Mr. Shapiro was an old fox, good at sweet-talking. When we asked him why he had chosen to do business in our Muji City, he had said he wanted to help the Chinese people, because in the late thirties his parents had fled Red Russia and lived here for three years before moving on to Australia; they had been treated decently, though they were Jews. With an earnest look on his round, whiskery face, Mr. Shapiro explained, "The Jews and the Chinese had a similar fate, so I feel close to you. We all have dark hair." He chuckled as if he had said something funny. In fact that was capitalist baloney. We don't have to eat Cowboy Chicken here, or appreciate his stout red nose and his balding crown, or wince at the thick black hair on his arms. His company exploited not just us but also thousands of country people. A few villages in Hebei Province grew potatoes for Cowboy Chicken, because the soil and climate there produced potatoes similar to Idaho's. In addition, the company had set up a few chicken farms in Anhui Pro vince to provide meat for its chain in China. It used Chinese produce and labor and made money out of Chinese customers, then shipped its profit back to the U.S. How could Mr. Shapiro have the barefaced gall to claim he had come to help us. We have no need for a savior like him. As for his parents' stay in our city half a century ago, it was true that the citizens here had treated Jews without discrimination. That was because to us a Jew was just another foreigner, not different from other white devils. We still cannot tell the difference.
We nicknamed Mr. Shapiro Party Secretary, because just like a Party boss anywhere he did little work. The only difference was that he didn't organize political studies or demand we report to him our inner thoughts. Peter Jiao, his manager, ran the business for him. I had known Peter since middle school. At that time he had been named Peihai Jiao, an anemic, studious boy with few friends to play with. Boys often made fun of him because he had four tourbillions on his head. His father had served as a platoon commander in the Korean War and had been captured by the American army. Unlike some of the POWs who chose to go to Canada or Taiwan, Peihai's father, Out of his love for our motherland, decided to come back. But when he had returned, he was discharged from the army and sent down to a farm in a northern suburb of our city. In reality all those captives who had come back were classified as suspected traitors. A lot of them were jailed again. Peihai's father worked under surveillance on the farm, but people r arely maltreated him, and he had his own home in a nearby village. He was reticent most of the time; so was his wife, a woman who didn't know her dad's name because she had been fathered by some Japanese officer. Their only son, Peihai, had to walk three miles to town for school every weekday. That was why we called him Country Boy.
Unlike us, he always got good grades. In 1977 when colleges reopened, he passed the entrance exams and enrolled at Tianjin Foreign Language Institute to study English. We had all sat for the exams, but only two out of the three hundred seniors from our high school had passed the admission standard. After college, Peihai went to America, studying history at the University of Iowa. Later he changed his field and got a degree in business from that school. Then he came back, a completely different man, robust and wealthy, with curly hair and a new name. He looked energetic, cheerful, and younger than his age. At work he was always dressed formally, in a Western suit and a bright-colored tie. He once joked with us, saying he had over fifty pounds of American flesh. To tell the truth, I liked Peter better than Peihai. I often wondered what in America had changed him so much--in just six years from an awkward boy to a capable, confident man? Was it American water? American milk and beef? The American climate? The A merican way of life? I don't know for sure. More impressive, Peter spoke English beautifully, much better than those professors and lecturers in the City College who had never gone abroad and learned English mainly from textbooks written by the Russians. He had hired me probably because I had never bugged him in our school days and because I had a slightly lame foot. Out of gratitude I never talked about his past to my fellow workers.
