by Ting-Xing Ye
“Do you know something, Xiao Ye?” Jia-ying confided from the bed beside mine. “If you were from a ‘red’ background, you would be a perfect candidate.”
“Don’t be silly!” I shot back, though I was half flattered.
I wondered how many of the women at the prison farm would have jumped at the chance to escape the farm and return to civilization, wear elegant and costly clothing, eat rich and carefully prepared food, enjoy sumptuous surroundings and, most important, live without politically motivated harassment.
“If you ever had the chance, would you go?” Jia-ying pressed.
Although I was eighteen, I knew nothing about intimate relations between men and women. Like many women my age, I was ignorant about sexual intercourse, or how babies were conceived or born. I was aware that to be Lin Li-guo’s mistress was dissolute, but had no idea what such a role entailed.
“Well, would you?”
There were, as I knew now, only three ways to escape a lifetime of exile in this desolate and strife-ridden place: suicide, prison or selection as a mistress. I had tried the first. The second loomed over me.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“So would I,” said Jia-ying.
Since her return from her home visit the previous February, Jia-ying had changed. She was bolder now—the only one who would speak to me directly—and nothing seemed to intimidate her, not even Cui and Zhao. I surmised that something was in the air when she was transferred to the vegetable-growing team, an assignment we all considered heavenly. Usually only the PLA reps’ favourites were given this privilege.
A couple of months later Jia-ying’s mother showed up at the farm, shocking everyone, since parental visits were unheard of. She soon let it be known that her younger sister, Jia-ying’s aunt, was married to Li Zheng-dao, a Chinese-American scientist who had won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics along with another Chinese-American, Yang Chen-ning. During the early phase of the Cultural Revolution, this “foreign connection” had worked against Jia-ying’s family, causing them untold misery; but now that China–U.S. relations were improving, the family fortunes had been reversed and they had returned to the home from which they had been evicted several years before.
The same government that had encouraged Red Guards to pillage, beat and kill families like Jia-ying’s was now “looking forward and forgetting the past” because of the change in relations with the United States. Although she was my friend and I was happy for her, I envied her unexpected good luck.
A week or so later word came that a woman from our sub-farm had been chosen by the panel selecting young virgins for Lin Li-guo. After a big farewell meeting she was paraded in a jeep from one village to another, waving to the crowds like a queen, then sent to the city of Guangzhou, where the young Lin lived.
“I told you so,” Jia-ying said to me as we watched the procession. “Only in the Tang dynasty were big and tall women considered beautiful. That’s why they turned down Xiao Hong.”
I wished I had brought Number 2’s glasses with me so that I could see what the fuss was about. All I could make out was a petite young woman in a blue Mao jacket, squeezed between two officers in the back seat of a jeep. In a society where beauty was officially labelled bourgeois, where femininity was condemned and where women and girls wore blue, brown or gray Mao suits, cut their hair short (unless they were young) and tried hard to look revolutionary, many women did not carry mirrors. I used the window glass to braid my pigtails.
Great-Aunt had once said, “A human being needs fine clothes the way a Buddha statue needs gold paint to enhance its glory.” But I had grown up wearing my brothers’ shabby clothes. How could I be good-looking, as Jia-ying had told me? No one else had ever even hinted that I was attractive. Until my friend made that remark I had never really thought much about how I looked to others, especially boys.
That evening I borrowed Jia-ying’s mirror. Outside, in the fading light, careful not to be observed, I had a long look at myself. I saw a young woman with jet-black braids, an oval face with even teeth and large eyes with folded lids. Folded eyelids were considered more beautiful than unfolded.
The woman who looked back at me from the little mirror was not beautiful, I thought. Pleasant-looking, perhaps, and certainly not ugly, like Fatty or Loaf. But not lovely.
I recalled my first trip to the farm on the bus. Because I knew no one and I had sat alone on a seat for two, the boys had vied with each other to fall “accidentally” into the seat beside me. Absorbed in my feelings about leaving my family, I had paid no attention at the time, but now I wondered if they too had found me attractive. Was that why they had shyly offered me candy and cookies? Even after some people in my brigade had started to call me “Mila” after a pretty woman in an Albanian movie, I never took it seriously. But at least I didn’t have a thick rump and ugly big breasts like Mila. Chinese standards of beauty preferred a small bosom and a flat bottom.
