Rice or Bitterness?

Clutching $20,000 (Chinese) in his chubby hand, a small American boy went into a Shanghai candy store to buy his regular afternoon popsicle. The shopkeeper shook his head, said popsicles now cost $30,000. Running home, the boy got an additional $10,000 from his mother. But in the few minutes he was away from the store, the price of popsicles had risen to $40,000.

The boy's howl of dismay was only one in the millions that made up the screaming wake of China's jet-propelled inflation last week. In two days, while Chiang Kai-shek was desperately trying to bolster the morale of his dispirited armies in Central China, the value of China's currency on Shanghai's black market dropped by half. In Shanghai a wet-nurse unable to find food for her family went on strike, demanding 100 lbs. of rice from her employer. Her nursling's harassed father at last scraped together the necessary $16 million; a few days later the cost of the rice had risen to $23 million.

Haircuts rose from $500,000 to $780,000 in a week. China's banks refused loans on anything but raw materials subject to quick sales. In Shanghai a housepainter insisted on payment in advance lest the price charged for the whole job fail to cover the cost of paint. Most salaries were geared to a monthly cost-of-living index, but the index ran hopelessly far behind prices in the spiraling race to oblivion, and China's housewives well knew that months would pass before present prices were reflected in their husbands' paychecks. Since to keep their workers on the job at all employers had to supply them with food and transportation, many firms collapsed under the crushing overhead.

Last week the Chinese dollar paused momentarily in its flight, to level off on a plateau of $380 million to one U.S. dollar. Desperate Chinese hoped that it might hold steady until military victories and U.S. aid could brace it. But the housewives feared to look ahead more than a single day. In busy Seymour Street market they shuffled from stall to stall, picking over fish and vegetables and hopelessly asking prices. One squat, broad-faced woman, a tram conductor's wife, finally bought two cracked eggs for her family of five. What if prices went even higher? She answered resignedly, for all of China's badly used plain people: "Chih-hao ch'ihku" (We can only eat bitterness).

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