On the day Cowboy Chicken opened, about forty officials from the Municipal Administration came to celebrate. A vicemayor cut the red silk ribbon at the opening ceremony with a pair of scissors two feet long. He then presented Mr. Shapiro with a brass key the size of a small poker. What's that for? we wondered. Our city didn't have a gate with a colossal lock for it to open. The attendees at the ceremony sampled our chicken, fries, coleslaw, salad, biscuits. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and orange soda were poured free like water. People touched the vinyl seats, the Formica tables, the dishwasher, the microwave, the cash register, the linoleum tile on the kitchen floor, and poked their heads into the freezer and the brand-new rest rooms. They were impressed by the whole package shipped directly from the U.S.A. A white-bearded official said, "We must learn from the Americans. See, how they have managed to meet every need of their customers. Everything was thought out beforehand." Some of them watched us frying chicken in the stainless steel troughs, which were safe and clean, nothing like a soot-bottomed cauldron or a noisy, unsteady wok. The vicemayor shook hands with every employee and told us to be cooperative with our American boss. The next day the city's newspaper, the Muji Herald, published a lengthy article about Cowboy Chicken, describing its appearance here as a significant breakthrough in the city's campaign to attract foreign investors.
During the first few weeks we had a lot of customers, especially young people, who, eager to taste something American, would come in droves. We got so much business that the cooked-meat stands on the streets had to move farther and farther away from our restaurant. Sometimes when we passed those stands, their owners would spit to the ground and curse without looking at us, "Foreign lackeys!"
We'd cry back, "We eat Cowboy Chicken every day and we've gained lots of weight."
At first Mr. Shapiro worked hard, often staying around late until we closed at ten-thirty. But as the business was flourishing, he lay back more and stayed in his office for hours on end, reading newspapers and sometimes chewing a skinny sausage wrapped in cellophane. He rested so well in the daytime and had so much energy to spare that he began to date the girls working for him. There were four of them, two full-timers and two part-timers, all around twenty, healthy and lively, though not dazzlingly pretty. Imagine, once a week, on Thursday night, a man of over fifty went out with a young girl who was willing to go anywhere he took her. This made us, the three men hired by him, feel useless, like a bunch of eunuchs, particularly myself because I had never had a girlfriend, though I was almost thirty. Most girls were good to me, but for them I was just a nice fellow deserving more pity than affection, as if I weren't able to handle my crippled foot all right. For me, Mr. Shapiro was just a dirty old man, but the girls here were no good either, always ready to sell something--a smile, a few sweet words, and perhaps their flesh. …
Mr. Shapiro was an old fox, good at sweet-talking. When we asked him why he had chosen to do business in our Muji City, he had said he wanted to help the Chinese people, because in the late thirties his parents had fled Red Russia and lived here for three years before moving on to Australia; they had been treated decently, though they were Jews. With an earnest look on his round, whiskery face, Mr. Shapiro explained, "The Jews and the Chinese had a similar fate, so I feel close to you. We all have dark hair." He chuckled as if he had said something funny. In fact that was capitalist baloney. We don't have to eat Cowboy Chicken here, or appreciate his stout red nose and his balding crown, or wince at the thick black hair on his arms. His company exploited not just us but also thousands of country people. A few villages in Hebei Province grew potatoes for Cowboy Chicken, because the soil and climate there produced potatoes similar to Idaho's. In addition, the company had set up a few chicken farms in Anhui Pro vince to provide meat for its chain in China. It used Chinese produce and labor and made money out of Chinese customers, then shipped its profit back to the U.S. How could Mr. Shapiro have the barefaced gall to claim he had come to help us. We have no need for a savior like him. As for his parents' stay in our city half a century ago, it was true that the citizens here had treated Jews without discrimination. That was because to us a Jew was just another foreigner, not different from other white devils. We still cannot tell the difference.We nicknamed Mr. Shapiro Party Secretary, because just like a Party boss anywhere he did little work. The only difference was that he didn't organize political studies or demand we report to him our inner thoughts. Peter Jiao, his manager, ran the business for him. I had known Peter since middle school. At that time he had been named Peihai Jiao, an anemic, studious boy with few friends to play with. Boys often made fun of him because he had four tourbillions on his head. His father had served as a platoon commander in the Korean War and had been captured by the American army. Unlike some of the POWs who chose to go to Canada or Taiwan, Peihai's