China in Ten Words Part 6

In the past thirty years, China has developed at a remarkable pace, maintaining an average annual growth rate of 9 percent and in 2009 becoming the second-largest economy in the world. In 2010 China's revenues are set to hit 8 trillion yuan, and we are told proudly that we are on the verge of becoming the second-richest country in the world, trailing only the United States. But behind these dazzling statistics is another, unsettling one: in terms of per capita income China is still languishing at a low rank, one hundredth in the world. These two economic indicators, which should be similar or in balance, are miles apart in China today, showing that we live in a society that has lost its equilibrium or, as the popular saying has it, in a society where the state is rich but the people are poor.

Unequal lives give rise to unequal dreams. About ten years ago China Central Television interviewed Chinese youngsters on Children's Day, asking them what gift they would most like to receive. A boy in Beijing wanted a Boeing jet of his own, while a girl in the northwest said bashfully, "I want a pair of sneakers." Though much the same age, these two children were worlds apart in their dreams, and the girl is probably no more likely to get a pair of sneakers than the boy is to get his own plane. Such is China today: we live amid huge disparities between recent history and contemporary reality, and from one dream to the next. The comment from the student in Vancouver makes me feel these are disparities that Chinese society is perfectly prepared to accept.

I will tell one more true story to end this chapter, an episode set in one of China's southern cities. There, amid the myriad cl.u.s.ters of high-rise buildings and the packed shopping malls, a sixth-grader was kidnapped. The two kidnappers embarked on this crime in desperation, having hardly a penny to their names and no experience whatsoever in kidnapping. After getting nowhere in their search for employment, they decided to take matters into their own hands. Without planning or preparation, they seized a pupil on his way home from primary school one day, clapped their hands over his mouth, and dragged him, struggling, into an unused factory workshop. Then they asked the boy for his mother's mobile number, went to a callbox nearby, and delivered instructions about the ransom. They didn't realize they needed to call from some other place completely, and the authorities, tracing the call, quickly sealed off the area. Before long they were in police custody.

While waiting for the ransom to be delivered, the kidnappers ran out of money, so one of them went out and borrowed just enough to buy two box lunches, gave one to the boy, and shared the other with his accomplice. On his rescue, the boy told the police, "They're so poor! Just let them go, won't you?"

*chaju.

Lei Feng, killed in a freak accident in 1962, aged twenty-one, was posthumously lionized as a devoted servant of Chinese socialism.

The Long March is the name given to the arduous trek by Communist forces during the mid-1930s, when they escaped from encirclement by Nationalist troops in central China to a safe haven in the northwest.

gra.s.sroots.

Five or six years ago a ritzy development began to go up in a bustling downtown area of one of China's main cities. When completed, it rose more than forty stories; its accommodations included six luxury apartments, each more than twenty thousand square feet in size and lavishly equipped with top-of-the-line kitchen and bathroom fixtures from well-known international brands. These hundred-million-yuan apartments were all snapped up as soon as they came on the market, and the first person to purchase one was not a celebrated real estate agent, financial investor, or information-technology baron but an inconspicuous actor on China's economic stage: an impresario of blood sales or, in common parlance, a blood chief. This wealthy blood chief was such a free spender he purchased the apartment outright with a single payment. It is a good place to begin my story of the gra.s.sroots.*

In my novel Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, published in 1995, I drew on childhood memories to create a character named Blood Chief Li. At that time "gra.s.s roots" in Chinese simply meant "roots of gra.s.s," but within a few years we imported from English a new meaning, and in China "gra.s.sroots" has come to be used in a broad sense to denote disadvantaged cla.s.ses that operate at some remove from the mainstream and the orthodox.

I remember as a child seeing a man pay peasants for giving blood at the hospital. He dressed in a white coat just like a doctor, but it was always grubby, with dirty gray stains on its elbows and seat; a cigarette invariably dangled from the corner of his mouth. Among prospective blood vendors he was known simply as Blood Chief, and he exercised unquestioned authority over his empire of blood. Although his status in the hospital was lower than that of the most ordinary nurse, he had a profound grasp of the benefits that accrue from steady, daily acc.u.mulation, and over the pa.s.sage of years he quietly confirmed his standing as a king of the gra.s.sroots. In the eyes of the peasants who, from poverty or from some yet more dire cause, had come forward to sell blood, he was sometimes even seen as a savior.

Hospitals in those days had well-stocked blood banks. From the start he made the most of that circ.u.mstance, planting seeds of uncertainty in the minds of the blood vendors as they journeyed from afar, sparking anxiety as to whether they would be able to find a buyer for the blood flowing in their veins. And he effortlessly cultivated their respect so that it came straight from their hearts, and on that basis he imparted to these simple country folk an understanding of the importance of gifts. Although most of them were illiterate, they knew that interaction is essential to one's relationships with others. Through him they came to realize that gifts not only are the most vital prerequisite for interaction but actually const.i.tute an alternative language, one predicated on a certain degree of personal loss but also able to communicate such sentiments as favor, homage, and esteem. Thus he made them understand that, before leaving home, they should make a point of picking up a couple of heads of cabbage, or a few tomatoes and a handful of eggs. When they presented to him their cabbages, tomatoes, or eggs, they would be paying him a compliment and addressing him with deference, whereas if they arrived empty-handed, this would be to forfeit language and lose the power of speech.

