n016  0737  07 Oct 84
BC-SINO-PAPER
By WALTER GOODMAN
c.1984 N.Y. Times News Service
    NEW YORK - ''People ask me what I like in America,'' Liang Heng
said, ''and I tell them, three things - one, freedom; two,
basketball; three, ice cream.''
    In the three years since he came to this country from China, Liang,
now 30 years old, has been spending most of his time indulging the
first of his tastes. As editor in chief of The Chinese Intellectual,
a Chinese-language quarterly that made its debut Friday, he hopes to
foster a trade in ideas among young people from China studying in
this country and in Japan and Western Europe.
     Liang developed his taste for freedom while growing up in Hunan
Province in south central China during the Cultural Revolution of the
late 1960s. ''Son of the Revolution,'' the 1983 book that he and his
wife, Judith Shapiro, wrote about that chaotic and brutal period,
told how Liang's parents - his mother, a government worker, and his
father, a journalist - were persecuted as rightists and antiparty and
their family was broken up along with their careers.
    The young Heng was sent to the countryside with his father for
''re-educaton.'' He was redeemed not by the re-education but by his
skill at basketball. The sturdy six-footer was wooed by the teams of
Changsha, his hometown.
    He was involved in some wooing of his own at Hunan Teachers College,
where he studied literature in the mid-1970s after the fall of the
radical Maoist leaders known as the Gang of Four. There he met Miss
Shapiro, a New Yorker who had learned Chinese at Princeton and the
University of California at Berkeley and had an M.A. in Asian
studies. She won permission from Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader,
for them to marry and leave China.
    Now she often accompanies Liang to lectures and interviews, helping
out at moments when his thoughts outpace his English. ''I couldn't
speak any English when we arrived,'' Liang recalled. ''I went to
elementary school in Brattleboro, Vermont. I was in a fourth-grade
class. My classmates taught me English, and I taught them Chinese.''
At the other end of the educational spectrum, he enrolled in Columbia
University's East Asian Institute, where he received his M.A. degree
last spring.
    ''Why study Chinese literature in America?'' he asked and proceeded
to explain, with the help of Miss Shapiro, that in his four years at
Hunan Teachers College, ''I never heard of important writers of the
1930's and 40's, like Qain Zhongshu, Zhang Ailing and Shen Cong Wen.
Nobody even mentioned their names. I first read them in America.''
    The inspiration for The Chinese Intellectual, he says, came to him
on the day he set foot in this country. He became an American citizen
on Sept. 17.
    ''The kind of open discussion he had in mind,'' Miss Shapiro said,
''isn't possible within China. There is no space for sophisticated,
thoughtful discussions among intellectuals. And there's no exchange
of ideas between those on the mainland and those in the West.''
    The couple sought backing from 14 foundations without success. Liang
was determined to avoid any trace of financing from Taiwan, saying:
''Chinese studying abroad are nervous. It's important to reassure
them that it's okay with the government for them to read this.'' For
that reason, too, the magazine will not take an anti-Communist line.
     Liang's idea won the support of several influential scholars -
notably John King Fairbank, a professor emeritus of history at
Harvard and the dean of America's China scholars, and Sidney Hook,
the philosopher who is now at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.
    With their help, The Chinese Intellectual became one of the first
beneficiaries of the new National Endowment for Democracy, a
federally financed corporation intended to encourage democracy around
the world. Its $200,000 grant will go toward producing four 120-page
issues; the format will be slightly larger than American news
weeklies.
    The first issue contains an interview with Fairbank, an essay by
Hook on existentialism and pragmatism and an analysis by Professor
C.T. Hsia of Columbia University on the 16th century classic of
Chinese erotica, ''Chin Ping Mei.''
    Each issue will also contain two short stories and two poems. ''I
insisted on them,'' said Liang, who laments that he no longer has
time to write his own fiction.
    The Chinese Intellectual, which is being put out from a two-room
apartment on West 96th Street, a few blocks from the Liang-Shapiro
residence, costs $4, with half price to students.
     Liang, who likes to list things in numerical order, says that its
10,000 copies are aimed at four audiences. The first, and main one,
consists of Chinese studying abroad. ''There are about 10,000 in the
United States,'' he said, ''and each year 400 more come here. And
most of them will go back to China.''
    The second group is made up of specialists on China in this country,
Hong Kong and Taiwan.
    About 200 copies will go to the third group, in China, where, Liang
said, the magazine will circulate ''only among high policy-makers.''
He said Chinese officials in this country had encouraged the project.
    And, fourth, Liang hopes that American policy-makers will read it.
    With the Endowment grant due to run out after four issues, Liang and
Miss Shapiro are again approaching foundations. Now, however, they
have the magazine itself to show, as well as endorsements from their
prestigious advisory board, which includes Professors Fairbank, Hook
and Hsia.
    Too busy for basketball these days, Liang has joined a neighborhood
health club, where he swims and lifts weights. Miss Shapiro revealed
that he had shown a talent for disco dancing. ''He's a yuppy,'' she
said.
    The most amazing thing he has encountered so far in New York, Liang
said, is that ''you call somebody and pizza comes into your house.''
    
nyt-10-07-84 1034edt
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