by Ting-Xing Ye
Taking the problem to my parents was not an option. They didn’t know anything more than I did. So I sat in class, writing nothing, as kids around me scribbled industriously, putting Milford or Edmonton or Toronto in the third blank.
“I couldn’t do it,” I said helplessly when Mother once more demanded an explanation. “I couldn’t fill in the spaces.”
Megan began to remove our plates and load the dishwasher.
“I think I get it,” Dad said after a moment. “You didn’t know the answers to the questions.”
I nodded, staring down at the table, twisting my fingers in my lap.
“What were the questions?” Mom asked.
My eyes stung with tears. “Birthday. Where I was born—that kind of stuff.”
“But,” Mom began, “why didn’t you—?”
“Because all that stuff you told me isn’t real! And Mrs. Crossly would find out! She’d get me in trouble for putting down lies.”
“Why didn’t you just make something up?” Megan suggested from the doorway. “Crossly wouldn’t know the diff. Or care. It’s just a project.”
“Megan, that’s not very helpful,” Mom said.
“Neither is your approach to the whole thing,” Dad put in. It was unusual for him to say anything critical to Mother, especially in front of Megan and me. “As far as we’re all concerned, Dong-mei was born on August 13, 1981, and that’s that. And she was born in Yangzhou. What’s the use of telling a child her birthday is only symbolic, for heaven’s sake? I told you it would only confuse things. Now look what’s happened.”
“Well.” Mother smoothed her napkin. “Be that as it may, there’s still a project that has to be completed.”
“I think I should call Crossly and tell her to give Grace a substitute assignment. Or maybe you should call. I’m liable to remind her how insensitive she was to ask Grace to do that project to begin with.”
“I’ll phone her tomorrow,” Mom said. “We’ll work it out.”
They left the table thinking they had solved something.
PART TWO
Liuhe Village, Jiangsu Province
OLD REVOLUTIONARY CHEN
(1980)
I am called Chen “Big Power.” Oh, yes, that’s my name—Chen Da-li. When I was young I was one of the tallest and strongest men in our village. I could pull a heavy wooden plow through the tired earth like an ox. And I was often asked to do so because there were not enough oxen to go around in those days. And for us farmers, time is everything. My being an ox earned me double work-points, more than any other farmer in the village.
Behind my back, by then less powerful but just as broad, I was nicknamed Old Revolutionary Chen long before my retirement. I would like to say there was no derision in the label.
Personally, I prefer to be called Secretary Chen. It sounds more respectful, and it reflects the damn truth. I became Party Secretary of my village after years of hard work and loyalty to the Communist Party, responsible for thirty-four households. Fifteen years later, I was promoted to brigade level, overseeing seven villages for nearly a decade. Then came retirement, which was not my decision. By then our great leader, Chairman Mao, was gone, and already the earth was trembling with change.
I could never raise myself to commune level, the highest position in the region, because I couldn’t read and write like most of the people there. But I knew by heart Chairman Mao’s story “Old Man Yu Moves the Mountain,” and that was good enough for me. It was our nation’s most sacred tale while the Great Helmsman, Mao Ze-dong, was alive. I personally distributed the little red book in which the story was printed, one for each member of every household. I also arranged to have it read daily through the loudspeakers mounted on hydro poles around the village. In those years, I would go nowhere without a copy of the book in my pocket, even though I couldn’t read it. I was as thirsty for Chairman Mao’s great wisdom as a drunken sailor is for rice wine.
A long time ago, the story begins, Old Man Yu owned three mu of land. But between his wattle house and his fields stood two mountains. Yu and his family wasted hours each day, precious tilling time, going to and fro around the mountains. One day, Old Man Yu decided to move the obstacles. But all he had was a hoe, a couple of bamboo baskets, and a shoulder pole. His neighbours laughed at him, saying his ambition was utter foolishness, a waste of time.
