Through the din of heavy metal pounded out by his White Angel Rock Band, Cheng Jian shouted: ”We are not interested in politics. We play our own tunes.”
That was inside the state-run Theater of Culture. Outside on central Dongdan Avenue on this hot Saturday night, girls in mini-skirts and translucent chiffon dresses pedaled their bicycles. Melon and ice cream vendors haggled over prices, and old folks in shorts sat on the curbs like parrots on perches.
This is Beijing 10 weeks after tanks and troops used bullets and steel to crash through makeshift barricades and smash the mass demonstrations for political change. On Dongdan Avenue, residents had fought the army using rocks and gasoline bombs. Students and workers bled to death here. Nearby, soldiers were disemboweled and torched alive.
In the weeks that followed, China`s Old Guard, relics from Mao`s Long March in the 1930s, seized the reins of power and ordered campaigns to re-educate the masses. Thousands were arrested, dozens executed.
Life in the Chinese capital since the showdown in Tiananmen Square has become a strange paradox between lip service to political obedience and an almost-carefree flouting of the campaigns launched by the Communist Party to return the masses to the Maoist straitjacket.
Many of the 150 at the rock concert arrived on Japanese-built motorbikes, swaggering in Hong Kong-made shorts and Thai silk shirts. They came with Walkmans over their ears and the knowledge they could afford to pay 15 yuan
($3.70), one-tenth of the average worker`s monthly wage, to enjoy the show.
Not far away, through the open door of a ground-floor apartment, an old man in a smudged gym shirt fanned himself with the People`s Daily as he watched the Saturday night fare on state television.
It was the latest documentary on the counterrevolutionary spring foibles of a young generation the party said had been misled by imported evils and had erred through lack of love for Karl Marx, Mao Tse-tung and current Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.
”Love me. Love me. Do it. Do it, baby,” a long-haired rocker sang on stage as the White Angels battered out a crescendo of amplified sound and the gyrating audience bellowed its ecstasy into the psychedelic lights.
”Rock might seem against the direction of the official policy to purify Chinese culture of Western influence,” said Cheng, 31, the band`s leader and drummer. ”But we do compromise by adding our own Chinese sentiments to the music,” he added, straight-faced.
Out in the street a man whispered to a foreigner, ”Change money?” When the reply was negative, he whipped out a couple of dirty photos and leered through crooked teeth.
Was he not afraid of being caught in the new antipornography drive or the moral rectification campaign, or of finding himself entangled in the martial- law regulation that prohibits Chinese citizens from having contact with foreigners? What about being accused of rumor-mongering?
”You like girls?” he replied.
Before the pro-democracy demonstrations rocked China, the party line was the prerogative of Communist zealots coveting political promotion. The rest of the country was trying to climb on the economic boom and imitate Western ways. The veterans threatened draconian measures to purify the nation, warned against the evils of a Western influence they held responsible for the decline of morals among the young and their disrespect for the Communist Party. Materialism had run amok. Private enterprise was undermining socialism.
With the worst of the crackdown over, the motto once again seems to be:
”Let the party talk doctrine as long as it doesn`t interfere with our credo of money and modern ways.”
”Give me money, money, money,” the rock star squawked.
”We live in a vacuum where nobody knows what they are supposed to do, but everybody does what is best for them,” said Liu Wei, a former tourist guide and fledgling rock promoter. ”Everybody hopes that politics will not interfere. Maybe we took a risk by organizing these concerts, but maybe they will make a lot of money one day. For China, of course.”
Not much has changed in the capital since the June crackdown, except the tone of the propaganda, the ubiquitous soldiers and a tacit understanding that it is necessary to button one`s lips, at least for now.
Martial law still exists. But because no one knows if there is a curfew, everyone is back on the streets at night and acting as if none exists. The common attitude is, ”They can`t arrest us all.”
At intersections and overpasses, knots of soldiers shaded by multicolored, striped umbrellas stand back-to-back cradling AK-47 automatic rifles. Their worried young faces peer suspiciously at the passing throng of cyclists and pedestrians, who already have learned to live with them and to ignore them.
The Ministry of Propaganda has spared no effort to repair the damaged image of the People`s Army as the People`s Friends. Soldiers daily help rescue people and build schools; in return they receive bouquets from toddlers. Last week the army rounded up 67 ”evil dogs” during a campaign to rid the capital of strays and the danger of rabies. The effort made headlines.
Bus No. 1 passed Dongdan Avenue. As usual on Saturday night, it was crowded. A small boy sang the latest state hit, which is now taught in all primary schools.
”Without the Communist Party there would be no new China,” he caroled.
”Shut up,” the boy`s father snapped.
Foreign businessmen, though not the tourists, have begun to trickle back to nearly-empty luxury hotels. The hotel discos once again charge high entrance fees. Well-to-do Chinese, who had been excluded from participating in this Western opulence before the turmoil, now are welcome.
The newcomers to this world of flicking lights and multiple TV screens sit around the dance floors, the girls giggling like kids at a circus and the men clicking their fingers to attract the waitresses just as they`ve seen it done in Western movies.
The two gold-plated Rolls-Royces again are parked outside the Palace Hotel, the majority share of which is owned by the People`s Liberation Army. And that despite the official ravings against displays of wealth.
The musty private bars along Chaoyangmenwei Street served drinks throughout the demonstrations. Now their hostesses once again bat their false eyelashes at prospective customers. The ladies seem far from intimidated by the news that one bar owner received a 5-year prison sentence for encouraging prostitution.
In the free market on Xidan Street, a melon vendor was caught shortchanging a customer.
”You cheated me,” the outraged client complained loudly.
”The government does it all the time,” came the prompt retort.
Two indignant soldiers who overheard the dispute led away the vendor, though it was unclear whether for petty theft or insulting the government. Before they turned the corner, the crowd helped itself to all the melons.
”He won`t need them anymore,” said one man as he bicycled off with his loot.
On the dance floor at the rock concert, two youths, unsteadily brandishing their bottles of beer, squared off to battle over a woman wearing a pink dress and a plastic bow in her hair.
”I`ll rip your eyes out,” one threatened.
”I`ll tear your motorbike apart,” retaliated the other.
It was sure to be one of those imported Japanese motorbikes, the new status symbol of China`s yuppies. Such a bike is now part of the permanent exhibition at the Military Museum together with other demonstrators`
paraphernalia and the burned wrecks of tanks and armored personal carriers salvaged from the Beijing Spring rebellion.
A label on the exhibit explains: ”This was one of the bikes used by the so-called Flying Tigers, the bourgeois liberals who informed students of the movement of troops during the counterrevolutionary rebellion.”
”Give it to me, baby, give it to me,” the rock star roared into the microphone, his White Angels rising to the occasion.
Cheng said the band had been together for 18 months, all self-taught musicians who once held menial jobs. ”I used to be a street cleaner myself,” he said candidly.
It was only their second concert since early June. In these times people are scared to promote any politically dubious ventures. Maybe, if the officials did not disapprove, the concerts could become a weekly fixture.
The band`s ambition?
”To give a rock concert on Tiananmen Square,” Cheng said.
No, he did not blink.
