One Bright Moon

by Andrew Kwong

  That afternoon we felt the sojourner’s presence in the street. People were already crowded around the front door of the prospective bride’s house. Instead of heading off to do my homework, I ran with Ah-dong to see for myself. Although the bigger children blocked most of my view, I could just glimpse the man from the New Gold Mountain. He looked older than my father.

  He was wearing a crisp white shirt, stiff as cardboard, nicely ironed trousers, a leather belt with a gold buckle that flashed like a small sun, and shiny leather shoes. His thinning hair, neatly combed and tamed with cream, shone like his expansive forehead. From time to time, he took a handkerchief from his trouser pocket to dab away the little mist of sweat from his full face. Ah-dong said it looked as if negotiations were drawing to a head, for the man was getting more restless in his seat.

  ‘His face is bigger and fuller than all the men’s in town,’ Ah-dong whispered to me. ‘Including those of the comrades. Wow, and his fat belly! He must be wealthy.’ The man’s big stomach bounced when he coughed. I tried to imagine what this man had been like before he went away to Australia to make his fortune; he’d probably been young, wild and carefree like us.

  I elbowed my way out of the crowd to get some fresh air. I felt sad. Why did life have to be like that? Why did families have to be separated? Why did young men have to leave home and not return until they were old?

  Ah-dong, who’d followed me, looked at me with a faint grin. He knew how I often struggled with the many unanswered questions about life, and how it seemed no answers would make me happy. ‘Give up,’ he said, rubbing his potbelly of worms. ‘You think too much and worry too much. Think about yummy biscuits now, my friend.’

  He understood me better than the others. In the unseasonable heat, sweat oozed from his patched singlet, dripping onto his dirty feet, thin as joss sticks. I became aware of my own patched T-shirt and grubby feet with mucky toes hanging like undernourished potatoes. How I wished we had shoes like the man from the New Gold Mountain.

  ‘We are grubby!’ I said.

  But who cared how we looked? We only wanted the treats. With barely a nod, we dived back into the crowd.

  Laughter rang out of the house, boosting our hopes. The negotiation seemed to be drawing to an end. The young woman’s father had a big smile that took over the whole of his shrunken face. Years of working outdoors had aged him, but the lines on his skin couldn’t mask the happiness and pride in his eyes that day. He looked older than his possibly older prospective son-in-law. His stained teeth rattled when he talked, and cigarette smoke hissed through the gaps left by the ones he had lost. Now he was laughing so heartily that I feared he might lose all of his teeth. But this was his big day, a day he’d been hoping for in between political studies, work and volunteer jobs. It was the day the fortune of his family might turn for the better: regular foreign currency would be secured, along with food from the black market for his family. And there was one less mouth to worry about.

  The young woman sat quietly behind her father with her head down. She glanced at us every now and then, while stealing looks at her future husband. The flush on her face grew, making her smile look awkward, until she became as red as the large flag that her father had borrowed to cover the dreary brick wall long before the sojourner arrived. The imposing golden stars on the flag seemed to gleam with approval for the parents’ patriotic act of arranging a marriage for their daughter with a sojourner from Australia, viewed as less hostile than the United States. The young woman nervously covered the small tear near the elbow of her faded floral blouse, a less proletarian outfit that made her stand out, like the sojourner, among the grey and blue, and those dirty feet in her house.

  As I looked at her, I wondered again what would happen if one of my sisters married a sojourner. Would that give me the opportunity to become one myself? I thought if that could relieve my family’s hunger, I would certainly do it, even if it meant missing all of my loved ones. If I had the opportunity to go overseas, I’d work hard to earn money and send it home to my parents so they wouldn’t have to work long hours building dams and roads, making strings, or repairing pots and pans. They wouldn’t need to worry about food anymore, for I would send enough money to keep them. And it would be a lot better than selling myself to child-eaters for a thousand yuan.

