Connecticut College Alumni Magazine, Summer 1980
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Connecticut College Digital Commons @ Connecticut College Linda Lear Center for Special Collections & Alumni News Archives Summer 1980 Connecticut College Alumni Magazine, Summer 1980 Connecticut College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/alumnews Recommended Citation Connecticut College, "Connecticut College Alumni Magazine, Summer 1980" (1980). Alumni News. 213. https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/alumnews/213 This Magazine is brought to you for free and open access by the Linda Lear Center for Special Collections & Archives at Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Alumni News by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author. ggU:ticutThe Alumlli Magazine Editorial Board: Vivian Segall '73, Editor (l5A Latham Lane, Noank, CT 06340) I Gertrude E. Noyes '25 / Katherine Gould '81 / Sarah Hargrove Harris '57 I Wayne Swanson I Marilyn Ellman Frankel '64 I Marion Vibert Clark '24, Class Notes Editor I Elizabeth Damerel Gongaware '26, Assistant Editor I Helene Zimmer Loew '57 and Louise Stevenson Andersen '41, ex officio The Connecticut College Alumni Magazine (USPS 129·140). Official publication of the Connecticut College Alumni Association. AU publication rights reserved. Contents reprinted only by permission of the editor. Published by the Connecticut College Alumni Association at Sykes Alumni Center, Connecticut College, New London, CT, four times a year in Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall. Second- class postage paid at New London, CT 06320. Send form 3579 to Sykes Alumni Center, Connecticut College, New London, CT 06320. CASE member. Alumni Association Executive Board: Helene Zimmer Loew '57, President I Michael J. Farrar '73, Vice President I Warren Erickson '74, Secretary and Chairman of Programs Committee/ Cynthia Caravan Holden '74, Treasurer and Chairman of Finance Committee / Joan Jacobson Kronick '46, Joann Walton Leavenworth '56 and Jane Muddle Funkhouser '53, Alumni Trustees. Nancy L. Close '72, Suzanne Krim Greene '57 and Carol J. Ramsey '74, Directors / Committee Chairmen: Ellen Lougee Simmons '69 (Nominating), Ann Crocker Wheeler '34 (Alumni Giving), Barbara Vosburgh Omohundro'72 (Clubs), Nancy L. Close'72 (Classes), Roy D. Taylor '74 (Undergraduate/ Young Alumni Relations) I Jay B. Levin '73, Legal Advisor / Louise Stevenson Andersen '41 (Executive Director) and Vivian Segall '73 (Alumni Magazine Editor), ex officio Communications to any of the above may be addressed in care of the Alumni Office, Connecticut College, New London, CT 06320. Cover: Special thanks to Professor Charles Chu, whose painting of the Great Wall is inscribed "The 1980 Connecticut College Alumni Association Trip to China." Left: The poem translates "Watching a few falling flowers / Listening to the scattered singing of birds." Calligraphy by Charles Chu. The Connecticut College Alumni Magazine Volume 57, Number 4, Summer 1980 2 China: The runner tumbles Charles Chu 5 China: Travels with Charley Helen Haase Johnson '66 7 Eulogy to a crane Charles Chu 9 Coming of age in the "me generation" Laura L. Nash '70 II Letters 12 Round & About 13 In Memoriam 14 Reunion Notebook 20 Class Notes China: The runner tumbles What kind of nation will China become as she hurtles into the 20th century? By Charles Chu, Professor of Chinese Charles Chu found China in afervor of came home with excitement and puzzle- I kept telling myself that I was now in modernization, experimenting with free- ment. socialist China, where old images are dom, but living under a bureacracy as old Like curious foreign tourists, I was gone. Land is communized, property as Chinese history. The character above eager to poke around to see new things; ownership is collectivized or nationalized, means "return." but unlike others, 1 found myself easily everything is organized, jobs are as- merged in a culture that was familiar no signed, the economy is planned, social After 35 years of living in America, 1 was matter how it has changed. On a few oc- systems are redesigned and democracy naturally drawn to the idea of taking a casions, I was overwhelmed by the genu- is centralized. How would an individual trip to the land of my birth. In fact, Helen ine smiles of children; I was touched as function in such a society? The answer Johnson '66, the ever enthusiastic alum, I talked with some young people; mem- is personal flexibility, endurance, pa- and I had talked about organizing an ories flashed through my mind as I tience, or simply following the dictates alumni group to visit China ever since chatted with old friends and professors. of the state; otherwise, one would perish, Nixon's journey of peace to Peking. It I could not help but