China in Transition: Witnessing the Mao Era’s End with Andy Kirkpatrick

The Friendship Store: Linguist Andy Kirkpatrick’s Tale of 1970s China and Its Transformative Times

Andy Kirkpatrick is a British author and academic specializing in linguistics, Chinese rhetoric, and intercultural communication. In the mid-1970s, he studied in Beijing and Shanghai, arriving shortly before the death of Chairman Mao Zedong. His forthcoming memoir, The Friendship Store: A Memoir of 1970s China, is scheduled for release on November 19, 2024, by Earnshaw Books.

The book provides an account of his experiences during a transformative period in China’s history, detailing his interactions with the local bureaucracy, time spent in factories and on a farm commune, and participation in university life. Kirkpatrick’s narrative offers insights into the cultural and political climate of China as it emerged from the Cultural Revolution.

Featured image: In the six-photo collage, Andy Kirkpatrick appears as the single individual in one image and is also shown sampling a drink in the dining photo. Photo: Krystyna Horko

What emotions did you experience during your first few days in Beijing, arriving just before Mao’s death?

A combination of nerves and excitement. There were very few foreigners in China at the time, so no one really knew what to expect. To the Chinese, we were objects of great curiosity.

How did the atmosphere shift in Beijing and Shanghai immediately after the announcement of the Gang of Four’s arrest?

At first, the locals were very wary of believing that the Gang of Four had been arrested. The news was broadcast first by the BBC. When I told a few Chinese students the news, one snorted and swore ‘Dog fart!’. Yet underneath it was clear that he desperately wanted to believe the news, but couldn’t say so as a) listening to the BBC was forbidden and b) it had been drummed into the locals that the BBC spread poisonous Western propaganda. It was only when the Chinese press later announced the news that the locals could openly rejoice in it. The mood was one of relief and genuine pleasure, although this was tempered with a fear of what the future might hold.

Can you share a particularly challenging or humorous moment when navigating the Chinese bureaucracy?

Ba JinThere were so many! But perhaps the most revealing one and one which was both challenging and humorous, concerned our attempts to set up an interview with Ba Jin, a famous Chinese author. I had learned that he was alive and well and living in Shanghai. I therefore, in November 1976, I asked the university bureaucracy (the section of it dealing with the foreign students) whether we could meet him. After all, we were studying Modern Chinese Literature, and it would be a great privilege to meet such a renowned author. The answer was abrupt. We were informed that meeting Ba Jin would be impossible for the simple reason he was dead. I was pretty sure this was not true, but it was obviously not possible to argue the point or reach some form of compromise. A few months later, I asked again, this time to be told that meeting Ba Jin would be impossible because ‘he was seriously ill’. The bureaucrats who passed this information on made no mention of how he had miraculously recovered from death. Not to be denied, I asked for a third time a little later. This time the bureaucrats smiled in unison and said that this was an excellent idea and that they would arrange for us to meet him – which we duly did.

What was it like participating in the mass criticism sessions you described, and what lessons did you take from them?

We didn’t actually take part in the officially organised mass criticism sessions, as only locals participated, but my roommates and other local students gave me some indication of what went on. There were several levels of these. At one level, students would set up these sessions and then either offer self-criticisms or launch criticism at one of their fellow students. What was hard to understand was the way in which students who had been subjected to severe criticism – almost always for some trumped-up behaviour – would often forgive those who had been the instigators of the criticism. At another more serious level, these sessions would take place in arenas such a sporting stadium, where those to be criticised (and tried) would be brought in and the crowd would bay for blood, as it were. I describe the process in some detail in Chapter 22 of the book.

How did spending time in factories and on a farm commune reshape your perception of Chinese society and its workforce?

These were both quite different experiences. The factory – a machine tool plant – was extraordinarily inefficient. For example, there were only two machines on the workshop floor where lathe operators could sharpen the blades needed for the lathes. This meant many of the lathes stood idle while the operators stood in a queue waiting their turn at the sharpening wheel. I would spend much of my shift, standing in such a queue. The factory also held political study sessions twice a week when groups of workers would study a Mao text. This proved farcical as it transpired that most of the workers were unable to read, so they sat around chatting and sipping tea, while the team’s political leader attempted to explain the finer points of a turgid Mao text to a completely disinterested group.

I was soon disabused of the notion that Chinese workers were busily beavering away to build socialism. But, I got on well with Foreman Shi, my supervisor. He was very keen to learn about England – or rather the Royal Family. One day he asked me out of the blue whether Prince Charles could play football. I confessed that I had no idea. He clearly took this lack of knowledge as evidence that I was not well-connected, so I tried to impress him by saying that Prince Charles was fond of polo. My translation of polo as ‘horseball’ may not have been strictly accurate given the look of stunned amazement with which Foreman Shi received this intelligence.

