Traffic Ooze, p. 2: What in America would have seemed an impossible traffic jam, in China I came to think of as traffic ooze. The density is such that a six-lane street most of the time becomes a 10- or 12-lane mess of slowly advancing vehicles. With an incredible awareness of the precise size and shape of their cars, drivers proceed with great finesse and an almost extrasensory awareness of mere inches of clearance on all sides. Progressing usually at a a glacial one to maybe eight miles an hour, the ooze rarely comes to a halt. Gridlock, mysteriously, doesn’t happen. Everybody keeps on oozing. A U-turn in the middle of a block, across all "lanes" of the ooze is not uncommon, nor is a left turn executed from the far right lane. Both are calmly accepted by all affected. Note the "calmly." Nobody gets upset, no raised voices or fists, and a horn is used only at some totally egregious automotive behavior. The really scary part: as far as I could make out: there is no eye-contact between drivers—that’s when I began suspecting ESP. After visits to my student’s relatives, I imposed on him to help me find culture—art, religion, theater, music. There too, whatever Old China had given the world, New China was taking it away pretty fast. In Beijing, I found a monthly magazine in English put out by the local expat community. It was a rather sharp publication with some good writing. I opened it to the pages listing cultural events in Beijing for the month of January, capital of my storied China and city of 14 million. I gasped. What I saw in terms of theater, art, and music was roughly what I’d expect in, say, Lubbock, Texas, or, being generous to Beijing, maybe Des Moines. A handful of art galleries (with mostly traditional Chinese art—we checked out several of them), a handful of concerts in various formats (symphonic, jazz, rock), a handful of Peking opera performances, and a couple of theaters. My eye stopped at the theaters. Something called the National Chinese Youth Theater was doing The Three-penny Opera. Ah-ha, I thought. I can’t find Very Old China. Maybe at least I can find Less Old China and see what a bit of musical Marxist theater looks like in the country that had really, really taken Marx seriously. Besides, the 3PO happens to be one of my favorite works. That evening, the thermometer at 25 above, wind-chill at 25 below, a taxi deposited us at the National Chinese Youth Theater, a modest, poorly marked establishment on a small side street . We entered just as Mack the Knife was starting his famous song. The house lights were still up and I’m sure I gasped again. Every seat was filled by a youngish audience dressed to the colorful nines in the latest Gap-Nike-Adidas offerings. The theater was unheated, so we all kept our gaily colored Thinsulate coats on. And the performance? To my ear it was note-perfect and, judging from my guide’s occasional translations, letter-perfect. But that doesn’t say enough. Imagine if a Las Vegas casino decided to do Brecht, brought in professional singers, actors, and musicians from Los Angeles and New York, spared no expense on the staging—spiffy new costumes, neat-looking props and scenery, and then the whole production is carried off with a slick elan—a kind of Wayne-Newton-on-the-Strip bravado—and you’ve got The Three-Penny Opera in Beijing 1999. Call it theatre engagé with capitalist tendencies. I’m sure I heard, at the other end of Eurasia, Brecht spinning in his grave. |
