Life and Death in Shanghai

by Cheng Nien

  I lost all interest in obtaining food. I had a loaf of bread and a tin of jam as well as some pickles at home. I thought I could survive on that for one day. So I got only my bottle of milk and returned home to wait for my old gardener.

  How glad I was to see the old man! I had looked for him ever since my release! I owed him money. His gratuity had been in my pocket when I was taken to the detention house.

  He was equally glad to see me. He had put on a new suit and was beaming when I ushered him into my room.

  “I’m so glad to have run into you at the market. I want to pay you the gratuity I have owed you all these years,” I told him.

  “Oh, that! Meiping gave me the money long ago. She came to see me after you were taken to …” He couldn’t quite bring himself to mention the word “prison.”

  Meiping’s salary was small, and I knew the Red Guards had left no more than a few hundred yuan in her savings account. She must have given the gardener all the money she had at the time. I was proud of what she had done.

  “Do you know anything about her death?” I asked the old man.

  “I heard she committed suicide. Except for the day she brought me the money, I did not see her.” The old man bowed his head. “But Lao-zhao saw her. I met Lao-zhao on the street once. He told me he was seeing Meiping regularly.”

  “Do you think you could find Lao-zhao and tell him to come see me?”

  “Certainly! I’ll find the cook too. They will be so happy to know you are still alive and well.”

  “Do you know if Lao-zhao and Cook are working?”

  “Yes, they have both been given jobs. I think Cook is at a factory and Lao-zhao is working as gatekeeper at a school. You know, the Red Guards beat him up and broke his arm. It was badly set. He is crippled,” my old gardener said.

  I was shocked and saddened by the news of Lao-zhao. I asked whether the gardener was working.

  “I was unemployed for many years. To plant flowers was supposed to be bad, if not counterrevolutionary. But now things seem to have changed a bit. I sometimes get odd jobs now. Even the local police station asked me to plant some flowers for them. It must be all right again, don’t you think?” The old man was obviously puzzled by all these ups and downs in what was all right and what was not.

  I was wondering if I could ask him to come and do something with the garden here. It certainly looked empty and deserted, even with the trees planted by the Housing Bureau’s tree-planting section. He seemed to be thinking the same thing, for he said, “Would you like me to come every now and then to tidy up the garden down below? I notice the hedge needs clipping and you have nothing except trees.”

  “That would be wonderful! Can you get seedlings for some flowers? Is it possible to make a lawn?” I asked him eagerly.

  “I’m afraid it’s not possible to get grass anymore. I grow seedlings in boxes at home. My fingers itch if I don’t plant something, you know. When the Red Guards were everywhere, I hid my seedling boxes under the beds,” he chuckled.

  When I accompanied him downstairs to show him the garden, Mrs. Zhu was there. I introduced the gardener and told her that he was going to plant some flowers.

  “Only on your side. We don’t want flowers on our side. Don’t you know our Great Leader Chairman Mao is against flowers?”

  Mrs. Zhu was obviously not informed about the changed situation regarding flowers. I did not bother to enlighten her since the situation might easily change again. I just asked her, “Would you want the hedge on your side of the garden clipped?”

  “As long as I don’t have to pay your gardener. We have no foreign exchange account and no foreign connections. We can’t afford to pay for a gardener.”

  She was making an unkind dig at me when she mentioned “foreign connections.” She was referring to my imprisonment.

  Two days later, A-yi came back, carrying a basket in which were a large fish, a fat chicken, and some eggs that she had obtained in Suzhou through the back door. As was her habit, she entered the house by the back entrance. Mrs. Zhu was in the kitchen and saw A-yi with her basket.

  “What have you bought on the black market in Suzhou?” Mrs. Zhu asked A-yi.

  “Who said I bought anything on the black market? These are presents from my husband and son. In any case, it’s none of your business.” A-yi was very annoyed to be greeted with an accusation.

