River Town_ Two Years On The Yangtze Part 17

I WAS AFRAID OF MISS OU and rarely dealt with her directly. During the first year I had learned that directness only encouraged her; once I asked her firmly to stop coming to my apartment at night, and she became very excited and showed up every evening for the next week. Like all of my Miss Ou stories, it seemed funny when told out of context, but when it happened I was only annoyed and depressed by how desperately unhappy she seemed. and rarely dealt with her directly. During the first year I had learned that directness only encouraged her; once I asked her firmly to stop coming to my apartment at night, and she became very excited and showed up every evening for the next week. Like all of my Miss Ou stories, it seemed funny when told out of context, but when it happened I was only annoyed and depressed by how desperately unhappy she seemed.

I took the money to Fei Xiaoyun, who worked in a different section of the same department store as Miss Ou. Fei Xiaoyun was possibly the prettiest xiaojie xiaojie I knew in town, as well as one of the kindest; she had been one of the first to talk with Adam and me when our Chinese was still bad. I often stopped to chat with her when I went into town, and I knew that she would understand the problem with Miss Ou. I gave her the money and explained the situation. I knew in town, as well as one of the kindest; she had been one of the first to talk with Adam and me when our Chinese was still bad. I often stopped to chat with her when I went into town, and I knew that she would understand the problem with Miss Ou. I gave her the money and explained the situation.

"You know that soon it's the Spring Festival," Fei Xiaoyun said. "There are many Chinese traditions at this time of year, and one of them is to give people money. So that's probably why she gave it to you-she just wants to show her kindness."

Years ago, Fei Xiaoyun had been a student at the college, and because of that the sound of her Mandarin was very pleasant. I listened to her clear tones and then I shook my head.

"During the Spring Festival people give money to children," I said. "I understand that tradition. But I'm not a child and you don't give this kind of money to an adult. Would it be appropriate if I gave you five hundred yuan because you're my friend?"

"No," she said. "That wouldn't be appropriate."

"It's the same way with this money. I think it's very strange and it embarra.s.ses me."

"Yes," she said, sighing. "It is a little strange."

That was what I liked the most about Fei Xiaoyun-she didn't feel the need to lie to me just because I was a waiguoren waiguoren. She had enough sympathy for Miss Ou to try to defend her, but at the same time she understood where I was coming from. Sadly she looked at the bills in the envelope.

"Will you please help me and give that back to Miss Ou?" I asked.

"Yes. I'll be sure to do that."

"You can tell her that I'm sorry I can't accept it. But please don't encourage her-I don't want her to bother me anymore. I don't want to be rude, but I don't want her to call me or come to my apartment again."

"I understand. I'll try to tell her that." But I could see that Fei Xiaoyun knew it was hopeless. Miss Ou was one of those who had slipped beyond the pale, and there wasn't much that you could do about people like that. I a.s.sumed that whenever I left Fuling for good there would be some kind of minor ha.s.sle with Miss Ou, which was precisely the way it would happen. But standing there in the department store I didn't worry too much about the future. In Fuling I always dealt with problems one at a time, and right now the most important issue was to give the money back.

I thanked Fei Xiaoyun and wished her a happy Spring Festival. She smiled, placing the envelope in her desk, and a couple weeks later she reported that she had returned it successfully. I put Miss Ou's health certificate in a folder where it could be forgotten. But sometimes I found myself thinking about the old photograph, and I wondered why the young woman had never married, and what had happened to make her the way she was today. For some reason I never threw the photograph away.

THE TEACHER.

"EVERYBODY NEEDS SOME KIND OF FAITH," says Kong Ming. "Whether it's religion, or Capitalist Democracy, or Communism-regardless of what the faith is, everybody needs something. My faith is the Communist Party. I first wanted to join when I was a college student, but at that time I wasn't accepted." says Kong Ming. "Whether it's religion, or Capitalist Democracy, or Communism-regardless of what the faith is, everybody needs something. My faith is the Communist Party. I first wanted to join when I was a college student, but at that time I wasn't accepted."