Yu shook his head. “It looks impossible,” he agreed. “But when I die, my son will continue the work, and when he passes away, his son will take up the task, and so on. And some day, those mountains will be gone.”
When the god of heaven got wind of Old Man Yu’s determination, he was so deeply moved that he sent down two of his generals, and they carried the mountain away on their backs. My eyes well up with tears when I think of Chairman Mao. He has been dead more than three years, but not for the first time I wonder if the Great Helmsman would have written this story if he reminded himself that not every man has a line of male descendants, like Old Man Yu did, to carry on his work.
I was never emotional when I was young. In those years I believed that there was no room inside my body to store tears. When, at sixteen, I watched my whole family swallowed by the muddy Yellow River, I didn’t cry. Nor did I shed a single drop while I was imprisoned in the “cow shed,” ridiculed by the Red Guards during the years of wind and fire—the Cultural Revolution. But when I heard about the death of Chairman Mao, I cried like a baby. I cried sitting down, cried when I was walking. I cried myself awake, then cried some more until I fell asleep again. For days, according to my wife, I couldn’t eat, couldn’t work, but most of all I couldn’t keep my eyes dry. My heart ached as I thought about the good things Chairman Mao had done for me, for my family, for the entire country, especially us peasants. The songs praised him as the sun in the east, the brightest star in the dark sky. Every word was the truth. I felt grateful to my parents because they had given me life to begin with. But it was Chairman Mao who had made it worth living. How could I not feel sad and totally lost upon his death?
My son, whom I had named Zhong—Loyal, showing my devotion to the Chairman and the Communist Party—said to me one day that it was only natural that my sorrow doubled, even tripled over the death of Chairman Mao because I had never really grieved the drowning of my own parents. That’s how young people speak nowadays, some flashing their schooling and talking in circles, some showing off their wealth, some just being plain disrespectful. Like many people his age, Loyal grew up in a honey jar, with no idea what sorrow means. His generation can’t even imagine what life was like before Chairman Mao liberated the nation and redistributed the land among the peasants. I would never put my parents on the same level as Chairman Mao. Not when he was alive, nor after his death. With him gone, I didn’t feel too terrible about my retirement.
I am not so sure about the sudden, sweeping changes taking place around me. But I am fully aware that I’m getting older. Two months ago, my oldest granddaughter, the first child of my eldest girl, gave birth to a baby boy. Weeks later, at the Lunar New Year, Loyal was married. With my first great-grandson in my arms and a new daughter-in-law added to my family, I came to realize that we all have to stop somewhere so that the young can make a beginning.
The way things have turned out in the past couple of years, I’m glad that I am Party Secretary no more. I would never have dreamed three short years of so-called reform could so quickly overturn thirty years of Chairman Mao’s glory. Nor could I imagine his godlike revolutionary greatness being dismissed from our lives at such speed. His little red book has became a relic, a collector’s item. With no instructions to follow, I feel like a fish out of water each time I think about my latest challenges.
My daughter-in-law is pregnant. I was beside myself with joy, and relief, when I was told the news. But after I calmed down, I was overcome by the worries I had harboured ever since Loyal’s wedding. I had to put on a happy, trouble-free face in front of those who came to offer their congratulations. I smiled, laughed a bit, t
hen smiled some more until my cheeks were stiff. I assured everyone that the gender of the baby was of no consequence. And that was the toughest thing for me to do, much harder than moving a mountain.
I didn’t fret like that when I was a father, six times altogether. I was disappointed each time my wife gave birth to a girl child, but not concerned. I kept in mind an old saying my wife loves to recite, that as long as there are green mountains, we have no need to worry about firewood. Eventually my patience was rewarded. Loyal, my sixth child and first son, was born in the fall of 1955, shortly after I turned forty. I was at an age when many men in our region were already grandfathers. One fellow villager said to me that no amount of gold could match my good luck. I criticized his feudal attitude, but in my heart I agreed.
