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TEACHING ENGLISH IN CHINA

1986-1989
James W. Bowers
Arrival

In the spring of 1986 I received a letter from the Embassy of the Peoples Republic
of China informing me, my wife Jytte and our son Eric, that I had been appointed by the
Ministry of Education to teach English at Zhenjiang Shipbuilding Institute beginning
with the fall semester. I had seen an ad in a magazine that teachers were badly needed in
China and applied for a position because I felt it was the right thing to do. Little did I
know that acting on a simple impulse would change our lives forever. The academic
dean of the institute was spending a year in New York at that time. She telephoned to
welcome us to her college, a typical sign of Chinese hospitality. When she returned to
China she made a call to her American hostess just to let her know that she had arrived
safely in Zhenjiang. That brief telephone message cost her half of her months wages.
When we arrived at the airport in Shanghai, which was roughly the size of the one in
our home town of Rapid City, South Dakota, we were met by a delegation from the
college in their heavy wool Mao jackets with collars resembling those of a priest,
obviously tailored for a perfect fit. It was the coolies in the street riding their bicycles or
struggling to move huge logs up a slight incline on a two-wheeled cart who wore
polyester western-style jackets with broad lapels.
Our first night was spent in the guest house of Jao Tong University, of which the
Zhenjiang Shipbuilding Institute had once been a division until the Korean War, when

colleges essential to a possible wartime effort were moved away from coastal cities in the
expectation that the American forces would invade China. The plan was to use atom
bombs on such an enemy if necessary. The guest house was roughly the equivalent of a
third class hotel in America, with thin mattresses on wire springs (the Chinese usually
sleep on boards) and a sit-down toilet.
On a later occasion I accompanied the chairman of the colleges English Department
on a journey to Shanghai. We stayed in the same guest house. He thought we were in
the lap of luxury. To approximate the life we were used to living in the states we
sometimes made the short journey from Zhenjiang to Nanjing, where we could have a
meal in Jing Ling Hotel, a modern, western establishment with a revolving restaurant
built to the highest standards, rising out of the poverty of the surrounding city. Only
westerners and communist party officials were allowed to enter this precursor of life to
come, while the iron gates held back throngs of ordinary Chinese gawking at such
extravagance.
Upon our arrival at the college we were invited to a sumptuous meal in our honor,
which included turtle soup with a large turtle floating on top and numerous other tidbits
whose origin was unknown to us. We did not ask. This was our opportunity to meet
distinguished members of the college, and unfortunately in many cases the only one,
since most of them could neither speak nor understand English. But the meal was at
government expense and for the staff a rare opportunity to share Chinese delicacies. As
for the daily diet of the students, that consisted of a bowl of rice with a single ladle of
vegetables and, if one was lucky, a piece of meat. One student described their situation

most succinctly: In the winter I am always cold and I am always hungry. The thighs on
the male students were not much larger than the rim of the bowl of rice.
At the end of the meal we were asked if we would like some rice. We were full to
overflowing, but in order to be polite we said, Yes. There was a lot of scurrying
around until a plateful of rice was placed before us. No one else at the table desired any.
We later discovered that we had humiliated our hosts, since to ask for rice after such a
meal was to indicate that we had not had enough to eat. It may have been the first, but
certainly not the last, faux pas that we unwittingly made during our stay in China. But
the Chinese are a tolerant people, at least toward idiotic westerners if not toward one
another.
Living quarters
Our next two years were spent in the colleges guest house. We had two bedrooms at
the end of the hall, since our son Eric was with us. Each had a real bed with a real
mattress. Where they got them I can not begin to guess. Between the bedrooms was the
hallway, which had been walled off to make a kitchen with hotplate where we could
prepare our meals if we did not want to eat in the guest house dining room. The hotplate
(220 volts) had a way of occasionally shorting out. Quality in the state-owned factories
which made them was evidently not a matter of concern. When I told my students that in
the West the customer must always be satisfied or else mollified by a money-back
guarantee, they simply laughed in astonishment. For the first month or so we took our
meals in the dining hall (always alone), but the cuisine in Zhenjiang relies heavily on the
use of rape seed oil, which Scandinavians use as a lubricant for machines. Our stomachs
rebelled, and we ended up cooking our own food, which we bought on the open market.

