

[The neighborhood where I grew up in Washington, D.C., and suburban Maryland was fortunate because we had a neighborhood Chinese restaurant, the Peking Restaurant on Connecticut Avenue south of Chevy Chase Circle, that served Mandarin cuisine, so we had a choice back in the ’50s and early ’60s. 

[The meal at Bei Yuan, as I observed, was unprepossessing.  One dish was, for all intents and purposes, beef stew.  (The food wasn’t bad in any sense.  It just wasn’t interesting.  It was a disappointing culinary experience that, happily, was never repeated again during the rest of the trip.)

[One more side note: I remarked earlier that many of my traveling companions complained about the food—not its quality, really, but just the fact that it was always Chinese.  What really aggravated me was the way they would sort of poke at the food in the bowls or on their plates and utter little noises like “eww” or “ick” and ask, “What do you suppose that is,” with a kind of grimace on their lips and in their voices.

[When my table mates did that at Bei Yuan that first night—it was over the “beef stew”—I quietly said, “I know what it is.”  Then I sat shtum.

[“What is it?” someone asked.  I looked up from my plate and looked around the table and said, “well, I don’t know . . .,” as if  were reluctant to say.

[“It’s dog,” I stated with certainty.  Silence.  I’m not real good at keeping a straight face usually, but this time I managed.  I don’t know if everyone believed me, but they were all uncertain at least.

[The thing was that on our last bus tour of Hong Kong as we drove through a residential neighborhood, someone commented on the many dogs running around.  This led our guide to tell us that many local Hong Kongese ate dog meat, even though the colony’s government had made that illegal. 

[It was still a practice among older Hong Kongese and it proved hard to eradicate.  Remember that I said that Hong Kong’s culture was Cantonese?  In other words, there was precedence for my statement, so it didn’t seem entirely outlandish.

[I did not make a lot of friends among my fellow travelers that night—but I was mighty annoyed with their consistent attitude about the food we were served.]

After dinner, we were taken to a performing arts compound [Guangzhou Cultural Park] where we were treated to a show by the [Guangzhou] Young People’s Acrobatic Troupe.  Very good show – with flying work, rope tricks, whip tricks, [and] balancing.  We had to leave at intermission because of our early rise this morning [5 a.m., as you recall] and our schedule for tomorrow.  Too bad, though I am tired.

The hotel, White Cloud [Baiyun], though the newest in Canton (1977), is rather rude, though certainly adequate.  Much like a hostel or second-class Gasthaus in Europe.  If things don’t get worse, I’ll certainly survive.

[Two more comments about the hotels—this was true of all of them in the PRC: first, the lights in the rooms were only turned on when we were expected to be in them.  The same was so of the dining rooms: the lights were out from some central switch somewhere.  So, if we arrived at the dining room a little early for a meal, it would be dark, and if we went to our rooms off schedule, say, during a meal, it, too, would be dark.  The reason was to save electricity since power was expensive and fuel for the power plants was scarce.

[(When I lived in Europe in the ’60s, this was also a common practice in a way.  The lights—and also the heat—wasn’t controlled centrally, but in shops and stores, lights in display rooms or sales areas that weren’t in use by customers were kept dark until someone went in.  In apartment buildings, hallway and lobby lights were on timers so they’d turn off automatically after a visitor or resident left the space.  The reason was the same: power was expensive and fuel was scarce.)

[The other thing was that every room was supplied with a thermos of hot water.  (Those Chinese thermoses were remarkably efficient: kept closed, they maintained the water at near-boiling temperature, even overnight!)  It was there ostensibly, I think, for making tea—but just about all foreign visitors used it for something else.  We’d all been warned not to drink the tap water in China; it was in the IPTIC guidelines and my parents had cautioned me before I left the U.S. 

[It wasn’t so much that the water was unclean, but that, also like many places in Europe and elsewhere, its mineral and microbial content was different from our sanitized and treated tap water and would very likely give one a good case of tourista.

[So, what we were all advised to do was take the cap off the thermos when we retired at night, and then use the cooled water in the morning for brushing our teeth.]

Canton/Shanghai – Tuesday, 23 December

First of all, what a lunch we had today!  After a tour of a ceramics factory and a Taoist temple, we went to lunch at the CITS center in Foshan – the food kept coming and coming – and all of it delicious!  I thought it would never end!  At last, what I’ve been drooling for for days!  A native Chinese meal that I’ve never tasted at home.

The day started early (6:45), and breakfast was OK – Then off we went to Foshan [a city of 250,000 (1980) in Guangdong Province], an ancient town [current city founded ca. 628 CE] near Canton [21 miles northeast of Foshan] that was a pottery center 1,000 years ago. 

We visited an art ceramics factory [Shiwan Artistic Ceramic Factory] where some beautiful pieces of decorative porcelain are made – figurines, animals, vases.  Some are whimsical and cute – obviously souvenirs—others are more “serious” art.

