by Andrew Kwong
We didn’t know then that it wasn’t steel but low-quality pig iron, and that it would stay there for years to come, rusting away in the typhoons and seasonal floods of subtropical Shiqi. Nobody ever knew what to do with it.
CHAPTER 10
While the adults were enduring long hours of work for the Great Leap Forward, we children managed to have fun.
The most memorable time for me was at the end of the first big autumn harvest during the Great Leap Forward. The day after the adults finished gathering the rice, the weirs were opened to flood the paddies between the commune’s lotus pond and fishponds, just opposite Kwong Street. Thousands of ducks kept for export waddled in to pick up worms, insects, snails and bits of grain that had been left behind. After the ducks had feasted for a few days, the field was allowed to rest and dry in the sun. Once the muddy surface was firm enough, it became our playing field, one many times larger than a football oval. There we held all types of games that city children could only dream of having space for. To me, kite-flying was the most enjoyable.
Our kites weren’t decorative – they were fighters, regularly doing battle with other people’s kites. The aim of a kite fight was to cut your opponent’s string with yours. To be king of the sky, a kite had to be agile and responsive, and fast and accurate in its attack, and have a razor-sharp line coated with shards of glass. Often we had to build several kites before we were satisfied that we had a champion fighter. The rejected kites were decorated with long colourful tails and given to Ah-ki and Weng.
While the ducks were in the paddies, we busied ourselves making the kites, using delicate rice paper and bamboo skins taken from the district’s plentiful bamboo stalks and dried in the sun on top of the levee wall.
‘Ah-dong,’ I said one day, ‘it’s your turn to bring some rice to make kites today.’
‘Do I have to?’ Ah-dong replied, rubbing his big tummy of worms. ‘Still hungry,’ he complained. He was always hungry. He was always tempted to gobble up the last few grains of rice when his stomach continued to rumble; however, the magical lure of kite-flying lessened the pain.
‘We need to make the best fighter kite ever,’ I said. ‘Earring will get the sap from the peach trees, and Yiu-hoi and I will be responsible for grinding up the broken lightbulb glass to glue onto the string.’ Yiu-hoi was the best in our gang at making things, regularly crafting toy cranes, and bamboo swords for warding off the nasty geese that chased us on our way to school, and I envied him for all the things he could make.
We sat on the levee wall with our pocketknives, working away on the bamboo sticks, shaping them bit by bit into the exact suppleness, length and size we needed for our sky fighters. At this time of the year the humidity had vanished and the air was crisp. Endless breezes replaced the dreaded typhoons and heat. We pulled Ah-ki up to sit with us on the levee wall as we planned our exciting fighting strategies. Then we carefully cut some fine rice paper in the shape we wanted, before gluing mashed-up cooked rice onto two carefully crafted sticks, one vertical, the other bent to form the frame of the kite.
A few days later, we came home from school to find Ah-ki sitting on the other side of the levee wall, crying. He told us that a kite from the neighbouring street had cut loose the one we’d made for him. We looked up to see a blue kite hovering high above us, soaring from one direction to another, showing off its intimidating skills and asserting its dominance of the whole sky. The menacing noises it made when diving and scooping were scaring the dozen or more little children in our street; they clutched their precious kites and ran for cover. They wouldn’t launch them into the perfect breeze of the season, for fear of the blue monster.
‘Let’s go!’ I shouted to Ah-dong, Earring and Yiu-hoi. ‘The fight is on.’
We dropped our schoolbags and ran to get our kite in the air.
Our supreme fighter was painted with a bold red star. We launched it by climbing onto the levee wall to catch a stronger breeze. Our Red Star had a soaring take-off and quickly gained altitude. It pulled on the spool, hungry for more string. We could hear the razor-sharp line cutting into the crisp autumn air.
Ah-ki stopped crying and held his breath. Weng stood with her arm around him. All our necks stretched high. The enemy kite disappeared into the blue distance but soon returned, seeming to sense the presence of Red Star just as a hungry beast smells blood. It turned, took aim, and dived straight towards our rising kite before it had gained enough height and power.