father, Out of his love for our motherland, decided to come back. But when he had returned, he was discharged from the army and sent down to a farm in a northern suburb of our city. In reality all those captives who had come back were classified as suspected traitors. A lot of them were jailed again. Peihai's father worked under surveillance on the farm, but people r arely maltreated him, and he had his own home in a nearby village. He was reticent most of the time; so was his wife, a woman who didn't know her dad's name because she had been fathered by some Japanese officer. Their only son, Peihai, had to walk three miles to town for school every weekday. That was why we called him Country Boy.Unlike us, he always got good grades. In 1977 when colleges reopened, he passed the entrance exams and enrolled at Tianjin Foreign Language Institute to study English. We had all sat for the exams, but only two out of the three hundred seniors from our high school had passed the admission standard. After college, Peihai went to America, studying history at the University of Iowa. Later he changed his field and got a degree in business from that school. Then he came back, a completely different man, robust and wealthy, with curly hair and a new name. He looked energetic, cheerful, and younger than his age. At work he was always dressed formally, in a Western suit and a bright-colored tie. He once joked with us, saying he had over fifty pounds of American flesh. To tell the truth, I liked Peter better than Peihai. I often wondered what in America had changed him so much--in just six years from an awkward boy to a capable, confident man? Was it American water? American milk and beef? The American climate? The A merican way of life? I don't know for sure. More impressive, Peter spoke English beautifully, much better than those professors and lecturers in the City College who had never gone abroad and learned English mainly from textbooks written by the Russians. He had hired me probably because I had never bugged him in our school days and because I had a slightly lame foot. Out of gratitude I never talked about his past to my fellow workers.
On the day Cowboy Chicken opened, about forty officials from the Municipal Administration came to celebrate. A vicemayor cut the red silk ribbon at the opening ceremony with a pair of scissors two feet long. He then presented Mr. Shapiro with a brass key the size of a small poker. What's that for? we wondered. Our city didn't have a gate with a colossal lock for it to open. The attendees at the ceremony sampled our chicken, fries, coleslaw, salad, biscuits. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and orange soda were poured free like water. People touched the vinyl seats, the Formica tables, the dishwasher, the microwave, the cash register, the linoleum tile on the kitchen floor, and poked their heads into the freezer and the brand-new rest rooms. They were impressed by the whole package shipped directly from the U.S.A. A white-bearded official said, "We must learn from the Americans. See, how they have managed to meet every need of their customers. Everything was thought out beforehand." Some of them watched us frying chicken in the stainless steel troughs, which were safe and clean, nothing like a soot-bottomed cauldron or a noisy, unsteady wok. The vicemayor shook hands with every employee and told us to be cooperative with our American boss. The next day the city's newspaper, the Muji Herald, published a lengthy article about Cowboy Chicken, describing its appearance here as a significant breakthrough in the city's campaign to attract foreign investors.
During the first few weeks we had a lot of customers, especially young people, who, eager to taste something American, would come in droves. We got so much business that the cooked-meat stands on the streets had to move farther and farther away from our restaurant. Sometimes when we passed those stands, their owners would spit to the ground and curse without looking at us, "Foreign lackeys!"
We'd cry back, "We eat Cowboy Chicken every day and we've gained lots of weight."
At first Mr. Shapiro worked hard, often staying around late until we closed at ten-thirty. But as the business was flourishing, he lay back more and stayed in his office for hours on end, reading newspapers and sometimes chewing a skinny sausage wrapped in cellophane. He rested so well in the daytime and had so much energy to spare that he began to date the girls working for him. There were four of them, two full-timers and two part-timers, all around twenty, healthy and lively, though not dazzlingly pretty. Imagine, once a week, on Thursday night, a man of over fifty went out with a young girl who was willing to go anywhere he took her. This made us, the three men hired by him, feel useless, like a bunch of eunuchs, particularly myself because I had never had a girlfriend, though I was almost thirty. Most girls were good to me, but for them I was just a nice fellow deserving more pity than affection, as if I weren't able to handle my crippled foot all right. For me, Mr. Shapiro was just a dirty old man, but the girls here were no good either, always ready to sell something--a smile, a few sweet words, and perhaps their flesh. …
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