  The crowd shifted, pushing me forward. Negotiations were favourable for all parties. Ah-dong urged me to get closer to the door, where fortune smiled on us too. We moaned with excitement the moment the young woman’s mother got up from her chair. She took the colourful tin that had been sitting on top of the family’s small tea table since negotiations had begun. She was glowing as she walked towards us with a warm smile. Our stomachs rumbled in a mad frenzy. We edged closer. What was inside the tin? Sweets? Biscuits?

  Blood rushed back to Ah-dong’s sallow face as the lid popped open. Sitting neatly inside were rows of oval biscuits with foreign words on each of them. The sweet smell of sugar, milk and flour hit us head on. ‘Me, me, me,’ Ah-dong cried out, standing on his toes and reaching out.

  I struggled to attract her attention too. ‘Me, me, me!’

  ‘One each,’ the young woman’s mother said as she handed out the biscuits with the biggest smile I’d ever seen. ‘And an extra one for you for taking care of the little ones in the street,’ she said to me, as our gang’s leader.

  I sank my teeth into my biscuit. It felt and tasted so different from the hard-to-come-by ‘Great Leap Forward biscuits’ on sale from time to time for a precious food voucher. They were almost unbreakable: we had to smash them into small pieces with a hammer. Even then they were too hard to chew, so we sucked the sweet taste one piece at a time. Ah-dong once took a bet that he could bite off a piece, and he lost a tooth.

  I ate my arrowroot biscuits in tiny bites over many days, sharing them with my sisters. As I savoured them, I remembered the ones Grandmother had soaked in milk when I was in Hong Kong with her. Once the biscuits were gone, I kept pulling out my pocket to catch a whiff of their wonderful and now fading aroma, and I waited patiently for the wedding, when more biscuits would be distributed to neighbours.

  CHAPTER 17

  ‘Ideology is destroying China,’ my parents mumbled to each other, in pain as they watched the decline around us. They gazed out of the house, past the levee wall, the vegetable gardens and Come Happiness Road, and over the gum trees all the way towards the South China Sea.

  By now the Great Leap Forward was well into its fourth year. Things were getting worse by the day, and starvation had become deeply entrenched. Our rations hardly lasted us three weeks each month, even with my mother’s strict planning. People regularly grumbled in public: some were angry, but most were too frightened to make a scene.

  My cousins Young-young and Young-chit, my Aunt Wai-hung’s older sons, rode for half an hour on their antiquated bicycles all the way from Shenmingting into town, to see if Mama might have some food for them. She always made sure she had a sweet potato or two for the boys, and she told us we all had to share. Sometimes they stayed a few days, and Mama had to arrange for their rations to be transferred to Shiqi. Not only did my gang enjoy their company, but we also had more productive food-finding expeditions because of the boys’ knowledge of fishing holes and how to evade commune guards.

  Most of the rats and sparrows had been killed during the campaigns to eradicate the Four Pests, or eaten by hungry people during the previous summer. Without these predators, rice-paddy beetles and grasshoppers became bigger, fatter and more plentiful. They tasted all right when roasted in a fire, but we got sick with nausea, stomach cramps and diarrhoea if we ate too many. Baba said our digestive systems were now used to low- or non-nutritious food, and they could no longer cope with even the slightly rich fare of beetles and grasshoppers.

  We were all thin and sallow. Our ribs threatened to push through our chests. They squeaked like worn-out spokes on old bicycle wheels as we moved. We lost our breath easily and struggled to keep our balance. We no
ticed the ankles and feet of many people around us began to swell. Baba said once this happened, the swelling would advance to the knees, then, in a short time, the stomach, and finally the chest and face, wringing the air out of the person. Then they would die an awful death of suffocation. I started checking my ankles and feet many times a day. I couldn’t keep my eyes from my friends’ feet and stomachs, especially Ah-dong’s. He was dear to me like a brother.

