The Abundance (13 page)

IT IS A SUNNY SEPTEMBER MORNING
in Disneyland. Bands are playing; people walk with their children and take pictures.

The Chinese writers, the UCLA Chinese-American writers' conference hosts, and Allen Ginsberg and I—for we stayed on to accompany our foreign guests—have just seen the film
America the Beautiful.
Along with the standard scenic tourist shots, the film offered a healthy dose of American militarism. Tanks rolled on parade, soldiers fired salutes, cadets trained with weapons at Annapolis and West Point—all to swelling music and rising choruses.

We have emerged, blinking, from this film and entered again the bright Disneyland streets. The Chinese writers seem content, perfectly familiar with Disney paraphernalia. In China you can buy Donald Duck on pink thermos bottles, Mickey Mouse and Goofy on handkerchiefs. Nearly everyone has seen Disney cartoons.

A sophisticated and cosmopolitan Chinese writer named Liu Binyan is strolling down the street with Allen Ginsberg. At home in Beijing, Liu Binyan is a muckraking journalist. He revealed corruptions in high places. He is in the United States on a six-month visit, he says. In fact, this visit will prove to be the start of his lifelong exile from China. The party disliked corruption as a topic. Liu Binyan's English is perfect. And his upright, forceful carriage enhances the grandeur of his leonine head, with its curved forehead, wide cheekbones, and strong jaw. He is young, at home in the world; his dark suit, remarkably, fits him. For twenty-two years in China, no longer permitted to write, he worked at forced labor. Now, he is in Disneyland.

Allen Ginsberg, beside Liu Binyan, is walking with his head down. He is sensibly dressed for a hot September day in a white, short-sleeved shirt and green chinos. The spectacle of the movie we just screened has left him gloomy. He says he considers all that military emphasis in the film to be Mickey Mouse.

Liu Binyan, walking so erectly in his fine suit, cocks an ear and says, “Mickey Mouse?”

“You know,” Ginsberg says. He is preoccupied. “Mickey Mouse. With the ears?” He wags his fingers desolately over his head. “A little mouse?”

Liu Binyan stands on his dignity. “Yes,” he says
slowly, in his careful English, “I know Mickey Mouse. Yes. But the film?”

Ginsberg is emphatic. “That was a Mickey Mouse film.”

It is all breaking down for Liu Binyan. He has probably seen dozens of Mickey Mouse films. Incredulity raises his voice: “The film we just saw was a Mickey Mouse film?”

Ginsberg, still shaking his head over the film, chooses another tack. “You know,” he explains. “Hallucinatory. Delusional.”

Liu Binyan slowly lights a cigarette and lets the subject go.

We all come around a corner and a band is playing. We are alone on a broad intersection under blue eucalyptus trees that cast pale and wobbling lines of shadow on the street. Two of us Americans begin to dance.

One of the Chinese men, with debonair smoothness, as if this were what one did every lunch hour on the streets of Beijing, lightly taps one of the women, and they dance. The band is playing Duke Ellington—“Mood Indigo.” They dance lightly, formally, grandly, seriously, until the song is over; we all continue on, without comment.

Things are always jolly when people misunderstand one another. I have made ludicrous mistakes in many places, in a number of the many languages I do not speak. In China people often looked at me aghast when I tried to pronounce a simple hello; I have no idea what I was actually saying. Several of the Chinese writers we are with, on the other hand, speak excellent English. Still, people will misunderstand one another.

We are luncheon guests at Disneyland's “Club 33.” We have a private dining room, with access to a lavish and excellent buffet. With us are three Disneyland hostesses, each dressed in a red tailored suit. The hostess at my table, to my right, is a gracious and shining young woman whose enormous name tag reads SUSI. Her blond hair is blunt cut and curled in a flip. She has a wide, friendly smile; she has worked as a hostess in Disneyland for seven years.

To my left sits a Chinese official, one Mr. Fu, whose English is very good; we have all often relied on this man's patient good nature and perfect sense of propriety to ease conversation along. Just now he seems to be engaged in catching his breath a bit, and in parsing the edibles on his plate. The Chinese are apt to take eating
rather more seriously than we do, and they are not so given as we to social chatter at table.

