Steve Allen :: Beverley Jackson

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: Literary Starvation

by Beverley

October 16th, 2013

Chapter Twelve
LITERARY STARVATION

Forbidden City. And was it cold!

Another day I returned with the group to see what was allowed to be viewed of the Imperial Palace. Restoration was going on which was surprising in view of the political thinking of the cultural revolution in which art, books, anything intellectual or part of the glamorous imperial past was being destroyed. Our guide gave us a general idea of the layout, and strict instructions of which gate to exit to find our taxi, then turned us loose.

The Forbidden City was and is an overwhelming place. Where to begin? Listed by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world, it covers 7,800,000 square feet. Construction of the Forbidden City began in 1406 when the Yongle emperor Zhu di became emperor. More than one million workers labored for 15 years to complete the construction. At this point 980 original buildings survive. Peter and I covered only a small section of what we were allowed to see in 1975. And in my many subsequent visits the past 34 years I feel as though I haven’t really covered that much more. I still find it overwhelming.

Steve Allen center of attention at Forbidden City

Steve Allen is the center of attention in the Forbidden City

Needless to say, everyone had trouble finding that gate the guide had told us to use as our exit point at the end of our visit. After viewing fascinating buildings with lovely names — the Throne Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Palace of Heavenly Purity, and the Hall of Imperial Peace — Peter from Denmark and I who had toured the Forbidden City together somehow emerged through the right gate and found the taxi. We tried charades to find out if others had already been transported back to the hotel. It didn’t work. When he delivered us to the Peking Hotel we thought he understood he was to return for the others. At dinner that evening an annoyed group of our fellow travelers were complaining about having to walk back to the hotel on feet weary from hours of wandering in the vast Imperial Palace complex. They couldn’t figure out where the taxi was that was supposed to pick them up. Peter and I listened, saying nothing.

It was strange having nothing to read. I’ve always been a two or more newspaper a day woman and still mourn the demise of afternoon papers and extras. How many readers remember coming out to the street midday, or leaving a night spot late in the evening and hearing a boy shouting “Extra! Extra! Read all about it!” while waving a paper in one hand and carrying a batch of them under his other arm. A natural disaster, a train derailment, a murder, the outbreak of war were all extra fodder.

But our orders were, take nothing into China to read. No newspapers, magazines, books, and certainly not a Bible!! This was one country where you didn’t find a Bible in the bedside table drawer. So we had nothing to read. Although the miniscule wattage of the hotel room lights was more suitable for lighting a child’s doll house than illuminating a book.

There were racks of political propaganda pamphlets in at least ten languages in the hotel lobbies. And it was possible to find Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book in English everywhere.

I did stumble upon a small book store that had some English reading material one day in Peking. There were ten paperback volumes of Chinese Literature for 1975. The volumes were numbered one to ten and dated. They were quite comprehensive — comprehensive of art and literature during the Cultural Revolution. A featured story “A Sea of Happiness” in volume one concerns the adventures of Miao-miao whose dad and mum were building new boats and making fishing nets for the good friends in Vietnam. In the poetry section “Ah, Chungnanhai, Pride of My Heart” is political poetry about Chungnanhai. “From here (Chungnanhai) Chairman Mao directs our revolutionary course. Here Chairman Mao meets heroes from all our fronts. Storm centre of revolution where the red flag will always fly.” Not exactly Byron or Keats.

Color photos of paintings from the National Art Exhibition show included two smiling triumphant workers pulling tin buckets of water out of a hole in the ice, a snowy scene with oil wells in the background. “Where the oil is, there is my home” is what the title winning painter Chang Hung-tsan called this painting. A black and white woodcut, “The Slave System Must Never Return!” shows a very forceful group of young people surrounding a woman pulling a big metal chain between her hands.

Literary starvation proved to be comparable to food starvation. If you are hungry enough you eat roots and grass. So now as I see the wild modern painting and the traditional ink and watercolor scenes being produced in China today, I can appreciate how the world has opened up for Chinese artists since the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. No one promised us China during the Cultural Revolution would be fun and indeed amusement was hard to find, even in the arts.

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: The Summer Palace Blanketed With Snow

by Beverley

August 17th, 2013

Chapter Ten
THE SUMMER PALACE BLANKETED WITH SNOW

Jayne Meadows by the frozen lake at the Summer Palace

There had been snow flurries the day we visited the Summer Palace. Our visit was at a time when the royal family would have been in residence in the Forbidden City in Peking, not the Summer Palace. During the imperial era this was a summer escape spot for the royal entourage from Peking heat that could soar to 104 degrees Fahrenheit with very high humidity. The small umbrella pines lining the road to the palace were dusted with snow. Bicyclists were generally dressed in the same cotton padded Mao suits that appeared to be inadequate for the extreme cold but somehow worked. Men from the north heading into the city wearing Mongolian fur hats with ear flaps and sheepskin clothing, driving large horse drawn wagons filled with loose hay or great balls of rope were more suitably dressed.

