Graham Earnshaw was the Daily Telegraph correspondent in Beijing from 1980 to 1984, and he’s been looking through his clippings, which seem to prove both that China has changed completely and also that China has stayed exactly the same. This spring and summer, Danwei will be publishing a series of these reports from the past. This is today’s resurrected item:
‘New China’ Girl Gives State 35,000 Pounds
By Graham Earnshaw in Peking
August 5, 1981
A 23-year-old girl in eastern China who recently inherited more than 35,000 pounds sterling has given the whole amount to the State “to help the country realize the four modernizations”, the People’s Daily reported yesterday.
The paper said she did not have a place of her own to live and was staying at a friend’s house. “I wouldn’t be able top spend so much money in a whole lifetime, and anyway if I kept the money it would not bring me any real good fortune,” the paper quoted her a saying.
“I belong to new China and real good fortune comes from relying on one’s own labours to support oneself.”
Author’s note: one can guess at the pressure brought to bear on her. But back then, with the Cultural Revolution still fresh in everyone’s minds and nobody with any money in sight, the dangers of being “rich” were significant. Times have changed.