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A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: I Want to Go to Shanghai

by Beverley
November 3rd, 2013

Chapter Thirteen
I WANT TO GO TO SHANGHAI

Beverley in front of the Chairman Mao statue on the Nanking Bridge

Beverley in front of the Chairman Mao statue on the Nanking Bridge

It took almost daily trips to China Travel office, and endless arguments in English and charades, but I finally convinced the mysterious powers who were always higher up and had to be consulted no matter what you wanted to allow Marge, Torrie and me to go to Shanghai. Our visa out of Peking and into Shanghai was finally granted.

More than I wanted to see Shanghai I wanted to ride the train that Marlene Dietrich had made famous in Josef von Sternberg’s 1932 film “Shanghai Express”. Marge and Torrie weren’t easy to convince taking this train to Shanghai was a great idea. And the Chinese hierarchy, China Travel, hadn’t been easy to convince either. But I finally convinced the Levys that the antique pickings might be good for them in Shanghai so they decided to join me on the Shanghai adventure. And it turned out the antique buying opportunities in Shanghai were fabulous.

We booked a compartment meant to accommodate four and split the extra ticket. Sharing the small compartment with a stranger hadn’t appealed to us. And we definitely needed that extra upper berth for luggage. I maneuvered myself aboard with four bursting suitcases and hand parcels of every shape. I can’t even begin to explain what the decorator/antique dealer mother – daughter team carried on board. While visions of gorgeous Marlene Dietrich riding the legendary train in the middle of China’s civil war, with never a bird of paradise feather or hair in her well coiffed head out of place, the reality was we were an American version of all those peasants with their bundles of belongings and livestock boarding the back cars of the train.

The train left Peking Station at 6:30 in the evening and our Peking interpreter got us there extra early. He herded us and our luggage porters through the crowded station most skillfully. We were extremely excited about this 24 hour adventure we were taking on our own. This was our first time traveling without guide or spy. Our entourage filed past hardback cars like we’d ridden from Tientsin to Peking early in our China trip. Twenty-four hours in those uncomfortable quarters certainly didn’t appeal to us. But the military and peasants who filled them to over flowing were all laughing, talking, munching and spitting watermelon seeds, smoking endlessly, and apparently quite happy.

The car of private compartments we were led into was a delightful surprise. Our little nest, Compartment D, featured teal blue velvet seats backed with lovely handmade white filigree and lace covers. Great piles of pillows, encased in shams embroidered quite elegantly in blue flowers and white on white embroidery looked most inviting.

Between the two bed-seats, was a table draped with a white lace cloth. Four of the ever-present covered tea cups (these decorated with skillfully hand painted trees, flowers and pagodas) and a blue and white porcelain pot holding a live purple cineraria plant sat on the table.

The window was draped in blue velvet and curtained in white lace. Strains of Chinese opera played over the loud speaker — and it was loud! Air conditioning was working and just the right temperature. Lighting was better than the Peking Hotel. A table lamp of bright blue and clear cut glass, and two sidelights, shed more light than we’d had in any bedroom the entire trip.

Bathroom facilities were at either end of the railroad car. One was quite passable, the other an unusual standup affair used in China at the time that will never be popular with American women and hell to try to maneuver on a fast-moving train on a bad roadbed. The washroom area, like hotel rooms and western restrooms throughout China, offered little wrapped cakes of soap, a nail brush, clean comb, pink toilet paper, and spotless thin white Turkish towels. There were two clean sinks and a young girl was always mopping the floor or cleaning the sinks.

Our interpreter handed us our tickets and visas, as always, at the very last moment when the engine had a full head of steam up and was ready to roll. Now we were really on our own. No one else on the entire train spoke English. Well, if they did they were there to spy on us and we never had a clue they did speak English.

Other than an armed policeman stationed two compartments down from our car, and a few kitchen workers, the entire work crew of the Shanghai Express was young women. The engineer up in the steam locomotive and the conductors of each car were women. And it was young women who were up front shoveling coal to keep up the steam for our engine.

Not unexpectedly, we saw very little of the people in the luxurious compartments in our car. But from what we saw they were all middle European with the exception of an attractive Chinese family from France with whom we could speak French. The father helped Torrie clean the train windows at every stop so that we could take pictures through them.

