Life in the Middle Kingdom

The common people of China are a strong, hardy race, patient, industrious and much given to traffic and all the arts of gain, cheerful and loquacious under the severest labor.

--Lord Macartney, 1794

THAT shrewd comment by England's first envoy to Imperial China remains accurate to this day. China has long been compared, invidiously, to a colony of human ants. The fact is that the devotion to hard labor noted by Macartney is still the nation's most conspicuous characteristic. If the thoughts of Chairman Mao Tse-tung could ever be boiled down to two words, they might plausibly be "work harder."

The emphasis on the work ethic points up one of the key realities of life in the land of Mao. Despite the social upheaval created by the revolution, there still is much of the old Middle Kingdom in China today. Although Mandarin is established as the official language, the nation's 50 major dialects and more than 1,000 variants persist in daily use. The Chinese have lost nothing in their devotion to the pleasure of the table; most foreign visitors return home several pounds heavier, spouting memories of exquisite meals. Women have been officially liberated, and are equal before the law with men; yet some marriages are still formally arranged. Young people as well as old visit burial places in rites of homage to their ancestors.

Westerners who remember the pre-1949 China, however, have been almost euphorically impressed by the transformation that Communism has achieved. The people, visitors note, appear happy, relaxed and well fed. Markets and department stores are well stocked, although the prices of luxury items are almost prohibitive: a good camera, for example, costs $80. City streets are clean and orderly, and traffic jams are created by bicycles rather than cars. There is no litter, no beggars, no prostitution, no drug addiction, no alcoholism. Almost everyone wears drab, heavy-duty work clothes--children, however, are gaily and colorfully dressed--but there is no sense of utter poverty. Instead, workers and peasants alike beamingly tell Western visitors of their faith in Mao and his works, and convey a sense of happy participation in their society. Prof. Victor Sidel, of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, was favorably impressed by the quality of Chinese medicine on his trip last September: "I'm tempted to say, 'I've seen the future and it works.' "

However pleasing its surface appears, China's "future" is one that most Americans would find intolerable. Party control of thought and intellectual life is total. Virtually everyone works an average ten hours a day, six days a week, and sometimes the seventh day is taken up with obligatory lectures and self-study sessions. Until last December, not a single new literary work of any kind other than a few poems or short stories eulogizing Mao had been published in China for nearly five years. Operas, films and drama are all propaganda pieces of socialist realism. Life in China may be stable and secure--but it is also, from a Western viewpoint, almost unbearably confined and boring.

On the Land. China under Mao has made rapid strides toward industrialization--not just in its ability to make weapons of war but in the production of trucks, railroad rolling stock and farm machinery. (Last year, China produced an estimated 21 million tons of steel, compared with the U.S. total of 120 million tons.) Nonetheless, eight of every ten Chinese still live and work on the land. Vast rural communes, some with a work force of more than 50,000 peasants, dominate the landscape. One of Mao's principal goals has been the equalization of life in the cities and life on the farms. That he has not yet achieved. In general, housing and wages are considerably better in the cities, but in comparison with, say, the U.S., even the urban worker comes off badly. A new bicycle, for instance costs $70 to $85, but a Chinese factory worker probably would have to save two years for it, while thousands of Americans could buy it on a day's pay.

In his vivid A thmtic account of life in China, Journalist Ross Terrill suggested that the foundation of its revolution rests on what he refers to as a "Blessed Trinity": the peasant, the worker and the soldier. A descriptive summary of their routine lives says much about what China is like today:

THE PEASANT. A worker at the Ma Chang Commune in Honan will rise at dawn, come rain or shine. Before a breakfast of corn dumpling soup and tea, he will spend two hours plowing the stony earth while his wife cleans their two-room hut, then joins him in the fields. A member of a 300-man production team--one of six on the commune--he will then have to face three hours in the field before a brief lunch of millet, sorghum and tea. Then it is back to the fields until sundown. Before supper--occasionally it may include meat, chicken or some other delicacy--there may be time for the peasant to work on his private plot of land, on which he grows vegetables to vary the family diet and for extra cash.