One I saw was very humorous in a way – a young boy riding on a water buffalo and reading a book; hanging from one of the buffalo’s horns was a bundle of other books.

Some of the pieces are molded and pieced together before painting and glazing, but some are done entirely by hand, including some magnificent landscapes with bonsai trees, pagodas [religious buildings in Asia usually multiple stories and typically having upward-curving roofs], and figures.  Some of these sell for ¥1000 ($666 [1980]) and more!  [The artificially high official exchange rate in 1980 was 1.5 yuan to 1 dollar.  The rates have changed considerably since then.]

I also saw a wonderful Fu lion I would have bought if I didn’t have to carry it around for 2 weeks.  Maybe at our last stop – or back in Hong Kong.  [I never saw the lion again and mildly regretted not buying it at the factory shop when I saw it.  I never asked if the shop could ship the figure to the States as I did for a bronze sculpture I bought in Israel and a print I bought in Taos, New Mexico.]

The Taoist temple [Foshan Ancestral Temple], dating back to the 15th century, was the first bit of ancient China we have seen.  Intricate and elaborate frescoes and friezes of ceramic, limestone, and wood decorate various parts of the temple.  There were also two magnificent gilt carved wooden altars and a sandalwood carved screen. 

A museum in the temple, near a “theater” [Wanfu Stage] used for special performances for the god (North God or Water God), contained some examples of ancient local art and handiwork, including pottery from 5,000 years ago, and some beautiful Fu lions and a cinnabar covered bowl.  Too bad they’re not for sale!

[The Foshan Ancestral Temple was actually built between 1078 and 1085 CE and rebuilt in 1372.  In the early Qing Dynasty, it gradually became a temple complex, and in 1449, by imperial order, it became an official ancestral temple, a shrine dedicated to deified ancestors.  In 1899, Foshan Ancestral Temple was renovated to its present appearance and after the foundation of the People’s Republic in 1949, it was converted into the Foshan Municipal Museum which houses Taoist cultural relics and local Foshan folk art.

[Taoism is a Chinese religion whose adherents attempt to live according to the Tao—the “Way”—which Taoists believe governs the universe.  It’s based on the teachings of Lao Tzu (571 BCE ?-5th C. BCE) as laid out in his Tao Te Ching, first known in the late 4th century BCE.]

After that magnificent lunch, we went to the Folk Arts Center where artisans made lanterns, cuttlefish-bone carvings, scroll and fan paintings, and paper cut-outs.  Most was not very good-looking, but it was fun.

[Guangdong Folk Arts Museum, housed in the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall, the most famous architecture of Qing Dynasty in Guangdong province, was founded in 1959.  It’s mission is to collect, preserve, display, and conduct research on folk arts and traditional crafts from Guangdong Province and other parts of China.]

Thence to the airport to catch the flight to Shanghai.

The airport [Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, replaced in 2004 by a new airport with the same name] is, of course, bare and spartan.  Not unlike the little airports in the U.S. – like Hyannis [Massachusetts] and Roanoke [Virginia].  Certainly functional.

But one very amusing thing was going on – they played Western music over the PA – old tunes like the Mexican hat dance, “Turkey in the Straw,” and “Coming ’Round the Mountain.”  They also stuck in “The Star-Spangled Banner” – and we all weren’t sure if we should stand or not.  We decided it wouldn’t be appropriate and that the Chinese didn’t really know what the song meant. 

They also played “Old Black Joe” [1860, by Stephen Foster (1826-64)] and I wondered if that song could even be played in the U.S.

[“Old Black Joe” isn’t blatantly racist—though some of Foster’s other songs contain strong racist elements—and there are no specific mentions of slavery in the lyrics.  The song, however, was a popular one for blackface acts and minstrel shows.  Written on the eve of the American Civil War, which ended slavery in the United States and, with it, a way of life in the South, the song’s melancholy seems to stem from a sadness for the loss of the “old South,” including for the character of Old Black Joe, perpetuating the myth that enslaved black people were happy with their lot and even loved their slave masters.]

They don’t waste any time taking off.  As soon as everyone was on board, the doors were closed, and we began to taxi.  Then, off we went, without even a mention, beyond the obligatory airplane welcome.  Wham, bam, off we went to Shanghai.

We arrived in Shanghai in the early evening [it was about a two-hour flight, about 890 miles northeast] and were driven to our hotel, the Jing Jiang [right in the middle of the city], formerly a French residential hotel [the Cathay Mansion, 1929].  It’s vast and, by Chinese standards, luxurious.  In many ways, it was like some of the older European hotels.  Dinner was marvelous, and the room was very comfortable.

[The Jing Jiang Hotel, or Jinjiang Hotel, was actually created in 1951 by combining three pre-revolutionary buildings: two wings of the Grosvenor House, originally built in 1934, and the Cathay Mansion, a residential hotel in the French Concession.  (The modern-day hotel was renovated in 1998.) 

