Can a Cultural Worker from Beverly Hills Find Happiness in the People's Republic of China?

In class society everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.

--Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, Selected Works

You can say that Again. I was raised in Beverly Hills by a famous father and a stunning mother, introduced as Edgar's daughter and Charlie McCarthy's sister, with a spoon stamped Sterling firmly clamped between my teeth, while Ronald Reagan stood staunchly in the living room beside framed photographs of my mother with President Eisenhower.

I come, of course, from a Republican family. Upper middle class, middle upper class. The term bourgeoisie is not threadbare from overuse in my vocabulary, but for purposes of clarification, we were and are some of its more comfortable, carefree constituents.

My college career was consistently and dutifully conservative. The extent of my political activity at school was being in Barry Goldwater's female honor guard when he came to campaign on campus, and participating in a protest against cutting down a tree.

I moved on to New York, to modeling and movies, bent on securing a well-deserved place in the sun and soaring off on the wings of the jet set. That bout was brief, fortunately, but left me hung with pearls, cashmere sweater sets, crocodile bags and a transcontinental lisp. At 20 I was a dead ringer for a dowager.

The deepening conflict between my conditioning and my dawning instincts was fertile soil for an incipient social conscience. But it took me a long time to realize I didn't want to be Princess Grace. It was not without sociological value, however, to have rubbed shoulders with a dwindling species that still subscribes to the divine right of kings.

After endless, intense debates on the origin of scampi. the moment of truth came during a celebration in a Madrid restaurant after a successful pheasant shoot. I was the only person at the table without a title and was flanked by two German counts who were deeply offended by a neighboring table of raucous Americans. It was more of a bane than either could bear and one broke the ice with the witty aside, "Disgusting. They should be made into soap." My jet-set days were over.

I began to let reality seep in. I started by learning about the American Indians--perhaps because they were less threatening than blacks to a blonde from Beverly Hills. I began acquiring some awareness of who they were and what they had become. I read about America's earliest war crimes while watching a series glorifying Custer on TV. I met red-power Indians and white-collar Indians, medicine men and chiefs. I joined organizations, made contributions, raised funds, attended endless meetings. I spent a weekend on Alcatraz passing a peace pipe filled with grass. I photographed Indians. I wrote about Indians. But finally I didn't do anything but find a focus for my new-found rage.

When Jane Fonda discovered the Indians, I actually felt resentful and proprietary. It was like some absurd philanthropic territorial imperative. The Indians were my cause. Why couldn't she pick the Panthers? I pulled over to inspect my motives. Keeping a wary eye open for signs of megalomania or martyrdom, I went on: cruelty to animals, abortion, the war. I didn't do much; in fact, I did very little. I felt you had to do something, but no matter how much you did, it didn't seem to make any difference; no one was listening--except perhaps to our private telephone conversations.

Then, four years too late, even for the living, the war ended anyway--or began to die a death so slow that it's still impossible to tell if it's over. After all the fantasy of armistice--the anticipation of a final signed agreement--the actuality was dull and drained.

Movement diehards hollered hoarsely to thinning crowds that the war was only symptomatic of the ills besetting us, that the fight had just begun. Rightly or wrongly, the feeling persisted that if things did get better, it wouldn't be because of anyone's energies in that direction. So--as abortion reform was adopted and as the iceman himself took steps to defrost the Cold War by strengthening diplomatic ties with Russia and China--it became increasingly difficult to figure out where to stand any more.

Then, late in 1972, in the heady afterglow of Nixon's trips behind the Iron and Bamboo curtains, a New York newspaper called the Guardian announced that it was going to sponsor a group of 20 people on a tour of The People's Republic of China. My name was suggested. The only credentials required were participation in some area loosely defined as "the arts" and evidence of liberal political leanings and activities, e.g., the antiwar movement. There probably aren't many minutemen in the arts, anyway.

The only Guardian I'd ever heard of was The Manchester Guardian, the left-of-center intellectual English daily. This Guardian was slightly to the left of Lenin--a Marxist-Leninist paper that hence enjoys excellent relations with China. I wanted to go to China, but I wasn't sure this was my golden opportunity. It took me long enough to become a liberal, for God's sake. Traveling with a bunch of Marxists was more than I was ready for. What if I couldn't get back into the country? What if, five years from now, in the chaos of some crazed conservative purge, my name were on The List? Even if my father had campaigned for Nixon. Oh, well, I decided if there were a list, I'd be in good company. And, as it turned out, there was. I didn't make it, but Joe Namath did. And he doesn't even know who's President. It was time to develop the courage of my convictions, take a stand, accept responsibility for my actions. I was sick of being spineless. But Marxism-Leninism? I hadn't even read the Manifesto.

I asked who would be in the group. "Well, Harry Belafonte's been invited." Suddenly the picture brightened. Having the courage of my convictions with Belafonte as a bonus, that was incentive. "And Alan Arkin might come, Joe Papp, Judy Collins, David Amram. We're trying to reach Brando...." That's different. Not only would they be great company but they would only be liberals.

But a few weeks later: "Belafonte can't come--he's got concert dates; Alan's doing a picture, Joe's tied up with several projects, Judy's recording, haven't heard from Amram, Brando's in Tahiti...." Who was coming? The only names I knew were Ring Lardner, Jr., screenwriter of M*A*S*H, and his actress wife; Howard da Silva, a New York actor, and his actress wife; Alan Meyerson, who directed the film Steelyard Blues; Leigh French, an actress I knew from The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour; Alice Childress, a New York playwright; Rita Martinson, a singer-composer who toured with Jane Fonda in the F. T. A. show; Pat Stitch, a television actress; Harold Leventhal, a theatrical manager; and Bert Schneider, a film producer, who had suggested me in the first place. There was also a realist-muralist from Chicago, a poet-professor from New York, a folk singer from Michigan, a movement writer from Los Angeles, a guerrilla playwright and a director of mime, both from San Francisco, a feminist writer / factory worker from Chicago, a novelist from New York and a representative from the Guardian who would serve as group leader.

