China and the West

Greene, Graham. A weed among the flowers [ID D32056].
I little knew the turbulent time which lay ahead of me when on the telephone my friend Margaret Lane invited me, subject to the consent of the Chinese authorities, to join a little party including herself and her husband for a month's visit to China in April 1957. It was during that deceptively hopeful season of the Hundred Flowers, and I accepted the idea with enthusiasm. When I visited the Chinese Embassy I gathered that all was in order.
At London airport I was a little disappointed when I found myself without my friends, who were apparently leaving some weeks later in another group. So here we were on the tarmac, four of us, all strangers to each other: myself, Lord Chorley, who was a distinguished socialist lawyer, a Mrs Smith, a Communist lady from Hampstead, and a Professor whose name I didn't at first catch. His subject, Comparative Education, was something then quite unknown to me, and I shall continue to call him the Professor since as it turned out I was to behave quite abominably to him. I was even to behave abominably to the innocent Lord Chorley, but Lord Chorley is dead and he will not be hurt by anything I may write.
The trouble didntt start at the first stage which brought us to Moscow where we changed planes, nor on the forty-eight hours one which followed, in those distant days before the jet, to Pekin, so perhaps the Mou-Tai which we learnt to appreciate after we arrived in China, may have contributed a little to the trouble I caused. We saw little of each other between planes in Moscow, and we were still a friendly party when we changed to a Chinese plane in Mongolia at Ulan Bator. It was a very rough descent to Pekin and I asked the air hostess why we didn't wear safety belts. "Oh," she said, "of course we had safety belts at first, but now our pilots are so reliable."
I think it may have been deeply rooted preference to travelling by myself which began the trouble. To misquote Kipling, "He travels better who travels alone." When we arrived at Pekin airport we were entertained at once with tea, sitting on the uncomfortable classical Chinese chairs, and we were asked where we wanted to go. Here was my opportunity, I thought, to be alone, so before anybody else could speak I said, "I want to go to your ancient capital Sian, then I want to go to Chungking, and then I want to take a boat down the Yangtse-kiang to Hangkow and then return to Pekin by train." There was a pause for someone else to speak, but then, to my dismay, my three companions agreed with my plan. We were doomed to be together. So what?
No trouble at first. We were told that we must wait for the second party before we visited all the right tourist attractions — and how marvellous they are —The Forbidden City, the Great Wall, the Ming Tombs — nothing in the West can compare with them. A few days had to pass before we flew to Sian and my companions got involved with serious visits to factories and educational establishments and scientific institutes, but I was able to excuse myself, as I had made friends with a gigantic trycycle driver who was ready to take me shopping in the back lanes of the old city. He was probably a police informer, but what did I care? I was innocent of any espionage intentions, I was happy to be alone, buying a case of inks here and an attractive padded jacket there for a friend at home. He even spoke a bit of English which made it even more probable that he was an informer, and I liked him the better for wasting his time with me. Perhaps my desire to be alone justified a certain suspicion.
We had now been allotted two guides, a young man and a girl (the girl I suppose to chaperone Mrs Smith). Both were kind, patient and charming. At some point in our travels we visited a collective farm and I questioned our male guide about contraception. "Of course," he told me, "it is encouraged and widely practised."
"In this village, for example, there would be a chemist shop?"
"Yes. Yes. In all places."
"Where a man can buy a sheath?"
"Yes, yes, of course."
"Would you mind going and buying one for me?"
He hesitated a long while before he found his reply. "That I cannot do. YJU see I do not know your size."
It was at Sian that I began my addiction to that dangerous drink, Mou-Tai, which has an alcoholic content of between fifty and sixty. I had been told by an expert that outside the great cities one should choose the dirtiest restaurants to eat in, and this proved to be true in Sian where the Mou-Tai was also of first class quality which perhaps explains gaps in my memory. I only half remember in Sian watching a Pekin opera modern style where girls sold refreshments during the performance like the orange girls in Stuart London, but they sold not oranges but pickled garlic.