For decades he managed his kingdom with unstinting devotion. Then times changed: hospital blood banks began to encounter shortages, blood purchasers had to fawn on blood vendors, and the authority of hospital blood chiefs was undermined. But this did not worry him in the least. He was now retired and took advantage of the opportunity to become a real blood chief, no longer affiliated with a hospital in the traditional manner.

This blood chief pa.s.sed away some ten years ago, but before he died, he pulled off an amazing feat. In late 1995 my father, who had just finished reading Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, told me over the phone that the blood chief had found a way to greatly boost his retirement income. As China's market economy began to thrive, the chief discovered that blood prices differed from one region to another, and in short order he organized close to a thousand blood vendors to travel some three hundred miles, through a dozen different counties, all the way from Zhejiang to the county in Jiangsu where he knew blood commanded the highest price. His followers thereby increased their earnings, and his own wallet bulged like a ball that's just been pumped up.

What an epic journey that must have been! I have no idea how he managed to induce this band of misfits, all strangers to one another, to form such a motley gra.s.sroots crew. He surely must have established some code of discipline, emulating a military chain of command and conferring limited powers on a dozen or so members of this untidy rabble, authorizing them to give free rein to their respective talents, whether threats or cajolery, flattery or curses. His officers kept those thousand foot soldiers in line, while he simply needed to oversee his dozen officers.

Their collective enterprise bears some resemblance to the operations of a mobile infantry unit during wartime, or perhaps a religious pilgrimage in full swing, as this dense ma.s.s of humanity clogged up long sections of highway. Men argued and women gossiped, clandestine affairs were conducted, and the unlucky were laid low by sudden illness. No doubt there were touching cases too of mutual support, or true love coming to fruition. You would be hard put to find anywhere a throng of people as colorful and diverse as this ragtag army of gra.s.sroots blood vendors.

If my childhood blood chief had not died so early, he would surely have acc.u.mulated enough wealth to move into a luxury apartment too, although he was not, of course, in the same league as the blood chief in the big city, who exercised even greater authority and is said to have commanded the loyalty of a hundred thousand blood vendors. Such is Chinese reality today: although blood vendors must hand over a percentage of their earnings to their boss, they still make more money than if they were to sell blood independently.

This big blood chief enjoys an opulent lifestyle under an a.s.sumed name, and n.o.body knows just how big a fortune he has. Whenever blood bank reserves run low, all the big hospitals eagerly seek his services, and sometimes he is so heavily booked that it can be impossible to set up a dinner date. To him business is business, and he will make sure that the blood he controls flows in the direction of whichever hospital offers the best price for his product.

Blood selling, which seems such a humble and demeaning profession, turns out to be just the kind of story on which Forbes magazine would love to do a feature: a quintessential rags-to-riches story. Another such tale concerns a trash recycler sometimes known as the Beggar Chief but more often dubbed the Garbage King. Although he is Garbage King in only one district of one munic.i.p.ality, he has managed to ama.s.s a fortune in the many millions. In Chinese cities every residential neighborhood has people who specialize in recycling trash; they buy cheaply items that the residents plan to throw away and, after sorting, sell them at a slightly higher price to bigger recyclers-like the Garbage King. After jacking up the prices, he resells the waste to manufacturers, enabling them to save on raw materials. When this millionaire Garbage King was interviewed, he struck a modest, una.s.suming pose. How had he discovered this business opportunity? the reporter wondered. "I just did the things n.o.body else was willing to do," he replied.

This straightforward answer reveals a secret about China's economic miracle. Chinese people today, inspired by a fearless gra.s.sroots spirit, have propelled the economy forward by seizing every possible opportunity. So it is that our economic life is full of kings: the Paper Napkin King, the Socks King, the Cigarette Lighter King, and so on. In Zhejiang there is a b.u.t.ton King who oversees a b.u.t.ton range so extensive it boggles the mind. The profit on a single b.u.t.ton may be minuscule, but so long as people go on wearing clothes, there'll be a demand for his b.u.t.tons everywhere in the world. The same goes for paper napkins, socks, and cigarette lighters: however humble such products may be, the minute they claim a significant market share, they are perfectly capable of becoming an empire of wealth.

A man I know runs a BMW dealership in the city of Yiwu. One day he was visited by an old man from the countryside, with a dozen or more children and grandchildren cl.u.s.tered around him. They all tumbled out of a van and bustled their way into the dealership, and the younger members of the family began to select a car for the well-heeled patriarch. A BMW 760Li with a sticker price of more than 2 million yuan caught his eye. "Why is this car so expensive?" he asked. But when the dealer listed all its advanced features and technological refinements, the old man just shook his head and said he couldn't understand a word. Finally the dealer pointed at the driver's seat. "It took two cows to make this," he said. "The leather is cut only from the finest part of the hide."

The old peasant, who as a boy had tended cattle long before he struck it rich, was won over right away. "If two cowhides were used just for one seat, this has to be a top-of-the-line vehicle!" he marveled. He bought the 760Li for himself and a.s.signed cars in the BMW 5 series to his sons and daughters-in-law and cars in the 3 series to the youngest generation. When it came time to pay for their purchases, his family toted in several large cardboard boxes from the van, each filled to the brim with cash. The paterfamilias had no confidence in checks and credit cards; for him only currency notes counted as proper money.