Until recently, food had been sold only through state stores and rationed accordingly, but
by the time we arrived the peasants were carrying their pigs, chickens, and vegetables on
the back of their bicycles into the city and selling them along the sidewalks.
At first we encountered some difficulty in procuring what we needed. Pointing at the
item was an essential first step. But when we ran out of toilet paper, I encountered
considerable difficulty in buying it from the state-owned department store nearby. There
was nothing to point to, and I did not know the word to use. The alternative step was to
indicate in a visual manner what it was that I wanted, but by this time I was surrounded
by a crowd of helpful onlookers, and I could not really just rub my ass to indicate what I
was looking for. We later realized that toilet paper was not sold in department stores.
One had always to carry a little packet of tissue paper, for there was never any paper in
public toilets (consisting of a channel over which one squatted, which may occasionally
have been washed down). The next day the paper appeared in our bathroom, courtesy of
the maid who cleaned our room.
We were also provided with a third room, used as a living room and office. The floor
was covered with tiles in a bilious yellow; so we decided we needed some kind of rug.
We bought a number of straw mats and sewed them together. Before long they were
replaced by a green carpet, a luxury unknown to even the highest officials of the college.
It seems the mats we used were what ordinary Chinese used as mattresses.
In all three rooms there was a heat pump, which in the middle of the winter raised the
temperature in the rooms into the forties. Whenever it was cold enough for frost to build
up on the heating element, the heat was automatically diverted to thaw out those
elementsthe colder it got, the less efficient the heater was. Ordinary Chinese heated

their rooms with a small, coal-fired stove with a long, three-inch stovepipe vented
through the window to the outside. Windows were kept open regardless of the weather;
otherwise asphyxiation from carbon monoxide was likely. Students and faculty alike
wore down jackets to class. The ends of the fingers on the students gloves were cut off
so they could hold a pencil. Frost bite was common. As far as I could see, ours were the
only heat pumps in the city.
The living arrangements for our department chairman were typical. There were two
bedrooms in the apartment, one for his parents, the other for him, his wife, and their
child. The kitchen was heated by a coal stove. The toilet was a communal one in the
yard outside. Likewise, showers were shared with the entire neighborhood. The walls,
floors and ceilings of the apartment were concrete. There were no pictures or other
adornments in the rooms. Student dorm rooms, roughly ten by sixteen feet, contained
eight students.
Under Observation
Since we were among the very first westerners to enter the city of Zhenjiang in the last
forty years, we were under observation by the police. We were assigned one of my
English students, Pan, as an interpreter who could accompany us whenever we left the
college premisesin order to make our stay in China more pleasant. The Chinese, unlike
the Russians, never placed hidden microphones in our apartment. Their efforts were
always couched in the appearance of making our life easier. We soon realized the true
purpose of his helpfulness and informed the college authorities we did not need his
services. Occasionally, a female police officer would show up in my office when I was
working with individual students. She wanted to improve her English. But there was

simply not enough to report, even though I saw our interpreter in earnest conversation
with her on one occasion. Eventually, we were allowed to travel to Nanjing on our own,
much to the astonishment of one of my students. However, we were never allowed to
travel into the countryside without an escort.
Shortly after our arrival we received a letter forwarded to us from The White House in
an envelope with a window which revealed our personal name and address on the
missive. It had been opened and returned to the envelope upside down. It was election
time, and President Reagan was requesting our support for the Republican candidate for
the Senate, whose picture together with the President was enclosed. To the Chinese, to
receive such a correspondence was like getting a personal message from Chairman Deng
Xiaopeng himself. We must be well connectedto the highest authorities in the land.
Very impressive indeed!
In a book written by a longtime Swedish journalist in China I read about what we
dubbed our friendly neighborhood committee. Such committees consisted of retired
women who had spent their entire married life living with their mothers-in-law. Their
job was to keep an eye on everything that went on in their neighborhood, including
monitoring the menstrual period of all the women and arranging for the abortion if
necessary. It is customary for a son to provide for his parents during their retirement; so
a wife is under tremendous pressure to give birth to a son. Female infanticide is still
common. There are twenty percent more males than females in China today. A couple
could not get married without the neighborhood committees approval, even though they
might be legally old enough to do so. In any case, the parents consent was also
necessary. One student confessed that he was in love with a girl in his college, but we

