In 1977, The Peoples Republic of China had just opened up to visitors from the United States. I was part of a small delegation of artists and craftspeople with a focus on artisans and craft production in major cities in the eastern part of China: Beijing, Tsinan, Suchow, Nanking and Kwangchow. It was an interesting time, a quiet sort of interim, as China, though still looking inward, was moving away from the strict methodology of its revolutionary communist past and had not yet begin the rapid economic growth so characteristic today. Hardcover with jacket, portfolio and commentary, 11" X 8.5", 90 pages, 88 black and white images, published 2010, $125 ppd. (ISBN: 978-1-4507-1846-2)

1. CHINA 1977 CHARACTER
Clare Brett Smith

2. These photographs were taken in 1977, soon
after Chairman Mao's death, and before any
sign of China's amazingly rapid modernization.
They seem almost antique now after more than
thirty years, not only because they are black
and white, but also because China has emerged
as such an economic power.
Smith traveled as a member of the First Dele-
gation of Artists & Craftspeople to the People's Re-
public of China. Her portfolio emphasizes every-
day life, on farms and in factories, and in the
workshops of skilled artisans in the context of
this country's long and illustrious history.

3. CHINA 1977 CHARACTER
Portfolio & Journal
Clare Brett Smith
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4. Photographs and Text of CHINA 1977 CHARACTER by Clare Brett Smith
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: ISBN 978-1-4507-1846-2
Copyright © 2010 by Clare Brett Smith
All rights reserved
Many of these photographs were exhibited in 1979 and 1980 at
Smith College and the New Britain Museum of American Art, with a
catalogue entitled CHINA CHARACTER.
Clare Brett Smith
80 Mountain Spring Road
Farmington, Connecticut 06032
United States of America
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5. CHINA 1977 CHARACTER
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6. PORTFOLIO & JOURNAL
Finally, in 1977, citizens of the United States could visit China, if approved and
invited by the People's Republic of China. As members of the First Delegation
of Artists & Craftspeople, we saw only what the Chinese government wanted to
show us, but, peripherally we saw quite a bit more. We had three points of view
for understanding China: what we'd already read of modern Communist China;
what we'd absorbed in the tales of Imperial China; and whatever our official
guides planned for us. We saw what they were proud of, as good a way as any to
begin to understand a place and its people. We were guests, not investigators.
In 1977 the People's Republic of China (PRC) was unfamiliar to us. I was still in
college when it was founded in 1949 and there was little mention of it even
though enormous changes were taking place there throughout the 1940's.
World War II ended in 1945 and, during the years before and after, Europe
and Japan had been uppermost in the news and in our minds. The dramatic
changes in China received much less notice.
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7. China was strangely calm in 1977, but it seemed to be stirring invisibly under the
surface. We had expected a more strident martial atmosphere. It was almost as if
the people were waiting, but for what? Chairman Mao had died. Zhou Enlai had
died. The Gang of Four had been smashed. What would come next?
We had read about the arrogance of the Red Guards and that intellectuals had
been exiled to work in the fields. We knew the Great Leap Forward had been
destructive, and that the Cultural Revolution had nearly obliterated traditional
culture and social structure. Chairman Mao's pithy motto, Let a Hundred Flowers
Blossom, offered a promise of freedom that was never honored.
China and the United States had been estranged for many years. Chinese pro-
ducts, under the anti-communist embargo, could not enter the United States. It's
hugely different now as Chinese goods flood our markets.
5

8. In Tienanmen Square, where Chairman Mao's embalmed body lay in state, hundreds of people stood in line
day after day to pay their respects. People shuffled along in their soft black felt slippers. It was very quiet.
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9. Not everyone stood in line. Some old comrades were "more equal than others".
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10. The old soldier looked typical to me, with his wispy beard and with mountains and valleys behind him. Posing for his
comrades on the Great Wall, he could not easily move away from my camera, though I think he would have liked to.
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11. 9

