The unlucky head does not give rest to the legs.

Proverb

The unlucky ones are always looking for the switchman.

Aphorisms. Statuses

The unlucky one feels like a guest even in his own house.

Kyrgyz proverb

Lack of luck as a quality of personality - a tendency to go through life without knowing one's own path; show windiness, frivolity; be sloppy and careless.

The old man had an unlucky son, he did not obey his father in anything and, as best he could, bypassed his advice. The father did not know how to deal with him and decided to stick a log in the middle of the yard, and every time his son disobeyed, he hammered one nail into this log. There came a moment when there was no more room for nails on the log. Looking at this, the son was horrified, and decided to improve. And the father for each of his good deeds began to pull out one nail from the log. And on the day when the last nail was pulled out, the son, looking at the log, began to cry. To the question of the elder: “Why?”, the son replied: “But the traces remained ...”

An unlucky person is a person who does not know about his path and life purpose. This is a disingenuous person. Frivolous and careless. In the old days in Rus', not only the road was called the way, but also various positions at the prince's court. For example, the falconer's path is in charge of princely hunting, the trapping path is dog hunting, the equestrian path is carriages and horses. Of course, the boyars, by hook or by crook, tried to get a way-position from the prince. And if suddenly this did not work out, they spoke of such a person with disdain: an unlucky person. So this disapproving assessment has been preserved.

A joke on the subject. The unlucky hunter tells how he went to the forest to hunt a bear. - Gathered, equipped and went. He only left his beloved dog, Sharik, at home, what if the bear picks up? - Well, I'm going, I'm going. I see a lair, I make my way slowly and then ... A crackling noise behind my back, a crunch and a paw on my shoulder ... I turn around, and this is Sharik !!! - My dear, dear, beloved. I look at him, I hug him. However, I can't stop pooping.

An unlucky person - goes through life in a naughty way, he does not have his own track, his big goal. It resembles a city dweller lost in the taiga. The boy got lost in the forest. He didn't know what to do or where to go. And he was about to cry. But then he pulled himself together, plucked up courage, climbed a big tree and saw his way.

Philosopher Vladimir Tarasov asks: - Where should we find such a tree so as not to stray in life? There is such a tree - this is our big goal. But it must be really big, like this tree... A big goal helps you see your way. We will recognize him: yes, here he is, how did I not realize it ?! We recognize him immediately, if there is, a big goal. A man of great purpose knows his way. A person who does not have a big goal does not know his path. This is a bad person…. A person who has seen the path is not the master of his own destiny. Now the path chooses him. Now the path dictates to him what to do and what not to do. The path controls it. Way is a great manager. Who has a way, does not complain and does not ask. Only offers. Because there is no greater authority for him, no greater protector than his path.

Balls - wooden and copper - of the same size were poured into the box. Almost full box. Closed the lid. Wait, open. As they lay there mixed up, so they lie. Closed again. They began to shake the box. Well shocked. Opened the lid and looked. At the top were mostly wood. And copper - below. The balls know their way. Every ball. Are we stupider than them? The old man was riding in an old crowded bus. He was squeezed from all sides, and it's time to leave. Don't push yourself to the exit. It's hard to breathe, let alone move forward. Luckily, the bus shook a few times on the bad road and the man was able to make his way to the exit. If life shakes us, we can move forward in it. If we know where the exit is. The one who has a great goal, life's adversity does not confuse, and success and failure equally move forward. What difference does it make how the box is shaken? What difference does it make how the bus shakes? If only something happened.

The paths do not intersect, - Vladimir Tarasov believes. People who have a path cannot interfere with each other. Enough space for everyone. Because the path is not a structure and not a figment of fantasy. It exists as long as man exists. It can be seen and recognized. It can be frightened, you can be embarrassed or rejoice. But there is only one for everyone. Not to step on it means to wander without a road. First we choose the path, then the path chooses us. And we can't step aside. And just as a crowd of intelligent people is able to pass slowly through narrow doors, not pushing each other with their elbows, but only experiencing the pleasure of mutual refined courtesy, so people who have a way cannot interfere with each other. He who has the path always has enough time. Only the slave of the moment is impolite, having no eternity in store.

A joke on the subject. Two unlucky hunters are talking. - Recently I was in Africa and found a very effective way to hunt tigers. You need to hunt at night - tigers have eyes that glow in the dark. It remains to aim between the eyes - and the tiger is on the spot. - And how many did you fill up? - No one. They, vile, began to walk in pairs, and each one eye closes.

There are unlucky and professors. Physics exam. The professor with a hangover, feeling terrible ..., decided to fill up all the students. The first student comes in, the professor asks him: - Here you are on the bus, you are hot, what will you do? - I'll open the window. - Right. Now calculate the changes in the aerodynamics of the bus caused by the opening of the window. — Uh…. - Come on, two. In the same way knocks down a few more students. A student comes in. - Girl, imagine you are eating on the bus, you are hot, what will you do? - I? Well, I guess I'll take off my jacket. — No, you don't understand, you are very hot. - Well, then I'll take off my blouse. - No, it's REALLY hot! - Well, I'll take off my skirt. - How so? - Yes, let the whole bus take me ... but I won’t open the window!

No matter how difficult it is to do in an era of degradation, a person is blessed who has embarked on the path of spiritual development, self-improvement, and the cultivation of virtuous personality traits in himself. The mind, tuned to the highest truth, leads a person along the solar path. Philosopher Oleg Torsunov claims that there are people who do not seek rest. The soul must work day and night. That is, they are set to constantly develop, work on themselves. Such people, after death, go along the solar path. That is, they follow the path where there is only development, self-improvement, and here, where there is no rest. On the path of the sun, such people reach the most higher planets material world and after that they go to spiritual world, where there is no suffering at all, that is, there is no material, no matter at all. There is only the spirit, there time moves in a completely different way, there the time of ever-increasing happiness arises. Here time moves in such a way that more and more suffering: we are getting old ...

Petr Kovalev

Vsevolod Ovchinnikov

Wanderer's Reflections (compilation)

In 2011 I have a double anniversary. The author of these lines is 85 years old, and 60 years of work in journalism. In September 1951, I, a 25-year-old lieutenant, a graduate of the Chinese branch of the Military Institute of Foreign Languages, was enrolled in the staff of the Pravda newspaper with the prospect of working in Beijing.

In the 50s I represented Pravda in China for seven years, in the 60s for seven years in Japan, in the 70s for five years in England. And since 1994 I have been working at Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

For my previous anniversary, in 2001, Rossiyskaya Gazeta gave me the right to publish a column every week under the heading "Journey". And five years later, when 260 such columns had already appeared, I received another rubric: “An hour with Ovchinnikov”. Now, every three weeks, a whole page is devoted to it in Rossiyskaya Nedelya, which, moreover, has a huge circulation.

Since this rubric has been regularly appearing in the new format for the fifth year now, the idea arose to publish the published materials in the form of a collection, just as the Journey rubric became the basis for the book Life Kaleidoscope.

So I had the good fortune to offer the reader my twenty-first book. I am immensely grateful to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, which extended my creative life.

Pull the bar up

"Chinese literacy" is the key to success

I am convinced that the key to success in journalism in my case was the knowledge of Oriental languages, philosophy and culture, which became the basis of my professional competence. Learning Chinese, and then, when I was in my thirties, taking up Japanese was damn hard. But in these two countries, not only did the language barrier not interfere with me, but, which is immeasurably more important, the language bridge helped a lot. It was enough to read a hieroglyphic inscription on a picture or on a vase, to quote, in place or out of place, an ancient philosopher or poet, in order to win over the interlocutor at once, to arouse his interest and sympathy for the “unusual foreigner”.

After all, getting to China means not just being in a foreign country. This is tantamount to moving to another world, to the realm of mysterious signs and unknown symbols. In Europe and America, even without knowing the language, you can always guess which public toilet door is for men and which one is for women. What if the inscription is made in hieroglyphs?

In any country, the key to understanding the soul of the people can be applied art. But in the Middle Kingdom, a foreigner immediately encounters a certain hieroglyphic barrier, a system of artistic images that is accessible only to the initiates.

For example, the Chinese used to associate each of the seasons with a certain flower. Peony symbolizes spring, lotus - summer, chrysanthemum - autumn, plum - winter. Moreover, each of these flowers metaphorically corresponds to a certain period of human life, serves as the embodiment of certain images.

Spring peony is a symbol of love, family happiness. Therefore, he usually flaunts on gifts for newlyweds. Lotus is considered a symbol of spiritual purity, mercy. This summer flower embodies the words of the Buddha that even among swamp mud one can remain spotlessly clean. Autumn chrysanthemum, blooming in spite of hoarfrost, personifies peace of mind and stamina - qualities that are especially appreciated at the end of life. Finally, the plum blossoming in New Year according to the lunar calendar, symbolizes the most important feature of their national character for the Chinese - cheerfulness in the midst of adversity.

After the invasion of Japanese troops in 1937, Chinese pilots painted plum blossoms on the wings of fighters received from the USSR. This expressed the same idea that we had in 1941 the words: “There will be a holiday on our street!” Of course, the four listed artistic images are only the first lines of the aesthetic primer. But even they will help to understand the meaning of many works of Chinese applied art.

In the first year of my work in Beijing, I explained all this to our diplomat and his wife, a magnificent lady of Balzac's age. We were sitting under a plane tree in a street tavern. And from the branches hung paper ribbons with inscriptions praising the local noodles.

“How I envy you, Vsevolod, that you have mastered this Chinese letter,” the portly compatriot told me coquettishly. “Sometimes I can’t take my eyes off the hieroglyphs. Each of them has so much harmony, so much aesthetics. By the way, please ask the owner to cut off this hieroglyph for me as a keepsake. And perhaps this one...

Somewhat surprised, the owner of the tavern complied with the request of the foreigner. She put the pieces of paper tape into her purse. And then she took them to the tailor and asked to embroider hieroglyphs in gold on an evening velvet dress. In it, she went with her husband to a reception on the occasion national holiday China. Premier Zhou Enlai nearly collapsed in amazement. Indeed, on one breast of the diplomat's wife was written "Tasty", and on the other - "Cheap".

I tell this episode as a warning to my grandchildren, who like to wear T-shirts with all sorts of incomprehensible inscriptions. I confess that I myself recently bought a T-shirt in Tokyo with the ad “Sex Instructor. The first lesson is free. I put it on on the Black Sea beach, but the inscription did not evoke any response. I would like to believe that not because of my age, but simply because we still do not know Oriental languages ​​well.

Cocoon of competence

Knowing the language helped me especially in China in the 50s. The opportunity to talk with me one-on-one immediately gave contacts with local leaders a confidential character. They treated me not as a foreigner, but as their own. I, too, behaved like a person with access to confidential information.

Once, when I was on vacation, I was invited by Andropov, who was in charge of socialist countries as secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU. It was from me that he first heard about Mao Zedong's intention to step down as head of state and remain only the leader of the party.

Andropov immediately called in my presence the corresponding sector of the Central Committee, the Foreign Ministry, and the KGB. But none of us knew about this news yet. And when my words were confirmed, Yuri Vladimirovich offered me to become a consultant in his department. It promised many blessings and privileges. He barely begged me to stay in the newspaper and recommended to him a younger sinologist, Viktor Sharapov, whom Pravda was preparing to replace me in Beijing.

When Khrushchev quarreled with Mao Zedong and the Chinese topic lost its priority, I decided to retrain as a Japaneseist. Using his authority as an orientalist, he convinced his superiors that the Japanese language differs from Chinese no more than Belarusian from Russian. The hieroglyphs, they say, are the same, and our eastern neighbors easily understand each other.

I was hired by a teacher to take Japanese lessons twice a week during working hours. Less than two years after returning from China, I was sent to permanent job to Japan. And there he was afraid of his own insolence. The first year was the most difficult in my life.

Every day from seven to ten in the morning I took language lessons from a Japanese. Then the interpreter told me about the content of the newspapers, helped me watch the midday news on television. After that, he sat down to write the next material, because the editors daily called me by phone at three in the afternoon. About a year later came the feeling of satisfaction that a journalist experiences when he can comment on any event taking place in the host country with knowledge of the matter.

It turned out to be much more difficult to get the recognition of compatriots. Diplomats, Chekists, journalists who worked in Tokyo were overwhelmed by the question: “What can this Ovchinnikov understand in Japan? He's a Chinaman!"

To break the attitude towards me as an outsider-amateur was the most difficult. But to win here was just as joyful. After a couple of years, everyone was already interested in my opinion. Chinese is the Latin of East Asia. So my knowledge of ancient Chinese philosophy and literature allowed me to shine in front of the Japanese where our Japaneseists sometimes yielded to me.