[In English, Cathay was an archaic name for what is now called China, in use from medieval times until the 19th century.  Today, it’s used in poetic contexts.  (Cathay Pacific Airways, for example, is the flag carrier of Hong Kong.)

[From the middle of the 19th century, “concessions,” which were territories and sectors of cities governed and occupied by foreign powers, existed in late Imperial China and the Republic of China.  The concessions were usually granted by the weakened Chinese government through forced or otherwise coerced treaties. 

[In Shanghai, three nations had concessions: France, Great Britain, and the United States; the U.K. and the U.S. combined their concessions into the International Settlement in 1863.  The legacy is that Shanghai is the most Western-looking city in China.  Today, all concessions in the country have been dissolved.]

After dinner and a wander through the Friendship Store branch, I went to bed.

[The Friendship Stores in the People’s Republic were like the Beryozkas in the Soviet Union when I was there in the ’60s.  (I mention the Beryozkas in Part 5 of “Going to a Swiss International School”; see above.)  They’re state-run stores which catered exclusively to foreign visitors and tourists, diplomats, and government officials.  (Most stores have now closed and the few still operating are now open to all customers.)  The Friendship Stores sold imported items as well as high-quality Chinese art and crafts.  Prices for the imported goods were higher than in the countries of origin and the stores accepted only hard currency (i.e., dollars, pounds, marks, francs, etc.).]

Shanghai – Wednesday, 24 December (Christmas Eve)

After breakfast, we paid a visit to a rug factory [Shanghai Ji Mei Carpet Factory, specializing in silk carpets], where much of the work is hand-done.  Most of the visit was devoted to shopping in the factory store.  This is the “buyingest” group I’ve ever met! 

Next door is a jade factory (also some ivory) [Shanghai Jade Carving Factory], and again, a retail store.  (I did see a lovely piece, 2 Fu lions playing, in dark green jade (malachite) – it cost ¥1200 ($800), so forget it!

From the factory we went to the Bund, the waterfront drive along the Huangpu River [the English name, derived from a complex line of sources, means “embankment”; the Chinese name means literally “outer bank”], across from the buildings of the former British Concessions.  We immediately drew crowds, especially people who wanted to get up English conversations.  We are such a curiosity – and so many Chinese learned at least some English – that we attract crowds and stop traffic everywhere!  Everyone’s extremely friendly.

[I encountered a similar situation in Russia, which I describe a little in “Going to a Swiss International School,” Part 5, referenced earlier.  It will feature, with more commentary, in my journal for that trip when I transcribe and post it in an upcoming Rick On Theater.]

After lunch at the hotel, we visited Nanking Road, Shanghai’s 5th Avenue, and the No. 1 Department Store (not only Shanghai’s largest, but China’s), so called [that’s its actual name] because it serves Shanghai’s 1st District. 

With 11 million people in Shanghai (China’s largest city and second in the world), even an ordinary day is a mob scene on the street and in the stores.  Totally impassable!

[I’m shocked that I didn’t write down a description of the Nanking Road and the No. 1 Department Store.  I’ll try to insert it now—and this will be no exaggeration, believe it or not.

[First, a little preparatory information.  Shanghai’s population is so huge that the city can’t handle everyone being free from work at the same time.  Furthermore, China in the 1980s had very few private cars on the roads, so nearly everyone traveled by public conveyance; in the case of Shanghai, that was the city bus system.  There were also lots and lots of bicycles and, of course, pedestrians.

[In addition, the system in the People’s Republic didn’t distinguish between weekdays and weekends.  People went to work in three shifts of five or six days a week with each shift getting days off on different days of the week.  That meant that three days out of each week was a shopping day for one third of the workforce—approximately 3-3½ million Shanghainese (omitting bosses, party officials and political officeholders, soldiers, students and school kids, and such) were on the streets on each work break.

[As it happens, Wednesday was one of the break days.  (It’s probably needless to add that Christmas and New Year aren’t holidays in China.  They mark them for us tourists, as you’ll see, but to Chinese citizens, they’re just ordinary days.  In this instance, Christmas Eve fell on a break day.)  When we arrived at Nanking Road, it was full to the gunnels with shoppers.

[The first impression I got was that Nanking Road was literally a river of people.  They filled the street and sidewalks from building line to building line without a hair’s breadth of light between them.  In those days, nearly everyone in the PRC wore a Mao suit in green or blue, topped with a matching Mao cap.  So the mass of moving people all blended together into what really looked like eddying water!

[While we were still on our own tour bus right across Nanking Road from the storefront and had a little perspective on this scene, the next thing I noticed was the city buses trying to make their way down the street.  Riders were literally hanging off the sides of the bus or out the open windows and doors while it was moving.  It was like some old cartoon scene come to life. 

[Since no one could fit onto the already overflowing bus, would-be passengers just grabbed on, pulled their legs up, and caught a ride until they dropped off a short distance later.  Because of the crowds in the street, the buses didn’t move very fast.

