It
was May 1989 when I together with 5 other PAEC scientists went to Beijing as
State Guests of Peoples Republic of China (PRC) to work with our counterpart
Chinese scientists at the Beijing Institute of Nuclear Engineering (BINE).
Three of us were Reactor Physicists, Two dealt with Reactor Thermal Hydraulics
and one specialized in Reactor Control Engineering. Naturally we all were very
excited even before embarking on that trip. To us it was a trip not less than
going to the moon. The excitement was mainly for two reasons. Firstly, we were
the first ever group of scientists to be visiting China about which we all
invariably knew a lot without having ever been there and secondly we would be
the first ever from the whole world outside the iron curtain (Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe) countries to be interacting with the Chinese Scientists who, we
were told could only converse in Chinese or Russian at best. We departed early
in the morning by a PIA flight on 14 May 1989 from Karachi and arrived in
Beijing in late afternoon. The airport building was a dreary shed apparently
setup up in an airplane hangar. Our railway stations in Karachi or Lahore in my
opinion fared much better in comparison. It was our first jolting shock. In
those days not many airlines other than PIA flew to Beijing and we were the
only foreigners arriving there at least at that time of the day. There was only
one person at the immigration counter and a couple of others at the customs
desk. We got very quickly through and out we went to step into mysterious Communist
China. There were no taxis but a couple of representatives of BINE who came to
pick us up on two very old model cars perhaps of Russian make. The drive from
the airport to our hotel was long, passing through agriculture land. We could
see peasants working in the fields using the age old equipment, covering their
heads with large straw hats. It was green but a bit gloomy.
The
hotel to which we were taken was in the outskirts of Beijing. A translator was
assigned to us on a permanent basis. We discovered later that he was to be with
us at all times except of course at night. He was an agreeable, laughing all
the time sort of person. We quickly adapted to his Chinese English, which he
spoke, often than not, without any pause. In the first few exchanges of
pleasantries, he told us that BINE was nearby and at a walking distance from
the hotel. I remember we had to wait a long time at the reception desk for the
assigning of rooms. The clerks mostly middle aged men, having no knowledge of
English apparently found it difficult to comprehend, pronounce and write our
names (computers were still not common even in the Western World). Listening
very intently to such names as Muhammad Shrafat ullah Siddiqui, jerkingly
Pronouncing bit by bit and laughing incessantly in between and then writing it
in the Chinese with repeated tries made it very difficult for them to
proceed. Noting down particulars from our respective
passports was an even more difficult ordeal for them. Without the help of our
translator, it sure would have been an exercise in futility. The wait was boring
and excessively tiring.
After
a couple of hours of waiting, we ultimately were assigned rooms, all on the
same floor. We found the rooms centrally air conditioned and the attached
bathrooms clean and tidy. Soon the girls came with towels and thermos flask jugs,
containing hot water. It was hot and sultry and we couldn’t possibly drink hot
water, so we requested a maid to replace the jugs with cold water. She bowed
her head several times, took the flask back and returned a little later with
another set of jugs. To our horror, the jugs had even hotter water in them. The
Chinese in those days only used hot water for drinking. Cold or chilled water
simply didn’t exist. The room however had a refrigerator, which we soon learned
to use to quench our often excessively demanding thirst for cold water.
Even
though the day had shortened by three hours for us, it being summer time, the
sun had not set yet. At dusk time we all together stepped out of the hotel to
stroll around. In spite of the posh hotel that it was, we found the street
outside unpaved, nonmetalled and dusty. The place we were in was quite clearly part
of greater Beijing but still rural in character. There were no cars but only long
carts like the one pulled by camels in parts of Karachi with a difference
however that those were being pulled by men. These cart taxis were used by
people to travel from place to place. There were street hawkers squatting on
road sides and street corners selling water melon and other small time items.
There was a barber, like the one we have in our villages. He had a make shift
type of setup with a rickety high chair and a mirror supported and held in
position by some kind of temporary arrangement. I remember having seeing a
woman squatting on the road side with a carving knife and a meat cutting board
placed on a pedestal before her. As we watched even though very casually, we
noticed another woman approaching her. There was quick and sharp exchange of
words between them. We gathered she was a customer, inquiring about the merchandise;
she so eagerly wanted to purchase. After some argument about the price, the
seller woman to our amazement and also horror pulled out a snake from the pouch
under her thighs. After virtually nailing the snake on the cutting board, she
sliced it along the length, pulled out the meat and removed the skin quite
expertly. She repeated the exercise with 2-3 more snakes, which she took out
from the pouch one by one. The customer woman watched scrutinizingly but quite
clearly with half open watery mouth. We watched all this from a distance and
neither of the two women nor the passersby’s took note of us.. We were hungry
and wished to buy dinner for ourselves during this brief outing but our hunger
had altogether vanished. Some of us even felt like vomiting. Aweful! we kept
repeating as we slowly traced back our way to the hotel. Our first introduction
to China had mercifully concluded. Quite unaware of the historical events soon
to be unfolded during our stay in Beijing, we went to bed soon.
The
reader might appreciate the details being described here later when we actually
would talk about the Tienmen Square Massacre. It might not be possible to
understand the depth of the events soon to unfold without actually coming into
to grips with the state of China, its people, its economic condition and the
totalitarian government that existed there before the happenings of the Tienmen.
The buildup to the events would necessarily therefore be slow but quite
informative at the same time for those who do not know the China that it was at
that time. Mind it was only 25 years ago!
Next
day our translator and official companion arrived at about 08:00 in the morning
to pick us up. He took us first to the hotel dining room for breakfast, which
only he ate as we found it comprising of tasteless rice and other things
totally unpalatable to our taste and liking. After seeing the slaughtering of
snake none of us had the stomach to take meals the previous night and now we found
the breakfast, the sort of which our even empty stomachs refused to accept. We
were the State Guests of the Chinese Government. Although we all took it
sportingly, our translator was visibly upset. He thought it strange that we
didn’t take the breakfast, even though in his opinion it was the best, that he could
arrange and that too in one of the better Hotels of Beijing.
Later when I had several more
opportunities of going to Beijing, I found absolutely marvelous breakfast
arrangements with what ever one would like to help himself with. But the time
I’m talking about is 1989 and the Chinese at that time did not even know what
chilled or cold water meant. Later when I went there gain in 2004 as a State
Guest, we were served with bottles of chilled water just after arriving in the
limosine that was sent to pick us up from the airport.)
He
told us that our lunch arrangements were made at our BINE work place, where the
food would be prepared by muslim Chef and cooks from the Chinese Uigar region.
He told us we could have our breakfast there too. The BINE was at a walking
distance and we happily walked with him, passing through alleys and lanes on
either side of which were housing apartments. Even from outside, we could have
our first glimpse of their living ways and style. The balconies all invariably
had a bird cage hanging with singing bird perhaps a canary besides a washing
line with spread out washed clothes. The balconies were quite clearly also used
as a storing place to dump house items that probably were not in routine use. People
mostly middle aged women looked at us interestingly but in visible bewilderment.
On arrival at BINE, we were taken to a reception hall with sofas arranged in a
semicircle. No one received us but soon the Director Mr Lou Goming entered with
a group of 5-6 deputies and/or heads of departments and greeted us most
graciously.
