by Andrew Kwong
Inside her room, where we all had to share a bed, she had a small altar for General Guan Gong and the Goddess of Mercy, where she burned an incense stick every morning. I particularly liked the sandalwood smell from her joss sticks, as well as the aroma of the morning coffee she brewed from grains before others woke up, and the arrowroot biscuits she soaked in hot milk for me. And I adored gentle Grandmother Lee, who went along with whatever my grandmother decided.
I soon made friends with Je Je, the daughter of the landlady and her husband, Mr Ho. An only child, Je Je had recently started high school. I had her company in the afternoons, and sometimes she took me to school and told her friends that I was her little brother. Her light blue, slightly oversized cheongsam-like school uniform reached halfway down her shins. I was amazed by her English and storytelling skills and couldn’t wait for her to come home each day to listen to her reading.
But homesickness soon set in. I was overwhelmed by the pace of Hong Kong life and all the traffic noise, plus the pungent smells of diesel and garbage heaps waiting at roadsides to be collected. Worst of all, there were no playgrounds near us, and definitely no trees or levee walls to climb.
My grandmother didn’t know what to do and wasn’t sure whether to enrol me in the local kindergarten. She must have noticed how bored I was as I looked down at the busy street below. ‘You’ll just have to keep playing with Je Je when she comes home,’ she said. ‘You can’t play in the streets, for children are often taken away and never found again.’
Children disappearing! I didn’t want that to happen to me so I just sulked at home. When my grandmother ignored me, I went to seek comfort from Grandmother Lee. My grandmother didn’t like that. ‘I am your real grandmother,’ she would remind me when the other grandmother was not around.
Despite receiving plenty of attention from the grandmothers, I desperately missed my family and friends. I also missed shouting slogans and singing revolutionary songs. I felt that I belonged in Communist China, not in dirty, capitalist Hong Kong. I also feared missing my chance to become one of Chairman Mao’s loyal children and wear the coveted Red Scarf when I was old enough in primary school.
During my two months in Hong Kong, countless stories of suicide were broadcast on the radio. The hardships faced by the displaced people streaming in from China led many to jump out of the high windows of tall buildings, so the adults told me.
‘I’ll jump out of the window and die,’ I said to Je Je one afternoon. I was looking down from the third-floor window onto Fook-wing Street, missing my family.
She was horrified and told my grandmother. The very next day my grandmother went to her trusted letter-writer around the corner and asked him to write to my parents. Grandmother Young had never been to school and she usually scrawled three Xs as her signature for everything, even when receiving money from grandfather and transferring money to Mama in Shiqi. It must have been so hard for her to navigate Hong Kong in those days.
When my mother’s reply arrived, Grandmother Young had to get the letter-writer to read it out. He hesitated, then read on with a sigh: ‘Maybe he is too young to leave home. Please bring him home to us . . .’
The day before my grandmother took me back to Shiqi, Je Je, who had been my best and only friend in Hong Kong, said with tears in her eyes, ‘I’ll miss you, Ah-mun.’
‘I’ll miss you too,’ I cried.
She gave me a small portrait of herself in her school uniform which I kept under my pillow for many months after returning home, until one day it mysteriously disappeared.
*
My parents didn’t say anything hurtful on my return. Like my sisters, they were happy to have me back.
The first thing I did on arriving in Kwong Street was to run out of the house and climb onto the levee wall, where my cousins and friends from the street were waiting.
‘Big Brother, tell us what it’s like in Hong Kong.’ Skinny, with sun-lightened hair and fair skin, Yiu-hoi was always curious about things. ‘Any trains and big ships?’
‘Ah-mun, any yummy food there?’ Ah-dong rubbed his stomach, and the others laughed or giggled. It made me feel important, like a sojourner.
‘Hong Kong is a huge place with many large double-decker buses that carry many people at once,’ I said with a certain air of authority.
‘What’s a double-decker bus?’ asked Yiu-hoi.