Ah-dong and Earring cried out. Ah-ki and Weng closed their eyes. I tucked the spool to the left, then tightened hard to steer our kite into a half-dive, keeping it clear of the attacker. Letting more line to Red Star as it began to swerve, I sent it into a fast roll. The breeze was strong up there; Red Star soon caught it full on, pulling harder now. More line sliced into the air. We stopped breathing. Silence all around. I could feel the vibration in the spool and hear the eager rustle of the rice paper. Red Star was keen to go into battle.
It continued to roll, taking more line with it – and headed right for the tall gum trees along the road on the other side of the lotus pond, with the blue kite in pursuit.
‘Big Brother!’ Yiu-hoi screamed, and Earring nearly fell off the wall.
‘Watch out!’ Ah-dong yelled at the top of his voice.
The blue kite regained its dominance in height and shot to the left, then to the right, and patiently waited for its prey.
‘Are we ready?’ I shouted to Ah-dong and Earring behind and Yiu-hoi in front of me.
‘Yes!’ they cried out.
Ah-dong and Earring ran away from me on the wall, leaving me room to manoeuvre. Yiu-hoi stepped back from the sharp line.
I spun the spool hard, sending Red Star into an upward swoop just before it touched the treetops. This was the biggest gamble in my life that day – I knew even the slightest misjudgement would see Red Star crash into the trees, and the fight would be over. But the endless line I was feeding the kite allowed it to climb high into the sky, where the powerful pull of the stronger breeze would give me the upper hand.
I ran along the wall, holding the spool high, and watched our kite surge. Fast.
Red Star shot up like an arrow, straight and clean, tearing high into the air. Passers-by got off their bicycles to watch by the roadside. Ah-ki, Weng and all the little children clapped. All of a sudden, Red Star was above the blue kite with little room to spare. Wasting no time, I sent it into a dive straight at the aggressor, thirsty for its blood.
The blue kite dodged to the left and began spinning to gain more line. Red Star spun with it, but continued to maintain its superior position. Then the two kites climbed, racing to beat each other to greater heights. Our enemy was catching up. It was neck and neck. I prayed for a stronger breeze to fill our kite. I spun in the line to send it higher. Now Red Star was almost directly above us, with the blue kite in pursuit.
It fell into my trap.
‘Great!’ Ah-hoi shouted.
Ah-dong grunted. Earring cried out in awe. The little children on the ground screamed, their faces upturned to keep their gaze on our warrior. I pulled and spun in hard at the same time, sending Red Star into a slicing dive, catching its pursuer at the jugular. Crisp and clean. I felt it cut right through our helpless enemy’s line.
Ah-dong, Earring and Yiu-hoi were already off the wall, running after the drifting blue kite. A whole bunch of children followed behind them, screaming and screeching with great joy.
I took a breath and praised Red Star for a job well done. People looked up in admiration. Children’s laughter returned as their kites emerged, soon dotting the neighbourhood sky with many shapes and colours. Red Star, the king of the sky, hovered above them like a guardian angel, regal and proud.
Before long, Ah-dong, Earring and Yiu-hoi returned, gasping for breath, overcome by excitement and pride. In their hands was the blue kite. As I’d sensed, it was cleanly cut, leaving less than a metre of line, which made us marvel at Red Star’s accuracy.
; We sat on the wall for the rest of the day swinging our legs, clapping our hands and singing ‘The East Is Red’, our favourite song.
*
I now felt completely part of the Great Leap Forward and more confident than ever about life, especially after beating the aggressive blue kite. At school we continued to promise ourselves that we could beat the British and catch up with the Americans in steel production. Life must be like kite-flying, I thought: be prepared, be bold and take risks in order to be successful.
My determination to succeed became an obsession. I’d never won any prizes at school, but now I was desperate to win one to cheer up Mama. When a new command came from Beijing to eradicate flies and mosquitoes to improve hygiene, I wanted to win the Kill Flies Prize, and Ah-ki became my number one comrade-in-arms.