The Guardian's intention was to assemble a representative group from different racial, geographical and financial backgrounds. Five people's trips were subsidized by other members in the group. There were nine men, 12 women, 16 whites, four blacks and one chicano. Five were hard-core Marxist-Leninists, three soft-core. There were six old-line radicals, two young radicals, one Black Muslim, one women's libber, two committed vegetarians and one McGovern Democrat (guess who).

The Guardian advised specificity in the visa application. If you'd made films, for example, list titles. Give examples of political activity, etc. It was implied that my political credentials might be substandard. I wasn't sure by whose standards--the Chinese' or the Guardian's. Later I learned it was the Guardian that wanted a politically homogeneous group; the Chinese like people of varied backgrounds, contrasting beliefs. But by then I wasn't taking any chances.

My visa application contained enough subversive activity to put me behind bars for years. For "Profession," I put "actress/journalist." Then I slyly synopsized some of the films I'd been in: The Sand Pebbles, a story of American imperialism in China; Getting Straight, about the college revolution in America; Soldier Blue, the white man's annihilation of the American Indian; Carnal Knowledge dealt with the oppression of women in America: T. R. Baskin, the alienation of urban life. I left out The Adventurers. It read like the most radical catalog of films ever to hit the silver screen. It made Jane Fonda look like Sandra Dee.

Next came "Political Activities": Slept at Alcatraz during the Indian occupation, board member Friends of the Earth, campaigned actively for the antiwar candidate, abortion reform, participated in Vietnam moratoriums. Women's Ring-Around-the-Congress, jailed for obstructing a hallway during an antiwar protest in the Senate--all from the girl who brought you Barry Goldwater.

Sending off my visa application was like waiting for college acceptance. I knew I wouldn't get in.

I did.

Soon I was sent my itinerary. It read, "Guardian Cultural Workers' Visit to China--April 15 to May 10"--and was addressed, "Dear Cultural Worker: You will be visiting the following cities in China: Canton, Changsha, Shaoshan. Peking, Soochow and Shanghai." What in God's name. I wondered, was a Cultural Worker? I was the only one in the group who had to ask. A Cultural Worker, in Marxist terminology, is someone in the arts. For the next month I was to be one.

The group converged in San Francisco for the JAL flight to Tokyo. In a monolithic heap before the check-in counter were guitars, autoharps, harmonicas, radical reading matter, still and movie cameras, tape recorders, raw honey and organic juices. The group leader from the Guardian was a girl about my age with close-cropped dark hair, wire-rimmed glasses, work shirt and jeans. She looked like my fantasy of a commissar, but the initial austerity of her appearance was betrayed by a sweet face and a small, wispy voice. It was her debut as a group leader and she attacked the responsibility of shepherding 20 people to (continued on page 88)Cultural Worker(continued from page 80) China and back with earnest but querulous officiousness.

I was a total basket case about the prospect of traveling 25 days with 20 people. Just thinking about it gave me claustrophobia. No matter how much I hated it, I wouldn't be able to leave. I don't deal easily with groups, especially wild-eyed, zealous ones. I am not collectivist or zealous by nature. I am selfish and intolerant. But I'm getting better. A pathologically low threshold of boredom and an inordinate need for space and privacy combine into a major character defect I'm determined to overcome. In a group whose Marxist commitment runs rampant, I'm just along for the ride. I want to see China as a tourist, not as a revolutionary architect. So the simplest stratagem to adopt during a month of dialectical-materialist dialog is to sit back, relax and be a sponge.

We were flying economy class, of course, this being a workers' tour and all, but it was still somewhat of a shock to my system. I'm the first to admit it--which doesn't mean I'm proud of it. But I haven't flown tourist since college, and while I always feel guilty and uncomfortable about the implied segregation of traveling first-class, I like it, and I never felt guilty enough to fly tourist. Anyway, the studios always paid for it. I was only following orders.

It was nighttime and raining in Tokyo when we arrived. Five o'clock in the morning our time. We were told it would be 20 minutes before the bus arrived to take us to our hotel. At the risk of exposing capitalist tendencies, someone suggested sharing a taxi. Our group leader explained that a spirit of unity and collectivism was the goal of the group and a few people taking a taxi would differentiate between those who could afford it and those who couldn't. It was clear that taking the bus was a measure of our Marxist convictions. "Be a good socialist," she cooed. We waited for the bus.

A sign in the hotel in Tokyo read, Special Guardian Group. The letters kept falling off, a good omen. The Fountainhead was playing on the TV in my room. For some reason I could never understand, that seemed to be one of those books that changed everyone's life. Everyone's, that is, but those in the Special Guardian Group.

On to Hong Kong, where a group meeting was called in the lobby of our hotel with amused Chinese looking on. Its purpose was to announce the following morning's departure time by train and to elect our "Delegation Leader." We couldn't agree on anyone, but we heatedly discussed when to continue the discussion and finally agreed to resume the next day in Canton. Then we were told to introduce ourselves, and one by one we announced our name, profession and purpose of trip. It was like show-and-tell time. That proceeded quite soberly and tediously: "My name is---, I'm an actor and a director and I'd like to discuss their feelings about Stanislavsky. You know, they think of him as a Khrushchev revisionist." "My name is---, I'm a writer and I want to see successful examples of communalism and democratic centralism." "My name is---, I'm a writer and a factory worker. I want to compare wages and working conditions with factories at home." Then: "My name is Leigh French, I'm an actress and a teacher and a Cancer with Gemini rising." I guffawed. No one else even smiled. I'd counted on Leigh for levity, and she came through. Alan Meyerson said, "I'm a director and I'd like to see a country where people don't say, 'You should have been here before the Americans ruined it.' I'd also like to know more about their studies in psychic phenomena." "They don't have any of that," the group leader snapped impatiently. "Yes, they do," said Alan quietly. Thus began the Marxist metaphysical schism. Soon everyone was speaking at once. A short, dumpy girl complained contemptuously, "I think we should conduct this as a collective enterprise, make our decisions in a collective manner and raise our hands."

