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A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution:We Had The Great Wall To Ourselves (Part 3)

by Beverley

July 6th, 2013

Chapter Six
WE HAD THE GREAT WALL TO OURSELVES
Part Three

Beverley Jackson on the Great Wall of China, 1975.

The tombs of 13 Ming emperors are North West of Peking, at the foot of T’ien-shou Hill where the low mountains overlook the flatlands. A great deal of modern construction had taken place around the tomb that was opened to the public. In 1975 only one tomb had been excavated. We toured that tomb, deep under the ground, and visited the museums adjacent to it that housed many of the treasures that were brought out after the tomb was located and opened.

The tomb museums were filled with treasures and propaganda. The propaganda was already all too familiar, such as endless quotes from Chairman Mao which of course everyone already knew from the little Red Book of Mao sayings that all Chinese were required to have. The treasures included two magnificent kingfisher feather headdresses inlaid with jewels that particularly intrigued me.

When asked for a translation of banners with Chinese writing, sometimes we got an answer, sometimes we didn’t. The big white characters on red background hung on the lofty wall of small moss-covered stones in front of the Ming tower at the tombs prompted me to try one more time. “It calls for the support of the North Vietnamese,” came my reply. I was to later ask about the larger orderly red graffiti painted on the beautiful carved
Chu-yung Barrier Gate we passed on our route to the section of the Great Wall on our way to visit. “It says this was built in 1343,” was the answer this time. I very much doubt if 1343 had anything to do with that recent graffiti!”

On this part of the journey we rode beside railroad track that was particularly well tended and armed guards were stationed at switch points. Our guides explained that this was the route of the legendary Trans-Siberian Railroad. Just the mention of it brought a tremendous thrill to all. However, he told us it only ran one day a week and we would not be seeing the famed train.

Suddenly we took a hairpin turn on the narrow climbing road, and far off in the distance I spotted the shiniest green train in China. “Today must be the day!” I shouted optimistically running to the back of the bus where I’d left my camera case. And it was. For at least five minutes we rode beside the world’s most famous train, adorned with red medallions on alternate cars, as it wound through the hills of north China on its journey to Russia.

Only a very small section of the Great Wall had been restored at the time we were there. We’d seen pictures of President Richard Nixon on that short strip of wall three years before. We’d seen Henry Kissinger there. In fact, any photo of anyone on the Wall was taken there. So we knew what to expect. But we weren’t prepared for the emotional excitement of actually walking on the Great Wall of China.

President and Mrs. Nixon visit the Great Wall of China and the Ming tombs. Photo by Byron E. Schumaker, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

Everyone climbed the steep incline of the Wall at their own pace. Two-thirds of the way up I stopped and stared out over the mountains and plains of China, and the length of the Great Wall that was within our sight. It would be difficult for people only familiar with today’s photos and films of the Great Wall of China, with thousands of tourists from all over the world, vendors hawking Coca Cola and tee shirts, graffiti, to grasp the emotion of being there in February 1975. I was in China, walking on the Great Wall. Tears started to blur my vision. So I sat down to allow the emotion of the moment to subside.

He was in my lap before I was aware of his presence — a tiny toddler in bulky quilted clothes protecting him against the intense cold winds blowing off the Gobi Desert so close to us in that location. A dear little boy who didn’t yet know about strangers and East and West and cultural revolutions and distrust. Even his parents watched fascinated from a short distance, for a few moments not thinking of possible consequences from those who were always watching them as well as us since the average Chinese citizens were not supposed to have any contact with Westerners.

Chapter 1: Part 1 Part 2
Chapter 2: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Chapter 3: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
Chapter 4: Part 1
Chapter 5: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Chapter 6: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Chapter 7: Part 1
Chapter 8: Part 1 Part 2
Chapter 9: Part 1 Part 2
Chapter 10: Part 1
Chapter 11: Part 1 Part 2
Chapter 12: Part 1
Chapter 13: Part 1

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Books, My Life
Comments (1)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: We Had the Great Wall To Ourselves (Part 2)

by Beverley

July 1st, 2013

Chapter Six
WE HAD THE GREAT WALL TO OURSELVES
Part Two

Traffic on road to Ming Tombs in 1975.
Today it would be Ferraris and Bentleys!

There were no restaurants along our route. And definitely no vendors braving the cold. Our guides had prepared by bringing picnic boxes to be eaten as we bounced along in our bus. We had no idea of what we might find inside those boxes. What could possibly be the Chinese version of a picnic? Well it wasn’t really unlike something you might find in a Western lunch box. Four slices of thick white bread, slices of assorted meats and chicken, a delicious pickle, an orange, cookies, two hard boiled eggs (the eggs were small but they had huge bright yellow yokes). And of course they included toothpicks. Using toothpicks was as common to the Chinese at that time as was the disgusting habit of continually spitting on the streets, floors of theatres and stores, or into the brass spittoons that were found everywhere indoors.