be emotionally as so many did. China has suffered a was not until Vice Premier Deng Xiao- drawn to those whom my hand touched. great loss in human resources because of ping came to visit the United States last Wherever I met people, the warmth of the rigid economic system and social year that China finally swung her door kinship gripped me, and my emotions code, and because of political manipula- open to foreign tourists in large numbers. churned. At times I felt there were so tion -c-especially during the Cultural China has undergone constant many unspoken words that my excite- Revolution of 1966 to I976. Only after changes in the past 30 years. Intensive ment froze. the death of Mao were these mistakes reading and research for my own curiosi- openly admitted by the communist ty have kept me up with Chinese affairs. "What did I do during the Cultural leaders. Belatedly, China realizes she I lamented the demise of the old regime, Revolution?" my friend said, repeating needs to breathe some fresh air in order but still held high hopes for better days my question. "I taught my subject, other- to regain her lost vitality. To effect this, for China's millions after 1949. Three wise lay low." the people were promised in 1978 the decades had gone by when, in March of "Incredible!" I said. "Four Big Democratic Rights": the right this year, China-the real China-reap- "Even though 1 tried to be quiet, they to speak out freely, to air views fully, to peared before my eyes. A jaunt of over were 'fishing' for me," he said. "They hold debates, and to write big-character two weeks in vast China was too short to picked bones out of the egg, misquoted posters. Excitement over this liberaliza- learn everything, but it was long enough a passage from one of my articles and tion spread quickly throughout China. to bring back many memories. My im- sent me down to work on the construc- The nation seemed to have made a I80- pressions told me that old, incredible tion of the Yangzi River bridge. It lasted degree turnabout into a new era. How- China is still there, but better days for two years." ever after one year of such an ex pen- the common people have yet to come. I I looked right into his eyes, speechless. ment, the atmosphere of this brief 2 freedom was found to be incongruous with the leaders' tastes, and the lid was put on once more. The well-known play- wright Cao Yu, now visiting in New York, said in March that the Chinese government feels the exercise of the Four Rights "is a practice which allows a person to talk irresponsibly, concoct false accusations and make slanderous statements against another without ever having to identify himself." He consi- ders the practice of these rights as more tyrannical than democratic. Now it has been announced that the Four Demo- cratic Rights will be taken away this August when the National People's Con- gress meets. Those courageous youths who, over the past 18 months, voiced op- position to certain government policies or uncovered injustice on the part of cer- tain individuals are now being jailed or banished. As a result, no more waves are being made. The rallying cry is that the nation is on a Second Long March toward Four Modernizations, which are to be achieved by the year 2000. Our alumni group toured China at the be- ginning of this national fervor. The situation is this. Since 1979, thou- sands of students have been sent abroad to study-over 450 are in the United States. Trade agreements with the West have increased in number and volume; foreign loans are negotiated, modern ma- chinery is ordered and delivered. Laws are passed to encourage the foreign in- vestments that were shunned in the past. Internally, new economic directives allow more freedom to factories, com- munes and collective enterprises. The most important changes involve the self- management of factories, labor con- tracts with communes, wage increases and new bonus systems, and the reversal of collective ownership of some land in Anhui Province, where land has been Children at a commune near Shanghai meet Connecticut's secret weapon, Charles Chu. 3 returned to small families and even to in- pie who, despite the egalitarian goals of I am getting old, my eyes are dimming. dividual farmers. All these measures socialist democracy, still live under the Everyone I see has two faces, point to a more diversified economic shadow of a bureacracy as old as Chinese and they can turn about, system and the prospect of a thriving history, though in a slightly different standing on their hands, feet to the sky. foreign trade. They represent a break form. For two years the People's Daily from China's splendid, self-imposed iso- has been printing reports of cadres' cor- My ears too are failing me. lation. ruption, factory inefficiency, institution- I am very hard of hearing.