High Speed Growth

Occasionally, two people meet and afterward they realize it was chance or fate (yuánfèn 缘分) that brought them together. How often in this world does one get to meet a person who has lived through the first six decades of a government and country’s growth? While riding the high speed rail from Shanghai to Beijing, the train hurling along the track at an average of 300 kilometers (186.3 miles) per hour, the kind grandmother seated next to me and I had a riveting conversation. At eighty years old, here sat a woman who has seen her government and country grow in so many ways over the past six decades.

She was seventeen when the Chinese civil war ended and the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) formed in 1949. She was in Shanghai with her family then, still a girl attending school. She moved to the new capitol, Beijing, in 1954 and began her career in the foreign trade bureau (wàimàobù 外贸部). It was there at the foreign trade bureau, in the worker’s canteen, she met her husband. He passed away a few years ago, just after their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

I asked her many personal questions; several times fearing she might not answer them. When I asked about her feelings on the Cultural Revolution, I thought she would hesitate. She did not. Instead, she turned toward me enough to make eye contact and stated soberly, “Insanely violent” (fēngkuáng 疯狂). Her words carried enormous weight and articulated the numerous pained stories which her eyes could not bear to utter aloud. “Everyone makes mistakes,” she continued on. “The difference is, not everyone recognizes their mistakes.”

When I asked grandmother who she sees as the best leader in the sixty year history of the P.R.C., she eagerly replied, “Deng Xiaoping!”

“Uncle Deng?” I asked. Her face lit with a broad smile as she laughed softly and explained, “Yes, Uncle Deng. Look at the economic growth China has seen since 1982. Only he had the courage to speak out and lead us forward to develop as a nation.”
We reminisced about Shanghai. “Everything is so different,” she explained. “As a product of the growth.”

“Do you recognize the city you grew up in? Haven’t all the road names changed?”
“Some have changed more than once. For instance, Yafei Road is now Huaihai Road. It’s all different. And so many skyscrapers! Totally different from the city I grew up in.”

Having noticed grandmother was wearing a pair of faded jeans, I remembered once my own grandmother had told me one of her favorite changes she had seen in her lifetime was the acceptance of women wearing pants. I inquired, “How old were you when you began wearing pants?”

“I must have been in my twenties. Before then, since I was a little girl, I wore traditional Chinese dresses (qípáo 旗袍).”

As our train reached its destination, I was sad to see grandmother go. I still have so many questions racing through my mind much faster than 300 kilometers an hour. What a chance encounter it was to speak with her about her life and modern Chinese history. In this fast-paced world of ours, you never know when life will slow down just enough for you to meet someone with their own fascinating story to tell, if you are willing to ask and listen.

Benjamin J. Hayford