Beijing Bittersweet Epub Edition: Foreign Exchange Student in Wushu at the Beijing Physical Culture Institute during the 1980s

By Andrea Falk

Beijing Bittersweet is a memoir of the 1980s at the Beijing Physical Culture Institute. The author, Andrea Falk, was a government sponsored student in wushu from 1980 to 1983, graduating as the first foreign student in the wushu department. The book includes enough history to place the author in her time and place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: tgl books
• Release date: Mar 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781989468111

Book preview

Endnotes to Chapter One: Foreign Exchange Student

Endnote 1: From John Keats, On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer. It was natural for me to think in poetry. My mother and I made a game of completing poetry quotes. One of our shorthand phrases for indicating wonder or astonishment was to ‘look in wild surmise.’

Endnote 2: After those farm visits around Vancouver with the Chinese revolutionary opera troupe, I have never been able to eat veal. I was vegetarian for quite a while before going to China, and it may have stemmed from then. Once in China, though, you eat what you are given.

CHINA IN 1980

When I arrived in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1980, it was a socialist country in the midst of change. People still dressed in blue Mao suits and rode big black bicycles, but they were recovering from the Cultural Revolution with a rush of optimism and bursts of colour. There were still obligatory meetings where someone would drone on about the latest government directive, but people chatted and knitted during them. Old women with tiny bound feet could still be seen, reminders of the old China. The Cultural Revolution had officially ended in 1976, and China was gradually relaxing. Bracketed by two events in Tiananmen Square – the Festival of Tending Graves protest in 1976 and the student sit-in in 1989 – the 1980s was a decade of relative freedom and hope, a bubble of optimism.

While I was studying Chinese language in Vancouver during the 1970s, all that China showed to the world were pictures of happy communes and bountiful harvests. Our Modern Chinese Readers, written in China during the late Cultural Revolution, consisted of folk tales, Mao’s three famous speeches: In Memory of Norman Bethune (1939), Serve the People (1944), and The Foolish Old Man Who Removed The Mountains (1945), and gems such as the lesson ‘Building The Bridge Over The Yangzi River At Nanjing’. (Footnote The vocabulary to chat about a double decker bridge with railway tracks below and a road surface above, strong enough to take eighteen wheeler trucks, was deemed more important than food, banking, shopping… . ) We knew little of what was really going on in China and only years later would I gradually learn about the millions of people that had suffered and died pointlessly since liberation in 1949. Although this book is about wushu and college during the 1980s, what happened in China prior to this time shaped the stories, and I needed to catch up especially on the Hundred Flowers Campaign, the Great Leap Forward, and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution if I were to understand my new friends.

As a foreigner in China, Chinese friends confided in me because they knew I would never report on them. The culture of reporting on each other was still part of life, though families were gradually reuniting. Friends often told me what they had done during the Cultural Revolution, and what their thoughts were. Whether they had beaten people as Red Guards, had suffered as a Black family, had been accused and struggled against personally, had buried old or valuable things to save them from destruction, had taken advantage of the Great Contact (free student travel) to see the country, had played endless games of cards at their factories, had been sent down to the countryside, or had trained martial arts in secret. In short, there were more than two sides to the Red and Black coin. No one talked about it much, they referred to it in allusions and passing comments, self-censorship was automatic. There was also a general consensus of ‘less said, quicker mended.’

During the Hundred Flowers Campaign of 1956-57, intellectuals were encouraged to give suggestions to the Party for improvement. This campaign segued into the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957-59, in which intellectuals were punished for giving suggestions to the Party for improvement. The ‘five percent quota’ meant that each work unit had to brand five percent of its people Rightist, or else be seen as going against the campaign. (Endnote 3) This stretched the definition of Rightist pretty thin. Once branded a Rightist, you and your family were established as ‘Black’ for any later movement. Worker, peasant, and soldier families were ‘Red’ unless something untoward happened that changed their status.

The Great Leap Forward of 1957-60 transformed the countryside from family based farms to communes, splitting up families into dormitories and melting down all personal metal items in backyard furnaces to make metal of such low quality as to be useless even to make the cooking implements and tools from which they came. Agrarian policies based on wild theories and production quotas rather than agricultural realities brought on the Three Year Famine of 1958-61 (at the time, called the Three Years of Natural Disasters). The Great Leap affected peasant families, but the resultant famine affected everyone. Chairman Mao then gave power to Liu Shaoqi, who sorted out that mess and allowed the peasants to do what they did best – take care of crops and livestock on their own.

