Last Time I Saw Peking

As bureau chief for Agence France-Presse, France's seasoned Newsman (Korea, Dienbienphu) Bernard Ullmann, 38, was one of two Western reporters permitted to reside in Peking and to travel about the country. Last week, after 18 months in Red China, Ullmann provided a rare non-Communist view of life in Red China in a copyrighted article for A.F.P. and the New York Times Magazine:

P: "Peking, winter, 1961. In frosty cold, endless queues line up in front of the few carts of vegetable peddlers. One item only is on sale: cabbage. For me even now its smell evokes Peking.

"There seems to be just one thought in the minds of pedestrians--to go on from queue to queue, from the one that stretches behind the bus stop to the one that lines up in front of a stubbornly shut shop window, where dried fish may or may not eventually be dispensed. Peking's buses, always crowded, have for the past few months been fitted on top with huge canvas cylinders: to save gasoline they are now run on natural gas. Never since the inauguration of the Communist regime in 1949 has poverty been so widespread as it is this year. Signs posted in eating establishments blare out the message: 'You don't need your "whole" ration. Eat no more than will keep the hunger away.' Mess halls compete for the 'Red Star' which is awarded to the establishment that has managed to serve its patrons even less than did its neighbors.

"There is talk of 'foreign devils.' I was told that a common complaint of housewives in queues was that 'the Russians are taking away everything,' or, more simply, that 'the Government is exporting too much.' [There is a] sweeping dragnet out for peasants, truants from their communes, who flock to the cities in hopes of finding a bit of food or more rewarding jobs, or even to commit the supreme crime of selling a few eggs or vegetables on the black market. Children, inculcated by their 'Pioneer' leaders, report at once all suspicious individuals--that is, any unfamiliar face.

"Since last October, cadres (party functionaries) and white-collar workers by the tens of millions have found themselves reassigned to work on the land. Picks and shovels on their shoulders, professors lead their students, officers their men, bureaucrats their bookkeepers--all of them on the march to lend a hand, physically, on the 'production front.' "

P: Life in a commune? "In an ill-lit corner, a dozen women of indeterminate age clad in blue overalls and white skullcaps, are darning trousers that belong to 1,500 anonymous spouses . . . There are 23 'factories' in this particular commune, each one employing from 100 to 700 women workers. The workers, many of them older women, crouch on their heels, blow on their stiff fingers, and try their clumsy best to keep their output up to the norm.

P: "In Shanghai I met a very brilliant young [chemistry] student. His professor was eager to retain him as a laboratory research assistant; his fiancee had a job in the municipal administration. From a list posted on the institute wall he learned that he had been ordered to a factory in remote Inner Mongolia for at least five years. He was not surprised. Of bourgeois origin, he was an 'expert' indeed, but not 'Red' enough to remain in Shanghai, a city that is still suspected of bourgeois and cosmopolitan proclivities. 'I shall work wherever the authorities decide I can be most useful to the country,' he kept repeating. 'My fiancee understands this perfectly. And so do I.' "

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