Calls Across the Pacific

by Zoë S. Roy

  Zeng’s mother cooked some noodles and fried eggs for supper, and Nina accepted their invitation to stay overnight. The air was heavy with the odour of pig feed, but it did not bother her, and she slept soundly.

  The next afternoon, Nina finally met with Zeng in her new home. They greeted each other warmly and held each other’s hands, jumping up and down like two excited children. “Is it true? You are really here!” Zeng screamed with joy, her eyes brightened, and her long braids shook on her chest. She pulled her two-year-old boy to Nina. “Call her Aunt Nina.” The boy raised his head, mumbled a few words out of a partially toothless mouth, and fidgeted with a broken wooden train. When Nina placed a piece of candy in his hand, he forgot the train. His fingers pulled the wrapper and saliva trickled out from a corner of his mouth as he smiled at her gleefully.

  Zeng told Nina that she had gotten married the same year after Nina left. Her daughter was a first grader and in school. “I’m a lucky woman. Then I had a son who is as strong as a calf,” Zeng said, a satisfied look on her round face.

  Nina was happy for Zeng who seemed content with life. They reminisced for a while and Nina confessed that she yearned to hear about her former workmates. “Have you heard anything about the Number Five Farm?”

  “Not too much.” Zeng scoured her memory. “Wait a second. A couple of years ago, a young man was executed.”

  “Why?”

  “He was caught sneaking across the border into Vietnam. You’ll find out the details when you get there.”

  Nina’s heart skipped a beat, and she sighed loudly. Another lost sheep.

  After Zeng’s daughter and husband come back, Nina had supper with the family. Zeng persuaded Nina to stay overnight. “My hubby can sleep on the temporary bed in the living room.”

  Zeng also passed along a message to her neighbour, whose truck passed by the military farm every day, about Nina’s plan to visit the farm on the following day. He would let Nina’s co-workers know she was coming.

  Excited about the get-together with her former co-workers, Nina prayed that no trouble would arise.

  15.

  REMOTE CORNER

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, Zeng left her children in the care of her husband. The two young women cycled over to the Number Five Military Farm, and Zeng led the way through fields of different crops.

  Tall and dense, each corn stalk carried two or three ears of corn. Some of the fields were filled with tomato plants, which bore egg-shaped or apple-sized fruit. Some were covered with weeds and bushes; the scent of numerous and nameless wildflowers penetrated the air. Across mountains, rivers, and an ocean, I am back here. And right here, on this land, many youths have shed their blood and sweat. Nina’s thoughts drifted back to seven years earlier and then to the present. Many memories of labouring on this land flooded her mind.

  Nina and Zeng approached a large brick structure that was finished with a mixture of mud and straw as its roof. Zeng said it was the place for their get-together that day. Two gas-powered tractors stood in front of the building, and stacks of large baskets, bamboo shoulder poles, and hoes lay or stood against the walls. Nina remembered that the building had once been a dormitory for thirty workers. Zeng told her that the building was now used as a garage to keep tractors and store tools.

  The ringing of their bicycle bells brought a couple bustling out of the building. “Welcome back, you lucky dog!” said the man, who then pointed to his companion, and announced, “My wife.”

  “I remember you both! Huguo and Dongfang,” Nina said. “I admired your bravery.” She shook hands with Huguo and hugged the woman, Dongfang.

  The lovers finally formed a family. Nina recalled that the couple had once been criticized for falling in love with each other. Nobody on the farm was allowed to have love affairs. But that had not stopped them, nor had they tried to hide their secret. Nina had always insisted on meeting Dahai secretly so as to avoid detection. Thinking about that ridiculous rule now, Nina sighed and shook her head.

  Dongfang held Nina. “You haven’t forgotten us, old friend. We heard a rumour that you vanished.”

  “We were here earlier to clear out the place for our gathering today. The other friends will join us soon,” said Huguo.

  “I’ll leave you here and come to get you this evening,” Zeng told Nina. She waved her hand to the others. “Enjoy yourselves.”