I turned the mirror over. What did it matter anyway? A woman with my bad blood could be as beautiful as a goddess and no one would give her the time of day.
By the time I walked into the summer of my nineteenth year, Lin Li-guo’s vice had spread as far as the PLA reps.
Lao Chang had warned us when we first arrived at the farm that dating was prohibited; under Cui and Zhao any kind of relationship, even friendship, was persecuted. Men and women were prohibited from visiting one another in their dorms. When the hot weather drove us outdoors at night, the reps would lead search parties under the bridge piers and through the bushes, looking for couples—as if an innocent romance was a political crime. Those they found were humiliated and criticized at a meeting called for that purpose.
At one special criticism meeting, Cui read out a personal letter from a woman in my dorm, Zhen Bao, to her boyfriend, Wang Hua-shan, whose brother was married to Zhen’s sister. Someone had stolen the letter from Wang and turned it in to Cui, who read Zhen Bao’s words out loud in a girlish voice, leering and mimicking, drawing sneers and laughter from some of the crowd. “‘Thank god my period came yesterday,’” he read. The women near me gasped and shied away from this embarrassing declaration, but soon all of us, as expected and required, were shouting in unison, “Down with the hooligan Wang Hua-shan!” The next day, Wang was transferred to another sub-farm.
A few weeks later we were called together again and, on the way into the warehouse, forced to walk in single file past a table on which a dish and a Do Not Touch sign sat side by side. In the dish I saw a small shapeless object like a collapsed balloon. Next to the table, Yang, the tallest man in the village, stood with his head bowed. At the meeting, Zhao called Yang a dirty bastard for possessing a condom. Yang’s girlfriend was criticized and ridiculed. The next day she tried to kill herself.
All this moral rectitude on the part of Cui and Zhao was pretense. We often saw them through the open windows and doors of the brick house, lying on their backs while girls, using two aluminum penny coins, plucked the hairs from their chins. Both reps openly petted and fondled willing female students. On more than one occasion a woman was sent packing. We learned later that these women had regained their city hu-kou as a “reward” for having an abortion and keeping their mouths shut.
Meanwhile I was still living in suspense, wondering when my jail sentence would be finalized and where I would serve it. There was no prison on the farm. Would they ship me off to a distant city? Then one day the five of us counterrevolutionary plotters were hauled up before the reps. It was a hot, humid July day, and the oscillating fan on Cui’s desk clattered in vain. Yu, Zhu, Qian, Jian and I stood with our heads bowed as Zhao read sententiously from the paper in his hand.
“For forming a counterrevolutionary clique and attempting to undermine the PLA, your sentence of two years is confirmed.”
My heart sank. In spite of myself I had been hoping that someone above Cui and Zhao would have some common sense, or take pity on me and my friends. But it was not to be. I steeled myself for what came next, c
ertain that I would be sent even farther from home.
Zhao cleared his throat. “Sentence to be served supervised by the masses.”
I could hardly believe my ears. I clamped my lips shut to hold back any expression of relief and fought to keep myself from glancing at my friends. It was an anticlimax, after all. I would not be shipped off to a prison. The charge and sentence would be recorded in my dossier. I would lose my tan-qin for the duration of my sentence. But “supervised by the masses” meant that I would continue as I had been since my release from interrogation—working as normal under the nominal scrutiny of everyone. The reps’ recommendation for our imprisonment had been repudiated at a higher level.
My four friends were split up and sent away to different brigades. I was not even allowed to say goodbye to them. If not for Jia-ying, I would have felt completely alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Cui often said that it was better to “reap proletarian weeds than sow capitalist seeds.” That autumn he got what he wanted. The rice harvest was so meagre that Lao Chang said it would have cost the government less money to have us sit around and do nothing, for the yield hardly repaid the investment of seed, equipment and fertilizer, let alone our wages and months of labour.
