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

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A strapping six-footer, Bi "got into the weight-lifting craze about two years ago, when it was big." He still pumps iron each morning before breakfast, which he takes at a local restaurant with four colleagues. Eating out is actually cheaper than cooking at home for Bi, since coal is very expensive. Besides, Bi is saving for new eyeglasses. He hates his thick lenses and believes he would not need them if he had grown up in the West. "Until about five years ago, we didn't have electricity," he says. "I read by candlelight till then. My eyes had gone to hell by the time I was eight."

Bi, his wife and two children live in a spare, two-room apartment of about 30 sq. yds. provided by his school. The bathroom is down the hall. In the smaller room the kids share a bed under a Michael Jackson poster. On the wall above the sink and the small stove are a calendar and a photo of the New York City skyline. "It's not much," says Bi, but the subsidized rent is only $4 a month.

The place of employment for most Chinese, called a work unit, or danwei, is usually responsible for providing housing and other essentials. "We used to get medical care for free too," says Bi, "but my danwei can't afford it now that the economic reforms have let doctors' fees rise."

Bi's seniority entitles him to a salary of about $38 a month -- less than a factory worker, taxi driver, guide and just about every other employed Chinese receives. Even so, for the next four years Bi must get by on $12 less each month. Five dollars is deducted automatically because the cash-starved government insists that state employees buy bonds. The other $7 represents a fine for the second child he and his wife had three years ago -- one child over Beijing's limit.

None of Bi's personal problems are on his mind this day. Instead he is incensed about work. "Meiyou," he says once, and then again. Meiyou (pronounced may-o) means "No, it cannot be done," or "No, we don't have it" -- a word foreigners learn quickly. "Too few primers," says Bi. "One hundred eighty-two students and 15 English books. Bad enough, right? But look at the books. They're about 40 years old, and boring. We can barely get by the first story."

Bi would like to ignore the texts entirely, but the college entrance exams test the books' content. "They can actually ask you how exactly Marx learned English," he says. (By writing for American newspapers, it turns out.) "So we have to go through them. But we also try to come up with exercises that get to the real questions of English grammar. Now, which word do you think belongs in the blank?"

The sentence on Bi's crumbling blackboard reads, "He has corn and other things -----------in his fields."

"O.K.," says Bi, "which word belongs in the blank, grown or growing?"

"Growing," I answer.

"What I said too," says Bi triumphantly to the three other teachers standing at his side.

"But what if it's a causative sentence?" asks a student who has wandered into the room. "What if the man who owns the fields employs workers so that all he does is give orders? Then the owner could be causing those crops to be < grown in his fields even though he isn't doing the actual work. Then you could use the word grown."

"What?" says one of the teachers.