Teacher Kong is a Party Member and a former peasant and a current instructor of Ancient Chinese Literature in the Chinese department of Fuling Teachers College. He is thirty-three years old, and there are a few streaks of silver in his black hair. He has a soft smile that is shadowed by the barest hint of a mustache on his upper lip. He knows a great deal about Han Dynasty poetry, and his three-year-old son has the given name Songtao, which means "waves of pines": the sound a pine forest makes when the wind blows.

"It's a common phrase in Chinese poetry," Teacher Kong explains. "It was also used once by Sh.e.l.ley-I read it in translation. There's a poem he wrote about a forest, where he describes the trees making that same sound. I think the forest was in Italy but I'm not certain."

There are only 58 million Party Members in all of China-less than 5 percent of the population. For more than a decade, Teacher Kong was interested in joining, but it wasn't until last year that he was finally accepted, after a formal application and a series of interviews and evaluations that took months to complete. "In the past they used to look more carefully at your home and your family," he says. "Your background was very important. But that's not the way it is now-they look at your ideas instead, which is better.

"I think the basic goals of Communism-to help the poor, to make things equal-I think those are good goals. The Party certainly has problems, of course, and some people join for selfish reasons. They want more power, and after they become Party Members they only care about themselves. That's not good-that's why we have corruption, because a few people only care about themselves. And if the Communist Party gets worse and worse, of course the common people won't believe in it. This is the biggest problem right now. But I believe that most people still support the Party, and I certainly agree with its ideas. There always will be some problems, but the fundamental goals are good."

ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL GOALS of the Chinese Communist Party has always been stability for the average citizen, which traditionally has been maintained through the system of state-run work units. Teacher Kong's of the Chinese Communist Party has always been stability for the average citizen, which traditionally has been maintained through the system of state-run work units. Teacher Kong's danwei danwei is the college, and as a result his life has none of the scramble and uncertainty of the entrepreneur. His three-room apartment is owned and maintained by the college, which rents it for roughly thirty yuan a month-a sum so small that its payment is essentially a formality. The college also provides Teacher Kong with health insurance, as well as a retirement pension. At less than eight hundred yuan, his monthly salary isn't high, but the big perk is security, because it's unheard-of for the college to fire an employee. Teacher Kong has what Americans would call tenure, except that traditionally in Communist China such tenure has been given the moment you start your job, and it has been given to everybody who works for a state is the college, and as a result his life has none of the scramble and uncertainty of the entrepreneur. His three-room apartment is owned and maintained by the college, which rents it for roughly thirty yuan a month-a sum so small that its payment is essentially a formality. The college also provides Teacher Kong with health insurance, as well as a retirement pension. At less than eight hundred yuan, his monthly salary isn't high, but the big perk is security, because it's unheard-of for the college to fire an employee. Teacher Kong has what Americans would call tenure, except that traditionally in Communist China such tenure has been given the moment you start your job, and it has been given to everybody who works for a state danwei: danwei: teachers, government officials, post office employees, train attendants, dock laborers, factory workers. Under Chinese Communism, all of them have job security-"the iron rice bowl." teachers, government officials, post office employees, train attendants, dock laborers, factory workers. Under Chinese Communism, all of them have job security-"the iron rice bowl."

But already this term is slipping into the past tense, and people in Fuling tend to use it in one of two ways. Usually it is heavy with irony, as locals emphasize a wasteful system that needs further reform; but there are still those who use it nostalgically as they describe something comfortable that is steadily disappearing. The way this term is used depends on where one stands in the danwei danwei system, and increasingly the government is adopting the more critical viewpoint of the iron rice bowl. As a result, no rice bowl is entirely iron, and no system, and increasingly the government is adopting the more critical viewpoint of the iron rice bowl. As a result, no rice bowl is entirely iron, and no danwei danwei is without reform, and never is Socialism without those Chinese Characteristics that are developing into a strange marriage of Communism and Capitalism, constantly s.h.i.+fting and redefining the parameters of lives like Teacher Kong's. is without reform, and never is Socialism without those Chinese Characteristics that are developing into a strange marriage of Communism and Capitalism, constantly s.h.i.+fting and redefining the parameters of lives like Teacher Kong's.