were not to tell anyone. They would immediately be separated. Another student was in
love with a female at a college several hundred miles north. His parents would not allow
them to be married. As with all students, she would be assigned by the Communist Party
to a job, probably in a city far from where he was to work. Like many Chinese couples
they would be able to get together only during the New Year holidays. The parents said
they only had his best interest at heart.
The fact that all of us were under observation made it difficult for me to teach a
seminar in American literature to nine of the English teachers at the college. I tried my
best to get a discussion going on the material we had read but found it impossible. Of
course I was nave enough, or perhaps cunning enough, to assign Thoreaus essay on
Civil Disobedience, about which no Chinese student in his right mind would have
anything publicly to say, even if it did reveal the essential character of an American and
why we rebelled against British authority. Occasionally, the Dean of the college who had
been to America sat in on my classes, but there was never any question about my being
able to teach whatever I wanted. Nevertheless, I could not get them to talk about
anything. Since they had never before heard a native speaker, I was not sure they even
understood what I was saying.
It finally dawned on me that our interpreter, Pan, was in the class, but even when he
was absent, there was absolute silence. Then one fine day in the springtime not only Pan,
but also one of the female students was absent, and suddenly we had a wonderful time
together. There were not just one, but two spies in the class! Incidentally, that female
student proved to be a particular problem. For the final exam I gave the students a
number of topics to write about. She was the only student who chose to write about the

influence of Calvinism in early American literature. This was China, an avowedly


atheistic society. There was no way she would be able to understand Calvinism. The
best I could give her was a C+. But the President of the college had determined that none
of my students could go on to graduate school who had not made at least a B. She was
the daughter of a prominent Communist official in the city. I was asked to allow her to
retake the final exam, but the second paper was no better than the first, and I could not in
good conscience change the grade. At the end of the second semester, however, she
wrote an excellent final exam, and I was able to give her the grade she deserved.
Although the students dared not to speak up in class, they did open their hearts when it
came to their writing assignments. On one occasion we read a story by Sherwood
Anderson, and I asked them to write on the subject of poverty, material or spiritual.
One student wrote on the spiritual poverty of being a Chinese student who could never
make any choices: as to what school he would attend, what his major subject would be,
whom he would marry, where he would live and work after graduation. I had never
before wept while reading a students paper.
The English Corner
In 1986 there were not many native speakers of English in China; so it became a
tradition in many Chinese cities for young people to meet in the park on Sunday morning
to practice speaking English to one another. Once it became known that we were in
Zhenjiang, I was soon invited to join them, which I did gladly. Here I met some young
men not connected with the college who later became our best friends. For the most part
they did not dare to visit our home. The guest house was surrounded by a high wall.
Entrance was through an iron gate surveyed by a gatekeeper who took down the name of

every visitorfor possible use later. The Cultural Revolution was still a vivid memory
in the minds of the people. During that time the high school and college students became
ardent revolutionary Red Guards inspired by Chairman Mao to destroy all vestiges of
Chinas decadent past. Anything western was strictly forbidden. For example, a violin
teacher at one of the universities was locked into a closet by the Red Guards for eleven
months. A sewer pipe which passed through the closet was leaking. He was allowed to
leave the closet for five minutes once a day. There were many professors who committed
suicide. Others were exiled into the countryside to learn from the peasants what real life
was like.
But there was one young man in particular, Zhou, who was fearless, extremely
intelligent and very informative. He was probably five foot ten, rather tall for a Chinese,
with a square jaw and thin-rimmed glasses. His father had been a high official in the city
government before the Cultural Revolution, but had been on the wrong side politically
and was sent into the countryside by some of his co-workers. Zhou told us of one day
seeing a procession in the streets of flags flying, cymbals clanging, and drums being
beaten followed by trucks filled with bourgeoisie on their way to exile. In the back of
one he recognized his father. Standing by Zhous side was a classmate who pointed to
the forlorn figure.
Isnt that your father? he said.
No, replied Zhou, who then punched his schoolmate in the face.
While his father was laboring in the countryside outside the city, Zhou managed to
make arrangements to meet him at a particular crossroad. He waited and waited until he