Perhaps already I was feeling a certain irritation with the Professor who seemed to me, I am sure quite unjustly, to speak in paragraphs even when replying to a simple statement as, "It looks like being a good day."
"Yes," he would reply, "when I went to bed last night I noticed that there was a slight breeze coming from the west, and I believe . . ."
Anyway Mou-Tai, even without the Professor, would probably have been my downfall — I bought a small bottle to take with me on the very small plane in which we flew on to Chungking where the real troubles began. On the plane, as it descended, the Mou-Tai blew out its inadequate cork, and the fumes filled the cabin.
The airport is on the top of the hill which dominates Chungking. A group of our hosts were waiting for us with care to take us down into the city. We all smelt of Mou-Tai, but I was avariciously guarding what was left in the bottle, having made an even more inadequate cork with a spool of paper.
A young man ushered me into a taxi. He spoke excellent English and he began to tell me how timely our visit was, for a festival was being held in Chungking for that great English poet, Robert Burns, and the guest of honour was another great English poet who had written an ode to Lenin, Hugh Mac . . . Mac . . .
"Diarmid?" I suggested correctly.
"I am a little poet myself," he went on, "and I admire much the poetry of Robert . . ."
He broke abruptly off. I looked at him. The colour of his face was a strange shade of green. He gestured wildly with his hand. I realized that he was trying to indicate the bottle of Mou-Tai — such a small bottle to cause so much distress. With regret I threw it out of the window and my companion was reproachfully silent as we made the long circular drive down into Chungking. (I met MacDiarmid a few days later at the festival. I think he was a little annoyed at the presence of an English writer at a Burns festival, but when I spoke to him about the blends of Scotch which I preferred he became friendly).
We were lodged in a very comfortable hotel architecturally based on the Temple of Heaven in Pekin, and we won golden opinions, when we were asked whether we preferred European or Chinese food, by giving the right answer. Our Russian fellow guests (it was still the period of entente) had chosen European, and there were large crates of food from Moscow outside the back door. As a reward we were taken into the kitchen and introduced to the chef who was secretary of the local Communist Party.
The golden opinions cannot have lasted long. The Mayor of Chungking invited us to dinner at the hotel, and the chef surpassed himself. The food was Szechuan which is justly regarded as the best in China. The Mou-Tai too was excellent. The trouble which had so long been brewing between me and the Professor switched suddenly and unexpectedly and Lord Chorley was the victim.
I had been asked in London to enquire into the fate of an imprisoned writer called, I seem to remember, Mr Hu Feng. As we relaxed over the Mou-Tai at the end of our magnificent meal I asked the Mayor if he happened to know anything about the case of Mr Hu Feng. "Oh, of course, yes," he replied. "Mr Hu Feng is a citizen of Chungking."
"Then I suppose," I went on with a certain lack of tact, "you will be relieved when he is at last brought to trial and you will learn whether he is guilty or innocent."
"He must be guilty," the Mayor replied, "or he would never have been arrested." There was what seemed a long moment of silence. I think all four of us were a little stunned, even Mrs Smith, by the frankness of his reply. Then Lord Chorley spoke up to ease the embarrassment and only made it worse. He even rose to his feet to emphasize the serious intent of his words.
"All of us here," he said, "realize the special difficulties you suffer from in the People's Republic, overrun as you are by spies from Taiwan."
The image of the Times map flashed before my eyes — the huge white patch of China extending from Canton in the south to the wastes of Sinkiang and in the far north to Mongolia and off-set, like a little green ear drop, Taiwan. China "overrun" by spies? Excited as I was no doubt by the Mou-Tai I too scrambled to my feet. I was deeply shocked, I said, to hear an English lawyer speak in such outrageous terms. Was a man considered in his eyes to be guilty without being tried? In that case I must refuse to travel any further in Lord Chorley's company. The dinner party broke up.