I found my own approach to lighting the Land of the Rising Sun. The fundamental difference in national mentality The Chinese and Japanese gave me the idea to compare the "grammar of life" of these two Far Eastern peoples, to create, as it were, a guide to the Japanese soul, which became the "Sakura Branch".

Know more than others

I will tell you about one more revelation in my life related to such a concept as competence. In the early 70s, I happened to visit Iran and visit Shiraz - the city of roses, nightingales and poets. I was taken to the grave of Hafiz. A gray-bearded old man always sits near her with a volume of poems by this Persian poet. You need to put a book on a tombstone and open it at random to get parting words in life. I did it with a beating heart. And this is what the Shiraz soothsayer read to me: “Only a poet who has well studied the laws of astronomy has the right to sing about the beauty of the starry sky.”

To be honest, I didn't get it right away. deep meaning parting words. It turns out that one literary talent, one ability for imaginative thinking is not enough. It is not enough to make the reader see what he saw, to feel what the author felt. To write about something, one must comprehend the underlying essence of events, one must know a hundred times more about the subject than potential readers.

It was only after realizing this that I truly understood why my competence became the cocoon that protected me from censorship in Soviet times. Both newspaper and television bosses felt that I knew much more about China and Japan than they did, and did not dare to reprimand me, to give me “valuable instructions”, so as not to get into trouble.

I remember that a two-minute commentary in the Vremya program, which was watched by the whole country, was considered the most important performance. It was supposed to bring the text personally to the chairman of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company. Sergey Lapin used to put my papers aside and say: “I have nothing to teach you here. Tell me, better, what kind of ribbon do you need to pull on a geisha to open her kimono? I willingly shared my experience, and communication with the authorities was exhausted by this. Hafiz's parting words were good for me.

During the thirteen years that I hosted the International Panorama, only Tatyana Mitkova, the editor of the program, read my texts. She should have known in advance which words of mine to include which plot. The cocoon of competence protected me here too.

The first post-Soviet edition of my works was the collection "Selected", published in 2001. During the layout, the editor called me and asked: “Have you de-Sovietized your texts?” "What do you have in mind?" I was surprised. “But now we look at things differently. Read these five books carefully, and you will certainly want to change something.

I went through a thousand computer pages of the collection with a pencil, without making a single correction. And then I was seized with euphoria, for which I was ready to kiss the vigilant editor. After all, it was thanks to him that I was convinced that I was not ashamed of a single line written in the Soviet years!

I am grateful to fate that it was I who had the opportunity to be the first of our compatriots to lay flowers at the grave of Richard Sorge at the Tama cemetery in Tokyo. Studying materials related to the life of the legendary scout, I remembered and made his motto his words: “To learn more, you need to know more than others. You have to be interesting to those who are interested in you.” Practical experience eleven years of my work in China, seven years in Japan and five years in England confirms that the more competent I became, the more interesting people were drawn to me and enriched me with their knowledge.

Once again I will summarize the above. Journalism is a vocation, a duty to readers, listeners, viewers. This is a relentless striving to pull up the level of people's spiritual needs, to make them sharper and wiser, more enlightened and kinder. Only those who know a lot themselves can enrich others. Therefore, the competence of a journalist is a guarantee of his creative independence.

Seven years in Beijing in the 50s

In March 1953, I stepped off the Moscow-Peking train to become Pravda's own correspondent in the PRC for the next seven years. At twenty-seven, I was then the youngest journalist not only in Pravda, but in the USSR in general, sent to permanent work abroad. Moreover, my knowledge of the Chinese language played a decisive role.

The old building of the Beijing Station was opposite the southern city gate, behind which are Tiananmen Square and the Imperial Palace. No less than the ancient buildings, I was surprised by the flows of cyclists and rickshaws in the complete absence of other modes of transport.

The office of Pravda was located near the main Wangfujing shopping street, in an alley with the poetic name "Sweet Water Well". It was a typical Beijing siheyuan, that is, four one-story outbuildings framing a square courtyard. Red sashes of windows pasted over with paper, earthen floors covered with mats. Potbelly stoves - to heat bath water and heat the room in winter. Even in comparison with the Moscow communal apartment, living conditions, to put it mildly, were not impressive.

Handshake of Mao Zedong

In the 1950s, twelve foreign ambassadors and fifteen foreign journalists were accredited to Beijing. Therefore, along with diplomats, we were invited to all state banquets. We were sitting just a few meters from the main table, where Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai were clinking glasses with Nehru or Sukarno, with Kim Il Sung or Ho Chi Minh.

Premier Zhou Enlai often came to our table and, knowing that I was a Sinologist, spoke to me. For example, noticing my addiction to shark fins, he advised me to eat this dish when I was his age. (It turned out that shark fins are useful for older men, because they increase male potency.)

It was Zhou Enlai who gave me the Chinese name O Fuqing (the three characters he chose literally mean "Minister of European Happiness").

In 1956, the Eighth Congress of the CCP opened in Beijing. The Soviet delegation arrived. And I had to give daily detailed reports on all meetings. On the final day of the congress, Mao Zedong unexpectedly entered the room of foreign journalists and asked: “Who is there from Pravda?” With a trembling voice, I introduced myself and was honored with the personal handshake of the great helmsman: “I worked so hard! Illuminated the congress well!”

After these words of Chairman Mao, my life changed dramatically. Instead of a fanza with earthen floors and smoky stoves, the office was moved to a modern apartment with central heating. And when traveling around the country, I no longer needed to coordinate them with the press department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC.

I remember Chairman Mao as being unusually tall for a Chinese and staring off into the distance. When I was introduced to Party General Secretary Deng Xiaoping, on the contrary, I was struck by his small stature. After all, it's one thing when you see a person in the presidium, and another thing when you come across him face to face. The party nickname of Secretary General Xiaoping, "little bottle", was perceived in China as a metaphor. The “little bottle” is a bottle of moonshine that cannot be turned on its side, because it immediately takes up a vertical position again. Like Deng Xiaoping, who was thrown off the top of the pyramid of power three times, but he returned to it again.

Fatal bathing of leaders

The first crack in Sino-Soviet relations appeared after the 20th Congress of the CPSU. According to Mao Zedong, Khrushchev had no right to come out with harsh criticism of Stalin without consulting the international communist movement.

After the successful completion of the first five-year plan, which was carried out on the basis of Soviet experience and with the assistance of our specialists, the "great helmsman" resorted to the adventuristic tactics of the "great leap forward". (The slogan of the time was: "Three years of bitter labor - ten thousand years of happiness.") The peasants in the communes were forced not only to work collectively, but also to eat from a common cauldron.

Under the slogan "Overtake England!" began to cook steel in almost every yard. And my Chinese colleagues and I carried baskets of earth on a yoke for a week, helping to build the Shisanlin reservoir near Beijing. The "jump into communism" ended in disaster for the country and the people.

The reason for the failure began to be sought in the international situation, more precisely, in the "revisionist" policy of Moscow. Beijing seems to have forgotten that it was Zhou Enlai and Nehru who once proclaimed the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and made them the political platform of the non-aligned countries. The Chinese leadership began to blame Khrushchev for his desire to reduce the intensity of the Cold War, to make peaceful coexistence the core of foreign policy socialist states.

The most dramatic collision arose in connection with this on the eve of the decade of the PRC. In September 1959, Khrushchev was to make a landmark tour of the United States. And by October 1, fly straight from there to the celebration in Beijing. I was included in the working group to draft his speech at the anniversary session of the National People's Congress.

Shortly before Nikita Sergeevich's visit across the ocean, armed clashes broke out on the Sino-Indian border. In order to protect the Soviet leader from unwanted questions, the TASS Statement was published. It expressed regret over the conflict and the hope that the parties would resolve the dispute at the negotiating table. This position of Moscow caused indignation in Beijing. How, they say, can be put on the same level as the fraternal country of socialism and the capitalist state!

And now, in the midst of the notorious "ten days that shook America," the Chinese leadership unexpectedly postponed the beginning of the anniversary celebrations from October 1 to September 26. This left Khrushchev with a difficult choice: either crumple up his American visit, or entrust someone else to speak at the anniversary of the People's Republic of China. He preferred the second. The report we were working on was read by Suslov. Khrushchev arrived only on 30 September. The next day, the demonstrators still saw him on the platform of the Tiananmen Gate.

After the festive celebrations, Mao invited the Soviet guest to his residence near the capital. There Khrushchev was in for embarrassment. The owner met him at the pool and offered to join. But the trouble was that Nikita Sergeevich could not swim. In his black satin shorts to the knees, as on vacation in Pitsunda, he could only go into the water up to his waist and sit down several times to take a dip. One can imagine how clumsily the guest looked against the background of the host, who could easily cross the kilometer-long expanse of the Yangtze. Khrushchev was so enraged that on the same evening he announced to us: he was canceling the week-long trip to China that we had prepared and intended to immediately return to his homeland.

I think that the reasons for the disagreement between Beijing and Moscow, which led to a thirty-year confrontation and even battles on Damansky Island, were not only ideological differences, but also the personal hostility of the two leaders. Khrushchev's feeling was reinforced by the memories of his helpless figure in long satin shorts, when he floundered in the pool next to the great helmsman.

"Moscow Nights" as a hymn of friendship

When I started my journalistic career in Beijing in the 1950s, I felt like a darling of fate. The first ten years of the existence of the PRC were held under the motto "Russian and Chinese - brothers forever!". It was then not only a line from a song. The friendship of the great neighboring peoples was not limited to official statements and newspaper editorials. She really entered tens of thousands of human destinies. I then had the good fortune to see with my own eyes how 156 new buildings of the first Chinese five-year plan, with the help of Soviet specialists, laid the foundation for the industrialization of the Celestial Empire, without which its current rapid rise to world leadership would have been impossible.

Following this, the opposite stage began in the history of the PRC: two decades of chaos and turmoil - the voluntarism of the "Great Leap Forward", the barracks life of the people's communes, the lynching of the Red Guards and even the battles on Damansky Island. Fortunately, I did not witness the atrocities of the "cultural revolution". But he was involved in how, after the death of Mao Zedong, Moscow and Beijing began to take cautious steps towards each other.

In 1984, the chairman of the Society of Soviet-Chinese Friendship, Academician Tikhvinsky, and I, as his then deputy, were invited to the PRC. After a quarter-century absence, we, two professional sinologists, went to China, where reforms had been going on for five years, as if to another planet.

I remember the meeting in one of the workers' clubs in Beijing. After our speeches, the song “Moscow Evenings” sounded. The whole hall stood up and picked up their favorite melody. People sang with tears in their eyes, like a solemn anthem, sincerely rejoicing that the tragic quarrel between Beijing and Moscow is finally a thing of the past, that it is possible, as before, to openly express friendly feelings towards the fraternal neighboring people.

This unforgettable moment came before my eyes again during the first official visit to Moscow by Chinese President Jiang Zemin. During a reception at the Chinese Embassy, ​​he unexpectedly took on the role of leader, which may have surprised some members of the diplomatic corps. The head of the foreign state conducted the choir of the guests, who enthusiastically performed the same "Moscow Evenings". Moreover, the Chinese were clearly more active than the Russians. Both of these cases I consider the most striking episodes of my sixty-year journalistic biography.

In 1990, I became the first foreign journalist to be given an exclusive interview by Jiang Zemin, who had just assumed the post of General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee. It was just a year after the dramatic events on Tiananmen Square in May-June 1989. The then Communist Party Secretary General Zhao Ziyang was blamed for the fact that student demonstrations in the center of Beijing got out of control. The old guard in the party leadership demanded that the Chinese "Grishin" be appointed at the head of the CPC - the first secretary of the Beijing City Committee Chen Xitong, capable of "tightening the screws."

Despite their pressure, the patriarch of reforms, Deng Xiaoping, ensured that the head of the party and state was not an opponent, but a supporter of the changes he had begun. The choice fell on the secretary of the Shanghai city committee Jiang Zemin. Moreover, in the largest metropolis of the country, which he led, there were no student unrest.

So the leader of the most populated country in the world was my peer, whom we met in our thirties back in 1956. The Chinese then celebrated an important victory of their first five-year plan - the launch of the first-born of the domestic automotive industry. And I, being Pravda's own correspondent in the PRC, of ​​course, came to Changchun to tell about this event.