saw two figures hauling heavy stones in wheelbarrows approaching the crossroad.
Finally one came up to him. It was his father, but Zhou had not recognized him.
After the Cultural Revolution his father returned to his job as a city official, to work
alongside the colleagues who had sent him to the reeducation camp. At the time there
was no such thing as private ownership. Among the duties of these officials was that of
assigning housing to those who had none. There was a long list of applicants, and Zhous
father insisted on parceling out the available apartments to those on the list who had
waited the longest. While he was attending a conference in another city, however, his
colleagues gave the apartments to their relatives and friends. When the father returned
and discovered what his co-workers had done, he became so angry that he had a stroke
and died on the spot.
Of all the people we met, it was Zhou who spoke perfect English. During the second
year the city officials decided to hold a public competition to determine who had the best
command of English. There were a dozen contestants who were to speak on the topic
Why I love Zhenjiang. We were among the judges, sitting on one side of the room.
On the opposite side was a row of city officials, none of whom spoke a word of English.
Zhou was the last speaker. As the proceedings droned on I could see that he was
becoming increasingly nervous. When he finally rose and faced the audience, his face
was pale as he announced, The subject of my speech is Why I Hate Zhenjiang. We
were dumbfounded, fearful that he would face terrifying consequences. Unfortunately,
he stumbled quite a bit during his talk; so we were not able to award him first place.
Afterward there was a sumptuous banquet to which we were invited. I assumed that it
would be for those who had competed, but not a single one of the contestants was

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present. All of the city officials who had been sitting opposite us were there. Apparently
those in the audience who understood English had not said a word about Zhous speech,
for he suffered no consequences.
On one of his many visits to our apartment Zhou tried to teach us the basic principles
of Tai Chi, which is based on belief in a system of energy called chi. Properly controlled,
it is an energy which creates physical and spiritual harmony. One leg stretched behind,
my arms trying to move in a graceful circle, and my breath carefully controlledI could
scarcely maintain my balance! My attempts were absolutely hopeless. All I could do
was marvel at the grace and beauty of his movements as he lost himself in an inner world
of peace, a sanctuary from the ravages of daily life.
Zhou wrote a novel in English, and asked me to edit it for him and if possible find a
publisher in the U.S. The writing was almost perfect English, but I soon realized that it
would never sell in the states. Everything was plot, depressing events that occurred in the
life of the protagonist, but there was no character description, no indication of inner
thoughts or emotions, no body language. He was describing Chinese life: any indication
of disagreement or outward display of true feeling were too dangerous. Jytte and I held
hands while walking down the street. Chinese men did not dare to touch females in
public. Someone might be watching.
Zhou was never able to get a university education, but is now in charge of safety
precautions at the nuclear power plants in China. A few years ago he was a speaker at an
international symposium on nuclear energy in Tampa, Florida, where our oldest daughter
lives. I was able to fly down and spend a couple of days with him. When he first saw

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me, he came up and threw his arms around me. I had had no idea of the depth of his
feelings.

A Feudal Society
We had great difficulty in understanding Chinese culture. One Chinese friend assured
us that we never would. But it was at the English Corner that I gained some insight,
given by a young man who referred to China as a feudal society. Thats precisely what
China was in the 1980s. The land owners who had for centuries ruled over their serfs
with absolute power had been replaced. The land was now owned by the state. The
landlords were the members of the Communist Party. Even in the cities everyone worked
for the state and was a slave to his workplace, ruled by Party members. Like every other
workplace, the college was a walled-in compound with sentries at the gate. Everyones
housing, students, facultys and administrators alike, was provided by the college.
Permission to travel outside the city had to be granted by college officials before one
could buy a train ticket. Transferring to another job or moving to another city was
usually out of the question. One might own a bicycle, but not a car. Cars were owned by
the college and driven by a chauffeur, available only to those in high positions, or
foreigners. Since most durable goods, such as furniture, stoves, refrigerators, were in
short supply, one needed a coupon from the workplace to buy them. In other words,
China was essentially a feudal society similar to that of medieval Europe.

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Power, Not Money


Several Chinese acquaintances told us, You Americans are interested in money. We
are not interested in money. We want power. Power was gained by knowing the right
people, having the right connections, and in particular becoming a member of the Party,
which is in essence a secret network of useful relationships.
According to Lord Acton, Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. In
China there was no restraint on the use of power, except perhaps Party discipline, which
could be rather harsh. When the misuse of authority became particularly egregious, the
official involved might even be executed. The jail in our city was located not far from
our college. Whenever a prisoner was impounded, he was first driven around the town in
the back of a truck with horns blaring before reaching his destination.

Posters of

criminals were placed all over the city. An X indicated the person had been killed.
Executions were public spectacles in a large arena, with many observers required to
attend. But they did not prevent the whole social system from becoming corrupt. For
example, if you wanted to get your child into a good kindergarten, you might go to the
headmistress and she would tell you, You know, my nephew would like a new bicycle.
Providing the bicycle did not necessarily mean that your child would be admitted, but not
providing it meant that your child had no chance of being accepted.
One of our young friends was getting married and desperately wanted an apartment of
his own. As a wedding present we gave him a carton of Marlborough cigarettes, highly
prized at the timeeven though he did not smoke. He was wide-eyed, profuse in his
thanks when we gave it to him. Nevertheless, he did not get the apartment.

