Two Innocents in Red China
Language: English
Pages: 164
ISBN: 0196808065
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
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3/23/07 15:39:57 24 · t w o i n n o c e n t s i n r e d c h i n a Harmony meant being at peace with one’s station, embracing it wholeheartedly whether you were the Emperor or the lowliest peasant. On a cold and rainy day, you may still be able to march into the empty City and feel its old soul pulsing in the solitude and silence. But the modern soul of the Forbidden City is elsewhere. Beijing is still the seat of power, and the centres of power in the capital are as inaccessible as ever.
O Pe k i n g · 53 the freedom of the hotel, which, like all hotels in China, belongs to the State. It was built by the government five or six years ago. That’s obvious: it is solid, functional, and drab. The charms of Peking have been so vaunted in literature that there is some risk of disappointment at first glance. Everything is grey, no doubt because these grim walls have been battered for centuries by strong winds coming from the Gobi Desert, loaded with dust. The present régime has added.
Workers are organized in mobile teams to serve vast regions. They move in quickly, build quickly, and quickly move on to the next place; they haven’t the time to come back and fuss about maintenance. The concept that lies behind this pace is imposed by necessity: if you waited till you could do perfect work, you’d never get started. This need to get started quickly accounts for a number of other aspects. Certain heavy tasks are performed by women, or by adolescents of whom one can hardly believe.
“the twenty thousand people here lived in utter wretchedness. Many were unemployed and nobody had enough to eat. Seventy-five per cent lived in huts, some in tents. They were constantly threatened by three plagues: the rain that seeped into the huts and turned the street into a river of mud; fire, which was very common because of the oil lamps (between 1942 and 1946 there were three fires that destroyed over a thousand hovels); and gales that carried o≠ roofs and even whole dwellings. There were.
Distinction? On the teenagers’ floor, we tour workshops where boys are building, with astonishing skill, boats and planes in lightweight wood, while girls are doing masterly embroidery—the most popular motif being the Picasso dove. TwoInnocentsIntFinal.indd 161 3/23/07 15:40:42 162 · t w o i n n o c e n t s i n r e d c h i n a In the former ballroom, where blasé Europeans used to try to enjoy themselves, a few hundred children are doing folk dances, many of them straight from the.