12. Women Roofers, Shanghai
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13. Our bus and the military truck were the only vehicles on the street in Nanking. Nanking, once the capital
city of China, was occupied by the Japanese Army in 1937. The memory of the Massacre of Nanking was still
strong, even among visitors, and the sight of soldiers in nearly empty streets was disquieting.
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14. Shanghai: Views from the roof of the Shanghai Mansions Hotel
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15. Shanghai
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16. Tsinan Railway Station
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17. China's most famous monument, The Great Wall of China, stretches some 3,800 miles from Gansu Province eastward to the
coast. Some parts were built as early as the 7th century BC. Most of it it was built during the Ming Dynasty 1368-1644.
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18. Most of the ancient city walls of Beijing have been torn down, just as old neighborhoods have been razed for modern
development, but restoration is also part of government planning. Above, rebuilding a remnant of the wall that once
surrounded and protected the heart of the city.
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19. Traditional Work Brigade: Holding the soil in place is essential as one-third of China was, and still is, desert.
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20. New Orchard Villa, Zhou Enlai's small house in Nanking became a museum when, after his death in 1976, he was
reinstated as one of China's heroes. Once popular in the outside world, he was widely admired within China too and his
portrait hung beside Mao's in public places. White, bright and austere, his bedroom appears at left and his desk at right.
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21. Zhou's polished Buick gleamed in the garage. The porcelain bowl contained pebbles, shining under water, as they must
have when he picked them up. Some were collected on The Long March, the year-long escape of the Red Army in 1934-35.
Eighty-six thousand men and woman began that trip, among them the future leaders of the People's Republic of China,
Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping
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22. EVERYDAY LIFE
Beijing was still called Peking when we arrived in November 1977. The air was
acrid and cold, with an old-fashioned smell of coal furnaces that suddenly re-
minded me of my grandparents' home in Ohio. We traveled south from Beijing
ending in Hong Kong. Wherever we went hard work on the land was a part of life.
There was no waste, no trash. Simple, even harsh by our standards, family life was
affectionate and strong.
Children were clearly treasured, even before the edict of One Child Per Family.
Older people were respected and useful, taking care of children while the parents
worked. Everyone wore simply cut blue cotton clothing, often recycled and
padded for warmth. Children were exempt from the uniform blues and bright.
prints often peeked out below their jackets. People stared at us intently but with
only passive interest, neither friendly nor unfriendly.
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23. 21

24. Raising vegetables for Shanghai was the business of this commune of 27,000 people. Organized into brigades, everyone
received a basic living. Work points, earned for extra hours, higher skills or more responsibilities, could pay for luxuries,
like a clock or a radio. One-year statistics were amazing: 2,700 acres, 120,000 chickens and 46,000 pigs.
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25. 23