Next morning we left Hong Kong by train for the Chinese border town of Shumchun. We arrived, taut with anticipation, and walked across the border through a stream of foreigners, most of them British, leaving the Canton Trade Fair. That trek along the tracks into China was like something out of Gunfight at O. K. Corral. Seldom has one walk meant so much to so few. For several in the group, it meant Marxist Mecca. To me, at the time, it meant terror. Excitement, of course, but also terror. Yellow Hordes, Red Guards, uniforms, masses. I saw it--like most Americans--as a threat to my very being. You would have thought I were moving there instead of visiting for three weeks.

At the check point on either side of me were the signs, beet-red with snow-white letters, exclaiming, Long Live the People's Republic of China, Long Live The unity of the People of the World. A baby-faced people's-liberation-army man with a red star on his cap and a rifle and sneakers casually examined my passport. In China, the only way to distinguish an officer from an enlisted man is to look at the pockets on their jackets: officers have four, enlisted men, two.

The border had a certain Iron Curtain flavor to it. Very militaristic, highly regimental, policed, purposeful, unsmiling. It was the only place in China where we saw anyone armed. The army guys had rifles and the buildings were a warm, Neo-Stalinist gray. We were shown into a large, multistoried building and one of an endless line of waiting rooms. Political broadcasts and revolutionary choruses came crashing out of loud-speakers. On a shelf were stacks of magazines on China and enough Little Red Books to put the Gideons to shame--all free and in different languages, with a sign saying, Help Yourself. After a cursory luggage check, we passed through customs into yet another series of waiting rooms. Enormous rooms, with light tumbling through huge windows filtered by billowing white-lace curtains. They were comfortable, airy, even beautiful. But I kept feeling like I was in a convent or a hospital.

Then it was time for lunch--at the Shumchun railroad station, of all places. It was one of the best Chinese meals I've ever eaten and one of the best we had in China. Girls in braids and white jackets refilled our glasses after we'd hardly touched them to our lips, and food was in abundance. All of us had switched to our best behavior: intensely polite, respectful, soft-spoken and considerate. We sweetly asked our Chinese guides' permission to leave the table ("May I" have the bean sprouts, etc.). China seemed to affect us like little kids who think Santa's watching.

I went off to explore my first Chinese bathroom. What high adventure. It was, like everything else, immaculate, with shining tile, no mirror and pink toilet paper. No one else seemed to care when I came careening out with the news.

Most people are understandably indifferent to trains, but Chinese trains are something to get excited about. They're perfect. A finished fantasy. For one thing, they're punctual; for another, they're silent (except for intermittent blasts of martial music); for another, they're gorgeous. The seats are covered with crisp white-lace antimacassars, the windows with white-lace curtains, and potted plants perch on each table, where jasmine tea is served in flowered porcelain mugs. And the cars are air conditioned.

The countryside slides smoothly by in symmetrical shades of green--an abrupt change from the other side of the border. Gone is the garbage from the water; left behind is the litter on the streets. Every arable inch of land is cultivated--planted with trees or rice--by people working here and there in what seems a most serene and pastoral landscape.

The Chinese are lined up five deep outside the Canton station to watch the Foreign Devils being disgorged. There are flowers at the station, in old ornate pots and in trim, modest gardens. Touches like that continued to turn up everywhere, and I was always surprised and impressed by the apparent anomaly of attempts at beautification in a struggling revolutionary society.

I found Canton, as I was to find most other Chinese cities we saw, spotless and (continued on page 150)Cultural Worker(continued from page 88) drab. I began to yearn for a drop of degeneracy. Our hotel, a nondescript, massive, modern thing, was "just finished yesterday," they said. They weren't kidding. The plaster was still wet and as yet there was no hot water. The walls absorbed Canton's high humidity like blotting paper and staying there was like life in a rain forest. Everything was soggy. The food, however, was ample compensation.

After unpacking, we met to elect our Delegation Leader. The meeting was a shambles, but pretty funny--with the party liners frantically trying to impose some sort of collective order and a splinter group countering by running someone on "the Revisionist Ticket." Two coleaders were elected, a man and a woman, in exemplary representative fashion, to serve as official spokes ... um ... people for the group, introducing us, presenting gifts, etc. It was explained that, as Cultural Workers, we may, in some places, be expected to give performances of some kind. A song would be perfectly acceptable, for instance. Someone suggested We Shall Not Be Moved, since the Chinese know that one, and the Internationale. "I have the words to the Internationale if everyone doesn't know them," the writer/factory worker said. Not only did I not know the words, I didn't even know the tune. Could it be I'm out of touch with the masses?

After dinner, we were taken to a People's Cultural Park, where thousands of people go, free of charge, to performances in two or three open theaters--children singing on one stage, a Mongolian puppet show delighting hundreds of people on another. There was also a ping-pong match, a roller-skating rink--you name it. It was a Maoist amusement park and everyone was laughing, clapping and enjoying himself. You could have knocked me over with a won ton. I knew the people had food and clothing here for the first time in their lives, but nothing I'd seen or read led me to believe they had a good time.

We were introduced there to the Chinese custom (albeit a recent one) of applauding foreigners. It was quite startling and moving. Everywhere we entered, the crowds applauded us--and we applauded back. It all began feeling faintly hallucinatory; I think by then I'd come down with a case of culture shock. At the first sign of rain, we were shown inside and our bus was brought around for us so we wouldn't have to walk. I'd expected more Red Guard treatment than Red Carpet, but this proved to be quite typical.

The next morning at six o'clock, I was blasted out of bed by a brace of loud-speakers outside my window giving forth at full volume with the communal wakeup call, which begins with the Internationale in crashing crescendo and continues throughout the day with revolutionary operas and rabble-rousing speeches, though they never roused any while we were there. It's not easy to sleep late in China. After 15 minutes of the Internationale and political broadcasts I can't even understand, I am moved to unheard of heights of industry. Busy hands are happy hands. I am up and packing for Chairman Mao, straightening my room for Chairman Mao, making my bed--in a hotel--for Chairman Mao, and this was only the second day. The Chinese can mobilize anybody. By nine o'clock I felt my day was already half over. We left for the Ren Ho People's Commune, passing a sign along the way, Proletariat of the World Unite!