Next day was Easter day. I attended a crowded Mass in the Catholic cathedral and when I returned to the hotel I felt a sense of guilt, which was increased when Lord Chorley met me and held out his hand and apologized for his conduct. The apology of course should have been mine. However we shook hands and forgave each other and next day found us quite amicably sharing a cabin on the boat to Hangkow.
The only irritant in the party was now the Professor who continued to talk in paragraphs. He shared a cabin with our male guide, and Mrs Smith who remained in a kind motherly way superior to our quarrels shared a cabin with the young woman guide. She was always quite beautifully calm and a credit, I felt, to her Communist faith. Half the boat was given over to soldiers for whom patriotic music was played throughout the day. The four of us were partitioned off from them in a sort of first-class of which we were the only members.
I do not remember whether it was the first night or the second night on board, after dinner on deck, and of course some glasses of that insidious Mou-Tai, that I could bear the Professor's paragraphs no longer. Our voices were raised. I forget what terms I used, they must have been severe, for the Professor threatened to throw me into the Yangtze-kiang. I expect it was Mrs Smith who calmed things down and we went to bed.
In the middle of the night I was woken by extraordinary noises, as though somebody was being strangled. They seemed to come from next door, and I thought at once of the dangerous Professor. He too had drunk a lot of Mou-Tai. Was he assaulting his cabin companion, our young and friendly guide? The choking sounds continued. I looked across the cabin at Lord Chorley. He was sleeping peacefully. Something had to be done. I got up and went into the corridor and banged furiously on the Professor's door. "Stop that fucking noise, you bugger," I shouted. There was silence and I went back to bed.
I fell asleep, but when I woke again it was to the same cries of strangulation, only this time they seemed to come from the deck above. Had our guide escaped there and been pursued by the murderous Professor? Would he, as a substitute for me, be flung into the Yangtze-kiang? After a look at Lord Chorley who slept on peacefully I left the cabin to go on deck, but then I realized the true origin of the strange sounds —it was just the Chinese language. Two cooks were talking to each other in the kitchen.
Next morning when we were all together Mrs Smith remarked with motherly disapproval, "Mr Greene, why were you shouting those bad words in the passage last night?"
I explained how I had feared that the Professor was strangling our guide. I don't know what the Professor thought, but I had the feeling that then and there I gained the guide's trust and friendship.
I had quarrelled with Lord Chorley. I had quarrelled with the Professor, there was no one else left to quarrel with, for no one, I believed, could possibly quarrel with Mrs Smith. Our short stay in Hangkow was peaceful and so was our train journey back to Pekin (I appreciated the Chinese thoughtfulness in providing fly-flippers in the restaurant car), and it was a relief to me to learn in the hotel that the Margaret Lane group had arrived.
Only one thing went wrong. Both parties were expected to take tea with the Minister of Culture, but we were nearly an hour late in joining him because Miss Beryl de Zoete, the dancer and companion of Arthur Waley, had got locked in her lavatory and nobody seemed able to open the door.
Together we did the tourists' sights and then the Lane party left on the route they had chosen and we four were entertained at a farewell dinner outside Pekin. I am sure that the occasion would have gone off splendidly if I hadn't been there.
Lord Chorley made an impeccably brief speech of thanks, but then to my dismay the Professor found it necessary to make another speech which threatened to be as long as the longest of his paragraphs and which gave me time to drink another glass of Mou-Tai. The Professor began, "I want to join my thanks to those of Lord Chorley so admirably expressed by him, and I want to add only one thing — that we have paid our Chinese hosts — not to speak of our two friendly and efficient guides — perhaps the greatest compliment in our power by behaving with such complete naturalness in their presence, and moreover I feel . . ."
I could bear no more of it. I rose in a rage to my feet. "We have done nothing of the sort," I said, "we have behaved abominably and we owe our hosts a very deep apology." The Professor sat down and the party ended, but before we left the Professor took me on one side. He was not angry. He was only hurt. "I do wish you hadn't interrupted my speech, Greene," he said, "you cannot have realize the circumstances which made it so necessary, You see this afternoon Lord Chorley quarrelled with Mrs Smith."