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In other words bribery was a necessary part of daily existence for anyone who wanted
something. Those in power did not need money. They simply suggested what it would
be nice for them to have, and they got it. In any case little disparity existed between the
wages of workers and professionals or administrators. Everyone shared in the poverty.
We were perhaps the only exception. Our pay was ten times that of anyone else; we
could not have survived on less.
Beyond the absolute necessities of food and clothing there was not much to buy
except in the Friendship Stores. At that time China had very little in the way of foreign
currency reserves to purchase goods from abroad. Such luxuries were available only in
the Friendship Stores and could not be purchased with renminbi, the money used by
ordinary Chinese. One needed an alternative money called Foreign Exchange Currency,
which could only be purchased with foreign currency. In that way the government could
prevent the outflow of their wealth to other countries.
Most underdeveloped countries try to jump-start their economies by borrowing
heavily from the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. But Chinese do not
borrow; they save, no matter how small their income might be. When China had later
accumulated enough dollars to purchase overseas goods, they no longer needed FECs.
Since we were paid only in renminbi, we had special cards which allowed us to use our
money in Friendship Stores, a recognition of the fact that we were foreigners serving the
interests of the government.
As for having the right connections, that often involved having a powerful member in
the family. While we were in Zhenjiang three jobs opened up in the local bank, highly
desirable positions.

The only prerequisite was a good knowledge of the English

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language. Over a hundred applicants took the language exam. One was the daughter of a
high school teacher, who thought she had done quite well on the exam. After waiting
patiently for an announcement, she finally persuaded her father to inquire at the bank if
the positions had been filled. He was informed that they had been, some time ago. On
the way out one of the tellers pulled him aside and told him that his daughter had gotten
the highest grade on the English exam. The jobs had been given to family members of
the banks administrators, none of whom had taken the English test.

Small business
Since China was a feudal society in which all its citizens were servants bound to their
workplace, it was not possible to have unemployment. The result was what the Chinese
called the iron rice bowl.

Everyone had a job and was paid accordingly, but in the

state-owned factories which produced all the goods for the economy there was not much
work to perform. A quota was assigned for each factoryno incentive to produce more.
The laws of supply and demand simply did not exist. The demand usually exceeded the
supply.

Too many workers, too little work.

Efficiency was unnecessary; quality,

irrelevant. No matter how poorly made, the product would be sold; hence, the electric
hot plates that gave my wife such a shock. Our friend Zhou worked in a coal-burning
power plant just outside the city as an English translator, but there were few documents in
English to translate and little contact with foreign firms. He spent his time writing the
novel in English while his co-workers read the newspapers.
We were in China at the end of the 1980s when the transition was beginning from a
feudal society to a modern, capitalistic one. The changes could not be made from the top,

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in the state-owned enterprises. Communist orthodoxy regarding a centralized control of


all productivity could not be questioned, nor could the power of the cadre be disturbed.
Change had to come from the bottom up, and started not in the cities, but in the rural
villages.
Until a few years before we arrived, the farmers were required to give their produce to
state-run stores, keeping for themselves only enough for bare survival. The policy was
subsequently changed, so that once the farmers filled their quota due to the state, they
could keep the rest and sell what remained. The result was a tremendous increase in
productivity as the peasants brought their goods into the cities to sell them on the streets,
while the state-owned stores carried only the least desirable food. The farmers also got
together to establish their own small enterprises. One village, which we visited under
supervision, had a small shop making wicker chairs.

In another it was silk carpets,

where women and children sat all day tying each thread to the backing. The men in a
village might pool their resources to build a small hotel in a neighboring city and share in
its profits.
But these were goods and services for local use, not for foreign consumption. It was
in 1988, when we were in southern China near Hong Kong, that we saw the beginning of
Chinas export to other countries. Since the state owned all natural resources as well as
factories, the private enterprise of the peasants had to take another form. Businessmen
from Hong Kong had to bring the raw materials into mainland China, to small enterprises
in the villages. We visited one farmers cooperative where they were assembling coffee
grinders for sale in the U.S. The farmers themselves did not do the hard work. They
recruited young people from the poverty-stricken villages of western China to work

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fourteen hour days seven days a week, with one weekend off each month. Quality
control was very strict so as to meet western standards. The assembled coffee grinders
would be taken back to Hong Kong, labeled Made in Hong Kong, and sold at a good
price, while the young workers sent their meager wages home to their families so their
relatives had some means to escape abject poverty.