[We got off our bus, the intent being to have look inside the department store—but I watched a few of our companions head for the store’s entrance.  The flow of bodies filling the street, however, was so relentless that no one could cross the street and end up actually in front of the store.  Anyone who actually made it across, came out way down the street from the entrance—like trying to ford a fast-moving stream or negotiating a riptide.

[I gave the crossing a try, managed to get back to the store and set foot inside—but the crown inside was as unnavigable as the one in the street outside, so I decided not to go any further and made my way back to the bus.  After all, I decided, I didn’t really need to buy anything, so I’d gotten a sufficient taste of the No. 1 Department Store in Shanghai.

[On a later stop on our trip, we also went to the city’s main store and I did end up buying something.  I’ll explain that in a bit because it bears on the experience of traveling in China.]

There are many surprising consumer goods on display and though many are expensive for the workers, they can be purchased.  [This was in contrast to what I saw in Moscow at GUM, the Soviet counterpart of China’s state-run department stores, as recounted in that section of “Going to a Swiss International School.”]  Radios, TV’s, washers and dryers, as well as daily necessities of clothing, kitchenware, and toiletries, are available – many imported from Japan (watches, stereos, cameras).

From Nanking Road, we were taken to a Children’s Palace [Shanghai Municipal Children’s Palace], an after-school center of play and study in the arts, crafts, and science and math for kids 7 to 15.

Dinner was a special banquet at the Jing An Hotel for Christmas [I said the holiday was observed for Western visitors].  Marvelous and exquisite! 

[The Jing An Hotel (or Guest House) opened in 1978, so it was virtually brand new.  I still have the menu from this Christmas Eve meal; here’s what we ate (I’ve corrected the Chinese idiosyncratic English):

Fruit Cocktail
Clear Turtle Soup
Baby Fish (Sea Bass) Mandarine Meuniere
Veal Brochette
Roast Stuffed Turkey with Chestnuts
Combination Salad
Christmas Pudding
Coffee
Fresh Fruits

[The “Combination” Salad is Chinese English for “Mixed Salad” and the Christmas Pudding is a British holiday tradition sometimes also known as plum pudding.  The steamed or boiled pudding is made from raisins, currants, citron, spices, and other ingredients. 

[Shanghai, because of its history as a European enclave, is proud of its reputation for European cuisine.  This meal was our group’s first banquet of the trip.  (The great lunch we had in Foshan when we visited Guangzhou wasn’t officially a banquet, though it might as well have been called one.) 

[At the time I took this trip, it was common for the tour leaders to treat the group to several banquets along the way, usually in the headquarters city of the guides, in our case Wuxi and Nanjing, and at other stops.  I don’t know if this is still a practice, though I suspect it’s not.]

After dinner, a party was going on at the Jing Jiang Club, across from our hotel.  The club is only open to foreigners and overseas Chinese [the common appellation for Chinese expatriates and émigrés whom the PRC was trying to woo back].  I elected not to go, and went to bed instead.  Rest was much needed.

There was some general disappointment [among my tour mates] that we are being shown so many factories and so few cultural and historical sights.  A few tactless members of the group argued with our hosts, who graciously arranged special tours for those few.

Though a little more seeing and less buying would be my preference, I feel it’s better to go with the flow.

[I didn’t feel terribly deprived seeing the factories because they were all centers of traditional and ancient Chinese crafts: pottery/ceramics, jade and ivory carving, rug-making, and silk embroidery and tapestry-weaving.  Also, I’d seen that this was a common practice in societies like the PRC, since I had the same experience in the Soviet Union; they like to show off their products and industry.  And at least they didn’t take us to furniture factories or tractor plants! 

[I could have done, though, without the time, which I considered wasted, set aside for visiting the factories’ retail shops.

[Now, news flash!  This stop was the first one since we learned about the possibility of requesting Chinese breakfast that we were in a position to do so.  Tomorrow, on the morn of my 34th birthday, a small group of us would get to try it out.  A small, but enticing, culinary adventure!]

[Well, we’re now well and truly inside the People’s Republic of China.  In the next installment, coming on 30 December, we finish our visit to Shanghai and travel to Suzhou and Wuxi.  (Wuxi, you’ll learn, was the CITS office out of which our trip was administered.  The headquarters of our CITS branch was in Nanjing, formerly Nanking, which we visit in Part 4, coming on 2 January 2022.)

[I hope all ROTters will return to the blog for the continuation of “Travel Journal: People’s Republic of China, 1980.”  I found this trip a fascinating and memorable experience; I wonder if any of you also find it so.]


24 December 2021

Travel Journal: People's Republic of China, 1980 – Part 1

 

[At Christmastime in 1980, I took a trip to the People’s Republic of China.  The country had only recently opened to foreign tourists and the only way one could visit the PRC at that time was as part of an organized tour group.  Only certain officially designated tour agencies could book tours to China.  I signed up with Inter Pacific Travel-In-China, which had an office on Madison Avenue at 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan. 