Holding baby Loyal in my arms, I contained myself, showing very little emotion. Although I was a new Communist Party member, I had been long aware of the government propaganda that favouring boys over girls was feudal rubbish. It had taken me many years of backbreaking work and positive attitude to be accepted by the Party, but only days to learn what I should say and not say in public. What I couldn’t admit openly was that we farmers needed boys: not only were they the ones to carry on our family names but their muscles and power were essential to keep our stomachs filled. Everywhere I turned my eyes, able-bodied men were called for. Even Chairman Mao agreed, as he showed in the tale he loved to repeat. The Chairman didn’t mention one word about girls—Old Man Yu’s daughters and granddaughters. Living in the countryside is like moving a mountain; we have to have boys.
I hold nothing against girls; I have five of them. But they are just not as useful and capable as boys. It’s particularly so in our region where nature contributes only thirty percent to our survival. Intense labour makes up the rest, so boys are regarded as feeding hands, and girls, as mouths. Some people in the village openly say that raising girls is a money-losing proposition. After years of feeding and clothing them, they leave home, get married, look after people other than their parents, and bear children who carry their husband’s name.
Among my five daughters, three are married; one lives nearby and two far away. They all have children, but I seldom see them. That, too, is reality. As soon as the pregnancy of my daughter-in-law was confirmed, the memories I had tried so hard to keep out of my mind returned, like water rushing past a broken dam. My number four and five girls didn’t live long enough to see their wedding day. They died very young, during the “years of difficulties” as the Party puts it, or the famine years as Loyal calls them more bluntly, which is typical of him. For a long time I have tried to shut out the memory of my lost girls. Each time their deaths surface in my mind, making me see them wasted to skin and bone, I close my eyes tight as if to squeeze the images out. Or I try to think of something else. Anything. Sometimes it works, but not always. Recently I find myself getting weaker because I’ve thought about them so much, and sadness and guilt are the aftermath. I’m glad that years ago Loyal stopped asking me how he, being the youngest among his siblings, had survived, while his two older sisters starved to death. It was not that I didn’t want to reply to him; I just didn’t know the answer. My wife is fond of saying that not everything in the world has an explanation. I don’t agree with her but I don’t argue.
The key point of the whole issue is that Loyal and his wife won’t get a second chance to have a son if the child is a girl. A family-planning policy that allows only one child to each married couple was laid down by the government, and two years ago the policy was made a strictly enforced law, bearing severe consequences for anyone who doesn’t obey. Since then, bad news keeps blowing in my direction. So-and-so was stripped of Party membership for violating the law; such-and-such family lost their precious vegetable plot for breaking the rule. And each lawbreaker is no stranger to me, for I used to be their leader. I would be the one to mete out the punishment if I were still in office.
I’m in a unique situation, being the only Chen among the Liu clan. Every household in our village has Liu as the surname, after the river that runs through the east end. At the age of sixteen, skinny as a rope, I left my native village after my family perished in the flood, and begged my way from Shandong Peninsula to the north shore of the Yangtze River, where a family adopted me and renamed me Liu. I changed it back to Chen soon after I started my own family. I am the only survivor in my original family, the only root of Chen. I can’t bear to see my family tree cease growing.
Last night I had the worst nightmare of my entire life. In the dream, the Yellow River had burst through its banks again and flooded our fields and village. I was tied down on a plank door. While one surge of waves dragged me into the current, the next surfed me up. I struggled as hard as I could, trying to locate my family in the dark, but the raging flood pushed me farther away from them. I was clearly aware that if I lay still, remained on the board, let the waves take me, I might live. But live alone. I was so torn apart in making a decision that my head hurt even after I woke up. My body ached too. I haven’t had this kind of nightmare for years. The only difference is that in my previous dreams I was a young man, but in the one last night, I was old, more helpless than ever. I didn’t share the dream with anyone, as I usually do. Not even with my wife.
