Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now

372 Pages·1997·3 MB·English

by  Jan Wong

First published in paperback in Australia and New Zealand in 1997 by Anchor
Hardback edition 1996 by Doubleday
First published in Canada in 1996 by Doubleday Canada Limited
Copyright © 1996 Jan Wong
Paperback first published in 1997
Paperback reissued in 2007
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Anchor Canada and colophon are trademarks.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication has been applied for.
eISBN: 978-0-385-67436-2
Published in Canada by
Anchor Canada, a division of
Random House of Canada Limited
Visit Random House of Canada Limited’s website: www.randomhouse.ca
v3.1
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
A Note About Names
Prologue: Brave New World
PART I - FOOL’S PARADISE
1. Montreal Maoist
2. Revolutionary Tourist
3. Welcome You!
4. Pyongyang Panty Thief
5. Rationing Friends
6. Snitching
PART II - TROUBLE IN PARADISE
7. Big Joy Farm
8. Chairman Mao’s Geishas
9. Matchmaker
10. Peasant Under Glass
11. True Lies
PART III - PARADISE LOST
12. Dancing with Dissidents
13. People Power
14. “Safeguard Your Lives”
15. End of the Snitch Dynasty
16. Professor Ding’s List
17. China’s Gulag
18. Chasing the Dragon
PART IV - PARADISE REGAINED?
19. Workers of the World United
20. Ferrari Li
21. Middle-Class Kingdom
Epilogue: Long Live Chairman Mao
About the Author
To my parents
and
Fat Paycheck Shulman
Acknowledgments
John Pearce, editor-in-chief of Doubleday Canada, first approached me
with the idea of writing a book, and stayed enthusiastic for five more
years while I finished my posting in Beijing. He read several very rough
drafts, and with great tact and grace, helped steer me in the right
direction. Charles Conrad, editor-in-chief of Anchor Books, New York,
made invaluable suggestions and kept me true to the spirit of the book.
Shaun Oakey did a masterful job of copy-editing the manuscript. Michael
Cohn, my agent, was always there when I needed him.
I thank Norman Webster, former editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail
(and former Beijing correspondent), and Geoff Stevens, former managing
editor, for sending me to Beijing. I also thank William Thorsell, my
subsequent editor-in-chief, for keeping me there, and John Cruickshank,
my subsequent managing editor, who saw to it that I got a year’s book
leave upon my return. I thank the Canada Council for providing a timely
grant.
In Beijing, my fellow journalists Catherine Sampson and Lena Sun
gave me their indispensable friendship, valued insights and professional
expertise. Later, Cathy read several early drafts and made numerous
helpful suggestions and corrections from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and
Hong Kong. Lena read later drafts in Washington, D.C., helped me with
queries and saved me from myself many, many times. Thanks also to my
matchmakers, Zheng Peidi (Betty) and Xu Shimin (Saiman Hui), who
helped me render the title into Chinese. They also read a draft and
corrected several errors. Any remaining mistakes, of course, are my own.
Many friends taught me so much about China. They include the old
revolutionaries who went to work there: Pat Adler and her late husband,
Sol, Betty Chandler, Ruth Coe and her late husband, Frank, Isabel and
David Crook and their remarkable sons, Carl, Michael and Paul, Israel
Epstein and his late wife, Elsie Fairfax-Cholmeley, Kathy Chiù and Bill
Hinton, Joan Hinton and Sid Engst and their children, Fred, Billy and
Karen, lone Kramer, Sidney and Yulin Rittenberg, the late Julian
Schuman, Sidney Shapiro, Bertha Sneck, Jane Su, Ruth Weiss, and
Gladys and Yang Xianyi and their daughter and my classmate, Yang Zhi.
They also include former classmates and friends, now diplomats, aid
workers, businesspeople and sinologists: Patricia Alexander, Anu
Arponen, Timothy Brook, Neil Burton, Anders Hansson, Peter and Chris
Gilmartin, Pat and Roger Howard, Ellen Judd, Frank and Dorothy Kehl,
Britta Kinnemark, Nick Menzies, Sandra Sacks and Ola Svensson.
My fellow Overseas Chinese, with whom I could discuss anything,
include Norman Bock, Maria Fang, David Hsieh, George Leung, Ben
Mok, Bing and Bonnie Thorn and Wenlan Peng. I also thank the MSG