[The trip I booked ran from Friday, 19 December 1980, with our departure from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Sunday, 4 January 1981, with our departure from Hong Kong and return to New York City.  That was another restriction of traveling to the PRC in the early ’80s: you had to enter and leave China through Hong Kong, then still a British colony (until 1997, when sovereignty over the city was returned to China).  Direct flights into the People’s Republic still weren’t available yet; they weren’t to come for a few more years.

[Around 1978, Deng Xiaoping (1904-97), de facto successor to Mao Zedong (1893-1976) and paramount leader of the PRC, implemented China’s Open-Door Policy, encouraging foreign tourism and investment.  (This was the second so-named program in China’s history; an earlier Open-Door policy was instigated in the late Qing era at the turn of the 20th century.)  The first steps were tentative, but by 1980, as new hotels and other accommodations for visitors were begun, the flow of travelers from abroad increased. 

[My parents had made a trip to China a few years earlier and then travelers had to be part of a special group, such as, say, teachers or lawyers, or organization, like a union or university alumni association.  (Pan American Airways, for example, had gotten permission to bring visitors to the People’s Republic in 1978.)  My folks, for instance, traveled with the Smithsonian Institution of which they were members.  Individuals or families couldn’t visit China at that time on their own, and private agencies weren’t authorized to arrange tours.

[By the time I went, tourism had opened up some, but, as we’ll see, the country was just creating the facilities and infrastructure to accommodate and manage large numbers of foreign tourists.  My group was still an experiment in hosting ordinary travelers.  Some hotels in which we stayed were still under construction when we arrived; there simply hadn’t been any tourist hotels in China designed to accommodate foreigners for almost 30 years.

[Among the other restrictions on foreign visitors was the ban on travelling anywhere you felt like.  A formal itinerary had to be drawn up and followed—no ad hoc side trips would be permitted.  And though a travel agency like IPTIC could book the trip and make out the itinerary, once we entered China we would be turned over to the China International Travel Service, or CITS, the official government tourist office, to guide and monitor us while traveling in the country. 

[We had “guides” (read: ‘minders’) from the main CITS office out of which our group was administered—ours happened to be the Wuxi office of the Nanjing branch; it was apparently an arbitrary decision—and two actual guides for each city we visited.  The head-office minder went everywhere with us, but the local guides were the ones who explained what we were seeing, answered questions, and gave us the history of the sites we visited.

[Tourism rules changed incrementally over the next several years.  Eventually individuals and families could make a trip, though it still had to be booked through an authorized agency and an itinerary had to be made—but the group or organization was no longer required.  I believe that just a few years after my visit, tourists could even pay for souvenirs, meals, and hotels with credit cards like Visa and MasterCard.

[As you see, by the way, sometimes I’ll be referring to the PRC simply as ‘China.’  I’m not forgetting that ‘China’ can also refer to the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan or that Hong Kong, even when it was a British colony, is also ‘China.’  I’m not overlooking those facts, nor am I making any kind of political statement; I’m just being colloquial.

[As I wrote in my introduction to “Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982 – Part 1” (11 July 2021), I’m not going to censor my 34-year-old self—though I may explain or comment on my reportage and I’ll clarify facts where I think it’s necessary.  I’ll expand abbreviations and correct misspellings and other writing errors, and I’ll also probably break up long paragraphs in the journal to make reading easier on the blog.  Otherwise, I plan to leave the content of what I wrote 41 years ago as it was, warts and all.

[An explanation of my commentary format: insertions I’ve made since the writing of the journal in ’80 are enclosed in square brackets.  If the comment is also italicized, then it’s based on information that dates from after 1980—information I couldn’t have known at the time.  (I make an exception for life dates that I’ve added; I think it’s self-evident that if someone’s died after 1980, I wouldn’t have known it at the time of my trip.)

[A note on the romanized spellings of the names of Chinese cities such as Guangzhou, formerly Canton, and Beijing, formerly Peking: in 1979, the Chinese government mandated that all foreign-language publications of the PRC use the pinyin romanizations instead of the old Wade-Giles system.  Western publications began conforming to the Chinese spellings soon after—though in 1980, both versions of the romanized names were still in use even in China, especially in tourist materials.

[(The same system was also applied to people’s names, so, for instance, Mao Tse-tung became Mao Zedong and Chou En-lai became Zhou Enlai; communist party chairman Deng Xiaoping’s name was romanized in Wade-Giles as Teng Hsiao-p’ing and President Xi Jinping of the PRC would be Hsi Chin-p’ing.) 

[Today, the Wade-Giles transliteration is rarely used in the People’s Republic or abroad, though it can still be found in old documents and publications.  In the Republic of China on Taiwan, Wade-Giles is still common for transliterating names and words.