But for me, the poor harvest was more than balanced by good news. September 24, 1971 was a typically crisp fall day, a welcome relief after the long season of heat and humidity. When I awoke that morning I heard someone shouting outside.
I rushed out of the dorm, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. A young man stood in front of the reps’ brick house, hands cupped around his mouth, yelling, “They’re gone! They’re gone!”
People began to run toward him. I hung back, afraid of a trick. But after everyone converged on the house, I joined them. The structure was empty, stripped bare of furniture, posters, even the photo of Mao and Lin Biao. “Where have they gone?” everyone asked, but no one knew. Many made guesses. I kept my mouth firmly closed.
The speculation and gossip continued for a week, until one day, as we made our way to the fields, Representative Huang of the Shanghai Garrison pulled up in a jeep with an officer I had never seen. Huang directed everyone except the prisoners to go to the warehouse immediately for an important meeting. When we were all assembled he wasted no time on formalities.
“The traitor Lin Biao, his wife and son are dead. The plane they had commandeered for their escape to the Soviet Union crashed in Outer Mongolia.”
No one spoke. We were stunned. Vice Chairman Lin Biao a traitor? Once again someone we had been taught to revere was now being called a stinking heap of animal dung. More than three weeks before, Huang told the silent assembly, Lin had fled when his plot to assassinate Mao and take over the government by military coup was uncovered.
Huang went on to admonish us not to speak of these events. An official investigation conducted by Premier Zhou En-lai himself was under way, and since our farm had been under the authority of Lin Biao and had figured largely in his plans as a base, some people’s lives were at stake. When he spoke these words, many turned their eyes toward me. I stared straight ahead, numb with fear.
No wonder Cui and Zhao had run off. They were associated with the PLA faction loyal to Lin Biao. Now the work to make the road fit for military vehicles made sense. Lin Biao had been preparing for possible civil war.
And so the tables were turned yet again. Another movement began, a rectification campaign criticizing Lin Biao and all those in his camp. What had been white was now black. Our nights were filled with political study, reading and discussing documents denouncing Lin Biao and his counterrevolutionary activities. Now, all the evil stupidities of the Cultural Revolution carried out on our farm—from the neglect of the fields to friends informing on each other—were blamed on Lin Biao and our departed PLA reps. Even Leggy bragged that she had harboured doubts about the reps as she took part in the merciless interrogation of me and my friends. I seethed at the hypocrisy. It wasn’t Lin Biao but the people around me who had persecuted me.
In the end, my four friends and I were brought together for a rehabilitation meeting at the sub-farm. What had been black was now white. Gatherings like this were supposed to cancel all the harm that had been done. Our malicious treatment was blamed on the dead. But exoneration tasted like ashes in my mouth. Was I expected to be grateful that we were not counterrevolutionaries after all? Our innocence, friendship and trust had been shattered. None of us talked about what had happened or what we had said and written under torture. None of us discussed our detention. More than ever I wanted to tell Yu Hua, Xiao Jian, Xiao Qian and Xiao Zhu what I had said and done, to clear the air. I craved their forgiveness, even though I could hardly remember the things I had “admitted.”
On my visit home that winter, after a two-year absence, Number 2 bought me a new short-wave radio and a set of recently published English textbooks. The gifts were his way of showing his concern for my suffering and apologizing for the letter in which he had criticized me for ruining his chances to join the Party.
“Shanghai Radio Station has started broadcasting English lessons as a positive signal to the United States,” he said. “You always liked English, Ah Si, so maybe you can continue learning it.”
Holding the books in my hand, I could not speak, for my throat was thick with emotion. I was touched by his generosity. I knew he was still paying off the loans he had taken out to help Number 5 and me prepare to go to the countryside.
But I was also filled with sadness because I could not bring myself to tell him the details of my ordeal or what I had done to my friends. Nor would Great-Aunt be a help. Even she was saying how she had always had a bad feeling about Lin Biao’s “conspiratorial looks.”