‘They are big red buses, two storeys high. They don’t have boilers or steam engines but noisy motors and are powerful enough to carry all of us and a hundred more,’ I said. ‘And you should see the many cars and lorries we don’t have in Shiqi, running all day and night.
‘And some of the ocean-going ships and boats in Hong Kong Harbour are bigger than Old Crow Hill.’ I hastened to impress them and couldn’t stop talking. ‘And there’s so much bread in different shapes and tastes. Oh, and the bakeries and cookie shops in Macau – ah, just mouth-watering.’
At home that evening Baba said we were at least fifty years behind the Western world, if not more, and stressed how important it was for us to study hard to help China catch up. ‘Just be careful, son, what you say to your friends. You may get into trouble with the District Head for spreading capitalist ideas.’
But the District Head was delighted. ‘You’ve defeated capitalism,’ he said, patting me on my head, which was still reeking of VO5, a popular men’s hair cream from Hong Kong that my grandmother had applied to my hair every day. ‘What a good example for everyone to follow.’
Soon I was enrolled again at the First Central Primary School and Kindergarten in the old Dragon Mother’s Temple. The Party Secretary and the school principal invited me onto the assembly hall stage, in front of all the students and teachers, and gave me a citation for upholding communism. I was designated a model student for the whole school to emulate because I had turned my back on Hong Kong. It felt wonderful to be a key player in the revolution despite my family’s lowly classification. I marched around with my head held high like a hero.
Mama and Baba didn’t share my elation. They were unusually quiet for the ensuing weeks, saying little to each other. Baba stopped reading, and Mama constantly looked for old clothes to alter for the younger children, just to keep herself occupied. But my faith in Chairman Mao and the Party had been indelibly imprinted on my mind since my memory began. I was glad that I could continue to follow their directives with earnest conviction. Along with my friends at school, I spent a lot of time singing revolutionary songs and shouting our favourite slogans:
‘Down with the American capitalists and their running dogs!’
‘Long live Chairman Mao! Long live! Long live!’
‘Long live the Chinese Communist Party!’
CHAPTER 4
Now that Flea had gone to Hong Kong, my neighbour Ah-dong became my best friend, aside from my cousins and sisters. Before I’d been old enough to totter outside my front door, his family had moved into one of the unoccupied rooms in house Number 2 along the walled-off compound of Kwong Street.
Ah-dong’s father was a senior union official, and I understood that made him an important comrade in town. We rarely saw him around. Ah-dong’s mother cared for her son and his younger sisters. Ah-dong had a protruding stomach, which his mother said was full of worms that consumed almost all the food he ate, leaving him with twiggy limbs. No herbs could fix this problem. His skinniness exaggerated his big round head, which seemed ready to roll off his thin neck whenever he ran or chuckled. And he loved to chuckle; that’s when his head would sway and his belly jerk.
Together with my cousins Yiu-wei, Yiu-hoi and Ah-ki (who was still a toddler), and my little sister Weng and some other younger kids in the street, we were a happy gang, minding our own business as we played together. Ping and Ying were a few years older than me and uninterested in us. Ah-dong was also two years older, but we were in the same class at school, his mother blaming the worms for his slowness in learning. However, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with him: he was witty, l
ikeable and mischievous, and brought a lot of fun to our gang.
School started at seven-thirty each morning, beginning with a political lesson on communism. So as not to be late, I’d drag Ah-dong out of bed every day. By the time we got to school, he’d be fully awake and ready to hear revolutionary words from the Party and Chairman Mao. One morning the talk was on courage and communism. We left the room glowing with patriotic fervour, and it burned deep into our hearts.
Soon enough, an opportunity to prove ourselves arrived.
*
A public execution was about to take place. These gruesome events usually occurred before important national days like May Day, the Anniversary of the Communist Party on 1 July, and of course, the most sacred 1 October commemoration of the PRC. My year level of Second Class was considered too young to bear witness; attendance would be part of our political education once we reached Fourth Class. Needless to say, it was compulsory for all the adults in town to attend as well.
