by Clive James
In Shanghai, however, one was likely to forget about drinking in favour of eating, because the food was astonishing – compared with Peking, there was a playful savour to its presentation which suggested that we were already getting closer to the West. The same thing was suggested by the attire and general demeanour of the waitresses, who wore skirts instead of trousers and in an alarming number of cases were unmanningly pretty. British scriveners and cameramen fought one another for a smile. If you are the kind of man who falls in love through the eyes, you will fall in love a hundred times a day in China. No wonder that in the Chinese artistic heritage the pictures outweigh the words and even the words are pictures. The whole place soaks the optic nerve like a long shot of morphine into a fresh vein. I smiled like a goof from daylight to dusk.
Among those prominent behind the top table’s array of carved pumpkins was the inevitable Powie. The Mayor referred to him as ‘Mr’ Y.K. Pao, thereby depriving him of his knighthood, which he must have received for services to athletics, because when the Woman of Science went up to congratulate the orchestra Powie was out of his starting blocks and congratulating them right along with her. The great Australian sprinter Hector Hogan used to move that fast but he needed spiked shoes to do it.
Onward to Canton, where there was another banquet, this time for lunch instead of dinner. The venue was the Dongfang hotel, a Disneyland Chinese emporium all dolled up in funfair gilt filigree. By now you could feel the West close by, just outside the Pearl River delta, a jetfoil ride across a short stretch of the South China Sea. People from Hong Kong come here to visit their relatives and give them that greatest of all gifts, a television set. The girls at the cashier’s desk have pocket calculators which the scientists in Shanghai would covet and which the clerks in the Minzu hotel in Peking would probably fail to recognise. China is a big place. Here, at the edge, it is a bit like the West, but the edge, we had learned, is a long way from the middle.
We were all Old China Hands now. Even the Woman of Science, clad today in a green dress recalling the famille verte teapots of the Ch’ing, was looking blasé. The locals kept bringing forth food fit to change the mind of anyone who had been harbouring the notion that Cantonese cuisine means offal rolled in red ochre and glazed like a brick. It was wonderful, but after a week of banqueting we had had enough. The Yin Sage’s impeccable chopstick technique did not falter. She could still pick up a greased peanut without lifting either elbow. But her usually transparent azure eyes had grown slightly occluded, like the milky-violet glaze which the Chinese collectors of ceramics call kuei-mien-ch’ing, or ghost’s-face blue. Perhaps she had seen too much of Powie.
She escaped him on the short flight to Hong Kong. When her plane took off he was not on it. I was not on it either, having failed to fill out the right forms some weeks before. After several hours spent anxiously facing the prospect of staying in China for ever – imagine how long it will be before they get breakfast television – I secured the last seat on a packed Trident and scrambled aboard. As I came stooping through the door I recognised a certain pair of Gucci shoes. It was Powie. He assured me that Mrs Thatcher’s trip was ‘very successful’ and that she had done a grand job. Powie has a lot in common with David Frost – permanent jet-lag, an unusual way with the English language, and an infallible nose for the main action.
The approach to Kai Tak, Hong Kong’s notorious airport, starts between mountains and continues between buildings. As the joke says, Hong Kong is the only city where street-vendors sell you things before you land. The place struck me, even at the very moment when I thought I was about to strike it, as a kind of slant-eyed Las Vegas. No sooner had the plane stopped rolling than Powie was outside and into a black Toyota, while your reporter was making his solitary and sweat-soaked way to the Hilton, where the rest of the British Media were already up to their necks in pine-scented suds while they filed copy on the bathroom telephone. The wealth of Hong Kong would seem ridiculous anyway, but after the Chinese People’s Republic you feel like a nun dropped into Babylon. To dial room service is to experience disgust, and for half an hour I hesitated. All right, half a minute.
