China in Ten Words

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Even the most productive rice fields at the time could produce only about one and a half tons per acre, but under the slogan “The more boldly a man dares, the more richly his land bears” districts all over the country claimed that per-acre production had topped five tons. Within a few months grain depots everywhere were empty. Famine ruthlessly enveloped China. Because regions had falsely reported the size of their harvests, the state’s grain procurement was vastly greater than actual output. Local officials had inflated their production figures to impress their superiors, and now it was the peasants who paid the price, for their grain ration, seed grain, and feed grain were all requisitioned by the state.

If you’re going to bamboozle at all, then clearly the bigger the better. As we Chinese say, you don’t have to pay tax on bullshit. That being so, why not bullshit to the max? “The more boldly a man dares, the more richly his land bears”—that famous Great Leap Forward mantra—turns out to be an apt description of bamboozlement’s essential nature. Its logic is confirmed by another Chinese homily: “The timid die of hunger, the bold of overeating.”

A few years ago a Western reporter asked me why I abandoned the profitable world of dentistry for a writer’s paltry income. What he didn’t realize is that China at the time had just started to initiate reforms, and it was still the era of socialist egalitarianism—everyone eating from the same big pot. All employees in cities and town got paid exactly the same, no matter what kind of work they were engaged in. I was a pauper as a dentist, too.

Fortunately my grandfather had been a slacker with no ambitions to improve himself; all he know how to do was party and play around, and so every year he would sell off a piece of land here and there to pay for his extravagant lifestyle. By 1949 this wastrel had managed neatly to burn his way through the whole estate, and in so doing he sold off his landlord status. If he had held on to his land, he could hardly have avoided being shot when the country was liberated. So my father reaped the fruits of the family shame, dodging the nasty stigma of being a “landlord’s brat.”

In a typical case, back in 2007, a family of five was unable to reach agreement with the local authorities on compensation for the loss of their house and found themselves forcibly evicted. One night as they were sleeping, a gang of men in hard hats threw ladders up against the outside wall, smashed the windows with hammers and clubs, and jumped inside. The family woke to find themselves surrounded by dozens of intruders. Before they were fully aware of what was happening, they were dragged from their beds like criminals and rushed downstairs without being allowed to dress or collect any personal effects; any resistance was met with a punch in the jaw. They were shoved in a van and taken off to an empty house. There they sat, huddled in their bedcovers, on a cold concrete floor, guarded by a couple of dozen policemen, until noon that day, when an official came in and informed them that their house had been razed and their property inventoried and moved to a new address.