  I heard her and came out of my room to meet her. A-yi went into our kitchen and said to me, “That old woman is a nuisance. How did you get on at the market? Were you able to get vegetables?” After putting her basket on the kitchen table, A-yi went into the bathroom. I took the eggs from the basket and wondered whether I should take a few down to Mrs. Zhu as a present. To buy things on the black market was illegal. But as long as the purchase was not reported, officials generally ignored it; they knew there was nothing they could do to stop the practice.

  I heard footsteps on the stairs, and Lu Ying appeared on the landing. I walked over to welcome her.

  “It’s such a long time since I was here. You must be well enough to join our study group meetings now,” she said as she took a seat in my room.

  “Thank you very much for your concern. I’m getting stronger every day.”

  “Many people have remarked that you should come. They see you going out and walking fast. They know you are fit.”

  “Indeed, I am now quite fit.”

  “We are studying the crimes of Lin Biao. It’s very important. It helps us to clarify our understanding of this criminal who tried to harm our Great Leader Chairman Mao. You had better join us next week.” She spoke firmly in the voice of authority.

  “All right. I’ll gladly come next week.” Since I could no longer hide behind the excuse of ill health, I might as well be pleasant about it.

  When A-yi came out of the bathroom, Lu Ying said to her, “I hear you have been away.”

  “I went home to visit my old man for a couple of days,” A-yi said.

  “Did you buy anything on the black market?” Lu Ying asked.

  “Of course not! We have a Residents’ Committee in Suzhou too. The things I brought back are presents from my family. We have cousins in the country. They raise chickens and catch fish in the river. They gave these things to my husband.”

  “You know buying things on the black market is illegal. Everybody has a duty to report to us when they see such activities. Be sure you don’t buy things on the black market.” Lu Ying was quite rude to A-yi because she could not prove A-yi had really bought those things on the black market. She had lost face and was angry.

  A-yi left the room. Turning to me, Lu Ying said, “Incidentally, I hear many people in this neighborhood comment on your clothes. They say you pay too much attention to your clothes. Your clothes are not only expensive but they are all new.”

  “Indeed, I dislike wearing new clothes. Nothing would please me more than to get my old clothes back again, but unfortunately I don’t know how to find the Red Guards who took them when they looted my home. Perhaps you could help me get them back?” I said to Lu Ying.

  She was visibly embarrassed that she had forgotten about the Red Guards taking all my clothes away. But she wasn’t going to give up criticizing me. “Next time you buy clothes, buy something ready-made in navy blue drill such as we all wear. Then you’ll look more like one of us and won’t appear so different in your gray woolen suits.”

  When Lu Ying had gone, A-yi and I both realized Mrs. Zhu had reported A-yi to the Residents’ Committee and perhaps was also the one who had gossiped about my clothes.

  I asked A-yi what she had found out about the bricks.

  “My old man will make discreet inquiries. When he locates them, he’ll let us know.”

  The next Sunday, both Lao-zhao and Cook came to see me. After asking about their work and the members of their families, I questioned them anxiously about Meiping.

  Lao-zhao said, “Soon after the Revolutionaries took you away, they gave her a room in a house that be
longed to a Professor Chen of Tongji University. The professor was denounced by the Red Guards and made to move with his family to the attic. The rest of his house was allocated to other families. I used to go to see her every ten days or so. She seemed well but worried about you. After she died, I asked Mrs. Chen what had happened. Mrs. Chen told me Meiping was abducted from the house by a group of Revolutionaries in the middle of the night. Mrs. Chen did not think those men were from the film studio. She said when she heard Meiping’s voice refusing to go with them, she came to the landing to listen. But in the end, the men made Meiping go.”

  “What about the other people who had rooms on the same floor as Meiping?”

  “I made inquiries. No one would say anything. They seemed afraid.”

  I asked Lao-zhao for the address of this house. He wrote it down for me but warned, “You mustn’t go there. You won’t find out anything. I got the impression they had all been told not to talk about it.”