On the basis of his life experience and simple, down-to-earth way of thinking, the old man immediately understood why the BMW 760Li was so expensive. Some Chinese gra.s.sroots may get involved in business without any knowledge of economics or any management experience, but they are perfectly capable of getting rich quick, thanks to their distinctive personal outlook on things. Just as the old man had his way of appreciating the 760Li, the gra.s.sroots way of thinking-even if it seems a lot like that of a country b.u.mpkin-can enable one to get to the heart of the matter in no time at all.

With all the changes since 1978, there's no end to such stories. China's economic miracle of the past thirty years, it's fair to say, is an agglomeration of countless individual miracles created at the gra.s.sroots level. China's gra.s.sroots dare to think and dare to act; in the tide of economic development they will adopt any method that suits their purposes, and they are bold enough to try things that are illegal or even criminal. At the same time China's legal system has developed only slowly, leaving plenty of loopholes for the gra.s.sroots to exploit and putting all kinds of profits within their reach. Add to that their dauntless courage, which comes from their having nothing to lose, since they began with nothing at all. "The barefoot do not fear the shod," the Chinese say, or as Marx put it, "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains, and they have a world to win."

If you look at the names that appear on the recent wealth rankings in China, almost all of these multimillionaires have come up from the gra.s.s roots. These honor rolls tell stories of sudden upswings-of empty-handed paupers transformed overnight into multimillionaires, of the glory and wealth that partner fame and fortune. At the same time they recount tales of sudden ruin, showing how disgrace follows glory and how wealth can vanish in the blink of an eye. Judging by the Hurun Rich List, during the past ten years there have been no fewer than forty-nine gra.s.sroots tyc.o.o.ns who either have been arrested or have fled to avoid arrest. Their crimes come in all shapes and sizes: misappropriation of funds, conspiracy to rob, conspiracy to swindle, corporate bribery, fabrication of financial bonds, illegal diversion of public funds, irregular seizure of agricultural land, contract fraud, credit certificate fraud, and so on. No wonder the Rich List is popularly known as the Pigs-for-Slaughter List. In China there's a saying, "People fear getting famous just as pigs fear getting fat," reflecting the observation that fame invites a fall just as a fattened pig invites the butcher. On the other hand, as Rupert Hoogewerf (aka Hu Run), the creator of the Rich List, has noted, "Pigs that deserve to die will die, whether or not they make it onto the rich list."

In November 2008 Huang Guangyu, who rose from humble beginnings in a small Guangdong village to become known as the wealthiest man in China, was arrested by Public Security on a charge of gross financial misconduct. After the launch of Guomei Electronics in 1987, within ten years he had developed it into the country's largest household appliance retailer. In 2008 he was listed as the richest man in China for the third time, with personal wealth of 43 billion yuan. In May 2010 a court found him guilty of "illegal operations," insider trading, and bribery and sentenced him to a fourteen-year prison term. Several years ago, when Huang Guangyu topped the Rich List for the first time, he was asked by a journalist, "This Richest Man t.i.tle of yours-did you have to pay for it?"

"Hu Run p.i.s.ses me off," Huang replied. "Why would I give him money? That list of his is like an arrest warrant-whoever's on it ends up in big trouble!"

The Rich List-or the Pigs-for-Slaughter List, if you prefer-is just the tip of the iceberg in China today. Off the list, in the ubiquitous battle for economic advantage, many more gra.s.sroots are performing their own dramatic rises and staggering falls. Or, as Chinese bloggers like to say, most pigs get slaughtered even before they're fattened up. And on today's stage, which lurches so unpredictably from comedy to tragedy, none of us has any idea when our end will come.

When we look back at the Cultural Revolution and all the political infighting it involved, there's no end to the stories of those who rose swiftly from the gra.s.sroots, only to drop like a stone afterward.

In August 1973 something unexpected happened at the Tenth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. It was no surprise that Mao Zedong sat in the central chair on the presiding bench or that Premier Zhou Enlai sat on his right, but everyone was amazed to see a mere thirty-eight-year-old sitting on Mao's left. After Mao announced the opening of the congress and Zhou read the political report, this newcomer calmly began to read the "Report on the Revision of the Party Const.i.tution."

His name was w.a.n.g Hongwen, and at the start of the Cultural Revolution he had been simply a security guard at a Shanghai textile mill. In November 1966 he and a few other workers set up what soon became a famous militant organization, Shanghai Workers' Revolutionary Rebel Headquarters. After that he enjoyed a meteoric rise, and in less than seven years he was elevated from a night watchman to a vice premier in the Politburo, No. 3 in the hierarchy after Mao and Zhou.

But good times don't last long, and just three years later-after Mao died and as the Cultural Revolution ended-he became a prisoner along with the other members of the so-called Gang of Four: Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, and Yao Wenyuan. In their show trial in December 1980 this celebrated revolutionary rebel was sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes that included "organizing and leading a counterrevolutionary clique."

In China's overheated political campaigns, revolution was just a short step away from counterrevolution. In popular idiom it was a matter of "flipping pancakes": everyone was just a pancake sizzling on the griddle, flipped from side to side by the hand of fate. Yesterday's revolutionary became today's counterrevolutionary, just as today's counterrevolutionary would become tomorrow's revolutionary.