When we arrived at the commune, we were shown into a meager meeting hall and sat down at a table set with steaming mugs of tea and plates piled with peanuts. The Revolutionary Committee members of the 60,000-person commune made various presentations to inform us of its history. Then one of our Delegation Leaders introduced us: "Responsible Persons, Revolutionary Committee Members and Comrades of the Ren Ho Commune: We are a varied group--blacks, whites, chicano--of different political and religious beliefs, from many different cities, but we have two things in common: We have actively opposed the Vietnam war and we have sincere respect for the great accomplishments of the Chinese people under their beloved Chairman Mao Tsetung. We are here to learn and observe and develop better understanding and deeper friendship. You have a culture hundreds of years in age and the benefits of a new society. We are grateful for your generous hospitality. Thank you."

The tables in the dark meeting hall were then spread with oil cloths and set with chopsticks. Dish followed dish: egg roll, sweet-and-sour fish--each one better than the last. I couldn't believe it; lunch at the Ren Ho Commune was like eating at Trader Vic's. With a little carpeting and some tiki gods....

Then a guided tour of the commune. By the end of the day, members of the group glided by--radiant radical countenances suffused with the splendor of socialism. While their smugness was annoying, I could see their point. We had learned that the cost of medical care--a major operation for $15--is minute in China, and if they pay an annual fee of a few dollars, they receive all medical services free. The price of food, housing and clothing is equally minimal. Those gray suits they wear aren't uniforms, we were told; they dress alike because it's cheaper. For approximately six dollars, a person can buy two pairs of pants and two jackets, which will be his wardrobe for the year.

For others in the group--the most idealistic, the most radical or the most cynical, I don't know which--China had already fallen short of their expectations. The repressiveness, the poverty (costs were low, but so were the wages), the apparent absence of individual choice or freedom--it wasn't the people's paradise they'd envisioned. The workers' homes we saw at the commune were primitive and spartan. Their hospitality was ample, but because they had very little, they had to serve us hot water in lieu of tea. "We are still a very poor country," our guide explained in a characteristic Chinese combination of honesty, humility and pride. Life was better, but life was hard. Yet it seemed to be hard for everybody. All over China, signs reminded the people of the long, hard Struggle and that the struggle was shared; but so were the rewards. Perhaps my political naïveté and my lack of expectations left me open to being impressed.

I began seeing the red-and-white signs not as insidious Communist Big Brother brainwashing but as a means, however regimental, to mobilize and motivate 800,000,000 people to help clothe and feed one another. If a country as vast and populous as China is to succeed in building a self-reliant society, it will only be through unity, not the chaotic Chinese legacy of thousands of years of factionalism. Two days in the country and I'm a Maoist maven. My Red-menace conditioning was crumbling before my very eyes. I began to regard those friendly billboards back home--exhorting us to buy overpriced, unsafe, obsolescence-oriented automobiles to carry us to our new reduced-rate, view-site grave--as far more pernicious than signs encouraging the unity of the people of the world.

After Canton came Changsha. The city had a distinctly Dickensian quality; soot-streaked, coal-blackened, bleak and skeletal. Visually stripped. The people lived poorly, but there seemed to be none of the desperate hopelessness that usually goes along with it. Wandering down winding side streets, I saw a cheerful community spirit of closeness. People would look up and their mouths would drop open as they saw--for the first time--an American running dog right on their block. The shock would then soften into smiles and laughter and eager waves.

In the smaller cities and towns, a Westerner becomes an instant Pied Piper, engulfed by sometimes hundreds of cautious, curious, friendly Chinese. The feelings they projected were so positive that it never occurred to me to be uneasy. I'm a devout paranoid, but in China I felt no fear. There was an incredible, quite valid sense of safety. I experimented by walking alone in cities at night. It was extraordinary. I knew I could go (continued on page 155)Cultural Worker (continued from page 150) anywhere at any time and return intact. And I did.

It was in Changsha that I saw my first fly. It must have sneaked in from Taiwan. Until the Revolution in 1949, thousands of people in China were dying of disease, and after seizing power, one of the things Mao mobilized the masses to do was kill flies. Every day the people were asked to turn in a quota of dead flies, and the consequence of 800,000,000 people's swatting is no flies in China.

One night we went to see a performance of plate spinning, human pyramids, unicycles, aerial acts. The aerialists wore wires, since the Chinese consider it decadent to risk a life or solicit thrill seeking. After all this, two men in battleship-gray Mao jackets walked out on stage and for fully ten minutes engaged in a birdcall dialog--screeching and hooting at each other, cawing and tweeting heatedly. Then they impersonated a barnyard, an auto race and, for their big finale, a locomotive. The audience went crazy and the guys got two encores. If only Ed Sullivan were still on.

Back in the bus, an argument raged about the acrobats' costumes. Some felt that they were too nice, that they were bourgeois, counterrevolutionary. Others disagreed. I thought they were pretty and who cares anyway? The hard-core Marxists complained that everybody wasn't interested enough in the movement. After seven days of Chinese food, Leigh replied loudly, "The only movement I'm interested in is the bowel movement."

The following day, we met with a group of our counterparts, Chinese Cultural Workers--a very somber, sweet group of composers, writers, actors, directors and the Responsible Person from the previous night's acrobatic troupe. Dressed alike in dark grays, greens and blues, they were a far cry from the Cultural Workers I've known in Hollywood, with unlisted phones in their custom convertibles. We met with them for three hours, exchanging questions and answers over tea.

A few days later, we went by bus from Changsha to Shaoshan to visit the farmhouse where Mao was born. It was a cross between Mount Vernon and the Wailing Wall. To the Chinese, Shaoshan is a pilgrimage, the house a shrine. Eyes shone with tears. The man who taught godless-ness is a godhead. "I don't tell my wife I love her," protested a guide proudly, "but I do love Chairman Mao." While it took Mao to mobilize the people, it seems such a setup for mass trauma when he dies. What happens when 800,000,000 people lose their father? Naturally, they've taken steps. Several years ago, Mao himself came out against the philosophy of the personality cult; that, too, seems self-contradictory to me. But Maoism in the extreme is gradually being phased out. Fewer Mao buttons are worn, fewer Mao posters are seen. One new poster has been issued, however, in what some consider subliminal preparation; it shows Mao up in the clouds over Tien An Min Square, with one of his quotations below. The man may be mortal, but the mind lives on. Mao's thoughts are the opiate of the people.