Dinner in the diner turned out to be just like every other dining experience outside our hotels for Westerners, it was cleared of Chinese before we could go in. The stewardess came to our compartment to lead us into the deserted dining car. Since our interpreter had preordered for us, everything that was placed before us on a table covered with starched damask napkins was a surprise. Cooking under the most limiting conditions, the crowded tiny train kitchen produced shrimps in spicy tomato sauce, pork-like baby veal with winter bamboo shoots (we all missed Steve when this appeared), and dinner ended with a most creative fruit soup, a large bowl of steaming sweetened broth with chunks of apple and tangerine sections swimming about in it.

One of the young women working in the dining car had her little girl traveling with her. As we were enjoying our hot fruit soup we could hear the tiny child singing quietly to herself at the far end of the car. With a bit of urging, charade style of course, she came and sang for us. And she even did a bit of dancing for encore. There were no guards watching, no cadres leering mysteriously. It was a lovely relaxed interlude filled with warm camaraderie. While we were still lingering over tea and cigarettes (yes, in those days we all smoked), our little entertainer was carried protesting past us to the nearest bathroom. Her mother was carrying her under one arm with a cup, toothbrush and tooth paste in the other. The child held out her arms to us, probably hoping we’d ask for one more song and thus prolong bedtime.

Following dinner we were escorted, past the armed guard, back to our compartment. We weren’t going anywhere on that train other than from our car to the dining car. There was no mingling with the Chinese passengers.

Our berths were made up for night when we returned. Crispy white sheets edged in floral embroidery covered them, and a cozy quilt was there for warmth. Torrie got the second upper berth, the one that wasn’t overflowing with luggage. She had long legs and youth in her favor. There were none of the ladders that were supplied for upper berths on the trains I’d traveled on in days past, the Super Chief, Broadway Limited, Sunset Limited — that transported us around America in style. Torrie had little chrome footholds about three inches by four inches, three feet off the floor, and agility to get her up to her bed. The ascent was complicated. It involved putting one foot on the lower berth, the other foot on the foothold, grabbing on to anything solid available and pulling yourself up.

We were completely comfortable in our snug little world. The roadbed our train traversed was as smooth as the one from Tientsin to Peking had been miserable. We all fell into deep sleep, Marge and I enjoying the nostalgic “Blues in the Night”(1) train whistles and the clattering wheels. But we did awaken when the sounds ceased at a station stop in the very late hours of the night. Peeking through the curtains we saw a platform solidly packed with young boys in thin cotton military uniforms. As we looked at them, hundreds of pairs of eyes stared back at the two strange white faces with hair in curlers looking out at them.

A harsh blast of martial music over the intercom brought us out of our deep sleep at 6:00 AM. Marge found the speaker control fast and cut off the music as well as the endless shouted propaganda that would follow. But with daylight allowing us to see China out there just through the curtains, there was no going back to sleep for any of us. We passed canals with sampans and junks under full red sail, small tugs pulling ten boats loaded with coal or grain in a row sailing parallel with us. There were straw and mud huts with children and big black pigs wandering in and out the small front doors. The mysterious wonder of China continued to unfold — graceful little rock bridges out of classical Chinese painting, occasional forbidden burial graves — half-hidden mounds of earth with small piles of rocks on top and an occasional stone slab. We’d been told the Mao regime was very firm in forbidding burials in the ground. They felt too much precious agricultural land was wasted by large gravesites. Cremation was expected.

Then we were in area where thatched roofs replaced the familiar blackened red tiles of our previous travels in China. Piles of orderly pine boughs banked the front of each little rock house. Small umbrella pine trees covered an area of barren rocky hills; later green stretches appeared where goats and sheep grazed.

