Among The Red Guards On National Day

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31560, 23 December 1967, Page 5

Among The Red Guards On National Day

(From JACK SPACEMAN) If it had not been for Australia’s wheat sales to China I would never have been allowed to watch 15,000 Chinese shouting themselves hoarse to celebrate the eighteenth anniversary of Chairman Mao’s coming to power.

It is impossible for European journalists to get into China, so most of us in the foreign press corps in Hong Kong did the next best thing. We went to Macao, the tiny Portuguese province on the Chinese mainland, where Portuguese Government men jump when Red Guards give the order.

One by one we stepped up to the desk outside the ground where the big National Day rally was to be held and produced our credentials in the hope of gaining entry. One by one the rejections followed. “Sorry, sir, you work for an American paper. No imperialists allowed . . .

Sorry, sir, no British allowed.” ... No Hong Kong papers, no Filipinos, no French, and so on down the line.

I kept my Hong Kong press card in my pocket and produced an out-of-date one from the days when I worked for a Sydney newspaper. “Is this paper owned by the Government?” asked the man in charge of the desk. The American in the queue behind me kept nudging my ribs as I replied that the paper was in fact owned by several thousand citizens, many of whom were members of the working class. He nodded once, handed me a lapel badge and I was through the gate, leaving behind a lot of disgruntled colleagues. But I was to find that one doesn’t break through the bamboo curtain so easily. Before I had taken one picture the security men were all around me. A leader sorted himself from the bunch and gestured at me.

I tapped the badge I had been given at the gate but he was not impressed. Out came the old Sydney press card again. This fellow knew as little about Australia as the chap on the gate, but he did not give in as easily. Magic Word The questions, in fairly good English, came thick and fast. What does this N.S.W. mean? Is Sydney the capital city of Australia? What is this newspaper? Is it owned by capitalists? I ignored the questions and began to draw a map. Carefully I showed him Sydney’s position. Then I sketched in N.S.W. Circling my pen over the greater part of the State I uttered what turned out to be the magic word. “Wheat,” I said. “This is where we grow the wheat to send to China.”

Slowly, a smile spread across his face. He handed me back my press card and said: “You right now. You go take pictures.” I fled before somebody introduced Vietnam to the conversation.

Many of the people on the gravel-surfaced football field that fine autumn morning were children, some of them too young to kick a football. But they were old enough to grasp a little red book and chant the thought of Mao Tsetung in unison with their parents and grandparents. They chanted “Mam soi, mam soi, mam marn soi,” which means “a thousand years, a thousand years, a thousand thousand years (of life for Chairman Mao).’’ They said it as repetitively and as emotionlessly as children in other lands at other times would chant their fourtimes tables.

Two things disturbed me greatly as I moved through the rally. One was the use of children for political purposes—and this rally was as much window-dressing as any-

thing. The other was the intense racialism that the Chinese can display when the climate is suitable. Many times that morning I heard uttered close behind me the supreme insult that a Chinese can pay a European like myself. This is the hissing of “Gwai-lo,” followed by the gutteral clearing of a throat and the sound of spitting. Even someone who doesn’t know the meaning of ‘Gwailo” could not fail to grasp the significance of the spit. “Gwai-lo,” a word coined in hatred when the British and Chinese were shooting each other over the opium trade more than 100 years ago, means literally “white devil.” When a Chinese says it to a stranger he means it. I was wearing a badge that could get me into trouble with the Special Branch back home, but this was not enough to break down the ntagonism of many of the people. I was a cameratoting “Gwai-lo” to them and hardly fit for their company. Two-hour Rally This was most obvious when a group of children finally over-came their shyness and moved closer to inspect my camera. We conversed awkwardly in very basic Cantonese for a few minutes until three or four adults began herding them away from me, reminding them that I was a “Gwai-lo.”

The rally lasted two hours —two hours of alternating praise for Chairman Mao and hatred for the British, the Americans and the Russians. From the rally ground the crowd moved off into the city by five different routes. Macao, one of the very few China-watching posts still

open to Western journalists and diplomats, was putting on its big show. The joke that day among the small Portuguese community, whose bravery is matched only by their optimism, was that Dr Salazar's East is Red. And red it certainly was. From every buildKand post fluttered a red or pennant. Communist officials said there were nearly 100,000 flags and pennants around the city. Every building, even among the squatter huts out on the reclaimed harbour foreshore, had its red flag flying and its portrait of Mao high on the front wall. Bicycles, pedicabs and cars—even an occasional Holden—passed under enormous ornamental arches as they wound their way through the cobblestone streets. Thought To Music Amplifiers blared out the thought of Mao set to music and endless versions of “The East is Red.” Every shop was closed for business (double wages for workers on this day was the decree that went out from the Communists) and even some hawkers were taking a day off.

The hawkers are an aspect of the Macao scene that visitors find attractive. The textiles hawkers in particular do much to add colour to the charming little province. They lay out their thousands of yards of cloth along the footpaths and haggle away with tourists and residents alike.

But on this day they were not at work. They had folded up their cloths and taken out their little red books to go demonstrating. Most of the pedicab drivers went with them.

In the casinos, however, the roulette wheels still spun and the dice clicked. Not even the Cultural Revolution has managed to shut down the casinos. Copyright, 1967. Associated Newspapers Feature Services.

[A recent article by Brian Beedham, foreign editor of the “Economist,” suggested that China’s cultural revolution was now dying out and that the Red Guards were going back to school].