We passed what our contrary cadre guide called a gymnasium. A more adequate explanation was not forthcoming however we assumed it might be a prison. Outside in the snow more than 100 men standing in precise rows did exercises waving red flags. Since this waving of red flags was a common practice in China during the Cultural Revolution it wasn’t a clue to what the gymnasium actually was. However, a few days later in Tien en mien square I was to remember this flag waving performance.

In that legendary world long gone the royal court could actually reach their summer palace refuge by canals that led from the Forbidden City northeast to the Summer Palace. The lovely lake at the palace has always been fed from streams which in turn feed into the canals. The lake was partially frozen over the day we visited, presenting a gray and white mystical scene, accented by the bright red tile roofs of the Palace of Orderly Clouds on the shore and far away scarlet bridges faintly visible through the mist.

Looking far out across K’un-ming Lake, Steve and I wondered about dark spots on the ice that appeared to very large birds. Our tour guide for the day, a particularly unpleasant man, was determined to impress us with Maoism and the Cultural Revolution unceasingly. Any minor question was answered with a party speech. But I plunged right in and asked him if the birds far out on the ice were some form of penguin.

“Those are not birds,” he practically screamed at me. “Those are markers put there by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to keep the children from falling through the thin ice.”

“I don’t care what that guy says,” Steve whispered. “I just saw one of his markers lay an egg!”

The rigid Stalinesque geometric architectural designs of the new Russian built buildings in Peking were in direct contrast to the lovely rambling scheme of the Summer Palace. The Garden of Pleasant Harmony flows into the Palace of Virtue and Harmony where theatre was performed for the joy of the all-powerful last dowager empress Tz’u-hsi who ruled China from 1861 until her death November 15, 1908. She delighted in anything of dramatic, theatrical nature.

The stage several stories high had the capability of bringing fantastic sets up from below or having a great deal going on in heaven overhead. And on many occasions the dowager empress herself had appeared in performances for the enjoyment of the royal family. Her favored role was that of the beloved Goddess of Mercy Kuan-yin. On these days it was presumed she wasn’t having princesses thrown down wells to die, or poisoning relatives, which she was known to do on off days. A favorite story that emerged from her court detailing one such bad day concerned a new eunuch who was called in to dress the empress’s hair. The eunuch hairdresser who always attended to the elaborate imperial coiffeur was ill. In a state of nervous terror at this task trust upon him unexpectedly the stand-in hairdresser accidentally pulled a couple of hairs out while combing the long black hair. The enraged dowager empress ordered him to put them back in immediately or he would be beheaded. The problem with this story, repeated for decades, is that no one knows the outcome.

We nestled into our fur coats and dug our mitten covered fingers deep into pockets for extra warmth as we strolled the famous open Long Corridor beside the lake. This elaborately painted meandering walk is a treasury of more than 8,000 paintings. It was originally built in 1750 by the Qing dynasty’s Qianlong emperor (1736-1795) so that his mother could enjoy the gardens of the Summer Palace without concern for the elements. Following the destruction of the fascinating structure by Anglo-French allied forces in 1860 it was rebuilt in 1886. The Chinese say that the Long Corridor on K’un-ming Lake is long enough (2,366 feet long) to speak the first words of love at one end, and be engaged to marry by the other end. I lingered extra chilling minutes examining an overhead beam painting of a mother panda carrying her baby through a bamboo forest with classical Chinese mountains beyond.

An adjoining covered gallery looks upon the aquatic garden in the lake. Imaginative windows shaped like bats, stars, fans, medallions, all outlined in strips of red and black lacquer, break through the stark white walls of this enclosed walkway. These are double windows, with paintings on the inside glass. Enjoying the unique windows Jayne was reminded of a window treatment Marge had used on an interior decorating job in Beverly Hills.

“Marge, do you remember what you did in Danny Melnick’s bedroom?” Jayne called innocently to Marge who was at the other end of the long gallery. The Chinese missed the hidden humor of this question and didn’t laugh. The sexual innuendo was totally lost on them. But our group of Americans found it most amusing.

Steve Allen at the Temple of Heaven

The snow had stopped by the time we reached the Temple of Heaven, one of the most frequently visited sights in China. It is the three-tiered Altar of Heaven whose bright blue tiled roof shone strangely in the unusual light that followed the disappearing clouds dispensing snow. There are actually three tiled roofs pile on top of each other looking quite like a three-tired blue Chinese summer hat.

