Memories Re-create a Vanished World

I knew exactly what he meant, remembering my own introduction to China. It was New Year's Eve, 1946, and my mother, my sisters Meme and Kjeryn, my brother Harmon, and I arrived by ship in Shanghai to join my father, who had gone ahead to his diplomatic post a year earlier.

Dad met us at the gangplank and guided us through the swarms of hawkers and children begging for coins with outstretched hands. One coolie grabbed Kjeryn's handbag from her shoulder and fled down the street. In a flash, Dad was racing after him, followed by little brother Harmon yelling, "Stop, thief!" Soon the whole family was in hot pursuit. The robber took one quick look backward. The sight of these foreign devils after him was too much. He flung the bag into the air and disappeared in the crowd.

Our family piled into rickshas, and the coolies pulled us through cluttered streets toward the Cathay Hotel. A slew of beggars, some with open sores on their faces, followed us. When Kjeryn, then 12, had no more coins for them, one spat full in her face.

But when we walked into one of Shanghai's most luxurious hotels, we stepped into a different world. Chinese women in brocade gowns and smartly suited Chinese businessmen and officials mingled with the international set. Numerous servants escorted us through red-carpeted corridors to our suite.

For the next two years we lived in Nanking among the foreign diplomats, and I attended Nanking University. The civil war was wracking the countryside around us, and most of my fellow students were in sympathy with the Communists. Riding to school in a ricksha each morning, I often passed corpses of people who had died in the night - from starvation, disease, or accident. Bodies sometimes lay unclaimed for days. In the evening I would attend elaborate dinners and diplomatic balls. Contrasting the lives of the very poor and the very rich, I sensed that the revolution in China had been inevitable.

Canton Moves by Muscle Power

Now, in Canton, surrounded by the new Chinese, I thought that, instead of comparing the standard of living in China today with that of the industrialized United States or Europe, we should rather weigh modern China against China's backward past.

Industrialization is increasing, but slowly. The contrast with Hong Kong's automobile-choked streets was startling. Canton's wide, tree-lined avenues were full of people walking, riding bicycles, and pushing carts, but there were few vehicles apart from a scattering of trucks, taxis, official cars, and buses. Man-pulled rickshas have been banned, but there are still a few pedicabs, which look like rickshas pulled by bicycles. All over the city are large political posters, portraits of Mao, and signs urging the people to keep the city clean, deposit refuse in the proper container, and refrain from spitting on the street. The admonitions seem to work, for the streets are impressively clean.