As the competition intensified, every day before school we set water traps around the house to catch flies, and after school we collected the dead insects in matchboxes. I gave Ah-ki a flyswatter and some empty matchboxes, and told him to fill them with dead flies while I was at school. Ah-ki had sturdy hands. He not only chased flies with his swatter in the house, but he also began killing them on the street; he seemed to know where to find them, unlike other kids his age. I then offered to do Ah-dong’s calculation assignments in exchange for three boxes of dead flies each time. Together we filled 238 matchboxes and I won the class Kill Flies Prize for Mama.
‘I’m very proud of you, Ah-mun,’ Mama said to me when she heard of my triumph. She hugged me close to her. I could feel her trembling with emotion.
Everywhere I went I repeated my favourite slogan – ‘Do more. Do it faster. Do it better. Do it cheaper!’ I was thrilled by my prize: a large poster of Chairman Mao surrounded by cheerful children belonging to the Red Scarf Brigade. I wanted very much to be one of those children. I had dreamed about it and saw myself there among the beaming faces of the Precious Ones. Sometimes when I sat on the levee wall, those hazy images appeared in my mind in the predawn obscurity, and I watched them disappear in the early light.
One morning I realised I had to be content that having the poster was the closest I would ever get to Chairman Mao. So I stopped fantasising. I took down my grandparents’ portraits and hung the poster with great respect on the main wall inside our room, decorating it with bold red ribbons. I promised myself to follow whatever Chairman Mao taught. His words resonated within me wherever I went: ‘To ride the wind and pierce the waves to realise the Great Leap Forward in all fields.’
With the Kill Flies Prize under my belt, and even without the Model Student T-shirt or the Red Scarf, I felt tall around the schoolyard and on the street. Two hundred and thirty-eight matchboxes of dead flies in one month was no mean feat. I realised that determination and an effective team of helpers, especially Ah-ki, were the reasons for my success. Would it be the same in life?
One bonus of winning the Kill Flies Prize was that more of the local children began talking to me. My little gang of friends grew beyond Ah-dong, Earring, Yiu-hoi, Ah-ki and Weng. Now Ah-bil, Hui and Big Eye from town came to play with us more regularly.
*
I’d lived two summers without Baba, two kite-flying seasons with many victories, and a third winter was near. His regular letters revealed only glimpses of what life was like in the extreme north of the Great Northern Wilderness. It was frightening but fascinating to read about wolves howling in the night, and sometimes we even heard the Siberian tigers roaring in his letters. He also wrote about his joy in seeing the frozen ground erupt into life in spring. He described how the many colourful wildflowers raced to bloom in the desolate wasteland, which he and thousands of intellectuals laboured to turn into productive farmland while they strove to be re-educated so they could participate in the revolutionary society, one day.
‘When winter is with us we have spring to look forward to,’ he wrote, keeping our hopes high.
*
Late in 1959, food rations were tightened because, according to the adults, the harvest hadn’t been as good as the previous year’s, and people began to go hungry. Everyone in the Wonder River District was ordered to perform a new activity for the Great Leap Forward – to reduce grain consumption by getting rid of the plentiful sparrows that were said to be eating a lot of the rice in the paddies. We dropped the hunt for mosquitoes and flies, and turned our attention to killing sparrows.
Like my friends, over time, I’d become used to the many government campaigns and treated them like the waterways of the Wonder River – I just went with the flow and swam with the current. But this plan upset me. While I knew I had to follow the Party’s directives without question, deep down I had a soft spot for sparrows. I loved their happy dispositions, and their chirps had helped me through many of my saddest days; they reminded everyone that there was always fun to be had in life. With enviable precision, they caught insects, grasshoppers, moths, worms and dragonflies – they didn’t just steal our grain. As soon as they had eaten, they danced in the sun as if they owned the universe. Easily satisfied, heartily contented, they seemed always optimistic.
Little did they know how precarious life was to become when the Great Leap Forward swung into its second year and grain production took a dramatic dive.
‘We must get rid of every sparrow in Shiqi,’ our teacher declared in class. ‘They are worse than the flies, mosquitoes and rats. They have eaten too much of our valuable grain, and that’s why the ration went down, and you are starving. We must get rid of them and save our food.’