He asked me to arrange meetings with factory workers who were trained in the USSR. Among them was my same age, thirty-year-old chief power engineer of the plant Jiang Zemin. However, the core of my report was a detailed story about how the first truck in the history of China rolled off the assembly line. So in the plot of the essay for the chief power engineer, with whom I talked for more than an hour, somehow there was no place.

But the veterans of the Likhachev Moscow Automobile Plant remember well the smiling and sociable Chinese trainee who conducted the choir of his compatriots who performed "Moscow Nights" at the Zilovsky Palace of Culture, where I, as a student, went to dance evenings from year to year.

A memorial plaque flaunts at the plant's thermal power plant to this day: "Here, in 1955-1956, energy engineer Jiang Zemin, later the Chairman of the PRC, was trained." The factory workers recall that Jiang Zemin liked to show off his knowledge of the Russian language, especially expressions that can only be learned from life. When someone from the management came to the thermal power plant and asked: “Well, how are you, Comrade Jiang?” - he winked merrily and answered: “Things are going on, the office is writing!”

From the third generation to the fifth

Jiang Zemin is called the representative of the third generation of the party-state leadership of the PRC. A cohort of founders (Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai) passed away. Their successors, the reformers led by Deng Xiaoping, also left. It was the octogenarian patriarch of Chinese reforms who put an end to lifelong tenure in leadership positions, limiting it to two five-year terms. Following this rule, he not only handed over the helm of power to Jiang Zemin, but also designated Hu Jintao as his successor.

So for the first time at the head of the third generation of Chinese leaders was an intellectual technocrat, capable of thinking with the latest achievements of science and technology, correctly assessing the direction of global processes. It was the Shanghai engineer Jiang Zemin, who once wrote a dissertation on global energy development trends, who was assigned to travel around the world in the early years of the reforms. The goal is to get acquainted with the experience of free economic zones (FEZ) in various countries - from Shannon in Ireland to Jurong in Singapore.

His report to the Politburo became the basis for the creation of the first four free economic zones located near Hong Kong and Taiwan. This helped the Chinese reformers to avoid "grabbing", to attract foreign capital (primarily overseas Chinese), which raised the overall technological level of production.

Jiang Zemin, like me, was born in 1926. Shortly before the proclamation of the PRC, he graduated from Shanghai Jiaotong University. When he revisited his alma mater many years later, students asked him how a statesman could grow from an energy engineer?

In response, Jiang Zemin recalled his favorite book, My Universities by Gorky. He spoke about his trip to Nizhny Novgorod, about visiting the house where Alyosha Peshkov was born. He emphasized that there are no faculties that would train heads of state or great writers, only life can be such a university.

This is what the biography of Zeng Zemin testifies to. After our first meeting in Changchun, my one-year-old, who remained outside the scope of the essay, rose steeply through the ranks. He worked as Vice Chairman of the State Committee for Foreign Trade and Investment, and was the Minister of Electronic Industry of the People's Republic of China.

In 1985, Jiang Zemin became mayor of Shanghai, and two years later, first secretary of the Shanghai city committee. In this post, he was caught by the dramatic events on Tiananmen Square. In the midst of them, Deng Xiaoping ensured that it was Jiang Zemin who was placed at the head of the party and state.

After meeting me at the start-up of the Changchun Automobile Factory in 1956 and my first interview with a foreign journalist as General Secretary of the CCP Central Committee in 1990, I was destined to talk to Jiang Zemin for the third time on June 14, 2001.

On this day, a meeting took place in Shanghai of the top leaders of six states adjacent to the former Soviet-Chinese border - the presidents of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The “Shanghai Five”, which was born there five years earlier, has turned into the “Six”, officially speaking, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Of course, being the host of such a summit is a responsible and troublesome business. So we - eighteen journalists from the above-mentioned countries, invited by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC to cover this event - accepted with understanding the sad news for us: on the morning of June 14, Jiang Zemin will not be able to give us the promised interview, but only a protocol audience.

We were awakened before dawn, and already at 7 am we were in the Shanghai country residence of the head of state. The President of the People's Republic of China thanked us for coming, wished us successful work at the summit, took a picture with us and took his leave. But when everyone was leaving the reception, Jiang Zemin unexpectedly grabbed my elbow and said in Russian: “And you, Stirlitz, I will ask you to stay! After all, we are now seventy-five, and when we first met, it was thirty. There are not so many politicians and journalists in the world who are connected by such a long acquaintance. So we deserve a detailed face-to-face conversation.”

During our third meeting on the birthday of the SCO, Jiang Zemin talked to me alone for thirty-seven minutes, only three minutes less than with the presidents of the Central Asian republics.

Let there be less poor

So, I managed to be personally acquainted with three generations of Chinese leaders. The first of them was personified by Mao Zedong, the second by Deng Xiaoping, the third by Jiang Zemin. And now the time has come when the fourth came to power. In 2002, Hu Jintao became the General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee and later the President of the People's Republic of China.

The founder of the policy of reform and opening up, Deng Xiaoping and his successor Jiang Zemin, with their Shanghai team, called out to the people: “Get rich!” and encouraged those who managed to break out of poverty earlier than others. This caused the flourishing of coastal regions, especially free economic zones in the south and east. However, the interior of the country - Central and Western China, which account for 89 percent of the territory and 46 percent of the population, has not yet got rid of poverty and backwardness.

Unlike Shanghai-born Jiang Zemin and his entourage, Hu Jintao and current head of government Wen Jiabao both started their careers in the poor provinces of the Far West. They know from personal experience the difficulties and hopes of the hinterland, they are prepared by their own lives to move from the call “Let there be more rich people in China” to solving the following strategic task: “Let there be fewer poor people in China!”

The new course means a change not only in goals, but also in methods of leadership. Instead of the traditional role of an instrument of breaking the old CPC, it intends to become a modern ruling party capable of competently governing the state, relying on the rule of law, democracy, and science. The goal has been set: to make China a society of harmony and concord, to stop the process of polarization, to smooth out the contradictions between the material interests of the seaside and the hinterland, the city and the countryside.

This task will be completed by the already designated representative of the fifth generation of Chinese leaders - the current Vice President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping, who accompanied President Medvedev during his visit to the Expo 2010 exhibition in Shanghai.

time to hug

twelve zodiac animals

Recently, we have begun to talk more and more about the twelve animals that form the cycle of the lunar calendar adopted in the Far East. Every time the media is filled with predictions of homegrown astrologers who most literally identify the features of the coming year with its calendar animal. Or they explain the life lived by a person, characterize his personality only on the basis of the sign under which he was born.

I honestly admit that on the eve of 1963 it was I who became the first journalist who introduced the fashion for twelve calendar animals in our country. The New Year's report from Japan, published in Pravda, where I said that the year of the Hare is coming, aroused great interest in the Far Eastern horoscope. I remember that I was instructed to accompany a very big boss from the Central Committee of the CPSU on a trip around the country. Introducing the guest to the local mythology, I spoke about the twelve animals that form the calendar cycle.

He clarified that according to local beliefs, the year of a person's birth largely determines his merits and demerits, and gives the key to understanding his character. He explained that, for example, I was born in the year of the Tiger, when creative people often appear in the world. But my wife was born under the sign of the Dragon, a symbol of authority. These people make good managers.

- How interesting! the chief exclaimed. - Please look at the calendar: who am I and who is my wife?

“You are a Dog, and your spouse is a Pig,” I read right off the bat and immediately regretted what I had said, because you know what the effect was.

And the trouble was the tendency to mechanically identify a person with his calendar animal, or to believe that a given year portends something the same for everyone. Whereas in reality it promises something different for each of the twelve types. And only experienced soothsayers can figure it out.

So do not blame a person born in the year of the Pig for the disgusting. Or to monkey in the year of the Monkey, to cock in the year of the Rooster. Or consider it offensive for a woman to be a Snake, which, on the contrary, embodies femininity and wisdom. In a word, it is impossible to directly identify a person with an animal, under the sign of which he was born.

I repeat, the coming year promises different things for each sign. Although there is something in common. People who turn 12, 24, 36, 48 or 60 years old, that is, everyone who was born under this sign, will become sources of happiness and good luck for relatives and friends in the coming year. However, they will be more vulnerable than usual. They need to take care of themselves, avoid drastic changes, not be exposed to a blow, spend a year "in deaf protection."

Unfortunately, in amateurish publications on this topic completely inappropriate questions have come to the fore: what should and should not be worn, what should and should not be eaten at the meeting of this New Year? Everything that we write about this is idle speculation. At the same time, the most piquant aspect of the Far Eastern horoscope fell out of sight: its attention to the problem of the physiological compatibility of sexual partners.

New Year holidays are traditionally considered the mating season and sometimes marital activity. People remember about twelve calendar animals first of all when choosing life partners. It is believed that certain combinations of signs promise better or worse physiological compatibility. For example, a woman born in the year of the Snake has the largest list of suitable partners, and a woman born in the year of the Horse has the smallest. So it is easier to marry the first than the second.

In addition to the twelve animals, five elements appear in the lunar calendar: blue water, red fire, white metal, green wood, yellow earth. Their paired combinations form a sixty-year cycle called "life". Therefore, when a person turns 61 years old, relatives give him toys, like a one-year-old child. It's like a second life has begun.

When I got to Japan after China, I thought that more high level well-being and culture in comparison with the Celestial Empire did not leave a trace of ancient prejudices in the Land of the Rising Sun. I remember how, on the eve of 1966, I was invited with colleagues from America and Europe to the NHK television company to talk on the air about New Year's superstitions in our countries.

The fact is that the year of the Horse and Fire was coming, the most unfavorable in the Far Eastern horoscope. According to ancient belief, a woman born this year tends to command a man (what a horror!) And therefore it is impossible to marry her.

Since spouses do not know whether they will have a boy or a girl, many choose not to have children at all in this ill-fated year.

The previous year of Horse and Fire (1906) coincided with the end of Russo-Japanese War. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers and officers returned to their families after a three-year absence. However, instead of the usual “baby boom” in such cases, there was, paradoxically, a drop in the birth rate.

Both Japanese and foreign participants in a television discussion on the eve of 1966 sneered at this superstition and expressed confidence that the modern generation had thrown it out of their heads. Imagine our surprise when it turned out that Japan experienced an even sharper decline in the birth rate in 1966 than in 1906.

The TV show, which was watched by millions of residents of the Land of the Rising Sun, had the opposite effect. Parents in unison justified themselves: we, they say, do not believe in prejudice. But suddenly a girl will be born, and the one for whom they will woo her will remember the year of the Horse and Fire. So it's better to have a baby a year later.

Pine, bamboo and plum

At midnight on New Year's Eve, the Chinese and Japanese listen with bated breath to the booming hum of bronze temple bells. They hit one hundred and eight times. It is believed that each blow banishes one of the one hundred and eight possible misfortunes that have darkened human life, and recalls all one hundred and eight good wishes.

Indeed, for the Far Eastern peoples, the New Year is not just a holiday of holidays, but, as it were, a common birthday. Until recently, it was not customary for them to mark the date of their birth. The one hundred and eighth strike of the New Year's bell adds one to all ages at once. Even a baby born the day before is considered a year old in the morning.

At New Year's midnight, a person becomes a year older and, moreover, crosses a certain threshold, beyond which a completely new fate awaits him. No matter how difficult the outgoing year has been, everything starts anew beyond this threshold, everything can go differently.

The holiday should enter every home, as the beginning of a new streak in life. Therefore, according to ancient tradition, the entrances of dwellings are decorated with branches of pine, bamboo and plum blossoms. Evergreen pine in folk poetic language personifies the wish to live long and not grow old. Bamboo symbolizes flexibility and resilience. And the plum, stubbornly blooming in February, when there is still snow around, is cheerfulness in the midst of any adversity.

To these common images, everyone has the right to add their personal hopes. Therefore, going to bed in new year's eve, millions of Japanese and Chinese put under the pillow popular print, which depicts a fabulous treasure ship on which the seven gods of fortune travel. To those who see them in a dream, the coming year promises the fulfillment of the most cherished desires.

An uninitiated person will see three fat men, two elders, a warrior and a woman on board the treasure ship. However, each of the seven is a popular character of folk art and deserves to get to know him better.

The God of Fortune Ebisu is immediately distinguished from other fat men by a rod in his hand and a perch under his arm. There can be no other god of luck in a country where the inhabitants are avid fishermen. Those who, in addition to skill, also need luck, turn to Ebis for help: sailors, researchers, athletes. The image of a fat man with a fishing rod can be seen in small shops. However, along with luck, Ebisu also represents honesty.