Near Mao's house is the Mao Tse-tung museum. There is a large silvered likeness of him in front of it, along with a famous pre-Nixonian quote captured in marble: "People of the world, unite and defeat the U. S. aggressors and all their running dogs! ... Then the whole world will belong to the people. Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed." I wish he'd just come right out and say what he really feels instead of beating around the bush. Later that night, I was idly doing a dance back at our hotel, tapping and shuffling, and our woman guide, Comrade Lin, asked what it was. "The Running Dog Stomp," I said. She laughed.

The hotel dining room was in a separate building and by dinnertime it was pouring rain. We all gathered in the tiny lobby, ready to make a run for it, when we saw 20 pairs of galoshes and several umbrellas lined up. Their thoughtfulness was always just that touching and genuine. And we never felt policed or prodded. We were free to take days off from the tour and wander on our own. With all due respect, the Chinese in China just aren't like the Chinese I've met in Hong Kong or Taiwan or America. They are warm and friendly, open and funny. They don't dump sweet-and-sour pork on your head; they aren't monosyllabic or surly--even if they can't speak English. And they were nice to me not because I was pretty or famous but almost in spite of it. It says a lot about China and a lot about the West. The Chinese have a decency and a humanity that, in the Western world, have become only words chiseled on Federal buildings. Perhaps that's why we were so susceptible to them, why we found them so moving. After all my apprehensions about armies of automatons, these revolutionary robots had me almost constantly close to tears.

After dinner, several of us adjourned to the sitting room to talk and play poker. (Item: Chinese cards have no kings, queens or jacks. The decks are egalitarian.) The poker game was under way at one end of the room, while at the other a jam session wailed with improvised instruments. There were East Indian chants and country-and-western hoots as the writer/factory worker persistently played We Shall Not Be Moved on her autoharp. In a corner, some of us were engrossed in a seminar on sex.

Our Chinese comrades looked on, eyes wide with wonder, initially a bit uncertain. Our disheveled and eclectic group posed a serious challenge to party discipline. Gradually, they began to loosen up--unbutton their collars, roll up their sleeves and really enjoy themselves. The guides began to grow their hair; one bravely but briefly sprouted a highly heretical mustache; shirttails hung out; they all began to relax. "You are different from other groups," they said diplomatically over the noise of bongos, harmonicas and kazoos.

Meanwhile, our seminar proved edifying to both groups. We asked Comrade Lin if she would explain Revolutionary Morality to us and offered to answer any questions she might have about Revisionist Morality. Lin said our guides were surprised to find that two of the couples in the group were not married. We explained that it was quite acceptable in America to live together without being married and that people often did so rather casually with little or no commitment and were remarkably flexible and expedient in their choice of roommate. Lin said the Chinese would find shocking that kind of casualness and lack of commitment. I respected them for not being judgmental in the face of our full countercultural dose.

Still, it's fairly safe to say that China is a puritanical society. Premarital sex, we were told, does not exist in the People's Republic. Yeah, but.... There are no buts. Buts also do not exist. There is, however, some chaste courtship as couples walk hand in hand along the rivers at night. But still, I persist, "What if a boy and a girl want to...." "They don't," said Lin firmly. After three weeks in China, I believed her. There was an absolute absence of sexual energy. I felt like I had been neutered. The very idea of sex was redolent of bourgeois self-indulgence. Never again, I thought, would I know the joy, the anxiety--at least not till I got home. In China, Lin told us, marriage is called "class friendship." We asked what qualities people looked for in a "class friend." "Political ideology," she said. Political ideology? That gives things an intriguing twist. What happens if the husband goes off to work and the wife meets another guy with better ideology, bigger ideology?

The legal age for marriage is 18 for women, 20 for men, but they are discouraged from marrying before the age of 25 or 26 and the government is trying to raise the legal age to 30. It's felt that early marriage is distracting to studies and work, and sexual emphasis is distracting to fighting imperialism. Boys and girls no longer fall in love at 17 or 18, as they did before the Cultural Revolution; education in that area has been successful. "When you find a good man, you marry him," Lin said simply. But you find him after 25.

Divorce exists but is exceptional. Even our guides didn't know that Mao, of all people, had been married four times. Couples contemplating untying the knot go before their neighborhood revolutionary committee for self-criticism sessions. They are usually urged to give it another go. "In China, we don't worry about divorce," Lin explained. "We think how to live together our whole life."

Several times we asked our guides to invite their wives or husbands to dinner, but they always politely declined. Other visitors to China have experienced the same refusals, but no one has understood why and it never occurred to me to ask. There seemed to be, however, on many levels, a policy of social segregation to keep visitors from getting too chummy with the Chinese; or maybe it's vice versa.

The next day, everyone was up early, eager to leave the sticks of Changsha for the bright lights of Peking. At breakfast an announcement was made that the plane had been delayed by fog and oversold. There were only 13 seats available. Who would volunteer to stay in Changsha? Were they kidding? That's like doing time in Trenton. Even in so selfless and socialistic a group, there were no volunteers. We drew lots. There was no doubt in my mind I'd be having Peking duck for dinner. I drew my slip of paper. Suddenly I understood how the men on the Titanic felt as the women and children climbed into the lifeboats. Another night in Changsha.

Our day, however, turned out to be a nice one, because no matter where you are, the Chinese are a pleasure to be around. Or be surrounded by. We went at a relaxed pace; a lovely People's Park that really was a people's park, then to the Changsha Restaurant. We had asked to eat at a people's restaurant--rather than get the VIP treatment--and we got our wish. Only we were led past the people having lunch and upstairs into a private room. The food was the same as downstairs, however--sumptuous, but made from the most inexpensive animal parts: spiced pickled pig's heart, goose gizzard, fried tendons, pig's stomach, fish-skin soup, fried pork fat and snake-bile wine. I would have given 1,000,000 yuan for a bowl of Grape Nuts and half-and-half. Then they brought in a plate of white fluffy stud that looked like floating island. Dessert? It was pork with egg whites. I finished my rice in silence.