26. Housing at the Shanghai Xian Hongchiao Ren Min Gong Commune
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27. Ventilation Stacks on the Commune's Mushroom Barn
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28. Cabbage Harvest
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29. Bok Choy
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30. One of 46,000 Pigs at the Commune
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31. Boatmen on the Pearl River
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32. Farm Traffic, seen from the Train
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33. Cabbage Transport, Soochow
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34. Near the Ming tombs Outside Beijing
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35. Nothing was discarded until it was completely worn out.
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36. Laundry on the roof of the Nanking Observatory
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37. Soochow
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38. Nanking, Damin Lake Park
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39. In one of Soochow's famous gardens, a grandmother fled my camera, but stood protectively behind the door where, she surely hoped,
she would be out of range. I am usually careful not to trail anyone too closely, but she and the child were irresistible.
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40. Construction, from the Train
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41. Early morning in Beijing, thirty-three years ago: morning and evening, people streamed through streets that
hummed with the sound of bicycle tires. Cars were few. Everyone moved at the same speed. Everyone was going
in the same direction, and they flowed smoothly around us when we crossed the street.
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42. The One Child Per Family Law was enacted in 1979.
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43. Young women usually wore two long braids. Older women had short bobbed hair. I didn't see anyone with the single
pigtail, perhaps now too reminiscent of coolies who were once required to wear queues to mark of their low caste,
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44. The head of the Revolutionary Committee at the Children's Palace in Shanghai, strong and confident, she looked about thirty years old.
She must have been born back when the People's Republic of China was first proclaimed. If old women were willing to tell, she might
hear of their bound feet or how girl babies were often abandoned. At right, a friendly knitter in one of the few remaining old quarters of
the city.
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45. Our guide waits at the East-Is-Red Silk Factory. Spittoons were an unpleasant aspect of public life. People spat often and
noisily, usually on the floor. Theater floors were a lot like our own which are sticky with gum, Coca-Cola and popcorn.
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46. Railroad Crossing, Tsinan
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47. Rain in the Streets of Soochow, a city of narrow streets, gardens and canals.
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48. ARTS & CRAFTS
Our official mission was cultural, specifically Arts & Crafts. Crafts were produced in
factories, not in home workshops, and they were made either for export or for sale
in tourist-only Friendship Stores. Decorative objects were irrelevant in the every-
day lives of new China. Hand skills were impressively high, developed through
repetition of the old ways. Art was not meant to be original and self-expression was
considered unimportant.
We visited a cloisonné factory, a rug factory and a silk factory, print workshops,
music schools, drama classes, an embroidery institute, a feather-picture studio,
child-care centers and Chinese Opera. And everywhere we went we had long
formal meetings, discussions and green tea, with the Revolutionary Committee.
Export production was huge with hundreds of oil paintings of Paris and thousands
of carved wool carpets. For indivualists, like the people in our group, this was
deplorable, but, without this official organized production, none of these skills
would have survived. That's the consolation.
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49. Embroiderers work together on a piece showing Chairman Mao and his successor, Hua. The title was
Our Great Leader, Mao, and our wise Chairman, Hua, subtitled With You in Charge, I Am At Ease. This same
scene was on billboards, pamphlets, even handkerchiefs, throughout the land.
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50. The Soochow Institute of Embroidery: silk threads used here are so fine that it's hard to believe it's possible. Wisely,
the embroiderers are sent out into the surrounding all-green garden every few hours to rest and refresh their eyes.
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51. The Studio of Glory & Treasure on Liu Li Chang Cultural Street in Beijing was a
light-filled workshop for fine print-making, woodcuts, rubbings and scrolls.
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52. The artist, obviously a master, was categorized only as a worker in art in this egalitarian society. He demonstrated his
flowing brushwork on a traditional Cactus in Flower. Because the state was the only employer and all property therefore
belonged to the state, experts were willing to teach their craft, having no reason to protect their intellectual property.
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53. Even veteran calligraphers practice.
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54. Calligraphy is copy work, but once correct forms, brush directions and strokes are mastered, an individual style can develop. Mao's calligraphy
was prominent on posters and walls, but our guides admitted they could not always read it. Form had given way to style and power.
52