“He had ghostlike features,” she claimed, “with those tiny triangle eyes under bushy brows. That pale smiling face always gave me goose bumps.” Hindsight can be blinding.
Two months after I returned to the farm, news came that there was a shortage of manpower in Shanghai, from sales-clerks to street-sweepers, from prison guards to teachers. The chaos of the Cultural Revolution had killed many by suicide, execution, beatings or battles, and hundreds of thousands had been sent to the countryside. A number of us would be chosen to return to the city to fill some of the jobs, and the farm buzzed with excitement and speculation as everyone tried in vain to keep their hopes in check. Hope, we all knew to our cost, was mother to disappointment. People around me thought I might have a chance to become a teacher because, ironically, a pure class background was not necessary for that role. To avoid frustration, I fought hard to remain unenthusiastic about my chances. It won’t happen, I kept telling myself. Yu Hua was selected to be a prison guard. When Jian, Qian and Zhu were assigned teaching posts I began to hope in spite of myself. Delirious with joy, they packed up and left the farm for good.
But all four of them were “red” students and I was not. Our new rep, Meng, said that I must remain on the farm. He explained that I needed more hardship to overcome my “bourgeois weakness.”
There were more changes. A newly formed civilian leadership took control of the farm, replacing PLA reps and self-appointed students’ committees. We moved across the bridge into houses with brick walls and thatched roofs—a great improvement over the damp wattle buildings in which I had spent the last four years.
I passed what little free time we were allowed on my bed, listening to my new radio and studying English. Although I was hurt and extremely bitter, as well as lonely, I reached a separate peace. My roommates pitied me and left me alone or jeered at me for “drawing water with a bamboo basket”—wasting my time studying a useless language. They could not understand that I wanted to be by myself and stay out of trouble. Nor did they know how much I thirsted for love and friendship.
And yet sometimes I thought of myself as a cold and insensitive creature not fit for this world. After all the persecution, insults, lies and betrayals, I didn’t know how to deal with matters of the heart like love and trust.
>
On my home visit the following winter I met Number 5 at the train station. Both of us were at a low point of our lives: trapped on our respective farms, watching in helpless frustration as our farm-mates left for city jobs and gained a city hu-kou through connections or “earned” it through good political background. Nevertheless, we agreed that we would try to make our two-week visit a cheerful event, especially since Number 1 was to be married. It was to be our first gathering as a family since I had been sent into exile four years before.
Number 1’s marriage was the fruit of matchmaking and the postal service. I was sad to see my eldest brother give up his belief in love. I remembered, during his first year at university, his conversation with Mother when he found out she had been secretly arranging a marriage for him. Number 1 had told her that times had changed, that the government encouraged the abandonment of feudal customs like arranged marriages. He would choose his own wife, he vowed, and marry her for love.
But in the meantime Number 1, a deeply intelligent man with a once-promising future, had been stripped of his Shanghai hu-kou and sent to a remote and backward mountainous area in Guizhou Province to work in a tool repair shop. There he had been confronted with reality. If he married a local woman, he would have to spend the rest of his life there, and so would his children. He would not see us again because the home-visit policy would no longer apply. So he agreed to exchange letters and photos with a young woman named Yu-qin, who lived in Shanghai. The whole arrangement was a gamble. No one knew when the young couple would be able to live together, if ever. But marrying a Shanghai resident was Number 1’s only hope.
In China it is the groom’s responsibility to pay for and host the wedding. The ceremony was held at home, with the two families having dinner together. I couldn’t remember the last time there had been so much food on our table in Purple Sunshine Lane. There was chicken stewed in soup, duck simmered in soybean sauce, steamed fish and braised pig’s legs, along with stir-fried vegetables—much of it bought by Number 3 in the Songjiang black market. The duck and chicken must be cooked and served whole, Great-Aunt had insisted, to symbolize the unity of the new family. It was a happy moment, but my heart was heavy with sorrow and contradiction. Number 1 had given up his dream and, like most people, married for practical reasons. What advantage was there for Yu-qin, his new wife? I wondered. She seemed pleasant enough, but was also loud and brash.