Maybe that's why among big businessmen more than Ebisu, Daikoku, a burly village bearded man sitting on a kul with rice, is more popular. Once the peasants revered him as the god of fertility. But since the bearded man had a wooden hammer in his hands, Daikoku has become the patron of those who need the art of extorting money - businessmen, stockbrokers, bankers. In a word, he turned from a god of fertility into a god of profit.

The third fat man is the smiling, chubby god of fate Hotei. His signs are a shaved head and a round belly protruding from a monastic robe. He has a carefree disposition, even a good-for-nothing, which, given his official position, is quite risky. After all, none other than Hotei carries a bag with human destinies behind his back. And sometimes, being drunk, gives a person a completely different fate than he deserves. The god of fate is worshiped by politicians and cooks (both of them sometimes make porridge, not knowing what they will get).

However, while secretly revering Hotei, politicians like to publicly call the god of wisdom Jurojin their idol. This is a learned-looking old man with a long beard and an even longer scroll of knowledge in his hand. Despite his advanced age, Jurojin is reputed to be a lover of booze and women, without which he simply would not be considered wise. Philosophers, lawyers, writers, as well as the politicians already mentioned, consider Jurojin their patron.

The second elder - the god of longevity Fuku-Roku-Ju (the Chinese call him Shousin) is distinguished by a bald skull elongated in length. His inseparable companions are a tortoise, a crane, a deer. The god of longevity is distinguished by a quiet disposition. He takes care of chess players, as well as watchmakers, antique dealers and gardeners - people whose work is related to the present, past or future time.

Bishamon is a tall warrior with an axe, in a helmet and armor on which is written: "loyalty, duty, honor." He is especially revered by people in uniform and healers, that is, the defenders of the country, as well as guardians of order and health.

The only woman on the ship is the patroness of the arts Benten with a lute in her hands. It is believed that she is excessively jealous of other people's talents, of other people's glory, of other people's admirers. Which, however, is inherent in the artistic intelligentsia everywhere.

Seeing seven gods of luck in a dream is a cherished dream among the Chinese and Japanese. People want what they value. And they value what they originally have. Choice new year wishes brings to mind the soul of the people. Perhaps it was my report “Pine, Bamboo and Plum”, where I was the first to write about the twelve animals of the Far Eastern calendar in 1963, that became the embryo of the idea to create a psychological portrait foreign people, which I then implemented in my books "Sakura Branch" and "Oak Roots".

In China and Japan, as countries with hieroglyphic writing, the New Year holidays give an occasion to decorate homes with the sayings of ancient philosophers and poets. They often mention three hypostases of happiness in the view of the Far Eastern peoples. First of all, this is “Fu” - well-being in the family, “Lou” - good luck beyond the threshold of the house, that is, career success, and, finally, “Show” - longevity, suggesting good health.

And the most common wish is expressed in four hieroglyphs: “Wan-Shi-Zhu-Yi” (“Let ten thousand problems be solved at your request”). It is also noteworthy that the Asian version of Roly-Vstanka is considered a favorite New Year's souvenir. This is Bodhidharma, who came from India to China to preach Buddhism and sat motionless in the Shaolin Monastery for nine years facing the wall.

After such a long meditation, the patriarch, whom the Chinese call Damo, and the Japanese call Daruma, lost his arms and legs. His symbolic figure was a head with thick Indian eyebrows - like a ball, personifying the motto of Vanka-vstanka: "Fall seven times and rise seven times." This, perhaps, is the essence of the philosophy of life of the peoples of the Far East, who are eternally threatened by earthquakes and eruptions, typhoons and tsunamis.

Transport emergency

To a foreigner who came to China on New Year's Eve, it may seem that a huge country was seized by panic. Not thousands, not even hundreds of thousands, but tens of millions of people have been storming ticket offices all types of transport operating in emergency mode. The cause of the fever is the New Year according to the lunar calendar.

Although in China it is now officially renamed the Spring Festival (Chunjie), for a billion three hundred million inhabitants of the Celestial Empire, these two weeks are sometimes the New Year holidays, which every family must certainly celebrate together, under one roof. One and a half million seasonal workers, who annually go to work in the cities, are returning to their native villages. Hundreds of thousands of military personnel go on a visit home. Tens of thousands of itinerant merchants and artisans rush to their families.

But, above all, tradition requires that spouses who for some reason were separated be reunited for the festive season. According to the ideas rooted among the Chinese, in nature there is a time for everything. The twenty-four two-week seasons of the traditional lunar calendar embody the centuries-old experience of generations - this is, in essence, the optimal schedule for field work, auxiliary crafts, and folk holidays.

It has long been considered that there is a time for an active married life: two weeks of the Spring Festival, from the first new moon to the first full moon. Therefore, tens of millions of people rush to the hearths precisely in order to fulfill their marital duty in a timely manner. It turns out that if anyone follows the biblical precept: “A time to hug and a time to avoid hugging,” it is the Chinese.

It should not be taken literally. The modern generation, especially in the cities, does not recognize seasonality in marital relations. But the inertia of centuries-old customs still makes itself felt. In the rural outback, almost all children are born at the same time, in September - October. So they were all conceived on the Lunar New Year. After the Spring Festival, Chinese spouses can easily part for several months, or even a year.

Mother-in-law bottle

In Chinese folklore, surprisingly for us, the theme of mother-in-law is completely absent. The daughter after marriage becomes a member of another family. She goes into complete submission to her mother-in-law and father-in-law. He sees his parents only on holidays a couple of times a year. No more contact with mother-in-law and son-in-law. There is only one exception. In order for the daughter's husband to endure a two-week marathon on the Spring Festival, the mother-in-law gives him a bottle with an alcoholized viper, ginseng root and dereza berries. This tincture increases male power.

It touched me that the mother-in-law's bottle has a hollow cork that holds a good stack of healing potion for a hangover. I emptied the bottle - and in the morning I got a hangover from the cork. Our sons-in-law can only dream of such touching care.

Together with the mother-in-law, the mother-in-law leads the preparation of dumplings. They came to the Chinese and Japanese, as well as to us, from the nomadic steppe peoples back in the time of Genghis Khan. Like other dishes of the New Year's table, dumplings should be sculpted together by all family members. The Spring Festival embodies its unity. It is no coincidence that the schedule of school and student holidays shifts annually in accordance with the lunar calendar.

The whole family also prepares sticky cakes, which are supposed to be placed on the altar of the ancestors on the Lantern Festival, which completes two New Year's weeks. They are meant for the spirit of the hearth. This character, whom the Chinese call Zaosheng, plays the same role in their New Year's mythology as Father Frost or Santa Claus in the West. After the holidays, Zao sheng goes to heaven in order to inform the souls of the ancestors about how their descendants lived for another year.

So, so that Zaosheng does not talk too much, the whole family crushes glutinous rice in wooden mortars and molds cakes from it, which should glue the mouth of the spirit. Put them on the festive table. Traditional delicacy sometimes turns out to be fatal. If you choke on a sticky piece of such a cake, only emergency surgery can save you from suffocation. In Japan, more people die every year for this reason than lovers of the deadly poisonous puffer fish.

The optimal combination of ages

The twelve calendar animals are most often remembered by the Chinese and Japanese when choosing life partners. Oriental medicine attaches great importance to the physiological compatibility of partners, which largely depends on the optimal combination of their ages. According to the traditional formula in the Far East, it is believed that the age of a man should be divided in half and added eight.

A twenty-year-old man is best matched by a partner of eighteen years, a thirty-year-old - twenty-three, a forty-year-old - twenty-eight, a fifty-year-old - thirty-three years. I confess that for some time now these calculations have somehow ceased to please me. But it turned out that after sixty years, the number eight should not be added, but subtracted. And then my doubts about the rationality of the formula dissipated again.

Chinese and Japanese gerontologists believe that late marriages are better than too early. After giving birth at the age of sixteen or eighteen, a woman ages prematurely. While for the first time becoming a mother after thirty, she not only feels the effect of rejuvenation to the greatest extent, but also lives longer.

Oriental medicine considers sex, including in old age, the path to longevity. However, allowing the difference in years, Chinese and Japanese doctors make a significant reservation. An intimate relationship between an elderly man and a young woman (or vice versa) is beneficial only with sincere mutual attraction of both partners. If at least one of them imitates this feeling, then both of them irreparably reduce their supply of vitality “qi”.

Although all countries of East Asia have officially switched to the generally accepted Gregorian calendar, the lunar New Year is celebrated there as a traditional folk holiday. Every time he introduces the name of one of the twelve calendar animals and five elements.

As for China, this event, renamed the Spring Festival, remains the main national celebration of the year. This is a two-week time of family meetings at the hearth, a season of active married life, when for all husbands and wives at once it comes "time to hug."

Pierre Cardin in a rural barn

I repeat: I was lucky to start my journalistic career in Beijing in the 1950s. I wrote about the romance of new buildings in China's first five-year plan. Then I happened to be an eyewitness to the events that quarreled between Khrushchev and Mao Zedong. And after the death of the "great helmsman" to become a witness and participant in the cautious steps that Moscow and Beijing began to take towards each other after a quarter of a century of tragic spat.

In 1984, I returned to China after a 25-year absence. First a real example The freedom of enterprise proclaimed by Deng Xiaoping for me was paid bicycle parking near Beijing railway stations, bus stations, department stores and cinemas. They were owned and operated by elderly housewives. After all, you can create such an enterprise with virtually no initial capital.

I was lucky enough to see another surprise in the western suburbs of Beijing, which I knew well. It was a village, from there I once had occasion to write about the labor successes of the People's Commune named after the Sino-Soviet Friendship. Now its former members have become individual farmers, received land for life use. But I was amazed that many peasants followed the slogan: "Leave agriculture without leaving the village."

I was shown a shed, under which sat more than fifty elderly women. They were diligently crocheting something in blue mohair. Looking closer, I realized that the barn was like an assembly shop. Stacks of sleeves were delivered from a neighboring village, backs from another. After the receiver carefully checked every detail, they were connected into sweaters, labels were sewn on: “Pierre Cardin. Handmade. Paris" and sealed in plastic bags.

As they explained to me, woolen threads of certain colors and patterns with marking the number of loops in each row are supplied by the concern of the French couturier. He also takes the entire ordered assortment of the models he needs. In a word, it exports materialized labor, which costs seven to nine times less than in France. Moreover, it is possible to join such a business, as in the case of creating paid bicycle parking lots in the capital, without initial capital.

Cardin's hand-knitted sweaters are produced by one of the one and a half million village enterprises that have emerged in the Middle Kingdom. Rural small business is a new, dynamic sector of the economy, which is called the secret weapon of China's reforms. It not only creates 150-200 million new jobs for peasants, thereby reducing the surplus of workers in the countryside. It allows you to turn the main wealth of China - labor resources into real goods and services.

In addition to Cardin's sweaters, headlights for cars were stamped on machine tools imported from a neighboring factory in the same commune. It turned out to be more profitable for large factories to locate the production of simple parts in nearby villages than to build new workshops on expensive urban land.

The experience of China shows that there are models of economic integration, forms of industrial cooperation that open up opportunities for the revival of depopulated villages and small towns. Here is one of them.

Representatives of large poultry concerns come to villages where only old men and women are left. They offer elderly couples to raise either one hundred, or two hundred, or five hundred chickens. When the contract is signed, a team of workers assemble standard cages-canopies of the appropriate size. Newborn chicks are delivered from the incubator. Twice a week they bring compound feed and bottles of clean water. And when the broilers grow up, they are taken to the poultry farm for centralized cutting.

I think that the experience of China can be instructive for our "unpromising villages" and small towns, whose population is declining due to the inability to find work. Particularly for the handicapped or immobile work force, for example, for the elderly.

Here we need the integration of rural enterprises with urban ones. This may be the equipping of rural workshops-branches with urban plants, where hands local residents labor-intensive, but technologically simple operations would be carried out, purposeful expansion of employment opportunities in small towns and villages through the development of small businesses. In short, the transformation of local industry into an important constituent part rural economy.

Facing the village

China amazes the world with the pace of its economic growth. Foreign guests are fascinated by the skyscrapers of Beijing and Shanghai, highways with multi-level interchanges, magnetic levitation trains. But by no means belittling the achievements of the Middle Kingdom over the three decades of reforms, as a person who has traveled China far and wide, I know the other side of the picture.

I happened to be in villages where the income per inhabitant is less than five dollars a month, where all household utensils are made by people with their own hands from wood or clay. So after a fire in the house there is not a piece of metal left, like our prehistoric ancestors.