The first major change will hit him later this year, in June of 1998, when his apartment will be privatized. No longer will he enjoy the formality of a thirty-yuan rent payment; instead, the apartment's fifty-four square meters will be sold to him for a little more than ten thousand yuan. It's a good price-but nevertheless a lot of money for a man who makes eight hundred yuan a month, and whose wife makes even less as a freelance photographer. There is, of course, the possibility that the apartment's value will rise, providing Teacher Kong with a profit in the long run-but nothing in the past has taught him to see an apartment as an investment. n.o.body in Fuling speaks of mortgages and refinancing, and it's unheard of for a common citizen to get a loan from a bank. To make a big purchase, you pay from your own savings, or you borrow from family and friends-or, if the money can't be found, you don't buy at all.

Other cracks are spreading across the iron bowl. Already the government has decided that the danwei danwei insurance system will be reformed. The details of this change have yet to be determined, but probably Fuling's teachers will have to buy their own policies from China's fledgling insurance companies. And soon Teacher Kong and his wife, Xu Lijia, will have to deal with the issue of schooling. Elementary schools in the East River district charge the standard fees-more than one hundred yuan per semester in tuition, along with book and uniform charges. Such expenses are not difficult to bear, but the quality of public education in Fuling has started to vary widely, because schools with good reputations can charge higher tuition fees, thus paying higher salaries to keep top-rate teachers. The East River inst.i.tutions are slipping in this compet.i.tive environment, and most teachers at the college choose to send their children to downtown schools. But such transfers are increasingly expensive-a few years ago it cost eight thousand yuan to change districts, and now the one-time fee has leaped to twelve thousand. How much higher will it be in three years, when Kong Songtao is ready for school? And is it worth the money? Are there other Characteristics that will crop up in the once-stable world of the Socialist insurance system will be reformed. The details of this change have yet to be determined, but probably Fuling's teachers will have to buy their own policies from China's fledgling insurance companies. And soon Teacher Kong and his wife, Xu Lijia, will have to deal with the issue of schooling. Elementary schools in the East River district charge the standard fees-more than one hundred yuan per semester in tuition, along with book and uniform charges. Such expenses are not difficult to bear, but the quality of public education in Fuling has started to vary widely, because schools with good reputations can charge higher tuition fees, thus paying higher salaries to keep top-rate teachers. The East River inst.i.tutions are slipping in this compet.i.tive environment, and most teachers at the college choose to send their children to downtown schools. But such transfers are increasingly expensive-a few years ago it cost eight thousand yuan to change districts, and now the one-time fee has leaped to twelve thousand. How much higher will it be in three years, when Kong Songtao is ready for school? And is it worth the money? Are there other Characteristics that will crop up in the once-stable world of the Socialist danwei danwei, leading to more difficult decisions for the family? And will these changes ever reach the point where Teacher Kong no longer speaks of Communism as a xinyang xinyang, a faith?

BUT EVEN AMID THESE CHANGES, Teacher Kong is not particularly worried. Decisions will be made when necessary; in the meantime, he teaches ancient Chinese literature and watches his son grow up. This equanimity has nothing to do with Teacher Kong's status as a Party Member, committed to the government's policies. Instead, he is calm for the same reason that so many other Chinese are strangely placid in the midst of changes that seem overwhelming to outsiders. Quite simply, he has seen far worse.

"When I was a boy we didn't have enough to eat," says Teacher Kong. "Especially in 1972 and 1973-those were very bad years. Part of it was that we lived in a remote place where the land wasn't very good, but also there were some problems a.s.sociated with the Cultural Revolution-problems with production and agricultural methods. It was a little better later in the 1970s, but still it wasn't too good. We never ate meat; I was always hungry. Every day we ate rice gruel, and we only had a little bit of that. Rarely did we have salt. We ate weeds, wildflowers, pine needles-I've eaten all those things.

"My mother died when I was five, after she gave birth to my sister. Of course, we didn't have milk or anything like that to help the baby, who died as well. I don't remember that. But at the age of ten my father died, which I do remember. He got sick suddenly, a very bad cold, and in three days he was dead.

"After that, things were even worse. My grandfather wasn't strong enough to work, and I was too young to do much, so my uncle had to support all of us. At that time the Production Team in that village was very bad, and they weren't of any help. Later, things improved and they were able to a.s.sist us, but for many years it was terrible."