SUSI, having ascertained the excellence of her lunch companion's English, opens the luncheon conversation. “Well, Mr. Fu! Are you enjoying your visit to Disneyland?”

Mr. Fu looks up from his plate and smiles. “No,” he says.

SUSI freezes. Fu goes back to his plate, spears a smoked oyster on his fork, and adds conversationally, “This is my very first visit.”

Ah, a simple misunderstanding. Easily explained to everyone. After that is straightened out, we all resume eating with a certain concentration. Following a decent interval, SUSI, with commendable pluck, gives it another go.

“Well, Mr. Fu!”

Fu looks up brightly, as if eager to reestablish himself in the good graces of his hostess.

“How do you find Disneyland?”

Fu smiles broadly, raises his eyebrows for emphasis, and says clearly, quite pleasantly, “I find it very messy.”

“Messy?” SUSI's smile has fallen, along with her fork.

“Messy,” Fu repeats, alarmed. “A'messy. Yes? A'
mess
-ing.”

Ah!! . . .

Seldom have I enjoyed a luncheon more.

Accompanying the delegation as its “secretary” is a middle-aged woman named Fan Baoci—“Madame Fan.” She speaks English, rooms with Zhang Jie in every hotel, and, I believe, enjoys herself. She is a tidy, small woman in glasses, and seems a sober, responsible person. I am charmed to hear about her unexpectedly spirited home life: “My husband loves children, and he loves
me
of course! And he has a good sense of humor. He plays the piano, and the guitar, and the accordion. Often at my house in the evening, after work, we start to dance.”

Now in Disneyland Madame Fan and I are alone on the street. The restaurant has chilled her a bit, and we are warming her in the sun. People are passing along the narrow street, which is modeled after a street in New Orleans's French Quarter.

A little boy approaches us. He is about five years old, a blond little boy with long bangs. He is wearing blue shorts, a green T-shirt, and a gun belt with two holsters. Madame Fan leans over and addresses him warmly: “What's your name?”

The little boy draws his two six-shooters and, with a grim “I-hate-to-do-this” expression, shoots us, one and then the other: Pow! Pow! I keel over, so he concentrates on Madame Fan: Pow!

“What's your name?” says Madame Fan, leaning down along the line of fire.

The boy steps back and draws a bead on her forehead: Pow pow pow! This goes on. I suggest to Madame Fan that she clutch at her breast and die a bit, in the interest of goodwill, and if she wants the killing to stop; and so she does. The boy pops his guns back into their holsters and stalks on down the street without a word.

The head of the delegation is a literary critic named Feng Mu. He is a rather shy, formal bachelor of sixty-four. He has an impressive gift for giving beautifully structured complimentary speeches off the cuff. Like the other writers, who perhaps take their cue from him, he seems game for any strange thing the United States may throw at him.

Feng Mu is so formal in his bearing that he manages, at all times, to stand with his spine at once perfectly aligned and canted backwards, away from the world, like a raked mast. Because of this posture, Feng Mu, who is not tall, nevertheless looks down his nose at things, and seems somewhat taken aback. Among his own delegation he is a favorite, not only for his personal qualities, but for the relative liberality of his politico-literary criticism and the honor it has brought him.
Among us Americans he is a favorite as well for a quality in his formality that I can only call sweetness.

Feng Mu and some others try the wildest ride at Disneyland: “Space Mountain.” It is like a roller coaster, only its cars, instead of dropping, jerk and veer through hairpin turns in the dark. When it is all over, Feng Mu and the others climb from their cars breathless, and compose themselves on terra firma. Feng Mu pats a hand over his hair and restores it to order. He stands absolutely straight and tilted backwards; his legs are formally together; his expression is at once serene and exalted. “I think,” he says severely, as if addressing the press, “that unless one has ridden ‘Space Mountain,' one cannot truly claim to have been to Disneyland.”

At some point we have managed to lose one of the Chinese. Chen Baichen is seventy-four years old and speaks no English. He must have been missing for quite a while before anyone noticed; in the meantime, we have taken a train ride across the park.

Chen Baichen is a playwright whose plays came out in the thirties and forties. He is a short, dignified man, broadly built, with large features and a long chin that touches his top collar button. Usually he wears, as do most of the Chinese, a rather long-sleeved trench coat.
Apparently their briefings stressed American rains.