We’d barely finished our picnic when the “Spirit Road” appeared. A spirit road was the avenue of huge carved stone animals and figures that lined the approach to ancient tombs. The Chinese funerary tradition is said to have started in the first century A.D. and was carried on until the fall of the last imperial dynasty in 1911. The monumental carved figures were there to represent the honor guard of real live men who would have lined the route for important occasions. The very large highly dramatic carvings of noblemen and warriors looked like escapees from classical Chinese opera. The carved animals were in place to guard the tomb against evil, and offer any help needed by the spirit of the deceased on its unknown journey to the other world.

We were heading down a paved road, following carts pulled by donkeys with owners sleeping on the cargo, bundled into sheepskin coats and fur hats with ear flaps, passing between monumental stone animals staring down on us. Some figures were mystical, such as the popular Chinese beast the qilin, and some were more recognizable elephants, camels and horses. The pairs of familiar animals offered the female of each species seated and the male standing. The four elephants on the route are each cut from one block of stone and are 13 feet high and 14 feet long.

We were allowed a picture stop here. Other requests en route had fallen on unsympathetic ears. We had a schedule to stick to. We’d had frustratingly few photo opportunities so far on this trip.

The trees beyond the stone figures were all quite young. The lush avenues of full aged trees found in old photographs had long ago been reduced to daily fuel by local peasants. But in springtime the young trees must have presented a pretty green backdrop for the stone menagerie.

“It’s just a short jaunt to the tomb,” our guide announced. “Two short jaunts make one sojourn,” Steve muttered. —to be continued

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Books, My Life
Comments (1)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: We Had the Great Wall To Ourselves

by Beverley

June 27th, 2013

Chapter Six
WE HAD THE GREAT WALL TO OURSELVES
Part One

The Great Wall was the last thing the astronauts saw from space, and the first thing our gang of ten wanted to see in China. The road out of town was lined with newly planted rows of bare trees. A few bicycles, trucks and horse drawn carts carrying hay speckled the long straight route. We bounced past deep excavations for a new part of the Peking subway. I heard about the subway but was never allowed to see it. Rumors were that it was truly an entire city underground to be used in case of attack. This tied into the rumors that the football field wide street upon which our hotel was located had been built to tremendous width to allow war planes to use it as a runway in case of trouble.

Heavy traffic on a Main Street in China during Cultural Revolution.

A cement mountain and dilapidated mining equipment appeared in the distance. We passed factories, the brick walls surrounding them topped with jagged pieces of glass sticking into the mortar. The glass sparkled quite innocently, quite prettily, in the light that filtered through the smoke and fine dust floating trough the resultant smog. Was it to keep people out, or in? We’d been lectured daily that since the revolution China was free of crime.

On this long drive we saw one of the only two gas stations we found in China — two bright red pumps at the side of the road. The other one was near the International Club in the foreign legation area.

A Hollywood spectacle suddenly sped past our lumbering bus. It was a fleet of black limousines. What a surprising sight. No one would tell us who it was. However, the flag of the Congo was flying out front of our hotel that day in honor of the visiting president of the Congo, so it was a safe guess that we’d just been left in the dust of his entourage.

We’d been driving a long time when the rest room stop was made. Now none of us were expecting a sparkling clean Chevron station. But the wooden shed where a long splintery plank with four holes set over four deep foul-smelling holes in the earth did come as a surprise. We were instructed that time was limited so four of us had to go at a time, or as numbers worked out with only members of the same sex participating at one time. What did we do? We hiked up our mink and broadtail coats, unzipped our trousers, pulled them down and climbed aboard. What a photograph that would have made.

Hygienics were attended to with good old American Kleenex and those antiseptic pads called “Wash & Dries”. Our purses and pockets were filled the little sealed packets of them at all times. Returning to the heated bus after our freezing bathroom adventure, conversation turned to the penetrating cold the Chinese were enduring in their padded cotton jackets and Mao suits as a chilling wind blew off the Gobi Desert.

“When I was a little girl in China,” Jayne explained, “my mother would ask the servants how cold it was outside. They would reply that it was a two coat day or a three coat day.” This day Jayne was obviously dressed for three coat weather wearing red and white striped long underwear, a plaid suit with silk blouse and two sweaters under it, her ankle length camel hair coat under her hooded camel color mink coat. And of course gloves, boots, scarf and beret. —to be continued.

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Books, My Life
Comments (0)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: The Legendary Capital Of China (Part 3)

by Beverley

June 23rd, 2013

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution
THE LEGENDARY CAPITAL OF CHINA
Part 3

Mural in “New” Peking Hotel dining room.

By asserting ourselves some amount of freedom was possible in Peking. We were well located. Two long blocks down the street was Tein An Men Square and the Forbidden City. Just around the corner we had Wangfujing Street, Peking’s main shopping street with the gigantic People’s Department Store and assorted small shops.

Steve located a bicycle and he was off to see the sights of Peking on his own. Rosa spent private time with family we were not allowed to meet. No museums were open during the Cultural Revolution. With the exception of the Forbidden City, which we were promised they would eventually take us to see, the contents of most museums had been carefully hidden to protect them from being destroyed by the frightening young Red Guards. So, I went shopping. The small stores were limited, but the big public department store was a fascinating orgy of cheap plastic products available to the Chinese.