Today, the Peking leadership has made a radical turn towards the problems of the countryside. Before the start of reforms in absolute poverty lived every fourth Chinese, that is, a quarter of a billion people. Now there are no longer 25, but only 2 percent of the population. But in the conditions of China, this is 24 million people, and the fewer reserves of poverty remain, the more difficult it is to get to them.

Until recently, it was believed that 900 million Chinese live in the countryside, 400 million in the cities. But the process of industrialization and urbanization has somewhat changed this ratio. Official documents now state that the average annual income of 800 million peasants is about $600, and that of 500 million city dwellers is $1,800.

The matter is not limited to this triple break. Even more significant is the difference in the social conditions of life in the countryside, its lag in such areas as education, health care, transport and energy infrastructure.

Finally, the problem of food security remains paramount and difficult for the Celestial Empire. After all, China has to feed 22 percent of humanity, with only 7 percent of the world's arable land. The sown area is only 130 million hectares, or 10 acres per capita. But we are not talking about a personal plot, but about the entire arable wedge.

The dissolution of the people's communes in the early 1980s caused a surge in the labor activity of the peasants. Gross harvest of grain for five years has grown from 300 to 400 million tons. However, twenty years were not enough for the next such breakthrough. The crops were treading water. Only in recent years they began to grow, exceeding 500 million tons.

Therefore, Beijing took an unprecedented step in 26 centuries of the history of the Middle Kingdom. The agricultural tax has been completely abolished. But taxes from grain growers have traditionally served as the main source of replenishment of the treasury. It was to deliver them to the capital that the Great Chinese Canal was once dug.

The abolition of the agricultural tax alone increases the income of farmers by about 16 billion dollars annually. Another 4 billion are given to them by benefits and subsidies for grain producers, the area under which has reached 105 million hectares. Minimum prices are guaranteed for the purchase of rice and wheat.

The state budget finances road construction in the countryside. A program has been adopted: by 2020, to build 300,000 kilometers of rural roads. Budgetary funds are allocated for supplying settlements in the outback with good-quality drinking water. Last year alone, an additional 32 million peasants received access to it.

Budget allocations to support agriculture and improve the social conditions of life in the countryside annually exceed $50 billion. Almost two-fifths of this amount is allocated for the transition of rural schools to a nine-grade education. Everyone will benefit from this peasant families with 150 million students.

Thirty-seven million poor children will receive free textbooks. For 8 million, expenses in boarding schools are paid. A new direction is the creation of vocational schools. Over 18 million teenagers are studying to become agronomists and veterinarians, machine operators and paramedics in order to join the ranks of the rural intelligentsia.

In half of the counties of the country, with the help of the state, a new system of rural cooperative medical care is being created. It already covers more than half of the peasants. The program "Radio and Television in Every Village" was launched. The activities of rural clubs are being activated, especially in the development of physical culture and sports.

Growth problems

The Beijing leadership has made the term "harmonization" a key word in its political lexicon, not only because of the widening gap between urban and rural areas. The annual growth of the economic potential by 10 percent also gave rise to serious difficulties - environmental, energy, exacerbated the problem of food security.

According to the UN, China's harmful emissions into the atmosphere have doubled since 1980, and by 2020 they may increase several times more. There are two reasons. Due to the predominance of small and medium-sized enterprises, energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product is more than double the world average. In addition, the country's energy balance is dominated by the dirtiest type of fuel - coal. A billion tons of it annually burns only in thermal power plants.

The share of coal in China's energy balance (75 percent) is twice that of other countries. Whereas oil, gas and especially the energy of hydroelectric power plants and nuclear power plants are used much less. As a result, emissions of sulfur dioxide, the most harmful air pollutant, are 70 times greater in China than in Japan and 60 times greater than in the United States.

Perhaps the most difficult task is to ensure food security. Indeed, in the Celestial Empire, there are approximately 10 acres of arable land per person. In addition, due to industrialization and urbanization, even this piece shrinks like shagreen leather.

It's good that China has entered the 21st century, bringing meat production to 55 million tons and fish to 28 million tons. Therefore, a fifth of humanity consumes a quarter of the global volume of these protein-rich foods, eating better than the average inhabitant of the planet.

People began to consume more meat, eat more vegetables and fruits all year round. Thanks to improved diets, each Chinese now requires not 400, but 350 kilograms of grain per year. That is, for 1 billion 300 million inhabitants, 455 million tons of grain are needed, and for one and a half billion (what the population will become in the middle of the 21st century) - 525 million tons. Well, to increase fees from the current 500 to 525 million tons is already quite an achievable goal.

So neither environmental, nor energy, nor agrarian difficulties will change the main thing: China is irresistibly moving towards the world championship. The current turn towards the countryside demonstrates the determination of the Chinese leadership to radically improve the living conditions of the 800 million people who make up the rural population of China.

How a Sinologist Became a Japaneseist

When asked what led me to journalism, I answer: knowledge of the Chinese language, history, philosophy and culture of this country. The leadership of Pravda showed interest in Vsevolod Ovchinnikov, a graduate of the Military Institute of Foreign Languages, precisely because in 1951 the newspaper needed a country expert well trained for work in China. Well, elementary journalistic skills could be mastered in the editorial office.

I must say that at the first stage of my career, I was truly a darling of fate. After all, any topic related to the newly born PRC was considered a priority in the 50s. Among the foreign staff correspondents of Pravda, I was not only the youngest, but also the most published.

Not a language barrier, but a language bridge

The atmosphere in which I began my work in Beijing was extremely favorable. catchphrase“Russian and Chinese brothers forever” was then not only a line from a song. Friendship of neighboring peoples was not limited to speeches statesmen and newspaper editorials. She really entered into thousands of human destinies.

There are still legends about Chinese students who spent their weekends in the reading rooms of our universities. Yes, and our specialists returned from the new buildings of the first Chinese five-year plan immeasurably grown in professional terms. After all, they were constantly addressed with questions that went beyond their direct duties, which prompted them to deepen their knowledge.

In addition, the Chinese strongly encouraged their mentors to innovate, taking responsibility and risk upon themselves. Engineer Konstantin Silin, for example, not only ensured the successful construction of the first ever bridge across the Yangtze, but also for the first time in the world used a fundamentally new, non-caisson method of erecting bridge supports, which the USSR did not dare to apply for a long time.

I was lucky to be in the midst of these romantic events. The opportunity to talk with me one-on-one, without an interpreter, gave contacts with local leaders a confidential character, prompted them to treat me not as a foreigner, but “as one of their own.”

If most of my Western colleagues in Beijing were hindered by the language barrier, on the contrary, the language bridge helped me. It was enough to quote some ancient poet or read a hieroglyphic inscription to immediately arouse the sympathy of the interlocutor. Knowledge of Chinese literacy, and even more so of Chinese antiquity, is the best key to the heart of a resident of the Celestial Empire.

In a word, at first fate spoiled me pretty much. But, having returned to my homeland after a quarrel between Mao Zedong and Khrushchev, I found myself as if I had a broken trough. Since the Chinese theme has lost its former attractiveness, I decided to retrain as a Japanese specialist. Using his authority as an orientalist, he convinced his superiors that Chinese differs from Japanese no more than Belarusian from Russian. The hieroglyphs, they say, are the same, and our eastern neighbors easily understand each other.

I was hired by a teacher to take Japanese lessons four hours a week. At the institute, we did it weekly for eighteen hours. Besides, I was then in my twenties, and by no means in my thirties. So it was unrealistic to quickly master a second oriental language. But less than two years after returning from China, I was sent to work permanently in Japan.

The first year of work in Tokyo was the most difficult in my life. The hardest thing was to break the attitude towards me as an outsider-amateur. But Chinese is the Latin of East Asia. So the knowledge of ancient Chinese philosophy and literature allowed me to shine in front of the Japanese where many of our Japanists were inferior to me.

I found my own approach to lighting the Land of the Rising Sun. I set out to find the hidden springs of the post-war economic miracle in the peculiarities of the Japanese mentality, human relations in this country, incomprehensible to foreigners. This led me to the idea of ​​writing a kind of guide to the Japanese soul, which became the book "Sakura Branch".

Two big differences

Trying to describe Japanese national character, I compared it with Chinese. And here it was necessary to oppose more often than to compare. Having spent five years studying the country and the language, and then having worked for seven years in the Middle Kingdom, I confess that I mistakenly believed that the Chinese and Japanese were some kind of twin brothers (both in skin color and in the shape of the eyes, and finally, in common hieroglyphic writing). But life made me convinced that our Far Eastern neighbors are, as the inhabitants of Odessa say, "two big differences."

Exaggerating somewhat, I will say that the Chinese are the Germans of Asia. In their behavior, they are guided by logic and reason. The Japanese, in this sense, are the Russians of Asia. They, like us, live not with the mind, but with the heart. They are dominated by emotion and intuition. This contrast is rooted in relation to nature, that is, to the natural, and to what is created by human hands - to the artificial.

In the opinion of the Chinese, man as a creator is the master, and the material is his slave. The Japanese master does not impose his will on the material, but helps to reveal its original essence. An illustrative example - National cuisine. In China, this is a kind of alchemy, the ability to create the unknown from the unseen. In Japan, it is the art of creating still lifes on a plate. Unlike geometrically lined Beijing, chaotic Tokyo has grown "like a forest grows." Japanese urban planners, like local gardeners, only corrected what appeared by itself.

But the main material is a person. According to the Chinese, personality can and should be re-sculpted. Confucianism requires a person to constantly improve. This is reminiscent of weathercocks in the form of carps, winding over the houses where there are boys. Swimming against the current, striving forward and higher - this is the essence of the male character, embodied in this poetic metaphor. The Japanese consider for themselves an example of a rafting raft. The main thing is to find the rapids of the river and go with the flow, only if necessary starting from the banks. It can be said that for the Chinese, religion is replaced by ethics (norms of relationships between people), while for the Japanese, aesthetics (the cult of nature, admiring the spring sakura, the crimson of autumn maples, other forms of joint beauty education). However, both peoples have a tendency towards self-control and prescribed behavior.

Both the Chinese and the Japanese are constantly searching for a consensus, an agreement based on mutual concessions. Both put common interests above personal gain. Their religious tolerance extends to worldly life. Both peoples have an idea of ​​truth as a mountain peak, to which many paths lead, and everyone has the right to choose any of them. Who knows, maybe this will someday become a favorable prerequisite for creating a truly multi-party system both in the Land of the Rising Sun and in the Celestial Empire.

Not rice alone

The problem of food security

The Japanese public is sounding the alarm. The Land of the Rising Sun now produces only 39 percent of the food it needs. This stunned figure was discussed after the transition to the internationally accepted method: to compare domestic and imported food products that the country consumes, not by cost, but by the number of calories.

In the 60s, when I worked in Tokyo, the figure was almost 80 percent. By 1989 it was down to 50 and now for the first time it has fallen below 40 percent. Japan is at the bottom of the list in terms of food security. developed countries. (For example: Australia - 237 percent, Canada - 145, USA - 128, France - 122, Germany - 91, England - 74, Switzerland - 49, South Korea - 49 percent.)

For an archipelago country surrounded by seas, the problem of food security is of vital importance. Therefore, the Japanese government has formulated a strategic goal: to raise the level of food self-sufficiency to 45 percent by 2015, and to 50 percent by 2020.

The current emergency is the result of two post-war developments. A negative side effect of rapid industrialization and urbanization was depopulated villages. At first, girls rushed from the villages to the cities in order to save up for a dowry.

As Masaru Ibuka, the founder of Sony, once told me, it was the hands of young peasant women who glorified Japan as the "kingdom of transistors." Then a stream of former farmers poured into the metallurgical and automobile plants. At present, only 5 per cent of the labor force is employed by peasant labor, while agriculture provides only about one and a half per cent of the country's gross domestic product.

In addition, the traditional diet of the Japanese has changed dramatically in half a century. After the war, the basis of food was rice, vegetables, fish. Over the past half century, meat consumption has increased nine times, fat - five times. Milk, overseas fruits and fresh-frozen vegetables appeared in the diet. At the same time, the consumption of rice, which has always played a major role in food self-sufficiency, has been halved from 126 to 67 kilograms per person per year.

Occupation of grandparents

The decline in the role of agriculture in the economy is a worldwide phenomenon. However, the Japanese perceive this trend especially painfully. For from time immemorial they have been accustomed to follow the covenant of their ancestors: agriculture is the basis of the state. The emperor himself is revered as the first plowman and personally sows a tiny rice field near his palace. Under feudalism, the peasants were the "second estate". Above them in society were only warriors (samurai). Whereas artisans, merchants and usurers, regardless of their wealth, were considered lower, "third estate".

