The Peking Season

I have been leafing through the Peking Review, a jazzy little weekly put out in Communist China and sold two weeks later--after what must be a devious job of importing--in this country. The Review's descriptions of life and letters in the People's Republic have my culture-hungry soul painting.

For example, one of the hits of the opera season this summer was "Blood and Tears of Hatred." In it, according to the Peking Review, "a poor peasant family, suffering from natural calamities and the tyranny of the Kuomintang regime, is on the verge of starvation. Its members flee to the Northern Shensi Border Region where they are rescued by the Communist Party and find a way out of their bitter plight." The opera is produced by the Modern Opera Group of the China Railway Workers' Cultural Troupe.

Nearby, the People's Liberation Army's Comrades-in-Arms Cultural Troupe was performing "Steeled in Battles." This three-act play tells "how three generations of a poor peasant family oppose landlord oppression. Finally, led by the Communist Party, they find their road to liberation."

The cultural troupe of the People's Navy offered a historical drama, "Naval Battle of 1894 Sino-Japanese War." Peking Review describes it in one convoluted sentence: "Despite the bravery of its men, the Peiyang Squadron of the Chinese Navy is defeated by the Japanese fleet as a result of the betrayal of the capitulationist clique of the Ching court working in collusion with foreign imperialists."

On the screen, Peking audiences were watching "A Girl Cloud Watcher," in which, "after a short period of training in meterology, a peasant girl is appointed weatherman of her commune. The film tells of her battle against conservative ideas and the success of her work in the end."

In case anyone wished to see a foreign film there were four of them in town, including one British import, "Red Shoes." Peking Review describes this beautiful film as the "tragic story of a talented ballerina caught in the toils of the bourgeois commercial theater."

The top Chinese best-seller this summer, with more than a million sales, was "Red Crag," by Lo Kuang-pin and Yang Yi-yen. This 420,000-word blockbuster, set in Chungking in 1949, "describes the bitter struggle between the people and the U.S.-Chiang reactionaries." Its critical scenes occur "behind the bars of the so-called Sino-American Co-operation Organization (SACO), a big concentration camp jointly operated by the U.S. imperialists' secret service and its lackeys, the Chiang gang. They use all the most diabolical means of torture to crush the will of the captured Communists."

But "iron shackles; dark, damp cells; rotten rice; and 48 kinds of U.S.-designed torture fail to away the prisoners." The imperialists whip one Communist stalwart into unconsciousness. When he revives, he tells his captors: "Beat and torture me as you like! These are our Party secrets. You will never get anything from me." Presently, after many such thrilling incidents, our Communists escape.

But evidently there is no escaping American bureaucratese. The Peking Review's advertisements for Flyin-Pigeon bicycles and Ostrich brand ink both speak of "finalizing" orders.