My visits to the stores were unplanned and unannounced, but somehow always anticipated by the Chinese. As I stepped over the threshold there was someone there to shepherd me through the crowds that quickly assembled around me, or empty an elevator for my exclusive use. The entire trip we were never once permitted to enter an elevator with any Chinese other than an employed elevator operator.

I did find some things to buy in the big over-heated over-crowded store. China had been such an unknown quantity to Westerners for so long, people had asked for samples of everything. I went home laden with cigarettes (I still have a couple of packages of very stale assorted brands of 1975 Chinese cigarettes), tooth paste, hand painted bone tooth brushes, plastic sandals, panda bear trimmed baby clothes, blue cotton Mao jackets, caps with red stars.

It was sad to see how limited merchandise was, and the consistently poor quality that was available. These are the people who had known the most beautiful of the arts for 5,000 years and had now been reduced to repetitive ugliness and mediocrity. In the art department of the store you could buy paintings, etchings, lithos and embroideries of Chairman Mao. In the literature department you could buy the writings of Chairman Mao.

The crowd attractor in this store, other than me, was the bicycle department. Bicycles were the ultimate luxury. Since cars were limited to high officials, the military, the foreign diplomats and a small number of taxis in major cities, bicycles were the luxury form of transportation. Horse or mule drawn carts still sauntered through the streets of Peking, and on the outskirts of the city on occasion we encountered camel caravans. Overcrowded buses ran in some areas of Peking. Salaries were so small that the purchase of a bicycle which was very inexpensive to our thinking was a tremendous expenditure for the average Chinese. Family members would pool money to help one member buy a bicycle, which others would share.

With the slight relaxation of our regimentation came the opportunity for expanding our culinary experiences. Our second night in Peking we dined at a popular restaurant called Hung Pin Lo. Peeking into the worker’s dining rooms which our guide/translator/spy hastened us quickly past, we saw groups of men sitting around tables with steaming Mongolian hot pots in the center. They were talking loudly, laughing, drinking, while dipping their vegetables and chicken or meat into the steaming broth.

Our heightened expectations were unwarranted. We were greeted by the familiar empty room with sofas and chairs at one end and a big round table at the other. Isolation was our destiny. The workers slopped broth on paper covers, we found cloth napkins folded like flowers emerging from western goblets. Out came the no longer surprising hors d’oeuvre platters with cucumbers cut like flowers, duck livers marinated in wine, 100 year old eggs, and thin slices of pork tongue. But unfamiliar dishes were to follow — a sort of quenelle with an outside layer of finely ground chicken mixed with egg white, filled with shark meat and served with a creamy butter sauce. Deep fried batter-coated chopped prawn balls came with a dish of fried salt to dip them in. A pyramid of Chinese cabbage was surrounded with thin carrot slices, bamboo shots, slices of mushroom, chunks of ginger root and Chinese ham jerky. Long skewers tipped with tiny pieces of mutton rolled in sesame seeds weren’t as innocent as they looked. This was our first adventure with really spicy food. Crispy deep fried seaweed was combined with thin slices of bamboo shoots. Chicken in a white sauce was surrounded by button mushrooms cooked in a brown sauce. A big whole fish stared at us from a pool of very spicy meat sauce dotted with slices of green pepper and carrots. Sections of oxtail arrived in a milder meat sauce. Dinner ended with corn milk based soup of prawns, fresh ginger and cabbage. And we would have settled so happily for cooking our own in a Mongolian hot pot with the crowd downstairs! …Next installment we travel to the Great Wall.

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories My Life
Comments (0)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: The Legendary Capital Of China (Part 2)

by Beverley

June 19th, 2013

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution
THE LEGENDARY CAPITAL OF CHINA
Part 2

We staked our claim on the only small patch of clear ground in that sea of blue Mao suits. In our cozy mink and camel hair coats we perched on our bags, as confused and intimidated as the masses all around us. It appeared we weren’t going anywhere.

The guides who met us were not happy. It should be explained, in China during the Cultural Revolution no one went anywhere without a City Visa. One didn’t just get on a train in Tientsin to Peking in 1975 and head off to the hotel. Everyone needed a city visa. And our group visa allowing us into Peking was nowhere to be found. Rosa was the culprit. She was in charge of our city visas. But where had she put it for safe keeping? She couldn’t find it. We all searched her belongings and couldn’t find it. The guides brought officials and they couldn’t find it. We weren’t going anywhere — except out of Peking on the next plane to the United States our guides informed us. We were not happy. We had those highly coveted four week visas to China. Westerners didn’t get four week visas to China in those days but for some mysterious reason, which would be answered for me 34 years later, we had them. And here they were throwing us out after only one week!