  “It’s better not to make inquiries yourself. If the police hear of your making inquiries, it won’t be good,” the cook said.

  “Did you say this professor is at Tongji University?” I asked Lao-zhao because I thought Winnie’s husband Henry, also a professor at Tongji, might introduce me to the Chens.

  “Yes, Mrs. Chen told me herself. She is a very nice lady. Meiping used to tell me she was good to her.”

  “Do you know what’s happened to my friends Professor and Mrs. Huang?”

  “They had a lot of trouble and were locked up by the Red Guards, but they are all right now, except that Mrs. Huang is very ill.”

  “Do they still live in the same apartment?”

  “I think so.”

  Lao-zhao and Cook also told me dear Chen-ma was dead.

  “You can’t imagine what Shanghai was like in 1967 and 1968,” said the cook. “The Red Guards and the Revolutionaries went mad. They ran wild in the city, looting and abducting people at will, torturing them in secret courts, and killing them in every cruel way imaginable. It wasn’t safe for anyone to go out on the streets. They even used ambulances to abduct people when there weren’t enough vehicles for their purposes. There were so many suicides! And many people went to the police stations begging to be taken to prison for protection.”

  “Not long before I saw her for the last time, Meiping told me she was going to marry Sun Kai, but they wanted to wait until you were released. She seemed confident that you would be released soon because she said she knew you had done nothing wrong. Do you want me to find Sun Kai?” Lao-zhao said.

  “Do you know his address?” I asked him.

  “He gave me his address in 1968 and told me to let him know if I had news of you.”

  Nineteen sixty-eight was five years ago. Would Sun Kai still be concerned for me? Since he was likely to know of Meiping’s life during that crucial period just before she was abducted, I was naturally anxious to see him.

  “Please try to find him. Just give him my address. If he is married now, don’t mention Meiping in front of his wife,” I told Lao-zhao.

  Then I asked Lao-zhao to get a letter of authorization from the film studio and go to the crematorium to bring Meiping’s ashes to me.

  A few days later, Lu Ying came again to remind me of the Residents’ Committee study group meeting on Tuesday afternoon and told me I must be there.

  “Bring a stool with you. There are not enough benches at the meeting place,” she added.

  On Tuesday afternoon, I put on a navy blue cotton jacket with my gray flannel trousers. I hoped the jacket would make Lu Ying feel she had gained face because I had taken her advice. But my jacket was specially tailored by my old tailor, quite different from the badly cut ready-made ones worn by most other Chinese women. I wanted Lu Ying to see that I had taken her advice, but I didn’t want to encourage her to give me advice too often. While I would not do anything to imply disrespect for her authority, I also had to make sure she did not think she could do whatever she liked with me. That was the best way to deal with people like Lu Ying.

  The Residents’ Committee premises were similar to the house I was living in. For the meeting, three downstairs rooms had been opened into one. It was already two-thirds full of blue-clad people with toddlers running underfoot, and others were coming into the room steadily to join the crowd. I was met with stares of undisguised curiosity, leading me to believe that my reputation as an ex-inmate of the No. 1 Detention House had preceded me.

  Mrs. Zhu, with whom I walked to the meeting place, led me across the crowded room to a group of women under the window. She gestured me to put my stool down and sit among them. Nobody greeted us. Everybody maintained an impassive face, as if afraid to be betrayed by a carelessly assumed expression. I was to learn some weeks later that the group of women I was sitting with were all members of the denounced capitalist class and intellectuals, the outcasts of the Cultural Revolution, considered undesirable and suspect by the proletariat. We sat with the others in the same room, yet we were apart from the others. Even when the room was packed, a few inches of space separated our group from the stools of the workers.

