Pearl of China

by Anchee Min

  Dick never shared with Mao his opinion that Pearl Buck was the only Westerner with the ability to write about China’s reality with both humanity and accuracy. Dick never mentioned that he admired Pearl, but I knew he did.

  Dick didn’t have the courage to challenge Madame Mao when she declared Pearl’s newest novels attacks on Communism. Madame Mao believed that Pearl was part of the American conspiracy against China. Dick was ordered to encourage China’s propagandists to mount a counterattack. Pearl Buck was labeled a “cultural imperialist.”

  Madame Mao set Pearl Buck up as a negative example. She was getting ready to help her husband launch the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The goal was to secure Mao’s power in China and beyond.

  Making his personal passion for destroying his enemies the nation’s obsession was Mao’s greatest talent. Dick said that I was better off in prison. When Rouge visited me in May of 1965, she told me that the outside world had turned upside down. Teenage mobs calling themselves Mao’s Red Guard chanted, “Whatever our enemy embraces, we reject, and whatever our enemy rejects, we embrace.” They sang Mao’s slogans as they attacked people they suspected were anti-Mao.

  Rouge was worried about my declining health and the fact that I was not allowed to see a doctor. She prayed with me for the first time in many years. She told me she wanted to learn more about God, but I feared that she had been brainwashed too thoroughly and one day might turn on me. I felt the best way to influence her was through my own example.

  Early one morning, I was dragged from my cell. I was told that the Red Guard had taken over the prisons. I was to be beaten to death unless I denounced Pearl Buck.

  Thin, rancid rice porridge was all I was fed and there was never enough. Hunger gnawed at my insides. There was no electricity or water. My cell was a dark concrete box without windows. I lost all sense of time. I knew many people had been driven mad that way.

  To preserve my sanity, I began singing Christian songs to myself. When I was ordered to stop singing by the prison guards, I changed my methods. I practiced finger calligraphy, recalling sentences from the Bible. Since there was no water available, I wet my index finger in the urine bucket and wrote the words on the concrete surface of the floor as if it were rice paper. I moved from left to right. By the time I reached the lower corner, the top corner was dry and ready for me to write on again.

  Time passed without measurement. There was no mirror, so I didn’t know how I looked. One day I noticed strands of my own hair on the floor and realized that my hair had turned white.

  Eventually, a prison guard came and led me to another room, where there was a table, chair, and sink. I was given a comb and a toothbrush and was told to make myself presentable.

  “You have an assignment,” the guard told me. I was to meet a high-ranking party official.

  After I had cleaned up, two men in soldiers’ uniforms escorted me to a car. One of them tied a cloth blindfold over my eyes.

  It was a long ride over bumpy roads.

  When the blindfold was removed from my eyes, I discovered that we had arrived in front of a military complex. We passed through a narrow entrance. I smelled food cooking. The soldiers led me to a large room where there was a stained carpet, red sofas, and deep-green curtains. There was a basket of bananas on the table.

  “Help yourself,” a female attendant said in perfect Mandarin.

  I would not have touched anything if I hadn’t been dying of hunger. Like a monkey, I grabbed a banana. Quickly peeling off the skin, I stuffed the banana into my mouth. I was so absorbed in chewing that I didn’t pay attention to anything else. When I reached out for another banana, I noticed a person sitting on the sofa. At first I thought it was a man because she was dressed in a man’s army uniform. She was wearing the green cap with a red star in the front.

  “Take your time,” she said.

  I froze. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  “Old friend, have you already forgotten me?” She smiled.

  I stared, recognizing the long, bony fingers. “Madame Mao, is that you?”

  “Yes, it’s been a long time.” She smiled. “See, I didn’t forget you.”

  She offered to shake my hand.

  I refused, explaining apologetically that my fingers smelled of urine.

  Madame Mao withdrew her hand. “The Chairman sends his greetings. As you can imagine, he’s been very busy. I’d like to work with you toward a solution that will please him.”

  “How could I possibly be useful to you?” I said.

