Learning The Western Alphabet

Cultural Pollution Campain

I go to the Friday afternoon meeting and find that we have a new campaign. Our Revered Leaders, the Old Men of the People's Republic of China, are worried about the young people getting too influenced by the outside world, now that we have foreign experts even in Changsha. This time there are five 'blacks': no pony tails, no skirts, no immoral foreign authors, no idle talk with foreigners, no empty modern music. Old Zhang asks me, as Class Monitor, to make sure the red banners with their black characters are painted by the students, and hung from the classroom windows. The loudspeaker outside the guest house is to be turned up particularly loud. They call this campaign 'Cultural Pollution'. My father says it isn't a real campaign; no one is going to get thrown out of their windows or paraded round the campus. My mother isn't so sure: 'Be careful,' she says to me. 'Just do what they say, I'll help you plait your hair, and make you some trousers: army green, I've got enough coupons saved up. I'll make them tonight. And don't see the foreign ghost any more.'

I tell her the leaders have asked me to carry on being his Minder. It's an honour: they don't trust anyone else. I am top of my class and on the waiting list to become a party member. I am the only one allowed to talk to him. 'Well don't bring him here again,' says my father. 'Foreign ghosts always mean trouble.'

'He's not a foreign ghost, he's a foreign expert,' I say. 'Deng Xiao Ping himself says we should invite foreign experts so that we can learn from them and develop China into a world power. He's come to help,' I add, as the wire mesh door swings closed behind my father.

'Let him sit in the sun in peace,' says my mother. 'He's an old man. I must air his camel hair trousers ready for the winter.'