The Gleaming Red Testicles of Communism .... by Adam (2005)

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Shhh…I’ve got a secret. Don’t tell anyone just yet.  But be sure to remember that you heard it here first.

Here it is: China is on the rise.  

Yes, the moaning you hear is our planet’s economy as the Chinese caress the stiff nipples of modernity. So I recently took two-weeks in China for an exploratory dip in the fresh spittle of this awakening giant. I discovered cities far more glitzy and self-gratified than I had imagined. And a land seemingly bereft of the communism that fuelled Chinese economics and society in the prior century.  

As a long-time fan of wacky Utopianisms gone wrong, I spent much of my trip rummaging around for the meaning of communism. One would think that a place referred to as “Communist China”, run by “The Communist Party” might contain a bit of… communism.  

But gone are the drab state-run eyesores of an era past. Instead, McDonald’s, Starbucks and KFC strut the street-corners of Shanghai and Beijing like gaudy whores. Clad in tawdry skirts of neon and plastic, they beckon passers-by to stop in for quick carborgasms.

Meanwhile the boudoirs of Prada, Gucci and Louis Vuitton entice customers with promises of storegasmic eruptions – the kind only attained through the accumulation of socially approved status-symbols. And the new middle and upper class urban Chinese – bloated with excess cash – are all too happy to feed their caffeine, sugar and status addictions.

Sure, you can still walk the fashionable lanes in your pyjamas, with a napkin stuck to your open sores. But there should be more to communism than that.  

I had always pegged the definition of communism to something like “an economic system based on the collective ownership of property.” But with most corporate brands and outlets prancing round the neighbourhood, I tried to refashion that description. I finally settled on this: “Communism is an economic system that prohibits the construction of Dairy Queens.” I was intellectually content with that – until I discovered a DQ/Orange Julius hybrid shop in Beijing.  

There is even a Starbucks in Beijing’s mystical Forbidden City. This begs the question: forbidden to whom? In centuries past, foreign eyes would be pierced merely for setting sight on this royal refuge.

It’s also not forbidden to Roger Moore, who accompanied me on my tour of the walled city, describing to me (on tape), tales of “the emperor indulging in the favours of his harem.” James Bond… low-fat Frappacinos…. It seems the Chinese will have to be content that their ancient sanctuary is forbidden to the KFC Crispy Strip.  

One possible plug for the Chinese political void is Phlegmunism – the resigned approval which greets human waste-management tasks. Even in glamorous Shanghai, the streets are alive with bodily functions.

 Old men cough out meatballs of succulent phlegm. A pretty, young waitress extinguishes table candles in 2/3 of her section with a single, throaty belch. Attempting to retrieve last night’s pork dumplings, a delicate old lady rattles her esophagus with barking hoarks, splattering her successful attempts over the feet of passers-by. Chinese mouths chew with smacking sounds similar to what I imagine removing a lubricated drainpipe from an anus might produce.  

Plus vomit. I have taken hundreds of flights in my life and not once have I seen or heard anyone vomit. These bragging rights came to a retching halt when I flew a Chinese domestic airline.  

Granted it was a bumpy flight. But I was shocked and repulsed that some 20 passengers felt smug enough to fill their airsick bags (I’m not exaggerating!). Flight attendants scuttled round, conveying bags distended with fresh upchuck. A dreadful gagging din arose and the stench of digestion wafted freely through the cabin.  

Even I, with my barf-proof constitution, felt a sickening urge to get reacquainted with my breakfast. But they had already drafted my sick-bag for the cause. I asked a flight attendant if such galas of gag were normal and she said, “yes…giggle”. (Of course earlier I had asked for an English newspapers and she said “yes…giggle”. I’m still waiting for my Herald Tribune.) 

And I have heard tales of Chinese toilets where patrons are forced into group BM jamborees. Before the current clean-toilet revolution, China’s crappers consisted of rows of floor perforations with no separation barriers to protect you from the wayward splatter of your poo-neighbours.  