I’ve never been sure exactly what happened at this point. It appeared Rosa suddenly gave the officials some telephone number to contact but she was so mysterious about everything, and this was no exception. Within minutes after this we were allowed to leave the train station and go directly to our reserved rooms in the new wing of the old Peking Hotel. Rosa had been the center of suspicion as far as the Chinese officials were concerned but they now appeared to be treating her with a surprising new respect as we departed the train station. I couldn’t help wondering whose telephone number she had given them? The person obviously had amazing pull. We were later told the missing visa document was found in a pocket of a sweater Rosa had worn under her coat. But Marge and I had checked that sweater ourselves and there was no group visa. One more mystery to be solved 34 years later!

All any of us cared about at that point was getting to our hotel rooms and a hot bath. The Peking Hotel was the best hotel in town at that time and we were fortunate to be assigned there. You didn’t pick your own hotel in China in 1975. China Travel put you where they wanted you to be. The 17 story air-conditioned new wing had just been completed months before our arrival. This was where the foreign diplomats and business people were housed. It was the very best the Chinese had to offer.

The rooms were clean, modern, and from mine I had a view from my windows of the tremendously wide main street, Ch’ang An Chien, that passed between the Forbidden City and Tian an men Square two blocks down. In front of our hotel at any hour of the day or night there were mobs of Chinese peering through the fences and down the driveway to catch a glimpse of the foreigners coming and going. We were all a celebrity to them!

Looking at that wide boulevard I was amazed at the total lack of traffic day and night. There were traffic police in white coats and caps at all the major corners. However the only traffic rule I ever became aware of was blowing your horn gave drivers the right of way.

No headlights of any sort were allowed at night, so that was added danger. Bicycles, of which there were thousands, also had no lights, not even reflectors. But most of the bicyclists did have Mao quotations on red cards attached to their handlebars. Those without could be stopped and threatened. We were assured by our guides however that if there were an accident, all drivers must know how to take their cars or trucks apart and put them back together before they could get the supposed license. And one accident and the license was revoked for life.

The most surprising thing about my hotel room was the curtains at the window. They were electrically controlled. We had lighting of about two watts per globe, inadequate hot water, toilets that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t, no TV, mini-bars, refrigerators, but our curtains were opened and closed by pushing a button. Buttons also summoned floor attendants, who of course entered without knocking. It was the same routine here of the desk near the elevator where your room key was secreted. The neat clean bathroom had the same heavy bright pink toilet paper we had found in our Tientsin bathroom, plastic shower slippers, clean comb and tiny bars of soap. The pillow cases and sheets were trimmed with hand embroidered blue flowers. The cost of this large clean new room was $25 a night.

Some room service was available here. I ordered fresh squeezed orange juice first thing. Everyone in the group was catching colds or flu so I wanted an extra shot of vitamin C. The room service menu read “fresh squeezed orange juice”. It was orange soda pop that arrived, on a pretty tray with beautiful silk damask napkin. It cost the equivalent of two cents in US money. And of course there was no service charge as there was no tipping allowed anywhere in China in 1975.

Laundry service was superb. You could send anything out and it would return the same day neatly folded with a small piece of white cloth stamped with Chinese characters suspended from the garment by about an inch of crocheted thread. Although lost now, for years I treasured a Vera print nylon bra and panties with those laundry marks attached.

The lobby, which we passed through that first night in a cold tired daze, was massively marble. There was a very large map of the world on one wall, topped by clocks with the different times in cities through the world. Groups of school children were brought to the lobby to see this amazing map and clocks. We studied it to get an idea of time zones, anticipating calls home. The lobby was filled with Japanese businessmen, European diplomats, women from small countries in Africa draped in brightly printed native gowns and a big group of German engineers who were on our plane from Canton to Peking when we first arrived in China.

The service desks were very small, and no one at them appeared to speak English. In fact, the only ones other than our guides who acknowledged speaking English were one telephone operator and a couple of elderly waiters in the dining room. The dining room where we dined three meals a day was on the same cavernous scale as the train station. The far end was covered with an intricate mosaic of the picturesque mountains of Quilin.

The center wing of the hotel housed a gift shop with the limited supplies and gifts available for purchase — orange pop, bottled water, Chinese dolls, embroideries, and tourist items. In the same area was a branch of the Bank of China. We used that a lot. A post office that took care of all small pieces of mail was located here as well. Big packages required a trip to the main interesting post office in back of Tien an Mien Square.

Sightseeing in the original wing of the hotel was discouraged. It was aged and run down, but picturesque with large red and gold columns in the grand old style. It was a sort of Hollywood Grauman’s Chinese Theatre without the hand and footprints in the cement out front. We were never allowed to linger long enough in this area to figure out who was housed here.

Thirty-four years later the two main things I remember about the New Peking Hotel are the electrically controlled curtains and the telephone service. Calls back to California were put through within ten minutes, and the lines were perfectly clear. However, a call to one of our group three doors down the hall could take up to an hour to complete. And then the conversation was unintelligible. However, this may have been due to antiquated surveillance equipment rather than staff inadequacy. We knew we were under constant surveillance here as we had been in Tientsin. But at least there were no late night interrogations to cope with in Peking. …to be continued.