  “Comrade Willow Yee, I am offering you a great opportunity. You can change your life by proving your loyalty to the Chairman.”

  It was hard to figure out the meaning of her words. She looked changed since the first time I had met her in Yenan. Still imposing, the Madame Mao in front of me today had dyed her hair ink black. Her eyes said, “I am powerful.” She kept herself in shape physically, but she was no longer a beauty. Although her eyebrows were still as thin as a shrimp’s feelers, the dark-framed glasses took away her femininity.

  “I see that you are hungry,” she said, showing her bright white teeth. “Would you like to start lunch?”

  Before I could answer, she clapped her hands.

  A door on the far side of the room opened.

  “A private banquet has been waiting for you,” Madame Mao said cheerfully, as if we were at a party.

  The servants came and lined themselves up against the wall.

  Stretching out her arms, Madame Mao took up my hands. “Let’s have a heart-to-heart chat, just the two of us.”

  “We are fighting a cultural war with the Western countries led by America,” Madame Mao said dramatically. Her thin lips quivered. She reached out and grabbed my hands again and squeezed them. “We will defeat the American cultural imperialists. We will chase them to the end of the universe. They will have no time to catch their breath!” She shivered as if she was cold.

  “Excuse me . . .” I didn’t know what to say.

  She put a hand up in a let-me-finish gesture and continued. “When we succeed, we will take over the Capitalists’ propaganda machine. We will have our voice heard and views printed in the newspapers of the world. Imagine—the New York Times, the London Times. It will be the victory of the proletarians of the world! The Chairman will be so proud of your efforts!”

  “I am not quite following you, madame . . .”

  “You eat, eat.” Madame Mao placed a dish of roast duck in front of me.

  “I’d like to know my assignment if I may,” I requested.

  “Relax, dear comrade.” Madame Mao smiled gleefully. “Believe me, I would not assign you a task that you would be incapable of accomplishing.”

  “What is it exactly, then?”

  “The assignment is easy: Write two articles. One will be titled ‘The Good Earth Is a Poisonous Plant’ and the other ‘Exploitation: Pearl Buck’s Forty Years of Evildoings in China.’ The subtitle will be ‘Crime Exposed by a Childhood Friend.’”

  Although I had no idea what exactly was going on, I sensed that Pearl had done something that had offended Madame Mao personally, over and above her refusal to endorse Mao’s policies for China. Many years later, I would learn that Madame Mao had dreamed of having Pearl Buck write her biography. With The Good Earth being made into a Hollywood movie, Madame Mao had imagined that she could be the next subject for the Nobel Prize–winning novelist. With characteristic confidence, Madame Mao had her agents approach Pearl Buck. The book’s title would be The Red Queen and the character of Madame Mao would have the style and flavor of Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind.

  Pearl’s rejection had come quickly. Madame Mao had been in the middle of watching Gone with the Wind for the fourteenth time. She had imagined Vivien Leigh playing her.

  Seeds of revenge had sprouted. Madame Mao vowed destruction.

  “Besides attacking Chairman Mao through her writings, Pearl Buck has been discovered helping Chinese dissidents escape to Americ
a,” Madame Mao told me.

  I asked if I could just “digest” her words first.

  “I am not asking whether or not you’re willing to do it,” Madame Mao said, raising her chin toward the ceiling. “I am asking for the date you will deliver the weapon.”

  I was reunited with my husband and daughter. We were provided with a room in the complex. My punishment if I did not cooperate had been spelled out. Saying no to Madame Mao meant saying yes to the continuing prison sentence and perhaps death. My age had never bothered me before but it did now. My body was tired and sick. I was over seventy and the idea of dying in a cold cell terrified me.

  “You should not consider this an act of betrayal,” Dick tried to convince me. “You won’t hurt Pearl if you denounce her. She will understand. She is not in China. It is very likely that you two will never see each other again. Pearl won’t even know that you wrote the criticism.”

  “But God will know,” I cried.

  “Consider the circumstance,” Dick said. “We must protect our public from Pearl Buck’s influence. Her books have damaged the Communist Party’s reputation worldwide. Pearl is no longer the friend you used to know.”