Public lectures
While at the college in Zhenjiang I gave a series of public lectures in English to be
recorded for subsequent use in the English classes. The first lecture was open to the
general public and held in a large auditorium packed with young people. I thought it was
my duty to explain American culture to the Chinese and naively chose as my first topic
our political system of checks and balances in order to mitigate the corruption of power.
Before beginning to speak, I handed out an outline of the lecture, since the audience had
seldom, if ever, heard spoken English. In the auditorium were a number of young men
from the English Corner. Afterwards, one of them came up to me to tell me he finally
understood the true nature of democracy.
A system of checks and balancesthat was a topic about which no one in China
spoke. It was political dynamite, and I am certain the college officials were thoroughly
reprimanded by the Party. Oblivious as to what I had done, I was never criticized. But
that was my first and last lecture open to the general public. Subsequent ones were given
to a very small audience.
Another lecture, attended by the academic dean who had been to America, was on the
subject of the true believer. I spoke about how the actions of true believers in America,

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such as those whose faith in trickle-down economics was unshakable, had had such a
devastating effect, without once mentioning China. Afterwards the dean complimented
me on the lecture and commented upon how she had seen in America just what I was
talking about. Then I knew that she understood what I was really concerned about,
namely the devastation caused in China by the true believers in Chairman Mao during the
Cultural Revolution. I had learned how to deal with delicate topics without causing dire
consequences for our Chinese friends.
We were never concerned about our own safety or fearful if we spoke out of turn we
would be reprimanded. But in the back of our minds was the constant worry we might do
or say something which would greatly harm our friends. If a friend in the company of
other Chinese passed us on the street without displaying any sign of recognition, we
passed by as if we did not know him at all. On a number of occasions we were invited to
dinner at someones home, only to be notified at the last minute that, unfortunately, our
invitation had to be cancelled.

Sometimes they brought us the food anyway. We

understood. On one occasion the wife of the head of the Communist Party at the college,
a man more powerful than the president, had invited us to their home. She taught
English; he had been educated in Russia and knew no English. At the last moment we
were informed that they could not receive us.

Later on, at a gathering of college

personnel, her husband made a point of coming up to me and shaking my hand


vigorously. Although we could not speak the same language, I knew he was apologizing
for being unable to entertain us. As important as he might be as a college official, he
simply did not dare to be seen alone with us.
hospitality every time.

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Party discipline trumped gracious

Revolution
We were in China during a revolutionary period. Our first encounter with student
demonstrations was in December of 1986. We took our son Eric to Shanghai on the
nineteenth to celebrate his birthday by going to a MacDonalds. At that time there was no
such foreign trash to be found in the whole of China. We had to make do with something
like a hamburger in the Peace Hotel, an aging relic from the period of Western
occupation of Shanghai located on the Bund at the beginning of Nanjing Road. When we
left the hotel to go shopping, there was quite a commotion outside. The police were
diverting traffic from Nanjing Road as a column of students the width of the entire road
was turning into the street. We spent an hour shopping. No one would answer our
inquiries as to what was going on. When we again emerged into the street, the masses of
students were still marching. Despite the confusion and lack of bus transportation we
managed to make our way back to Jao Tong University, where we were once again
staying in the guest house for the night. That evening in the dining room there was a
table full of students laughing and rejoicing together. I am always reminded of that scene
when we watch our video of Les Misrable when the students are carousing the night
before they are killed on the barricades by the French militia.
Upon our return to Zhenjiang the president and academic dean of the college gave us a
small banquet in the guest house dining room. Despite a swift kick under the table from
her husband, Jytte asked them what they thought of the demonstrations in Shanghai. To
our surprise they replied that they were pleased to see such public expressions permitted
by the government. In fact, the government was not so pleased. They had no intention of
allowing such freedom of expression again. A month later Hu Yaobang, a member of the