While we quietly admired it in the context of a Ming creation utilized by the theatrically clad emperor (who wore special blue robes, not imperial yellow for his performances at the Altar of Heaven), our guide droned on about this great example of chairman Mao’s directive to “Let the Old Serve the New”. Now the people of China walk the marble paths where only the emperor and his entourage trod in the era past. However, this is the one place where this living god, the emperor, was humble. He came here once a year in his role as the Son of Heaven, taking upon himself the sins of all his people, prostrating and humiliating himself for the redemption of mankind.

This humble attitude only struck once a year. Escorted by soldiers, officials and princes of royal blood, he went from the Forbidden City to the Temple of Heaven in an anything but humble procession. Every window along the route had to be covered, from the gate of Ch’ien Men to the entrance of the sacred temple area. This was due to the very strict laws that no one was allowed to look upon the face of this man who was about to be humble. Even foreign diplomats were strongly advised to stay indoors on the day of this journey from the Forbidden City to the Temple of Heaven.

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: 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: 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)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: The First Annual Tientsin Carpet Fair (Part 3)

by Beverley

December 9th, 2012

Chapter Two
The First Annual Tientsin Carpet Fair
Part Three

One day when we arrived back at the hotel for lunch, I spotted two Chinese boys playing badminton in a small paved area near the hotel. Wandering over to watch, one of the boys laughingly held out his racquet to me. Throwing caution to the thick black smoggy wind, I took it. A bit of exercise was much more appealing than lunch. Badminton happens to be one sport where I’ve always been able to more than hold my own. But this was the People’s Republic of China so I gave my cute young challenger enough of a fight to let him see he was playing a worthy opponent. But of course I subtly gave him the last point.

Totally engrossed in the change of pace, and etiquette of our game, I hadn’t noticed the crowd gathering to see the strange woman with strawberry blond hair. Westerners were a great novelty in Tientsin, unlike Peking and Shanghai where foreign diplomats and business people were rather commonplace. Word had spread fast and a very large crowd surrounded us by the time the police arrive to clear them out. Comrade Sung arrived with the police and the crowd dispersed fast. Needless to say he had much to say to me at our evening meeting beginning with, “I forbid you to ever play badminton again!” Then he went on about visitors in China must abide by the rules. In all the material I had to prepare me for my trip I couldn’t remember a single reference to playing badminton but I let him rant on.

One evening we decided to have a cocktail party. Helene volunteered her suite — she somehow had landed a bedroom and little sitting room. Everyone was instructed to bring their own glass. Steve brought his own chair. However, he spent most of the party on the floor with his legs over the chair and hands behind his head mentally composing a new song. While known primarily as an actor, TV star and comedian, Steve Allen was a jazz musician, composer of many hundred songs including the very popular “I’ll be Home for Christmas”, author of books of poetry, fiction, mysteries, juvenile books, autobiographies, travel, screen plays, movie scripts, TV plays, a man of seemingly limitless talents. Jerry and Louise Fisher and I brought two bottles of champagne which cost us about $3.00. That’s exactly what it was worth. Herb Cole brought a bottle of Chinese red plum wine no one even tried. The safest drinks in China at that time were tea and orange pop. If you ordered orange juice for breakfast, you got orange pop. In fact, if you ordered anything anytime that wasn’t understood there was a pretty good chance it would be orange pop that was served. Tea was accessible 24 hours a day. A very large thermos of boiling water was left outside our rooms each morning. And tea leaves could be purchased at the “gift shop” downstairs. Those thermos bottles appeared to be quite flimsy but they were possibly one of the greatest Chinese inventions since gunpowder. Water could stay boiling hot in them for up to two days.

Lying in bed the next morning waiting for my 7:00 call my thoughts wandered. A French woman’s comment, “The Tientsin Fair wasn’t ready for your crowd. You all have turned into the best show in town!” The girls guides at the fair describing the years they spent laboring and living in the caves of Yunnan and how much they respected the hardworking peasants there. We hadn’t heard any news for days. We knew nothing beyond our own little group’s activities. What were those gunshots I’d heard late two nights before? It wasn’t a dream. Herb had heard them too.

A visit to a carpet factory broke into the monotony of the fair. The factory employed over 1,000 workers. They were a healthy happy looking crew who worked from eight in the morning until noon. Two hours were allowed for lunch and a nap, then back to work from two until six in the evening.

Four girls worked at each loom. They would pull and knot wool with their left hand, cutting, to the exact size needed with a small cleaver in the right hand. Embossing was done with the newly invented electric scissors. There was great pride in these new electric scissors as the old scissors crippled the hands of those who used them continually. This factory visit, like every visit to any business, ended with a meeting with the heads of the factory. At these meetings we were asked for suggestions on how they could improve and of course included much Communist Party propaganda from our hosts.