The traditionally respectful attitude to the work of the farmer, and above all the rice grower, is not accidental. As the Japanese say, "rice is the head of everything." From time immemorial, it has been not only the basis of the diet, but also a key factor in the formation of the national character. Japanese civilization practically did not know hunting or cattle breeding. Its origin is irrigated agriculture, the cultivation of rice on hillsides turned into terraced terraces.

It is not possible for one family to create and maintain such an irrigation system in order. This requires the joint work of the rural community. The spirit of collectivism inherent in the inhabitants of the Land of the Rising Sun, the willingness to put the common good above personal gain, loyalty to the group with which working life began - all these features of the national character, clearly manifested in the years of the post-war economic miracle, are rooted precisely in rice growing.

With the transformation of Japan into an economic superpower, the fate of the "second estate" was in jeopardy. The rural population, which had thinned out after the war, has since the 1960s decreased by more than four times: from 13 to 3 million families. Half of them are over 65 years old. As the people say with bitterness and anxiety, "farming has become the occupation of grandparents." Cultivated areas have almost halved over the past half century. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of arable land are abandoned.

Nevertheless, gray-haired Japanese farmers have the right to be proud of the results of their work. They managed to stabilize the harvest of rice at the level of 10 million tons for a long time.

Three million small farms not only fully provide the 127 million inhabitants of the country with the main food crop - rice, but also produce about two thirds of the vegetables, meat, milk, and eggs consumed by the people. And the gross output of Japanese agriculture (mentioned above one and a half percent of the country's GDP) in absolute terms is 70-80 billion dollars, which indicates the efficiency of the peasants' labor.

After the defeat in the war, Japan lost its colonies - Korea and Taiwan, which served as the empire's rice granaries. The occupation authorities began to accustom the Japanese to American wheat (starting with free buns in school breakfasts). So bread was added to the traditional diet. And now we have to import 5 million tons of wheat annually, and for the needs of animal husbandry and poultry farming, we still have to import about 20 million tons of corn and soybeans for fodder.

State support for farmers

In terms of rice yield (65 centners per hectare), Japan ranks third in the world. But in terms of its cost, it cannot compete with the large-scale, industrialized grain production of American, Australian or Canadian farmers. Foreign experts have repeatedly advised the Japanese to take into account the limited sown areas of the Land of the Rising Sun.

The land plots of the majority of the peasants there are little more than one and a half hectares. Whereas a farmer in the US has an average of 178 hectares, in England - 68, in Germany - 36. Therefore, they say, it is expedient for the Japanese to move from rice to more profitable crops. Let's say, following the example of Israel, to grow melons, strawberries or kiwis under a film. And buy grain at lower prices on the world market.

However, in this matter, Tokyo is guided not by commercial gain, but by the interests of food security. The government contracts the entire crop at a price that farmers can afford, and then sells the rice to domestic consumers for two to three times what it was paid for. At the same time, any intermediaries or resellers are excluded, so that the state support intended for rice growers goes to them.

The authorities proceed from the fact that the production of the main food crop cannot be stopped and resumed, as if by turning a tap. If the last generation of rice growers goes bankrupt, the Land of the Rising Sun will no longer be able to feed itself in the event of an international crisis and a naval blockade.

How can we explain that the rate of food self-sufficiency, which in the 1960s I remember was almost 80 percent, has now fallen to 39 percent? As already mentioned, the consumption of rice, which was the main link in Japan's food security, was halved.

Another reason is the distribution of imported semi-finished meat products, as well as ingredients for "fast food" dishes. If the Japanese relied more on fresh domestic meat, it would be better for both food self-sufficiency and the health of the nation. The inhabitants of the Land of the Rising Sun were practically unknown to cardiovascular diseases. They considered cholesterol plaques the lot of wealthy foreigners. And it turned out that at a time when in North America and Western Europe the death rate from hypertension and ischemia has halved since the 60s, in Japan and other countries of East Asia it has increased.

Of the 47 prefectures in Japan, Okinawa has long been considered the “land of centenarians”. Its inhabitants traditionally consume especially a lot of seafood. After the war, it was on this island, where the lion's share of American military bases is concentrated, that the country's first McDonald's was opened. Now there are already 44 such plants. And the islanders consume almost as much animal fat as the Americans.

As a result, Okinawa moved from first to thirtieth place in terms of life expectancy. People began to die more often from cardiovascular diseases there. Fatty hamburgers turned out to be especially harmful to the people who created the most exquisite, truly healing cuisine. Young people are especially susceptible to foreign fashion. But the nation traditionally tends to "re-Japanize the diet" in adulthood. And now the government is striving to develop this trait in every possible way.

The World Trade Organization tirelessly and fruitlessly criticizes the Tokyo authorities for subsidizing food production. However, the Japanese experience of energetic state support for domestic agriculture, in my opinion, is instructive for Russia.

"Workshop of the world" will become a "world laboratory"

China continues to amaze the world with the swiftness of its economic rise. In terms of its share in world trade, the Celestial Empire was ahead of the Land of the Rising Sun, which in the 60-80s performed an economic miracle, filling the whole world with its cars and televisions.

The world community, not without reason, now calls China the "workshop of the world." This title was once the first to be earned by England after the industrial revolution of the 18th century. The Manchester textile mills then made the English cloth frock coat the cherished dream of any wealthy person.

A favorable investment climate that has ensured the influx of hundreds of billions of dollars into the special economic zones created on the coast, plus a cheap and conscientious labor force capable of flawlessly working on modern equipment and new technologies - this is the formula for the success of the Middle Kingdom, which today has surpassed the achievements of Britain glorified by Dickens, as well as post-war Japan.

Now the Beijing leadership has set a new goal: to make another breakthrough, no longer quantitative, but qualitative. Turn the "workshop of the world" into a "world laboratory". In a country that would not borrow foreign technologies, but create them anew itself, would turn into an equal participant in scientific and technological progress.

So, the 21st century has set before China, as well as before Russia, the task of moving to a “knowledge economy”, turning into an innovative power. And then it turned out that the ancient Confucian traditions give important advantages today. The cult of learning, the idea that only education can improve a person's position in society, that is, serve as a channel for social mobility, has long been rooted in the Chinese people.

Talking about turning China into a “world laboratory” is sometimes skeptical to the average Russian. He is accustomed to judging Chinese exports by the second-rate consumer goods that shuttles bring to us. And he will buy a microwave with the brand "Made in China" in last turn. However, since childhood, the third generation of Americans has been accustomed to wearing only good-quality and inexpensive school uniforms made in Chinese factories. It has the same good reputation in the United States as we had Chinese wool sweaters with the Friendship brand in the 50s.

Having become the "workshop of the world", China sells an order of magnitude more goods to the United States than to Russia. More importantly, in terms of the structure of its exports, it is not inferior to the most developed and wealthy countries. China, for example, imports more science-intensive, high-tech goods into the United States than it comes from the states of the European Union.

Over $300 billion in Chinese exports are integrated circuits, computers, digital cameras, mobile phones and their components. However, only 15-20 percent of the added value of these goods is due to Chinese entrepreneurs. The rest is paid to foreign owners of patents and licenses.

Science-intensive, high-tech goods made in the Celestial Empire are competitive, because they are of high quality and cheap. But they are, strictly speaking, four-fifths not Chinese. Is China capable of transforming itself from an imitator into a creator of know-how?

China has already been the vanguard of progress

It is appropriate to recall that until the 15th century, it was China that was at the forefront of scientific and technological progress. Everyone knows the "four great inventions" with which he enriched mankind. This is a compass and gunpowder, paper and typography. European travelers were amazed that all the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire - from the prince to the plowman - "do not touch food with their hands, but use special chopsticks when eating." Yes, and personal hygiene items, from a toothbrush to toilet paper, the Chinese came into use five to seven centuries earlier than the Europeans.

At the end of the 11th century, when Europeans kept track of time only by the sun, the Chinese master Su Song created a mechanical water clock. They were wrong no more than a couple of minutes a day. A jet of water from a refillable tank rotated the wheels with saucers and set in motion a complex mechanism. Every quarter of an hour there was a beat of a drum, every two hours - a chime of a bell. Changed its position and imitation celestial sphere with sun, moon and planets.

Until the 15th century, China was ahead of Europe in metallurgy, shipbuilding, machines for processing cotton, jute and silk. But if the industrial revolution in England in the 18th century gave impetus to scientific and technological progress in Europe, then since the 15th century China has, as it were, lost the incentive to move forward. The Middle Kingdom beyond the Great Wall prospered without rivals. His priorities were stability, not development, continuity, not renewal.

China sold more and more tea and silk to Europe. But he did not show interest in the "Anglican cloths", which were popular in all capitals. When the ambassador of Queen Victoria expressed his bewilderment about this, Emperor Qianlong replied that the Celestial Empire itself produces everything that its inhabitants need.

The ever-increasing flow of silver from London to Beijing worried the British and prompted them to grow opium in India in order to smuggle it to the Chinese. Drug addiction began to spread throughout the Celestial Empire, like a fire in the steppe. And when the governor of one of the southern provinces ordered the burning of 25 thousand boxes of confiscated potion, the British squadron fired at the port cities of China. Thus began the first of the Opium Wars, which in the 19th century turned the Middle Kingdom into a semi-colony.

Modern China, which, as if waking up from a dream, is striving for world leadership, does not have to choose: stability or progress? In countries struggling with poverty and underdevelopment, social peace is impossible without economic take-off. And the economy today can develop only on the basis of scientific and technological progress. In order for the "workshop of the world" to turn into a "world laboratory", it is necessary to increase the innovative component of growth, to independently create intellectual property.

Prior to the reforms, China spent less than 1 percent of its gross domestic product on research and development (R&D). By 2020, investments in scientific and technical progress increase to 2.5 percent of GDP, which by then could be $6 trillion.

Piracy is a boomerang

An ambitious program to create a "knowledge economy" aims to reduce China's dependence on foreign technology from 80 percent to 30 percent. Innovation can only be stimulated through effective protection of intellectual property. And the great imitators from the Celestial Empire have become addicted to piracy over the years of reforms. They skillfully imitate not only the ancient bronze censers of the Zhou era, but also fashionable Swiss Rolex watches, Japanese Nikon digital cameras.

Piracy, from which foreigners previously suffered, like a boomerang, is beginning to hit the Chinese as well. So a radical re-education of domestic entrepreneurs is required.

An innovative economy needs new personnel. As already mentioned, the Confucian cult of learning contributes to their training. Chinese universities are already graduating four times as many engineers as American ones.

Leading transnational corporations have begun to create their own scientific and technical centers not only in the G8 countries, but also in China. There are already 750 such centers operating there, and in their number the Celestial Empire is second only to the United States and Great Britain. The well-known firm Nokia has concentrated 40 percent of all development work on cell phones in its research and development center in Beijing.

Huawei is the 6th largest cell phone manufacturer in the world. It sells nearly $10 billion worth of them every year. It is noteworthy that the corporation has now directed a tenth of this amount and almost half of its workforce to research and development.

University Science in Zhongguancong

The Chinese analogues of the American “silicon valley” are, first of all, Shenzhen, which grew out of a fishing village next to Hong Kong. This is Shanghai's Pudong district, which is called the city of the 21st century. And, finally, Zhongguan-tsun - "a zone of promotion of the development of high and new technologies" in the northwestern suburbs of the University of Beijing.

In 1992-1996, I unexpectedly found myself living there. Foreigners who worked for the Xinhua agency were accommodated in the Druzhba hotel complex, once built for Soviet specialists. It was there that I had the opportunity to meet the first “returnees” who connected university science to the cause of turning China into an innovative power.

It should be clarified that from the first years of the reforms, the Chinese authorities annually send thousands of young people to foreign universities and react very calmly to the fact that the best of them are offered to stay to work in the United States, Europe or Japan. Such an act does not entail expulsion from the Komsomol, does not stain the reputation of relatives. “We are proud of the successes of our compatriots and hope that in due time they will return to their homeland not just as holders of diplomas, but as established specialists.”

This official conclusion is often confirmed. In ten or fifteen years, many "defectors" feel that they have reached the ceiling in their foreign careers and express a desire to continue their scientific research in their homeland. Searches for a place for this are carried out by specially created agencies.

Of course, they cannot offer a Chinese repatriate the $60,000 a year that he received in the US. But at purchasing power parity, this corresponds to 12 thousand dollars. And getting a thousand dollars a month in Beijing, or 7-8 thousand yuan, is not so bad (after all, I lived there for four years on two thousand yuan). In a word, the “returnees” who appeared in the university suburb of the capital gave impetus to the development of university science.

