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Life has grown sweeter in Longzhao. Women who once made $10 a month can now take home $30 to $40, while their husbands earn similar paychecks building houses and factories, thanks to the construction boom, or working at jobs once limited to large collectives, like raising pigs and ducks. Liao's husband builds houses. With their combined income of $670 a year, they were able to buy a three-room duplex for $1,700. The collective chipped in about $300, and the couple will pay the balance over several years. Liao does not begrudge the debt, since it symbolizes better times. "We used to live under a straw roof," she says. Her next big purchase: a color TV to replace the black-and-white set.
Yet along with free enterprise come the whims of the customer. The garment factory's profits, normally about $30,000 a year, fell to $15,000 in 1984, when the collective overestimated the demand for army-style clothes. "We have to be much more responsive to the market," admits Director Ru, Liao's boss. After the relative freedom of laboring in the fields, some workers have trouble adjusting to the tyranny of the assembly line. "You can't just go out to the well whenever you want, but I am getting used to it," says Liao.
The full scope of the reforms can best be glimpsed in Sichuan's cities, especially in Chongqing and in Chengdu, the province's capital. Under a huge white statue of Mao, disparagingly called the "Old Man" by many Chinese, downtown Chengdu is alive with hundreds of peddlers hawking fruit, vegetables, meat, fabrics, pots, wicker furniture, even Brooke Shields calendars. The bargaining would shame an Arab bazaar. "What do you mean selling them at this price?" a woman asks a man hawking tangerines. "They're full of defects." The vendor yells back, "Defects? What do you mean defects? You can't get tangerines at a better price." Meanwhile, local government agents patrol the street, collecting a 2% sales tax on what the sellers have, brought to the market, setting off more arguments about the value of the wares.
Entrepreneurs in Chengdu dabble in many things, but few are as versatile as Zhang Wu, 36, who owns a construction firm, an appliance store, a beauty shop and a nightclub. The son of an officer in Chiang Kai-shek's army, Zhang was branded a counterrevolutionary and he languished behind bars for a dozen years before being freed in 1977. Though Zhang is so wealthy he can afford a car, the ultimate luxury, he still feels ostracized. "People look down on me because I was in jail for political reasons," he says, perhaps ignoring the fact that some may suffer from what the Chinese call "red-eyed disease," or jealousy.
If Sichuan is plump with signs of progress, there are also constant reminders of how primitive the province remains. The countryside is redolent of night soil, or human excrement, a time-honored method of fertilization. Carts are still pulled by men in harness. If a village is lucky enough to have a telephone, it is usually the hand-crank variety.