After that w.a.n.g Hongwen was gradually forgotten. Left to stew alone in his prison cell, he could only sigh and moan at the thought of his fleeting days of glory. Wracked by liver cancer, he came to a desolate end; when he died, in August 1992 at the age of fifty-seven, only his wife and brother attended his cremation.

How many stories of rebels' topsy-turvy careers did the Cultural Revolution tell? Too many to count, and way too many to mention. If all these stories were laid out one after another, they would stretch as endlessly as a highway and be as hard to tally as the trees in a forest.

This makes one think of Liu Shaoqi, who died wretchedly in the early Cultural Revolution. After many months of humiliation and abuse at the hands of militants, this former head of state died in November 1969, at the age of seventy-one. So much time had pa.s.sed since his last haircut that his white locks dangled down to his shoulders, and his naked corpse was covered only with a single sheet. In the ledger recording the storage of his ashes his occupation was given as "Unemployed."

During the Cultural Revolution, as I moved from childhood to adolescence, the grim reaper twice made special visits to our town. The first was right at the beginning, when Communist Party officials, once so awesome, were denounced as capitalist-roaders and some chose death rather than subject themselves to further mistreatment. The second was when the Cultural Revolution ended: the rebels who had ruled the roost for ten years suddenly became followers of the Gang of Four, and it was their turn to be purged. Some felt the end of the world was nigh and, like the capitalist-roaders ten years earlier, took their own lives by this means or that.

One of the leading militants in our county during the Cultural Revolution, having risen precipitously from the gra.s.sroots, threw his weight around every chance he could. When I was young, I would often see him at struggle sessions; and when his voice blasted from the loudspeakers, it sounded like two or three voices overlaid on top of each other. As he read out his denunciations, he would keep an eagle eye on the row of capitalist-roaders, with their heads bowed, and if one of them made the slightest movement, he would break off his tirade and kick the unlucky victim fiercely in the back of the legs to bring him to his knees. When Mao Zedong set up "three-in-one" revolutionary committees with a mix of veteran cadres, military men, and Red Guard militants, this activist secured a place on the county revolutionary committee and was soon promoted to the rank of deputy chief, confirming his legitimacy in the new order. When he walked the streets of our town, everyone vied to claim acquaintance with him and hailed him with a warm, respectful greeting; but he would respond simply with a perfunctory nod, a reserved expression on his face. If we children hailed him with a cheery "Chief," however, he would wave to us in a friendly way.

After the Cultural Revolution he was placed in solitary confinement during the campaign to purge followers of the Gang of Four. My cla.s.smates and I had just graduated from high school then; feeling at loose ends, our curiosity piqued, a few of us went to observe his interrogation. We knew he had been shut up in a little room behind the department store warehouse, so we clambered up on top of the wall just outside and sat there with our legs dangling. Through an open window we could see him sitting on a stool, facing two questioners on the other side of a table. They banged the table and harangued him just as mercilessly as the rebels had interrogated capitalist-roaders. This militant, once so intimidating, was now a broken man, abjectly confessing all the crimes he had committed as a lackey of the Gang of Four. He started crying at one point, breaking off from the recitation of his misdeeds to mention that his mother had died just a few days earlier. It upset him terribly that he could not attend the wake, and suddenly he wailed as loudly as a child, "My mom was spitting blood! She filled up a whole washbasin with it!"

This simply provoked his interrogator further. "Don't talk nonsense!" he barked, rapping the table. "How could your mom have so much blood?"

One morning when the guard was in the toilet, the man made good his escape, fleeing along the seawall for a good five miles before he finally came to a stop. There he stood, gazing blankly at the boundless sea, oblivious to the waves crashing on the sh.o.r.e. Head bowed, he walked over to a corner shop, stood at the counter for a minute, and emptied all the cash out of his pockets. He bought two packs of cigarettes and a box of matches, then returned to the seawall.

Peasants who were working in the fields nearby noticed how he lingered there, chain-smoking steadily. When he had finished both packs, he watched in a daze as they went about their jobs, then turned, scrambled down the embankment, and threw himself into the seething waves. By the time his captors closed in on his location, there was no sign of him, just a heap of cigarette stubs on the seawall. It wasn't until several days later that his body washed up on a beach farther along the coast. His corpse was so swollen, I heard, that it was hardly recognizable. He was still wearing shirt and trousers, but shoes and socks had been scoured away.

The Cultural Revolution induced gra.s.sroots from society's underbelly to throw caution to the winds, and in a revolution where "to rebel was justified" they gained opportunities to soar. Completely ordinary people enjoyed such rapid vertical elevation that they were said to have "taken off in a helicopter." With the end of the Cultural Revolution these people slipped from their lofty perches and found themselves in free fall, plunging through the gra.s.sroots layer to the level below, where only jailbirds roosted. "What goes up comes down even quicker" was the new line used to mock these rebels on the slide.

Of course there were even more people whose rises and falls followed a less dramatic trajectory. In the town where I lived there were a number of such cases, and I will now introduce one of them.

After the January Revolution of 1967 swept across China and government seals everywhere exchanged hands, rebels and Red Guard organizations that had failed to s.n.a.t.c.h control of official seals were not reduced to total despair, for it occurred to them that they could simply carve their own. Thus self-appointed gra.s.sroots power structures popped up everywhere in dazzling array, like the Tang poet's evocation of the scene after a snowstorm: "Spring seems to stretch as far as the eye can see/Pear blossoms bloom white on tree after tree."

