Archive for Jayne Meadows Allen

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

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

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: The First Annual Tientsin Carpet Fair

by Beverley
October 11th, 2012

Chapter Two
The First Annual Tientsin Carpet Fair
Part One

The pretentious big shiny red and gold invitation Rosa’s influence had secured for me that had brought me to China during the Cultural Revolution read:  “China National Native Produce and Animal By-Products Branch, Peking Branch and Talien Branch cordially invite Mrs. Beverley Jackson to the Chinese Carpets Fair 1975 in Tientsin.”  Thirty-four years later I still can’t explain why animal by-products groups hosted a carpet fair, other than the fact that the carpets were made of wool or silk.  I suppose if you stretched logic a bit a silkworm might qualify as an animal.  But the timing was right for me to arrange my life and work in Santa Barbara to allow for a few weeks absence for such a rare opportunity so I didn’t question anything.  I accepted the invitation to the Tientsin Carpet Fair immediately.

Tientsin Hotel Number One was old.  It was as clean as any place could be where brooms and dustpans are the substitute for vacuums when cleaning tired worn carpets.  But this was a big exciting adventure and things like dirty carpets didn’t really matter.  Our group quite liked the quaintness of Tientsin Hotel Number One.  I was deeply saddened to hear it totally collapsed in the big earthquake that hit Tientsin the following year, but happy it hadn’t occurred while we were in residence.

My room had two dark metal twin beds and quilts in white muslin duvet covers with big square cut-outs mid-quilt to show the pink quilt inside.  The steam radiator worked, and so did the unglamorous but western style toilet.  The hot water supply was occasional at best.  The bed linens and limited towels were thin with age and wear, but clean.  All meals taken at the hotel were quite good.  The first night Marge urged all of us to get a sealed bottle of water in the dining room to take to our rooms. So we all followed her lead and got bottles of water like Marge’s. Traversing the lobby heading for the elevator holding our Chinese water bottles we drew rather quizzical stares.  In our rooms it only took one sniff, not even a sip, to understand the reason for those quizzical stares.  Somewhere along the way the word water had been translated into strong undrinkable white wine.

There were questionable locks on the doors to our rooms and no Chinese inhibitions about entering without knocking.  Delivery of a thermos of boiling water, clean laundry being returned, the nightly inquisitional visits from Comrade Sung — all entered no matter the state of dress or undress we might be in without hesitation and totally unannounced.  More than once I was caught stark naked but no one blinked.  Well, no one but me!

Comrade Sung appeared to be responsible for us.  Although our original thinking was he was checking us out for what harm we might do to China, I eventually realized he was equally concerned that nothing bad happens to the rare visitors from America.  There were elements that might profit from an unpleasant incident involving Americans in China.  The Bamboo Curtain was just beginning to rise a tiny bit and not everyone in China approved.

Each night after we returned from dinner — about the time we had all our clothes off and were ready to bathe — Comrade Sung would burst into one of our rooms accompanied by two young language students from the foreign language school in Tientsin.  Two different students every night.  “Mrs. Jackson, why Mrs. Pollack wear white gloves all time?”  “Mrs. Jackson, why Jerry Fisher do all talking and wife not talk much?”  And in other rooms he had quite a few questions about Mrs. Jackson. “Why Mrs. Jackson have two coats?  Who was Jacqueline she talks about?  Her daughter is named Tracey.”  (Jacqueline was my beloved German shepherd.) “Why Mrs. Jackson always want yoghurt for breakfast?”  Reason for this was I’d been advised that the Chinese had learned to make delicious yoghurt from the Russians and it was a safe way to get calcium into my Chinese diet.

