All the Flowers in Shanghai

by Duncan Jepson

  I listened to more of the madness: the shouting and screaming, the hands and arms beckoning frenziedly, demanding people should join, work and fight, give over their minds and bodies to his cause and course: the Great Helmsman.

  With my head bowed, I quickly entered the building the man had pointed out to me. As soon as I was inside it the people there jeered at me. It had once been a shop with shelves and a sales counter, but was now more of a general store—selling clothes to new supporters but supplying existing Party members for free. There were piles of plain white shirts, and trousers in dark blue and khaki green stacked on a table in the center of the room or piled in heaps on the floor. On shelves racked from floor to ceiling there were hundreds of pairs of rubber-soled shoes, slippers, and sandals, knapsacks and caps.

  A young man standing behind the counter noticed me.

  “Look here, a wealthy woman in tatters!”

  Everybody cheered and laughed at the sight.

  “This is what they deserve,” said another. “Let them wear nothing and suffer like we had to.”

  The atmosphere was hostile, I did not feel safe, and yet these were just children—the same age as Lu Meng. There were some older people looking through the stacks of goods, but they went about their business quietly and unobtrusively. I sensed that, like me, they were interested purely in survival. They did nothing to attract attention, for even in that shop, as in the street outside, there seemed to be the constant threat that a spirit of frenzy would seize control of all these young bodies, taking possession of their mouths, arms, hands, legs, and feet, directing them against anyone at a moment’s notice.

  I moved to the back of the shop and found a space to change between the piles of clothes and shoes. The black trousers I’d chosen were of thick loose cotton with a drawstring, and once I had them on I realized they were the same kind as those I had worn as a child, running through the gardens with Grandfather. I slipped out of my cheongsam, wrapping the bundle of notes into the material and tying it around my waist. I quickly put on a white shirt and a thick padded coat over that. I also took out the money I had retained from the bundle, ready to pay for these things.

  At the counter the boy in charge looked at me and barked with laughter.

  “A convert! Our first in Shanghai today,” he shouted.

  He leant over the counter and touched my lapels. Instinctively I took a step backward.

  “Don’t worry, comrade, these are free for you,” he shouted.

  “Thank you very much.” I kept my head down and looked at the floor. Following the lead of the other older people in the shop, I turned and left quietly.

  As I did I passed a mirror and saw myself in the ill-fitting clothes. I looked like a child again, and for a moment I wondered whether my life in between had all been a dream.

  I looked across the road to the entrance to the railway station. The mayhem there continued, endless crowds pouring out and down the street into the city. I made my way through them and on to the concourse. I had never been outside Shanghai before and my heart was racing at the prospect, but with each step I took farther away from home I felt more relieved. I bought a ticket and, once through the barrier, breathed in more freely. There was no returning now. The journey would take nearly eighteen hours but this train went direct to Daochu itself. The carriage was old. The seats, bare wooden benches fixed back to back, were placed down either side of it. The wooden floor was stained a dark moldy brown and the smell of piss rose from freshly wet patches. A young boy slept in the rack above the seats. I sat in a corner and waited; there was still another thirty minutes before we would depart.

  Chapter 22

  I had not slept well in the gardens the night before and after a few minutes tiredness took hold. My eyes began to close. I remembered seeing you step down from the back entrance, and the couple rushing to greet you. Then I saw your face suddenly close to mine, our foreheads touching, and your eyes looking into mine. Your breath smelled of flowers and I felt it waft over my cheeks and lips. You pulled away a little so that I could see your whole face. I had never seen you so closely—would never have let a maid do this. I wanted very much to cry then. You smiled slightly, plaintive and anxious, your lips pale and broken. The right corner of your mouth pulled your cheek slightly crooked, where the scar ended. You turned your face away from me, sensing where I was looking. I needed to look at it closely; I had not cared before. I felt your hand against my cheek, fingertips sliding around to the back of my neck, your hand pulling me in, my cheek resting against yours. I felt the scar against my skin, hard and unnatural. I felt my whole body tense and my eyes start to sting. I was shaking and crying, the wooden seat hard beneath me. The carriage was empty except for the sleeping boy. I dropped my chin to my chest and cupped my hands around my eyes. The tears rolled between my fingers and down my cheeks, over my lips and to the floor. I sniffed hard and smelt the stale piss. Then there was a noise to my left as thirty or so Communist youth members scrambled inside the carriage and took up the seats around me.