After lunch, we were taken to the movies. It was a film about a young boy who runs away to join the Red army and his adventures therein. It was surprisingly well shot, emotional, exciting, funny and even moving. Sort of revolutionary Walt Disney: Tom Sawyer Fights the Imperialists.

The next day, we awaken with one thought in mind: Peking. The plane allegedly leaves at one P.M. We are taken while we wait to see a kindergarten, where the student body put on a show for us. The children's make-up was theatrical and heavy, classical Chinese, and they gave the startling impression of hardened, overly made-up dwarfs. The plays were all political, but non oppressively so. In one, The Long March, the kids came out in uniforms with red-starred caps and a big red banner. It wasn't very different from American kids' playing George Washington at Valley Forge. But it was very different from American kids. The performance was perfectly professional and smooth; there were no screw-tips, no giggling, no fidgeting--and no humor. They were the most disciplined and purposeful regiment of preschoolers ever bred. The children at this kindergarten, we were told, live at school from the age of three and visit home only on weekends; they looked it. The teachers seemed gentle and kind, not like some of the wardens I knew; they didn't terrorize. But these kids seemed beyond terror. I don't know. It was impressive and lovely--but somehow a little chilling.

By four P.M. we were finally fastening our seat belts as a stewardess in cotton jacket and baggy pants offered us candy, apples, tea and gum with the resilience of vinyl. It was a far cry from "Fly Me, I'm Sheila." The trip--a long one; China is vast--went without incident, and we hit Peking at midnight. Our hotel had all the warmth of a Y. Like all hotels where we stayed in China, however, the rooms were stocked with tins of tea, a Thermos of hot water, cigarettes, combs, pen and ink, writing paper and an occasional old radio. We also got private bathrooms, but when they made "The Great Leap Forward." they leaped right over the plumbing.

In the morning, we went to Peking U--lovely lakes and pagodas in disrepair; real Ivy League. The students here, too, were appallingly well behaved; all of them were the kind of model students teachers had always held up to me as the desired academic mold. Most were from worker-peasant homes and for them, college is a privilege, a supreme opportunity for self-improvement for which they are deeply grateful.

A discussion of arts and literature had been arranged between our group and members of the faculty. Group intensity was high, as usual, and we stayed an extra hour. The faculty told us about some of the changes in post-Cultural Revolution education. "The teachers go to the country to work and live with the peasants for two months a year to offset the distance from the people and to get in touch with the lives of the laborers, because labor creates the world. They try to integrate theory with practice. Most of the teaching staff has had one year of labor. Teachers and students have to work outside as well as attend classes.

"In teaching we have abolished 'the cramming method' and instead practice 'the method of elicitation.' It is a means of self-enlightenment as opposed to force feeding. We still have tests, but with different aims than before, when teachers treated students as enemies and launched 'surprise attacks.' The aim now is for the students to review their own studies to master what they have learned."

Then we bombarded them with questions:

Q. "Has the educational level dropped since the enrollment of peasants and workers?" asked the Muslim pointedly.

A. "To think the educational level must decrease is a bourgeois bias. But there are requirements. All the students have graduated from middle school and some from senior school."

Q. "What is the role of dialectical materialism in art, and should art follow dialectical materialism?" (My eyelids are growing heavy.)

A. "Literature and art should reflect reality."

Q. "Do you consider socialist realism, with revolutionary romanticism and revolutionary realism, a dialectical method as now practiced?" (ZZZZZ.)

A. "Socialist realism has defects. It puts too much stress on reality and truth and not enough on Marxism-Leninism. So we combine revolutionary realism with revolutionary romanticism. We discard anything harmful to the minds of the people, avoid the bourgeois aspects of human nature and eliminate the stress on complexity. In life we have hardship, but art should also reflect the people's heroist and ability to overcome. Revolutionary heroism plays an important role in literature and art. The works should not have a negative impact but should encourage the militant will of the people, show a bright future and inspire them by revolutionary experience. The main idea is to sing the praise of the heroic revolutionary peasant figures."

Q. "What is the Chinese attitude toward the suppression of Soviet writers?"

A. "It is difficult to write proletarian works, because the Soviets are under the domination of revisionism. The writers who are suppressed are rightist--writers who want the so-called freedom to write in the Western sense of the word."

Q. "What role do the minorities play in the arts now?"

A. "The minority people are shown well in the arts to correct the majority attitudes. They now have the freedom to use their own language, to hold their own religious beliefs and to practice their own customs. Because of their small populations, they are encouraged to have more children than the Hans [the majority]. Before liberation, the minorities never played a role. Minority folk dances, for example, are performed for the people after they have been refined."

Q. " 'Refined'?"

A. "There is a Tibetan dance, for instance, with stooped, bent-over movements symbolizing years of hard labor, but this reflects oppression and suffering, not the Revolutionary Chinese spirit. So we refine it, we regulate it. We straighten and unbend the posture, portray a proud and free attitude--erect, strong, invincible--the opposite of an oppressed feeling. All art reflects this idealized revolutionary spirit. Since changes have happened in our national life, we reflect them in our art."

Q. "But we are seeing the spirit of the people, not the reality of the people."

A. "Reality changes."

Q. "But so does the spirit. It sounds elitist to tell the masses what is good for them. By taking expressions of suppression out of their dance, you are denying their history. If the spirit of the people is free, the dance becomes just a dance showing the history of the people."

The Chinese seem amused by our passion, laughing and saying, "We perform such art when we think it necessary. Some dances are created to show oppression. Even though you are in Communist China, you see the Forbidden City," they summarize sagely.

"Tell us about your modern American fiction," the Chinese ask us. "Are Mark Twain, Jack London and Theodore Dreiser still your favorites?" It seems they are about the only American fiction writers allowed on the shelves as yet. Someone explains that they aren't really popular anymore and, furthermore, announces that there are no works being produced in America that aren't bourgeois. Several people take umbrage at that remark and Mailer, Vonnegut, Pynchon and Barth are grudgingly recognized. The girl guerrilla playwright volunteers a statement: "Since America is still under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, our art and theater reflect the bourgeoisie. We are happy to be here in China, where art serves the people."