It was against this backdrop that our hero rose to prominence, establishing an Invincible Mao Zedong Thought Publicity Team, with himself as its self-proclaimed leader. He must have been about forty years old then. In the past he had been a timorous creature and a man of few words. He was not the sort who swaggered along in the middle of the street; rather, he kept his eyes cast down as he walked and tended to hug the wall. Even children could push him around.

At first it was the older boys in the alley who would give him a hard time, just to show off. As he walked past, a boy would veer into his path and deliver a stinging body check. His reaction was simply to stand still, scowl at the boy who knocked into him, and then walk off without a word. I admired those older boys for being so bold as to bully a grown-up, and later on we preschoolers worked up the courage to hara.s.s him too, tossing pieces of gravel at him as he pa.s.sed. He would turn and throw us a dirty look, then walk on without saying a word. This made us feel on top of the world, and we reveled in our newfound power.

When the roiling tide of revolution swept our way, people were quick to attach themselves to one rebel organization or another. This meek, self-effacing individual found the temptation impossible to resist and eagerly offered his services to the cause. Perhaps because he seemed so unprepossessing, the rebel organizations wrote him off as lacking revolutionary fiber and rejected his application for admission. Helpless and desperate, he resorted to establishing his own one-man rebel organization. He had an Invincible Mao Zedong Thought Publicity Team seal carved and hung it impressively from his waistband.

Thus began his days of excitement and distinction. I remember that every time he appeared on the streets of our town, his jacket was always stuffed inside his trousers-the only person in the whole town to wear his clothes that way-for this rendered his seal all the more conspicuous. A whistle hung from a string around his neck, and in his hand he clutched a copy of Quotations from Chairman Mao as he strutted back and forth, head held high and chest thrown out, his eyes scanning the people in the street. Often without warning he would give a blast on his whistle, and when the pa.s.sersby stopped to look at him, he would clasp his Little Red Book in both hands. "Everyone turn to page twenty-three. We will now read a pa.s.sage by Chairman Mao," he'd loudly instruct.

In those days most people carried a Little Red Book with them at all times; as soon as they heard his summons they pulled their books out of their pockets and, at his prompting, earnestly began to read aloud quotations of Chairman Mao. After finishing page twenty-three, they would find he had other pages earmarked for them to read-pages forty-eight, fifty-six, seventy-nine, and more-until he judged it time to bring their pious study session to a close. "That's all for today," he would solemnly declare, closing his copy of the Little Red Book. "I trust you'll all continue your reading when you get home."

"Yes, we will," the pa.s.sersby would answer, relieved to have recovered their freedom.

Some people were deeply embarra.s.sed that their failure to carry the Little Red Book had been exposed to the world, but he did not take them to task for being so remiss. "Just don't forget the Little Red Book tomorrow," he said amiably.

With this ideological policeman on the loose, everybody made sure to take the Little Red Book with them when they went out. As soon as his whistle blew, the resounding peals of Mao Zedong's quotations would echo along the street.

We children no longer took liberties with him, a.s.suming mistakenly that only the biggest rebel leader around would be able to bring so many militants and ordinary townspeople to heel with a single blast of his whistle. We didn't realize he was basking in borrowed glory, for in those days everyone was easily cowed by the Little Red Book.

We became his admirers. Other rebels didn't give us a second glance, but he was very willing to establish cordial ties with us. We would swarm around as soon as he appeared and tag along behind as he walked down the street. We also followed his sartorial lead and tucked our jackets inside our pants, although-much to our disappointment-we had no seals to hang from our waistbands. He was generous enough, however, to allow us a feel of his Invincible Mao Zedong Thought Publicity Team seal and would stand in the street with a patient smile on his face no matter how long we spent fingering it. But when we pushed things a bit too far and asked whether we could hang this wonderful seal from our waistbands for a moment, he would sternly refuse. "That would amount to a power seizure," he warned.

This rebel without a clique enjoyed good relations with the townsfolk. Schools no longer offered cla.s.ses and factories no longer operated shifts-everyone was too busy making revolution to go to work-so some thought they might as well take the opportunity to travel and visit family and friends in other parts of the country. As long as they had a letter of introduction from a revolutionary rebel organization, they did not need to pay for their ticket or hotel room, so they would turn to the one-man propaganda team for help. He greeted such suppliants warmly and never turned anybody down. To meet the growing demand, he kitted himself out with another revolutionary prop: a faded military satchel strung over his shoulders, stuffed with a thick sheaf of mimeographed letters of introduction.

At the top of the letter were printed the words "Supreme Directive" and underneath was a quotation of Mao Zedong's: "We hail from all corners of the country and have joined together for a common objective.... All people in the revolutionary ranks must care for each other, must love and help each other." A standard form letter followed.

He was thrilled every time someone asked him for a letter of introduction. He would plop himself down on the ground, take a blank sheet out of his satchel, and rest it on his thigh. "Where is it you want to go?" he would ask, then conscientiously jot the answer down. Each time he would issue two letters, one authorizing free transportation, the other authorizing free lodging. Then he would produce from his pocket a tin of red ink paste, untie his belt, and detach his Invincible Mao Zedong Thought Publicity Team seal, dip it in the ink paste, and carefully impress it on the paper.