[Some tourist information in the PRC still used the old Wade-Giles transliterations, so the usage in my journal was mixed.  That’s because the guides and the CITS materials they handed out used both despite the official ukase.  I’ll try to provide both the obsolete forms and the currently preferred ones.  In my inserted commentary, I’ll use mostly the pinyin romanizations.

[(Some uses of the old forms have become so well-known that they haven’t been changed.  Readers will see that Peking duck, the famous Chinese meal, isn’t renamed “Beijing duck” and the well-known Chinese opera style called Peking opera still often goes by that name.

[(One further note about the Chinese personal names I use in this transcription: in most instances—whether in pinyin or Wade-Giles—all are in Chinese style, with the family name first and the given name second.  So Mao Zedong’s surname is ‘Mao’ and Sun Yat-sen’s is ‘Sun.’  (Some Chinese who live, work, or are published in the West have westernized their names, putting their family names last as we do in the U.S.  I. M. [Ieoh Ming] Pei, the renowned American architect, is an example; his surname was ‘Pei.’)]

EN ROUTE & ARRIVAL

New York/Anchorage/Tokyo/Hong Kong – Friday-Saturday, 19-20 December 1980

Finally left JFK – late take-off – ca. 12:30 p.m. [EST.]  Minor turbulence delayed release from seat belts.  Otherwise uneventful flight to Anchorage.

Magnificent sight flying over Alaskan mountains – Mount McKinley [now officially called Denali] on our right as we came in.

[I didn’t note in my journal that I had been offered a choice of airlines for the flight to Hong Kong: I could fly on Japan Airlines or an American carrier—probably Trans World Airlines (TWA) or Pan American World Airways (Pan Am), but since I didn’t book that way, I don’t remember.

[I expressly chose JAL because, though the IPTIC Tour Guidelines said that in the PRC all meals except breakfast would be Chinese, I couldn’t wait and I thought that on JAL, I’d get at least Japanese food.  (In 1980, airlines still served actual food on board; they even competed to outdo one another for the best in-flight cuisine in the industry!)  Unfortunately, I misjudged and didn’t get anything but Western food until we hit Guangzhou (Canton).]

Prices are unbelievable in Anchorage!  $1.25 for a glass of milk – $2.25 for a hot dog!  [That’s the equivalent of $4.15 and $7.47 in 2021.  This was all long before my 2003 visit to Alaska; see “The Last Frontier,” posted on Rick On Theater on 26 March, 5 and 30 April, and 10 May 2014.]

Late take-off again for Tokyo.  New York-Anchorage was 7½ hours; Anchorage-to-Tokyo was about 6 hours.  Also uneventful.  Got very weary.  Read China guidebook and [Craig] Claiborne article [a December 1978 food article, “Dining Out In The New China,” from the New York Times Magazine].  Day got very long during second leg.

Late take-off again for Hong Kong.  Five-hour flight was unexpected.  Lady next to me wouldn’t shut up.  Managed to get some sleep.  Including time/date change, flight was 36 hours (left noon, Friday, 19 Dec.; landed midnight, Sat., 20 Dec.)  Actually, flying time was ca. 20 hours plus an hour or so each at Anchorage and Tokyo. [Anchorage was a lay-over; Tokyo was a plane-change.]

Met my roommate, Noel Cooperberg – MBA student at the University of Michigan.  OK.  Baggage took forever to get to the room.  Was nearly 3 a.m. before we got to bed.  Had to be up at 7 a.m.  Hotel fine; new “motel modern” high-rise.  Our room has view of Victoria Peak [highest hill on Hong Kong Island at 1,811 feet above sea level].

[I didn’t record the name of the hotel in which we stayed in Hong Kong, but notes I saved suggest that it was the Hotel Furama Inter-Continental in the Central District of the city.  It was a 33-story hotel that was only built in 1973, managed in 1980 by Inter-Continental Hotels Ltd.  It was closed and demolished in 2001.]

Tomorrow – Hong Kong.

HONG KONG

Hong Kong – Sunday, 21 December

Briefing at 9 a.m. – nothing new from literature and book.  (Some people are really stupid; they just don’t listen!)   Signed up for evening tour of island and dinner at Victoria Peak.  Will look around Kowloon shopping area this a.m.

[I think I should make a comment on that stupid-people-who-don’t-listen crack now, and then do a brief run-down on Hong Kong as it was in 1980.

[Our tour group was made up largely of middle-aged folks, mostly couples, from Long Island.  (I was about to turn 34 on Christmas Day and Noel was in his early 20’s or so.  There was at least one couple from Brooklyn who were in their late 30’s and early 40’s, but the rest were mostly older.)  They seemed to be mostly interested in buying stuff: rugs, porcelains, antiques, carved jade or ivory, tchotchkes, souvenirs.

[I didn’t learn this about my traveling companions immediately—it took a few days—but signs began to show right away that might have been clues if I’d been paying attention.  My remark above, I think, was about the food we were going to be eating once we crossed the frontier into the People’s Republic.

