by Anchee Min
Without thinking, I answered yes. I wanted to escape as much as he did since I had failed to make peace with Wild Ginger. "You would have to wait until I graduate from the middle school," I added. He was thrilled. The idea of being with Evergreen, away from Wild Ginger, and teaching children was both appealing and exciting. The options for graduates were not encouraging in 1973. Shanghai's population had exploded and the city was terribly overcrowded. There was little demand for workers. One's best option, if one qualified, was to become a city sanitation worker. The rest would be sent to labor collectives in the remote countryside. A person's fate depended on family background, the level of his or her loyalty toward Mao, and the government's quota the family owed.
When I broke the news to my parents, they were quiet. They weren't sure if it was a good idea for me to become engaged at eighteen. I explained that our love was strong. Finally my parents granted me silent permission. When Evergreen started to receive "congratulation" candies from the neighbors he cautioned me to "be careful of Wild Ginger." I couldn't think of Wild Ginger as dangerous, so didn't take his words too seriously.
"She might not mean to harm you," Evergreen warned, "but she is insane."
"Well, she needs time to heal, and after all we are the cause of her pain."
"I don't think that we should blame ourselves for her misery," Evergreen disagreed. "She had made it clear at the very beginning, to both of us, that being a Maoist was more important to her than being human. I was not what she wanted. To make a bad joke—you picked up her leftovers."
I didn't want to argue with Evergreen. I believed that Wild Ginger loved Evergreen. It was a part of herself that she couldn't understand, didn't know what to do with. I had taken advantage of her confusion. I was the thief. I was prepared to face Wild Ginger's rage one day. I needed that combat; I needed her to slap me in the face. It would be a kindness, forgiveness, and blessing.
20
"We're organizing a Mao quotation-singing rally!" Wild Ginger's voice came through a loudspeaker. "The Cultural Revolution is in its seventh year, and the struggle between the proletarian class and the bourgeois class has intensified ever more significantly. Defending Maoism and demonstrating the proletarian class's strength is not only important but absolutely necessary. We must sing loud, louder, and louder the Mao quotation songs. We must promote hard, harder, and hardest the ideas of Maoism! The rally will be held in the Shanghai Acrobatics Stadium!"
The city was mobilized. Hot Pepper led a thousand-member team and distributed leaflets at every street corner. People were ordered to put down whatever they were doing to join the event. The factories, labor collectives, and schools were required by the city committee to send a delegation of singers to the rally.
As the executive producer, Wild Ginger selected the delegations and scheduled their auditions. She discussed her ideas with the orchestra, stage designers, and technicians on sound, lights, and props. She conducted the practices, rehearsals, and run-throughs. On the surface her energy seemed inexhaustible, but I could tell beneath her smiling face she was falling apart. There was a detectable nervousness in her voice. People who worked with her talked about her unpredictable outbursts and mood swings. The way she shouted and yelled for no particular reason. Her habit of smashing things. Her use of profanity.
Although Evergreen and I had no interest in joining the rally, our names were called and we had no choice but to go to the Acrobatics Stadium for practice.
The practice was a three-week, daylong commitment involving fifteen thousand people from over five hundred work units. Each group was called to stand up and sing until Wild Ginger gave her approval. Some groups were good. The Shanghai Garrison was disciplined, with a tradition of singing, and had obviously been practicing. But the peasant groups were lousy. They were sent by the commune and had hardly sung in their lives. They sang off-key and confused Mao quotation songs with their folk songs. Wild Ginger did as much as she could to help them but finally she had to give up. "As long as you show me that you can follow the beat, I will pass you," she told them. The school groups were the best, but the young children had little patience. When it wasn't their turn, they sneaked around the bowl-shaped stadium and looked for their friends and neighbors to play.
Evergreen's group was about two gates away from me. I saw him sitting quietly, reading The Electrician's Guide. I didn't understand why Wild Ginger insisted on having us. It was awkward to meet like strangers.
Evergreen and I fought over whether or not to continue attending Wild Ginger's rehearsals. Encounters with her had become unbearable for him. I didn't want to go either, but I was concerned that we would be singled out in ways that would jeopardize our future. Evergreen disagreed.