During one of his interrogations with me, quite amusingly Comrade Sung confirmed our suspicions that all our bags were carefully and cleverly searched while we were at the fair each day.  “Mrs. Jackson,” he began.  “Why Mrs. Allen have so many hairs?”  It took a minute for me to understand.  Some years previously actress Jayne Meadows Allen’s adored long-time hairdresser retired.  After endless attempts to replace him, Jayne simply gave up and started covering her own beautiful natural red hair with red wigs.  And she was traveling with five red wigs in her “locked” suitcases. —to be continued

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

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: And So the Adventure Begins (Part 2)

by Beverley
October 7th, 2012

Chapter One
AND SO THE ADVENTURE BEGINS
Part Two

My flight to China took over 24 hours. We ran into a heavy snow storm that put us down in Anchorage, and kept us there until record snowfall abated in Tokyo. My plane seatmate was a U.S. military man who, during his temporary leave in the States, had been dramatically reunited with his wife on the popular “Truth or Consequences” TV show. The next day she told him she was divorcing him!

Two of our party, Helene Pollack and Herb Cole, had been told by their U.S. doctors that they wouldn’t need smallpox vaccination certificates. Immediately upon arrival in Hong Kong they were rushed into an office at the Airport. Helene came out rubbing her arm, clutching an official white form. Herb came out looking distraught. He didn’t get a shot because he still had a scab from his U. S. vaccination. But the nurse couldn’t give him a form like Helene’s. I suggested we adjust our itinerary to allow an extra half hour at every port of embarkation and debarkation for Herb’s vaccinations. He didn’t find me amusing.

Torrie Levy had her own crisis to cope with. Her hairdryer broke the first morning in Hong Kong and she didn’t want to continue the trip. She’d already lost her glasses on the plane from Los Angeles. Her mother Marge Levy had lived through 30 years of these crises with Torrie and carried on unconcerned.

The two days in Hong Kong involved a lot of trips to China Travel Agency to get the endless documents required. And we all spent a good part of the last night making sure our customs declarations were accurate to the last U. S. penny or dime that might be found in a pocket or bottom of a purse. We’d been forcefully warned that there was no fooling around with money declarations going in or coming out of China. Pennies and dimes mattered to the precise Chinese.

And so, when that big old puffing steam engine pulled us as close to the border as it could go, we were ready for the short walk across the wooden bridge into the People’s Republic of China where the bright red flags were waving and Chairman Mao was smiling at us from a big gaudy painting.

Lugging carry-on bags, camera cases, coats and purse, I walked excitedly across the short bridge into the People’s Republic of China. Well, I didn’t exactly walk in. I fell in. There was a small step as I walked off the bridge that was invisible beneath all the things I was carrying and down I went.

Jayne Meadows next to a frozen lake at the Summer Palace

The customs people were smiling and cooperative, not at all what we’d been led to anticipate. Well, they were smiling and cooperative until they got to Rosa and Jayne. Jayne’s passport and visa photos had been taken without her red wig and she wasn’t getting into the People’s Republic of China without removing the wig she was wearing. However, Rosa was the real problem. Since we’d been helping her carry them we were aware that she was entering the People’s Republic of China with 11 suitcases and some extra boxes and bags. What we didn’t realize was she was bringing not only clothes for her family but TV sets, bathroom scales, meat grinders, and more. The customs officials were not happy with Rosa’s baggage and we seemed in for an endless delay. We’ll never know if her persistence wore them down, they just wanted her out of there, or Rosa said some magical name or words, but we were suddenly and most unexpectedly waved on.

An hour and a half later, after much tea served in tall quaintly decorated enamel cups with lids, and a good lunch of assorted dishes of stir fried vegetables, pork, chunks of deep fried fish, and rice we exited the way we’d entered. We had to catch a train to Canton. In Canton we’d catch the plane to Peking where we’d take a train to Tientsin, which is where we were actually going. Nobody had ever suggested that this trip would be easy. Approaching the memorable step of my entrance, we encountered four uniformed men on either side of the step. They were stationed there to direct our attention to the step. Their outstretched arms, all 16 of them, pointed directly towards that one small step. Foreigners didn’t often make the same mistake twice during the Cultural Revolution in China.