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Books, My Life
Comments (4)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: The Legendary Capital Of China

by Beverley

February 25th, 2013

Chapter Five
THE LEGENDARY CAPITAL OF CHINA
Part 1

Once the fair ended we all boarded a night train to Peking, a hard-back night train. This meant we sat on once-polished uncomfortable wooden seats in an unheated dimly lighted railroad car. We had departed with a royal sendoff from our Tientsin Hotel. Everyone who’d served us, spied on us, had any sort of seen or unseen contact with us, was there to wave goodbye. Comrade Sung stayed with us all the way to the train. I think he’d grown to like us. He’d enjoyed the mental challenge of trying to outwit us in his nightly inquisitions, finding himself against commensurate minds. He stood on the platform waving goodbye until totally veiled in steam and darkness. The composure Sung displayed at the end led our cynical minds to presume all the completed resumes, the results of his endless hours of questioning and spying, had been deemed satisfactory by his superiors and were now in the hands of the proper authorities in Peking. Peking was now well informed and prepared for our arrival.

Traffic on main street in Peking looked like this in 1975. Today it is bumper to bumper.

Our railroad car was filled with young soldiers in thin green cotton uniforms with red lapels and red stars on their hats. Their belongings spilled over the netting overhead racks. They had packages, probably sent along by mothers or wives, wrapped in reed matting, khaki color bags, enamel pans filled with fruit and garlic (pans to be used for bathing later), burlap bags with hidden necessities, and string bags with indiscernible contents. And soldier had a rifle casually tossed up there as well.

Somehow Steve Allen and I got separated from the rest of our gang. There wasn’t anyone else in our car except the soldiers and the two of us. There were no railroad attendants or guards. This fact, coupled with all those rifles, didn’t exactly create a “sit back and let us do the driving” sort of happy traveler. Trying not to dwell on those rifles I concentrated on how each young man could carry so many diverse items in those string bags. Among items I could make out were an enamel drinking cup, tooth brush and tooth paste, changes of shirts and underwear, books, and bags of sweets. When we arrived at the end of our trip and bamboo poles were retrieved from beneath all the bundles I was fascinated to watch as everything was carried off most easily dangling from the two ends of the bamboo poles, just as the Chinese have transported everything from night soil to gold ore for centuries.

Steve and I were cold in that barren railroad car even though we were enveloped in camels’ hair, cashmere and fur. The young soldiers conversely appeared quite comfortable in their light weight padded cotton uniforms. One young soldier a couple of rows in front and across the aisle from us kept looking back at Steve and me rather menacingly. Thinking of those rifles overhead this made us quite uncomfortable. Then about an hour out of Tientsin, after watching us continuously, he stood up and reached into the rack above his head. I was holding my breath and Steve definitely wasn’t cracking any jokes. To my relief the soldier’s hands passed right over his rifle. He unzipped his canvas bag and rummaged inside, just long enough for my imagination to conjure up secreted Central American machetes and Middle Eastern daggers. But what he pulled out was one of the colorful big green thermoses decorated with floral decals that had become part of our daily Tientsin survival. He carefully poured some of the hot tea into the thermos lid, not easy on a train moving rapidly over tracks that appeared to have been laid about the same time the Great Wall was being built in the north. Slowly he walked across the aisle and handed the cup to Steve, indicating with his free hand that Steve and I were to share the cup of steaming liquid. Our shivering smiles must have been an adequate reward for his sympathetic kindness to two enemy strangers. It was a beautiful example of human kindness and I felt quite ashamed for having been suspicious of the young soldier’s intentions.

Thoroughly warmed inside by both the hot liquid and the warm gesture, Steve and I settled into relaxed conversation. This noisy train couldn’t be bugged. He told me about a train poem he’d written that is included in an English book of famous train poems when he was young. Unfortunately the name of the book is now forgotten. We talked about family and friends, our cameras and the types of film we’d brought. We felt safe, but not safe enough to talk about China.

The seats were so uncomfortable and we couldn’t see much outside the window. Soft moonlight and steam drifting back from our old fashioned steam engine created strange silhouettes of the bare trees and darkened villages.

Our bodies were cold and sore at the end of the several hour ride. Stiffened fingers were slow gathering up our gear. The young soldiers in their padded cotton uniforms however had no problems pulling down their carry-ons, looping the handles over either end of their bamboo poles and trotting off into the cavernous Peking train station. Possibly it was enthusiasm that motivated their rapid departure. The majority of these young peasant recruits had never been to a city before.

The Peking Train Station was a product of Mao’s Great Leap Forward architecture, built in 1958. It was big and cold and unwelcoming, the ceilings outlandishly high to make individuals feel small and insignificant. Tall pillars of granite, marble balustrades, long escalators and huge paintings broke the space.

One tremendous painting portrayed a paternal young Chairman Mao on a grassy hilltop, leading smiling happy peasants and minority people waving flags, rifles, picks. And charging up the hill towards them ran happy recruits coming to join the revolutionary forces. It was a sort of “Uncle Sam Wants You!” recruiting poster Chinese style. And there were the ever-present, very big, always smiling portraits of Chairman Mao.