George Bush and Steve Allen in Tientsin

Arriving at the carpet factory we ran into George H. W. Bush, chief of the U.S. Legation in Peking, who was just leaving. He appeared very happy to see fellow Americans, especially since he and the Allens were old friends. He was warm and friendly and immediately extended an invitation to visit Barbara and him when we got to Peking. Although it was the Allens who were his friends, he was very good about including all of us in his conversation. Little did we realize this friendly very attractive man we were talking to would soon be president of the United States? Speaking of which I must say the small American flags on the front of his official black limo waving in the Chinese breeze as he drove off looked mighty good to us.

Our lives were fairly well confined to the fair area and Tientsin Hotel Number One for our first five days in China. Jane and Rosa’s negotiations for their carpet purchases were confusing, annoying and generally hopeless. When the two of them could finally agree on something, negotiations would be stalled by the Comrades Chou and Chen who sat across the table from us at all business meetings. Rosa was the big problem. Every time the order appeared set, she found a new rug she wanted, had a new list, or just plain disappeared. We were learning to say “Do you know where Rosa is?” in Chinese, Rumanian, Bulgarian and Hungarian. And we could understand “No” in all these languages.

This ends the second chapter of “A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution.” In a few days we will continue the adventure in Tientsin as we begin chapter three.

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 First Annual Tientsin Carpet Fair (Part 2)

by Beverley

November 13th, 2012

Chapter Two
The First Annual Tientsin Carpet Fair
Part Two

The young language students were quite delightful. It was a great novelty for them to be able to practice the English they were studying with real English-speaking Americans. They smiled at us when Comrade Sung couldn’t see, giggled at anything slightly humorous, and eyes lit up whenever we came out with a bit of slang or unusual idiom.

Steve Allen getting checked out

Steve Allen arrived a couple of days after us. He had been committed to perform at a charity benefit two days after we were to leave for China and wasn’t about to disappoint the organization. Comrade Sung and the students really had a challenge when they took on the multi-talented and very funny Steve Allen. His answers to questions could be most unpredictable, to the total confusion of Comrade Sung and delight of the language students who knew more English than the Comrade.

Jayne and Rosa both came down with a flu bug several days after our arrival but tried not to give in to it. One night, after a particularly arduous day at the carpet fair, Jayne went straight to bed. I decided to take a big bowl of chicken vegetable soup up to her room after we finished dinner about 6:00 in the evening.

Room service definitely wasn’t available in Tientsin Hotel Number One during the Cultural Revolution. Maneuvering a large bowl full of hot liquid and vegetables up five floors in a swaying ancient cage elevator proved to be an interesting challenge.
Inside the sick room, after first knocking, I found the invalid entertaining five of the young language students. They were sitting on her bed, the only chair in the room and on the floor. They had snuck in, unknown to the dreaded Comrade Sung, for “slang lessons”. Deep into the night, Jayne resting against several of the lead-filled pillows the hotel supplied, and I on the floor, taught “so long”, “see you around” and other innocent little gems to the enthusiastic young Chinese. A couple of days later, walking near the hotel, a voice called out to me, “Hi Pal!” It was of course one of our students.

On one occasion Steve Allen was speaking very slowly and clearly to a young man who was studying English. “You speak English good,” the young man exclaimed.

We each found our own way to cope with language problems. My worry was leaving a morning wakeup call each night. I’d write very large on a piece of paper “7:00 Room 203” and take it down to the formidable two attendants who sat in a little kiosk near the elevator spying on us and guarding the heavy keys we needed to get into our rooms, unlike the Chinese who entered by magic. Then I’d show them 7:00 on my wrist watch. The charade continued with me resting my head on my hands, closing my eyes pretending to sleep, snoring a bit, then knocking on the wall. It worked very well, except for the night one of the attendants asked after my performance, “You want me to wake you up at 7:00 in the mornings again?”

We were transported each day, for five days, to the First Tientsin Carpet Fair in buses, and bussed back to the hotel for lunch. Then back to the fair for the rest of the day. Jayne and Rosa’s negotiations for carpet purchases went on endlessly. And since I got into China under the guise of a secretary to the newly opened Allen-Wu Carpet Company I had to be there pen and paper in hand. This fair was our first experience with the “no one can make any decision what-so-ever without consulting someone else who is somewhere else” policy in the PRC in February 1975. There were interminable sessions at long tables, drinking tea and inhaling the cigarette smoke of our hosts, who also made frequent use of the ever-present brass spittoons. And through all of this, hour after hour, a pianist at a Steinway played. Every now and then, in our honor, he would play a very loud rendition of Home on the Range. —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)

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

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
Comments (3)

Archive for Steve Allen

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: Literary Starvation

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: The Summer Palace Blanketed With Snow

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

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

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

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: The First Annual Tientsin Carpet Fair (Part 3)

A Front Row Seat for the Cultural Revolution: The First Annual Tientsin Carpet Fair (Part 2)

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

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