But Mao became impatient with this ‘revisionism,’ and started The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Lasting in total ten years (1966-76) it was at root a power struggle between radicals and moderates at the highest level of the Party. In early 1966, Mao encouraged Red (revolutionary cadre and army) family high school and university students to struggle against those in power. This at first meant writing big character posters (handwritten posters with characters big enough to be seen when posted on a wall) and holding meetings to criticize teachers, activities that were done mostly on school grounds. After Mao met with a million Red Guards, the cream of the Red families, in Tiananmen Square in August they were encouraged to escalate their activities. (Endnote 4)

During the Red Terror of the fall of 1966, the Red Guards raided houses seeking out anything that looked to be against the revolution or to be one of the ‘four olds:’ old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits. They confiscated valuables, burned books and art, destroyed ceramics and sculptures, demolished temples, and humiliated and beat intellectuals and ‘black elements’ in public denunciations.

These extremes were hidden from us in the West, and to us students, China seemed to be in the midst of an exciting social experiment with its youth at the forefront. Although we knew little about the Red Guards, we thought that they had power, and kind of envied it. (Endnote 5) But mostly, they were just frustrated children trying to be Red, revolutionary, and do what Chairman Mao asked. By late 1966 the Red Guards were encouraged to go on The Great Contact. Free train tickets and billets were given to students, especially Red students, which kept them travelling around the country and out of the way. The ‘unfettered period’ continued through 1967 for school-aged children – an almost two-year period of no school and little revolutionary activity.

In 1968, it was the Red students’ turn to have the Party backlash applied to them. In the summer of 1968 students started being sent to the countryside to learn from the peasants. There they lived and toiled, supposedly cared for by the peasants, but more often treated as unwanted burdens. The workers took over the Cultural Revolution, with armed skirmishes throughout the country between factions from 1967-1970. Explaining how a couple of months of Red Terror in 1966 Beijing turned into ten years of violence and rampage throughout the country is certainly not within the range of this book.

By 1970, the Cultural Revolution was losing steam, but not officially ended, and the radical leaders, the Gang of Four and their cohorts, were still in power. Millions of people had died, or were in prison or labour camps. (Endnote 6) As things settled down, many students (who hadn’t been in school since 1966) were sent from the countryside to factories or the re-opened universities. Universities took students voted in by their work units – there were no entrance exams. Applicants had to be politically sound, have graduated junior middle school (instead of the usual senior middle school prerequisite, which had been lost to many), and have worked for three years among the workers, peasants, or soldiers. There was no choice in major or in assigned work after graduation, but it was infinitely better than spending the rest of your life in the countryside.

When Premier Zhou Enlai, always perceived as a reasonable and honourable leader, and one of the few that tried to help the people, died in January 1976, the citizens of Beijing placed thousands of white paper flowers and poems in Tiananmen Square to mourn his death. (Endnote 7) They took the opportunity in their poems and posters also to oppose the Gang of Four. Thousands of flowers, wreaths, poems, and posters appeared, and hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Tiananmen Square for the Festival for Tending Graves on April 4th.

It probably would have ended there, but the government (still controlled by the Gang of Four) called the movement counter-revolutionary and cleared the square of all the flowers, wreaths, and posters during the night. In response, on April 5th Beijing citizens flocked to Tiananmen Square. Although the spontaneous demonstration was not anti-Party, the people were asking the Party to improve, and the militia were sent in to clear them out with clubs. We Western university students knew something of the gatherings, and were impressed with their poetic and peaceful nature. Few people knew what was really going on, and certainly not to the full extent. The government’s suppression, reprisals, and imprisonments were well hidden from those abroad.

People copied the poems and hid their notebooks, so some of the poems were saved. They were brave and outspoken, such as the one below:

"In my dreams I hear demons shriek; I weep while wolves and jackals laugh.

Though tears I shed to mourn a hero, With head raised high, I draw my sword." (Endnote 8)

When Chairman Mao Zedong died on September 7th, 1976, the new chairman, Hua Guofeng, was able to move against Jiang Qing and the rest of the Gang of Four – Wang Hongwen, Yao Wenyuan, and Zhang Chunqiao. Ten of the leaders who were responsible for much of the excesses were arrested and imprisoned to await trial. With these arrests, it seemed like the people had won.