For example, Beijinger Jing Cheng, who was engaged in biotechnology in California, created the CapitalBio company at his alma mater, Tsinghua University.

The government ordered her equipment capable of detecting the presence of banned doping (steroids) in athletes. The government order has been fulfilled. The company not only provided for the needs of the Organizing Committee of the 2008 Olympics, but also successfully exports the world's best laser scanners on biochips for testing athletes. The Chinese jokingly call this their first Olympic record. But seriously, this is a clear step towards becoming the birthplace of our own high technologies.

Housing and communal services - a generator of growth

We are accustomed to consider the housing and communal services as a kind of sore spot, an obstacle to the development of the economy and the improvement of people's lives. However, the author of the concept of “enlightened authoritarianism” popular in East Asia, Lee Kuan Yew, using the example of the city-state he founded in 1965, Singapore, proved that housing and communal services can serve not as a brake, but as a generator of growth.

Judge for yourself. The island republic is half the area, and the population is three times smaller than Moscow, which does not have any natural resources, forced to import even water, annually exports more goods than Russia. In the forty-five years of Singapore's independence, its gross domestic product per capita has increased fifty-fold. According to this indicator, the city-state is second only to the United States, Japan and Germany.

Singapore originated as the "Asian Gibraltar". It was a typical colonial port, which lived on the income from the British naval base. However, the traditional role of the outpost of the empire has exhausted itself just in the years of gaining independence. The British curtailed their military presence "east of Suez." A mini-state endowed by nature with nothing but benefits geographical location at the junction of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, had to determine its own development strategy. Continuing to head the government from 1965 to 1990, Lee Kuan Yew ensured that Singapore not only survived, but also prospered. First of all, by the fact that he developed and successfully applied a unique mechanism for mobilizing domestic savings.

The Singapore economic miracle is the result of the successful implementation of a peculiar model of housing and communal reform. In the forty-five years of independence, more than 90 percent of Singaporeans have moved into state-built apartment buildings. And the construction boom became the locomotive that allowed Singapore's economy to pick up rapid growth rates.

"Asian Gibraltar" has become a country of new settlers

As soon as Singapore became independent, the Housing and Communal Services Authority (UZHKH) appeared there. Today, a house for a Singaporean is a spacious modern apartment with all amenities in a multi-storey residential area, which is built by the state on state land. Since the population density is approaching five thousand people per square kilometer, Lee Kuan Yew has focused on high-rise buildings, on complex microdistricts of 20-25 floors.

During its existence UZHKH built about a million apartments. How does the government of Singapore manage to finance such an impressive building program? And how could state apartments be made so affordable that most of the new settlers were able to buy them into their personal property?

The key to solving both of these problems is Lee Kuan Yew's favorite brainchild: the central savings fund (CFS). Every Singaporean is required to pay 20 percent of his earnings there every month. The employer transfers the same amount to his account. So these contributions amount to an amount equal to 40 percent of the payroll.

Savings in the CFS are not taxed, in an investment bank they accrue interest. Having reached retirement age, the Singaporean receives all this amount in his hands. But even before that, he has the right to use three-quarters of the savings in the CFS in order to purchase an apartment, and a quarter - to pay for treatment in the hospital if necessary.

The benefits of the government housing program are available only to citizens of Singapore. To get an apartment, it is enough to accumulate 20 percent of its value in the CFS, and the rest can be paid in installments. In order to speed up the purchase of a home, parents and children, brothers and sisters can pool the funds they have accumulated in the TFS. If, five years after moving in, the state-built apartment is fully paid for, it can be sold at the market price without any restrictions.

With only 12,000 employees, the Housing and Utilities Department manages a huge amount of construction and maintenance work because it awards open tenders for all types of public services, including water supply, sewerage, garbage collection, lawn mowing, and maintenance of parking lots. It retains in its hands only the operation of elevators to ensure their uninterrupted safe operation in multi-storey buildings.

Thanks to the TFS, Singapore has become the country with the highest savings rate in the world. It makes up almost half of the gross domestic product. These funds make it possible not only to conduct housing construction, but also to finance health care and social security. This method is in many ways better than covering such costs from the budget.

The scale of the state housing program has made the construction industry a generator of Singapore's economic development. It was the construction of multi-storey residential areas that later allowed private construction companies to join the "hotel boom". As a result, Singapore can comfortably host nearly 7 million tourists a year, twice the population of the city-state.

Key to the 21st century

Compatriots honor Lee Kuan Yew not only for making Singapore a “land of new settlers”, but also for the fact that he initiated the “IT plan”, which is called the key to the 21st century. Adopted back in the 80s, the "IT Plan" is a state program for the development of information technologies for the integrated computerization of Singapore.

In the first years of independence, Lee Kuan Yew considered the main task to ensure the viability of the city-state, reduce its vulnerability to external factors by creating import-substituting industries. At the second stage, the priority was the development of export-oriented industries. Here Singapore widely borrowed the experience of post-war Japan. A bet was made on the acquisition of licenses and patents in order to combine advanced technologies with a competent and cheap labor force.

Soon, however, this path has exhausted itself. The competition not only with Japan, but also with South Korea, Taiwan, and other states of East Asia, including China, began to have an increasingly stronger effect.

And then Lee Kuan Yew carried out a forced promotion minimum wage in order to ruin the owners of labor-intensive industries and focus on high-tech, knowledge-intensive products. The country was faced with the need to make a breakthrough in the age of informatics.

The "IT plan" provided for the solution of three strategic objectives. First, through massive investment in the education system, make Singapore a country of universal computer literacy. Secondly, to carry out the computerization of the state apparatus and thereby set an example for the private sector. Third, to create a competitive industry for the production of computer equipment.

The results of what has been done are evident. By turnover of containers sea ​​port Singapore leads the world. Its electronic computing center chooses the best option for each operation. The processing of all documents related to foreign trade has been brought together. Thanks to the extensive use of information technology, Singapore Airlines and Changi Airport also won the world championship.

In the field of healthcare, the Medinet system operates, covering both the public and private sectors. This not only simplifies calculations, but also allows the databank of Singaporeans to be used for medical purposes. If a person on the street becomes ill, the ambulance doctor will instantly find out by personal number about the patient's blood type, allergies to some medications and other contraindications.

The fruits of the "IT plan" are especially evident in the case of small and medium-sized firms, which are the majority in Singapore. The National Computer Board does not wait for a private entrepreneur to turn to him for help. It itself suggests conducting a survey to find out what benefits it promises in this business application of information technologies.

If, after such a free examination, the company decides to modernize, it is provided with a soft loan for the purchase of equipment, a subsidy for inviting a consultant. So, following the state institutions of Singapore, the private sector entered the age of informatics, which undoubtedly increased its competitiveness.

Kingdom of Longevity

Once the beginning of the twentieth century was called the Silver Age. But the first years of the 21st century have even more reasons to be called that. Only if the former metaphor reflected new trends in art, then the current one is connected with demography.

The world's population is aging. In just half a century, the number of people over sixty-five has more than tripled. If in developing countries children under fifteen years of age make up about half of the population, and older people of the above age - less than a tenth, then in industrialized countries the ratio is radically different.

Second Life

This is clearly seen in the example of Japan. In the 1960s, when I worked in Tokyo, children under 15 made up 36 percent of the population there. Now their share has decreased to 13 percent. While people over 65 make up 20 percent of the population. And by 2050, every third person will fall into this category.

On the other hand, there will be 32 million fewer Japanese of working age (15–65) by the middle of the century than they are now. That is, not two-thirds, but only one-third of the population. Such a change in the demographic structure will create an unbearable burden on the social security system. After all, it is one thing when there are four workers for every pensioner, and another when there are only two.

Notes

The first edition of the book "Reflections of a Wanderer" was published by the publishing house "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" in 2011.

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108 bells

Breaking the Pacific wave, the ship rushed to the Japanese coast. His square sail was scarlet from the setting sun, which he pursued persistently. The seven on board the sailboat were in a hurry. But the wind of folk fantasy, as always, brought them to the deadline - when the booming peals of old bronze bells began to beat New Year's midnight.

Japan froze as it counted those one hundred and eight beats. After all, the New Year there is not just a holiday of holidays, but, as it were, a common birthday for all the people. Until recently, the Japanese did not have the custom to celebrate the date of their birth. The one hundred and eighth strike of the New Year's bell adds one to all ages at once. Even a baby born the day before is considered a year old in the morning. At New Year's midnight, a person becomes a year older and, moreover, crosses a certain threshold, beyond which a completely new fate awaits him. It is customary to decorate the doors of dwellings at this time with pine, bamboo and plum branches. For the Japanese, the evergreen pine symbolizes longevity, the bamboo symbolizes resilience, and the plum tree that blossoms in the dead of winter symbolizes cheerfulness in the midst of adversity.

To these general wishes, everyone has the right to add their own personal hopes. That is why, on the eve of the holiday, pictures depicting a fabulous sailboat are quickly bought up all over Japan. They are placed under the pillow to see the most desired dream on New Year's Eve: the seven gods of happiness on the Precious Ship. This dream portends to a person the fulfillment of his most cherished dream. So, the sailboat rushed to the Japanese shores. An uninitiated person would have noticed on board three fat men, two elders, a warrior and a woman. However, each of the seven deserves to get to know him better.

The God of Fortune Ebisu is immediately distinguished from the other two fat men by the rod in his hand and the perch under his arm. The god of luck cannot be otherwise in a country where all the inhabitants are avid fishermen and even the emperor himself is addicted to fishing. Those who, in addition to tackle and skill, also need luck, turn to Ebis for help: fishermen, sailors, merchants. An image of a fat man with a fishing rod can be found in almost every shop. Ebisu, however, along with good luck, also represents honesty. So one day a year, merchants are obliged to sell goods at half price, as if apologizing for the profits received beyond measure. Maybe that's why businessmen have more respect than Ebisu for Daikoku, a burly village bearded man sitting on a sack of rice. Once he was revered only by the peasants as the god of fertility. But since the bearded man had a wooden hammer in his hands, Daikoku has also become the patron of all those who need the art of extorting money - merchants, stockbrokers, bankers; in a word, he turned from a god of fertility into a god of profit.

Finally, the third fat man is the smiling, chubby god of fate Hotei. His signs are: a shaved head and a round belly protruding from a monastic robe. He has a carefree, even unlucky disposition, which is quite risky in his official position, because none other than Hotei carries a huge bag with human destinies behind his back. The god of fate is worshiped by soothsayers and fortune-tellers, as well as politicians and cooks (they and others sometimes brew something that they themselves do not know what they will do).

However, while secretly revering Hotei, politicians like to publicly call the god of wisdom Jurojin their idol. This is a learned-looking old man with a long beard, who holds in his hand an even longer scroll of knowledge, now and then supplementing it. Jurojin is also reputed to be a lover of booze and women, without which he simply would not be wise enough, in the understanding of the Japanese. Philosophers, lawyers, writers, as well as the politicians already mentioned, consider Jurojin their patron.

The god of longevity Fuku-Roku-Ju is a small bald old man with an exorbitantly high forehead (it is believed that over the years the skull is stretched in length). His inseparable companions are the crane, the deer and the tortoise. Unlike the god of wisdom, the god of longevity is distinguished by a quiet disposition. He loves to play chess and, due to his personal predilection, takes care of chess players, as well as watchmakers, antique dealers, gardeners - people whose work is related to the present, past or future.

Standing apart on the deck is Bishamon - a tall warrior with an ax, in a helmet and armor on which "Loyalty, duty, honor" is written. Bishamon does not like being called the god of war, proving that he is not a warrior, but a guard, which is why he is called the patron saint of policemen and doctors (the military, by the way, too).

And finally, the only woman in the society of the gods is the patroness of the arts Benten with a lute in her hands. Once upon a time, Japanese women who played this instrument did not dare to get married, fearing that an angry goddess would deprive them of their musical gift. Benten is really excessively jealous - for other people's talents, for someone else's fame, for other people's admirers, which, however, is characteristic of art servants by no means only in Japan.

With what thoughts did the Japanese want to see these seven on the Precious Ship on New Year's Eve? The most seemingly ingenuous dream was that of a boy from a mountain village in Iwate Prefecture. He wanted his father to come home for the holidays and help him make a huge New Year's kite with the face of Shogun Ieyasu. My father had left for Tokyo to work on a construction site since the harvest. The boy was sent to the post office to receive another transfer from him, and at the same time to find out if the buses run after the blizzard. Unfortunately, it turned out that due to drifts, the message was again interrupted. As he walked back through the deep snow, the boy thought: why shouldn't his father build the same outlandish road on pillars through the local mountains that he builds over the streets of Tokyo? At home, mother and grandmother watched a New Year's concert on TV. Girls in incredible outfits danced on the screen. Here, as always, complaints began that, although there was no war, peasant women lived like soldiers: husbands were more often away than at home.

