I Stand Corrected (22 page)

Roger’s attitude toward his erotica collection was in keeping with China’s tradition of discretion. I was never shown the artifacts he considered purchasing at Panjiayuan, and we sought common ground in the market’s erotica-free zone of the bookstalls.

Points of interest beyond Beijing’s various markets required me to learn the city’s metro stops. One brought me to the Military Museum of the Chinese People’s Revolution, a war museum, featuring row upon row of antiquated tanks, each with a sign:
MADE IN CHINA
. Cutting across Tiananmen Square afterward, I stopped to study an enormous obelisk that is the Monument to the People’s Heroes. Not far from the monument was a conclave of young men lingering around something I was unable to make out. As a foreigner, I would impart validity to whatever it was that was being deliberately obscured by the crowd, and so those standing next to me urged those standing in front to give way so I might see.

In the center was a young man holding a long calligraphy brush. I watched as he dipped the brush in a sawed-off plastic Coke bottle filled with dirty water and wrote hurriedly on the pavement. The approach of an army officer scattered the crowd. I was left standing over words of dissent compressed into a few quick characters. Flung fearlessly on the pavement, they lasted the short time it took for them to be absorbed by the cement.

China has come by its reputation for censorship without apology. Logging on to any public server in mainland China—including those at the increasing number of Starbucks coffeehouses—requires your cell phone number. Newsstands do not carry English-language newspapers or magazines, and even publications sold at the airports are tampered with. I realized just how hands-on the censors are with their vetting process when I purchased
The Economist
at Guangzhou’s airport and discovered pages missing. From the cover line, I assumed what had been ripped out was an article on China’s Politburo,
the nerve center of the government. When I returned the magazine to the vendor and asked for another copy, he told me that all of the magazines featured the same omission and that the pages were torn out on the loading dock before the magazines had been delivered. Visualizing the logistics of what that entailed was enough for me to realize the Ministry of Information’s maniacal level of operational efficiency. Recently, it has required that some 307,000 Chinese reporters, editors, and broadcasters attend a mandatory two-day course on Marxism, presumably a prerequisite to keep their press passes.

Although privately and publicly held media companies exist in China, the Western ones are limited to a minority ownership, and those run by the state retain a significant market share. The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television and the General Administration of Press and Publication set strict regulations on taboo subjects. Topics disallowed coverage in the media are not dissimilar to those banned from debate in universities.

Paper, printing, and dictionaries—all Chinese inventions—have been subordinated by the Internet and its wraparound influence. How long China’s newly empowered citizens—most of whom have access to the web on handheld devices—will continue to cooperate with their one-party government, which operates on its own timetable and according to its own needs, is another question entirely.

In addition to my work with Chairman, I had a consulting arrangement with another Chinese businessman. In a grand gesture to impress the Chinese delegation he was traveling to London with, he purchased a British cable station during the course of their trip. Returning to Beijing a week later, the man had no idea what to do with the station. At his request, I met with a senior officer in China’s State Council Information Office, a government agency that now includes the Internet Affairs Bureau. I was impressed with the young man in charge, but he gave me no way of knowing whom, exactly, he was representing: the government or my client.

Both, it turns out.

The State Council Information Office has been mandated
by the party to ensure that news from China is justly represented in Western markets. Impressive inroads have been made.
China Daily
began to appear in various foreign editions during the time I was writing
The Tao of Improving Your Likability
. Since then, its management has entered into co-ventures with cash-strapped non-Chinese media companies. Censored news from China is now distributed by Western newspapers, which are coproducing—and inserting in their pages—special sections of
China Daily
.

While China’s narrow version of the news is widening its global distribution, Western hotels are the only local outlets selling the
Financial Times
and
The New York Times
. Those same hotels, along with diplomatic compounds, have access to the BBC, CNN, and Bloomberg News, but it is believed that CNN’s broadcast agreement with China stipulates that the network’s signal must first pass through a Chinese-controlled satellite. Blacked-out content comes in broad strokes: reports of unrest in Tibet, tainted food, and Chinese dissidents are three of the usual suspects. When warranted, China’s censorship can drill down to specifics. During the state-run China Central Television’s coverage of President Obama’s first inaugural address, there was no audio when he spoke of how “earlier generations faced down fascism and communism.”

In addition to censoring information, China manages its own news. Though that process lacks subtlety when dealing with political criticism, it is an effective means of covering natural disasters in China, of which there are many. Immediately after a horrific earthquake while I was there, all Western broadcast stations were blocked in Western hotels and compounds. For three days, I watched identical footage, appearing simultaneously on all channels, of the Chinese army rescuing devastated villagers. No broadcast advertising was allowed for those same three days, and print advertising was banned from showing people smiling.

C
hina Central Television, CCTV, is the nation’s largest network. The sequential launch of its various channels speaks for the nation’s cultural agenda. CCTV-1, its general programming channel, was launched in 1958, followed by CCTV-2, its finance channel, in 1963. Six years later came the arts-focused CCTV-3. Launched in 1992, CCTV-4, the network’s international channel, spawned CCTV channels for Europe and America. Subsequent channels were devoted to sports, the military and agriculture, and Chinese opera. The most recent channel—and a personal favorite—is the Chinese version of an entertainment channel. It airs soap operas and game shows.

One of China’s more popular soap operas is a historical romance that tells the story of Zhenhuan, an imperial concubine during the Qing dynasty. Possessing unmatched beauty and fierce intelligence, Zhenhuan manages to rise above the other concubines—and even the empress—to become the emperor’s favorite and the most powerful woman at court.