  “Hey, kid, no sleeping,” one of the youths shouted at the boy, and poked him with a finger. “There is work to be done. The country is calling us.”

  Others laughed.

  I kept my hands around my face. I heard a whistle and the train started to move. For a moment, like a child, I wanted to look out of the window and see what was happening, how this huge machine would carry us, but I just closed my eyes and thought of the lonely mannequin, waiting for someone to clothe it and give it life. The train gathered speed and its gentle rocking made me sleepy. I leaned back and rested my arms and hands on top of the money wrapped in the cheongsam tied around my waist. I watched the city speed past the window. This was my first trip out of Shanghai and I left an emptiness that told me I would never return. As I watched, the buildings grew smaller, more broken and worn, until eventually they disappeared leaving scarred ground, piles of stones and bricks, sand, dirt, grass, empty space, wooden houses tied together, fields, people with no shoes, farmers, animals, mud, river, water, grass, trees, green: endless green. Yet again I had misunderstood Ming: she had told me China was huge but I had never realized it was so vast. I forgot everything and just watched. I did not feel myself blink, my eyes drinking in everything that flickered before me. The plains of grass, hills, farms, then a small village would flash past, children waving and cows with their heads down chewing grass, or hundreds of sheep, like little white spots sprayed across a canvas of green. Our country is truly beautiful, I thought. Perhaps, as these students keep shouting, it is worth dying for.

  I awoke hours later. It was night and the students were sleeping now. They huddled against each other, like cats keeping warm. The air was thick and moist. An old woman came through the door and, seeing me awake, asked for my ticket. She took it and looked at it, commenting, “You don’t look like you’re from Daochu.”

  She sat down next to me, ready for a chat.

  “I know the people of that town—they’re farmers.” She looked me up and down, frowning. “You haven’t got worker’s hands.” She grabbed my left hand and squeezed the fleshy part below my thumb. “Yes, very soft. I like them.”

  She smiled at me. She had wiry hair that sprouted and coiled from her head like fine tree roots, a fat rosy face with tiny slits for eyes, and when she smiled her mouth and eyes seemed to converge at the center of her face. She held my ticket between chubby fingers.

  “I’m going to see an old friend,” I said, politely but trying to shorten our conversation.

  “Oh, why?” I was surprised at her forthright attitude. “Dear me, I didn’t mean to offend you. It is nice to talk to someone, though. I have friends there . . . perhaps I know them?”

  “Well, it is a seamstress and her son. She is a great seamstress, knows all the old traditional meth—”

  “You must stop!” she cut me off, whispering close to my face, her breath bitter and rotten. “These students do not approve of people who know such things.” She paused
and smacked her lips a few times while she checked that they were still sleeping. “They hate all the people with traditional skills . . . I hear them shouting about it all the time, riding up and down the country.” She examined me closely. “I know the woman you mean—Madam Zhang. She’s very good. How do you know her?” she whispered.

  I pulled my head back but answered in a low voice, “A long time ago, she made my wedding dress . . .”

  “You must have been from a rich family!” she cut me off again.

  “Well, no, she was a family friend,” I lied.

  “Yes, Madam Zhang . . . she is old now.”

  “Where does she live?” I quickly interrupted.

