U.S. News & World Report - June 1997

BY CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY

[Christopher Buckley is a humorist and author of Wry Martinis, a collection of short pieces.]

Welcome to our Internet chat room: Chinese President Jiang Zemin will now answer the questions of all concerned Hong Kong residents When you take over Hong Kong on July 1, will you be sending tanks into our streets?

Absolutely not! For one thing, your streets are too narrow for our tanks. For another, it is sticky business to clean tank treads after running over democracy demonstrators. Comrade Gen. Wo Tu Yu of the Central Committee for Urban Harmony advises that he is excited to use the new four-wheel-drive, all-terrain DDV (dissident disperser vehicle) with V-6 engine and fender-mounted Prole-Roller. It proved most successful during a recent field test in Tibet province when neoirredentist monks armed with wooden bowls unprovokedly attacked the People's Persuasion and Detention Center.

As a small-business man, I have worked like a rat all my life to accumulate savings. Will these be safe if I leave them in Hong Kong?

Very safe! We have an excellent place to put your money. Each month you will receive a statement showing what exciting hydroelectric and nuclear weapons projects it is helping to build.

Will we be able to vote in elections?

Limpid heavens, yes! After each election, you will be notified whom you have voted for and what glorious reforms are in store. Have you not read Comrade Ha'ng Man's exhortation to the recent 38th Congress of Electrical Insulators: "Together We Can Crush Revanchism Within the Neosyndicalist Tendency and Have Enough Left Over for Soup"? It gives me the goose pimples to read it.

We Hong Kongers like to dress sharp. Are we going to have to wear boxy, ill-fitting suits like the central committee? Sorry to say this, but to us they are "way uncool."

Where have you been lately, working at the Commerce Department in Washington, D.C.? (A humorous remark.) "Fashion Fascism" went out with the Gang of Four. Wear whatever you want, so long as it does not cause the opposite sex to behave like an inflamed Sichuan panda.

Can we go on making kung fu movies?

Most certainly! Did not the Great Leader like to unwind, after a rigorous day of devising five-year agricultural plans, according to strict Marxist-Leninist precepts, with a martial-arts-action drama in which a foreign devil or capitalist roader receives a good bruising at the hands of the worker-hero? Let me answer this question emphatically: "Yes." His favorite film was On the 17th Anniversary of the Long March, Fu Li Unites the June 6th Sisal Workers Collective to Throw Weng Shin Over the August 11th Dam After First Re-educating Him by Means of Repeated Blows to His Head and Groin With Bamboo Staves. Ouch! For guidance in preparing your film scripts, consult with your local cadres.

Our local who?

Think of them as your teachers. And remember, they only want what is best for the people.

We in Hong Kong love children. Can we go on having them?

What do you take us for, Planned Parenthood? It is true that there seem to be so many of us, but in the past the wise leadership of the Communist Party has remedied this by means of periodic reallocation of such resources as, for instance, food. For now, continue to mate and reproduce. Your local cadre will advise you of the advantages of having male children, such as tax benefits, medical care, not being shot, and extra cigarettes.

Can we go on eating dog?

Why do you think we want Hong Kong back? We have eaten all our own. We in the central committee are eager to "swap recipes" with you. The wife of Vice Premier Zhu Rongji makes Premier Li Peng's lips drip at just the mention of her Bao Wao Beijing-style.

While practicing colonial rule, the British liked to "stay out in the midday sun," drink heavily, and "do the dragon dance" with each other's wives. After 150 years, we have picked up some of their habits. Can we keep them?

This is most dismaying. The central committee is not just a collective of elder flatulents who spend the whole time drinking green tea and rereading Engels's (groundbreaking) tracts on dialectical materialism. Only last night, on the occasion of the 78th anniversary of the May 4th Movement, much Mao tai and Albanian wine was consumed, after which we went over to the February 7th, or March 3rd no matter Communist Youth League Hospitality Center and "did the dragon dance" all night until the East was red. So we, too, like to "party down." We are eager to drink enormous quantities of Scotch with you and have a "spirited" consciousness-raising with you from May 1 to July 1. Whenever.