The train to Canton was clean and air conditioned. We were now passing through a tropical area, not unfamiliar to my Santa Barbara eye. Lush green foliage and crops, flowers, banana trees, house roofs of red tile. The Canton train station was a marvel of high ceilinged, Leningrad influenced, Art Nouveau. The vast waiting room, filled with eggplant colored imitation leather sofas, had marvelous etched glass windows. Glass curtains of lace with bamboo design stretched the length of the two story tall exterior windows. But we didn’t linger here. We were moved on to the airport and another waiting room and more tea. We drank a lot of tea in dining or waiting rooms before we finally got to Tientsin. The dining rooms all had wash basins near the door. Waiting rooms were decorated with small tangerine trees covered with tiny fruit in pots and lots of big red propaganda banners hanging everywhere.

And so ends the first chapter of “A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution.” In a few days we start Chapter Two. You don’t want to miss it!

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

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: And So the Adventure Begins

by Beverley
October 2nd, 2012

Since Fluffy took off to save his turkey friends from Thanksgiving disaster there haven’t been any health reports and queries come in from all over the world. Thank all of you for caring. I’m proud to report I’m making great progress. Tracey was here again and got me to dine at Lucky’s, Via Vai & even lunch at the Pharmacy. She found a stairless path from the parking lot in.

Yesterday Holly Lord and I lunched at Tydes and last night Bill Cornfield took me to Plow & Angel for dinner beneath the magnolia trees filled with sparking lights. And we even had a full moon!

And now I’m getting back to work. I haven’t felt up the hassle of getting my book “A Front Seat at the Cultural Revolution” published. This story of Jayne Meadows, Steve Allen and I getting into China in 1975 is fascinating and has an ending that is astounding! And great photos of a China were not a single person in the entire country owned a car. Where everyone wore the same shabby Mao suits. Today the roads are filled with Ferraris and Bentleys. Fifteen thousand dollar Birkin handbags can’t be found in New York now. They are all going to China!

Tracey suggested I serialize the book on my blog so here goes. Come with me to a China totally unrelated to China today. Take a front seat at the Cultural Revolution with Jayne, Steve and me……….

Beverly Hills April 2005: Monday’s society columns reported that Merv Griffin’s Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel ballroom was filled to overflowing, the gala benefit chairman wore a floral print chiffon gown from Oscar de la Renta’s spring collection and $250,000 was raised for the charity.

“You live in Santa Barbara I understand,” the elegant older woman, an American of Chinese descent, sitting to my right said in opening conversation. And my affirmative answer was followed with, “Do you know Rosa Wu* by any chance?”

“Indeed I do. It was thanks to Rosa that I was able to visit China during the Cultural Revolution 34 years ago. Just last week I told a friend about a remark I made to my fellow traveler Steve Allen(1) in 1975, that Rosa’s mother must have been the Madame Claude(2) of China to get us into China during the Cultural Revolution, and to get us a one month visa at that…

* Name has been changed
1. Steve Allen was actor, composer, author, comedian and possibly best known for starting the Tonight Show in 1954 on NBC.
2. Madame Claude ran the most famous, most glamorous house of prostitution in Paris the second half of the 20th century. Many of her beautiful, elegant, well trained girls married into the French aristocracy.

Chapter One
AND SO THE ADVENTURE BEGINS
Part One

They were an incongruous pair, the flame-tressed American woman and the stylish American of Chinese descent belting out chorus after chorus of Hello Dolly in Mandarin Chinese. Big red-painted wheels rolling noisily over rusted train tracks played backup for the twosome as we made our way towards the crossing point into the People’s Republic of China.

