The Trail to Buddha's Mirror

by Don Winslow

  Father was denounced that autumn. I was surprised and hurt that Deng joined the attack on Father to try to save himself. It didn’t work, of course, and Deng was toppled shortly after. The Red Guard went to Father’s office, tied his hands behind his back, and dragged him into the street. I was at home on the second floor of the house and heard the noise in the street. Mother went to the window first, then quickly closed the curtains. I pushed them aside and stood there watching as they put a dunce cap on Father’s head … and a rope around his chest … and paraded him down Renmin Road. I saw some of my schoolmates throw garbage at him … and spit in his face … as the Red Guard chanted “Capitalist Roader” and “Western Stooge.” Father just looked straight ahead. His face was calm and composed, and two feelings fought in my heart: hatred and pride. Hatred for the Red Guard and pride for Father. How could such opposite feelings live in the same heart?

  Hong came home that afternoon. She was sobbing. I thought she was weeping for Father, but that was not the reason. She had been thrown out of the Red Guard because of Father. Her armband had been ripped off and her uniform was torn. She had bruises on her face. Mother tried to talk to her. I tried to comfort her, saying that Father had suffered a great injustice, but that it would be corrected soon, and she would have her revenge on the Red Guard. But she wasn’t angry at the Red Guard, she was angry at Father! Father had caused her downfall! We did not speak after that.

  Father did not come home. We heard that he was in jail. Later we heard that he had been sent to a work camp in Xinxiang. We stayed in the house after that. We knew that it was only a matter of time before we would be attacked. The Red Guard had come to the homes of other purged officials, searching for evidence of Western influences or decadent belongings or just to loot. It was a terrible time. I was worried about Father, Mother sat for hour after hour saying nothing, doing nothing, and Hong sank into silence and acted as if she could not stand the sight of us.

  Finally in November it happened. It was cold for Chengdu, and I was huddled beneath my quilt, late at night, when the front door crashed open. We all ran downstairs to see what had happened. There were at least twenty Red Guards. The leader was a tall young man. His face was flushed with rage! He screamed at Mother, “American spy! You must confess now!” Mother glared back at him and answered, “I have nothing to confess. Perhaps it is you who has something to confess.” He grabbed her by the neck and threw her to her knees. I rushed at him, but he easily threw me off, and two other Red Guards—one of them a girlfriend from school—held me down. The leader screamed again for Mother to confess, but she just shook her head. He hit her on the back of the neck and she fell flat on the floor. I screamed for him to stop and my old friend slapped me in the face. The leader kicked Mother and pulled her back up to her knees.

  “You are a spy,” he said, “and the wife of a traitor. We are here to express the outrage of the masses and give you revolutionary justice!”

  “You know nothing about justice,” Mother answered, “so how can you give it?”

  He kicked her again and pulled her arms behind her back and handcuffed her. It was a very painful position, but Mother did not cry out. Then he ordered his helpers to search the house. All this time Hong stood in a corner and said nothing.

  They tore our house apart. They ripped the beautiful paintings with knives, they smashed the record albums into pieces. When they found the writings of Jefferson and Paine, they let out shouts of triumph. The leader slammed these books down in front of Mother.

  “English books!” he screamed. “Who are these American thinkers you admire?!’”

  “They were true revolutionaries,” she answered. “You should learn from them.”

  The leader spat on her and made a pile of the books in front of her face. Then he lit a match and tried to set them on fire, but he did not know what he was doing and could not get the fire to take flame. He became so angry that he picked up the books and threw them at Mother’s head, giving her cuts and bruises. All this time, I was held down on my knees, and I cried and cried … and Hong stood silently in the corner.

  The Red Guard stayed for hours. The sun was coming up as they were getting ready to leave.

  “We will be back for you later,” the leader warned. “So you can face the people and tell your lies!”