  “Unfortunately, I have read The Good Earth,” I replied. “I read it when it was a handwritten manuscript thirty years ago. Pearl Buck didn’t insult Chinese peasants, as Madame Mao claims. On the contrary, she showed what we were truly like.”

  “You are letting your personal feelings get in the way of your political judgment,” Dick warned.

  “To hell with my political judgment!”

  Rouge came. She sided with me.

  Dick was upset. “Nobody says no to Madame Mao.”

  “I can’t do it,” I said.

  “Make up stories,” Dick suggested. “Lie!”

  “I can’t tell the world how evil Pearl and her family were!”

  “You have to do it to survive, Willow. You can tell Pearl that you didn’t mean it later.”

  I looked at my husband and was overwhelmed by unspeakable sadness. Telling lies had become Dick’s way of life. I wished that I could bend with the wind the way he had.

  “I don’t want to teach my daughter a lesson of betrayal by my own example,” I concluded.

  Dick pleaded, “Because of you, Rouge is having a hard time finding a man who will marry her, and she’s already passed her thirtieth year!”

  The words stabbed me like a knife. I blamed myself for ruining Rouge’s life. So many times my daughter had suffered a broken heart. Young men fell in love with Rouge at first sight, but as soon as they found out that her mother was a people’s enemy, they avoided her like a virus. To pursue Rouge would mean a lifetime of hardship and persecution.

  My prison sentence was increased to ten more years and then reduced to five more because I was Dick’s wife. I was sent to a labor prison in a remote province near Tibet. I spent my days working in the fields planting wheat and cotton and my nights scavenging for food and fighting cold, heat, and vermin. Our family was spread out over hundreds of miles. Dick was in the north, Rouge in the south, and I in the southwest. Dick and Rouge took turns visiting me once every three months and during New Year’s. Rouge never complained about the hardship, but the pain was written on her face. She had become a quiet woman, more mature than her peers. After graduating from Beijing University with a degree in medicine, she was not allowed to practice. She worked at a textile factory as a laborer. Dick wouldn’t tell me his punishment, but I learned what it was anyway. He was demoted and sent to an obscure post in the provinces. After a year, Mao called him back. Dick worked hard to regain Mao’s trust.

  Rouge and I tried to keep our perspective. We saw that ours was not the only family that suffered. Millions of others shared the same fate. By the end of 1969, the Cultural Revolution was showing itself to be one of the most destructive episodes in China’s long history.

  After serving five years in the labor prison I was ordered to go back to where I came from, Chin-kiang. It was considered a continuing punishment. I was ordered to reform through physical labor as long as I lived. I was nearly eighty years old.

  Rouge was given the option to stay where she was or come with me. She chose the latter and quit her job. She said that she had barely been earning enough to eat anyway.

  We went home on a slow train. My skin was sun-beaten and my back was in constant pain. I couldn’t walk straight. I had injuries to my joints, spinal cord, and legs. But my spirit had not been crushed. I was proud of myself for paying the price for decency—I could honestly say that I had never betrayed God, and that God had never abandoned me.

  Dick was given no option but to remain at Mao’s side in Beijing. For fifteen years Dick had been China’s chief propaganda director. He was the ghostwriter for both Mao’s and Madame Mao’s speeches and articles. When he begged for my release so I could join him, Madame Mao answered, quoting her husband’s poem, “Enjoy the beauty of snow while feeling no pity for the flies that freeze.”

  I thought Dick had suffered from my absence and had been waiting for me. But I was wrong. One year after I was sent to the labor prison, the party provided him with a young woman one third his age to be his secretary and nurse. In the beginning, Dick was unaware of the trap that had been set for him. By the time he figured it out, he had fallen in love.

  CHAPTER 28

  Summer in Chin-kiang was hot and humid, like living in a steam bath. Papa came to pick us up at the Chin-kiang station. We hadn’t seen each other for many years. It was amazing that Papa was still alive. He had shrunk in size and was bald and stooped. Our tears fell when we embraced. Rouge was excited to see her grandfather, although she barely knew him.

