The Back Door

Cadging on the commune

In China only a decade or so ago, the supreme sex symbol was the virile young Red Guard. Nowadays for millions of Chinese maidens, the objects of affection are butchers, truck drivers and doctors. The reason, according to travelers recently returned from the mainland, is that these lucky fellows possess the most potent of aphrodisiacs--the goods and services denied the majority of Chinese. Butchers have virtually unlimited access to meat that is rigorously rationed. Truckers have proved ingenious in buying merchandise where it is plentiful and selling it where it is scarce. Physicians can provide hard-to-get medicine and that precious possession, their time; doctors in state clinics are obliged to examine ten or more patients an hour.

Whether through seduction and marriage or just plain old-fashioned bribery, the practice of illicitly cadging products and favors is called tsou-hou-men, or going through the back door. It is prevalent in every part of the country, from the poorest rural communes to the most luxurious compounds reserved for the elite. In the countryside, for example, peasants are allowed only two bars of bath soap and two or three light bulbs a year. But more of these precious items, as well as scarce fresh vegetables, chicken and eggs, can readily be obtained by anyone with an obliging relative in the commune supply department. Butchers have devised a simple means to bypass rationing to benefit their relatives and favorite customers. The scheme is based on the fact that each consumer is allowed to buy 20-c- worth of pork without ration coupons. In exchange for a length of hard-to-get cloth or a dozen eggs, however, the butcher will sell $2 worth of pork to one customer but record ten fictional transactions at 20-c- each.

In Peking, tickets to ideologically suspect movies are among the most highly prized items on the black market. Though screenings of such films as The Red Shoes and The Sound of Music are restricted to high Communist officials, a clever practitioner of tsou-hou-men can sneak in by exchanging a favor with someone employed in the moviehouse or in the Ministry of Culture.

Even that most valued of commodities, permission to leave China for good, is available by tsou-hou-men. One teacher, sent to do manual labor on a commune after the Cultural Revolution, tried in vain to leave China by the front door. Last year he got out by the back, after appealing to a former student who had been put in charge of approving exit visas. Success stories of this kind have given rise to a popular new proverb in China: "When a man knows the way, even chickens and dogs can go to heaven."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.