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.]