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• First Person - Ian Rae
Going to China on business in the 1960s, particularly during the Cultural Revolution, was a trial from start to finish and you never really came out any the wiser, writes Ian Rae.
It is, of course, well known how all business with China was conducted according to a set of unbendable rules from shortly after Liberation, right up to the Open Door of 1978. You could not beat the system and there was no inside track. It was slow, it was at times very difficult, it was honest and it worked. Not only did the Westem businessperson face the task of lengthy negotiations and long delays, but he or she also had the problem of getting to China and, once having got there, moving around. This was at least simple in as much as you could not go unless you were invited, your hotel and everything else was arranged by your hosts as indeed were your visits.
The first problem was the visa. In some cases travellers went almost daily to the consular section of the Chinese embassy in London to enquire, with an urgency that increased as the day of their flight approached, as to what was happening. The letter of invitation from the Foreign Trade Corporation having arrived you then filled in a form and so applied for a visa; a lengthy questionnaire including religion, political party and friends in China.
In one extreme case a businessman only got his visa the day before flying and, somewhat ruffled, asked the reason for the delay, in this case of many weeks. The slightly affronted girl behind the desk, with pigtails and sleeve protectors clicked out the sum due on an abacus and stated there was no point in issuing a visa before it would be actually used, now was there?
You then flew to Hong Kong and took the train in Kowloon, getting off at the Luowu frontier post to walk over a bridge carrying your bags, under the red flag and the stolid gaze of young People's Liberation Army soldiers with sub-machine gun slung on chest. On the Chinese side there was a lengthy but courteous customs and immigration inspection and all books and journals were inspected, particularly if in Chinese. There was a lunch, all part of the ticket; at Cultural Revolution time enlivened by a song and dance act. Then the train, which parted to the rousing strains of a march, with station staff standing stiffly to attention, to reach Guangzhou after nearly three hours travelling through paddy fields and villages with traditional curly roofs, conical hatted peasants and water buffaloes.
Passengers on the train sat sideways on large deep sofas while girls served tea, listening perforce (for there was no way of switching it off) to the public address system with its music and political harangue. When you turned down the volume at one end of the carriage so it increased at the other.
In Guangzhou there was a large ugly hotel some way from the station. Originally called Yang Cheng/Goat City it was re-named Dong Fang/Eastern in 1966 at the advent of the Cultural Revolution. The vast reception hall was so dark electric light was needed all day. Tall windows were draped with heavy deep-red, dust-filled curtains; vast portraits of Chairman Mao, either solo or encouraging peasants and workers in the field, lined the walls. Rooms were allocated by two or three girls sitting behind a counter with a huge ledger. They also handled currency exchange, ordered taxis, passed messages and sometimes booked restaurant tables. All these duties took a long time to perform; calculations were done on an abacus, one girl clicked away, another checked the total, yet one more flicked off the banknotes.
Guests would go to their rooms and dump their bags on their bed after check-in and go off to find friends, or look at the displays if it was Canton Fair time; occasionally they would return to find a stranger's baggage on the other bed. The Chinese sometimes sold bed spaces, not rooms, particularly if full and this different concept took a long while to change. There were occasional emotional and unhappy scenes in the hotel lobby.
There were few taxis and none had meters. You could not hail them in the street, and could only find them either at the railway station, the airport or the two or three hotels that took foreign guests. Drivers drove straight ahead, constantly tooting their horns, never changing down to a lower gear, even when turning; at night, headlights were switched off in face of oncoming traffic as it was impossible to dip lights. There was little motor traffic on the road; as in all Chinese cities, a cloud of cyclists, buses, lorries, horses and carts. Here and there a long black saloon with drawn curtains would swish by, the vehicle of a party chief or very important guest.
Any travel within China would be arranged by the hosts, and the visitors would be accompanied on any journey, almost invariably by rail. This necessitated showing passports to be examined at the "foreigners check point" at the railway station. Fairly soon during the visit passports would be impounded by the Gong An (public security) for further checking and issue of exit permits. Not only did you need permission to get into China, but to get out of it as well. This worried some people, particularly during the Cultural Revolution when it became increasingly hard to identify just who was in charge.
Someone once said that business trips to China deserved a campaign medal. It was so much harder then, but – sometimes – much more fun.
Ian Rae learned Chinese in the 1950s, and later established his own business promoting Western technology in China. He was a SBTC council member, 1978-1982.
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