Word: liang
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...Winds and Clouds over a Funeral, the best story in the collection, a Communist official named Ding Liang finds himself trapped between competing loyalties. On her deathbed, his aged mother has begged him not to have her remains cremated; at the same time, the party is waging a nationwide campaign in favor of cremations so that burials of the dead will not use up more of China's arable land. Clearly, Ding's dilemma calls for a meeting of local party officials, some of whom are his enemies. Follow your conscience, they advise the bereaved and now relieved...
...Most of Liang's colleagues at the factory are too frightened or too indolent to follow suit. Shenyang is a warning to the government that it cannot easily trade in communism for completely laissez-faire capitalism. There is no national welfare system for workers like Liang. If they leave their work units, they lose their housing, health benefits, education subsidies, pension rights...
...Liang has earned enough driving his cab to share purchase of a 10,000-yuan ($1,220) house with his father, a low-ranking city bureaucrat, but he worries constantly about financing his daughter's education now that the factory will not. "That costs me 300 yuan a month," he mutters, "plus extra for the English tutor." Liang is determined that his 11-year-old daughter will "never, never have anything to do with the factories." Somehow he's going to find the 40,000 yuan it will take to put her through high school and training as an accountant...
...fact, workers like Liang look back with misguided longing to the days of Mao for their salvation. If they had their choice, they'd retreat to 1955 rather than grapple with today's complicated reforms. "We respect Mao, not Deng," says Liang. "Deng forgot about us." The people of Shenyang resent the way the city has been left behind by the capitalist advances in Shanghai and Guangzhou. At Liang's old workplace, his friends sit around all day grousing, drinking tea and reading the papers until the shift whistle blows. "We call it the nonworking day," he says. "The managers...
Under Mao, he says, "who dared be corrupt?" Shenyang's workers complain angrily that bosses are pocketing all the wealth through bribery, kickbacks and payoffs. That bothers them even more than their own low salaries. "If you were corrupt under Mao," Liang says, "you'd be purged. Now they just tolerate it." Shenyang's citizens "loved" Beijing's recent Strike Hard crackdown on crime and corruption. When U.S. officials noted that some innocent people were jailed during the ruthless campaign, Shenyang applauded. "They said only bad people got caught," says a Western diplomat...