An older boy at school eavesdropped on me and Ah-dong as we mulled over the idea of skipping afternoon classes to witness the execution. He challenged us to go, and offered us a biscuit if we would watch the execution up close. Without saying a word, Ah-dong grabbed the biscuit and ran off after the truck that was parading the condemned prisoner around town. I hurried after him.
Loudspeakers on the truck and on street corners blared out the prisoner’s crime of spreading anti-communist thoughts, and cautioned people against such counter-revolutionary activities. The truck crawled through the main streets of town before heading towards Pig Head Hill, a small mound of red earth with clumps of desolate weeds. The hillock stuck out, resembling a pig’s head, according to the adults, and was supposedly held down by the mythical tiger’s claw on Pagoda Hill. Under the People’s Republic, the hillock had become Shiqi’s execution ground.
The truck came to a stop there. Ah-dong and I hid behind the adults, narrowing our eyes to slits and peering through the gaps to spy, for the first time, on the killing of a human being.
Sandwiched between two guards in worn PLA uniforms, the prisoner could barely stand. A rope around his neck also tied his arms firmly to his sides. Blood had drained from his face as if death had already taken possession. He was like a dog about to be slaughtered, but he made no struggle, no noise, not even a whimper. Fastened behind his head was a long picket bearing his name in black ink. A bold tick in red paint against his name symbolised that the spilling of his blood was necessary to achieve the goals of the revolution.
My heart went into a wild gallop. At the last moment I wished I wasn’t there, and I’m sure my friend felt the same.
The man was dragged to a spot against a slight embankment. At the signal of the People’s Militia officer-in-charge, several officers took aim with their rifles and fired.
I shook. My heart pounded harder.
Ah-dong and I covered our ears to muffle the sound of bullets thudding into the prisoner’s flesh. They tore through his body, exploding organs. Some wounds oozed and others gushed red like water from a collapsed dam. Not uttering a sound, the man tumbled forward, twitching and writhing. On the ground he rattled and gasped, sucking in erratic breaths. Death came fast. The executioners looked ashen, and were as frozen as the rest of the town. With his hand shaking, the officer in charge pulled out a shiny revolver, walked over to the body and added a few more bullets, until he was satisfied that this enemy of the people could never again rise against the sacred revolution.
The rancid stench of a slaughterhouse swamped the subtropical air. Pig Head Hill slumped into dead silence.
I couldn’t stop my teeth clattering, nor could I speak. My shorts were flooded.
All the townspeople stayed quiet until, after another political lecture, the People’s Militia let us leave. As most people began to walk away, the prisoner’s family remained, wailing and shrieking to release their grief.
At first I couldn’t shift my leaden legs. The worst fear arose inside me, that I might be left there by myself with the corpse and all the angry ghosts I’d heard about from the seniors at school. There was Seven Shots, a warlord who’d needed seven bullets to put him down. Then there was the chilling presence of the ghost of a landlord’s young concubine, who roamed the lonely hillock searching for her face, which had been blown off when she was executed for some unspecified reason. I wanted to cry, and regretted accepting the older boy’s challenge. The stink of blood churned my stomach.
Flies gathered to feed on the congealing blood and splattered organs. Panic shot through me when I imagined that Ah-dong and I could be eaten alive by those hungry beasts once they had finished with the dead.
Somehow we managed to get away from Pig Head Hill. As we left the piercing cries of the family behind us, we entered an eerie silence that had descended on the town of Shiqi.
*
That night I jumped into my parents’ bed to sleep. I was too sick to go to school the next day. When I told Baba what I’d done, he put his arm around me and said, ‘It’s an awful way to die, so senseless.’ He lit a cigarette and told me never to witness an execution again.
Over the next few weeks I repeatedly woke from my sleep drenched in a pool of sweat. I shook and gasped, and frantically looked for bullet holes on my body; I had to stop the bleeding. Only by climbing into my parents’ bed and sharing their warmth and closeness could I calm down.