Like Gulliver’s Travels, tiny people hovered beneath the benevolently smiling giant. Khaki-clad soldiers sprawled over their rope-tied cloth bags and reed bales of gear, peasants trotted past with treasured belongings suspended from shoulder balanced bamboo poles, wrinkled old women in quilted black silk jackets, black pants, black velvet turbans touched with a bit of jade and tiny black slippers on their bound feet reclined on their bags of belongings. Enchanting tiny children so bundled up in quilted clothing they looked like toddling Russian tea cozies clung to parents. Their little bare derrieres were exposed through slits in the back of their trousers, a Chinese provision for potty training. These and a sea of indistinguishable blue quilted Mao coats and caps with people inside filled the gigantic station waiting room.

This was our first real sample of the magnitude of the masses of people who could assemble in any one place in China. As Americans we couldn’t really imagine such numbers all crushed together. There could be no comparison to record crowds in their orderly rows of seats at a Super Bowl. There each one still retained their individuality. — To be continued…

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Books, My Life
Comments (1)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: The Bug In The Light Fixture Couldn’t Fly

by Beverley

February 7th, 2013

Chapter Four
THE BUG IN THE LIGHT FIXTURE COULDN’T FLY

It had taken a few days, but we were learning the rules of life in China during the Cultural Revolution although they frequently didn’t make any sense to us. We were cautious, actually on guard at all times. Any critical conversation was reserved for moments when we might be walking alone for a bit of exercise, hopefully out of the hearing of whomever was following us.

Although, on occasion we used the conditions we knew existed to our own advantage. We all knew there were listening devices hidden somewhere in our rooms. We’d been warned of this condition before we left home. I found the one in my bedroom the first night when I turned on the lights. There in a vintage frosted glass-domed light fixture in the middle of the ceiling of my bedroom a little black listening device showed up quite clearly. The occasion when I used knowledge of this device to my own advantage concerned the one thin ragged towel and washcloth allotted me that had not been changed for four nights. While I didn’t expect the big fluffy bath towels I enjoy at home, I did feel it was time for a fresh dry replacement of what I had been using. Having whispered to Marge earlier in the evening that I needed her help, after dinner I led her to my room and stood her directly under the light fixture. Directing my words upward to the little black supposedly hidden device, which Marge could see clearly, I announced loudly, “Can you believe it Marge. They are trying so hard to do everything as nicely as possible for us, yet they only give me one thin little bath towel that hasn’t been changed for four days and is getting mildew.”

“I’ve had the same problem,” she replied, grasping the role I’d intended her to play.

We kept up idle conversation about the day’s work at the carpet fair, checking our watches to time the expected results of our experiment. Within four minutes the door burst open and a young attendant tore into the room. Two large clean towels and two washcloths were rushed wordlessly into my bathroom, the limp remnants of the previous four days disappearing with the retreating attendant.

Dinner conversation was guarded too. We were all convinced that we were exposed to ears other than those of employees who supposedly spoke no English at all. We talked about the carpets and the Fair. We discussed how the stir fried vegetables at this meal deferred from the ones at the previous meal — a different cut of the carrots, broccoli instead of cabbage, an unfamiliar mushroom.

Observations about guests at other tables were allowed. We noted the lowering level of the contents of the Nescafe jar always sitting on one table, or the bottle of red wine that went down by only an inch per meal at another.

Of particular interest to us was the destiny of a tiny almost valueless coin that rested in a glass dish on our table three meals a day. Evidently one of us had dropped the coin unknowingly the first day. Or they thought one of us had. So there it sat, every meal, as dependable as the late night visits of Comrade Sung.

Our last night in Tientsin someone finally braved the issue and asked the elderly white-coated waiter who spoke some English from pre-1949 days when he’d worked in an English-speaking home and had served us every meal. He explained that the little coin would be kept for six months. If no one claimed it by then the coin would be put into the employee’s fund.

We’d been warned of such situations. There were tales from returning Europeans of being chased down a train station platform by a hotel employee waving torn panty hose or a beaten up discarded bra that had been retrieved from a hotel room waste basket. Or less embarrassingly one report concerned having a bus halted until a bicyclist brought some rumpled papers found under a desk. It really was quite impossible to throw away anything short of banana skins or tangerine peels, without finding them neatly folded on top of the dresser the next day.

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Books, My Life
Comments (1)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: Stockholm Syndrome in Tientsin (part 4)

by Beverley

January 29th, 2013

Chapter Three
STOCKHOLM SYNDROME IN TIENTSIN
Part Four

Then came the moment we’d all dreamed of — Comrade Sung had arranged for us to go to the local antique store, state owned of course. Knowing nothing about Chinese porcelain at the time, I picked up one piece after another and tried to ask my antique dealer friends with great expertise if they were worth the high prices being asked. No one took the time to answer me. Their hunt was on. Finally I gave up and sat on a small chair in a corner watching my frenzied companions shop.