Working on a farm commune on the other hand was the experience I enjoyed most during my time as a student in China. We stayed with the families of the ‘peasants’ (in the factory we were housed in depressing dormitories) and were able to get to know them. As soon as they got used to us and saw that we would actually do some work (I sent most of my time tying cucumbers) they were happy to chat about their lives.

What were the interactions like with local students who were instructed to spy on you? How did you reconcile these friendships later on?

I got on well with my two roommates – and we all knew that our roommates were required to make regular reports about us and what we had said to the bureaucracy. And if evidence were needed about this it was provided by my two roommates desperately asking me for help. I had written some articles for The Far Eastern Economic Review describing various aspects of student life in China. The bureaucracy had got wind of this and asked my roommates to translate the articles into Chinese. This, of course, they were unable to do – they were Chinese majors and knew very little English. So, I ended up helping them.

When I returned to China a couple of years after I had left, I managed to track down one of my roommates who was then working at the Ministry of Health in Shanghai. I made my way, unannounced, to his office. He was thrilled to see me and then, as I describe in the book, broke down in tears apologising that he had reported on me but that he had had no choice. Sadly, I have since lost touch with him. My second roommate was the son of an army general and himself marked for the army and I never learned where he had been posted.

What surprised you most about the Chinese students’ reaction to Deng Xiaoping’s reinstatement?

I didn’t feel too much surprise. They, along with most of the population, were genuinely elated when the news of Deng’s reinstatement was made official. Shanghai laid on two days of celebration and huge crowds jubilantly thronged the streets. At Fudan University, the celebrations were more muted, as Fudan had been the Headquarters of the Gang of Four and since their overthrow there had been what the Chinese call ‘a settling of accounts’. Several members of the university’s Revolutionary Committee had undergone criticism meetings, and one had committed suicide. But the students themselves were very happy at the prospect of Deng’s return.

What role did literature and poetry play in shaping your understanding of Chinese culture during your studies?

This is an interesting question because when I arrived at Fudan to study their course in Modern Chinese Literature, the only authors who had not been proscribed were the famous short story and essay wirter, Lu Xun, the CCP’s leading idealogue, Guo Moruo and Mao himself. As I was a graduate of Chinese before arriving in China, I had already read pretty well all of Lu Xun’s works and Mao’s poetry (as well as his political writings). The Guo Moruo ideological texts that were on the syllabus were of the type likely to put one off literature for life. So, the actual course was stultifying and we were not allowed to read anything by contemporary authors such as Ba Jin, Mao Dun, Lao She or Shen Congwen. It was thanks to a fellow student from Switzerland that I then became interested in Classical Chinese. He was taking the Classical Literature course and pointed out that there was no censorship at all for texts written before a certain period. So, I started to study some of these texts and have been doing so, on and off, ever since.

How did the shift from ideological to practical governance under Deng Xiaoping manifest in daily life, from your perspective?

In terms of the course, some of the previously proscribed authors returned to the curriculum. These included Ba Jin after his miraculous resurrection. Another academic shift was that the Chinese students now had to sit exams – until then there had been no exams and no assessment required for Chinese students. Only the foreign students had to undergo assessment in the form of a 10,000-character dissertation. In terms of daily life, local markets stalls started to appear – these had been banned – and there was a sense of joie de vivre among the population.

What do you believe are the long-term cultural impacts of the Cultural Revolution on the generations you encountered?

For the generation of Chinese university students studying at the time I was there (1976-7), the long-term cultural impacts were, for many, devastating. For example, the majority of the university students at Fudan were drawn from the three favoured political classes, namely, workers, peasants and soldiers. My two roommates (and the roommates of many of the foreign students) were exceptions, as one of my roommates was the son of a general and the other’s father was civil servant of some sort. Both were highly literate, unlike the great majority of students who were not. But even my two roommates had not even heard of famous contemporary Chinese authors. It was as if English students of English literature had never heard of, let alone read, the likes of Graham Green or George Orwell. So, a whole generation of Chinese basically missed out on a proper education. The cultural revolution resulted in a cultural desert. By the time of the 2000s, however, this had changed dramatically and generations since then have had the opportunity to get an education.

Are there any new writing or research projects on the horizon that will explore your experiences with Chinese rhetoric or cultural analysis?

In the past I have published academic books and chapters on Chinese rhetoric (both traditional and modern) and translated the Sung Dynasty author, Chen Kui’s text, the Wen Ze, which I translate as ‘The Rules of Writing’. References are given below for anyone interested. At the moment I am working on a memoir of my 4 years in Burma (1984-8).

References

• Kirkpatrick, Andy and Xu Zhichang (2013) Chinese Rhetoric and Writing: An Introduction for Language Teachers. Andersen, SC: Parlor Press, (available for free download from https://wac.colostate.edu/books/perspectives/kirkpatrick-xu/)
• Kirkpatrick, Andy (2005) China’s first systematic account of rhetoric: an introduction to Chen Kui’s (陈騤) Wen Ze (文则). Rhetorica 23(2): 103-152.

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