  “Nina will stay with us at least until tomorrow. If you’re interested, you’re welcome to join us tonight,” said Dongfang, who then looked at Nina for her consent.

  “Go look after your family, Zeng. Tomorrow I’ll come back by myself,” Nina said, waving her hand to say goodbye.

  “Don’t worry. Nina is under our care now,” Huguo said, popping out his muscular arms. “I can fight if I have to.” Zeng laughed, waved back, and turned her bike around for the journey back to her home.

  Nina followed the couple into the garage. A girl of three sat on a stool and clutched a stick, which she trailed across the floor. “Mama, I’m helping the ants find their home.”

  “This is our daughter,” Dongfang said to Nina. She turned to her daughter, and said, “Yaya, come say hello to your American auntie.”

  “Why am I introduced this way?” Nina asked, looking surprised.

  Dongfang said, “You’re from the American continent, right?”

  Nina, thinking about her American citizenship, chuckled at her new title and said, “Okay.” She then pulled a paper bag out of her satchel and laid it in Yaya’s hands “Yaya, this is yours.”

  “I’ve never seen you before, American auntie,” the little girl said, looking up at her. “Is America far away?” She held the package. After taking a look inside, she took out a few pieces of candy and gave them to her parents.

  “Take the whole pack,” Nina persuaded.

  “Mama always tells me not to be greedy. I’ll get one more.” Yaya put her hand into the package.

  Touched by her words, Nina said to Yaya, “Well, you can share some of the candy with the other kids when they get here.”

  Yaya nodded and clutched the package in her hands. “Thank you.”

  Soon other people, twelve of them, from Shanghai and Chongqing, joined them. Some of them brought their children. One woman, Kali, had two kids; the younger one was cradled in her arms. She turned to the middle-aged man following her, and said, “Leave your vegetable basket here. You can go home now. My friends will take care of us.”

  Dongfang said to Nina, “Kali’s husband is a local peasant who always follows her everywhere. He’s afraid she’ll leave him if he isn’t with her.” She laughed out loud as she ushered Kali and her children to some chairs that had been set up in a corner of the room.

  Nina went over to speak to Kali, pulling up a chair beside her. The peasant husband loitered around for a while and finally left.

  Whole chickens were steamed in a huge wok, corncobs were roasted in the bonfire, fish soup was reheated, and vegetables were stir-fried. Everybody got excited since they had not had such a festive occasion together for years. Some of the children were experiencing such a joyful gathering for the first time in their lives. The cheers, singing, and kids’ babbling almost blew off the thin roof.

  Nina handed one hundred yuan to Huguo. “Can you use the money to buy some useful stuff as my gift to everyone? I don’t know what to buy.”

  “I can’t take it. You have a long journey. You need money.”

  “Compared to you guys, I have an easy life. I beg you to have it. Otherwise, I won’t eat the dinner.”

  “Whoa, hunger strike?” Huguo shook the bills. “This is a monthly salary for more than three workers.”

  Nina laid on the table two bottles of wine she had bought in Kunming, a red and a white.

  The wine was poured into ceramic mugs and the group toasted each other. “For Nina’s visit, for our wasted youth, and for o
ur sorrowful past,” offered one friend. For the second toast, Huguo quoted an ancient catchphrase: “Let’s get wealthy, but not forget one another.” This well-known phrase was from the peasant uprising led by Chen Sheng and Wu Guang in 209 BC. After overthrowing Emperor Qin Shi Huang, Chen Sheng and Wu Guang became emperors themselves. Every adult remembered the countrymen’s uprising, which had been taught in elementary school, so they repeated Huguo’s toast with giggles.

  “I’m no longer a naïve city teenager. I’m a peasant making a living with a hoe in my hand, dependent upon the heavens,” a man said in a mocking voice.

  “We’ve been working here on the farm for eight years,” a woman said with a sigh.

  “We may never get rich, but we won’t forget each other,” Dongfang said.

  “That’s right,” many in the group shouted out together. “Nina still remembers us.”

