But this vandalism of China's recent past did not extend to Gulangyu except in the form of big-character graffiti (Long Live the Thoughts of Mao Zedong! was still legible in two-foot characters on the walls of a villa) and in selective desecration. The Catholic church was turned into a factory, hate meetings were held in the Protestant ("Three-in-One") church, and the Buddha statues were smashed in the temples — a quarter of Xiamen is Buddhist.
I asked Mr. Wei the reason for the meticulous restoration of Gulangyu.
"Because the government wants to turn this into a tourist island," he said. He also said that he was relieved that the government had not decided to tear the place down, as they had so much else.
We were walking towards Sunlight Rock and ran into a junkman on a back street. He was a fat boy with a pole across his shoulders, carrying loads of wastepaper. I stopped him, and because his dialect was incomprehensible to me, Mr. Wei helped me quiz him.
The boy said that if the wastepaper was good quality, like old, neatly stacked newspapers, he would pay 50 fen for one kilo — about 6 cents a pound. That seemed to me pretty fair. But for other paper he paid less than a penny a pound.
How was business?
"No good," he said. "This is hard work for very little money."
Off he went, his pole bouncing from the weight of the wastepaper bundles.
"Why are you so interested in the Cultural Revolution?" Mr. Wei asked me.
"Because it influenced me at the time — twenty years ago when I was in Africa," I said. "I thought of myself as a revolutionary."
Mr. Wei smiled. He was twenty-one. His father was my age.
I said, "What did your father do during the Cultural Revolution?"
"He just stayed in the house."
"For how long?"
"Six or seven years."
We climbed to the top of Sunlight Rock. In 1982, at the age of seventy-eight, the chain-smoking Mr. Deng Xiaoping climbed to this summit. He was followed by a flunky with an oxygen bottle, but he didn't need it.
Looking across the harbor to Xiamen city I could see how the areas of light industry and banking had expanded westward. This was said to be one of the busiest boomtowns in China. Once upon a time they made paper umbrellas and firecrackers and chopsticks for export. These days they manufactured bicycles, toys, Camel cigarettes, and microchips. And the Kodak Company was installing a filmmaking plant at great expense.
The harbor was full of freighters and fishing boats. Beyond it, in the lanes and streets, there were stalls — people selling fried noodles, fruit, sweets, vegetables, fish soup. One of the happiest pastimes of people in south China is eating out — at greasy little restaurants or at stalls — by lantern light. I could not forgive them for stuffing rare birds into their mouths, but very few had the money for such delicacies. They were great noodle eaters, and because of the pleasant climate, they liked milling around the town and eating when the mood took them, a habit they had exported to Malaysia and Singapore and Indonesia.
Xiamen was the only place in China were I was repeatedly accosted by pretty girls. They sneaked up behind me and snatched my arm. "Shansh marnie?" they said, and pinched me delightfully and held on. Was that all they wanted?
They were good-tempered people, but always in a flap. Inevitably there are squabbles among the Chinese, who live on top of each other. It is surprising that fighting is not more frequent. Fistfights are rare. Often children are beaten, and hit very hard. But the most common mode of conflict is the screaming out-of-hand row — two people screeching at each other, face to face. They are long and loud, and they attract large crowds of spectators. For face-saving reasons such disputes can only be resolved by a third party, and until that person enters the fray, the two squabblers go on shrieking.
I witnessed a barracking like this in Xiamen one day. All tourist sites have so-called Viewing Places, where the Chinese visitor is obliged to go — otherwise the trip is futile. The ritual element in tourism is carefully observed. In Xiamen there were the Eight Major Views, the Eight Minor Views and the Views Outside Views. It is customary to have your picture taken on the spot, and since few Chinese can afford to buy cameras, professional photographers stand around these Viewing Places and offer their services for one yuan a shot. The shouting match I saw was between one of these photographers and his dissatisfied customers.
Mr. Wei translated the screams. At first they were all about money — a man and wife claiming that the photographer had put the price up after they had agreed on a lower one. But for face-saving reasons, the screaming became more general and hysterical. It wasn't an argument. It was a random howling — everyone at once, the couple, the photographer and then the onlookers joined in. It started at the Viewing Place, moved down the path, flowed behind a rock and then continued in a shed. It was extremely loud and went on without a break, a remarkable torrent of abuse and exclamation.
"First we're told it's one kuai, and then the thief changes it to two!"
"I'm not speaking to anyone until the unit leader comes. But I've never been so insulted—"
"Someone get the unit leader!"
"This is ridiculous! All these people are liars!"
"We're being cheated!"
"Thieves—!"
They were almost certainly tourists, Mr. Wei said. He could tell from their northern accent. Shanxi, he thought. He was whispering, "The woman says that they are thieves. The man is saying liars. There is a child in the shed. The photographer is banging the table with his fist—"
Then there was a greater commotion and the child began to scream. Someone was howling at the child. Then everyone was howling at once.
"What happened, Mr. Wei?"
"The child cursed the worker."
"What did he say?"
"He called him a wang ba—a tortoise," Mr. Wei said, with some reluctance.
"Is that bad?"
"Yes. Very. If a wife sleeps with other men her husband is called a tortoise."
"Is that expression used all over China?"
"No. Mainly in the north. Northerners are very tough. North of the Chang Jiang they are loud and muscular. They use violent language. That's why the demonstrations in the north were large and noisy. But we are thin and small and very gentle. We don't use such language, calling someone a 'tortoise' because he overcharges you."
The screaming match was still in full cry fifteen minutes after it had started. I got bored and went away. Mr. Wei said he found it distasteful having to translate this abuse for me, but I told him I had to know these things in order to understand China. And I explained that our version of a tortoise is a cuckold, which (coming from cuckoo) is a more logical word. Female tortoises, I told him, are not great copulators. They only need one screw and they are able to lay fertile eggs for years!
"You are interested in arguments and also interested in biology."
"I'm interested in everything, Mr. Wei."
"In China we specialize in knowledge. One person studies agriculture, and another does engineering."