White mist from the steam engine up ahead cast a protective shield over a cluster of baby water buffalo grazing beyond our train windows. Big-footed Hakka women, who unlike most Han Chinese women never bound their feet, labored in the fields, shielded from the 20th century by black ruffled curtains cascading from their crownless straw sun shade hats. Viewing the serene ancient pastoral scene outside our train windows one could lose prospective of the ideological fanaticism of the Cultural Revolution that gnawed away at the remarkable ancient Chinese civilization.

And we were singing our way right into the eye of that frightening storm.

It was February 24, 1975 and ten of us from southern California were going into China. During that dark period of Chinese history people didn’t go to China, or leave China, visit China, take a trip to China. One was either going into China or coming out of China. It was rather like gaining admission to a high security prison.

The trip had come upon us quite unexpectedly. Rosa Wu had gone from Santa Barbara to visit her mother in Peking, a rather surprising event in 1974 when American citizens were not welcome in China unless their name was Nixon or Kissinger. While there she learned from her beautiful mother that the Chinese government was hoping to somehow get 10 Americans for the upcoming First Annual Tientsin Carpet Fair to be held in February 1975. The had ten Rumanians and ten Czechoslovakians, ten Russians and ten Bulgarians. But suddenly they wanted ten Americans.

Jumping into action Rosa flew out of China to Hong Kong and from there contacted her friend actress Jayne Meadows Allen in Los Angeles and on the telephone she, Jayne’s’ husband Steve Allen and Jayne formed a carpet company. That was three out of required ten Americans. Then Rosa remembered that she had seen me taking notes for my society column in the Santa Barbara News-Press in shorthand and remembered me once saying I longed to some day walk on the Great Wall of China. “Call Beverley Jackson in Santa Barbara and ask her if she wants to come as the secretary of our carpet company.” Without a thought of how I would swing it of course I said yes!

That was four out of ten. Rosa and Jayne filled out the remaining six with a couple who owned a carpet company, one of Hollywood’s leading interior designers and her daughter, a woman who had an important antique carpet company and a male interior designer. I was the least interested in carpets but I worked the hardest once we got to the Tientsin Carpet Fair as I had to keep writing the whole time — notes on all the endless meetings and transactions. I earned my trip by filling notebook after notebook of shorthand notes that were really of no interest to us but impressed the Chinese with how dedicated I was to my job. Jayne and Rosa bought lots of carpets for their company. Steve spent his time talking into his two small handheld recorders taking notes for the book he would write Explaining China.

Getting visas wasn’t easy. The United States and China had no formal diplomatic relations. George H. W. Bush was our representative in China but he was not an Ambassador. He was Chief of American Legation in Peking. There was no proper embassy in Washington DC and our visas had to come from a small office somewhere in our capital. Mine arrived special delivery air mail in the evening the night before I was to leave. Being optimistic I was packed and ready to go. I knew that I was going to China even though I had no visa for entry in my hand until hours before my departure from Santa Barbara.

This is what led up to our going into China on that old steam powered train with Hollywood actress and TV comedienne Jayne Meadows and Rosa Wu singing their way into China. Other than our own group, the passengers in our railroad car were returning Chinese carrying big bundles back from a day’s journey to the New Territories or Hong Kong who chose to ignore the strange singing and foreign words.

There was a bit of déjà vu for the two singers in the words “It’s nice to have you back where you belong”. Rosa had lived her early childhood in China, as did Jayne whose parents were American missionaries there. Jayne remembered her family’s hasty departure from China when conditions turned very bad for foreigners. She was seven years old and her sister, the late actress Audrey Meadows was five.

Hello Dolly in Mandarin wasn’t usual, nor was anything else about our journey into China in February 1975. Americans weren’t exactly running in and out of China in over-packed tour buses at that time. President Richard Nixon had been there. And Henry Kissinger. David and Evangeline Bruce had opened the U.S. Legation, but they weren’t swamped by an overflow of visitors from home. Barbara and George H. W. Bush were now holding down the Legation fort with no improvement in the situation. —to be continued

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
Beverley Jackson
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