Word: homely
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Taishan bills itself accurately as the "home of the overseas Chinese." The county's 960,000 residents have about 1.2 million relatives living abroad, and much as American Jews send money to Israel in lieu of actually moving there, Taishan's "overseas compatriots" have sent millions home. Since 1982 foreign funds have built 500 new schools, 50 hospitals and an indoor soccer stadium...
Quan spends most evenings in his new two-story home "drinking beer and watching my Rambo tapes, because it's so damn boring here." Many of those who remember Quan and his family from before the revolution think he was crazy to return, despite his roots in Taishan. "Most of my friends here thought I was on the lam when I showed up." Others thought Quan could not possibly have anything to offer. "The Chinese have an incredible superiority complex," he says. "They're backward as hell, but they still believe the world revolves around China. They take great pride...
...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...
...matching coffins. The silence puts on a little weight and becomes fat before she stoops to her handbag and takes out a small transistor radio. She carefully places it on the pine box of her daughter-in-law, in the grave that is the dead bride's new home. "What can it hurt?" she says, looking daggers at the stiff-burner. "Maybe they'll want to listen to some music...
...strapping six-footer, Bi "got into the weight-lifting craze about two years ago, when it was big." He still pumps iron each morning before breakfast, which he takes at a local restaurant with four colleagues. Eating out is actually cheaper than cooking at home for Bi, since coal is very expensive. Besides, Bi is saving for new eyeglasses. He hates his thick lenses and believes he would not need them if he had grown up in the West. "Until about five years ago, we didn't have electricity," he says. "I read by candlelight till then. My eyes...