In the end I was less interested in the fishing and manufacturing side of Yantai than I was in the recent history of Mr. Hu. After a few days he disclosed to me that he had been married for just two weeks. That information was like catnip to me; I asked him ceaseless questions. But he did not mind. He was a jaunty, thin man, with two distinct sides to his head. He was also very pleased with himself and happily talkative; with an air of a man of the world. He was proud of the fact that he had traveled out of Yantai — he had been as far as Qingdao and Qufu (the birthplace of Confucius). And, in his telling, his wedding had been quite an event.
Two years before, in one of the pebbly and decrepit Yantai parks, he had met a girl who was out walking with her friends. Mr. Hu was captivated by her. Her name was Mu. After a year of taking her for walks and buying her noodles and watching TV with her at her parents' apartment, Mr. Hu decided to get to the point.
He said, "What do you say, Mu — shall we register?"
Mu was excited. She could hardly speak. Shall we register? was an unambiguous proposal of marriage. Registering leads in only one direction. Article 7 of The Marriage Law of the People's Republic of China (1986) specifies, "Both the man and the woman desiring to contract a marriage shall register in person with the marriage registration office."
Mr. Hu was twenty-six, and Mu was twenty-five. Article 5 states: "No marriage shall be contracted before the man has reached 22 years of age and the woman 20 years of age."
When the couple's ages, status, jobs and addresses were verified, a marriage certificate was issued. Other clauses in the marriage law explain that cousins cannot marry, nor can lepers. Mr. Hu had expected that his work unit would give him a place to live — a room in Yantai. He put in several requests, but was bypassed.
Mu told him to forget it. If they waited for a place to live they might never get married. She urged him to consider going through with the marriage. Could they live with his parents?
Mr. Hu said okay — let's do it. But there was another problem. January was deemed an unlucky month, according to an old tradition, for the way it falls just before Spring Festival. Both sets of parents implored the couple not to get married in an inauspicious month.
I said, "Did you agree that the month is unlucky?"
"Not really," Mr. Hu said, but he seemed uncertain. "But for their sakes, we changed the date."
"Are you superstitious?"
His face became very thin with the chattering laugh that meant You have just asked me a tactless question, but I will nevertheless answer it. He said, "I don't think so."
"Do you believe in God?" I asked.
"Sometimes," he said. He did not laugh.
By pretending to satisfy the old folks he could calm himself. He chose to get married just after Christmas. Chinese who study English rend to make a thing of Christmas — the eating, drinking, card-sending and gift-giving part: all its heathen elements.
Mr. Hu bought basins of food and cartons of wine and beer. His school friend Hua did the cooking. On the big day he rented a taxi — something he had never before done on his own — and he was driven to Mu's house. He wore a Western suit and necktie. He picked up Mu and proceeded to his parents' house, and on his arrival there strings of firecrackers were unleashed. That was eleven in the morning. The guests arrived at noon, and everyone ate and drank until ten that night.
At that point Mr. Hu and Mu went upstairs. They did not go to work for two days, nor did they stir out of the house. Their romantic tryst was sporadic, and this was not exactly a love nest, because seven people lived in the three-room apartment, and the TV set was in the room occupied by Mr. Hu and Mu. Occasionally members of the household wanted to watch their favorite programs.
Article 9 of the Marriage Law states, "Husband and wife enjoy equal status in the home." This was a bit tricky in the house owned by Mr. Hu's parents, because his mother did all the cooking — Mu could not cook — and "home" was really just a euphemism for the TV room with its convertible bed.
A unique feature of the Chinese Marriage Law is its unambiguous treatment of birth control. That is Article 12: "Husband and wife are in duty bound to practice family planning."
I did not ask Mr. Hu how they managed this aspect, though I was deeply curious. I simply asked him how he was enjoying marriage.
"So far, very nice," he said.
He said it did not bother him that his wife kept her own name. The law allowed children in China to adopt the name of either parent. The law insists that parents be kind and that they act responsibly. This is spelled out in specific detaiclass="underline" "Infanticide by drowning and any other acts causing serious harm to infants are prohibited."
If Mr. Hu's marriage did not work out, and Mu was of the same mind, a divorce could be very speedy. There were restrictions, of which the most interesting was Article 27: "The husband is not allowed to apply for a divorce when his wife is pregnant or within one year after the birth of a child." However, Mu could apply and could be granted a divorce, even though she happened to be pregnant. That seemed an enlightened and considerate way of looking at divorce. In general, the Marriage Law was as straightforward as a driver's manual.
The snow did not let up. The sleet accumulated in Yantai. It was a grim place, with the wind blowing from Siberia.
One snowy day a large group of pilgrims appeared in the hotel, wearing the smile that one instantly associates with people in possession of the Christian message. These were Americans, from Texas. They had come in search of a missionary who had been in this part of Shandong a hundred years ago. Her name was Lottie Moon. The group had discovered the ruins of Miss Moon's house about forty miles away at the coastal hamlet of Penglai. I was told that they regarded this woman as a saint and that they had volunteered to reconstruct the house and the church using their own money, and the Chinese government was on the point of agreeing to this. In Mao's China that would have been unthinkable.
Only six years before, I had copied down an inscription under the photograph of a Catholic church in Nanjing. Its tone was very fierce. It read in part, American imperialism took preaching as its cover. All over China they erected churches like this and carried out destructive activities…. The American missionaries joined up with the Qing Dynasty troops and attacked the Small Sword Society troops, and the church acted as a stronghold.
I asked Mr. Hu what he thought of this difference in official attitudes.
"If people know about Lottie Moon and other missionaries in Yantai, they will visit here and enjoy themselves."
By "people" he meant foreign tourists. His attitude was characteristic of the Chinese in generaclass="underline" if it brought in tourists and was not immoral, it was to be encouraged, whether it was missionaries, rebuilt churches, or city tours of the bourgeois suburbs of old Shandong. But there were obvious dangers in tourism. After the complete eradication of venereal disease (the fifty-year personal struggle of an idealistic doctor from Buffalo, New York, George Hatem, who became Chinese, transmogrifying himself into Ma Haiteh), the VD clinics were reopened in 1987, to cope with new outbreaks of the disease. But antibiotics were not to be the only remedy. The Chinese also recently decreed that the punishment for engaging in prostitution would be a bullet in the neck.
18: The Slow Train to Qingdao: Number 508
On these one-day railway trips, the Chinese could practically overwhelm a train with their garbage. Nearly everyone on board was befouling the available space. While I sat and read I noticed that the people opposite, after only a few hours, had amassed on their table (I scribbled the details on my flyleaf): duck bones, fish bones, peanut shells, cookie wrappers, sunflower-seed husks, three teacups, two tumblers, a thermos, a wine bottle, two food tins, spittings, leavings, orange rinds, prawn shells and two used diapers.