All of Kong Ming's early life took place in the mountains outside Fengdu, a town that nowadays has about thirty thousand residents. From his childhood home it took an hour by foot to reach the nearest road, which was three hours by rough bus ride from Fengdu, and as a result Kong Ming never saw the town until he was fourteen years old. He helped his uncle farm the land, where they grew wheat and corn on the slopes, rice in the paddies, and vegetables where they could. "The work didn't seem hard back then," he says, "but it would be hard now, because I'm not used to it anymore." He looks at his hands and smiles, for now they are the hands of a teacher-ink-stained and soft, the dirt and calluses long gone.

"I go to the countryside now," he says, "and I can't believe how hard the work looks, even around the suburbs of Fuling, where the peasants are relatively well off. I can't believe I used to live in a place like that. And I see the students here at the college, most of whom are from peasant families, and I want to tell them that they shouldn't waste their parents' money. So many of our students are from backgrounds like mine, but they've already forgotten how hard the work is. On weekends they go out and waste so much money."

Only a few of his middle-school cla.s.smates made it to high school, and none of the others tested well enough to go to college. He was admitted to Sichuan Teachers College, a four-year inst.i.tution in Chengdu that is the top teachers college in the province. After graduating in 1988, he taught in a Fengdu trade school for six years, and then he was offered a job in Fuling.

Almost anybody in America who has made a rise like Teacher Kong's would be full of the confidence-and perhaps the arrogance-of the self-made man, but it is characteristically Chinese that such pride is completely absent. He rarely talks about his background, and he never emphasizes its difficulty, because he knows that things easily could have been worse.

"My family never had any trouble during the Cultural Revolution," he says, when asked about political problems. "We were too poor. After Landlords, there were three types of peasants: Rich Peasants, Middle Peasants, and Poor Peasants. We were very poor-when you were as poor as we were, you didn't have anything to worry about during the Cultural Revolution. As long as you didn't steal something, or kill somebody, or commit another crime, there wasn't anything to worry about. n.o.body in my family was persecuted.

"I can remember some of the village meetings at the end of the Cultural Revolution, in 1974 and 1975. I didn't really understand, of course, because I was only in elementary school, but I remember them clearly. They would take a Landlord, or maybe a Capitalist Roader-usually somebody who had been trying to sell firewood or vegetables-and they would have a meeting to criticize him. He'd stand like this."

Teacher Kong demonstrates: feet together, waist bent slightly, head bowed so that his chin is tucked against his chest. For a few seconds he stands completely still, and then he laughs and continues the story.

"They didn't do the airplane so much. Mostly they had to stand like this, and if they didn't bow their head far enough, the people would force them down. I remember one older man in the village who had been a Landlord. At all the meetings they made him stand for hours like that, with his head bowed. He would s.h.i.+ft his head to the side, because it was more comfortable that way, and finally after all the meetings his head was like that all the time. Even after the Cultural Revolution was finished, he would walk around the village with his head bent to the side."

Teacher Kong is still standing, and now he tilts his head to the left and walks across the room. He laughs again and shakes his head.

"When you're a child, all of that seems very exciting. Of course it has some influence on a child-you see something like that when you're small, and it affects your thoughts. At the time we thought it was fun. During a meeting they might criticize the father of a cla.s.smate, and then afterward we'd make fun of the child: 'Your father's a Counter-Revolutionary! Counter-Revolutionary! Counter-Revolutionary!' It wasn't something we understood, but we used to say it."

He imitates a child, pointing and laughing and covering his mouth as he says the words, Fan Geming, Fan Geming, Fan Geming Fan Geming, Fan Geming, Fan Geming. Counter-Revolutionary, Counter-Revolutionary, Counter-Revolutionary. And then suddenly he is serious again.

"Nowadays people look back at that time and say it was absurd. It's almost funny, because the things people did were so huangtong huangtong, so ridiculous. But back then, all of that was serious-it was real life. It wasn't funny. It's impossible to understand that today.

"And perhaps in the future it will be the same with what's happening now. Ever since Deng Xiaoping's Reform and Opening, everything has been much better, and we know that those problems of the Cultural Revolution will never happen again. But still it might look different in the future. Today we look back at the Cultural Revolution and say it's so ridiculous, but perhaps in the future people will look back at today, and maybe they'll say the same thing."

CHAPTER TEN.

