Father to the Man

Only 90 coastal miles separate Canton and Hong Kong, but they are two whole worlds apart. In the last days of free Canton, before the Communists took over, Hsiao Tao-huang and her husband said goodbye to her sister Hsiao Ming, who was pregnant and was staying behind with her husband. At first the two families wrote occasionally, but then it became wiser not to. Recently in Canton, Hsiao Ming took advantage of relaxed Communist exit rules, went south to Hong Kong for a visit. She had to leave one member of the family behind, her husband. But she brought along her child Li Po, who just had finished his first term in the state-run kindergarten. He wore a dark blue Lenin uniform and, for a boy of five, a preternaturally grave expression.

Little Li Po gawked at the food on the Huang's table, then pitched in with his chopsticks ahead of everyone else. The Huangs were startled, but his mother remarked defensively that food was scarce in Canton because Red China "is saving to build for the future." "I and young men like me," announced little Li Po at this point, "will be masters of the future." A pall of silence fell over the meal.

Suddenly Li Po slammed his tiny hand onto the table, and bowls and chopsticks jumped into the air. Proudly he exhibited a black blotch on his palm. "Ha," he cried, grinning for the first time, "I have exterminated another fly." Embarrassed, his mother mentioned the Reds' campaign to destroy the four pests. Li Po broke in: "I have already trapped and killed 20 rats and sparrows and exterminated 300 mosquitoes and flies." Hsiao Ming ordered her son to go off and wash his hands. Li Po had expected praise. Wounded, he replied, "Stop ordering me about like an American running dog."

Next morning the Huangs were awakened an hour earlier than usual by the loud singing of their little guest. "The Communist Party is like the sun," sang Li Po. "From every direction comes the call, 'Rise, rise, face the enemies' bullets.' "

That night Li Po angrily snapped out the lamp as Mr. Huang read his newspaper. "There is a light in the other room," he informed his host briskly. "You are wasting electricity, the people's money and the people's sweat and labor." Hoping to befriend his nephew, Mr. Huang offered him candy. Li Po shot out his hand eagerly, withdrew it when he saw the English lettering on the wrappers. "I do not eat goods of the enemy," he said, and turned his head away.

In the days that followed, Li Po was as inquisitive as any youngster, but with a difference. Why was there no portrait of Mao Tse-tung on the wall? How were Aunty and Uncle Huang serving the people? Why were the poisonous movies of the Americans shown in Hong Kong?

Anxious to answer these questions in their own way, the Huangs asked Hsiao Ming to leave Li Po in Hong Kong for schooling. "They would not mind if I stayed in Hong Kong," answered Hsiao Ming, "but if the boy did not return to the nursery, it would cause my husband great trouble." Then she added: "You find the ways of my son strange, and even suggest--though I know you meant no offense--that he has not been receiving the right kind of teaching. I cannot tell any longer what is right or wrong. I only know that if you were in China today you would not think badly of my son, because all the children there are just like him."

The Chinese Communists like to show with statistics how well the younger generation is being brought up in the New China. They boast that some 5,000 state-run nurseries and more than 1,900 nursing rooms, caring for 192,000 children, have now been set up in industrial and mining enterprises "to avoid the phenomenon of mothers' being unable to join production because of their children." Result: nine out of ten women in Red China are now "suitably employed."

The favorite recreation of Communist China's children, and so useful too, is the game of hunting and killing the "four injurious pests." Kiangsi Radio reports that the children of Hsuangsi village called the pests "little Chiang Kai-sheks, thus creating considerable enthusiasm for eliminating them." In one recent two-week stretch alone, 710,000 children destroyed 2,832,000 sparrows, 869,525 rats.

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