55. Ivory tusks were still being carved in a Kwangchow workshop before the international ban on trade in elephant ivory took
effect. Pieces ranged in size from a five-foot centerpiece, an intricate scene of ladies, gardens and willow trees that took years
to complete, down to a rice-grain sized piece of ivory engraved with one hundred Chinese characters.
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56. Master Cloisonné Artisan
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57. After seeing the magnificent Cloissoné pieces in the Forbidden City, we admired the skill of the workers at the Peking Arts & Crafts
Factory but not the final products. They were elaborate constructions of metal and enamel, but they were commercial products and
lacked the subtle color and design of fine old pieces. Scholars claim that genius will come again in a hundred years or so. In the
Chinese long view this may not matter, just as it doesn't matter that Taiwan Province has not yet returned to the Motherland.
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58. Sandalwood Fan Factory products were for sale in tourist areas. The spines were carved and pierced sandalwood and the paper
hand-painted. It's a sharp contrast, the sturdy farm girls from rural villages learning to make such dainty and unnecessary objects.
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59. Shiwan Art Pottery in Foshan: The Pearl River Delta yields fine clay and Foshan pottery is well known for figur-
ines, teapots, tableware and vases. Their tiny figurines, half glazed, half natural, were special. Potters in our group
were impressed but not surprised at the technical level. Chinese ceramics have been justly famous for centuries.
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60. Carving and modeling clay demands concentration.
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61. The Shanghai Carpet Factory was a big complex with its own schools. Middle
School students work an hour a day for free tuition. The rugs were very fine, the
kind of thick blue and ivory wool carpets familiar in Europe and America
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62. Reeling at a Soochow silk factory: Chinese silk was a major export and only eclipsed today by the sale of the silkworm cocoons themselves.
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63. Repetitive work requires as much close attention as invention but is calming. Perhaps it's the rhythm.
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64. SOUNDS OF MUSIC, PERFORMANCE & CULTURE SHOCK
In Beijing, in the outskirts of town near our hotel, loudspeakers played music inces-
santly, especially in the mornng when, at daybreak, it was time to go to work. The loud-
speakers were not literally loud, but the music was high and sounded like small bells . I
grew to be fond of one oft-repeated piece, The Yellow River.
In the streets of Shanghai there was more construction noise than music, but there was
also a world-class music conservatory. Some musicians had trained in Europe and Am-
erica and all were versed in classic western music as well as Chinese music. Perform-
ances had been planned wherever we went, both children and adults. Often there were
gymnastics. Even the littlest children had merry well-rehearsed song-and-dance pieces.
The arts were beginning to recover by the time of our visit, but the Cultural Revolution,
1966 to 1976, had been a time of economic disaster as well as social and personal
upheaval. Chinese Communism had deviated from its idealistic early start. All the
growing pains, oppressive and irrational rules, forced exile of intellectuals, dunce caps
for transgressors, real cruelties as well as nonsensical ones were eventually blamed on
The Gang of Four. It was a cultural revolution but, in fact, much more devastating than
its name implies.
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65. 63

66. Making a classic cello and demonstration of an early pipa, a four string lute, one of the oldest Chinese instruments
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67. Young People's Orchestra
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68. The Tibetan girl sang an ethnic song, an example, it was explained, of the governnment's proclaimed interest and
sympathy for the tradtions of its minorities. On the right, the music master was more animated than his students.
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69. School of Art & Music,Tsinan: few students had returned to the shool but this young man
played a patriotic piece, Liu Yang River, In Praise of Chairman Mao, followed by a Chopin prelude.
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70. Shanghai Music Conservaory: Discussing the effects of the Gang of Four on the arts, this professor, re-
cently reinstated, had been deemed too worldly and too old to be a proper revolutionary. He was not
allowed to teach nor to compose. His colleagues were afraid to speak with him and he lived alone. Others
fared worse, were assigned hard labor, and were never able to return to music. This seemed to us a sur-
prisingly frank discussion, even more so, because it was done through official interpreters.
68

71. The Bad Acts of the Gang of Four: a poster cartoon of Madame Mao and, on the right, a boy manipulates her effigy, a
large puppet, in an unsettling and powerful performance. The boy portrayed Madame Mao as unmitigated evil. She
(Jian Qing), wife of the late Chairman Mao, was the leader of the despised Gang. Wilful and tough, she was much
disliked by the people. The boy's expression was intense, He looked almost possessed.
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72. Children sang for us at a day care center and, right, young girls demonstrated Peking
Opera style, with its rigid stance and high shrill singing that pierced one's eardrums,
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73. THE ART OF CHINESE MEDICINE
Although our focus was arts, we were interested in
other aspects of Chinese life and our visit to the
Tsinan Central Hospital was a high point. There,
the senior doctor offered a five-pulse analysis to a
member of our group. Pulse analysis, dating back
to 220 BC, is both ancient and sophisticated. Acu-
puncture was relatively new in the United States,
but it was in wide use here. Dozens of patients sat
quietly, studded with needles and hooked up to
low-intensity electricity.
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74. We could not tell from our colleague's expression if he was relieved at his diagnosis or not. Clearly the doctor was pleased.
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75. As part of their training young doctors were assigned to rural areas in a new program called
Barefoot Doctors, a program that has since been copied in many parts of the world
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76. GARDENS
Soochow's gardens reflect a long-gone way of life, a life of wealth, leisure
and contemplation. Rooms were built at the end of a scholar's garden so he
might be untroubled by household affairs.
There were all kinds of chrysanthemums in pots or vases, moongates, trees
pruned to frame a view, patterned pebble pathways, thin slices of marble set
into the back of carved rosewood chairs. Such houses and gardens were not
attainable in the spartan communist world of the People's Republic of China,
but they were being maintained by the government as treasures, owned by
and for all the people not just for a favored few.
The garden light was beautiful, silvery and subtle in tone.The meaning of a
Chinese word depends on its tone, an appropriate metaphor for the infinite
tones of gray in these photographs of China.
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77. 75

