Reporter ‘had to be aggressive’

Press, 7 May 1984, Page 8

Reporter ‘had to be aggressive’

NZPA-Reuter Peking A Chinese journalist, who spent two years in the United States and will publish a book about his experiences, said he had to learn to be aggressive to survive there. But he often felt as though he was from another planet, like the extra-terres-trial in Stephen Spielberg’s science-fiction film, “E.T.”, who wanted to go home.

The English-language newspaper, the “China Daily,” has published a preview of Liu Zongren’s outsider’s view of America as President Reagan was visiting Shanghai, China’s largest city, on the fifth day of his trip to China. The book, entitled “Two Years in the Melting Pot,” talks about his attempts to win friends and understand American society, of “the steaks cooked rare (that) seemed to ooze blood and upset my stomach” and the orchard where apples were left to rot while the family he was staying with drove to market to buy fruit. The orchard, he noted, was big enough to support a Chinese five-member peasant family, but was

planted only with grass, apart from the apple trees. He said at the beginning he felt lonely in the streets of suburban Chicago which had “so few people walking in them” and felt “humbled by the elegant houses along Lakeshore Drive.” A fellow journalism student gave him his first lesson on survival in America — “be aggressive.” He plucked up enough courage to telephone a list of contacts an American had given him in Peking “and the result was an invitation to a family dinner and a blues concert.” The big resources of virgin forests and rich agricultural farmland sometimes made him jealous of America.

China is almost the same size as the United States, but only about 12 per cent is suitable for cultivation to feed its population of one billion. “If we had as much rich and arable land here as in the United States, the Chinese people might produce even more than American farmers do,” Liu, a writer on the official publication “China Reconstructs,” said. He went to see “E.T.” in San Francisco and liked it, because like E.T. he felt alien and wanted to go home.

In two years, he said, he made many contacts, but “few were able to understand why I preferred to live a poorer, simpler life in China.”