  “Alas, I don’t know. Her son left her and did not return because of the war, and then after that there was the Revolution.” She continued speaking but I did not hear her, my mind fixed on Bi, the boy I had known. The only one I had kissed out of love. When I had woken in the gardens this morning I had drifted down to the place on the riverside where we had lain together in the grass. He had fished and I had picked flowers. I remembered the feel of the petals of a wild rose between my fingers, the slight red stain they had left on my skin, and then giving one to him, his fingers touching mine as he took it. I had visited the willow tree, which had grown thick and now hung heavily to the ground, and sitting against its trunk, I had thought of our kiss there and of our fingers entwining under that tree, years before. I wished we had been old enough to make love.

  “. . . here is your ticket.” Her short fat arm was outstretched in front of me. “Have a good trip.”

  I took the ticket and she stood up.

  “I’ll see you later.” She smiled at me and walked down the carriage, pushing past a young girl who had fallen asleep and whose head and arm were hanging into the aisle. I heard her close the carriage door and I returned to staring out of the window into the darkness outside, and in that dense black I imagined I saw Bi with his mother. I saw us meeting again; we were young and we fished and ate together and smiled. Then in the window I caught sight of my reflection. My face was dirty and my hair wild. The clothes were too large for me. Though I was dressed like I had been while I was with Grandfather, my face was older and its innocent luster lost. I looked hard and cruel, because I was.

  I sat and watched the students sleep. One of them had a puppy cradled in his pocket. It had pissed, and the piss had soaked into his coat. I slept, too.

  The train came to an abrupt halt. There had been no announcements of the name of the station but at each stop a team, which had obviously been charged with working in that area, would start to chant and shout. There was tremendous excitement among them all; they believed they were changing the world. I climbed down from the train. Daochu station was small. Following everyone else, I was outside in a few minutes. As in Shanghai, there were young people surrounding the place, encouraging people to work for the Party, for the country, and for the Great Leader. There were posters hanging from every wall demanding allegiance to the Party and Chairman Mao. There were also lists of meetings to attend and orders from various work groups, instructing people to farm, fish, build, and manufacture. The station stood on a main road, though it would only be a small one in Shanghai. To my left was the town, nothing but a straggle of dusty roads and low brick houses; to my right I could see down the road to a People’s Square created for gatherings, where a team of students were busily erecting a statue of Chairman Mao.

  Chapter 23

  I walked away from the square to what seemed to be the quieter side of the town. The streets were empty but eventually I saw an old man sitting outside a house. Like all the other buildings, it was made from gray bricks, with basic shuttered windows in front of thin glass panes. I could see inside but there was little other than a bed, a desk, and a cooking kang. On the wall was a picture of Chairman Mao in a green jacket with a red-trimmed collar.

  “Hello, who are you?” he asked me.

  “I’m looking for Madam Zhang,” I replied.

  “The seamstress?” he said and frowned. “Well, she is in the clothing depot just down this road. Keep going, then turn left at the fruit stall. There is a wide road with large production halls on either side. She is in charge of the clothing unit.”

  “Thank you,” I said and turned to go.

  “What’s your name?” he asked me abruptly.

  “Feng . . . Xiao Feng,” I replied.

  “Well, Xiao Feng,” he said, in an abrupt tone, “you take care with Madam Zhang. Remember, she likes people who work hard.”

  I nodded to him and walked in the direction he had pointed me. The streets continued to be empty but the doors to most of the houses stood open and I could see into each one of them. They all looked very similar, containing a bed, a desk, a poster of Chairman Mao or a little statue of him. Many of the walls and doors were covered with handwritten posters and printed images of strong and proud men and women, holding aloft tools and farming implements. After fifteen minutes’ walking, I found the fruit stall. I turned into the next road, which was much wider than the previous streets, wide enough for trucks to come and go. I walked past four or five production halls, set on either side of me, all identical, simply constructed with double doors and large metal-framed windows to either side. Each had a plaque nailed next to the doors. The first one was producing radios, the second torches, the third was mixing fertilizer. I came then to one marked CLOTHING PRODUCTION and peered through the window. There were twenty old women sitting inside making clothes: white shirts, black trousers, green and blue jackets.