  “I have lost track of your age, Grandpa,” Rouge said. “How old are you exactly?”

  “Twenty-nine!” Papa said.

  “You must mean ninety-two,” Rouge said.

  “You got the joke! Yes, but actually I’m even older,” Papa said, straightening his back to look taller.

  “But you do look like twenty-nine!” Rouge said.

  “I do?” Papa was pleased. “I feel like twenty-nine, too.”

  “I don’t remember your being this short,” I said. “Four feet?”

  “I used to be double the height,” replied Papa.

  “What made you shrink?” Rouge asked.

  “My body knew how to conserve when times were hard.”

  Rouge laughed. “I can’t imagine myself shrinking like you.”

  “Thirty years in the river east, and then the next thirty years in the river west,” Papa said, reciting Confucius.

  “What does that mean?” Rouge asked.

  “In the concept of feng shui, it means that there are equal opportunities in the circle of life.”

  “What is the secret of your longevity, Grandpa?” Rouge asked.

  Papa smiled and whispered, “Having faith.”

  “In Buddha?” Rouge teased.

  “How dare you forget who I am?” Papa pretended to be upset, but not very convincingly.

  “What will our living arrangements be, Papa?” I changed the subject. “Where are we to stay?”

  “In the church,” Papa said.

  “The Chin-kiang church?”

  “Yes, Absalom’s Chin-kiang church.”

  “But the Chin-kiang church was not built for people to live in . . .” I immediately realized the silliness of my statement. Living conditions in China had deteriorated so much that people had turned animal barns into living quarters.

  “To many people, it is no longer a church,” Papa explained. “It was the headquarters of the Nationalist troops during the war against Japan. When the Japanese took over, it became a barracks. After the 1949 Liberation, the Communists repossessed it. It has been put into different uses ever since. First it was a military headquarters, and then a utility storage for the new government. During Mao’s People’s Commune movement, it was a public cafeteria. After the communes failed, it was turned into a shelter for the homeless.
At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards from outside the province took over. They broke my stained-glass windows and painted Mao’s picture over every image of Jesus on every wall. They climbed the roof and knocked down the cross.”

  “Are there families living inside now?” I asked.

  Papa nodded.

  “How many?”

  Papa stuck up two of his fingers.

  “Two?” Rouge guessed.

  “Twenty.”

  “Twenty families?”

  “Yes, twenty families, one hundred and nine people.”

  “How can anybody manage?”

  “Oh, we manage, like caged pigeons.”

  Memories of Absalom and Carie rushed up at the sight of the Chin-kiang church. I had to stop for a moment to collect myself. The gray structure had faded, but the building looked sound. The stone steps at the entrance were so worn they looked polished.

  Although Papa had warned me about the crowded space, I was still shocked when I stepped into the church. I was prepared to see a pigeon cage, but what was in front of me looked like a beehive. There were no windows except those high up near the ceiling where the stained glass had been. These were the only light source for the entire interior. From floor to ceiling, the walls of the church had been divided into wooden, man-sized boxes, like giant wall-to-wall bookshelves, for people to sleep in. One could only lie down inside. To get into the boxes, people used a tangle of rope ladders. Young people and children occupied the top levels, while the old lived on the lower levels. Every inch of space was put to good use. The washing area was dominated by a large sink made from a water pipe about twenty feet long and split open at the top. Ten faucets poured weak streams of water. Below the sink was a slanted open gutter covered by a metal grate. Plumbing pipes and a dragonlike aluminum chimney were suspended in the air by wires. A loft had been built right under the ceiling as a shared storage space. Where the rows of church benches used to be was now a communal dining area. A large wooden table was surrounded by crooked benches. The raised stage where the altar had been was now a kitchen. There was split firewood piled high against the back wall. Baskets of coal spilled their contents. Wooden frames held buckets, pans, and woks. The podium where Absalom had preached now housed a stove. Behind the stage there was a room in which chamber pots were divided by curtains.