Forbidden City Read Online Free PDF

residence card mixed together. Every family has a green residence book. Kids are in the father’s book. To get your ration coupons — a lot of food here is rationed, like rice, cooking oil, meat, milk, and more — you have to show your
hu kou
. No green book, no coupons.”
    “I think I’m beginning to see,” Dad said.
    “Yep. If you tell your boss — your leader, they call him or her — to stick his job in his ear, and you quit and go to another job, he refuses to transfer your
hu kou
.”
    “He can do that?” I asked angrily.
    “Your leader has tremendous power over your life, Alex. In lots of things, not just your job.
Hu kou
is also the way the government controls population movement. For instance, if you live in the country on a farm and you want to move into the city, you can’t. The Public Security Bureau won’t accept your
hu kou
. So you have to stay where you are. Otherwise, millions of people would move into the cities, which are already overcrowded.”
    I let all this soak in for a minute. I could see the part about the population. There were well over a billion people in China. But the stuff about the jobs sounded stupid to me.
    “Anyway,” I said, “it’s too bad. Lao Xu is a terrific guy. I really like him.”
    “Yeah,” Dad said, “me too.”
    Eddie smiled a cold smile. “Yep, Lao Xu is the nicest spy you’d ever want to meet.”
    “Spy?” I almost shouted. “What do you mean?”
    Eddie took a big swallow of beer and shifted in his chair. “Well, part of Lao Xu’s job is to keep his superiors up to date on our activities. As a matter of fact,” he laughed, “if one of us sneezes, the Party boss says Bless you. Or would, if she weren’t officially an atheist.”
    “Come on, Eddie,” I complained. “Stop talking in riddles.”
    “Alex, you know that Lao Xu’s job is to assist me and your dad as an interpreter, right?” And you know he helps us if we want to arrange an interview with someone, or dig up some background for a story. For instance, tomorrow morning we’re goingto the Citi building — you’ve seen it, it’s down past the Friendship Store — to do a little piece on a new joint venture between China and another wine industry in France. Well, Lao Xu made the connections and got approval from the government to set it up.”
    “Approval? Why do you need approval?”
    “Because it’s a government project. Remember, this is a centralized communist state. The government doesn’t have to talk to the CBC about its plans to do business with French grape-growers. This isn’t Canada, where the government officials are responsible to the citizens because the citizens elected them. Political power here belongs to a very few, very old men. The Chinese government can do whatever it pleases, including send us all home tomorrow if it wants. Lao Xu is also arranging for us to cover Gorbachev’s visit. We’ll do our interviews, write our copy, then take the tapes down to CBS or CNN and ask them nicely if we can use their satellite feed to send the video to Toronto. But that satellite feed is set up by the Chinese government especially for the state visit, and they can pull the plug anytime.
    “Lao Xu wears a couple of hats, Alex. He’s assigned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to help us. And he’s good. He has lots of contacts and he gets us stuff that helps us keep ahead of a lot of the other news agencies. But part of his job is reporting back to his superiors on all our activities.”
    “But what’s to report? I mean, you’re not doing anything wrong or illegal. What do they care?”
    Eddie took another swallow of beer, then puffed furiously to get his stove going again. “They care because we’re foreigners. Foreigners are not trusted here — or in any country where there is no freedom. Number two, your dad and I are journalists from a country that has freedom of the press. We’re used to writing and broadcasting and” — he nodded to my dad —