  As she pondered the uprising almost two thousand years earlier, Nina was struck by a thought. Is China going to experience another uprising after Mao’s death? Isn’t Mao himself the leader of uprising peasants? In history, when peasants suffered and felt desperate, they rebelled. If she had been among those countrymen, she would have joined in their riots. But she wondered if the uprising was successful, would another ruler enforce a similar regime? Would history repeat itself? She asked herself these questions, but did not have any answers.

  While they devoured the festive food, the chatter was lively and numerous stories were shared about old friends who had left the farm. One person told what he had heard about Dahai and Wang, those two daredevils. Nina did not mention what she knew about Dahai’s death. Since nobody else had known about their relationship, she did not need to show them this scar or drop such a bombshell, but a sadness like an invasion of invisible flies did battle all over her skin.

  “I remember a rumour about Dahai and Wang. I heard that after they ran away in August, 1969, they earned medals from a battle in Vietnam. Even I thought about crossing the border to join in the Vietnam War, but I dared not. Jingsheng did, but he got caught,” one person said.

  Jingsheng? Nina searched her memory. She remembered him as a medium-built young man with glasses whom everyone had nicknamed “Ancient Poet” since he could recite many poems by Li Bai and Du Fu. She asked, “What happened then?”

  “You want to know?” Huguo said. “I’ll never forget it. Jingsheng was arrested on the border by the People’s Liberation Army’s patrol team and sent back to the farm to be denounced. Do you remember Chairman Yang? He organized a denunciation meeting, but none of us said anything against Jingsheng. Even though we were warned that we would lose our chance of visiting our parents if we didn’t cooperate. Yang found his authority challenged, so he contacted the Public Security Bureau and they put Jingsheng in jail.

  “A couple of days later, I remember, Yang announced the shocking news that Jingsheng would be executed because he had betrayed the country. When the day came, all of us got up early. We didn’t go to work in the field but trudged to the place used to shoot death-row criminals. It was our sympathy strike although we didn’t call it that out loud. We told one another, ‘The law can’t punish everyone. They can’t put all of us into jail.’

  “The execution spot was at the bottom of a rocky hill that had been surrounded by armed soldiers. Nobody was allowed to get close to it, so we stood with other onlookers to watch the execution. Jingsheng was forced to kneel on the ground. They gagged his mouth with a thick rope and pushed his head down.

  “The ruling class always practise the idiom, ‘to kill a chicken is to scare the monkey,’ but at that moment, we monkeys weren’t completely frightened. We had our way to protest. Kill-one-to-warn-a-hundred didn’t work that time. Instead, hundreds of hearts and brains came together to protest this cruelty.

  “When the gunshots echoed in the valley, Jingsheng fell into the pit in front of him. I still remember his blood spattering on the weeds around his head. I cried, and many watchers cried, even though men were not expected to shed tears. Even now, whenever I think about it, I tear up. Any one of us could have ended up like him. I looked at his body and felt my heart stop beating. Right after the soldiers left, all the farm workers rushed down the hill. Another man and I had brought a stretcher with us. We placed the dead body on it, and four of us carried it away. All the others followed us. On our way home, everyone took a turn in bringing home the remains of Jingsheng.

  “In our twelve-person dorm room, we washed Jingsheng’s body and dressed him in the best outfit we could find. Everybody chipped in. We used the money to get a casket. We couldn’t get his parents here right away as they were far away in Beijing, but we did everything we could on behalf of his family. We read his favourite poem by Li Bai, ‘Long Yearning.’ Anybody remember the poem?”

  Many voices responded:

  Above the dark night stands the sky

  Beneath the green water the tides rise

  Along the long path in the endless sky,

  my bitter spirit flies

  The dream of my soul can’t get through as the mountain pass lies

  Long yearning

  My broken heart sighs.

  Listening to the stanza, Nina burst into tears.