Chinese New Year AT THE END OF THE FALL SEMESTER, our third-year students went off to do their practice teaching. In December, Adam and I made a trip south to watch a couple of our favorite students teach; they were training at middle schools in Wulong, a town up the Wu River near the border with Guizhou province. It was a very remote area and the schools were honored to receive foreign guests; for two days we gave speeches and attended banquets, and we played in an exhibition basketball game.

Adam and I had spent so much time together that we could give a good joint speech without a bit of planning; we knew how to play off each other and everything always went smoothly. We gave the Wulong speeches half in English and half in Chinese, and mostly we tried to get the students excited, which wasn't difficult. After every speech hundreds of them crowded around, asking for autographs, and we signed until finally the cadres dragged us off to some other event. We were scheduled to give speeches and attend meetings for virtually every hour that we were in Wulong.

After two days of that we were completely exhausted. Often my days in Sichuan ended like that, in absolute and total exhaustion. Part of it was that I was usually sick-I had chronic sinus infections from the pollution, which finally made me stop running, and my health was bad enough that I was infected with tuberculosis during that year. By the time I left Fuling, my Peace Corps medical folder would be swollen with the illnesses and injuries of those two years: tuberculosis, amebic dysentery, chronic sinusitis, a broken ear drum, a broken nose (from basketball), one eye with dramatically reduced eyesight (a mystery).

The climate wasn't healthy, but mostly I was run down by the pressures of daily life as a waiguoren waiguoren. It was tiring always to be the center of attention, and being a foreigner meant that you were more likely to attract complications. Often there was some minor crisis or issue that demanded my attention-a Miss Ou incident, or somebody from the teahouse calling me every day for a week, or something of that sort. I didn't really mind, because this was the life I had chosen; the teaching itself was rarely stressful, and I pushed myself in the city simply because I found my Chinese life fascinating.

Traveling usually added more stress, and there was nothing harder than spending time in a tiny river town like Wulong, where the pressures of Fuling were intensified. It was also rewarding, because the people were thrilled to see outsiders, but in the end it was impossible to maintain any control over your life in a place like that. The hardest thing for me to imagine was that someday foreigners might live in towns like Wulong. It was bound to happen as Reform and Opening accelerated, but I couldn't envision it, because it seemed to me that if a waiguoren waiguoren lived there he wouldn't last three months. The intentions of the community would be nothing but the best, but they would kill you with kindness-an endless parade of banquets and special events. After two days in Wulong, Adam and I became sick, and it took us half a week to recover. lived there he wouldn't last three months. The intentions of the community would be nothing but the best, but they would kill you with kindness-an endless parade of banquets and special events. After two days in Wulong, Adam and I became sick, and it took us half a week to recover.

We had five weeks' vacation for the Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, starting in mid-January. Sunni went to Thailand; Noreen headed off to southern China and Vietnam. Adam decided to take the boat to Shanghai and then swing south to visit Anne in Shenzhen. I planned to do some hiking alone in the Guizhou mountains, but the more I thought about travel in China the more clearly I remembered the last train ride I had taken in Xinjiang. I also thought about the exhaustion of Wulong, and my comfortable Fuling routines started to look better and better.

In six months I would leave the city. As the vacation started, I realized that my time in Fuling was limited, and I knew that there was no other place in China where I wanted to spend the Spring Festival. It was the biggest Chinese holiday, a time for family reunions; Fuling was my home, and so I stayed.

I WOKE UP EARLY IN THE MORNINGS and wrote for three or four hours. That was the English part of my day; usually it was over by ten or eleven in the morning. To clear the language from my head, I studied Chinese in my apartment for another hour, reading a newspaper or listening to tapes, and after that I went to lunch at the Students' Home. In the afternoons and evenings I walked around the city, and often I ate dinner with friends. Teacher Liao and her husband had me over a couple of times, as did Teacher Kong, and there were several people in the city who often invited me to eat. If n.o.body had me to dinner I ate in town or went back to the Students' Home, which was the same as eating with friends. and wrote for three or four hours. That was the English part of my day; usually it was over by ten or eleven in the morning. To clear the language from my head, I studied Chinese in my apartment for another hour, reading a newspaper or listening to tapes, and after that I went to lunch at the Students' Home. In the afternoons and evenings I walked around the city, and often I ate dinner with friends. Teacher Liao and her husband had me over a couple of times, as did Teacher Kong, and there were several people in the city who often invited me to eat. If n.o.body had me to dinner I ate in town or went back to the Students' Home, which was the same as eating with friends.

