XINRAN: In the past we Chinese used to say that people who engaged in trade were capitalists. So, have any Party members opened a tea house?
WU: That's hard to say, there aren't that many of us.
XINRAN: You see, now we're starting to use electricity and lots of new technology. We're modernised. Are you worried that the tea houses will die out?
WU: There are people who drink tea in Hangzhou, I've seen 'em. When I went there to visit my son, I saw people sitting in tea houses drinking black tea. There's no one who can hold back tea drinkers. But people who drink tea together in the city can get AIDS, so nobody should dare to drink tea outside their house.
XINRAN: How do you know that tea can transmit AIDS?
WU: That's not what I said. To be honest, there are people like that, and diseases like that. They can spread. That's what infectious diseases are like.
XINRAN: So after you stopped running a tea house, apart from being an official, what job did you do?
WU: Well, these days I sell antiques. I go to small places to buy up old teapots. If I can get a bit for them, enough for spending money, that's all I need – the children don't want them. I'm a rough-and-ready, uneducated sort of chap. I can't read books or newspapers, but I remember everything I see and hear. If not, why would the Party have told me to 'sing the Revolution'?
XINRAN: So how long have you been 'singing the Revolution'?
WU: I started when I was ten. Everyone in the tea house liked to hear me sing. I could sing anything; whatever went into my ears, I could make into something to sing. I sang until the big loudspeakers came to the village. Things changed then. When the big loudspeakers from the broadcasting station started shouting, everyone could hear it. I couldn't sing the things that everybody knew, so I went looking for things the broadcasters didn't say. I kept on singing after I became a Party member and a cadre, but not as much as before.
XINRAN: How did you know what things the broadcasters never said?
WU: Need you ask? Everybody knows that they never talk about gods or fortune-telling; that's superstition. And they don't talk about the police doing bad things, right? Or about droughts or natural disasters either, or how the Yellow River drowned all those people. It was all 'class struggle every day', but we were all poor here, we couldn't find a class enemy even if we wanted to. Those class enemies were all rich. Would you stay here if you were rich? That'd be like a man dying of hunger using a gold bowl for a pisspot!
XINRAN: So if you often spoke of those things, didn't anybody try to stop you?
WU: Nobody bothered about me, who comes here? If they came here to control us, what would they eat? Those officials who were so fond of class struggle wouldn't have been able to bear hunger!
XINRAN: You're seventy-five, and there are so many stories in your life, so let's narrow it down. Can you tell me about the three most painful things in your life and the three happiest?
WU: That's easy, I was happiest when I was selling rice. It was one yuan a bowl, and I could sell five hundred bowls in a day, and that's the truth. I made money from my
XINRAN: And the most unhappy thing?
WU: The most unhappy thing? There are people in the government who act recklessly. I don't say anything out loud, but in my heart I don't approve. The peasant cadres in the past were all better than the ones now. I've got no way to say it.
Judging by my experience of interviews in the countryside, I could feel that he was not being completely candid. There must have been other things that made him unhappy. But Old Mr Wu changed the subject, and his face immediately took on an actor's stage expression of 'happiness'.
WU: There's nothing to make me sad. I play, I sing. If a man's happy he'll have long life. The happier a man is the longer he lives; the more anxious a man is the quicker he'll die.
XINRAN: If you had your life over again, would you still live it this way?
WU: That's not easy to say. Me, live my life again – I would be hundreds of years old! That's not possible.
XINRAN: No, if you had your
WU: It was worth it.
XINRAN: Many foreigners say that China is very poor, and this place of yours is really very poor. You live in poverty here, is it worth it?
WU: This place doesn't count as poor. When Chairman Mao was alive, just after Liberation, it was very poor. Now? Not poor.
XINRAN: A lot of people here don't even earn three jiao a day, and you still don't think this is poor?
WU: It's not poor now, truly. Back in 1949, 1950 and 1951, we were poor. Chairman Mao was making revolution in those days. There were no buses, not many people; that was real poverty. Foreigners? I say the foreigners are poor. When I went to Hangzhou I saw the trousers the foreigners were wearing, holes all over, and their hair was all dirty. Isn't that poor? Why be like that?
XINRAN: Do you prefer Hangzhou or Linhuan?
WU: For living Hangzhou is better, of course. But it's not so bad here either. A peasant's lot has been bitter since ancient times. Who told you to be born into this life, born into a peasant family to spend all day working in the muck and mire?
XINRAN: Do you and your wife ever quarrel?
WU: I've never fought or quarrelled with her since the day we were married, not even sworn at her.
XINRAN: Comparing you and your wife, are you more successful than her, or the other way round? Who's more revolutionary, who's more successful?
WU: She's more capable than me. She's a model worker, the first female Party member in the village. She's a cut above me.
XINRAN: Can you still remember the ceremony when you two got married?
WU: It was raining that day – she came in a sedan chair.
XINRAN: Did you have a banquet?
WU: We were very poor then, we didn't have any land yet, or a house, we didn't have a thing, my family was the poorest.
XINRAN: Is there anything that you wanted to do that you haven't done yet?
WU: No, I've done it all, a man should have a conscience.
XINRAN: How old is the oldest person in the village?
WU: The oldest is over ninety.
XINRAN: Do a lot of people from outside come and see this place now?
WU: Yes, they do.
XINRAN: Do you know why they come?
WU: We've got a lot of historic sites here, but many of them have been dug up, like the temple of the Town God and the temple at the east of the walls. They've all gone. People come because they've heard about them, but actually there's not a lot for them to see.
XINRAN: If someone were to say that your tea house was too old, and wanted you to build a new one, would you be willing?
WU: If you had the choice between something old and something new, who would take the old one?
XINRAN: Do you like this kind of old-style tea house, or do you prefer the new style?
