Word: communists
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Quan has another claim to local fame: in the middle of his orange groves he has erected a 6-ft. shrine to Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party leader whose tacit support of the student protesters in Tiananmen Square contributed to his ouster in late June. Near the top of the tiled column is a photograph of Zhao -- with Tommy Quan standing at his side in his Seattle Seahawks cap. "Zhao made it all possible," says Quan. "He showed people that incentives can turn China around. Now that he is out of favor, my friends think I should tear my monument...
...midst of Zouping is a village of 1,100 where Wu Baohua, 57, has been Communist Party secretary for 25 years. Wu is soft-spoken and polite, and his face expresses a sanguine dignity without a trace of self-importance. Then there are his teeth, big strong Jimmy Carter teeth. Separately, each one could win a prize. Taken together, the effect is electric. You could read fine print at the bottom of a well by his grin...
...propaganda efforts, his face becomes heavy. His brooding eyes are cast downward, his mouth grows sulky. But not because of the coffee, which he insists is "quite good." What causes the professor to lower his voice to a drone is the presence, at the next table, of a local Communist official. "They say he is honest," says the professor. "They say that he doesn't have a crooked bone in his body. Maybe so, but I am certain those bones are held together by crooked...
...newspapers that urge "bitter struggle" against "bourgeois liberalism" while trumpeting the pleasures of disco dancing on the same page. Like the never ending loop of music in the lobby of a hotel in Sichuan province that alternates between a Rod Stewart oldie (Sailing) and a socialist goody (Without the Communist Party There Would Be No New China). Like the young man break-dancing to a blaring Madonna album amid a few hundred elderly tai chi practitioners at a Shanghai park. Like the reserve and civility evident in personal relations that rarely translate to civic responsibility. Like the more intractable tensions...
...guests are stunned. Everyone realizes that the sentiment just expressed -- as well as the wedding itself -- could easily cause this gentle woman's expulsion from the Communist Party, a "home" she later says she "entered out of love and idealism" 32 years earlier. The guests glance about nervously. Has the woman gone too far? Is someone in the crowd an informer...