Rediscovering Peking Man

By R.Z. Sheppard

"WATCH OUT FOR THE FOREIGN GUESTS!" CHINA ENCOUNTERS THE WEST by Orville Schell; Pantheon; 178 pages; $8.95

To find the Peace Cafe turn right at the Four Unities Hair Salon, pass the East Wind Movie Theater and head down Goldfish Alley. Before it was shuttered in the late 1970s, the cafe attracted some of Peking's most stylish youth, like New Nation Li, "attired in silken shirt and a well-tailored, gray Western suit with tight-fitting bell-bottom pants and pointed black shoes." Or Benefit-the-People Wang, by day a soldier in the People's Liberation Army, by night an exponent of the funky layered look. "From the chin up he looks like a gangster. From his neck to his knees he seems like an Englishman who has just stepped out of his neighborhood pub into the London fog. But below his knees, where his army pants emerge to meet his khaki sneakers, he looks Chinese. His costume--fedora, trench coat and army uniform--creates the illusion of a man who has been cut in thirds and pasted back together."

Such is Orville Schell's rediscovery of Peking man, a post-Cultural Revolution pastiche of shifting policies and that old foreign devil, instant gratification. The author has been observing China ever since he was graduated from the Harvard-Yenching Institute in the late '50s. He made his first trip to the mainland in 1975 and knew pretty much what to expect. The rift in Sino-Soviet relations and memories of America's recent war in Southeast Asia had deepened China's traditional sense of isolation and natural mistrust of outsiders. Although he gorged on statistics and toasts to peace and friendship, Schell felt as if he were part of an experiment in "barbarian management." There were no casual chats, no exchanges of mailing addresses and certainly no offers of female companionship. "In the back streets of China's less cosmopolitan cities," he recalls, "I would sometimes see mothers protectively grab their children as I passed."

From 1978 on, with Mao dead and the Gang of Four arrested, Schell returned repeatedly to find many of those streets transformed. There were more spontaneous introductions, ogling of Western clothing and transactions for profit. At the Peace Cafe, Benefit-the-People Wang had quick eyes for American cigarettes, Inca-bloc watches and hard currencies. He and his friends drank orange soda mixed with beer and discussed which foreign visitor might like to get it on with Golden Thunder Chen.

Schell speaks Chinese and can end-run an official travel brochure; yet, he never seems certain if Benefit-the-People was a pimp or just a young punk playing at the second oldest profession. What impresses him is the new willingness of many Chinese to assert their opinions and desires. Says one young woman who dreams of becoming a fashion designer: "Of course I want what is best for myself during my life. I think that is only human nature." Schell finds such sentiments to be radical departures from the orthodoxy of the founding father. It is as if people who were raised clutching Mao's Little Red Book had suddenly embraced an est training manual.

"Watch Out for the Foreign Guests!" is full of observations that are worth a thousand glossies of the new New China. On Shanghai's vast People's Square, he encounters three youths slaloming their mopeds between the lampposts. One of the boys is wearing blue bell-bottom jeans that he sewed himself. He has even attached a small tag on which LEVIS has been written with a ballpoint pen. In the Manchurian port city of Dairen, Schell tours a "free market" crammed with peddlers hustling their wares. He wonders how all this commercial activity differs from capitalism. Replies his Communist guide: "The reason why it's not capitalism is that in a socialist society like China's, you are still not allowed to exploit people for your own profit. You cannot hire another man to work for you and make money for you. But if you work harder yourself and make more money, that's completely all right."

Yesterday's heresies become today's sophistries. Yesterday's enemies may be tomorrow's customers. The Pacific is a two-way ocean. In Texas, Schell watches visiting Chinese officials politely handle local hospitality -- proffered hunks of hot, bleeding beef, cheery hostesses nearly bursting out of their tight jeans and blouses. At a rodeo, the Peking delegation listens, expressionless, as a voice on the public address system starts the show with "Help us, Lord, to live our lives in such a manner that when we take that last ride up there, You, as our judge, will tell us our entry fees are paid."

Americans touring Chinese farms and factories; Chinese filing through Disneyland and aircraft plants -- such scenes should sweeten the ulcers of market development executives from Long Island to Seattle. Schell is not so sanguine. "Everywhere around me in China now I see irreconcilable forces and contradictions," he writes, and ponders whether "all this profit-making energy will not finally collide with the collectivist ethic, which theoretically animates China."

Schell is nostalgic for theory. The ideal of a classless society excites him, even though the goal is unrealistic. The Chinese were, after all, aggressive merchants when most Europeans were still tribal socialists. But this brief, bright book raises practical questions. Is China going too far, too fast? Can a nation where orange soda pop is mixed with beer avoid a severe hangover? --By R.Z. Sheppard

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