Later, owing to an unfortunate mishap, his life in the fast lane screamed to a halt. One day he must have been in a rush when going to the bathroom, and when he pulled down his pants a little too vigorously, his Invincible Mao Zedong Thought Publicity Team seal slipped off his waistband and tumbled into the cesspit below. As luck would have it, a Red Guard was using the bathroom too, and trouble followed. The seal was famous throughout our town, and everyone knew that the characters for "Mao Zedong Thought" were carved on it. "What, you dropped 'Mao Zedong Thought' in the cesspit?" the Red Guard cried, scandalized.

In a second, life's high tide suddenly began to recede. After delivering his scolding, the Red Guard never brought the matter up again. But the guilt-stricken publicist subjected himself to endless self-reproach. His jacket was no longer tucked inside his trousers, and the satchel over his shoulders was no more to be seen. The whistle still hung from his neck, but when he gave it a halfhearted blow and pa.s.sersby respectfully brought our their Little Red Books, expecting to read Mao's quotations aloud under his supervision, he would simply burst into tears and slap himself in the face, denouncing himself as a counterrevolutionary. "I deserve to die a thousand deaths!" he cried in distress. "I dropped 'Mao Zedong Thought' down the toilet."

The pa.s.sersby with their outstretched Little Red Books were stunned, and it took a few moments for them to understand what had happened. Naturally they felt it inc.u.mbent on them to sternly criticize his faux pas; the fashion of the day, after all, was to advertise one's revolutionary standpoint at the earliest opportunity, whatever the circ.u.mstances. But n.o.body seriously considered him a counterrevolutionary, and since everyone knew him to be a decent fellow, he was never subjected to a struggle session.

But he continued to blow his whistle and heap abuse on himself in public, to the point where pa.s.sersby got quite annoyed. One day somebody reached his limit. "A counterrevolutionary like you," he cursed. "What makes you think you've got the right to blow that d.a.m.n whistle at us all the time?"

The whistle-blower turned pale as a sheet. "I'm so sorry," he said, bowing his head penitently. "This won't happen again."

When he next appeared, a whistle no longer hung from his neck. He had changed his outfit and now was wearing a papier-mache dunce cap on his head and clutching a broom in his hand. He would spend the whole day sweeping the streets of our little town, fearing that some awful retribution might descend on his head at any moment.

As time pa.s.sed and the Cultural Revolution ended, the man reverted to his original self, pa.s.sing his days in quiet obscurity, and n.o.body paid the slightest attention to him if they pa.s.sed him in the street. With that he was completely forgotten by our little town. When I went back home a few years ago and mentioned this man to some of my childhood companions, not one of them could remember him, and when I recounted these stories that left such an impression on me, they looked so surprised it was as though this was the first time they had ever heard them. I tried to jog their memories, stressing how he would blow his whistle and orchestrate readings of Mao's quotations. Finally it rang a bell with one of them, and he promised to make some inquiries. A couple of days later he came by to report that the man had died ten years earlier. "He's blowing his whistle in the underworld now," he chuckled, "leading the lost souls in a recital of Mao Zedong's selected sayings."

I looked baffled. "He kept his whistle lovingly all those years," my friend explained, "and his dying wish was to have it deposited with his ashes." In keeping with age-old conceptions of death as an extension of life, he had asked for his most cherished possession to accompany him into the next world, for use whenever needed.

For him, I realized, the whistle signified the most vital symbol of his existence. Without the Cultural Revolution, there would have been no whistle, and no ups and downs. Although his rise and fall can hardly be compared to w.a.n.g Hongwen's, he did in his own way scale a peak, only to tumble off the other side. If on his deathbed he thought back to those glorious days when he could blow his whistle and lead everyone in a reading of Mao's quotations, he would have felt, I'm sure, some satisfaction at a job well done.

As I look back over China's sixty years under communism, I sense that Mao's Cultural Revolution and Deng's open-door reforms have given China's gra.s.sroots two huge opportunities: the first to press for a redistribution of political power and the second to press for a redistribution of economic power.

*caogen.

copycat.

The story of contemporary China can be told from many different angles, but here I want to tell it in terms of the copycat, a national myth playing itself out on a popular level.

The word here rendered as "copycat"* originally denoted a mountain hamlet protected by a stockade or other fortifications; later it acquired an extended meaning as a hinterland area, home to the poor. It was also a name once given to the lairs of outlaws and bandits, and the word has continued to have connotations of freedom from official control.

In the past few years, with the increasing popularity of copycat cell phones that offer multiple functions at a low price, the word "copycat" has given the word "imitation" a new meaning, and at the same time the limits to the original sense of "imitation" have been eroded, allowing room for it to acquire additional shades of meaning: counterfeiting, infringement, deviations from the standard, mischief, and caricature. With visas such as these one can gain entry to the Land of Imitation and take up residence in Mountain Hamlet. It would not be going too far to say that "copycat" has more of an anarchist spirit than any other word in the contemporary Chinese language.

Copycat cell phones began by imitating the functions and designs of such brands as Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson; to muddy the waters further, they gave themselves names like Nokir, Samsing, and Suny Ericcsun. By plagiarizing existing brands and thereby skimping on research and development costs, they sold for a fraction of the price of established products; given their technical capabilities and trendy appearance, they soon cornered the low end of the consumer market.