Yes, I am retired, and no one comes to ask for my advice or seeks my approval any more, but I haven’t stopped trying to keep up-to-date with government rules and Party lines. I feel I owe the government that much, but my family doesn’t agree. Not long ago Loyal remarked to me that my brain has been washed by so much propaganda for so long that it’s like a slab of granite. He was joined by my wife, who has, since we were married more than forty years ago, never contradicted me. The argument started as soon as the three of us stepped into the house after the village political meeting. The new Party secretary, whom I didn’t recognize, re-emphasized the family-planning law and announced yet more severe penalties for any violation. His voice was firm and loud, tainted by an accent unfamiliar to my ears. But it was no way as powerful as the silence that followed. When the villagers were asked to stand up and voice their support and make personal promises, there was no response. Half an hour must have passed before I got to my feet and did my duty. That was the fuse that lit the home battle.
“You’re retired,” my wife, usually soft-spoken, shouted at me before the door was closed, tapping my temple with her fingers to suggest that I had lost my mind—a gesture she had never before made to me. “Why couldn’t you keep your mouth shut like the rest? Haven’t you learned that the lead bird takes the first bullet? What are you thinking, old man? Loyal is getting married in three months.”
As if her words were not enough to teach me a lesson, she, for the first time since I took her for my wife, refused to cook me breakfast. She didn’t get up the next day until lunchtime. As for Loyal, he didn’t speak to me for a whole week.
I understood my wife’s concern, and knew where Loyal’s anger came from. I am a farmer, a peasant, good at planning crops. As for family planning, I find it even difficult to say these words. It’s hard to follow, like many other rules and regulations. But I am aware that each year we have more and more people to feed. The statistics read to us at the meeting were no good to me. They are pushed into one ear and leave right away through the other. All I need is to walk around our village, go through our fields, and make comparisons. In our area, the land is not as rich and fertile as our southern neighbours’, nor are our lakes and rivers as generous. Still we try to grow three crops a year instead of two, if weather permits. As soon as we bring in the spring wheat, we plant rice seedlings. When the harvested rice bundles are on the way to the threshing ground, the land is made ready for winter wheat to be sown. There is no spare season and our fields are never empty of labourers. Yet for the past two decades, our brigade, which I know the best, sometimes has to bring in grain grown somewhere else. We all work harder but in the end we still can’t feed ourselves every year. And that’s a bitter pill for a farmer to swal
low. Over the past fifteen years the population in our village has doubled, but the arable land hasn’t grown one inch.
I don’t mind having fewer children around, to respond to the government call. But I must have a grandson of my own so that the spirit of the Chen family can live on. As long as I’m around, my family tree is not going to die.
LOYAL
(1980)
My father has told me often enough that he doesn’t dislike all the changes that have taken place over the last two years, although some of them make him uneasy. I welcome them, because they have made my life a lot better than I ever imagined. For the first time I have come to realize that a farmer’s standard of living doesn’t have to be as tough and bitter as I was used to. And, believe me, I know what I’m talking about in that regard. Just look at the house we are living in now: a two-level building of real bricks, not a hut made from hard-packed mud mixed with chopped rice straw. It’s true, we still have a thatched roof. We could have had clay tiles if my pathetic stab at private enterprise hadn’t gone down the drain.
I grew up hearing about “Old Man Yu Moves the Mountain.” In grade two I had to memorize the story for a school assignment. After that my father would ask me to tell it over and over again, to him alone and in front of guests, even to strangers. It didn’t take long for me, my mother, and everyone else in our village to conclude that he was obsessed with the stubborn and unrealistic Yu. One thing has become clear to me: no matter what kind of spirit Old Yu was praised for, he could never build a house like ours by relying on his bare hands. He would have needed money. Moving dirt around wouldn’t have brought him a cent, nor a piece of brick, with or without the god of heaven’s generals. And that’s the bottom line.