Together, the sparrows, flies, mosquitoes and rats were known as the Four Pests. They had to be eradicated, like all the unwanted human elements in town.
Our teacher had told us previously that the Russians also contributed to China’s food shortage by insisting on repayment of debts from the Korean War. I wanted to know more about that but didn’t dare ask – it was unthinkable that the son of an unwanted Shiqi man would have the cheek to question the orders of the authorities. I had learnt to keep my mouth shut and not discuss my own thoughts, hopes and dreams with anyone. Yet there were so many questions I had no answers for, and there was no Baba to ask.
Early one morning, I sat on the levee wall watching the red glow rise and thinking of Baba in Heilongjiang prison. The predawn light had begun to capture my whole world with its reach – the lotus pond and fishponds, the Wonder River and its many tributaries, the gum trees along Come Happiness Road, the lychee trees, the dreary roofs and grey walls of the ten houses in Kwong Street, the vast rice paddies surrounding Old Crow Hill and beyond. The glow even reached further across Come Happiness Bridge into town where Pagoda Hill perched in its somnolence on the flat landscape, near the dreaded Pig Head Hill, and further . . . as far as my eyes could see. There and then, I decided I shouldn’t feel sorry for the sparrows and would go along with the rest of the class. There was no escape for anyone. It was futile to resist. It was better to be part of it. The choice was clear: fewer sparrows meant more food for us humans as Chairman Mao had promised. Perhaps I could obtain another Great Leap Forward prize.
Later that day after school, I sat on the levee wall with a big group of my friends, trying to work out the best way to help eradicate the sparrows in Shiqi.
‘What about the fortress, the derelict place by the river?’ Yiu-hoi suggested, brimming with ideas as ever. ‘It’s full of sparrows and their nests.’ This ruin, near Old Crow Hill, was just ten minutes from home. But it was also the place where the townspeople had resisted the British Navy as it sailed up the river during the Opium Wars; British cannonballs had killed many young volunteer fighters from the district, and locals said the fortress had been haunted ever since.
Ah-dong turned pale. ‘The, ah, ghosts. No . . . no one wants . . . to get near it, at, at . . . night.’ His large round head swung from side to side in obvious distress.
‘There are lots of us,’ I said, reassuring him. ‘If we stick together, we’ll be fine. We’ll be strong like a bundle of arrows bound together,’ I adde
d, quoting the revolutionary storyteller from under the banyan tree.
It was dark by seven o’clock, when we met at the end of Kwong Street with our torches and fishing baskets. Only Ah-dong and Yiu-hoi turned up. Undaunted, we headed towards Old Crow Hill along the narrow track that separated the paddies from the vegetable gardens. At times, a small glimpse of a new moon peeked from the clouds, which were as dark as the night itself. There were no lights once we left the last street in town, but we knew how to make our way, even in near-darkness, along this narrow path we romped on every day.
We had to be wary, though, of the small but venomous South China snakes, which were plentiful in the Pearl Delta. As we walked we clapped our hands and talked loudly to shoo them away. Frogs stopped croaking and dived off into irrigation ditches. Swarms of insects paused their humming as we approached, only to resume after we passed. Not a star shone that night. But we were at ease with the cosy scent of the countryside, and the muddy smell of the Wonder River not far away.
Yiu-hoi pushed open the heavy wooden door of the fortress. It creaked. A scraping noise sounded from the large beams high up. Ah-dong and I quivered, but we followed Yiu-hoi inside. My friends and I often marvelled at his boldness, and now we felt strangely safe with him, even though, at seven, he was the youngest of the three of us.
‘Ssshhh,’ said Yiu-hoi. Ah-dong was trembling and his teeth chattered, echoing mine. ‘I’ll count to three and we’ll flash our torches up at the sparrows. Swing your torches from side to side and shout loudly to frighten them, then they’ll start flying and knock themselves silly. Ah-dong, you pick them up and secure them in the fishing basket, while Big Brother and I keep upsetting them.’ Yiu-hoi was reiterating what the teachers had told us about catching sparrows. The leader of our expedition had spoken, and we went into action.