With the rapid growth of the copycat industry there is now a dizzying variety of knockoff phone brands. One has recently appeared in the stores under the mantle of Harvard University. Claiming to be manufactured by "Harvard Communications," the brand presents President Obama as its spokesman and sports a beaming Obama on its advertis.e.m.e.nts. His smile, seen everywhere these days, has to count as the most famous-and the most powerful-smile in the world, but now it's been hijacked and made to appear in promotions for Chinese copycat cell phones. "This is my Blackberry," Obama tells us with a grin, "the Blockberry Whirlwind 9500!"

Obama is today's symbol of that long-running American dream, but I am pretty sure he could never have imagined such an outlandish misuse of his image, and Americans at large would no doubt be flabbergasted to see their president serving as brand amba.s.sador for a Chinese knockoff. We Chinese take it all in our stride, for we don't see anything wrong with copycatting Obama. After all, in China today, with the exception of the party in power and our current government leaders-plus retired but still living party and state leaders-everybody else can be copycatted and ridiculed, imitated and spoofed, at will.

Thirty-three years after his death, Mao Zedong-our erstwhile Great Leader, Great Teacher, Great Commander, and Great Helmsman-like Obama came to play the starring role in a Chinese copycat advertis.e.m.e.nt. On October 1, 2009, the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the contemporary Chinese state, a karaoke parlor in Zhejiang posted two huge red banners on either side of its door. On them Mao Zedong appeared in military uniform and cap, with microphone in hand, belting out a song; he looked nothing like the charismatic leader of the revolutionary era and much more like the kind of petty bureaucrat who haunts nightclubs at all hours of the night. In the bottom right corner were listed such patriotic anthems as "China, Today Is Your Birthday," "My Motherland," "China, I Love You," and "O People of China." "We put the poster up on October 1," one of the staff proudly explained. "It's our way of marking this great national celebration."

In 2008 Mao's home province of Hunan embarked on a campaign to select Mao look-alikes from all over the country. Lured by such tempting bait, surely plenty of tourist fish would throw themselves on the hook; visitors would flock to Hunan and line its coffers with a more ample store of legal tender. "This is an innovation in our cultural system reform," a local official explained. "It will effectively promote the development of our cultural tourism industry."

One hundred and thirty Mao Zedong look-alikes traveled from all corners of the country, braving every hardship to arrive at their destination. After several elimination rounds thirteen finalists entered the last stage of the compet.i.tion. At the news conference they sat in a row on the stage, each with a fake mole stuck on his chin. Some struck the cla.s.sic pose of the historical Mao Zedong, a cigarette between their curled fingers and an ankle resting on their knee. The real Mao Zedong spoke with a genuine Xiangtan accent; copycat Xiangtan accents spilled from the mouths of the copycat Maos. Most were dressed in Mao jackets of gray or green; one wore a replica of the octagonal cap in which Mao was photographed during the Long March; the others had their hair styled in the backward sweep that Mao favored. All at different stages in life, they declared that they represented Mao Zedong at varying stages in his career: the Jinggang Mountains version, the Long March version, the 1949 founding ceremony version.... One was so confident in his appearance that he refused to put on makeup; another put on makeup but claimed to be "the most physically unaltered." A third mock Mao, facing the packed audience below, improvised as giddily as a pop singer. "I'm a hundred and fifteen this year," he declared, clutching the microphone tightly, "but it gives me such a lift to be here, I feel just as young as you see me!"

Yet another Mao Zedong look-alike imitated Mao's speech at the founding ceremony: "Greetings, comrades!" His phony Xiangtan accent enlivened the atmosphere, and the audience cried happily in return, "Greetings, Chairman Mao!"

"Long live the people!" he continued.

"Long live Chairman Mao!" the crowd roared.

These past few years Mao Zedong has been copycatted constantly. In the most bizarre instance, a female Mao impersonator appeared in southwest China, making such an immediate impact that she was hailed by the Chinese media as "sweeping aloft in majesty," a literary expression over which Mao once claimed exclusive rights. When this fifty-one-year-old woman made herself up as Mao Zedong and walked along the street, waving to the crowds that gathered, she looked uncannily like the Mao who waved to the parading ma.s.ses from Tiananmen, and the crowds pressed toward her, rushing to be the first to shake her hand. In a moment the street was a dense throng of humanity, and it took her more than half an hour to walk just a few hundred yards.

Everybody felt that this female copycat was even more like Mao than the male impersonators they had seen. Of course, the cost to her personally and financially was far higher, for she had to invest enormous effort to master Mao's accent and mannerisms to the point where she could resemble him so closely in every way. Each time she made herself up to look like Mao it took her four hours and cost her 2,000 yuan in cosmetic expenses. To conceal her deficiencies in the stature department, she wore the highest possible elevator shoes. The real Mao was six feet tall, and she was not quite five foot six. After careful viewing of newsreel footage and endless hours perfecting the simulation of Mao's accustomed gait, this female copycat Mao Zedong managed to walk with her thickened insoles in such a way that people who saw her thought she looked just like Mao strolling along in his flat cotton shoes.

