After the Lin Biao Incident (1971): A gradual opening to the outside

December, 1971, a second grader in Beijing, I was sitting in the classroom, listening to the school principal's speech via the intercom on how to handle any possible encounter with American visitors should any happen; that our attitude should be "neither overbearing nor humble; neither too approachable nor too distant." Nixon was in China and every one in China was prepared on how to speak to the Americans should such an opportunity occur. The streets of Beijing, as well as in those other cities Nixon was to visit, were scrubbed extra clean. Thieves and robbers received extra heavy punishments during Nixon's stay. The Americans were impressed: China was clean, and there was no crime. Obviously socialism worked in China! For us, it was very exciting and very confusing. It seemed to be a big event out of an otherwise very monotonous living, full of political meetings, lacking in material life or much if any entertainment. We never got a chance to see the American visitors, and never got to know how come our number one enemy was suddenly becoming our friend. It was so typical of revolutionary China's policies, both foreign and domestic, that went through sudden changes without any explanations, and one was to follow by quickly adapting to the new way of thinking. Nixon's visit to China resulted from his decision to end American involvement in Vietnam. He wanted, however, to make sure Vietnam's northern neighbor China was not the same Communist country as the Soviet Union, and that after American withdrawal, Vietnam was not to form a "Communist zone" with China and the Soviet Union. He was glad to find Communist China was more nationalistic than Communist and that it had broken off with the USSR as early as 1960, with Krushchev's visit to the United States in 1959. At that time, China charged the Soviet Union had lost its revolutionary zeal, and that it was "revisionist"--it started to revise the Marxist doctrines of class struggle and no compromise between the working classes and the capitalist classes. By late 1971, the huge costs of the Cultural Revolution and the defection of Lin Biao made Mao think twice of his own revolutionary radicalism, hence his decision to modify his political zeal and become more open in the international realm. Nixon's visit, however, did not signify an immediate opening of China to the outside world. China viewed the Americans with suspicion, and guarded its own people against any improper behavior in front of the Westerners. The Chinese government felt the need to defend its national pride. The irony was that although economic development was much deemphasized and pitted against political/class consciousness during the Cultural Revolution, it was economic prosperity that the Chinese government wanted to display to the American visitors. Thus the themes of the "Big Fish" and "Nixon's Press Corps. Around the time of Nixon's visit, there was a semi-political movement in China, focused on the criticism of a documentary made by a renowned Italian filmmaker called Antonioni (who died recently) who was charged of "smearing the great revolutionary China's image" because he filmed some shanty houses and realistic scenes of life such as soy sauce bottles in people's homes. Image was all that mattered, suggesting Communist China's sensitivity to the capitalist world. The story "Big Fish" like other stories in the collection, covers several aspects of the CR: Kuai shifu (master Kuai) was an old dockyard worker in the city of Nanjing, the setting of most stories in the collection. He had very good class background, and, by Communist standards, should have "high class consciousness," and display revolutionary selflessness and dedication to the party and the country. Here, he is out shopping for some good food for his sick wife. Their financial difficulty was obvious, from the way he carefully weighed the prices of the fish and other groceries. And again, it reflected the financial difficulty of much of the Chinese population at the time. Even though food was exceedingly cheap in the 1970s by today's standards, much good food was still beyond the purchasing power of many ordinary Chinese. Because he was an experienced worker, and enjoyed expertise at his work, during the Cultural Revolution, some of his younger apprentices attacked him, associating him with being bourgeois. Although the charge was absurd, it reflected the radicalism of the CR, that even an experienced working class man could not escape from it. Knowledge itself seemed to be bad. The new apprentice's respect for him suggested a decrease of political radicalism in 1972. The prospective visits of American newspapermen, possibly accompanying or in the wake of Nixon's visit to China, led Nanjing officials to put up a show by stocking up the central market in the city where merchandise could be seen and not bought. The irony was when Kuai Shifu learned the truth, he did not behave as what he was supposed to: bow to the authority and willing defer his own interest to the defense of the city's image, but reacted with anger. Here, the old worker did not act according to his class role but put his own interest first. It might also suggest people were fed up with the fake shows, fake reports, fake pledges, of the Cultural Revolution. "Nixon's Press Corps" is on a similar theme: the possibility of American journalists visiting Nanjing stirred the city to prepare three months ahead of time. While putting up a best image for show to the Americans, the city also guarded against suspects who might badmouth China to the journalists. Since the author and her husband did not come from a revolutionary background but from the United States, they were suspected not to have the "class consiousness" to talk properly to the American journalists (even though they came back to China full of ideals for socialism) and were tacitly advised to avoid appearing in the streets on the designated day of foreign visit. Another big thing to do was to take off the drying racks outside of people's windows--as most in the city lived in apartment buildings and had very little space to hang their clothes to dry in the open. Those racks and the clothes on them made the city look "messy." One of the charges against Antonioni the Italian filmmaker was he photographed people's drying racks with clothes on them. It is interesting to note that such a thing as taking off drying racks was done in the same way as other mass political movements: it relied on the mobilization of the masses and the latter's voluntary following of the party's directives. Therefore when the neighborhood community leader Kang Sao came to persuade Hsin Laoshi (teacher Hsin, the protagonist) to take off her drying racks, she would charge Hsin Laoshi for acting against the Party discipline but would not take off the racks for her, as this was supposed to be done voluntarily by the people. As in other political movements, pressure, and coercion were used to make people conform to party line; the people must appear voluntarily conforming, just as those most persecuted in the CR all had to write confession letters to show they really were what they were charged with. Often these confession letters were written under great pressure, sometimes even physical torture. One example was how Jen Hsiu-lan was treated in order to have her write a letter of confession. Surprisingly, Hsin Laoshi was not punished for acting defiantly against party orders, suggesting that becaus China was softening toward the U.S., as a returned Chinese from the U.S., Hsin Laoshi was to be befriended, by new party policies. Should she have been a native of Nanjing or some other region of China, her treatment could have been very different.