[IPTIC’s mimeographed guidelines, which I mentioned earlier, told us, “Breakfast will be Western style; lunch and dinner are Chinese . . . .”  Despite this explicit note—which we all received before we left the States—many of my fellow travelers complained bitterly about all the Chinese food they’d be getting!  (We actually hadn’t gotten any yet, by the way, much to my disappointment.)

[I was delighted . . . when it finally started in Guangzhou . . . but my companions went off in Hong Kong in search of the nearest McDonald’s.  Horrors!  When I found out, after a few stops along our itinerary, that if we arrived at a hotel in the afternoon or early evening, we could request Chinese breakfast the next morning instead of the Western breakfast that was the default—I (and a few others in the group) jumped at the offer.

[Now, about Hong Kong in the ’80s and before (in brief). 

[First of all, Hong Kong was British.  I don’t mean just because the United Kingdom owned the city—well, leased it . . . for 99 years—but it had the veneer of British culture (over its native Chinese/Cantonese one).  Almost everyone with whom a visitor came into contact spoke English, and did so with a British accent.  The hotels all served high tea in the afternoon, and the deluxe hostelries, such as the Peninsula Hotel, used Rolls Royces for their courtesy cars.

[Hong Kong had its own currency, the Hong Kong dollar (HK$), issued by the Government of Hong Kong.  The exchange-rate with the U.S. dollar in 1980 was about HK$5 to US$1; most stores accepted foreign money—dollars, francs, pounds, marks, and so on—at various rates of exchange, and American Express traveler’s checks and credit cards were generally accepted, too.  (Visas and MasterCards were not yet ubiquitously accepted abroad in 1980 as they are today, but Amex and, I think, Diners Club were.)

[Hong Kong became a Crown Colony in 1841.  At the time, the colony consisted only of Hong Kong Island; in 1860, the colony expanded to include Kowloon Peninsula, north of Hong Kong Island across Victoria Harbour, and in 1898, it added the New Territories, an area consisting of 368 square miles of the mainland north of Kowloon Peninsula.  The 1898 agreement was the one at which the 99-year lease began.

[By 1980, the population of the colony was about 5 million inhabitants, of whom about 98% were Chinese.  Residents of the British colony held British National Overseas Passports and could live and work in the U.K. and apply for permanent residence status and British citizenship.

[Hong Kong in the ’80s was known for its wealth, as well as its high cost of living, and it was a popular tourist destination for its lifestyle and the shopping.  Goods, especially luxury goods such as jewelry, watches and cameras, antiques, art, and fashion, were on sale all over downtown Hong Kong, which was like a huge open-air, high-end mall.  (My family used to call Hong Kong “the World’s PX.”)  When the People’s Republic first opened up to foreign tourism, Hong Kong was the designated gateway to the mainland.

[In 1997, the U.K.’s 99-year lease on the territory expired, and Hong Kong was returned to China—which, in the interim, had, of course, become the communist-run People’s Republic of China.  All the former citizens of the British Dependent Territory of Hong Kong involuntarily became citizens of the PRC and subject to its laws and authority.]

One of our [IPTIC] guides, Patsy Cheung (Pepsi Cola [a nickname she supplied]), took us by subway to Waterloo Road in Kowloon where the Chinese Emporium is.  Very clean, fast, and efficient subway, and not expensive [HK$3, ca. 60¢US in 1980/$1.99 today], either.  [The Mass Transit Railway, or MTR, went into operation in 1979.]

Looked around Chinese Emporium – said to be better quality handicrafts here than in PRC.  [I don’t recall the store now, but according to the Hong Kong tourist map I have from this trip, it was probably the Chung Kiu Chinese Products Emporium on Nathan Road near the corner of Waterloo Road.  A branch of a mainland-owned department store, it carried a wide selection of Chinese products of good quality; it went out of business in 1997.] 

Bought white silk scarf with blue “Lucky” embroidered [in Chinese] and interesting table screen – my souvenir of China.  [I still have the scarf, a little grayed with age and rumpled from use.  I used to have a navy-blue overcoat with which I liked to wear that white scarf—very dashing!—and it lived in the coat’s sleeve.]

Some nice things (Chinese jackets and robes, cloisonné, antiques) and some cheap-looking things (cinnabar, furniture, some ivory carvings).

[Cloisonné is a decorative technique for metalwork in which colored enamel is baked between raised thin bands of the metal.  (In antique cloisonné pieces, the colored inlays were cut glass or even gems.)   

[Cinnabar is the common term for a distinctive Chinese form of carved lacquerware in which the lacquer has been colored with cinnabar, an ore of mercury which is a deep red mineral.  It’s used to make a variety of decorative and practical items such as boxes, plates, trays, screens, and furniture.  Fine pieces, especially antiques—the practice goes back to the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and most of the extant pieces are from the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) Dynasties—are very expensive.]

