THENEWYORKER,AUGUST17, 2020 33
Colorado Springs, together at last. But
Chinese Christians and queers both rep-
resent fringe communities, and they’re
more likely to flourish in a place like
Chengdu, which is far from Beijing and
has a reputation for tolerance.
Serena’s reporting was part of a trend
that I had noticed in the fall; namely, that
many students were good at it. Sichuan
University is among China’s top thirty
or so institutions, but few of my students
majored in media studies. Even in that
department, it is uncommon for under-
graduates to do much field work, because
Chinese journalism classes emphasize
theory. Initially, I wasn’t sure if self-
directed projects would be appropriate
for my students, especially the freshmen,
who had just completed the gaokao, the
national college-entrance examination.
Preparation for the exam has intensified
in the past twenty years, in part because
of all the one-child households, which
tend to focus energy and resources on
education. As a result, gaokao prep has
become a brutal grind, and high-school
students have few opportunities to de-
velop creativity or independence.
But I quickly learned that, for all the
gaokao’s flaws, it produced diligent re-
searchers. The students had an extremely
high tolerance for boredom, which is a
lesser-known secret of effective jour-
nalism. When I explained the impor-
tance of details—numbers, signs, slo-
gans, quotes, facial expressions—they
collected data accordingly. My fresh-
man composition classes consisted en-
tirely of engineers, and there was no
logical reason for them to be assigned
journalism projects, but nobody com-
plained. Even among these only chil-
dren, there seemed to be little sense of
entitlement. Near the end of the fall
term, when Serena was neck-deep in
Catholics and gay bars, I realized that
I had failed to properly register her for
the course. The administration informed
me that it was too late: she couldn’t re-
ceive credit. Serena’s response to her
nonfiction experience—first rejected,
then denied credit—was to ask politelyif she could finish out the term’s work
and then do it over again in the spring,
this time on the books. That was one
tradition that hadn’t changed: in China,
a student always respects her teacher,
even if the teacher is a moron.W
hen we emerged from lockdown,
I asked the students to write
about a person or an organization that
was dealing with the effects of the
pandemic. Near Nanjing, Andy’s fam-
ily knew somebody who ran a venti-
lator factory, so he visited the plant,
where he learned that production had
increased more than tenfold. In Liao-
ning, in the far northeast, Momo re-
searched a state-owned tobacco com-
pany that had suffered a steep drop in
sales. In the U.S., there were reports of
increased tobacco use during lockdown.
But Chinese smoking is often social—
people light up at banquets and din-
ners, and they give cartons of cigarettes
as gifts. An accountant told Momo that
one of the company’s post-COVID strat-
egies—and, by any measure, a new vi-
sion of public health—was to give away
masks and disinfectant to retailers who
purchased cigarettes.
I liked these glimpses of life from all
over. In Xi’an, Elaine visited a lesbian
bar, where she noted that the owner
kept some of the beer warm, because of
the traditional Chinese belief that cold
drinks are bad for women. Sisyphos
profiled a pharmacist, who outlined how
one could skirt government rules on
mask price-gouging, although his sense
of responsibility had prevented him from
doing it himself. Hongyi shadowed a
loan manager at a state-owned bank
in Chengdu. A new program granted
deferrals to borrowers who had been
affected by the pandemic, and Hongyi
reported that three hundred and sev-
enty people called the manager to ask
about the program. The bank approved
deferrals for twenty-two. At another
branch, every applicant was rejected.
This was a recurring theme—in
economic terms, individuals seemed to
be largely on their own. The Party had
never allowed the protections of inde-
pendent unions, and across China sal-
aries were cut and workers were laid off.
In April, the country recorded the first
economic contraction since the end of
the Cultural Revolution, in 1976. ButTree frogs mostly sound like birds.
The tree frog overcomes its fear of birds by singing.
The harmonica playing is so bewitching,
The boy gathers a crowd in a flea market
In the Deep South. A bird may eat a frog.
A fox may eat the bird. A wolf may eat the fox.
And the wolf then may carry varieties of music
And cunning in its belly as it roams the countryside.
A wolf hungers because it cannot feel the good
In its body. The people clap & gather round
With fangs & smiles. The father lifts the son
To his shoulders so the boy’s harmonics hover
Over varieties of affections, varieties of bodies
With their backs to a firmament burning & opening.
You can find damn near anything in a flea market:
Pets, weapons, flags, farm-fresh as well as farm-spoiled
Fruits & vegetables, varieties of old wardrobes,
A rusty old tin box with old postcards & old photos
Of lynchings dusted in the rust of the box.
You can feel it on the tips of your fingers,
This rust, which is almost as brown as the father
And the boy on his shoulders & the girl making
The sound a tree frog makes in a flea market
In the Deep South before the blood of dusk,
Just before the last blood of dusk. Just before the dusk.—Terrance Hayes