The Dragon Lady, guarded by police SWAT squads up on the roofs, had by now transformed herself into the Keeper of Secrets. The fate of Hong Kong, known to her faithful consort as Honkers, was locked in her mind and safe from divination, even by the methods of geomancy or feng-shui (the winds and the waters). While the Hong Kong Media went crazy with speculation, she did her chores, starting with a visit to the Scots Guards at Stanley Fort. After Northern Ireland, Honkers is a cushy posting. The wives swim in the clear water of Repulse Bay and have babies while the going is good. The Keeper of Secrets dropped out of the sky by helicopter and moved among them in a midnight-blue dress sprinkled with almond blossoms. The heat was breathtaking. ‘Are you all pregnant?’ she asked. The teeth of a pretty child called Joanna were duly inspected. The British Media rushed to interview Joanna. I interviewed the wives, who all said, without being prompted, that their visitor looked too tired to last out the day.
As she climbed back into the thwacking helicopter, one could only agree. Her stamina is impressive but she is overly proud of it, and this trip she had pushed herself too far. Along with the punch-drunk British Media I strapped myself into the back-up helicopter and found myself hanging into space over an open door with Kowloon lying sideways underneath. If she felt half as bad as I did then the upcoming, all-important press conference was going to be a disaster.
In fact, it was her best yet. On the last day in Peking she had made a bad press conference worse by showing obvious impatience with the halting English of some of the Hong Kong Media. This propensity probably springs less from intolerance than from her urge to get cracking, but to possess it is a handicap and to indulge it is a grievous fault. Now, however, on the day that mattered, she kept her irascibility bottled up. She said all she could say, which was that an agreement had been reached that there should be an agreement, and that from here on in it was all down to the diplomats. When a Hong Kong girl reporter said that the question of renewing the lease could have simply been ignored, the Stateswoman turned a potential minus into a plus by insisting that a contract is a contract and the means of meeting it should be found early, ‘in good time’. Clearly she spoke with conviction, from the deep core of her nature, where the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval has the force of law. In Peking she had got away for a few minutes on her own in search of a bolt of fabric. The one she liked was too pricey at £39 a yard, so she had not bought it. Her passion for managing the household along sound lines was what got her elected in the first place, and was what now reassured the people of Hong Kong that things might just conceivably, in the long run, be going to be all right. On Hong Kong television the assembled pundits, posing in front of blown-up Thatcher glossies that looked like publicity stills of Eleanor Parker in Return to Peyton Place, began a long analysis of what little she had said, as if there could have been more. Next day the stock market dipped but there was no crash. When the rabbits had finished pulling out, the smart money would probably buy back in.
The smart money was there in force at the Government House reception. Chinese businessmen whose personal wealth made Powie look like a pauper were jostling to breathe the Dragon Lady’s perfume. If her mission had been a flop then they would already have been in Acapulco, so the signs were favourable. I met such mighty Hong Kong tai pans as Mr Lee of real estate, Mr Fong of many boats, and the ineffable Sir Run Run Shaw, who had made a hill of money out of those terrible films in which bad actors kick each other. (In the days when he was plain Mister, Run Run invented a cinematic process called Shawscope, a version of the wide-screen ratio which allowed more actors to kick each other at the same time.) One after the other I asked all these characters whether they had been in Peking lately. It turned out that all of them had been spending a lot of time there. Mr Lee told me how much the Chinese leaders respected his honesty.
So the boys are smoothing the roa
d to the inevitable. Only Sir Run Run had the cheek to say that if a new regime asked him to make a Socialist movie he would run-run for cover. Actually it is hard to see why he should be worried: his movies would be readily adaptable to Marxist-Leninist ideological content. Just make the bad guys the capitalists and the good guys could start kicking again straight away.
The Dragon Lady’s VC-10 screamed out of Kai Tak like a fighter and banked steeply towards India. All RAF transport aircraft have the passenger seats facing backwards, so the British Media, once again confined to the rear of the aircraft, could see where they had been. Laden down with electronic devices and paper kites for the children, they were too tired to sleep. So was the Dragon Lady, but she had no choice. Soon it would be the Conservative Party Conference. It was time for another transformation. The cabin lights went out to denote that she had retired. Her mind stirred in the darkness, putting away China and putting on Britain, forgetting Zhao Ziang and remembering Francis Pym. She was turning herself back into a Party Leader. While she dreamed and the Media drank, I looked back through the window along the Road of Silk, the ancient trade route which brought Marco Polo to Cathay and the Land of Prester John, and which was already old when Chinese lacquer boxes were on sale in the markets of Imperial Rome.