  This segregation was not ordered by the Party or the police. It was the result of political propaganda on “classes” that had been fed to the people over the years. Once, several weeks later, I arrived when the speaker had already begun. I hastily placed my stool by the door and sat down among the proletariat. Almost as if an electric shock had hit them, the two workers closest to me immediately moved their stools away so that I sat there isolated in the crowded room. Though I was really more amused than embarrassed, I dashed across the room with my stool when the speaker paused to take a sip of water. Mrs. Zhu and the other ladies, with whom I felt by now an invisible bond, welcomed me with nods and approving glances while their facial expressions remained impassive.

  The meeting room was decorated with familiar Cultural Revolution slogans and reminded me of my own struggle meetings. But it also had many large posters with messages of a more peaceful nature. These extolled the country’s economic achievement since the Cultural Revolution, which was supposed to have liberated the forces of production and increased productivity. Of course, the Cultural Revolution had done just the opposite. Official lies like this, habitually indulged in and frequently displayed by the authorities, served no purpose except to create the impression that truth was unimportant. In fact, the posters were meant to show the Residents’ Committee’s support of the Cultural Revolution and Mao’s policy. It was a display of the political savoir-faire of our Party secretary and her co-workers.

  Right in front of us, occupying the most prominent position in the room, were the slogans denouncing Lin Biao, the target of our criticism. Large sheets of paper held cartoons and lists of Lin Biao’s crimes against Mao and the Party.

  The meeting started with all of us standing up to sing “The East Is Red,” a song eulogizing Mao Zedong as the rising sun of the East. It had taken the place of the national anthem since the Cultural Revolution. When we sat down, a man whose name and official status were not revealed to us made a virulent attack on Lin Biao for his crimes. He started with the days of the Long March, went through Lin Biao’s entire career as an army officer, and ended with Lin Biao’s attempt to kill Mao. He reversed the propaganda we had been fed during the Cultural Revolution while Lin Biao’s star was rising. Everything Lin Biao did that we had been told was good now turned out to be bad after all. All Lin Biao’s virtues had been turned into vices. And the vices we weren’t told about were now exposed. However, hardly anybody was listening. Many women had brought their knitting and mending, while the men were either smoking in a relaxed posture or dozing. The study group meeting was a mere formality. People came to it because they had been told to by officials they could not disobey. It was not a serious effort to indoctrinate the people, and the result was nil. Nobody became more pro-Communist or anti-Communist as a result of attending study group meetings.

  After the man had finished talking, several mem
bers of the audience stood up to support the view expressed by the speaker, who on such occasions represented the Party, no matter how lowly his official rank or status. Everything had been prearranged. The residents who spoke read from bits of paper pulled out of their pockets. Their texts had already been approved by the Residents’ Committee.

  At the end of the meeting, everybody stood up to shout slogans expressing our collective disapproval of Lin Biao. Though to hear him condemned gave me some measure of satisfaction, I did not join in. In fact, very little noise came from our corner. Perhaps, like me, the others felt that since we were not considered a part of the people, we were merely spectators. When we trooped out into the fading light of the chilly November evening, we definitely walked a great deal faster towards our homes than we had when we came to the meeting.

  In the feeble light of the street lamp outside my front gate, I saw a tall young man standing there. When I came nearer, I recognized him as Winnie’s son. He had changed from a husky teenager into a thin and rather delicate-looking young man, but his features were recognizable. I led him into my room and asked him about his parents.

  “We were very pleased to get your letter and to know you had survived the detention house. Mother is very anxious to see you. I’m afraid she is very ill. It’s a strange disorder of the skin that is incurable. My father is also unwell. He has heart trouble and high blood pressure.” The young man spoke quietly and looked sad and troubled.

  “Tell me more about your mother’s illness. Has she seen a skin specialist?” I asked him.

  “It’s called scleroderma. The skin becomes hardened and rigid. The internal organs are affected too so that they cannot absorb nutrition,” he said. “She has been in and out of the hospital, but none of the doctors seems to be able to do anything more than give her intravenous feeding.”

  “I’ll come to see her tomorrow,” I told him.

  “Be prepared to see a great change in my mother. She doesn’t look the same as she used to.”