Club members, the Macho Sino Girls of our elitist, racist, sexist club in
Beijing, whose founders included journalists Charlene Fu, Lena Sun,
Mary Wong and Sheryl WuDunn.
Diplomats and other professionals working in China who gave me
friendship and generously shared their knowledge include: Mary Ann
Burris, Daniel Dhavernas, Earl and Monica Gruder Drake, John Hecht
and Laura Sabin, Normand Mailhot, Don Myatt, Michel Riberdy, Judith
Standley and Tse Hau-sing.
I especially thank these journalists and colleagues in China and Hong
Kong: Jim Abrams, Zorana Bakovic, Daniel Biers, Diana Bishop, Louise
Branson, Michael Browning, Sandra Burton, Mike Chinoy, Robert Delfs,
Seth Faison, Jaime FlorCuz, Edward Gargan, Caroline Gracie, David and
Fumio Holley, Susan Lawrence, LeeYee, Julia Leung, Simon Long,
Timothy Luard, Robert MacPherson, Jim and Cathy McGregor, James
Miles, Jim Munson, Judy Polumbaum, Caroline Straathof, Mia Turner
and Kathy Wilhelm.
Among the Chinese friends who have left China and can be thanked
are Chi Ching, my indispensable news assistant Yan Yan and her
successor, Stella Wu. There are many, many others to thank who cannot
be named. They include several classmates, a filmmaker, a novelist, two
journalists, a laid-off factory worker, an office worker, several dissidents,
student activists and a seamstress.
Professors Ella Laffey and Paul Lin of McGill University gave me an
appreciation of the complexities of China’s history. Many more people
have guided and influenced my career as a journalist. I especially thank:
The New York Times’s Fox Butterfield and James Sterba, who showed me
how much fun being a foreign correspondent could be; Professor Melvin
Mencher of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism for teaching me
the nuts and bolts of reporting and how, above all, to keep that fire in
the belly; Joseph Gelmon, my copy chief at the Montreal Gazette, who
fed me dinner while I watched “Lou Grant,” and valued colleagues Jay
Bryan, Janet Brooks, Jennifer Hunter, David Pinto and Shirley Won; my
editors and colleagues at the Boston Globe, Gordon McKibben, Lincoln
Millstein, Steve Bailey, Jane Meredith Adams, Kathryn Tolbert and
Jonathan Kaufman; and my bureau chief and colleagues at the Wall
Street Journal, June Kronholz, David Wessel and David Stipp.
I owe a great debt to my editors and colleagues at the Globe and Mail.
Timothy Pritchard hired me as a business reporter and didn’t mind when
I ran off to Beijing soon after. Sue Andrew of the foreign desk always
kept the money flowing, even when I was five months behind in my
expense accounts during Tiananmen Square. Ann Rauhala, my foreign
editor, was unfailingly encouraging, as were her two deputies, Jane
Gadd and Larry Orenstein. Colleagues Alexandra Eadie, Stephen Strauss
and Elinor Reading always kept the in-house gossip flowing so I would
not feel completely isolated in Beijing. Amanda Valpy, the chief
librarian, and her colleagues helped me retrieve photos I had taken in
China for the Globe and obtained permission for me to use them in this
book.
In Toronto, my Aunt Ming and Uncle Ying, now both in their eighties,
and my cousin Colleen Parrish Yao, helped me trace the family history.
My Uncle Yao provided the Chinese calligraphy for the jacket. My sister,
Gigi, provided computer advice no matter what time of the day or night
and helped me recall some of the funnier incidents in China. My parents,
Bill and Eva Wong, instilled in me an abiding curiosity about the country
of my ancestors and put up with my Maoist phase unfazed.
In Beijing, my Chinese staff did everything so I could concentrate on
journalism. In Toronto, Mercedita Iboro took over the housework, the
cookie baking and the care of my sons, making it possible for me to
write this book. Ben, then four, learned that a chair placed in front of
the entrance to the living room, which led to my sunroom office, meant
No Entry, and soon taught his brother, Sam, then one, the same. My
husband, Norman, has been unfailingly supportive and loving, giving up
his career to follow me back to Beijing, changing the majority of the
diapers for our sons and correcting my drafts while taking the subway to
his new job in Toronto.