19

Central Committee who was sympathetic toward the students, was forced to resign and
placed under house arrest, to the chagrin of many young people. Every member of the
collegeadministrators, faculty, and students alikehad to sign a personal statement of
support for the actions taken by the Central Committee. Shortly thereafter I went to the
English Corner on a cold and snowy Sunday morning, but for the first time no one was
thereexcept for a police officer, who suggested it was perhaps too cold for others to
appear, and I had better return home.
We remember one student in particular, brilliant, diligent, who often visited us in our
apartment. He was about to graduate from the college, and had learned through the
grapevine he was to be appointed to teach at a language school in Beijing, where his
parents lived. But he had participated in the student demonstration held in our city the
previous December. When we returned to the college after our summer vacation, we
learned that a Communist Party official had assigned him to Shanghai to work in a
shipbuilding factory, sweeping floors. That was to be his life-long occupation.
In the spring of 1989, when we were living in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known
as Canton), the revolutionary spirit returned with the death of Hu Yaobang in April. His
dying presented the students with an opportunity to gather togetherto pay their
respects, something the government could scarcely prevent. The result was students
marching through the city every night in an orderly, respectful manner. At our university
the demonstrations were led by one of my graduate students, who on one occasion, which
I shall never forget, quoted to me: Give me liberty, or give me death. Though entirely
sympathetic with the students, we did not join them in their demonstrations. We did not
want to give the authorities the excuse that foreigners had instigated their behavior.

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Although public displays were being made in college towns all over China, it was on
Tiananmen Square where students, including some from our own university, gathered to
make a non-violent appeal to the government for reform. They were not asking for
improvement in their personal living standards, nor were they demanding a democratic
government such as we have in America. They simply wanted an end to feudalismthe
arbitrary use of power without restraint. They pleaded for the rule of law, under which
all persons are treated equally regardless of how powerful they might be. America was
their ideal, where even a President could be forced to resign if he broke the law; hence, a
statue resembling our Statue of Liberty was wheeled into the square.
In China students are held in high respect, perhaps even higher than their professors,
who were humiliated and degraded during the Cultural Revolution. Admission to higher
education depends upon passing an extremely difficult national examination. Young
people begin preparation for the exam in kindergarten. It is a great honor for the family
to have their son or daughter in a university.
It has often been the students who have instigated changes in Chinese society. When
the government began to send local military forces into Beijing to end the demonstrations
on Tiananmen Square, the citizens of the city poured into the streets and surrounded the
trucks filled with soldiers, preventing their reaching the central square while pleading
with them not to attack the students.
The Central Committee agreed to peaceful negotiations with representatives of the
young people, but they appointed Li Peng, a hardliner, to represent them. He simply
dismissed their requests out of hand.

A member of the Central Committee more

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sympathetic to the students was subsequently placed under house arrest until he died
some years later.
During the first weekend in June we foreigners teaching at the university were given a
treat, a vacation at a tourist site often visited by citizens of Hong Kong. In Guangzhou
we were not allowed to have TVs because we were too close to Hong Kong and could
receive their signal. But in this resort area we awoke on the morning of June 4th to the
horror of television programs broadcasting scenes of military tanks crawling over and
crushing the tents of students sleeping on Tiananmen Square. Over the state TV station
an alternative scene was played again and again: a military truck pulling up, suddenly no
driver, but young people pelting it with stones while military tanks passed by in the
background. In other words, we were being shown a fabricated scene to prove that the
students had attacked the soldiers. When I read the book in college, I had thought that
George Orwells 1984, about communists rewriting history to make it conform to the
current doctrine, was simply too fantastic. In 1989 we lived through such revision.
A Chinese woman from the Foreign Affairs Department at the university had
accompanied us on our vacation.

She was eight months pregnant and weeping

inconsolably. The ancient grief of generation after generation had returned to China. She
had said she could never read Chinese history without crying. We returned immediately
to the university. Spread out all over the campus were pictures faxed from students in
foreign countries, revealing what had really occurred on Tiananmen Square.

Our

students were stricken with horror and fear. One phoned me to find out if it was safe to
return to the campus. Another called to me from behind while I was walking to class; I
did not recognize him behind his dark sunglasses. He wanted to say goodbye. Most

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students were already beginning to leave the campus, even though the final exams had
not yet been given. They wanted to return to their home towns to tell their families and
neighbors what had actually occurred in Beijing.
On Wednesday evening I made my way to the American Consulate where Jytte was a
nurse and I was conducting a seminar for a few of the Foreign Service personnel. I
brought with me a piece of intelligence gleaned from an American colleague at the
university: the armed forces stationed in Guangzhou were authorized to use live
ammunition beginning on Friday. The consulate contacted all Americans in the area,
advising them to leave China within the next forty-eight hours. During the massacre on
Tiananmen Square the soldiers had also fired into the American Embassy nearby. There
is nothing that will gain the attention of American diplomats more forcefully than live
ammunition aimed at them.
On the bus back home, I was the only foreigner in a sea of faces crowding the streets
so that the vehicle could scarcely move. It was the only time in China I actually felt
frightened. That Friday we were in Hong Kong, on a flight back to the U.S. I was in
hysterics, could not stop crying.