  More and more people in Shiqi were looking like the waves of outsiders who had previously poured into town in search of food. Some older people developed blisters of all sizes, and a clear fluid, the colour of dried rice straw, oozed from their legs. It trickled all day long, soaking through bandages and sending out an unpleasant odour. The sicker people panted as they moved, trying to keep away the flies that gathered to suck the fluids on their skin. Later their breaths became more laboured and rattly, and flies swarmed on them like leeches as they drew their last breaths.

  Baba told us to collect beetles and grasshoppers from the fields, and even to trap field rats. He carefully prepared and roasted the grubs we caught, before letting us eat them in small amounts. The years in Heilongjiang had turned him into some kind of health expert in our eyes – better still, a survivalist, determined and obsessed, unyielding. But there wasn’t much more he could do to remedy the situation. He became more apprehensive by the day, probably more than the other adults, who didn’t know what was happening to them.

  Apart from the few rice distribution centres, hardly any other commune-run shops were open in Shiqi. Those that were had scarcely any goods to sell; they were mostly empty shops with empty shelves. Shopkeepers were idle, taking long naps during the day, even at work. And of course there were no private enterprises, as those were illegal in the PRC, although we heard from the adults about the black market stirring in the background. With that mostly hidden from view, the town was turning into a ghostly place like Pig Head Hill.

  *

  During 1961, Grandfather Gut Young had retired due to poor health and gone to Hong Kong to recuperate – as an American citizen, he was fearful of how the authorities might treat him if he visited Shenmingting. My parents seized this rare opportunity to apply to the District Head for a visa for Mama, Weng and me to go to Hong Kong. My mother’s reasons were to help Grandmother nurse Grandfather back to health, and for us kids to meet him for the first time. (Ying, being more patriotic than the rest of us, refused to travel abroad.) Mama hadn’t seen her father in many years, and she hoped the authorities would consider the application with compassion. Aunt Wai-hung, who was then living in a different administrative district, also applied to leave, giving similar reasons.

  This time if we were allowed to leave, we would not return. The family was quietly excited, having something to look forward to. But the possibility of success was slim. The District Head knew we’d probably not return, and in due course he rejected our application.

  Mama tried again and again. After each rejection, she’d wait outside the district security office early the next morning to collect another application form. For people in Shiqi, securing even one of these forms was a triumph – an opportunity to be considered for an exit visa, even if approval was unlikely. Baba said that the Hong Kong goods we gave regularly to the District Head moved him to give Mama an application form each time – but nothing more. Aunt Wai-hung, on the other hand, was permitted by her local District Head to leave with her youngest son, Young-syn. For reasons since forgotten, they ended up staying in Macau instead of proceeding on to Hong Kong.

  *

  ‘Living without freedom is like a living death, and now with starvation it is a certain death,’ Baba grumbled to Mama inside our room, with the door shut so the tenants couldn’t hear. Stated publicly, that comment would have landed him a long prison term in a worse place than Heilongjiang.

  I sensed that he could no longer tolerate his situation – that he was getting ready to run away to Hong Kong or Macau, as some townspeople had recently done. His attempt would mean risking his life, and it would involve more denunciation and criticism of our family. The fear of Pig Head Hill began to hover in my dreams again. Yet escape seemed to be the only way out for us. I began to wish Baba would just do that: run away and live. If he could make it out of China, we might all have a chance; then one day the family might be together again. I was sure Baba would try his very best to get us out, no matter how many years it might take.

  One day in late 1961, I overheard Baba telling Mama that he had made a pact with Mr Lee to escape China, and that was what they had been plotting. It took little time for her to agree to this. She had seen the man she loved being punished, denigrated and shamed – not for committing crimes, but for his education. While Baba remained under watch by the neighbours, especially by Choilin, Mr Lee had been planning how to get out of Shiqi. The deal was that Baba would take care of Mr Lee when they got to Macau, and perhaps eventually Hong Kong, both places my father knew very well and Mr Lee did not.