  He took the handcuffs off Mother and stormed out of the house. I went to Mother and held her. She shook with pain and anger, but she got up and we walked through the house. Everything was destroyed. Even our beds were ripped up, so we put our quilts on the floor and tried to sleep. I could not sleep, because when I closed my eyes I saw them beating Mother.

  They were back in a few hours. They handcuffed Mother again and ordered us to follow. They took us to the same government building where Father’s office had been. There was a large room there, full of people. Posters denouncing Mother were all over the walls. “American Spy!” “Kuomintang Snake!” “Treacherous Class Enemy!” They sat us down in the front row and carried Mother up on the stage. They hung a poster around her neck. “Death to American Spies!” it read. The crowd chanted these slogans and hurled insults, but Mother refused to lower her head. She stared back at the people, some of whom had been friends of hers and Father’s. At one point, the young man from the night before even pushed her head down to make her look ashamed, but she raised her head again.

  “What do you have to say for yourself?” an older man asked her.

  “I have nothing to say to a mob,” she replied.

  “Then you will speak to the Committee of Revolutionary Justice,” the man answered.

  Then several men grabbed Mother and walked her through the crowd. People hit her and spat at her as she passed through. After an endless hour, a young Red Guard came to Hong and me and took us upstairs to the fourth floor. We were left on a bench in the hallway by a door, but we could hear shouting from inside the room. They were screaming at Mother to confess to being an American spy.

  “Your father was a Kuomintang official, a traitor! You are his spy! Didn’t you fraternize with Americans during the War of Liberation?!”

  “Yes, that is true! I was spying for the Party!”

  “Liar! You were working for the Kuomintang. You are still working for the Kuomintang!”

  “That is a lie.”

  “You hate China! You have American books and American music!”

  “You are being ridiculous. Please spare yourself further embarrassment and stop being so foolish.”

  This went on for some time. I flinched with every shout, and sometimes I could hear them kicking and hitting her. They were desperate for a confession. I realize now that Father’s powerful enemies were behind it, seeking to discredit him further, but Mother must have known it then, because she refused to give them anything. She knew that they had no real evidence against her, because she was innocent.

  Finally, the young Red Guard who had destroyed our house came out. He was very red in the face, almost out of breath, and he ordered us to enter the room.

  Mother was standing in the “airplane” position, her knees bent and her arms stretched behind her. She was in great pain, but she remained composed. Hong and I were pushed against a wall, opposite a draped window. It was dim and hot in the room.

  “Denounce her!” the older man demanded.

  I shook my head. Hong remained silent, and I was very proud of her.

  “Tell us what you know,” he repeated. “You will be helping her. If she confesses, she can be rehabilitated, but if she does not, she can be executed a a spy. Help her to confess!”

  I stole a look in Mother’s eyes. She shook her head so gently that only I could see it. I loved her so much and I started to cry, but I refused again to denounce her. So they tried another tactic.

  “Then you are as guilty as she is! You are against the revolution! You hate Chairman Mao! Do you want to go to prison?! To a work camp?!”

  I didn’t care. No prison could have been worse than that little room. All of Chi
na had become a prison to me. I remained silent. Hong remained silent. I felt that we were sisters again.

  “You must correct your bad thought!” the young Red Guard screamed. “Your mother has poisoned your mind with bourgeois thought! She is a criminal! Denounce her!”

  I do not know where I found the courage to answer, but I said, “You are the criminal, and I denounce you.” And I saw Mother smile. They gave up on me then, and talked only to Hong.

  “Denounce her!”

  Hong shook her head.

  The older man spoke quietly to her. “Xao Hong, you were a Red Guard. Now you are in disgrace because of your parents. Do you want to be rehabilitated? Do you ever want to be a Red Guard again?”

  Hong dropped her eyes to the floor. She shook her head, but very gently.

  “Xao Hong, we know you love Chairman Mao. We know you love the revolution. Your mother wants to destroy Chairman Mao. She wants to destroy the revolution. She is your mother in body only. In spirit you are a daughter of the revolution.”