On this particular commune, the pay of a peasant is 30 yuan a month --roughly $12. But the farmer pays only 1 yuan a month in rent, 60 to 80 for cigarettes and, as likely as not, nothing at all for books or magazines; despite the massive literacy campaigns, the majority of peasants are still functionally illiterate. The farmer's children, though, attend the commune school, where elementary math is taught in concrete, even ominous terms. A typical question: "How many guns have four militiamen each armed with two guns?"

The basic foodstuffs--rice, noodles and breadstuffs--are obtained by the peasant as his share of the production of his commune, which is run by a revolutionary committee. Medical care is free, thanks to the "barefoot doctors" --medical technicians who are assigned to all communes. Television on the commune is, of course, unheard-of. Many families have radios, though, and from time to time entertainment is provided by touring companies of actors and musicians.

There is a dulling sameness to the peasant's life. Still, most commune dwellers are grateful to have seen the end of the bad old days before the revolution. Then there was an eternal debt that could never be paid, abuse from a landlord whose word was law, wandering soldiers who stole and confiscated.

THE WORKER. To a factory worker in Detroit or even Moscow, the life of his counterpart in Shanghai or Peking would appear uncomfortably lackluster. But as the peasant in Honan sees it, his comrade assigned to an engine plant or machine shop is blessed with unimaginable luxury. Not only are wages higher than on the farms, but there are the attractions of city life --cinemas, stores, parks, athletic events --that provide some brightness to China's overall blue-gray drabness.

If a worker is single, he may share a flat with a factory colleague, and pay perhaps 5 yuan a month in rent. The apartment will be heated with a coal stove, if at all; the privy is outside. If he has a wife and child, a worker is eligible to move into one of the vast new government-built apartment complexes, complete with gardens and nearby day nurseries. Largely because the government controls migration to the cities, China does not have an acute urban housing shortage. A newly married couple, for example, can obtain a place to live in three or four weeks.

Like the peasant, the city worker rises early--usually by 6:30. More often than not, he lives within a few minutes' bicycle ride of his factory. The workday begins at 7:30, not at the assembly line but in the factory recreation hall, with a study session on Maoist thought. Working conditions are adequate: safety regulations spell out the proper procedures for operating machinery, for instance, but set down few guidelines for personal safety. Factories pay compensation, however, for job-caused injuries or death. Foremen tend to be chosen mainly for their job expertise, though political correctness remains important too, and the ablest serve on the factory's all-powerful revolutionary committee. Even large Western-style factories with assembly lines are not air-conditioned or heated; workers sweat in hot weather, shiver in the cold. The actual work hours are from 8:30 till noon and from 1 to 4:30; the pace, by American standards, is fairly relaxed. Unless an afternoon study session is scheduled, the worker is then free to go home.

Shopping is not a major problem.

Many big stores stay open for business until late in the evening; some are open all night. As a rule, a worker's first luxury purchase after the necessary bicycle is a radio (218 yuan, or $92), perhaps a wristwatch ($34).

THE SOLDIER. A few million homes across China are privileged to display two red banners. One says: THE

PEOPLE MUST LEARN FROM THE P.L.A., AND THE P.L.A. MUST LEARN FROM

THE PEOPLE. The other reads: WHEN A

MAN JOINS THE P.L.A., HIS WHOLE

FAMILY is HONORED. The posters are awarded to parents whose sons pass the stiff medical and political examinations --90% of applicants fail--for entry into the all-volunteer, 3,000,000-man People's Liberation Army.