  Through the rest of the year and into the spring of 1962, while Baba and Mr Lee refined their plan, Mama kept applying for an exit visa, but the District Head rejected every application. She was losing hope – like the townspeople as they became even more emaciated – and becoming desperate. I heard her say she would be content even if Baba was the only one in our family to make it to the free world, away from starvation, persecution and looming death. She said she was prepared to put up with the inevitable consequences from the authorities after my father’s escape. There was nothing left for her to hang on to except the tiny glimmer of hope that, perhaps, one day they might be reunited. Success depended on blessings from the ancestors and the gods, so she continued to light an incense stick each morning to keep her hopes alive.

  *

  I have scant memories of how we survived the winter of 1961–62, but I recall how grateful we were when the warmer weather returned. Early May 1962 was like the previous late springs, hot and humid. We took respite in the swollen rivers and enjoyed the sounds of the dragon boats practising for the annual race. Although the drumbeats sounded weary, they still managed to spark our imaginations, reminding us of life, of hope, and of the big river flowing eternally into the South China Sea. We couldn’t help but stop and listen to those strange, almost supernatural sounds that returned year after year without fail, in good times and bad, booming like a beating heart. They also reminded me of an incident that had occurred during the previous year’s boat race.

  On the day of the festival, Yiu-hoi and I had squeezed between other spectators who, like us, thought the best vantage point for watching the race was the lifesaver’s tower at the swimming pool by the river. Too short to see properly, we climbed onto the plank that stabilised the posts under the tower. It was still high enough there; the view was spectacular. Thousands of people were crammed on both sides of the Wonder River.

  Dozens of dragon boats had gathered, decorated with many colourful flags and streamers representing different villages, towns and organisations. The drums boomed, and the men moaned with great effort as they rowed. We cheered, shouted and clapped to the vibrations of the race. The boats skimmed along, hovering on the surface of the swollen river. The excitement took us away, momentarily, from the misery of the famine.

  The race was reaching its highest point. The currents gathered force, and the loaded tower began to move in the burgeoning river. It swayed as the spectators shifted with the motion of the boats. Crouching beneath the tower, I remembered what Baba had often taught me about risk-taking: never stand under an unsafe wall. I became nervous. Instinctively I pulled Yiu-hoi to the outermost pole that supported the tower. We clung on, hanging free from the spectators above us, feeling wonderful and enjoying a particularly superb view of the whole Wonder River. The cool summer breeze caressed us as we shouted and cheered with the crowds who were equally excited, even though all our stomachs were empty and rumbling with cramps.

  Suddenly the entire tower tumbled with one big clunk.
It plunged into the rising river, taking with it planks of wood and all its spectators, except Yiu-hoi and me. It fell so fast that people had no time to scream; they were gone in a gulp. All seemed quiet in that instant, despite the commotion around us. Yiu-hoi and I dangled on the lone stable pole, watching scores of spectators struggling to keep afloat. It was a miracle no one drowned.

  *

  Now with another summer approaching, another season of hope had begun.

  ‘The sea takes all that flows into it from the river,’ Baba said as Mama walked past him without taking her watery breakfast, heading to the District Head’s office for another application form.

  For some reason I still don’t understand, I followed her out of the house that day.

  The District Head was now just a shell of the man he used to be. He didn’t look Mama in the eye; he didn’t seem to notice my presence either – although from time to time, I thought his eyes slid in my direction.

  ‘Put your son on one,’ he said, as he handed Mama two application forms instead of the usual one. Then he mumbled something incoherent.

  ‘But he’s only a young child,’ she replied, struggling to understand the meaning behind the District Head’s unusual offer.

  ‘Just do it for luck,’ he said with his head down, his voice soft and surprisingly gentle. ‘He did it before, didn’t he?’

  My head began to spin as I also tried to understand. The tiny spark of hope I had nurtured all through these lean times was twinkling inside me like a glow-worm. We’d heard of a few more people being permitted to leave for Hong Kong or Macau since the Qingming Remembrance earlier that year. Mama said that maybe the District Head was finally touched by the plight of his people. Or perhaps it was the sight of my pitiful shrivelled body that had moved him – or a touch of humanity, Baba would say later.