We were waiting now for 12:13 when our train would cross the legendary Nanking Bridge. The accurate time for this adventure had been garnered through the usual hand movements and drawing little pictures procedure during dinner the previous night. The Nanking Bridge was the first Chinese railway-highway bridge built over the Yangtze River designed by a Chinese architect and is the longest bridge of its kind in China. The Chinese were very proud of this bridge and with good reason. They built it in spite of western engineers proclaiming quicksand and Yangtze tides prohibited a bridging structure of any sort in this area. The Soviet engineers, who originally drew up blueprints, withdrew with their blueprints and modern machinery in 1960, leaving the Chinese completely on their own. However, by 1968 the Chinese had completed the two-tiered bridge using methods entirely primitive to western engineering. It was done the ancient way, hauling materials in baskets suspended from bamboo poles carried on peasant shoulders, of moving giant steel girders by men’s strength, not modern cranes. Tens of thousands of men and women participated in this miracle of construction.

The highway part of bridge is 15,056 feet long and 49 feet wide enabling four normal size cars to cross at same time. The 22,218 foot railway enables two trains going in opposite directions to run simultaneously. At 279 feet, the highest point of the main bridge span, vessels of up to 10,000 tons can pass underneath. Twin bridge towers are found on either river bank. Elevators in these give access to the railway bridge, highway bridge and top observation post. A most impressive accomplishment indeed!

At 12:13 precisely we crossed the amazing bridge. The excitement was more in the anticipation than in the reality since being on the lower level what we saw mainly was glimpses of the Yangtze River through all the criss-crossed steal girders. Had we crossed on the highway above us we would have seen groups of sculptures of peasant workers and soldiers and on the sides of the great towers quotes from Chairman Mao in huge red characters. One well known quote found there read: “The people are the only hope, are the driving force behind world history.” This could well be the quote for the incredible success of China in 2009!

Once over the bridge we continued to watch the spectacle of the mysterious world of China rolling past our window. Filtered dramatically by the endless steam blowing past we watched women bent in two working in the flooded rice fields; the gigantic canal being dug with shovels by hundreds of women and children; children near the tracks in the middle of nowhere waving at the train or just staring in wonderment. Sometimes the adults would wave too.


1.  A popular 1941 song in the United States written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer that was recorded by all the leading singers of the day.  Train whistles were incorporated with the background music in certain segments of the song.

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: Some Freedom In Peking

by Beverley
August 3rd, 2013

Chapter Nine
SOME FREEDOM IN PEKING
Part One

doc024-v2

Because the hotel phone service was so impossible, except for distances exceeding 10,000 miles, we left lots of notes under each other’s doors.  “Meet me in morning at 8:00 in dining room” or “Do you have any extra hair rollers?” and similar messages would be slipped under doors at all hours.   Once we’d hit Peking and the evasive entry visa was discovered, we didn’t see much of our leader.  But we did have daily assemblies to coordinate our plans.  The note-leaving operation was great when it worked.  But there were times it didn’t.  One night I was tired and didn’t go to a late night assembly so Marge left me an important communication.  “We are meeting at 8:30 to go to the China Travel Office.  Very important so get up early.”  Fortunately Jerry, an early riser, saw the note and beat on the door awakening me to give me the note to tell me to get up early.  Well, as I said, sometimes it worked better than phones.

The constant visits to China Travel had begun in Hong Kong and only grown more frequent and frustrating as the trip progressed.  The only sign I found in English in all branches of China Travel read “The People who have triumphed in their own revolution should help those still struggling for liberation.  This is our internationalist duty.”

Visits to the big local hospital were unexpectedly on our agenda.  Doctors could not come to the Hotel.  Patients had to seek aid at the hospital.  Louise went for a swollen jaw.  An English speaking Chinese doctor sent her to a dentist.  Here she was given a prescription and the medicine.  Her total bill was $1.50.  Comparing notes at dinner it came out Marge’s sore throat was only an .80 cent illness.

My health was holding up so I went to the zoo.  They had an interesting setup with the Peking Hotel taxis.  If you could find where you wanted to go in a little book that was written in Chinese and English with simple drawings, you could get a taxi to take you there.  The taxi would wait, even if it was hours.  And once there it wasn’t surprising to look back quickly wherever you were and see your driver following at a distance. There was always someone spying on us. The fare was shockingly cheap.  At the end of your ride the driver would give you little tickets which you presented at the main desk of the hotel and you paid there instead of paying the taxi driver directly.  You might have had a one ticket ride, or a long wait could mean a nine ticket trip.

