TECHNICALLY, I can claim that I was there, in China, during the civil war that brought the communists to power. The ship that was carrying me to San Francisco in July, 1947, had called at Shanghai. It was a Shanghai that I would never forget. The captain of our ship had assembled us and told us that Shanghai was a dangerous city, that we should go out in groups, that we should not carry any US dollars.
When we had got out of the docks area, there was the sight of refugee-women, lined three-deep, some with babies in their arms, selling their wares which were on their bodies, importuning, hectoring, begging — “Hey Joe, good time? One dollar (US)!.” The skirts got higher, and the price lower — “Hey Joe, good time? One packet of cigarettes.” Whoever the hell Joe was, he seemed awfully popular.
These women were not prostitutes, they were women reduced to prostitution, the last refuge of war-refugees. The official rate of exchange was 12,000 Chinese dollars for one US dollar. The blackmarket rate was 44,000. By the time we left, it had soared to the moon and the paper was worth more than its currency value. I tried to buy a souvenir and the shop-keeper wanted US dollars or the shirt off my back. Shanghai was dying. It would die and be re-born. I stood on the deck of the ship and watched the bobbling sampans. And I wondered whether I would ever come back to Shanghai.
Nine years later, I was to get my answer. I had returned. And Shanghai had changed. It was still, as ever, a giant of a city. But it was, as if, its soul had been cleansed. Its morals had been toned up. The race course had become a public park, the classy Cathay Hotel, a hostel for foreign visitors such as I was. Shanghai had been called the Paris of the East. Forty cinemas and 97 theatres were what made up the ‘night’ life, and the amusement park had ping pong tables instead of winking women and whispering touts. Shanghai had become a dull city. And, thank God, for that.
MY hosts and I went through the routine of a programme for me and I was given some salient points of the city. It had a population of six million (then). It had been ‘liberated’ in May 1949. It was a city with a revolutionary tradition. The Chinese Communist Party was founded in Shanghai and their first Party Congress had been held there in July 1921, Mao had attended it.
Shanghai had also been the scene of a savage massacre of communists by Chiang Kai-Shek, in collusion with financial interests and secret societies in the pay of the latter, in April 1927.
Tibor Mendes in his book, The Chinese Revolution, describes the massacre: “Public mass-executions continued for several days, after, carried out with deliberate cruelty. Tens of thousands were either killed, disappeared or were herded into prisons. A few prominent Communists managed to escape. Chou en-Lai himself, captured in Shanghai, and ordered to be shot, owed his life to the accident that the man in charge of the execution turned out to be one of his former pupils at the Whampoa Military Academy, and let him escape.”
IHAD hinted that the programmes for me were a bit too heavy and surely there was more to China than revolutionary slogans. So, I was taken to see a football match. A visit to a film studio was also arranged, and I met Han Hsin wne, one of China’s most famous film actresses. We drank tea and smoked cigarettes and talked pleasantly through an interpreter which makes conversation sound like dialogue in a play, the sort of play I used to act in at the Ismail Yusuf College in Jogeshwari, in Bombay. She was the best-dressed woman I would see in China. She wore an immaculate grey woollen suit and was very attractive in a quiet way, easy on the eyes like a pink sunset. She had never heard of Gregory Peck, but she asked me to give her regards to Charlie Chaplin, if I ever met him. Did she know him? She did not, but said that he was a genius.
I asked her about her career and whether, like famous actresses in other parts of the world, she was temperamental and given to tantrums and ever threatened to take an over-dose of sleeping pills, and was she hounded by the media and was she a sex-object. My interpreter had lost me and was probably making up his own questions because there was a good deal of giggling between the two of them.
SHE was presently making a film called Common Undertaking which was the story of a governess in a kindergarten who, at first, regards her work as unimportant and longs to work in heavy industry. As the celluloid rolls on, she is shown the light and she finally realizes how important is the work of a governess in a kindergarten. There’s a happy ending for you. But this is not to belittle Chinese Cinema. On subsequent visits, I saw some excellent films.
There was no ambiguity about capitalism. It was pure evil. What about the capitalist? It was possible to ‘correct’ him. Thus, I was taken to meet a ‘happy’ capitalist whose name was Kwok Lam Shong, once described as the ‘Rockefeller’ of China. He had been an exploiter of the people and had repented. He used to own the famous chain of Wingon Department Stores, which had branches all over China and a few in the United States as well.
Aromantic myth had been built around him. He had once been kidnapped and held for ransom for a million dollars. Kwok spoke English well enough and he was a man of energetic charm. His smile as disarming and infectious and he used his hands, like a potter, as he spoke. From time to time he would let slip a witticism and beam with joyful self-congratulations at his humour.
Capitalism had not been liquidated. It had been allowed to die a natural death. As a private entrepreneur, Kwok told me that he had experienced difficulties after Liberation, and he had in the end entered into an agreement with the government on the basis of a Private-State Joint Enterprise. By this the government takes over a private business and gives compensation to the owner on the basis of a certain fixed interest on his initial investment for ten years. After this period, the ‘private’ part of the enterprise disappears. He seemed to have it rehearsed.
He told me that the system had several advantages. He was getting enough goods and he was able to get loans easily. The morale of his workers was good and he was getting plenty of customers. He admitted that he was not making as much money as he used to, but was compensated by the fact that he enjoyed security. “I have transferred my burden to the State,” he said. And then added, cheerfully: “And nobody kidnaps me anymore.”
“I tell you from the bottom of my heart that I am happier now, happier than I have ever been before,” he said to allay any doubts in my mind. There must have been some show of scepticism on my face. He must have been flexible enough to make the best of the inevitable. That was not only being pragmatic, it was being smart.
I thoroughly enjoyed meeting Kwok. He was urbane and worldly, and I was able to banter with him and we both laughed a good deal. He showed me around his store and pointed out all the items that were now being made in China. “Previously, these used to be imported,” he said. Self-reliance was the anthem, one heard it everywhere, like the music of the Chinese opera that came through the air-waves of the radio, or the more martial The East is Red.
Walking on the embankment, my host pointed to a building, it must have been a club, and said, quite bitterly: “Before Liberation, Chinese and dogs were not allowed there.” I told him that before our own liberation, we too had clubs where Indians were not allowed. “But dogs were. The British had a fondness for animals,” I told him. “We have much in common,” my host responded, and we basked in the warmth of a shared history.
We had dealt with colonialism in different ways. The Chinese had had a civil war (a revolution?) and we had partitioned India. We were also dealing with freedom in different ways. Having both come to a fork, we chose not to travel down the same path, but we would reach our destination. Or would we?
From Shanghai, I returned to Peking and learnt to my dismay, but not my surprise, that Prime Minister Choudhary Mohammad Ali’s visit had been postponed indefinitely. K.M. Kaisar broke the news to me. He was not surprised either, but he was crestfallen all the same. “So much good could have been got out of that visit,” he said. I asked him what would be the reaction of the Chinese government? He said that officially they will say that they are disappointed. “Unofficially?” I asked him. “I would imagine they would not have been surprised,” he replied. “I think they would have been surprised had the visit come off,” he added, and laughed, but the laughter was sardonic.
“How was Shanghai?” he asked me, as if to change the subject. “Fine,” I said. “Shanghai was fine.” I don’t think he was in the mood to listen to my views of Shanghai. He asked me to stay for dinner and, after dinner, he got out his harmonium and his family joined him in a singsong and his dog made an appearance and wagged its tail. “He seems to approve,” I said. “Yes, he is a good critic. He has an ear for music,” Kaisar said cheerfully, now in his natural self.