We were in a vegetable patch somewhere in the suburbs. It was night. We were afraid of Wild Ginger's spies so we traveled as far as the public bus would take us. But still, we couldn't escape Wild Ginger. Whenever we opened our mouths, her name popped out. Even in the middle of passion my mind would slip and I would feel a wave of guilt wash over me. Evergreen was affected, but he couldn't loosen Wild Ginger's hold on my mind. Soon he was frustrated. "We'll leave Shanghai as soon as we can."
I was unsure about Evergreen's feelings about Wild Ginger. He wanted so badly to get away from her. But my conscience kept telling me that it was because he wanted her. Maybe we both wanted Wild Ginger so much that we couldn't stand it.
To avoid mentioning Wild Ginger we ceased talking. We would meet at the station, get on the bus, and sit silently until our destination. When we got off the bus I would follow him. We would walk miles until he located a quiet spot. Our usual place was in a cow shed behind fields of yecai. We would climb over the packed hay to hide ourselves. He would lay his raincoat down and I would offer him my body. It had become a ritual, a way to get the frustration out of ourselves.
I had trouble looking at him because Wild Ginger was so much on my mind. I kept seeing her eyes. Yet I dared not speak about my thoughts. I would get on my knees and look at the cows. I asked Evergreen to do whatever he liked with my body while I thought about my future with him, a future without Wild Ginger. And then I would be aroused.
I could feel his tension—his pleasure often came in the middle of our shared pain. Too many times I saw tears in his eyes. He wouldn't speak about his thoughts either. I knew he was thinking of her too. I told him that it was all right. Everything would be all right. It would be over soon and we would survive. At that moment he broke down and he was free. I received and calmed him until he became full of desire again.
One night things became unbearable for me. I asked him to call me by her name. Before he could react I started to talk like Wild Ginger. I started to recite Mao quotations the way Wild Ginger would. I copied her tone and style. I recited the quotations as I unzipped his trousers.
He took me as I continued to recite. It was Wild Ginger's favorite paragraph: "Volume three, page thirty, 'Rectify the Party's Style of Work.' 'So long as a person who has made mistakes does not hide his sickness for fear of treatment or persist in his mistakes until he is beyond cure, so long as he honestly and sincerely wishes to be cured and to mend his ways, we should welcome him and cure his sickness so that he can become a good comrade.'" I rode him as he moved gently inside me. Through the sound of his breath I stared out into the night. I envisioned Wild Ginger. She stood in uniform with her front buttons open. Her breasts were two steaming buns.
I took Evergreen's hands. I asked him to close his eyes. I asked him to touch me, to feel me, feel Wild Ginger. '"We can never succeed if we just let ourselves go and lash out at the comrade with shortcomings. In treating an ideological or a political malady, one must never be rough and rash but must adopt the approach of curing the sickness to save the patient, which is the only correct and effective method.'"
And then I closed my own eyes and once again I was in Wild Ginger's closet.
21
Finally the rally came. The afternoon was cold and windy. The temperat
ure continued to drop. A big crowd milled in front of the stadium. The singing groups started to arrive. My group head, a guy nicknamed "Shorty," was upset with me. "Don't take it so lightly! It is a political assignment. It is much more important than finishing your lunch." He asked if I was wearing a white shirt underneath and whether I had brought the straw hat that he had requested. I reported that I had the white shirt but had forgotten the hat. "Go home and get it!" he yelled. "You know, our group has been appointed to play peasants. Wild Ginger will shower my face with spit if I have my members wear the wrong costumes. Her reputation is on the line. She's giving us our chance to show loyalty toward Chairman Mao. It is an honorable assignment! And there is no room for mistakes. Please sing as loudly as you can. Sing at the top of your lungs!"
After I fetched my hat my group entered the stadium. It was dim and smelled filthy. Sitting on benches that circled from bottom to top, thousands of people were preparing themselves. The noise was deafening. I stood on the west side at row thirty-seven. As I looked around for Evergreen, Shorty came with props. They were sunflowers made of cardboard. He asked me to help distribute them. "Sway the flowers from side to side when singing. Now let's practice 'Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art.' Ready? Begin. 'Our great savior, great leader, great helmsman, and great commander Chairman Mao teaches us..."'