The high lama of our group asks if Laotzu and Confucius are studied in China today. Several firebrands impatiently roll eyeballs heavenward and mutter contempt for his irrelevance. They glare at him, lasers shooting through wire-rimmed glasses, anxious to get back to ideological brass tacks. The degree of their intolerance seemed calibrated to the depth of their fervor. At times, the politics were almost incidental; their commitment often seemed to be to their rage, their alienation. For some it could just as easily have been Scientology as radical politics. I thought of Rennie Davis' recent devotion to the 15-year-old Maharaj Ji.

Someone in the group spoke up to denounce the impossibility of a fair trial in America, explaining that's why kids go to Russia. Of course. Another, virtually in the same breath, buried the bourgeoisie and lamented the lack of room service. One of the older, mellower members of the group, who's been through the fervor and the FBI investigation that comes with it, still gets the Guardian delivered to his door at his summer home in Connecticut. Having seen it all before, he cracked, "Someday we'll all meet at The Polo Lounge at The Beverly Hills Hotel and laugh about all this." Solidarity Forever.

We visited the Forbidden City: endless elegance, dripping with decadence: eunuchs' quarters, guards' quarters, concubines' quarters (adjacent to the Emperor's quarters), and the Empress' quarters a discreet distance away. The Imperial Palace swells with fairy-tale riches, a jade sculpture weighing tons, seven-foot solid-gold vessels, jeweled saddles, gold bowls and gold chopsticks. The mink-handled pair someone gave us for formal dinners in Peking looked underdressed.

Through all of this move old women hobbling on hooflike bound feet gently supported by their grandchildren; farmers, workers, soldiers shooting snapshots. When one considers that all this magnificence was laid on a foundation of hunger, oppression, death and disease, it's great public relations for the new regime to keep it open as a tourist attraction. The dazzling relics also provide relief from China's post-Revolutionary architecture: ponderous, monolithic, elephant-hued conglomerations of the worst of Stalinist and Nazi gigantism.

While we were in Peking, we requested a tour of the underground tunnels some of us had read about in The New York Times. We were taken to a side street in a busy shopping district and shown into a small clothing store. There we were cheerfully helped into heavy jackets they took off the racks to keep us warm below. A man then stepped behind the counter, pushed a baby-blue button and the linoleum receded, revealing concrete steps, which we descended, blinking in amazement, arriving in a narrow 7' x 5' tunnel 13 feet underground. Shades of Flash Gordon. We then descended to the second level, 26 feet underground--more recently completed, more sophisticated, higher and wider, well ventilated and well lit. There were a loud-speaker system, first-aid stations, storage for food and water, bathrooms for men and women. "We have built an underground Peking," our guide said with a pride that was at once touching and slightly ominous.

We were led down a side tunnel that ended in a set of massive metal doors. These were swung back and light spilled out of a huge meeting hall in the middle of which was a long table set with 21 mugs of steaming tea. The Responsible Persons in charge of the tunnels were there waiting for us. We sat down, 26 feet under Peking, while a woman pointed to a diagram of the tunnels, explaining where we were and how all of this came to be here.

The thousands of miles of tunnels were begun in 1969 "as a defense against U. S. and Soviet imperialism. The American people and the Soviet people love peace, but if the imperialists should impose war on China, we must be prepared. However, if the Americans or the Soviets wage war, we believe the U. S. and Soviet peoples will oppose it." The tunnels were built partly "by the masses working on a voluntary basis." There is also a rotating full-time professional crew. The network of tunnels extends underneath all Peking--as in other major cities--with a trained staff familiar with the location of hidden entrances and with procedures. Eighty percent of Peking's urban population of 4,000,000 could be safely underground within ten minutes of a warning signal, said the woman, and the capacity is increasing.

The tunnels were designed chiefly to disperse the urban population in the event of an attack and to provide temporary defense against radiation long enough to escape through the tunnels to the open countryside. Since the possible by-products of such mass dispersal through narrow tunnels are congestion and panic, citizens are drilled and briefed on the nearest locations and on emergency procedures. The consensus of our tunnel tour was conclusives "Don't mess with the Chinese."

The next day was full of sight-seeing--beginning with the Great Hall of the People, which lived up to its name in size, at least. Inside were vast reception rooms for representatives from each province, including one for Taiwan featuring seascapes of the island and aborigine artifacts. "This room is reserved for the representatives from Taiwan," announced our guide. "The representatives haven't come yet," someone observed dryly. "No, not yet," allowed the guide, "not yet."

We then drove to the Ming tombs. They were fine, but the surroundings were spectacular. You could see for miles in every direction. What a development site: The Ming Tombs Estates--a golf course here, a shopping center there....

From there we went to the Great Wall, the archaic alter ego of the tunnels. (Item: The Great Wall is the only man-made object on earth visible from the moon.) It was mind-boggling but slightly anticlimactic. The soft-drink stands below detract somewhat from its mystique. Nevertheless, the Wall itself is probably one of the richest repositories of graffiti in the world--most of it, for some reason, in Albanian.

'I was the night before May Day and all through Peking, 4,000,000 were stirring, all doing their thing. China's cities really shimmer on holidays. They're very festive; all the hotels and government buildings are trimmed in white lights, draped with red bunting and hung with bulbous red lanterns lit like incandescent tomatoes. Throngs of people blanket squares and streets. Again, there is the astonishing sense of safety, the absence of tension. The young help the very old and the old help the very young.

While I was exploring the Early Grauman's lobby of the Peking Hotel, a small, trim man followed by six escorts entered briskly and disappeared into a hallway. It was Chou En-lai, 75, who, according to journalists, sleeps from nine in the morning till noon, takes occasional naps and operates at peak energy from midnight to three A.M.