78. Antique Rosewood and Marble Chairs in Soochow
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79. Soochow Garden Room
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80. Soochow Tea House
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81. Nanking
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82. OLD CHINA
We did not expect to see many traces of old China. Growing up, we learned
about the clipper ship voyages and trade with China, of silk and tea and
porcelain. Dishes are commonly called china and many of us still have some
blue and white willow-patterned pieces. New England families often had at
least one missionary relative and Chinese silk jackets with embroidered
dragons may still be found in our dress-up trunks. My sister and I had played
happily with Mother’s ivory Mahjong tiles. We knew Pearl Buck’s, The Good
Earth, and we'd read of women’s roles as wives or concubines. We feared it
had all been destroyed in the Communist Era, but, even though high-rise
buildings and astonishing new architecture was already rising apace in 1977,
some of the ancient temples, pagodas, Sung dynasty scrolls, stone and wood
carvings and bronzes survived, along with the famous Soochow gardens.
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83. 81

84. En Route to the Ming Tombs
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85. Section of Sung Dynasty Scroll, Shanghai Museum
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86. Bronze Crane, Forbidden City
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87. Nanking
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88. Bronze Guardian Lion in the Forbidden City
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89. Buddhist Shrine, Nanking
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90. Miss Chang
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91. PHOTOGRAPHER'S NOTE
I was surprised to like group travel so much. I had never been part of a travel group
before. I liked having no responsibilities. I felt free to wander to photograph and to fall
behind, knowing the guides would find me and probably scold me for straying.
Our guides were knowledgeable and conscientious but they were disappointed in our
lack of knowledge of labor issues, something so central in Chinese life. We explained that
we were artists and academics (though my husband, Burge, and I were actually business
owners, i.e. capitalists). Many of us were self-employed and all of us lived a life-style far
outside our guides' experience. Miss Chang, our capable and serious guide throughout
the trip, helped us act as a group, to build on each other’s questions in our many
meetings rather than pursue our own individual interests. The guides referred to us as
Our Friends, although I would describe them as being more interested in people-to-
people connections than person-to-person.
It's been more thirty-three years since this trip and so much has changed. I returned to
China only once since then, for a conference in Yunnan Province, far from Beijing and
the East China cities, and so I have only read about the changes, not seen them for
myself. I liked China then and, as we entered Hong Kong, bustling, neon-lighted,
mercantile and frantic by contrast, at the end of our trip, I felt a deep nostalgia for the
simpler life, the work ethic, the sense of equality, the goal of greater good, and that
elusive promise, never realized, of Socialism.
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92. Clare Brett Smith has spent most of her life in
New England. She graduated from the Putney
School and from Smith College. She is the
mother of seven, the grandmother of ten and
great-grandmother of eight .
Clare has worked with artisans throughout
the world with her !husband, Burges, in their
importing business and later, for twenty-two
years, as President of the non-profit, Aid
to!!Artisans. She has been honored with
many awards for her work, creativity and
leadership and is considered a pioneer in
c o m b in in g m a rke t in g w it h c u lt u ra l
preservation and economic development.
Now retired, she has returned to her other
major interest, photography. Her work has
been widely exhibited in one-person shows
in the United States and abroad She taught
photography at Zone VI Workshops in
V e rm o n t a n d St u d io A rt s C e n t e rs
Int erna t io na l in Flo renc e, It a ly . H er
ninebooks testify to her keen visual sense.