A Day in The Life . . . . . . Of China: Free to Fly Inside the Cage

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It is impossible, after just five weeks "inside," to say what China is like. It is possible only to meet some people, sketch some scenes, let some voices tell their stories. And if, up close, childhood impressions fade, enough incongruities and paradoxes survive to concentrate the mind. Like the newspapers that urge "bitter struggle" against "bourgeois liberalism" while trumpeting the pleasures of disco dancing on the same page. Like the never ending loop of music in the lobby of a hotel in Sichuan province that alternates between a Rod Stewart oldie (Sailing) and a socialist goody (Without the Communist Party There Would Be No New China). Like the young man break-dancing to a blaring Madonna album amid a few hundred elderly tai chi practitioners at a Shanghai park. Like the reserve and civility evident in personal relations that rarely translate to civic responsibility. Like the more intractable tensions of incorporating the best of capitalism while preserving socialism -- tensions that have arisen because of, rather than in spite of, Deng's economic reforms. Like everything about the ghost marriage and those who celebrate it. All this and more reflect the clash of modernity and tradition and the exquisite balancing acts required when a nation persists in pursuing contradictory notions of culture, economics and politics at the same time.

Even the dead bride's Thatcher fixation tells a larger tale. The young woman, it seems, idolized Thatcher, not because she shared her politics but because with a single phrase Thatcher once captured her own world view: "If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman."

An exchange of business cards at the wedding, as common in China as saying hello, establishes that one of the guests has more than a nodding acquaintance with cremation. "Yeah," says a middle-aged man proudly, "I burn stiffs for a living." Only I smile. Everyone else knows what's coming, a recitation of the state's official line against using precious land for burials. "This is ridiculous," says the man, arcing a wad of spittle behind him, a small measure of civility indicating that China's famous antispitting campaign has done little more than improve the people's aim. "Zhou Enlai once said that China's greatest contribution to world peace was simply feeding its own people. To keep doing it we need the land -- all of it, every square meter. Earth burials are an incredible waste of space. Cremation is the future."

"Earth burial honors our ancestors," says a guest.

"Give me a break," says the man. (My hip translator is a Berkeley graduate.) "Despite our tradition of filial piety, most of us treat our elderly relatives like crap when they are alive. Then, when they die, we feel guilty and build shrines to their memory and use valuable land to bury them. It's all nonsense. It's all hypocrisy -- as hypocritical as this wedding."