The next generation


Twelve years later, in 2001, we returned to China to teach for half a year, and could
not believe our eyes. Shanghai had become a modern city with tall skyscrapers, block
after block of high rise apartment buildings. The area on the other side of the Yangtze
River, which had been open farmland when we last visited the metropolis, had been

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transformed into an impressive business sector. A subway system replaced the crowded
buses of the past. The Chinese were now interested in money.
Our housing was a spacious, two-story duplex with a kitchen, living/dining room,
bedroom and bath downstairs and four rooms and bath upstairs, heating and airconditioning, in a compound half an hour away from our workplace. The president of the
college, an entrepreneur from Singapore, had bought it for his son, but it remained
unused for the time being. For those who could afford it, living accommodations could
comfortably house a family with their single child as well as his parents, who had lived
through the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s, and student demonstrations of the
1980s, and now could live out their lives in luxury.
Chinese citizens were no longer bound to their job, but could buy their own housing,
travel at will, invite us into their homes, change jobs whenever they wished. Resident
permits were still required if one wanted to live in the city so that the masses of peasants
from the countryside could not overwhelm urban areas. Nevertheless, rural men built the
high rises, living in the lower stories while building those above, often cheated by their
employers because they could be expelled from the city at any moment since they did not
have resident permits. Privately owned cars had replaced the multitude of bicycles. To
walk across the street at an intersection was literally to take your life into your hands.
Pedestrians paid no attention to traffic lights, nor did bicycles for that matter, and of
course cars turned right on red as you began to cross the road.
We were teaching in a private business college under the auspices of the city of
Shanghai, not the federal government. Passing the university exam was not an entrance
requirement.

The school was a for profit enterprise; the more students the better,

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regardless of qualifications. Discipline was a constant problem. The boys were the
outcome of the one-child policy, spoiled by two sets of grandparents and doting parents.
They skipped classes to play games in the internet cafs or basketball on the school
grounds. Another result of the birth-control policy is that there are twenty percent more
men than women in China today. Female infanticide is still the norm. Homosexuality, of
course, does not exist, according to one of our Chinese friends, despite the fact that I
witnessed male students holding hands under the table. During the classes the girls had
to share the latest gossip with one another. One of my students simply slept through the
final exam. One third of the classes failed the course, but I suspect the president changed
the grades after I left. It is now possible to buy a college education for your child.
On the crowded subways, respect for elders has returned to China. We were often
offered a seat by a young person. Many of them wore crosses on delicate chains around
their necks. The female administrator who shared our housing quarters was, alone in our
presence, an avowed Christian, meeting with other Christians in private homes. But she
had been invited to become a member of the Communist Partyseveral times. To refuse
was dangerous. She moved to Xingjian Province, as far away from Shanghai as possible,
to work in an orphanage supported by foreign funds. Our friend Zhou sent us an e-mail
in 2010 to wish us a Merry Christmas. Among other things, he mentioned that he was
enjoying reading the Bible.
Jytte met privately with a small group of students while I taught my classes. Every
time she mentioned our three years in China at the end of the 1980s, the students asked,
If you loved China so much, why did you leave?
Because of Tiananmen Square, she replied.

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The young people could not understand her replybecause the massacre there never
occurred. No one is ever allowed to talk about those horrible events. The younger
generation has not heard about them; the older generations dare not speak. Not until
2003 did Li Peng, whose failed negotiations with the students provoked the massacre,
retire. He was premier from 1987 to 1998.
Were the sacrifices made by the students on Tiananmen Square worthy? Chinese
citizens certainly enjoy more freedom than they did in the past, as long as they do not
question the political system.

Chairman Deng Xiaopeng abandoned communist

orthodoxy and turned to pragmatismas far as the economy is concerned. China has
risen from poverty to become the second largest economy in the world today, within a
period of two decades.

The cities have become modern metropolises, but in the

countryside, where eighty percent of the population lives, not much has changed, and
according to a masters thesis written, in Hong Kong, by Zhous daughter, the local party
officials still exercise their feudal powers over the farmers. The political leadership in
Beijing has already demonstrated, in 1989, how determined they are to hold on to their
power.

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