In China's distant past, a soldier belonged to the bottom level of society; these days, military service is considered an honor and a privilege. Although ready for war, the P.L.A., practically speaking, is a peacetime army. It has not been involved in any large-scale fighting since the brief Sino-In-dian conflict of 1962, but some units engaged in sharp combat against Russian forces on the northern frontier in 1969 and there were several pitched battles with the Red Guards in the late '60s. In the wake of the Cultural Revolution, soldiers have been employed by Chou as civil administrators, and they run everything from post offices to railroads, factories and communes.

After a recruit has passed the exam, he spends six months in basic training (mostly drill, field exercises without live ammunition, and political indoctrination) before being assigned to a regular army unit. Except for the heavy emphasis on politics, the daily routine of a Chinese soldier is much like that of a private in any army. Reveille is shortly after 5 a.m., followed by exercises, a political discussion, breakfast at 7:30, then two or three more hours of discussion before lunch. Drill is usually in the afternoon. After supper (5:30) there are two hours of farm work, followed by yet another political study session. Lights are out at 9:30. Officers and men wear almost identical gray-green uniforms.

Compared with peasants or even workers, soldiers are well fed. While on leave they are permitted to buy unlimited amounts of rationed food and cloth. Base salary is only 6 yuan a month, but there are allowances for families and a special food ration of 50 Ibs. of rice a month during the spring and autumn harvests. The normal enlistment period is three years, and can be extended for one-year terms. After his service is over, a soldier is assigned to a "rehabilitation regiment" to prepare for civilian life. Once discharged, the veteran has little trouble finding a job, either as a security officer or, if he has received technical training, in some related field. The ex-soldier automatically becomes a member of the local militia and must return to service if called. His reward for his tour of duty: a month's extra pay for every year of service, a discharge certificate and two uniforms.

The ongoing Communist revolution in China is conceivably the most ambitious--one might even say the most arrogant--in human history. Its goal is not merely to transform the institutions of society but, in the words of St. Paul, to "put on the new man"--to reshape the soul and spirit of an entire people. By material standards, the achievements of this revolution are already considerable: China, for nearly a century the sick man of Asia, is now a feared and respected world power.

Like all revolutions, Mao's single-minded struggle to transform China has been achieved at a terrible cost. No one knows for sure how many people died in the aftermath of the Communist conquest in 1949. or even in the considerably smaller-scale clashes of the Cultural Revolution. Beyond that, the revolution has cruelly stultified a proud intellectual heritage that was forged almost 1,000 years before Confucius and Lao Tze. All art, music, theater and poetry that is not of and by the people --that is, a large number of the masterpieces in China's cultural history --has been destroyed or declared "corrupt" and "decadent." Intellectuals, along with landlords and survivors of the bourgeoisie, have been the chief victims of China's purges. The worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution are now over; the universities, closed for four years, have now been reopened. But who is left to teach, and what to learn? Under Mao, China has taken the daring gamble that a great nation can survive without a free-ranging life of the mind.

There are great risks inherent in so bold an effort to create a perfect, homogeneous society. One is that the dream will fail, or succeed only to the point that it reinforces the social phenomenon so well described by Karl Marx, alienation. There are signs of such alienation in the Soviet Union, in the form of youth gangs who find surcease not in doctrine but in alcohol and crime. And for all the glowing reports from shielded Western travelers, there is at least some alienation and crime in China as well: factory cities of the north are plagued by the so-called hei jen (black persons)--youngsters who have run away from the communes and eke out an illegal existence on the streets.

The Soviet Union, although still a totalitarian society, has mellowed considerably since Stalin's death. China, too, may relax and loosen after its present leaders are gone, but the process of doing so may prove traumatic. There is risk to a would-be seamless society when its people are exposed to other ways of life, other modes of liberty. The Chinese are the most self-confident of peoples. A greater experience of Western ways may convince them that, apart from advancements in technology, there is nothing to learn or emulate. On the other hand, the human contacts that will presumably follow Richard Nixon's historic Peking venture may also raise more doubts that the road of Mao is not necessarily the road to paradise.

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