Word: manly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...know," said an 88-year-old man in a Beijing park. It was early morning, and along with a score of others, the old man was exercising his birds -- by illusion. The men walked about and swung their birdcages. The movement is said to convince the birds inside that they are free. "We trick them, you know," he said. "How long can they stay fooled? Who knows? Maybe they hope. Like us. We hope. I hope. But you know, in China it is dangerous to hope. Your heart is always being broken." I said I knew...
...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 of incorporating the best of capitalism while preserving socialism -- tensions that...
Even the dead bride's Thatcher fixation tells a larger tale. The young woman, it seems, idolized Thatcher, not because she shared her politics but because with a single phrase Thatcher once captured her own world view: "If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman...
...exchange of business cards at the wedding, as common in China as saying hello, establishes that one of the guests has more than a nodding acquaintance with cremation. "Yeah," says a middle-aged man proudly, "I burn stiffs for a living." Only I smile. Everyone else knows what's coming, a recitation of the state's official line against using precious land for burials. "This is ridiculous," says the man, arcing a wad of spittle behind him, a small measure of civility indicating that China's famous antispitting campaign has done little more than improve the people's aim. "Zhou...
...Give me a break," says the man. (My hip translator is a Berkeley graduate.) "Despite our tradition of filial piety, most of us treat our elderly relatives like crap when they are alive. Then, when they die, we feel guilty and build shrines to their memory and use valuable land to bury them. It's all nonsense. It's all hypocrisy -- as hypocritical as this wedding...