  He lifted her chin up and looked her in the eyes. “You are Chairman Mao’s good daughter.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “But you must prove that. You must prove yourself before you can become a Red Guard again. Help us to foil this woman’s conspiracies. Denounce her.”

  I could not breathe. I could only watch Mother as she looked at Hong, looked at her with such gentleness, with such love, even as Hong suddenly shouted, “Yes, it is true! She is a spy! She hates Chinese things! She taught us to read American books, and to listen to American music!”

  The older man smiled. “Yes, yes. But surely there is more!”

  You see, he still didn’t have anything on Mother that he didn’t already know. These things were mistakes, but not crimes.

  Hong was really yelling now. She was almost hysterical. “She encouraged my sister to make decadent paintings!”

  “Comrade Xao, we need to know more.”

  My sister’s eyes were wild. She shook her head furiously and almost seemed to be choking. I felt for a moment that we were both going to die. Then she pointed a finger at my mother and screamed, “She said Chairman Mao was insane! I heard her!”

  At first I didn’t know what she was talking about, but then I remembered when we were little girls in Dwaizhou and eavesdropped on our parents and Mother had wondered aloud if Chairman Mao was mad. It had happened nine years ago, and in her desperation Hong recalled it.

  “I heard her say it!” she repeated. “I heard her say that Chairman Mao was mad!”

  Then my mother dropped her head and began to cry, not because she was guilty of treason, but because her own daughter had betrayed her for a green jacket and a red armband.

  I tried to go to Mother, but the Red Guard grabbed me and took me into the hallway. They were all congratulating my sister, and they locked my mother in that small room and took us downstairs. They yelled to the crowd of their great victory as we entered the auditorium, and the crowd started to chant, “Xao Hong! Xao Hong! Xao Hong loves the revolution!” Her former Red Guard comrades ran up to her and draped a jacket on her. Then they gave her an armband. The crowd was shouting and celebrating the victory over Mother, and the demonstration swept out of the building onto the street. Hong was pushed to the front of the parade as it marched around the building underneath the window of the room where Mother was held. Hong herself held up a placard denouncing her.

  They were not finished humiliating Mother yet, you see, and I believe to this day that they meant to leave her unguarded. They knew that she was a proud woman whose spirit had been broken, and they wanted to make an example of her.

  Mother kicked out the window first, so we were all looking up when the curtain fluttered open and she plunged through.

  I started to shut my eyes, but then I opened them because I wanted to remember, always.

  She shut her eyes tight, but the tears came anyway. Neal sat down beside her on the bed and put his arms around her shoulders. She put her face in the crook of his neck and started to sob. The tears ran down her cheeks onto his neck and he held her tighter. She cried in choking gasps, as pain that was ten years old flowed out of her, and she cried for ‘ a long time. Neal leaned back and brushed a tear off her cheek, then he kissed one off, then kissed a tear on her neck, and then she brought her mouth to his.

  Her lips were soft and warm and her tongue was hard and probing and her jacket seemed to unbutton itself and the silk slid down her legs and then he was inside her. She lay back on the bed, her long black hair rippling under her as she moved beneath him. Her legs clasped him tightly as her hands fluttered up and down his back, or stroked his hair, his face. She kissed his forehead, then his eyes, then his mouth again, before she clasped her legs tighter and rolled them both over.

  She rubbed his chest with her hair as she moved back and forth on him, and he reached between her legs and stroked her as she stretched up and kept him just inside her. She slammed back down on him and they moved together and he could see her beautiful face, touch her breasts and her stomach; she was shiny with sweat. She rose and fell and twisted on him and then collapsed on his chest and he held her tight and still and thrust to the center of her once, then twice, and then again until they smothered the sounds of their joy in each other’s mouths.

  They lay together under the quilt and she nestled her head in the crook of his arm as she went on with her story.

