There never was a real “bamboo curtain,” just like there wasn’t a real “iron curtain.” Whereas, most people understood the iron curtain to be the metaphorical border that divided Europe after WW2 into the “free world” and the “communist world,” the term “bamboo curtain” was used to describe that same border separating “communist China” from “free Asia”. But “bamboo curtain” never really became a part of the popular venacular during the 1970’s. For Americans wishing to visit China during that era, however, it was every bit as unbreachable a wall. Although Richard Nixon had opened the door to a changing relationship between the two nations, it wasn’t until 1979 that America set up diplomatic relations with China and American students began trickling into mainland China. I have vivid memories of traveling through Hong Kong in 1979 and taking a train with the poet, William Howard Cohen. We rode the train to the end of the line to look at mainland China from a hill near Lowu. I remember feeling sorry for the hard working communist farmers in the fields below.
We were all pretty ignorant of China at that time. Remembering the propoganda magazines and English tracts of Mao’s Little Red Book (毛主席语录 Máo Zhǔxí Yǔlù) and White Haired Girl (白毛女 Bái Máo Nǚ) I picked up in Vancouver in the early 70’s and the passages from the elementary children’s textbooks in Taiwan lambasting mainlanders as Communist Bandits 共匪 gòngfěi , it’s no wonder most foreigners remained ignorant of China. Most of us were totally unaware of the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” (无产阶级文化大革命 wúchǎn jiējí wénhuà dà gémìng) rampaging through China destroying young and old alike. Communism was always more of a vision than a plan. Still the Red Guard believed that by destroying the old, they would enable the new, and that by relegating university professors to working the fields and having uneducated peasants become their teachers, China would emerge glorious and victorious. But it didn’t. It would take years to recover and evolve into China’s current “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.”
Unlike the iron curtain which toppled, the bamboo curtain opened on its own volition. When the US normalized relations with Beijing 30 years after it had established itself as the official government of China, America merely joined the ranks of the majority of countries of the world . The USA and China issue the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations, in which America agreed that there is only one China and that Taiwan is a part of China; China’s one concession is that America could continue to carry on an unofficial relationship with Taiwan.
Chinese Odyssey 17
At that time ‘round China
was a big bamboo curtain.
No way to go in then
that was for certain.
So we stood by a fence,
at the edge of Hong Kong,
watching communists work.
It all seemed so wrong.
The Panda in the Room PD 