I was finding it hard to wipe the scene of the execution from my memory. Shouting slogans didn’t help, and neither did wishing harder that Chairman Mao would live for ten thousand years. Teachers complained that I wasn’t paying enough attention.
As the year went on, political studies began to make less sense to me. It shocked me profoundly how life could be so fragile, and how easily it could be destroyed in the name of the People’s Revolution. Yet I was annoyed with myself for being hopelessly weak as a revolutionary. Disappointment, fear and terror assailed me, along with perplexity at the mysteries of life. My teachers reassured me that as long as I devoted myself to Chairman Mao, I would be safe, and that the Americans and their running dogs would never harm me. But I was sick for months, while Ah-dong continued to stutter and have bad dreams.
Ah-dong’s mother complained that his bedwetting had returned because of his nightmares. She filled him up with herbal concoctions that neighbours and relatives suggested might soothe him. She also burned paper money at the crossroads near Come Happiness Road to appease the spirits that she believed now haunted her son.
For many days after the execution the town was numb and lifeless. Everything had ground to a halt. No one spoke. All the adults, even Mama, chain-smoked like Baba. They kept their heads down as though they were distraught hermit crabs withdrawing from the world. The children, too, were subdued and stunned. Even the sparrows stopped chirping.
CHAPTER 5
One night in November 1956, a clatter of footsteps and the banging open of the front gate disrupted my cosy autumn sleep in the small hours of the morning. I woke to torches flashing and voices barking orders. Then a group of People’s Militia officers swarmed into our room. Men and women with their shiny long rifles and well-worn PLA uniforms promptly secured their positions.
Baba had barely got himself out of bed when several officers pounced on him and pinned him to the ground. I saw that Wang Ting, one of Baba’s former students, was among them. They held Baba’s head down on the ground as they put a rope around his neck and tied his hands to his back. Then they sat him on a heavy rosewood chair just outside our bedroom. A few officers pushed Mama and me into the sitting room, while the rest of their party kept searching inside. My sisters ran crying from their room.
Mama was trembling. We huddled behind her.
‘What’s my crime?’ Baba’s voice was hardly audible.
‘What’s your crime? Fuck your mother. You fucking counterrevolutionary,’ yelled the leader of the group, a pimple-faced young man, his finger pushing hard on my father’s head. His bulging eyes made him look
like a starving tiger wrestling its prey. ‘Your father was a fucking capitalist. You fucking nationalist, so-called intellectual and scholar. You’re a black element in disguise, and your whole family is fucked!’
I had never seen anyone so rudely threaten my parents. How I wished that my legs weren’t weak as rice straws and I could have jumped on those nasty intruders.
‘Fuck your mother,’ the young leader continued to scream. ‘We’re here to bring you to the justice of the people.’ His eyes stuck out even more, like two large lychee nuts about to burst. He cursed my parents, their parents, our ancestors and the whole family, dead and living. At each outburst I shut my eyes and cringed.
Mama held on to us tightly, even though she shook at the insults and accusations. Without her, I could have slumped to the ground like the prisoner at Pig Head Hill. The stench of blood and mangled flesh rushed at me. I wanted to vomit, but nothing came. My mouth was dry and cracked, and I had no voice. I could not move. All I could do was make weird, screechy noises like a dog begging for mercy. I pressed my hands against my ears to block out the abuse barked at Baba and the family.
Baba shuddered at each insult, but, drawing deep breaths, he somehow managed to steady himself. He shook his bowed head in disbelief. Eventually, he gathered his strength and raised his head, fixing his gaze on his ex-student with a look sterner than any I had ever seen him give before. ‘Wang Ting,’ said Baba in his deep voice. ‘Honouring your teacher is a virtue, as much as honouring your own parents. I am here at your mercy, but there’s no need to insult and dishonour the rest of my family.’ His words, clear and unswerving, quietened the commotion as if spoken in a classroom. ‘Don’t you have parents, brothers, sisters and families? Shouldn’t you treat them with honour and respect? What would you do if their honour was insulted, and their persons outrageously vilified?’