  For weeks after Mother’s death I just wandered the city. I didn’t want to be at home among all the memories and where the Red Guard could find me. I took food from garbage piles and slept in the parks. I was not unusual; there were many “political orphans” and nobody seemed to care. The city was in chaos. The Red Guard splintered into several groups. They seized weapons from the armories and fought the police and each other. From time to time I caught a glimpse of Hong, always in the lead of something: a parade, a demonstration, a street battle. We never acknowledged one another. She was always in the center of the action; I existed on the margins.

  In January the Beijing Red Guard tried to seize control of the government itself, and the army stepped in. Soon the Sichuan garrison did the same, and they fought bloody battles against the Red Guard all over the province, but especially in Chengdu. The fighting went on for weeks, and the last of the Red Guard seized a factory building in the northern part of the city. It took the army three days of hard fighting to get them out.

  With the Red Guard shattered, there were so many young people wandering the streets! Schools were still closed, families disrupted. The police and the army rounded up thousands of the youth. The government made the decision to send the urban youth to the countryside, “to learn from the peasants.” I was arrested and spent weeks in a detention center. When I was identified, I was sent away to the far southwestern part of the province, up into the mountains.

  It was not really a village, just a group of huts on the lower slopes of a great mountain, and the people there were not even Chinese. They were from the Yi tribe, primitive people who grew a little tea and some vegetables and hunted in the mountains. Only the headman spoke any Chinese, and he assigned me to live in his cousin’s hut. I was like a slave. They worked me very hard, and the cousin’s wife hated me because she suspected that her husband … wanted me.

  I was numb from hunger, hard work, and the cold, but perhaps this was good for me, because it also numbed my grief. And the mountains were beautiful. As I worked in the vegetable gardens I could see the snowy peak on the Silkworm’s Eyebrow—Mount Emei—a mountain sacred to Daoists and Buddhists. It is part of my story, because I ran away from the hut and fled up the mountain.

  The husband came to my kang one night. He was filthy and drunk and tried to press himself on me. I fought, and the wife heard the noise. She came in and beat me. Later that night I put my few things in a cloth and walked up the mountain. I was very afraid, because I had heard stories of the many wild animals there—tigers, snakes, big monkeys, even pandas.


  I followed the path of the Buddhist pilgrims, stone steps up through the forest to the very top of the mountain. For a thousand years Buddhist … pilgrims … have climbed to the summit of the mountain to look into Buddha’s Mirror.

  At the very top of the mountain you can look over into an abyss, thousands of feet deep, filled with mist. But magical light hits this mist and makes reflection. So when you look over edge, you see Buddha’s Mirror, and you see your true self. You see your soul.

  That is called “enlightenment,” which is the goal of all Buddhists. So the mountain is sacred, and many pilgrims make the climb to Buddha’s Mirror to find enlightenment. The climb takes at least three days, so pilgrims sleep at monasteries along the trail.

  There are many monasteries hidden deep in the forest, far away from the stone path, and I thought I would stay on the main path until daylight, then try to find a very remote monastery to hide in. As a good communist, I did not believe in God, but I hoped to find refuge among the monks and nuns.

  But I became lost. It was dark and the path seemed to disappear beneath my feet. All around me was thick bamboo, and I heard the howling of wild animals. And it was so cold! Snowing now! I was freezing in my thin clothes. I sat down in a tiny clearing and hugged myself. I rocked back and forth and cried and cried. I did not know what to do. I just sat down to die. Then the miracle happened. A light appeared in the woods! A lantern! I walked toward it and then I saw that light was in a small cave, and in the cave was a man—a monk—and an ancient little statue of a beautiful woman—Kuan Yin, the goddess of mercy—one of the many faces of Buddha. The monk wrapped me in a blanket. He built a little fire and it was still cold, but not dying cold, and I fell asleep. When I woke up, it was morning, and the monk said it was time to go. I followed him up the mountain for many li. My feet hurt, and my legs ached, but I was happy. In Kuan Yin I had seen the beautiful face of my mother, guiding me to safety, and then I believed in God.