Women prevailing against the odds seems to offer universal appeal, for I have viewed variations on that theme on television screens wherever I’ve traveled, including the unlikely location of Santiago de Compostela.

The name of this city in Galicia in northwestern Spain means St. James in the Field of Stars, and it has a long history of drawing travelers from distant parts of the world. Legend
has it that the bones of the Apostle James made their way to the Iberian Peninsula for burial and were eventually discovered by a Galician shepherd who was guided to the spot by a star. A church built over the relics was later replaced by the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, which became the destination of the medieval pilgrimage route known as the Way of St. James.

“How did the bones get to Spain in the first place?” asked Gilliam when he was a boy and I suggested a trip there.

It was a fair question. Before I could consider it, he was already on to the next.

“What proof is there that they’re actually his bones? And I don’t believe the part about the star. It’s always used to move the plot ahead when they can’t explain the story.”

“It’s a legend,” I pointed out. “Legends require a leap of faith.”

“Just how far of a leap?” he asked.

“Granted, this particular legend doesn’t make a great deal of sense,” I admitted. “But it’s been a destination for pilgrims for a thousand years. Aren’t you interested in seeing why?”

He didn’t answer.

“Come on, Gilly, we’ll have a good time there. It will be like
The Canterbury Tales
.”

“Because that book was so much fun,” he said snidely.

I realized I was losing control of the decision-making process.

“No more sarcasm. I found a very reasonable hotel. We’re going.”

The Hostal dos Reis Católicos in Santiago de Compostela, thought to be the oldest hotel in the world, is also considered one of the most beautiful. An e-mail alerted me to its off-season rates and, ten days later, we arrived at its massive baroque door.

The rate was wildly out of step with the beautifully appointed twin-bedded room and the level of luxury we enjoyed for three days. Breakfast featured an abundance of local produce. Afternoon tea was served in the grand sitting room, where we were offered the traditional sweet pancakes known as
filloas
. Dinners, none costing more than thirty dollars for the both of us, centered on local fishes and meats cooked in the Galician way.

Gilliam was too young then to be allowed to explore on his own. That level of independence would not be sanctioned for several more years. He and I were stuck with one another twenty-four hours a day, and we had entirely different approaches to exploring Santiago de Compostela. I read guidebooks, with the intention of getting us to what had already been identified as worthwhile during our limited days. Gilliam wanted to enjoy himself without the burden of an agenda.

“No more of the cathedral, no more churches, no more Museum of Tapestries,” he grumbled at the end of our first day.

“All right,” I muttered without thinking. I was propped up in one of the two canopied beds, reading. The boy flopped down on the other, with his feet facing me and his focus on the television. Switching from one channel to the next, he paused on a quiz show.

“Sweetheart, can you turn that down.”

“You should watch this.”

“It’s too loud,” I said. “Please turn down the volume.”

“No, I really mean it, you need to see this.”

I peered over my reading glasses. There, on the screen, was a young woman made older-looking by makeup. Bleached blond hair and a silver lamé dress cast her in an oddly metallic light. Her ample bosom was straining against the plunging neckline of her tight dress. Having lived in L.A., where plastic surgery is a local craft, it is relatively easy for me to recognize surgically enhanced breasts—they often are seen preceding their owners into a room. But what took this artificially voluptuous and inappropriately dressed young woman from vulgar to intriguing was the fact that she was seated on a sofa in front of an elegant Georgian silver tea service, casually chatting with a nicely dressed young man seated on the couch next to her. Both of them were facing the studio audience. She hadn’t served the tea yet. She would soon. It was expected by the young man sitting next to her, by the audience, by Gilliam, and, now, by me.

There was something else about the woman and her situation, something that undercut the expected act of serving tea.
She was wearing snorkeling goggles, the lenses of which had been blackened out, making it impossible for her to see.

In openmouthed wonder, I asked my son a question I would have spoken out loud had I been the only one in the room.

“What is
that
?”

“They’re gigantic breasts,” he said, having no need for more sophisticated analysis.

The book I was reading dropped to the side. My eyes narrowed on details while my brain tried its best. As it stood, very little was clear except that what I was seeing was inconceivable.

Gilliam’s fluency in French brought him close to a Spanish understanding of what she was poised to do. “The audience bets on whether she can pour the tea without spilling,” he explained.

“She’ll spill,” I said.

“Who cares? It’s funny,” said the boy.

That it was. And so was the game show I would watch regularly during my residency at the St. Regis Hotel in Beijing. The program featured women wearing panda ears while competing to win a date with a man they must first serenade in a karaoke contest. It surprised me. Not the panda ears. Pandas are almost an obsession in China. Not the karaoke. Karaoke is wildly popular among Chinese youth. The girls’ deliberately short skirts teasing to reveal what was underneath: that surprised me. Overt sexuality is frowned upon in China, so the young women on the game show seemed to be beaming out mixed signals.

If asked to identify the most likely qualifier for professional success—be it for a man or a woman, a manager or an employee—I would answer that it is respect. Inherent in the meaning of respect—whether granted by the person to whom you report or by the person who reports to you—is how it’s been earned and how it’s been kept. Gaining professional respect is more difficult for women than for men. Often that unfair fact is through no fault of their own. However, it can sometimes be the result of how women present themselves to men—reason enough for me to write a lesson on appropriate dress for women in the office.

If in doubt about appropriate attire, remember that underdressing is always better than overdressing
. A woman’s dress or appearance should not detract from her ability to conduct business.

You need not have a great deal of money to dress well
. If you keep your wardrobe simple, it’s hard to go wrong. You will get the best use from (and look the best in) clothes that are simple and fit properly. Never buy anything for just one occasion.