  Huguo continued. “Jingsheng was buried on the top of a hill, and a tombstone was set facing north. We believed his soul could see his family and vice versa. For the next three days, nobody went to work. We took turns sitting around the tomb because we were ready to fight if the authorities sent people to destroy it.

  “We returned to work on the fourth day, and a military truck came and arrested five of us workers. By the time the truck drove the captives away, the news of the arrest had spread to the other 996 workers who arrived at the local court on foot and sat around the building.

  “That was the first time we re-educated youth organized ourselves to stand up for our basic right to bury a body. We refused to be treated like ants or flies. We are human beings. We insisted on our human dignity. Guess what happened? More than two thousand other youths from different military farms came, and even some local peasants also joined us. Finally, after the provincial court placed an order, the local court had to release the five jailed workers. We won!”

  The story touched Nina deeply, and she felt a shiver from head to toe. She, too, would have been shot if she had been caught red-handed on Defence Road, or caught jumping into the water on that dark night.

  From their reminiscences, Nina learned that several years earlier, some dispatched young people had found different excuses for returning to their home cities.

  One of the men said, “We all are eager to leave, but Mao’s directive wanted us to settle down in these rural areas for the rest of our lives. A man from Shanghai named Ting Huimin is trying to organize a petition to send to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in Beijing to allow us to return home. All of us who came here in 1968, like you, will sign the petition.”

  When Nina thought about the reality of her former fellow workers’ circumstances, she felt wretched for the unfair treatment they had received in life. They had not had any chance to choose their own future, such as an education, a job, or even a place to live. What Rei had told her then came to mind, so she asked, “Do you think someday everyone will have a chance to go to college?”

  “My dream was shattered when the Cultural Revolution started,” a woman said. “But I hope my daughter will have a chance. I’ve been teaching her how to read and do math since she turned three.”

  “My city has abandoned me. Hopefully, my son will return there,” a man sighed.

  “Maybe the sun will rise from the West someday,” said Huguo. “Old Man Mao didn’t live forever like what we had been led to believe. Isn’t that right?” Seeing others nod, he continued, “Let’s look on the bright side. Things will look up if we don’t give up.”

  “Right now, let’s put the kids to
bed. They’re tired out,” Dongfang reminded the others. As the parents unfolded the blankets on the pallets for their children to sleep on, the moonlight filtered through the windows and mingled with the light emitted from the kerosene lamps in the room.

  “Let’s sing,” one person suggested.

  “Look at the full moon outside, bright and nice,” another responded. “How about singing the song, ‘Dating at Aobao’?”

  All of them hummed along. Nina’s memory of those lyrics came back, and she joined in the singing: “The moon on the fifteenth rises in the sky. Why are there no beautiful clouds around?”

  When the lyrics of “The Song of the Sent-down Youth” started, Nina sobbed with the crowd who had lost their green years to hard labour. Tears of lamentation on each face glittered in the moonlight that now streamed through the windows, and each pair of eyes reflected the flame of the kerosene lamps. Originally composed by a young man named Ren Yi, dispatched from Nanjing, the song had been popular among the entire young generation who were sent to the countryside.

  We go to the field in the sunrise

  We drag ourselves home in the moonlight

  To repair the earth we dig with sigh

  We even try to change the sky.

  Then, they lifted up their voices in the verses they had collectively composed behind the scenes on the Number Five Military Farm.

  Born in Red China

  We were taught to be loyal to Mao.

  As Red Guards in the Revolution

  We fought to defend Mao.

  From peasants we get re-education

  We settle in remote corners now.

  These songs had accompanied them everywhere during those unforgettable years. The lyrics had described their wondering minds, their critical thoughts, and their struggling lives, every endless dismal day and starless night.

  The moon eventually inched up high into the sky. In a faraway place, the last dog’s barking faded. Exhausted, each person leaned against the wall or lay down with her or his own child. Her heart pumping with powerful emotion, Nina felt so close to each person, it was as if she had never left. Her eyelids heavy, she eventually fell into a deep sleep on a bundle of branches in the corner while the first early rooster crowed in the distance.