Things were changing. By 1978, many innocent people had been let out of prisons and labour camps and many had returned from where they had been sent to the countryside. The Democracy Wall movement of the people in 1979 indicated a new confidence. Posters of essays and poetry asking for more political and intellectual freedom and human rights were posted on the walls of Zhongnanhai, the high-cadre housing compound beside the Forbidden City. But again, there was a crackdown, with many writers and journal editors imprisoned. The West was more aware of this movement, and again impressed by the peaceful and poetic nature of the people, and again, the reprisals were well hidden.

When I got there in late August 1980, this was all in the past. The motto was xiang qian kan [look forward]. Universities were open. Everyone just wanted to get on with their lives. The feeling was one of naïve hope that from now on, all would go well. The same sort of hope that drives people to row their rented boats towards the narrow channel between the downtown Shishahai and Houhai lakes, no matter how many are already jammed there. But that is another story.

In the early 1980s, the ‘Emulate Comrade Lei Feng’ movement was brought back by the Party, to ensure the people’s mood did not stray towards individualism or ingratitude to the Party. Lei Feng (1940-1962), our model to emulate, was a soldier who had gotten himself killed by misdirecting a truck into a telephone pole, which then fell on him. (In his defense, in Mandarin, the word for ‘back up’ and ‘arrived’ are pronounced exactly the same – dao with a falling tone.) His ‘diary’ was ‘found,’ and apparently, he spent all his time helping people without revealing it. Improbably, photos of him doing his good deeds were also found. So that is what we were supposed to do – be polite and helpful, much like a boy scout. A boy scout absolutely loyal to the Party, of course. As he said, repeatedly, a screw in the machine to be used as the Party saw fit.

The ‘Emulate Comrade Lei Feng’ movement came originally from 1963, when perhaps people didn’t notice the kinks in the story. Indeed, one soon-to-be Red Guard remembered the movement when it started, when she was in grade five. She believed in it wholeheartedly and tried to be as selfless as Lei Feng. With a child’s understanding, this involved loving Chairman Mao and studying his writings, obeying orders, working hard, and doing good deeds. (Endnote 9)

Not everyone was that gullible, and the dividing line may be between the Red families trying to be progressive and those already labeled as somehow lacking. As Tung Chi-Ping recounted in his memoir of the 1960s;

"Lei Feng was unbelievably generous. He was constantly taking the shirt off his back to wrap up a shivering child or to tear into bandages for an injured fellow worker. He invariably gave up his vacations to some deserving comrade. He frequently washed and mended the underwear and socks of his companions. And Lei Feng was honest to a fault. We had the feeling that every pay day he was inadvertently overpaid, a mistake that he would discover only when he was miles away through the worst possible weather; nevertheless he invariably made his way back to return the few cents that belonged ‘to the people and not to him.’

And finally, Lei Feng was always helpful. During a bus ride, for example, he would begin by scrubbing the floor of the bus and cleaning it up generally. Next, he would read the newspapers aloud to his fellow passengers. Thereafter he would lead a lively ideological discussion to raise the political level of the passengers. He would end with stories concerning the glorious leadership of Chairman Mao. For the rest of the trip he would tend babies or nurse the sick and aged….

No one, not even the most backward youngster, believed in Lei Feng. He became the butt of innumerable jokes. Invariably the idea of these jokes was to exhort someone else to emulate Lei Feng by doing something for one’s selfish benefit." (Endnote 10)

In the 1980s, we loved Lei Feng, but not in the way the Party intended. A good deed jokingly made you a huoleifeng [a living Lei Feng]. A selfish deed brought out xuexi Lei Feng haobangyang [emulate the good example of Lei Feng]. The ‘comrade’ of the original motto of ‘Emulate Comrade Lei Feng’ had been dropped, and the cooler term haobangyang added. Even the Party knew that ‘comrade’ was starting to be used ironically.

Lei Feng is still brought out from time to time to encourage selfless and loyal acts. The Party seems to think that if it treats people like not-very-bright children, they will see it as their parent.

Endnotes to Chapter Two: China in 1980

Endnote 3: In socialist China, a work unit was not just where you worked. Most work units, such as factories, schools, stores, publishers, restaurants, universities, etc. were government controlled. Your housing, ration coupons, children’s education, etc. were supplied by the workplace, and your residency permit was attached to it. In this way, your entire life was controlled by your work unit.