Meanwhile, the city girls, with whose hands the color TV set in the peasant house was assembled, were also preparing for the holiday. In the room of the factory dormitory, decorated with pine, bamboo and plum branches, the beauties from Utamaro's painting came to life sat sedately. Let not tortoiseshell, but plastic combs adorned their complex hairstyles; even if the patterned festive kimonos were not made of hand-woven silk, but of nylon. In every gesture of young Japanese women there was the same exquisite femininity that the great artist once glorified.

At first glance, it might seem that the girls have two decks of cards in their hands. But it wasn't just cards. The workers' hostel competed in the knowledge of ancient poetry. Seven centuries ago, one hundred the best poems one hundred best poets. They gained such popularity that to this day they have remained the theme of their favorite New Year's game among young people. On the cards of the first deck, each of the hundred quatrains is printed in its entirety; on the other, which is laid out on the table, only the final stanzas. The winner is the one who, having heard the beginning of the verse, first finds and reads its ending. A hundred years ago, a game of one hundred quatrains was the only time when boys and girls befitted to be together. Today there are many more such opportunities. However, the picture with the Precious Ship was nevertheless put under the pillow by every inhabitant of the workers' dormitory. And although girlish dreams are easy to guess, because they are very similar in all ages and among all peoples, it would be immodest to talk about them.

And therefore, let's better look at one of the friends who celebrated the holiday in the hostel a year ago, and got married last summer. The young couple, which will be discussed, slowly moved along the main street of Tokyo in a stream of walkers. Ginza sparkled in new Year's Eve much brighter than old name. The words "Silver Row" would be too dim for this frenzy of lights. The newlyweds walked, sincerely admiring the neon glow. Both of them had rarely been here since they rented a room on the outskirts, an hour and a half away by train. Near the transparent cylindrical tower, everyone stopped to look at how its top was illuminated. (By the color of the lights one can judge tomorrow's weather.) In the middle of the tower, three red diamonds were invariably lit. They are seen in Japan more often than the chrysanthemum with sixteen petals - the official emblem of the imperial court. The emblem of the Mitsubishi concern seemed to make it clear that it was these three red rhombuses that make the weather in the country.

The young husband said that the peculiar design of the building in the form of a tower is due to the fact that it was built on the most expensive piece of land in Japan. By talking about real estate prices, the couple broke the vow not to touch on this sad topic. The fact is that a young couple without fortunetellers and soothsayers knew that the new year promises them an addition to the family. And the landlord from whom they rented a room included a condition in the contract: until there was a child. On the eve of the holiday, I wanted to drive worries away from myself. There were three days off ahead. They took a sightseeing tour with a stop at the Aso volcano, which for some reason is loved by newlyweds and ... suicides.

Near the crater of the Aso volcano, a police patrol spent New Year's Eve. One of the policemen came here for the first time and saw not at all what he expected. Instead of a fire-breathing mountain, instead of a swollen abscess, there was a painful ulcer on the body of the earth in front of him. Ashy piles of slag piled up all around. They looked like a lunar landscape. And this similarity was enhanced by the fact that large porous blocks were unexpectedly light - they could be moved alone. The patrol this time was not on duty at the crater in order to drive tourists into concrete shelters in the event of an eruption. The volcano was deserted. But it was necessary to protect it on New Year's Eve from those who do not want to put a picture with the Precious Ship under their pillow.

The eccentric and unpredictable god of fate Hotei, who makes even professional fortune-tellers make mistakes, only before the New Year, as it were, reveals his cards. For 365 days, people on the streets may have different reasons to rejoice or grieve, rush headlong or wander in thought. But it is known in advance that of all fifty-two weeks of the year, it is precisely the two pre-holiday weeks that account for the largest number of victims of traffic and the largest number of suicides. No measures can affect these statistics, which sometimes you want to call mysticism. Such is the inevitable fate of this feverish time. After all, the New Year brings not only hopes, but also worries. Reopening a blank page in the book of life, it at the same time serves as a threshold beyond which it is impossible to transfer unfulfilled promises, unpaid debts.

But here comes New Year's Eve. With bated breath, the Japanese listen to the booming bass of bronze bells. It is believed that each of these blows casts out one of the one hundred and eight evils that darken human life. If only this solemnly unhurried ringing was really capable of expelling trouble after trouble! A blow - and off the coast of Japan there would be a Precious ship with seven gods capable of making happy dreams come true. It is a pity that such miracles occur only in New Year's fairy tales ...

Thirty years of studying Japan, its people, language, culture reveal to me more and more clearly the features of commonality and continuity that lie under everything that mixes and changes. Of course, it would be naive to deny the external chaos that catches the eye: internal tremors, sharp shifts, sudden jumps in blood pressure. But deep beneath it all, something monolithic is revealed, like a support frame holding together the parts of a complex machine.

This frame takes on shocks, shocks, shocks and even turns them into impulses for further movement.

Fosco Maraini (Italy). Japan: traits of continuity. 1971

If the new in Japan is striking, then the old contains even more to marvel at. Somehow, at the core of their nature, the Japanese uncompromisingly adhere to aesthetic norms, ideals and communal ties that have remained unchanged for twenty centuries. More than any other country in the East, Japan adopted, perceived and even stole everything that was best from the West. But more than any other country in the East, Japan has remained itself.

By buying up technological processes and modern conveniences from the West, Japan resolutely refused to allow these acquisitions to displace, replace the solid, unchanging core of Japanese tradition. At some end point, the Japanese are incorruptible - the arrogance of Western materialism does not stun them, does not even impress them. Japan believes that its past is as valuable as its present.

William Forbis (USA). Japan today. 1975

Debt to cherries

During the years of journalistic work in Tokyo, I often recalled the words of Mayakovsky, who considered himself indebted

... in front of the cherries of Japan,
in front of everything that I did not have time to write about.

The constant race for current events in political and public life leaves almost no time for a journalist writing for a newspaper from abroad to tell a detailed story about the people themselves, about the features of their portrait. Then you leaf through the voluminous folders of the transferred materials and bitterly make sure that you did not have time to really answer the question: what kind of people are they, the Japanese? Since the beginning of this century, our country has known more bad than good about this neighboring people. There were reasons for this. And even the bad things that we are used to hearing about the Japanese are generally true and need more explanation than refutation. However, if negative traits Japanese nature is known to us by ninety percent, then only ten percent is positive.

Of course, the assessment of a particular character trait is always relative, subjective.

An American, for example, will say: “The Japanese are enterprising but impractical. They are serious about work, but very careless about money.

The German will add: “And by the time too. They lack punctuality, adherence to a reasonable order. It's hard to argue against this. Although the Russian nature is impressed just by the fact that the Japanese, even when they are poor, are not petty, when they are organized, they are not pedantic, that they are reluctant to subordinate spiritual impulses to the voice of reason. The Japanese loves to show that he is indifferent to money (perhaps even more than he really is). It is not accepted to recalculate change. If five workers come in for a beer, someone alone will pay, and no one will hand him their share later.

Visiting foreigners, Japan strikes as a country where they do not take tips. The taxi driver, the peddler from the shop will hand over the change to the last coin and thank you. The people as a whole are distinguished by some kind of moral cleanliness in relation to money. People have not forgotten how to put spiritual values ​​above material wealth. A Japanese of any position and wealth reads a lot, is interested in many things. The total circulation of Japanese newspapers has crossed over seventy million copies, approaching the world championship.

And here it is necessary to note an interesting feature. In the Western press, it is customary to divide newspapers into “high-quality” and “mass” ones. The first of them, that is, the most solid, influential ones, have a much narrower circle of readers than the tabloid publications that come out in millions of copies. In the United States, for example, the serious New York Times is three times inferior in circulation to the much lighter New York Daily News, and the circulation of the most respectable newspapers in England, The Times and The Guardian, is ten to twelve times less than that of "mass" Daily Mirror. In Japan, it is precisely the “quality” newspapers that are at the same time the “mass” ones, that is, the most popular. Asahi, Yomiuri, Mainichi each have seven to eight million subscribers. The point here, of course, is not in publishers, but in readers - in the level of their requests.

There is a typical scale of feelings that a foreigner changes as he "gets used" to Japan: admiration - indignation - understanding. The very exotic that touches a tourist sometimes annoys a person who has lived in the country for a year or two, that is, a period sufficient for unusualness in itself to cease to be identified with attractiveness, but, as a rule, insufficient to overcome the habit of approaching a foreign people with one's own. by the standards. The Japanese sometimes compare their country to a bamboo trunk bound in steel and wrapped in plastic. This is the exact image. Tourist attractions, which first of all appear to the eyes of foreigners, are indeed in some ways similar to the exotic wrapper through which the steel of modern industrial Japan peeps through in places. It is easy to notice new features on the face of this country. It is more difficult to look into her soul, to touch the bamboo trunk hidden from prying eyes, to feel its elasticity.

Anyone who first begins to learn a foreign language knows that it is easier to remember words than to realize that they can be combined and controlled according to completely different rules than ours. Grammar mother tongue gravitates over us as the only universal pattern. This to a large extent also applies to national characteristics (that is, as it were, to the grammar of the life of a particular people).

As the flow of information about foreign countries grows, the ability to comprehend these facts becomes more and more necessary. Otherwise, saving them is just as useless as memorizing foreign words without knowing grammar. Notice the features of local originality, exotic oddities - this is just a step towards external acquaintance. For a true knowledge of the country requires something more. You need to get used to the question "how?" move on to the “why” question. In other words, it is necessary, in my opinion, to understand the system of ideas, standards and norms inherent in a given people; trace how, under the influence of what factors these ideas, measures and norms have developed; finally, to determine the extent to which they now affect human relationships and, therefore, contemporary political problems.

The question may arise: is it legitimate to talk about some in general terms whole people? After all, each person has his own character and behaves in his own way. This is true, of course, but only in part. For different personal qualities of people are manifested - and evaluated - against the background of common ideas and criteria. And, only knowing the pattern of proper behavior - a common starting point - one can judge the degree of deviation from it, one can understand how this or that act appears to the eyes of a given people. In Moscow, for example, you are supposed to give up your seat to a woman in the metro or trolleybus. This does not mean that everyone does this. But if a man continues to sit, he usually pretends to take a nap or read. But in Tokyo there is no need to pretend: this kind of courtesy in public transport is simply not accepted.

The question is also legitimate: how can one talk about national traits if life is so full of changes, and, therefore, people are constantly changing? No doubt, the Japanese have become something different than before. But even the changes themselves take place in their own way, in the Japanese way. Just as the constant influx of new words fits into the stable framework of the grammatical system in the language, the national character also changes very little under the pressure of new phenomena.

National features deserve to be studied not only for the sake of cognitive, ethnographic interest. Knowledge of these features helps to delve deeper into the essence contemporary problems better understand the background of phenomena and processes, the mechanics of the interaction of social and political forces. In a word, having understood what kind of people the Japanese are, it is easier to understand what kind of country Japan is. With this Far Eastern neighbor, we are destined to always live side by side. And who does not know the truth: a neighbor may have his own views, inclinations, habits, but in order to get along with him, you need to know his character.

A bad person is reprimanded.

It is unlikely that there will be at least one person who wanted to be considered unlucky. And this applies not only to all life, but also to some particular situations.

Phrase bad person means: to be unadapted, not representing anything and generally a lost person. Sad, I must say, the situation. Moreover, it is very bad to be unlucky yourself and it is undesirable to have any joint business with such people. There is even such an expression: “It is better to lose to a smart person than to get involved with an unlucky one.”

The origin of phraseologism is an unlucky person

However, in the old days the word path had another meaning. In Rus', this was the name of the position under princely court. And not any, but only very profitable and honorable. So, for example, the falconer's path is the management of the prince's hunting, the hunter's path is the management canine hunting, and the path of the stables is a guarantee for the princely horses and carriages. Prestigious and money for those times. So the boyars tried by all means, by truth or falsehood, to get this path (position) from the Grand Duke himself. Some people succeeded, and some didn't. The last applicants were called with derision and disdain "unlucky people."

After some time, this expression was no longer associated with a profitable position. It has become a characteristic of the negative personal qualities of a person and the inability to find the right and sensible life line.