These would be unacceptable toilets for me, as my hairy legs are not conducive to the repulsion of errant sticky pastes or liquids. Had I been travelling in rural China, I may have been forced into stretching my constipation past my designated 3-day standard. I prefer to harvest my fecal yield in isolation.  

Oh… sorry… I got side-tracked for a moment. I was talking about politics. So what is communism exactly? My generation grew up thinking it was a system of gruesome oppression producing hulking female weightlifters, waiting-lists for sausage purchases and bloodthirsty foreign curmudgeons hungrily dreaming of roasting our loved ones with nuclear obliteration.  

Communism is meant to bring justice and equality to humanity by allowing the workers to control the means of production. It’s supposed to end the exploitation that results in inequality. A perfect communism would give workers, women and minorities equality, would provide food, education and health care to all, would protect our environment etc. All without creating the alienation we now feel as tiny cogs churning in a brutal corporate controlled system.   

Oh, and with communism everyone could eat chocolate bunnies for dinner without getting fat and we would all have fresh breath and larger penises.  

But lately, the doctrine of communism in China contains about as much meat as a Nancy Reagan bicep. A ‘McTatorship of the proletariat’ has replaced the supposed “rule by the workers.”  On the bright side, it seems to have come with a few of the freedoms Chinese dissidents have been whinging for during years of both secretive and public opposition. 

Sure, disappointed parents are still forced to toilet-flush female newborns. And the occasional Falun Gong limb may get pushed through a gulag wood-chipper. But the snitching, spying, torture and paranoia is dissipating slowly.  

For example my friend Ben is a member of the Communist Party. He never tried to torture me. We didn’t have to check to see if we were being followed. He imprisoned no peasants for travelling without papers or reading non-party literature. To join the party, all he had to do was sit at his Toshiba laptop, latte in hand, and compose an essay condemning capitalists as ugly ingrown hairs aside the gleaming red testicles of communism.

 In Ben’s city of Beijing, citizens speak with an accent composed primarily of choking noises and panicky gagging sounds. Squeeze the back of your tongue between two fingers and say “garage celery” and you get a good idea of a typical Beijing sentence. To some (well… me), this vomitty accent stands as a metaphor for the difficulty with which the Chinese have swallowed modernity and capitalism. They’re doing it, but not without lots of societal gagging. 

The glitzy towers of Shanghai and the wide leafy avenues of Beijing are impressive. But alongside such progress nearly a billion angry peasants seem ready to ignite. The environment gets clobbered, the poor are neglected at best, brutally violated at worst. One wonders if a few hundred million or so might storm the citadels and repossess the DVD players they assembled during their 16 hour sweatshop shifts. 

 The portrait of Chairman Mao and his prodigious chin-mole still loom over Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. I have always been an enthusiast of Mae Tse Tung and his murderously misguided shenanigans.

 This was a man of lofty ideals. He Leapt Forward toward agricultural and industrial stability by starving to death 40 million of his laziest citizens and forcing accountants to plant broccoli. He Revolutionised Culture by torturing monks and burning watercolour paintings. But gone are the days when the Chinese would attempt to mount such galloping aspirations. 

So now it’s capitalism. But without the democracy that normally fuels it. We are all impressed with the Chinese ability to suppress hundreds of unarmed schoolgirls with a few measly tank battalions. But Mao is dead, Deng is gone and the party faces a future of murky uncertainty. An upper class may now be able afford to install the newest ass-wiping technology in the toilets of their getaway cottages, but outside the trees are turning brown, the water yellow and the peasants ornery.

 I climbed The Great Wall and it is extraordinary. But the new super-rich Chinese will need a bigger one to protect themselves from the storming hordes of angry peasants and the noxious fumes of ecological disaster. And unless the bricks can be fashioned from the ubiquitous street phlegm, they’d better look to democracy as a building block. 

But like the West took dreary Chinese food and perfected it, the opportunity is there for the Chinese to improve on our dismal efforts at democracy. Let’s all pray for the Sweet and Sour Chicken Ball style of freedom, rather than the Hoof and Intestine Stew version that we in the West suffer through.

See my China pics