When students were sent off to the countryside, a huge difference between university students and high school students was that the university students maintained their universities as work units, while the high school students lost their hometown residency permits. In this way, a Beida student would return to Beijing after working in the countryside, but a student from the high school attached to Beida would have to apply to local cadres in the countryside for permission to go home.

Endnote 4: The mass Red Guard event in Tiananmen Square was called the 8/18 Reception. After the 8/18 Reception, the Public Security Minister, Xie Fuzhi, said that the existing laws of the People’s Republic should not be applied to Red Guard activities. He suggested that the police not use force to stop revolutionaries from beating people, but instead actually help them by giving them information about how to find known members of the five categories. The five categories were: landlord, upper-class peasant, counter-revolutionary, bad element, and Rightist.

The Red Guards understood that the ‘five categories’ were the embodiment of the ‘old four,’ and that it was alright to use whatever force they saw fit to destroy the old four. Zhai Zhenhua, a young Red Guard, recounted her activities following this announcement in Red Flower of China: a memoir, Lester Publishing Limited, Toronto, 1992.

Endnote 5: It is not that we were not politically aware in the West. In the 1960s, even young students in the West were active. My first political memory was the assassination of president John F. Kennedy in 1963, when I was nine. The 1968’s assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the 1970’s killing of four unarmed protesting students by the Ohio State Guard at Kent State University, meant by the time I was sixteen I knew that violence and politics went together, and that something was wrong with the Western system. Two years of Russian studies in the early 1970s at UVic, though, taught me that the Soviet way was also fatally flawed. Could China get it right?

Endnote 6: Zhai Zhenhua found in her research that during just one month of Red Terror in 1966, in Beijing alone, more than 1,700 people were killed, 33,600 homes were raided, and 84,000 people from the five categories were expelled from Beijing. Zhai Zhenhua, Red Flower of China: a memoir, page 100.

Endnote 7: Premier Zhou Enlai, one of the old guard, was always popular in China and the West as a reasonable and fair man. He had been a student leader of the May 4th movement of 1919, and had studied in France. People in the West knew him because he had been the foreign minister as well as the premier, and was urbane, comfortable with Westerners. In China, Chairman Mao was worshipped, but Zhou Enlai was loved. The people were genuinely saddened by Zhou’s death, and did the required rituals for Mao’s death.

Endnote 8: The Tiananmen Poems, Xiao Lan (editor), 1979, page 24. This may harken back to Song dynasty poet Su Dongpu (1037 to 1101), who wrote, Although just peasants, when they raise their swords, none under heaven can contend against them. This kind of erudite reference wouldn’t surprise me.

Endnote 9: Zhai Zhenhua, Red Flower of China: a memoir, page 41.

Endnote 10: Tung Chi-Ping and Humphrey Evans, The Thought Revolution, Leslie Frewin, London, 1967, page 161-162. I searched extensively to ask for permission to quote the book directly, but was unable to track down the current publisher. This quote was too brilliant to paraphrase or leave out. Instead, I will highly recommend that you buy the book.

LIVING IN BEIJING

The Beijing to which I arrived in 1980 was a city of grey walls, brown dirt, slime-green canals, and black coal grit. It was also a city of tree lined avenues, wide bike lanes, and blue skies. There was no grass because it had all been pulled up in a typically badly-thought-through drive to prevent mosquitos, which had flourished after the equally badly-thought-through drive to kill all the birds. The fetid canals were for some reason not seen as the breeding grounds.

Beijing formed most of my 1980-83 ‘China Experience’ – its geography, climate, architecture, ambiance, people, and local language. I never thought of going to a museum or art gallery, but roamed the streets and parks alone and with Chinese and foreign friends. In that, I fitted in with Beijingers, who are among the most park-savvy people in the world. (Endnote 11)

Most of these street photos were taken during 1980-81. By 1982, I saved the expense of film and developing for travel photos. Beijing was no longer ‘travel,’ it was ‘home.’