As you might have gathered, I loved China. But Westerners have always loved China. In the last century they drugged her, stripped her naked, tied her hands above her head, and loved her as they pleased. We were lucky that a revolution was all that happened. If we are luckier still, the current bunch of Chinese gerontocrats will be smoothly replaced by a generation of intellectuals who were so appalled at the Cultural Revolution that they are now less frightened by democracy than by despotism. If that happens, the Chinese revolution might manage what the Soviet version so obviously can’t – to civilise itself. Here, as in every other aspect of Chinese life, tradition is a comfort. China knew totalitarianism two hundred years before Christ, when the mad First Emperor of the Ch’in obliterated all memory of the ancient glory of Chou, burned the classical texts and put to death anybody caught reading the Book of Songs. But he unified the tribes, and on that strong base rose the majestic dynasty of Han, on whose era the Chinese of today still pride themselves, as will the Chinese of tomorrow.
In Delhi Mrs Thatcher had breakfast with Mrs Gandhi: a hen session. In Bahrain she shook hands with a sheik. At 34,000 feet over Europe she invited the Media forward for a drink. God knows what she thought of us: prominent in the front row of the scrum were at least two journalists who had been blotto since Peking. As for what we thought of her, the answer is not easy. Some had their prejudices confirmed. None thought less of her. I still wouldn’t vote for her, because I favour the Third Way, the Way of Tao, in which the universal principle is made manifest through the interlocking forms of David Steel and Roy Jenkins.
But I had grown to admire her. She is what she is, and not another thing, and on such issues it is better to be crassly straight than subtly devious. Perhaps being haunted by the Falklands, where for want of a nail she was obliged to send many young men to their deaths, in the matter of Hong Kong she seemed determined to be well prepared. The business touches me personally, because on Hong Kong Island, in the war cemetery at Sai Wan Bay, my father has lain since 1945, cut down at the age of thirty-three because the British did not know how to avoid a war in the Pacific. If firm talk and a steely glance can stop that happening again, Mrs Thatcher is ideal casting. She deserves credit for her iron guts, even if you think her brains are made of the same stuff.
While thinking all this I was searching the cabin. He wasn’t there. Finally I wangled an invitation to the flight deck. He wasn’t there either. Powie was not at the controls. She had got away from him at last. As the VC-10 dived towards Heathrow the wings suddenly shone like water gardens. After ten days and a dozen countries it was raining for the first time. The Han dragons could control the rain but ours must have been too tired. She had just enough energy for the last transformation, into the mother of her children. Mr and Mrs Thatcher stepped down to embrace their son Mark, who had driven all the way from town without getting lost once.
October 3, 1982
Postcard from Epcot
A TECHNOLOGICAL fun-fair made possible by the microprocessor and mankind’s allegedly unflagging responsiveness to the cuddly warmth of Mickey Mouse, Epcot is the Walt Disney organisation’s latest and most awe-inspiring addition to the large part of central Florida known as the Vacation Kingdom. From the moment I first heard about Epcot I knew I would do almost anything to get out of going there, but duty called.
Epcot sounds like an anagram but isn’t, unless Cotpe and Pocet are scatological words in the language of the Aztecs. Mexico is just around the gulf from Florida so perhaps that’s the connection. I was thinking this while reading the Epcot brochure on the way across the Atlantic by British Caledonian DC-10. The prose helped set the mood. ‘Epcot Center represents the ultimate in Disney-Imagineered entertainment . . . a celebration of ingenuity and innovation . . . the incredible visions of Walt Disney . . . the Epcot Experience.’
