Two Innocents in Red China. Pierre Elliot Trudeau
and censorship have been pillars of the party ever since it took power in 1949. The party wants much of Chinese reality to remain opaque to the outsider.
From arrival to departure, visitors are treated to a controlled view of China. Just as the Two Innocents were allowed to see a very limited and specific portion of Red China—all that was most exemplary—modern-day visitors are also only shown a partial picture. For the most part, they are left to their own devices. But one way or another, all freedom—freedom of information, freedom of movement, freedom of exchange—is subtly limited.
Your average visitor may not notice these limits so long as he or she sticks to well-charted points of interest, but as soon as that visitor strays off the path he or she will be politely urged back onto it. This happens in an official way: at every place frequented by foreigners, there is always some guard or attendant to make sure that no one goes where they are forbidden to go, to politely but firmly tell a straying foreigner to return to the designated areas. But these barriers arise informally as well. Common citizens are mindful of foreigners who behave in too independent a way. They can be held responsible for the inappropriate behaviour of outsiders and are quick to “help” foreigners return to the fold.
At a deeper level, several generations of totalitarian rule in which ever-changing “universal truths” have been barked at them from above have trained most Chinese to keep their heads down, to be careful not to stand out from the pack. Being exceptional is to invite trouble. And any kind of meaningful or open exchange with a foreigner is by definition exceptional.
Things have been slowly and superficially changing, especially in the cities. Youth are behaving and dressing in more original ways these days. They are fully aware, however, that while it may be okay to dye your hair or get your navel pierced, openly discussing society or politics with strangers is still risky.
Censorship isn’t merely imposed by the government. Neighbours censor each other. Chinese society is politically organized, right down to the residents of a single floor of an apartment building. The Party is literally everywhere. There is always somebody watching. And if there isn’t, one side of the brain is watching the other.
This opacity can only be lifted with time and real intimacy. No one can censor him- or herself forever. But only a rare few travellers can linger for months or years, long enough to become “old-hands” and lift the veils of self-censorship. The more hasty need rely on various strategies to navigate through the socio-political quicksands of China.
Hébert and Trudeau’s innocence is, among other things, a strategy to encourage frank and meaningful conversation. Pretend to be a bit of a fool. Confine conversation to non-sensitive subjects that are revelatory in the long run. A good example of this is family; if you discuss a person’s family in enough detail, an intricate little picture of society emerges. Another strategy is to make innocent claims that, though benign, are so obviously false and ill-informed that your Chinese interlocutor is forced to correct them. In doing so, much may be revealed.
In a place like China, where one’s title and station are all important, another useful strategy for the traveller is to carefully frame oneself as something rather innocuous: a tourist, for instance. Never a journalist. The label of journalist immediately sets off alarm bells among both Chinese authorities and common citizens. Ideas shared with a journalist suddenly become more consequential, and thus people are less forthcoming. On the other hand, lying is risky; it is best just to choose some remote yet correct interpretation of one’s true identity. In Red China, for instance, Trudeau was declared a famous Canadian economist—probably for the first and last time of his life. As a result he was constantly paired up with “famous” Chinese economists.
Hébert, on the other hand, was accurately labelled a journalist. At the time, there was no question that Hébert the journalist might witness or report something that wasn’t properly prepared and packaged by the Communist Party. These days, the Party cannot possibly control everything a foreigner might see and is thus much more wary of journalists.
The final opacity that stands before the observer of China is by far the most subtle one. It is the assumption by virtually all Chinese that most foreigners won’t understand the truth about Chinese reality if it is presented to them. They believe that the outsider is simply not equipped to understand the whole of Chinese reality. Perhaps they are even right: so much of China happens under the radar, so much communication is indirect and metaphorical, so many truths are highly oblique and contextual. Even the Chinese need a lifetime of exposure and training to master meaning in China. Anyone who doesn’t speak the language, who hasn’t lived through a succession of political periods, who hasn’t faced and assumed the unspoken responsibilities of the son or daughter, of the pupil or citizen, can never grasp the truth of being Chinese. Only the Chinese can truly know the Chinese.
One might argue that this is true of all peoples and all cultures, that outsiders can never really know the truth of another society. But the Chinese honestly believe that their culture is by far the most ancient and sophisticated around, that the Chinese man or woman has absorbed a unique set of values that others will never be able to grasp. Few other cultures or peoples actually dwell on such an assumption to the extent that they completely change the way they communicate. Most cultures simply express themselves and let outsiders figure out what they will. But the Chinese sincerely believe that it would be foolish and inappropriate to even try to explain certain things to foreigners.
In practical terms, this means that on complicated and sensitive issues, the Chinese will rarely share all their thoughts with a foreigner. In many cases, they wouldn’t know how to properly express their innermost feelings and opinions to a foreign outsider. Sometimes they will adopt a different, simplified logic to avoid addressing difficult points.
This final opacity is immensely frustrating for the curious and audacious traveller. Innocence is fine when it is willed but bitter when imposed. How dare they decide how much I can understand about them, the traveller fumes!
Perhaps this is precisely why, from the very start, Hébert and Trudeau declared and embraced their innocence towards China.
HÉBERT AND TRUDEAU entered China through its great capital, Beijing. At the time, it was a great communist metropolis: immense, filled with workers, yet still low-lying, empty and austere. In the intervening years, change has come to Beijing like nowhere else in China. In many parts of the city, the places and people described in Two Innocents have simply been replaced by a completely different reality. But then as now, Beijing is the centre of the Chinese universe. In fact, the capital is arguably more potent and central to the country than ever before. It stews with its own specific flavours and habits, but somewhere in the mix is a little bit of everything you can find elsewhere in China.
In Beijing the Two Innocents visited the People’s Congress. They briefly describe some of the rooms representing the different provinces: “the Szechwan room, with its bamboo marquetries, its exquisite watercolours, and its ancient vases; the Kwantung room, with its teak furniture, its jade statuettes, its porcelain flowers…” Then as now in Beijing, you can visit museums or Party buildings where the various regions and ethnic groups of China are proudly displayed, wearing their traditional outfits, singing their folk songs.
As emblems of the radically diverse ways of life to be found within China’s immense borders, these formulaic displays come off as forced and phony. But they should be understood as celebrations of China’s unity, not its diversity. And is it so surprising that the Communists enthusiastically indulge in such symbolism, given that they alone have achieved a unity that had eluded China since early in the Qing Dynasty, a good three centuries ago?
In ancient times, parading peoples and things from the far reaches of the empire was a display of imperial might. And so it still is. The provinces and people on show in the capital are proof of the central government’s hold on all the regions of China. There is even an element of competition, whereby each group stresses its own crucial importance to the totality of China and Chinese history. Thus all these far-fetched energies and passions descend upon the capital as a radiant symbol of the Chinese people, ancient and united.
These days, the notion of Beijing as the focal point of a vast but deeply united empire is further enhanced by