The Front Gate of Beijing Zoo was built in 1904. (Photo taken 2004 by snowyowls | Wikimedia)

The Front Gate of Beijing Zoo was built in 1904. (Photo taken 2004 by snowyowls | Wikimedia)

The Peking Zoo was big and well-tended.  People were proud of their zoo.  And the real pride of the zoo was the panda bears, which of course was where I was heading.  When I first got word I was going to China, my 17 year old daughter’s immediate reply was, “You are going to your version of heaven, a world of Chinese food and panda bears.”

Not wanting to waste time I drew a quick picture of a panda bear and showed it to two teenage girls passing by.  They giggled and pointed left.  Through an arch to the left was a large brightly painted map with each animal beautifully painted in its own locale.  As I tried to orient myself with my back to the map, several people pointed the way to the pandas.  They knew where an American lady in a funny ski hat with a tassel on top wanted to go.

The two pandas were worth the trip to China.  They were smaller than expected, but were definitely professionals constantly performing for the huge audience that surrounded the moat that circled their world.  Space was immediately cleared for the foreign lady by the smiling citizens, a relief from spying cadres.  My enthusiasm must have been adequate thanks.  I was enchanted.

Nabisco-like wafers were thrown to the pandas by children and grownups alike.  The pandas assumed the most ridiculous positions to eat, reclining with one leg over the other or lying on their stomachs.  Anything they did was amusing.  Chomping on bamboo was a whole routine.  Finally I got down to serious photographing.  Literally hundreds of people participated.  They would clear space at the rail every time a panda changed direction, sending a child to bring me there by the hand.

Deeply engrossed in what I saw through my lens I wasn’t paying much attention to anything else — until I heard laughter behind me, the kind of laughter that designates something naughty.  It’s a laughter that sounds the same in any language.  I looked up from the camera viewer to find the source of the merriment.  It was two soldiers near me who were staring down at the boy panda in the moat beneath us.  The panda was looking straight up at the big border of beautiful blue Norwegian fox that served as the hem on my brown broadtail coat.  He was staring at the blue fox and most embarrassingly appeared to have been excited into a full erection by the fur on the hem of my coat. …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: Visiting A Future American President

by Beverley
July 10th, 2013

Chapter Seven
VISITING A FUTURE AMERICAN PRESIDENT

George Bush and Steve Allen in Tientsin

George Bush and Steve Allen in Tientsin

That invitation George H. W. Bush had extended on our hurried encounter outside the Tientsin carpet factory was repeated in Peking. Needless to say, we accepted. The man we now refer to as father of the first President George W. Bush was at the time Ambassador George H. W. Bush. He had been the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, before being appointed Chief of Mission from the United States to China. We didn’t have full diplomatic ties to China in 1975, so we didn’t have an Ambassador there. And we didn’t have an embassy.

Where we were invited was to the United States Legation. It was a nondescript concrete brick building exactly like all those around it, except in size. The Czechoslovakian Embassy just down the street was tremendous and had a swimming pool, tennis court and large staff. The Greek Embassy right next door was much larger than the U.S. Legation. And the Russian Embassy, with reportedly more than 400 people living inside, was gigantic. The U.S. legation had a total of 28 people connected with it. Bush wanted to keep it small. And unlike the Russians, he had all Chinese staff. They did however have one debugged room in the legation for confidential talk.

Barbara Bush was grounded with a flu bug the evening we went to visit, as were Rosa and Jayne who remained in their rooms back at the hotel. But George Bush was the perfect host. Before any sightseeing, he steered the American guests straight to the bar where they were met by an unfamiliar sight — no orange pop, no Mao tai — there was scotch, bourbon, gin. My request was not for any of these, but for an English language newspaper. “Sadly I can’t supply that Beverley,” he replied. I have to go out to Hong Kong to get one myself. Not allowed in China. No western magazines either.”

Our future president couldn’t have been more personable. He was warm and friendly and obviously delighted to have guests from home, particularly Steve Allen.

