By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 1, 1998; Page A01

SHANGHAI, June 30—Yu Fang spent lunchtime today in the Happy Earth Fruit Shop hawking mangoes and furiously dialing the telephone. The 33-year-old fruit monger was trying to reach the leader of the world's sole superpower.

"I have a question for Kelindun," he said, using the Chinese rendering of President Clinton's name as he pressed the redial button again and again on the wobbly red phone in his store. "I want to know what he thinks about interracial marriages, about love between China and the USA."

Sadly for Yu, he never got through. But a dozen other questioners did as Clinton once again took his charm offensive onto China's airwaves -- appearing live on a popular radio talk show in this bustling commercial metropolis. The event marked the third time in four days that the president has broadcast live on China's electronic media; he appeared on national television Saturday and Monday.

The Chinese, it appears, are eating it up. For a nation accustomed to aged and distant leaders, locked away in guest houses and remote compounds, protected by dour soldiers, cruising in black sedans, Clinton's popular touch has been a hit with many people here. His willingness to answer personal questions about himself -- from how he likes to exercise these days to what he plans to do when he leaves office (continue working) -- have both befuddled and amazed the Chinese. His apparent spontaneity and human touch are rare in a country that has attempted for centuries to turn its leaders into gods.

"We're just not used to thinking of our leaders as people," said Ma Xiebin, an accountant in Shanghai. "We could never ask those questions of Jiang Zemin," China's president.

"Hi, my name is Li. Here's the question I want to ask," said one man who got through to the radio show, "Citizens and Society." "We noticed that you've been involved in a lot of activities and you seem to be very healthy and you seem to have a nice figure, Mr. President. . . . Which sports do you like to play?"

Clinton said he used to play basketball in college and jog. But last year, he hurt his leg in a fall at the Florida home of pro golfer Greg Norman. Since then, he said, it's been a Stairmaster exercise machine.

"And I play golf. I like golf very much. It's my favorite sport," he said. "Even though it doesn't burn a lot of calories, it makes my mind calm. So I like it."

Information about the private lives of Chinese leaders is all but taboo here. Mao Zedong's physician, Li Zhisui, published in English an unflattering account of his years with Communist China's first leader before it was translated into Chinese. It is still banned in China. In the book, Mao is portrayed as being a wooden dancer and obsessed with women.

In recent years, cracks have appeared in the armor of the ruling elite, although much remains to be learned about their families. Premier Zhu Rongji's mother-in-law apparently was murdered sometime in the past few years, but it never made China's papers, Chinese sources said. Wang Yeping, the wife of President Jiang, seems frail, but no reports on her health appear in China's closely controlled press. Zhu Rongji's wife, Lao An, is rarely seen in public.

In recent years, the most prominent spouse of a senior leader has been Zhu Lin, the wife of Li Peng, a former premier who now is chairman of the National People's Congress. But Zhu Lin's willingness to trumpet her successes has incurred the wrath of many Chinese, a former Chinese diplomat said.

For most of China's leaders, a whole decade of their lives is missing from their official biographies -- the period of the Cultural Revolution from 1966-76. When Premier Zhu was asked at a news conference in March to recount what happened when he was purged by the Communist Party in the anti-rightist campaign of 1957, he replied that it was a painful experience and that he did not want to go into it further.

Stuck in traffic, Luo Zhigang, 38, a truck driver, leaned out of the cab of his dump truck today to vent his spleen. "This Clinton's okay," he said as the radio program had just touched on traffic in Shanghai. "He's better than our guys. He is willing to talk about anything -- pollution, human rights, anything goes."

Other questions for the president revolved around the Asian financial crisis, fledgling attempts by the United States to improve relations with Iran, Americans' unfamiliarity with foreign lands and Clinton's predictions about the World Cup soccer tournament.

It is unclear, though, if the president's unprecedented invasion of China's electronic media will have any long-term effect on the populace of this country. Some Chinese predict some kind of a government crackdown after Clinton departs -- a preventive measure just in case democracy activists feel emboldened by his words. "Killing a chicken to scare the monkeys," said one Chinese analyst, employing a Chinese proverb.

Speaking to an audience tonight at a reception in the atrium of the newly opened Shanghai Museum, Clinton praised the Beijing government for allowing him to appear on the talk show and hailed the talk show itself as a sign of a new openness here.

"I saw a great example of that when the mayor [Xu Kuangdi] and I did a talk-radio show this morning here in Shanghai," Clinton said. "I was especially impressed when one of the callers called in and said, 'I don't want to talk to the president, I want to talk to the mayor about traffic problems in Shanghai.' "

Clinton's combination of folksiness and humor seemed to strike a chord with Chinese listeners. Ma Lan, 16, a high school student who was home today studying for college entrance exams next month, said she loved his voice.

"I can almost understand his English," she said. "It's raspy. That's very interesting to me."