I became aware of an elderly man across the room watching me. He stood there in his blue Mao suit, his hands tucked into opposite sleeves in the style of aristocrats in pre-liberation China. He just kept watching me. So I watched him. Slowly one hand came out of the sleeve and it appeared he was signaling me to follow him. With nothing else to do, I did.

I followed him up a narrow, dangerously in need of repair, old wooden staircase lighted by a single bulb on the second floor. Arriving there without incident I realized that this kind old man had brought me into Tientsin’s Aladdin’s cave of antiques. What they were fighting over downstairs was Walmart while I was upstairs in Cartier. The walls were hung with ancient scrolls and calligraphy. Heaped in piles wherever you looked were rolls of ancient scrolls edged and bound in beautiful old silks. Somehow my new friend had understood I knew about paintings but had no knowledge of porcelains. Or was he just kind?

He let me wander, and unroll, and feast my eyes. Then when he could hear business was being concluded downstairs, he went to a shelf and pulled out a silk-covered portfolio and handed it to me. He pointed to the portfolio, then to my purse, then to me. In other words, buy it! Peeking inside I discovered 12 beautiful very valuable old gauche paintings of Lohans (religious men) in representative legends pertaining to their particular titles.

Cautiously edging back down the aged staircase, gripping my treasure, I reentered the room and realized no one had noticed my absence. No one noticed the silken portfolio I presented at the desk where the clerk worked with abacus figuring how much I owed for the 12 paintings, the equivalent of $48 US for all. Another clerk brought a basin of hot water so we could wash off the ancient dust from the antiques we’d been handling.

However, it turned out Jayne, Marge and I didn’t have the proper Chinese currency to pay for our purchases so we were rushed into the minibus which sped off through a totally unfamiliar area of Tientsin to the main branch of the Bank of China. It was a huge old building, of British design, and we guessed it had once housed a British bank. Everything was frighteningly quite inside the high ceilinged building where great numbers of young Chinese worked silently at the long rows of desks. No typewriters clicked. There were no computers, no calculators. No phones rang. There was no light chatter between co-workers. Only the sound of beads sliding up and down the abacus could be heard in that vast room.

I studied the European detailing of the church-like structure as our guide led us over to a counter where foreign money transactions were handled. “Which of you ladies is Mrs. Jackson?” the stern man behind the counter queried in heavily accented English.

Chills traversed my spine. An unknown building in an unknown part of town. Our visit was totally unplanned. Of course, this was China during the Cultural Revolution. There were spies everywhere. Our every move was known and recorded.

I acknowledged my identity fearing the worst as my fellow travelers distanced themselves as far as possible from me.

“You lost your gloves this morning Mrs. Jackson,” he announced. I checked my coat pockets and purse and he was right. “You will find them with the attendant on the fifth floor of Tientsin Hotel Number One when you return there.” And I did.

It wasn’t until our group began to go separate ways some days later in Peking that I had the joy of showing my treasure when we all played a sort of show and tell after dinner. As I took out each of the 12 beautiful paintings of Lohans there was silence. I wished that the kind old man from the antique shop could have been there to share my triumph. [… and so ends chapter 3. Next week we start chapter 4, “The Bug in the Light Fixture Couldn’t Fly “]

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Books, Uncategorized
Comments (2)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: Stockholm Syndrome in Tientsin (part 3)

by Beverley

January 13th, 2013

Chapter Three
STOCKHOLM SYNDROME IN TIENTSIN
Part Three

Comrade Sung’s built-in radar must have told him we were getting bored and edgy spending all the time at the fair. So he produced a mini bus and took us on a city tour. One thousand years ago Tientsin was only a sea bank, so its history is only about 800 years old. Before liberation (1949) it was a semi-feudal, semi-colonial city. Traces of architecture from that period remained such as the Dutch building built by the French we’d seen the night before. Tudor beams adorned buildings in the former British sector, brightly colored tiles and grillwork were found in the Italian section. The former club for Italian colonists was now the Worker’s Palace and quite elegant. Nowhere were there signs of flower gardens but some window sills held pots of wild clover.

We passed people lined up to get tickets for the evening dance show. Admission tickets were thirty cents. Torrie asked, “May we go to the dance show tonight Comrade Sung?” “No!” came the Comrades anticipated reply. No reason given. We just were not allowed to go to the theatre. Possibly this was the fear of allowing us to be in middle of crowds where we were unprotected. Both sides of the wide boulevard we traveled on were hung with clotheslines holding strands of straw looped round and round. They’d been hung out to dry. Several blocks of natural color, then blocks of red, next blue, then orange. Rows of children pushed carts down the main street, collecting manure left behind from those morning horse drawn delivery carts. Later they would deliver it to peasants working outside the city in the fields. This was one way to teach children to respect the peasants. However those peasants got cheated out of a lot of manure by the horse owners who tied little cloth bags under the tails of their horses.