  The room was a large rectangular space, the lower half of the walls painted blue and the upper half whitewashed. Seated in two lines running the length of the room, each seamstress had a long wooden worktable set in front of her. At the back of the room, standing with her back to me, was a woman I recognized immediately. Her long gray hair was drawn up in a bun; although she stood bent over a little, her neck was still long, slender, and beautiful. I watched her as before, again frightened to enter but this time frightened also to stay outside in the empty street. I left the window and went to the double doors, gently pushing one open. My heart suddenly beat wildly. I entered and stood silently just inside the hall. The women looked up and Madam Zhang turned around. She walked toward me, taking each step calmly and carefully.

  “Hello, can I help you?” she asked.

  “I have come to see you,” I said. I didn’t know how to continue. My face felt hot and flushed and my eyes became watery. Instinctively I brought my hands together in front of me; they were very dry and I clenched them tightly.

  She looked hard at me.

  “You have grown much older, my dear. Did you marry that rich man?” she asked in her soft voice.

  “Yes . . . yes, I did.” My throat had seized up until I could barely talk. “Yes, I did.” I started to cry. “I did! I did!” I could only repeat myself and sob. I inhaled deeply and gasped for air. Tears rolled into my mouth and their saltiness made me think of sitting with Yan after Xiong Fa had held me down and forced himself into me.

  I cried until my whole body shook. I felt my shoulders sag forward and my head loll. Then a hand reached under the disheveled hair that now covered my face. It touched my cheek and brushed my hair back.

  “Just sit down. Ah Ting, get her some tea.”

  Madam Zhang led me to a seat and I continued to cry into my hands. She stood next to me and lightly stroked my hair.

  “What has happened to you?”

  I could not talk for the tears would not stop and my throat felt strained and somehow locked. I wanted to speak but when I opened my mouth all that emerged was a whooping sound. My voice could not compete against the tears.

  “Take your time,” she patted my shoulder, “it will come, whatever it is, and we all have plenty of time.”

  “Aiiiya, time to make a million suits of green and blue?” moaned a lady behind me.

  The other women laughed.

  Madam Zhang gathered up my hai
r, now dirty and unkempt, into a ponytail. Reaching over, she took a strip of red ribbon—in that room every ribbon was red—and tied my hair back.

  “We can’t offer you much, things here are not good,” she said flatly, then she groaned. “This is crazy. You cannot stay here. I will take you back to the station.”

  She walked from behind me to the other side of the worktable immediately in front of me. “We should go now so you can catch the next train.”

  She held out her hand. “We should go.”

  “No,” I whispered; my breath was weak but my tears were drying at last. “I don’t think I can ever go back.”

  “But there is nothing here for you.”

  “Then it will be like this cloth around us, it is not much at present but in your hands has the promise of something much more.”

  I continued to look down into the working surface of the table and the deep scars from all the cutting, but I felt her bend down close to my face.

  “Ai, I always liked you, like my son once did. Well,” she whispered in my ear, “if you stay here you will have to work and life will be difficult.”

  Madam Zhang walked around and stood behind me again, then and rested her hands gently on my shoulders. “We have lost twenty minutes since you arrived and we have a very strict quota to fulfill. If we miss it there are penalties, but if we do more then we receive benefits—sometimes food, sometimes a stupid badge—so for now we must all return to work.” She stroked my cheek as if to wipe away the last of my tears. “If you stay, you must work.” Then her hands suddenly left my cheeks and she tugged my ponytail sharply, which didn’t hurt but surprised me. I turned and saw her face close to mine. She was beautiful still, more padded in her old age, but her face had a sheen and her eyes were a hard nut-brown and shone with a light I had not seen since I last saw Grandfather’s. I smiled at her faintly. “Good. Now . . . what can you do?” she asked me bluntly.