Gary also had a good head for investment. Enlightened by a hurricane that had blacked out parts of the DC area for two days the summer before, he’d bought some electricity stocks, which had been rising in value ever since. Nellie was impressed that it was so easy for him to make money.
In truth, he took a casual approach to the investment, which eventually didn’t yield much. His mind was preoccupied with other matters. Following the news in his homeland, he came to know that the previous year China had scored a bumper harvest. Then the collectives called “the commune” began to be formed in the countryside. He had misgivings about that, knowing the kolkhozy, the commune system in the Soviet Union, had turned out to be a nightmare. The collectivization in China went to such an extreme that even household kitchens were banned. The country folks began to have meals at communal dining centers, where free food was plentiful enough that everyone could eat their fill. People seemed too optimistic and giddy with fantastic visions, which promised to realize a Communist society soon, a utopian world where everyone would work diligently while taking whatever they needed free of charge. (“You can eat beef stewed with potatoes as much as you want,” according to Khrushchev’s depiction of Communism.) The Chinese government propagated this slogan nationwide: “Surpass the UK in ten years, catch up with the USA in fifteen.”
Gary had been to England and was very impressed by its order, efficiency, and affluence, though it was still recovering from the war. China’s official slogan appeared too simpleminded to him, based on the assumption that the United Kingdom and the United States would stop developing. Worse, the Chinese seemed unaware that the West’s development had relied on the elaborate building of infrastructure and resulted from centuries’ worth of accumulation of wealth and knowledge. Also, of course, from exploiting underdeveloped nations. Bo Yibo, the vice premier in charge of industry, even reported to Chairman Mao that China would surpass England in outputs of electricity and steel in 1959. Mao was so exhilarated that he declared, “We shall definitely get ahead of the Brits in three years, but for now we must keep this secret.” That sounded silly to Gary, because to maintain a bigger household you must pay bigger bills — the same went for countries.
Though beset by uncertainties and doubts, Gary was riveted by the tremendous changes in his homeland — evidently the nascent socialist country was developing at a record pace. Growing up, he had seen how destitute the people were — many county seats would be teeming with beggars in the springtime, and some folks were so desperate that they sold their children and headed south to beg. By any criterion China was poor. More than half the population was illiterate, and everywhere the land was exhausted after sustaining the population for millennia. Granted, the socialist system might have unleashed the potential of the country, but most Chinese seemed unaware how shabby their land was compared to many other nations. At the same time, Gary could sense a kind of desperation in Mao, who’d just spoken about the necessity of reaching economic preeminence in the world, saying, “If you have no rice in your hand, even chickens won’t respond to your call.” The chairman’s analogy, devoid of his habitual pompous rhetoric, seemed to show his knowledge of their country’s plight; on the other hand, it also implied that Mao might aspire to become the leader of the Socialist Bloc, like the late Stalin. The chairman’s ego must be too inflated.
Unlike his American colleagues, who were amused by some Chinese posters designed to promote the Great Leap Forward in developing the country’s economy, Gary felt downhearted about them. He resented David Shuman’s flippant remarks about “the propaganda crap.” The young man, a graduate of the University of Chicago, had joined the translation agency two years before; he was over six feet tall with sloped shoulders and in the habit of carrying to work a red water bottle that resembled a miniature fire extinguisher. He hated Communism with a passion because his paternal grandfather had perished in a Soviet labor camp on Sakhalin Island. David and Gary often argued about the rift between China and the Soviet Union. Most times Gary could get the upper hand, believing that the two countries were not on congenial terms in spite of their apparent friendliness. But nowadays, when they looked at the Chinese propaganda graphics together, he could hardly say anything against David’s gibes and smirks, because the pictures were indeed preposterous, some even farcical. In one, a plump young woman sat atop rice plants to prove that the crops were thick enough to support her weight. Obviously the plants had been put together for the photo shoot. Every province had begun bragging about their increased grain production; some counties even upped the number to twenty or thirty times more than the previous year. (This in turn made the state demand doubled or tripled grain contributions from them, and consequently, more country people starved to death.)
Many of the posters showed wild imaginings: pigs as large as elephants; enormous bundles of rice plants launched into space in the form of satellites; a new breed of corn that grew so gigantic a railroad flatcar could carry only a single ear; the same with wheat, but two ears per flatcar. (The caption claimed: “Shipping Our Harvest to Beijing for Chairman Mao.”) Even the photos of actual things and events were incredible. To promote steel production, smelting furnaces were erected all over the countryside like small granaries constructed of mud, more than thirty thousand of them lighting the skies day and night. Commune members, besides being deprived of their poultry and animals, were ordered to surrender their utensils to the stopgap furnaces — every piece of iron and steel must go. Even metal gates and fences were dismantled and taken away. Their leaders told them, “Whatever we have belongs to the public, even our bones.” In some areas it was a crime to hide any iron tool or vessel—“the same as harboring an enemy soldier in your home,” an editorial claimed. The makeshift smelting furnaces emerged in cities as well, where citizens were also mobilized to join the steel production. One stood in the very compound where Mao resided. With a broad smile the chairman watched his young colleagues pouring out molten steel. Gary couldn’t help asking himself: Can steel be produced that easily? Something must be terribly amiss.
Oddly enough, despite the distance of an ocean and a continent, he now could feel China’s pulse, which beat irregularly, racing feverishly, as though he could at last grasp intimately his vast homeland in its entirety. For his superiors back home he compiled information showing that even the Americans believed China might implode if it continued with all the reckless experiments.
Gary shared his concerns with Bingwen when they met in Hong Kong in late August. His comrade sighed deeply and said, “People seem to have lost their senses. In my hometown everyone enjoyed free meals last fall and began to laze around because they didn’t need to work hard to support themselves and their families anymore. The crops were bountiful but left to rot in the fields. The villagers ate the whole year’s food in just three months, so they had to starve afterward. If the harvest is bad this year, they’ll face a terrible time.”
“How about all the activities promoting steel output?” Gary asked, taking a drag on his Peony cigarette.
“That was a mess too. Most of the makeshift furnaces can produce nothing but low-quality pig iron. So there’s no substantial increase in steel production to speak of.”
“I hope Yufeng and my kids are all right. Can you ask our leaders if I can go back and see them and my parents?”
“Don’t think about it for now. The higher-ups made it clear again that you must stay in America as long as possible. By crossing the border back into China, you’d blow your identity. We cannot afford such a loss. But don’t worry about your family — we take good care of them.”