English became a language strictly for writing; during that month I spoke nothing but Chinese. Later I would look back on that holiday as my favorite time in China, because at last my Chinese life was settled, and I saw precisely how I fit into the local routines. All of it had to do with Ho Wei-not a single English department colleague invited me over or had anything to do with me during the vacation. Later that spring, I would discover that this was the result of explicit instructions, because from the moment Adam and I had arrived in Fuling, the department authorities had told the English faculty not to a.s.sociate closely with the foreign teachers. Like so many of the cadres' policies, it stemmed from a vague and pointless paranoia, and perhaps the saddest part was that it was extremely effective: I was much closer to the uneducated family at the local noodle restaurant than I was to the English-speaking teachers in the college. But by isolating me, the department authorities had simply pushed me to become something else, and now even if they changed their minds I would never trade the life I had for English-speaking friends.h.i.+ps. During the holiday I was the only waiguoren waiguoren in the city, but for the first time I no longer thought of myself as being alone. in the city, but for the first time I no longer thought of myself as being alone.

Groups of local children often came up to my apartment, because I had strings of holiday lights on my balcony and it was beautiful out there at night, high above the Wu River. Sometimes there were girls led by Ho Li, an eleven-year-old who shared my family name and called me gege gege, older brother. Other times I was visited by packs of wild boys who followed w.a.n.g Xuesong, the nine-year-old across the hall. He lived with his grandparents and his mother, who was divorced, and the adults in his apartment had strictly told him never to bother the waiguoren waiguoren neighbor. But Little w.a.n.g and I learned how to trick them; either he'd come with a group of other kids, or he would leave his apartment and walk loudly down the steps before turning around, sneaking back, and knocking softly on my door. I enjoyed talking with him; he would tell me about incidents on campus, life at school, and the fat kid in his cla.s.s, who was so thoroughly despised that he had been nicknamed Chiang Kai-shek. Little w.a.n.g liked to watch my television, look at my photographs, and shout at people from my balcony; I let him do whatever he wished. I missed my niece and nephew at home in Missouri and it was good to have a child around the apartment. neighbor. But Little w.a.n.g and I learned how to trick them; either he'd come with a group of other kids, or he would leave his apartment and walk loudly down the steps before turning around, sneaking back, and knocking softly on my door. I enjoyed talking with him; he would tell me about incidents on campus, life at school, and the fat kid in his cla.s.s, who was so thoroughly despised that he had been nicknamed Chiang Kai-shek. Little w.a.n.g liked to watch my television, look at my photographs, and shout at people from my balcony; I let him do whatever he wished. I missed my niece and nephew at home in Missouri and it was good to have a child around the apartment.

Together Little w.a.n.g and I strung nearly one hundred holiday lights across my balcony, and now at night you could see them from the Yangtze. It took us two hours to put all of them up, and afterward, as a reward, I let Little w.a.n.g throw all of the burned-out bulbs down to the sidewalk six floors below, where they popped and shattered nicely. I didn't feel particularly guilty about encouraging his delinquency; whenever the college workmen came to replace a light in my apartment they did exactly the same thing. And they seemed to enjoy it nearly as much as Little w.a.n.g, the workmen giggling as the gla.s.s exploded on the sidewalk.

Downtown Fuling glowed bright across the river in the evenings. The city streets were strung with red lanterns and strands of electric lights, and all of the trees were decorated. The small park at South Mountain Gate had been turned into a riot of color-its coal-stained shrubs and trees were covered with lights, dazzling in the heart of the city. Crowds gathered to look at the park and take photographs. As the holiday approached, it seemed that everybody in the city came out in the evenings, families and young couples and packs of children, all of them strolling aimlessly up and down the streets: buying snacks, gazing at shopfronts, watching the crowds. Soldiers had returned home on leave, and they marched proudly in their uniforms, keeping an eye out for xiaojies xiaojies. Food stands sprouted along the streets and stairways-barbecue grills, potato vendors, tofu men, hot pot stands-and it seemed that everybody ate out on the sidewalk. I did, too; I had always liked Fuling at night, but now everything had intensified, and I had never seen a place with so much energy. Even the pathetic trees along the main road finally seemed alive, glowing with bright white lights. These lights had been wired carelessly and sometimes they exploded and caught fire, the tree s.h.i.+ning proudly with a sudden burst of flame and smoke. The pedestrians would stop to watch, chattering and laughing, and after the flame died-the tree hissing softly, the smoke drifting upward-they kept walking through the brilliant city.