Stopping at the Tientsin Water Park we were allowed to get out and take photos. It was a pretty winter scene with ice crusting the lakes and canals. Bare trees were wrapped in protective straw mats, and boats were out of the water for winter, piled up in the main square.

Back in the bus we engaged the guides in casual conversation. We learned they had read Shakespeare and Mark Twain. One girl said she truly liked Huckleberry Finn. “He very bad boy,” she giggled.

We were even allowed a visit to Tientsin’s big department store this day. But as usual we were being watched. The chain of spies was set up by our guide. At the first counter we approached in the store he subtly tugged at the back of a young man’s jacket. From then on this young man, or others who looked like him, were always a slight distance ahead and behind us to move crowds away from us when they began to gather and clear elevators of all other shoppers so we rode up and down in empty elevators. However, this was all done for a good reason. Westerners who looked like us were a great novelty in Tientsin at that time. This was proven to us when we left the department store and discovered curious mobs had nearly turned our small bus over. — to be continued

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Books, My Life
Comments (1)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: Stockholm Syndrome in Tientsin (part 2)

by Beverley

December 27th, 2012

Chapter Three
STOCKHOLM SYNDROME IN TIENTSIN
Part Two

Since the taxis weren’t waiting for us when we finished Steve, Herb Cole, Rosa and a nice Danish man, Peter with an unpronounceable last name, and I decided to walk a bit. Peter somehow had become assimilated into our gang of ten by the second day, having met and liked him at the carpet fair. We were no sooner out of the alley than the crowds began to appear from the dark shadows to follow us. This was nothing official, just curious citizens looking at strange people, Red haired Steve at six foot three definitely stood out. Jayne, still down with flu back at the hotel, would have made a bit of a statement as well.

We walked past shops with subtly lighted window displays. One had a tiny child’s suit with panda bear appliqués and a little hat with ears. At a movie house Rosa inquired about the film playing. She was told it was the story of a great hero of the people’s revolution who worked in the oil fields of China. Two darling little girls with black braids took a special interest in me. This was to be my first chance to give out some of the marigold seeds my friend David Burpee, the father of the flower seed industry in America, had given me to take to China. Although we’d been warned that the Chinese would accept absolutely no gifts, to prove the self-sufficiency achieved through their revolution, David felt flower seeds would be acceptable. I thought tomato or squash seeds to get something extra to eat would have been a better gift. But he was hung up on marigolds — even spent a great deal of money lobbying unsuccessfully in Washington D.C. to make marigolds our national flower. So I went off to China with 50 packets of marigold seeds, marigolds the flowers of friendship.

Reaching into my oversized travel bag I pulled out two packages of the seeds and tried to give them to the little girls. Suddenly one of the crowd following us spoke up in perfect English. “The children have everything they need,” he said politely but firmly. And then he added, “Also they would not grow in our climate.” The little girls looked so disappointed. But I got the message and 50 packets of marigold seeds were left on my hotel bed at the Hilton Hotel in Tokyo before I returned home.

Fortunately at that point attention was diverted from my marigold problem when two bikes collided nearby. The men riding them stopped and started checking damage as though they were going to file insurance claims. Peter and Herb grew tired of the crowds and returned to the restaurant. Rosa, Steve and I wandered across the street to look more closely at a building built in traditional Dutch architectural style. Rosa asked someone what it was and they said it had been built by the French. At that point we realized the crowds surrounding us had grown very large and were moving in so close we were facing potential problems. It was still a friendly smiling crowd, but we decided it was time to return quickly to the restaurant. Rosa, trying to keep things friendly, announced in Chinese that Steve should get a long-eared fur Mongolian hat like several boys in the crowd wore. A few people laughed.

Suddenly the man who had declined the seeds started pushing the crowd away from us, speaking severely in Chinese. They dispersed quickly. Heading straight for the restaurant we found our group huddled in a little room rather like the Parisian concierge quarters of days long past. Jerry informed us the police had been called to clear the street. One official ran inside and shouted into the phone to get taxis there fast. We were forced to remain crushed together in the tiny room until the taxis came tearing up. As our taxis drove off the worrisome threatening crowd that had so alarmed the head cadre lined the sidewalk across from the restaurant grinning and waving goodbye to us. Didn’t the officials realize that even if we had been subversives with terrorist plans, we’d been rendered quite harmless with the ten course meal and seven to ten dumplings we’d consumed such a short time before!

Awakening to a new day in Tientsin was quite an exceptional awakening. The whistles of the steam engines passing through blended with the horse hoofs clattering in the streets. So many deliveries were made in horse-drawn carts each morning. As the first signs of dawn threw light, a bare tree in front of the factory across the street stood in silhouette like a Chinese paper cut out. A lone girl practiced her tai chi exercises each morning on that factory roof at sunrise. —to be continued

By The Way
This blog was started to sell my new book and I keep going off on other topics. Please do check out The Beautiful Lady Was A Palace Eunuch at Amazon.com

Acknowledgement:
Kathleen Fetner, Technical Advisor and Friend

Categories Books, My Life
Comments (2)

Author Archive for Beverley – Page 2

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