Took subway to Nathan Street [sic – Road] area [still in Kowloon] where main shopping is.  Wandered a bit and bought a pocket calculator to figure currency conversions.  Had lunch at Peninsula Hotel (with Cooperbergs [my roommate and his parents]).  Very “colonial” old hotel – boys in white uniforms (including pillbox hat) at doors – Rolls Royce parked out front and very grand.

[One of the things my parents suggested I do when I was in Hong Kong was to have tea at the Peninsula Hotel, which opened in Kowloon in 1928.  I didn’t manage to do that exactly, but this was my substitute.

[Combining colonial elegance and modern elements, the Peninsula has maintained its Baroque style architecture since its opening.  The Rolls was one of a fleet (Silver Shadows [1965-80], I believe), all painted “Peninsula green.”  Surprisingly, the hotel is not only still in operation under the communist regime, but continues to be a Western-type, colonial-style luxury hotel.]

Took Star Ferry back to Hong Kong.  Carols being sung at City Hall.  Went back to hotel to freshen up and met tour of island.

[The Star Ferry runs between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon across the harbor from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m.  The fare was 30¢HK for 1st class (upper deck) and 20¢HK for 2nd (lower deck).  (That’s all of 6¢US and 4¢US, respectively.  The Staten Island Ferry, which operates 24/7, is free now, but it used to cost the same as the New York City bus and subway—$1.50 when it went fare-free, the equivalent of HK$7.50 in 1980.)]

So far, don’t really feel I’m in China – Hong Kong [is] so Western, except for [the] faces, could be Berlin or Athens!  [Well, that was inaccurate.  I was stationed in Berlin in the army in the early ’70s (see “Berlin Memoir,” 16 and 31 December 2016 and 20 January, 9 and 19 February, 11 and 29 March, and 13 April 2017) and I visited Athens in 1973—and neither city was anywhere near as modern in its appearance then as was Hong Kong in 1980.  I’d describe this city’s architectural style as aggressively modern.]

Bus tour starts with Aberdeen [an area on southwest Hong Kong Island famous for floating village and floating seafood restaurants in Aberdeen Harbour].  Now I see some of old China in Hong Kong.  Old tenements climbing the hillside, real native shops and markets.  Very different from Kowloon of this morning.

Aberdeen is first real “exotic” encounter.  Somewhat like Turkolimano near Athens [smallest of the three ports of Piraeus and used by smaller yachts and small fishing boats, known for its seafood restaurants and bars], but teeming with people and fish.  Sampans [flat-bottomed Chinese wooden boat, often used for fishing] crowd the harbor – took a ride around the harbor – past fishing junks [type of Chinese sailing ship with distinctive battened sails] and floating restaurants.  “Floating people” with whole families, including dogs, living on the boats.  Getting overcrowded and city is trying to force them all onto land.

On to Deep Water Bay ([off southern shore of Hong Kong Island] where [1955’s] Love Is a Many Splendored Thing [starring William Holden and Jennifer Jones] was filmed) and Repulse Bay ([next to Deep Water Bay to its east] named for World War II destroyer sunk there).  Some very wealthy homes perched along the bay!  [Deep Water Bay is reputed to be the richest neighborhood in the world.]

[The origin of Repulse Bay’s English name is obscure—and probably apocryphal.  No account of the name’s origin rests on any documentary evidence that has so far been found. 

[The story that it was named after the British warship HMS Repulse which was stationed at the bay is undocumented: no ship named Repulse was ever docked there according to Admiralty records.  Another account is that in 1841, the bay was a haven for pirates who were “repulsed” by the British Royal Navy.  No such action is recorded in the naval logs of the period.]

Up to Victoria Peak – wonderful view of Hong Kong by night.  The meal was good [we had dinner at one of the several restaurants near the summit – but Western.  I guess we won’t get Chinese food ’til tomorrow on the way to Canton [Guangzhou].

[My plaint about a Western meal on the Peak comes from the long wait I had for my first taste of Chinese cuisine, even after we arrived in Hong Kong.  I didn’t note at which restaurant we ate that night, but I think it was the Old Peak Café (renamed the Peak Lookout Restaurant in 2001) which served so-called international cuisine—a fancy name for Western food—much to my disappointment.

[As it turned out, the meal we got en route to Guangzhou didn’t satisfy my craving . . . as you’ll hear shortly.]

Just stepped out for a walk around Hong Kong Centre ([the city’s main business district] near the hotel) where the Christmas lights have just gone on.  (They seem to wait ’til the last weekend to put them on.)  Everybody’s out with their cameras and tripods.

Tomorrow starts very early (5:00 a.m.) and looks to be very long.

[This is the first of five installments of my transcription-with-commentary of “Travel Journal: People’s Republic of China, 1980.”  I’ll be posting the rest of the journal at three-day intervals through Wednesday, 5 January 2022; I hope you’ll return for each installment.

[The next segment of the journal will appear on Monday, 27 December, covering my entry into the People’s Republic and my visits to Canton (now called Guangzhou) and Shanghai.]