ON THE NIGHT BEFORE THE CHINESE NEW YEAR, the family at the Students' Home invited me to dinner. It was the most important meal of the year, a traditional time for family reunions-the equivalent of Christmas dinner in America. Huang Xiaoqiang closed the restaurant early, and together we walked up to his apartment at the foot of Raise the Flag Mountain.

Huang Kai was now two years old, and he had reached a stage where he was frightened by waiguoren waiguoren. From the beginning he had gone through cycles; he was a skittish child and sometimes he played with me and other times he was terrified by the sight of my face. It was a strange, mixed reaction-part fear and part fascination. Whenever a waiguoren waiguoren appeared on television, Huang Kai became excited and called out "Ho Wei!" His parents said that he often talked about me at home, but for some reason that winter he had become terrified of seeing me in person. appeared on television, Huang Kai became excited and called out "Ho Wei!" His parents said that he often talked about me at home, but for some reason that winter he had become terrified of seeing me in person.

The child started crying when I arrived at their apartment for the New Year's dinner. "He's been doing that off and on for an hour," his mother said. "I told him you were coming and he started to cry; I don't know why."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I wouldn't have come if I had known he'd be unhappy."

"No, that doesn't matter! He'll be fine-I'll just take him into another room for a while."

I sat on the couch with Huang Xiaoqiang and his father, Huang Neng, and together we watched television. That seemed to be what most Chinese people did for the Spring Festival-for two days they watched as much television as possible. The first year I taught in Fuling, I had given my students a vacation a.s.signment to write about what they did on the day of the holiday, because I was interested in learning about Chinese traditions. The second year I did not repeat that a.s.signment. It was depressing to read about a holiday older than Christmas whose celebration seemed to have been refined to gazing at televised floor shows.

The Huang men sat smoking. Neat formations of PLA soldiers marched across the television screen. I could hear Huang Kai crying from the back room, but he was starting to calm down. His mother talked to him softly, and occasionally I heard my name as she spoke to the child.

"Your soldiers in America don't march the same way ours do in China, do they?" asked Huang Xiaoqiang.

"No, they don't."

"When Hong Kong returned," asked Huang Neng, "were those soldiers American?"

His son corrected him: "Those were English soldiers!"

"Well, they marched differently from us Chinese-they marched like this." Huang Neng stood up and stomped his feet. He was a small man of forty-nine years and he had the wiry build of a peasant. He marched across the living-room floor, bringing his knees up high. "Is that how you march in America, too?"

"More or less."

"We think it looks strange-it certainly looked funny when Hong Kong returned!"

"In Western countries we don't march like you do in China, and we think the way you march looks strange. It reminds us of Xitele Xitele and and Nacui Nacui-Hitler and the n.a.z.is."

"Oh, I see-you don't like them because of the war, right?"

"That's right. It's the same as the way you Chinese see the j.a.panese."

"We Chinese don't like the j.a.panese at all."

"I know."

"They killed many Chinese people in Nanjing. And they bombed your America, too."

"Yes, they did. In Hawaii."

"In China we call them 'small devils,' or 'j.a.panese devils.' What do you call the j.a.panese in America?"

"During the war, people called them j.a.ps."

Huang Neng liked the sound of the word and he said it a few times: Jia-pahs, Jia-pahs, Jia-pahs.

"Is it an insult?" he asked.

"Yes. It's like saying 'small devil' here in China."

"So you Americans also don't like the j.a.panese?"

"I think that now most people like them, or at least they don't hate them; we don't call them j.a.ps anymore. But during the war Americans didn't like them."

"That's because they bombed your America."

"That's right."

"But then you dropped the atomic bomb on j.a.pan."

"Yes. We did that twice."

"America was the first country to have the atomic bomb."