In late August 1980, our group of seven exchange students was flown from Vancouver to Hong Kong, where we picked up our steamer trunks that had been sent ahead by cargo, bought dictionaries galore, (Footnote: I had never had a Chinese dictionary before. We shared the dictionaries in the Asian Studies reading room. Our main source for classical Chinese, Mathews’ Chinese English Dictionary, was xeroxed. The excitement of having my own copy is indescribable. When I published Falk’s Dictionary of Chinese Martial Arts, the plain dark blue cover with stripes on the spine was a homage to Mathews’ hardback book that is still on my shelf.) were given a briefing at the Canadian embassy, escorted into China, and put on the train for the thirty-six hour trip from Guangzhou to Beijing. All we saw of Guangzhou were swarms of bicycles, each rider chiming away at their bell, an otherworldly sound in the dark streets. Of the seven of us, one became a lifelong friend, which is pretty good odds.

(Footnote: Bing, from Edmonton, was the first foreign student accepted to the law department at Beijing University. I was jealous that he was able to move to Beida immediately, but when I got into Beiti the food at my dining hall turned the tables. We visited back and forth regularly, and I coached his running and rode my bike beside him on long country runs. He received extra food coupons by being a member of the Beida track and field team, and he ran in many long distance races, including the first Beijing marathon (September 27th, 1981). The food at Beida was horrendous, so getting more of it didn’t really help. Bing always made a face as if he were going to die when he ran, but once he almost did. Racing a 10k in over 30 degree heat, without enough to drink, in the last hundred metres he was actually running backwards in a tremendous effort to get to the line. His coach was encouraging him to finish, while I was trying to get down to the track to make him stop. Finally they took him off and packed his entire body in popsicles. I’m not sure he ever realized how close it had been.)

I immediately applied to Beiti on arrival in Beijing on September 1st. I couldn’t apply to my chosen university until I actually arrived in China. My years of preparation were now in other people’s hands.

All foreign exchange students were dumped into the Language Institute, which served as a holding pen. (Endnote 12) The ones that I really felt for were those from African and Middle Eastern countries. They had to do two years of Chinese language studies before they could go on to university to study for their degrees. Often this had not been made clear before they left home. Told that they would be studying in English, then loaded with an additional two years of language study, and a full degree done in a difficult language, they were understandably not happy. The North Koreans gave great entertainment value, though we could not talk to them. They did not mix with anyone, always wore the same blue trousers and sparkling white shirts, and travelled as a group. The men took their basins outside to wash in cold water every morning, to show off how much tougher they were than everyone else.

One of my few exploits that autumn was to obtain the necessary cotton coupons and to speak enough Chinese at the state department store in Wudaokou [Five Roads Corner] to buy my cotton padded coat. This really was an exploit, not just a shopping trip – I had not learned the word for cotton padded coat, nor had I been trained to understand the breakneck speed of real speech. Also, students from most countries were issued coupons and funds to get winter clothing. But I was from Canada, so it was assumed that I would have appropriate clothes. Victoria, British Columbia, is not exactly typical Canada. It has a Mediterranean climate (Garry Oak meadows that start flowering in February, plum trees that blossom in March). My coat was, and still is, absolutely huge because the sales clerk insisted that it be large enough to put on over a couple of layers of winter woolens. All products in stores were carefully hidden behind the counter, so you had to ask the sales clerk for what you wanted – you couldn’t just buy something without talking. Generally, they were tetchy and had something better to do than help you. This one, though, was quite patient, and of course she was right, and I learned to just give in to the opinions of Chinese shopkeepers.

I was lucky that the administration at Beiti were open to the idea of a first Western foreign exchange student. They accepted me to attend classes right away, though not yet to live there. I was allowed to spend Thursdays and Saturdays at Beiti taking wushu and anatomy lessons, to fit into the start of term. Meanwhile, they took meetings about me – it was a big step to allow a Westerner to come as a full-time student, and to bring the first woman to live in the foreign students’ building.

The two days a week spent at Beiti just drove home how awful the Language Institute was – bad food, intermittent hot water and electricity, filthy washrooms, atmosphere of futility, and lack of language practice.

Diary entry, November 12th [1980, Language Institute]. Felt so good I ate on the Chinese side for the first time in a week and a half. Had ‘lovely’ meal of rice, steamed bun, fat, potatoes and disgusting sausage bits. At least it was cheap.

Compare this to an entry after a day in Beiti: Diary entry, November 27th [1980]. Another great day at Beiti. Hot shower after class, curried meatballs with non-greasy steamed buns, a relaxing sit