This was also the case once in Beijing. I was resting, squatting in Chinese, and did not immediately notice the disheveled Chinese mincing in my direction. A poorly chosen resting place with a smell of common areas, traces of the recent trade in vegetables and a runoff of rotten water made me rise, I automatically answered his greeting. And suddenly a confused monologue followed:

China is a terrible place! All around lies, deception. Everyone is used. And thieves run everything, all warm places are distributed to their relatives. Mao was the main liar, he killed millions of people. I remember the corpses lying around the corner over there. When in the Cultural Revolution people driven to despair died of hunger on the streets, they were afraid to approach them, they avoided them like the plague. And Dan is a liar. Everything that is said in the West about the Chinese economic miracle is a mirage, our rulers are mediocre, unable to rule a city, let alone a country. Tibet, Xinjiang - I hope they will rise up soon. Are you recently from Taiwan? Tell the Taiwanese not to agree to unite with China, in any case. There is lies and violence everywhere.

...Stability under the leadership of the party, which is the primary goal of the leaders, is not cheap for the Chinese people. According to some reports, up to 20 million convicts of the Chinese Gulag are injected for free to ensure the Chinese Miracle. (A few years ago, a Chinese firm received a contract to build a railway in one of the African countries; the profitability of the contract it proposed was easily explainable: after finishing the work, it took its prisoner workers back to China.) Tried and tested political dissidents receive repeated fifteen-year sentences, criminals are shot in public in stadiums - in 1995, a thousand death sentences were carried out. Women who become pregnant a second time are fined, forced to have an abortion, or even sterilized. The order to shoot chest-level students in Tiananmen Square in 1989 was issued by the current authorities. “Kill the chicken to intimidate the monkeys,” explained the perpetrators of the persecution of the past decades in China. This rule stuck, and it seems that the authorities are not going to abandon it even now.

So many things I heard in China; here are some memorable phrases from this discord. Taxi driver in Harbin: "The party does not have much time to govern, they have already become across the throat for the people ." Shanghai student: “Students will not go out on the street again. But nobody else believes in either the party or the government. ” A young musician from Chongqing: "Whatever one may say, but without democracy, China will rot." An employee of the city administration of Chengdu (despite the constant tugging at his wife's sleeve): “The South is already unstable, and the poisoned gift of Hong Kongers who do not want to fall under the power of Beijing will only aggravate the centrifugal forces of this economically advanced region. And returning Taiwan will be much more difficult. ” Well-fed party members in Kaifeng: "The reforms are correct, but too fast, the foundation has not grown stronger, but they are building on, building on everything." “It’s hard to find a wife now,” the poor peasant complained.

(c) Ermolai Solzhenitsyn, new generation of same old scum