I expected May Day to be a series of thundering squadrons and marching military hordes; instead, I saw gay garlands of flowers everywhere and laughing children dancing hand in hand. Chiang Ching's (Madam Mao's) hard-line ideological influence is evidently waning, while Chou's is becoming more pervasive. The problem is relaxing their rigid political policies without losing their ideological base. Ideology, however, was nowhere to be found this year. May Day was brimming with balloons, music, games and children. It was also brimming with Shirley MacLaine and her women's delegation, who were conducting their own concurrent tour, and Mr. and Mrs. Bill Paley. Bill Paley is the president of CBS. He is not a Marxist-Leninist.

I'm understanding people in the group better now. We're mellowing. Perhaps thawing is a better word. Despite the differences, the hostilities, the conflicts, I'm learning as much from them as I am from the Chinese. Before this trip, the closest I'd come to a Black Muslim was reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Now here was a black woman from Harlem with the habitlike head covering and ankle-length dresses worn by Muslim sisters, raising her two sons named, in Swahili, Warrior and Black God, writing tough, terse poetry, teaching at a prestigious college and succeeding in her struggle to give dignity to her life, her children and her people.

The oppressively officious writer/factory worker sported something not unlike a tablecloth to camouflage her overweight and her Fulbright in literature. She is a women's movement writer who rejects her bourgeois background and acquires proletarian consciousness by working on assembly lines. At first I was put off, but then it all seemed so poignant; the intense, pale-faced girl gently hugging her autoharp and singing We Shall Not Be Moved in flat, persistent tones.

Finding myself humming the Internationale took some getting used to. Singing "Arise, ye prisoners of starvation, Arise, ye wretched of the earth" is tough to get away with when you live with the wretched of Beverly Hills.

We were waiting to board the train to Shanghai when a man from the hotel came running up to the platform with a washcloth someone had left behind. It was always like that--impossible to lose anything anywhere and often difficult to throw something away. Someone kept trying to discard an old pair of socks that followed us for days.

We arrived in Shanghai. The Big Apple. Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, Rita Hayworth, Jimmie Cagney, Ruby Keeler.... It's all there. Or was. Even the train station exudes the cosmopolitan aroma: Mao's quotes on the signs are bilingual now--in Chinese and English: Unite in the Struggle against Imperialism, long live the oppressed peoples of the World.

Our hotel, a British relic, was a wonderfully decadent dinosaur with gilded bats and dragons swooping down from ceilings and cornices like eulogies for colonialist capital. It was refreshing by now to see decadence rear its ugly head, if only in memory. And seeing a Kent wrapper in an ashtray in the lobby was like finding a beer can in the Gobi. We had steak and French fries for dinner.

In the morning: the docks, where the dockworkers grin and applaud us. Many of them are women, sweet, soft-spoken and often very beautiful. An old dock-worker explains what life was like before Liberation; all the unloading was done by hand, there were few jobs, no money, men starved and sometimes died from sickness and overwork. As we left, I heard a leering noise, a macho mating call, totally out of context in China. It was from some greaseball on a ship from Ceylon.

That night we went to see China's hit ballet, The Red Detachment of Women. The choreography was uninspired and heavy-handed, or should I say multihanded? I must have seen a million fists raised and clenched in defiance of the ruling classes. All the ballet movements had been "refined" into revolutionary gestures. There are no virtuoso solos, because solos are elitist. Nureyev is not exactly beating down their door. And I would have given a lot to see just one ratty tutu, one rusty tiara--instead of gray bermudas, knee socks and toe shoes. Still, despite the stiltedness and the creatively confining restrictions, there was enormous energy and contagious enthusiasm. The audience, who had seen it many times before, responded as totally and tearfullly as if it were their first ballet.

The show culminates in the death of the hero, a commander in the Red army. Wounded, with his uniform looking as if it had been put through a shredder, he is consumed by flames in a hot finale while his troops stirringly sing the Internationale. It was enough to make Barry Goldwater enlist. Then, in a triumph for women's lib, the command is turned over to the heroine, who clutches this big red flag and, cheeks streaked with tears, sobs, "Red flag, O Red flag, I've found you at last." Hmmm. There's more sex and romance here than meets the eye.

We'd been in China three weeks--two days to go--and I was tired and crabby. We were off to a kindergarten--just what I need, I thought. More kids. Then they all ran out--the most beguiling, breath-taking children, the kind of children that make you ache to have kids. Some sat on our laps while others danced. They made it tough not to cry. They were irresistible. They touched everyone. We had to be pulled away.

We said goodbye to Shanghai at a lavish banquet given for us by the China Travel Service. There was a goose with parsley hanging out of its beak, and much gaiety. We closed with For He's a Jolly Good Comrade. The next morning, we flew from Shanghai to Canton. It was May ninth. This was significant because it was my birthday. I felt much older.

May tenth--I'm very sad to have to say goodbye to our three main guides. They are really terribly special and I've come to care for them a lot. I feel like a morose camper leaving my counselors at the end of the summer. We deluge them with presents for their children. Everyone has bought them something and everyone is crying. Lin, glazed and engulfed in gifts, gasps between sobs, "You know, Chinese people are supposed to be very reserved." We hug her and she tries to regain her composure and shakes hands goodbye. We slide away on the train to the tune of The East Is Red on the loud-speakers.

I'm looking forward to getting back "home." As exhilarated, impressed and deeply moved as I've been in China, I don't want to live there. While my mind has been boggled and my circuits overloaded, my senses have scurvy. They're starving.

We pulled into Hong Kong. You could tell the border by the bottle caps, the beer cans, the gum wrappers, the brusque-ness of the immigration officials, the lateness and loudness of the trains and the indifference of the people. Suddenly, I was being shoved again, clutching my cameras for dear life. How soon we forget. Home, sweet home.

I checked into the Peninsula Hotel. How I had dreamed of that moment! The marble bathrooms, the wall-to-wall, the room service, the TV console ... it all fell flat. The Chinese "room boy"--who was 60 if he was a day--came to cater to my needs, and I wanted to cater to his. "Listen," I felt like saying, "there's this place across the border--you should see it." But I thought better of it, and the next day flew home--first-class, of course; the flesh is weak. And so I find myself tiptoeing back down the yellow-brick capitalist road--humming the Internationale.