Once copycat cell phones had taken China by storm, copycat digital cameras, copycat MP3 players, copycat game consoles, and other such pirated and knockoff products came pouring forth. Copycat brands have rapidly expanded to include instant noodles, sodas, milk, medications, laundry detergent, and sports shoes, and so the word "copycat" has penetrated deep into every aspect of Chinese people's lives. Copycat stars, TV programs, advertis.e.m.e.nts, pop songs, Spring Festival galas, Shenzhou 7 s.p.a.ce capsules, and Bird's Nest national stadiums have all made a splash on the Internet, each revealing their own special flavor and gaining instant popularity.

Copycat stars appear in imitation shows, just like the ersatz Mao Zedongs. The difference is that sham Maos require a physical likeness, whereas the copycat stars aspire merely to a similarity in spirit. However different their looks, so long as they can capture a star's voice and expression, they can achieve their goal and create some buzz. As their reputation soars, some copycat stars chafe at their limited resemblance to their models and end up wanting to look like them, too; so they go to enormous expense and suffer the discomfort of surgery to have themselves cosmetically reshaped, looking forward to the day when they and the stars they are imitating will look like twins. Fired with feverish ambition, they long to elevate themselves from copycat status to genuine article and to downgrade the original to a wannabe.

Copycat pop songs and copycat TV programs are even more varied, combining imitation with parody. Lyrics are altered at will so that the solemn becomes comical and the refined becomes crude, and the songs are deliberately performed out of tune. Copycat TV programs, released as videos on the Internet, tend to be send-ups of official TV programs, and China Central Television's Network News at seven o'clock each evening, notorious for its rigidity and dogmatism, has become a perennial target of mockery. In one spoof, two completely unfamiliar anchors appeared on our monitors in a skit inspired by the 2008 milk-powder scare. In the ponderous tones of Network News they announced that the regular anchors had been poisoned by contaminated milk and rushed off to intensive care; they had been brought in at the last minute to deliver that evening's broadcast.

Some versions of Copycat News have been quite incisive in confronting sensitive social issues. When official media outlets hem and haw, Copycat News gets straight to the point, telling things as they are and adding liberal doses of derision and sarcasm. After the tainted-milk scandal was exposed, it became clear that it was not just the Sanlu Group in Shijiazhuang whose infant formulas had astronomical levels of melamine; many other producers' infant formula exceeded the limits to varying degrees. China's entire milk industry suffered a major blow. n.o.body would buy domestically produced milk powder, and many people stopped drinking milk. Copycat News had plenty to say about this. It poked fun at Sanlu and the other milk producers, who were said to register their dissatisfaction with Sanlu in the following terms: "We put melamine in our milk powder, but you guys put milk powder in your melamine. d.a.m.n it, you're even more shameless than we are!"

In August 2008, after the success of the opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics, the official Chinese media sang its praises to the skies, proudly declaring that such a glorious opening ceremony had no parallel in the past and would never be matched in the future. Copycat News said the same thing, but cynically. Its commentary went like this: "Such a glorious opening ceremony has never happened before and will never happen again. Why so? Because other nations with so many people do not have so much money, and other nations with so much money do not have so many people, and other nations with so much money and so many people do not have so much power."

China Central Television's annual Spring Festival gala provides the best possible chance for budding entertainers to make their name overnight. A decent female singer normally earns only about a thousand yuan for a day's work; but after she makes an appearance at the Spring Festival gala, she can ask a much higher fee-ten or twenty thousand yuan for a single song. The result is that to get a place on the gala program becomes a life-or-death struggle for many performers. They pull out all the stops, begging businessmen to underwrite them, imploring leaders to intercede on their behalf; s.e.x is traded for money, or power. The gala keeps growing and growing, giving the director endless headaches: s.p.a.ce needs to be found for more and more items on the program; there are fewer solos and many more ensembles.

A few years ago the following joke made the rounds: One of the top bra.s.s at CCTV decides that it is high time the gala was pared down. In order to ensure its artistic quality, he thinks to himself, they are just going to have to step on a few toes. He pulls out the drawer in which he has been keeping all the instructions, requests, and pleas he has received, dumps them all on the top of his desk, and studies them carefully one by one, scanning the signatures of the various bigwigs who have thrown their weight behind one or another performer. No, this one he can't afford to offend, nor that one either. In the end he is left with just three messages he can get away with ignoring-for they are all notes he himself has written to the director. He removes these three pieces of paper from the pile but then has second thoughts. "Why give myself a hard time?" he asks, and tosses them right back in.

It is against this backdrop that copycat variety shows are broadcast on the last evening of the traditional Chinese year, the same time as the official CCTV gala. In 2009 more than a dozen such copycat events were broadcast on the Internet. As Spring Festival approached, their organizers unleashed a flood of copycat advertising, sending vehicles out into the streets to publicize their events, conducting news conferences in city squares, marching through downtown holding aloft wastepaper baskets emblazoned with promotional quips. Advertising slogans for the copycat galas took multiple forms; one, borrowing Mao Zedong's calligraphy, had the line: "The People's Gala-for the people and by the people." Viewers who are fed up with the CCTV gala-young people in particular-turn off their televisions on the last night of the year and flick on their computers. As they eat and drink, they can relish on the Internet the copycat galas produced by the gra.s.sroots.

From this we can see that the copycat phenomenon has a certain positive significance in China today. Seen in this way, it represents a challenge of the gra.s.sroots to the elite, of the popular to the official, of the weak to the strong.