The living room of the residence section of the Legation had magnificent walls covered with many coats of deep yellow lacquer. Our host gave full credit to former resident Mrs. David Bruce for this. Evangeline Bruce was a woman of superb taste and she had achieved wonders inside this unimaginative concrete brick structure. Chinese earthenware pots with bamboo trellises four feet high displayed espaliered nasturtiums in bright orange and yellow bloom in various areas of the room. These were most effective against the spectacular yellow lacquer walls. The room was divided into comfortable seating groups, with the sofas covered in yellow, orange or brown raw silk. You can be sure there were no white lace antimacassars here.

Paintings hadn’t been sent out from Washington yet to adorn the walls. But Barbara Bush did some interesting improvising in the large dining room. She displayed a very large finely executed needlework piece she had done herself. “Barbara had a lot of time to work on it sitting there during the long sessions when I was at the U.N.,” her husband explained laughingly. I photographed our host in front of the framed needlework and many years later, when Barbara Bush appeared at a political fundraiser in Santa Barbara in role of First Lady of the United States, I presented her with a copy of that picture. She was so pleased she said because she had no other photograph of that project that involved so much work and she’d left the framed needlepoint behind in Peking.

My great interest in the house, having heard about it in detail shortly before leaving Santa Barbara from Evangeline Bruce’s best friend Baroness Pauline de Rothschild, earned me a private invitation for a tour led by our host. Everyone else was quite content to relax in American surroundings, with no one listening behind every chair. The upstairs sitting room was done in shades of beige and rust, and there were pictures everywhere of the large Bush family. Four of the five Bush children were expected for a visit to their parents in China a short time after we left. Ambassador Bush’s mother had just been visiting from her home in Connecticut. She had been a great hit with the Chinese as she bicycled all over Peking.

The private quarters were spacious and contemporary. The bathrooms were modern, though not fancy. The guest rooms were comfortable and cheery. The contemporary Chinese earthenware the Bushes had collected since arriving in China was pointed out with pride. In the living room we were shown a Boehm porcelain panda bear similar to the ones we had seen pictured when President Nixon had given them as gifts to his hosts that first trip to China. The kitchen was a large white tiled room, centered by a gigantic stove and grill. George Bush spoke glowingly of their Chinese cooks.

He reported both Barbara and he loved the food, and they were generally quite delighted to be in Peking. They played tennis, and thanks to daily Chinese lessons he could now keep score in Chinese when playing with Chinese friends. Sundays they attended church services held at 9:30 in an old bible school building. “I wouldn’t miss church,” he explained. “It means a lot more here. The service is in Chinese. The Africans all sing the hymns in African and we sing them in English. It’s a very personal part of our lives. We’re very glad that we are permitted to have it,” he added. Hearing this we were all brought back to the realities of the world outside, the world where we were in the middle of the frightening Cultural Revolution in China.

It was a nice visit, and well worth the time I had taken earlier in the day to visit the beauty salon in our hotel. It was probably the only one in all of China at the time. Vanity was definitely not encouraged under the communist rule, and was even less encouraged during the Cultural Revolution. Even wearing lipstick was considered a serious offense for a Chinese woman during the Cultural Revolution. Actually it was just nice to have really clean hair again. Torrie had been very optimistic with that hair dryer, and very athletic to get hair washed in the Chinese hotel sinks. I opted for the beauty salon.

The Peking Hotel Beauty Salon looked like an American hospital operating room. The floors and walls were white tile. The cute young girl with her hair in two braids who did my hair wore a white surgical smock. She soaped my hair for about five minutes with me in a sitting position, periodically carrying off excess soap to a sink across the room. For the rinsing process one transferred to an oral surgeons chair near where the excess soap had been deposited. A very clean smelling lotion of some sort was applied. My operator had fairly modern rollers and there was quite a good modern standing hair dryer to facilitate her work. She asked me if I’d like my hair teased. This was the most contemporary encounter I had with any Mainland Chinese the entire trip. Back in my room, examining the finished product in my bathroom mirror, I had to admit she did quite a decent job.

China excerpt from David Frost’s interview with George H. W. Bush in the A&E documentary “One on One with David Frost – George Bush: A President’s Story”.

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 My Life

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.

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…

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

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