If the late Walt Disney’s visionary capacity had indeed remained operational beyond the tomb, then the word ‘incredible’ seemed hardly sufficient to fit the case, but that was a quibble. The British Caledonian Experience included some reassuringly larky hostesses in plaid skirts. Had they been heading straight back to Gatwick, instead of stopping over in Atlanta, I would probably have begged to go with them.
Atlanta airport gives you your first taste of the Epcot Experience. A computerised mini-train with a flat voice takes you to the passenger processing centre. ‘This is Concourse A. The next stop is Concourse B. The colour-coded maps and signs in the vehicle match the colours in the Concourse.’ The paging system has a real human voice calling out real human names (‘Would Gloria Raspberry, Slope Middleton and John Lurching please go to a white pay phone and dial zero for a message?’), but in all other respects the machines are in control, running a complex whose sheer size reminds you that the South is the new wealth centre of the USA.
After a quick Eastern Airlines interstate flight to Orlando in Florida, you get an even stronger reminder. Eastern is billed as the Official Walt Disney World Airline and Orlando’s airport is just as thoroughly automated as Atlanta’s. Thanks to the Vacation Kingdom, tourism is the Number One industry in the area, with the traditional citrus and cattle running second and third. But coming up fast in fourth place is technology. Just as Florida’s Walt Disney Magic Kingdom copies the Californian Disneyland but gives itself more room, so the Florida equivalent of Silicon Valley turns out the same chips but at a lower overhead. With Kennedy Space Center only an hour down the tollway, not even the sky is the limit.
The Mickey Mouse touch-telephones in my hotel room were a token of how Epcot marries advanced electronics to the hallowed Disney ideal of anthropomorphised model animals who insist on being your friend. A special television channel with a Slim Pickens-type Southern Fried voice-over described Epcart as a noo world of wonder and a leading Florida traction – traction being the opposite of repulsion. So I was already well prepared for Epcot’s initial impact by the time I became a statistic at the turnstile.
The turnstiles are overshadowed by the eighteen-storey geodesic globe housing Spaceship Earth, a ride sponsored by the Bell System. Bell’s big ball stands for both main themes of Epcot: Future World, which is composed of the high-tech display structures contributed by the respective industrial sponsors, and World Showcase, a series of lakeshore pavilions non-controversially encapsulating the way of life in various countries. The big ball, in short, symbolises the international cultural unity which must inevitably accrue as our planet, singing in harmony like the Mickey Mouse Club choir, spins confidently into the future.
The big ball also symbolises another of Epcot’s recurring themes, the balls-up. On my first day’s visit Spaceship Earth had conked out and didn’t get started until after nightfall, by which time the intestinally c
onvoluted queue of waiting customers would, if straightened out, have stretched to the Magic Kingdom, two-and-a-half miles away by monorail. So I left that one for later and queued up for the Universe of Energy, sponsored by Exxon. Many of the people in the queue were very fat, so that if you wanted to see what was happening at the turnstile you had to take a few steps to one side. Epcot is indeed tracting ‘guests’ from all over the world, but most of the guests it tracts are Americans; of those, most are Southerners; and of those, an impressive proportion are of enormous girth, a fact emphasised by their special vacation clothes.
As one who must watch his weight lest it double overnight, I was chastened to be in the presence of a whole population whose idea of weight-watching is to watch other people’s weight while adding to their own. Imperfectly circular men and women clad in T-shirts and running shorts snacked their way through one-pound bags of peanut brittle. They all wore training shoes. Training for what? A heart attack? That the rides should keep breaking down no longer seemed quite such a mystery.
Inside the pavilion there was a hundred-piece multi-screen movie plus stereo song. ‘Ener-gee! Bringing our world new graces!’ Then we went through into an environment of rhubarb lurex drapes with blocks of seats looking like cut-down buses minus wheels. ‘You are seated in an Epcot innovation, the Travelling Theater,’ said a tape proudly. ‘Keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times.’ Another wrap-around movie told us about energy in the past. Then the screen rolled up and we rumbled forward to see what the past looked like.
