Cultural Gathering: American Writers, Scholars, and Artists in China

Author: Zhang Ziqing, Jane Evans, David Evans
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-01-01
Features: The fifty authors collected in this book are American writers, scholars, and artists who came to China as ambassadors of American culture for cultural exchange between the United States and China.
Spatial Scope: Covers the entire country from south to north and east to west, including major and small cities, rural areas, border villages, towering mountains, scenic areas, and deserts.
Temporal Scope: From the late 1970s to the early 21st century, their time in China varied, ranging from a few weeks to one or two years, or even many years.
Methods of Exchange: Travel, visits, research, studying and teaching at universities, or marriage.
Social Contact: In addition to primarily interacting with Chinese writers, scholars, and artists, they also encountered high-ranking leaders, ordinary cadres, common people, ethnic minorities, monks, and believers. It can be said that this is a historical record of social changes and spiritual landscapes in China since its reform and opening up, as seen through the lens of Americans. It is also a cross-cultural dialogue by British people coming to China. Thus, from their personal accounts, we not only see the footprints of Chinese people during this historical period from a side perspective but also clearly discover the valuable aspects and overlooked or mistaken places that we ourselves may not notice.
Excerpt:
Like Smoke and Mist
My husband, daughter, and I took a temporary leave from the cold and gloomy Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, and boarded a hard sleeper train southbound to Kunming. Our journey was twelve hundred kilometers, and we had only covered half the distance. Our destination for the winter vacation was the satellite launch site—Xichang. There was a large lake surrounded by high altitudes, the water was blue, and on a sacred Taoist mountain with over a dozen Taoist temples, the air was unusually fresh, the sunlight was warm, the moon was bright, and the number of Han Chinese was not too large.
In early January 1993, near the Spring Festival, it was like the two weeks before Christmas—when over a billion Chinese people buy firecrackers, baijiu, duck legs, and smoked pork heads as New Year’s goods, gathering for family reunions. In a classless society, train compartments were divided into three classes. The soft sleeper compartment was for cadres, wealthy merchants, and foreign affairs staff. It had air conditioning, four beds, ample space for luggage, and a small table for dining or playing cards. The compartment door could be closed, and the loudspeaker could be turned off.
The hard sleeper compartment had two rows of beds, with three beds in each row, only one public aisle, and the compartment was filled with smoke. Most passengers smoked, and sometimes those on the upper bunks would come down to stretch their legs. Passengers flowed in and out, taking turns to use the restroom.
In the hard seat compartment, most were farmers who squeezed together all night. One hand was used to eat melon seeds or fruit, while the other held onto their belongings. They smoked low-quality cigarettes or hand-rolled ones. You could also see students sitting there. After shooing away the passengers occupying the bunks, we arranged our belongings and settled into the lower bunks.
The passenger opposite us in the lower bunk was a man in his fifties or sixties, with two adult children with him: a beautiful daughter and a handsome son. They had the air of a middle-class Chinese family: dressed stylishly and with neatly combed hair. They seemed unconcerned about us big-nosed foreigners.
“，” I explained in Chinese, “My husband’s name is Jeff. He’s an English teacher. My daughter’s name is Eleanor, and she’s eight years old. My name is Mary. We love China! Do you smoke?”
I noticed that this was the main thing Chinese people wanted to know when talking to foreigners. After an initial surprise, they seemed happy to have interesting and wealthy Americans as fellow travelers, and we were glad we weren’t as dull as Russians or Canadians. I took out a pack of Camel cigarettes (we had bought forty tax-free Camel cigarettes in Hong Kong) and offered one to the man. He liked Chinese cigarettes. He thanked me, carefully examined the cigarette pack, opened it, pointed to the discarded filter tip of a cigarette, and said, “The tobacco in American cigarettes is quite dark.”
I lit a cigarette of my own and smoked it. He lit his cigarette and smoked, then coughed for a while. He took the cigarette from his mouth, extinguished it, and shook his head gently. His weathered face turned pale under the fluorescent light. He mumbled, “American women are strong.” At least that’s what I understood him to mean. I smiled slightly, letting the smoke slowly drift from my nostrils, then took a sip of my floral tea.
As the train climbed the mountain, it passed through over a dozen tunnels. At eleven o’clock, all the lights in the compartment were turned off, leaving only the faint glow of cigarette butts, the occasional light of flashlights, or the flickering of lighters. Coughing and spitting sounds filled the compartment. Except for some fashionable young Chinese women, Chinese women did not smoke. Smoking was a man’s thing.
A Italian woman I met in China told me that one day, she asked a Chinese man for a light. He handed her a small box of matches. She said in English with a strong Mediterranean Italian accent, “When I leaned over to light the cigarette for him, he trembled all over! Trembling! As if he wanted me to have sex with him or something!”
I’ve said that smoking is a man’s thing.
There were cigarette stalls everywhere on the streets. Branded cigarettes included Hongtaishan, Golden Monkey (the flavor was as good as its name), and Five Bulls (the taste was decent, five yuan per pack). I wasn’t too picky about branded cigarettes, and the joint-venture-made Marlboros were quite expensive. Besides, we had a few authentic American cigarettes at our residence. I never thought of smoking in China, but I noticed that the cigarettes in the desk drawer, originally brought from the U.S. to smoke, had made my hands increasingly dark.
The air was terrible. The New York Times had an article about Chongqing calling its air “acid mist,” so it seemed ridiculous to worry about smoking. Among foreigners living in China, there was a popular joke: “Breathing through the cigarette filter is safe.”
I spent ten days in a Chinese hospital, treating acute bronchitis and nephritis, watching the saline drip drop by drop, and I thought a lot. I mainly thought about not dying in China or in any other foreseeable place in the future.
Seven months after our vacation in Xichang, we took the train back to Beijing. The school’s car took us to the huge train station in Chengdu, and when I saw the new Lucky Strike billboard that had been erected, I frowned. The man on the ad had a sun-tanned brown complexion! How strong he was! How big his nose was! I only cared about the harm of smoking when I saw him again. When I thought of him as an ambassador, I felt a bit annoyed.
This billboard also reminded me that in two weeks, I would be heading back to the U.S. Ironically, during our eleven months in China, a news story from the U.S. was about the Clinton White House’s smoking ban. Americans abroad liked to announce this news with courage, while the Chinese found it slightly amusing. A student from Azerbaijan (all the boys here studied, and they would work in the foreign affairs department) was skeptical.
Politicians, teachers, and travelers from the U.S. (especially among travelers, from those rigorously trained in Christian salvation to city youths looking for ice-cold Qingdao beer) continued to travel between the U.S. and China, selling American branded cigarettes to the Chinese.
However, Lucky Strike was in its peak moment in China.
Under the portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong on Tiananmen Square, I smoked the last cigarette. If Chairman Mao had been a smoker, he would have been one too.
My husband, daughter, and I walked out of the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong and into the bright sunlight of Beijing, bargaining our way through stalls selling small souvenirs. I stopped, recovered from my thoughts, and looked at the wide streets surrounding Tiananmen Square, filled with flowing traffic.
“Can we go eat McDonald’s now?” my daughter asked. She was already at the end of the rope tied to China, eager to reconnect with her mother culture and couldn’t wait any longer.
Only a twenty-minute walk later, she enjoyed her favorite chocolate milkshake mixed with milk, eggs, and ice cream.