As our group practiced the drill, other groups joined in. All of a sudden, the air boiled. I swayed my props and sang, "'In the world today ¿11 culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines'" I looked for Evergreen and located him way up in the back by an exit door. '"There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics.'" He was not reading The Electrician's Guide this time. But he looked terribly bored. He had been attending electricians' workshops and classes. His mind had already gone to the remote village. He told me that we had to prepare for a place where no one had ever seen a lightbulb. He had a dream of putting lights in village kitchens and motors in farming machines. I encouraged him. I had been spending my savings to buy him pliers and wires.
Evergreen saw me. He waved his sunflower. I waved back and sang, '"Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause; they are, as Lenin said, cogs and wheels in the whole revolutionary machine.'" He smiled and cautioned me with his eyes not to stare at him. I thought about the dinner my parents had invited him to several days ago. It was a way for them to acknowledge him as their future son-in-law. The day before, he had offered to install a shower bath for my family. My mother was pleased. It was her dream to have a shower. Evergreen came in the morning with three of his friends. The men didn't stop working until late night. They put up a giant wooden bucket in the corner of our kitchen with plastic draperies. When it was time to demonstrate the shower, not only did the showerhead not work, the fuses blew. Evergreen was embarrassed. It turned out that in his nervousness he had misconnected the wires. My parents were impressed by his effort. The shower finally worked and my parents started to help me pack for my life's journey with Evergreen.
At the bottom of the stands, Wild Ginger stood with the Shanghai Orchestra at her back. The conductor wore white gloves. His fingers spiked out like chopsticks. I recognized him. He was the young pianist whose hand had been destroyed by the Red Guards.
Wild Ginger directed the swarming crowds into their places. The microphone in her hand kept malfunctioning. One minute it buzzed, the next it was fine. A few minutes later it was dead again.
Hot Pepper ran around Wild Ginger's feet trying to reconnect the wires. She tapped the microphone to test the sound and then ran up and down the staircases to check the volume. I had no idea how Wild Ginger and Hot Pepper could possibly get along. I knew how little Wild Ginger used to think of Hot Pepper. She used to say that Hot Pepper would never need a cardiologist because she had no heart. Did she think Hot Pepper had a heart now? When Hot Pepper was accepted as a Communist party member she said, "I was a piece of shit before Wild Ginger took me in." I wondered if Wild Ginger found the relationship fulfilling.
The lights brightened. The crowd cheered. Wild Ginger announced the opening of the rally. We sang the national anthem, "The Red in the East." The "workers" challenged the "peasants." Then the "peasants" challenged the "soldiers" and the "students."
"Wasn't that an awfully good song?" Wild Ginger shouted.
"Yes!" the crowd responded.
"Another one, yes?"
"Yes!"
The shouts were followed by thunderous applause.
The way our group sang depended on Shorty's gymnastics. When his arms swayed like a willow in a storm, we pitched. When the arms moved like a sweeping broom, we wailed. The paper petals of my sunflowers began to drop. The men and women next to me screamed as loudly as they could. It made Shorty happy.
The sound rose and fell in waves. After the "soldiers" sang "The People's Army Loves People," we came to our last song, "On Youth." My throat hurt badly.
"'The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. You are the young people. You are full of vigor and vitality. You are in the bloom of life..."' In the midst of the song I noticed a few foreigners in front of the stage with cameras in their hands. They were accompanied by a gray-haired man. The foreigners smiled as they flashed their cameras.
"It's the new general party secretary of Shanghai!" someone said.
"'...like the sun at eight or nine in the morning,'" I shouted, '"China's hope is placed on you..."'
Many years later when I recalled this scene, I asked myself why Wild Ginger hadn't introduce the gray-haired man and his guests to the rally. If she had, I might have figured out why she was so nervous. She was like the driver of a speeding train who suddenly realized that the track had been wrongly connected and that he was about to smash into a train speeding from the opposite direction. And there was no way she could stop the train.
"'...The world belongs to you. China's future belongs to you!'" I remember squeezing my gut to reach the high note.
Suddenly the lights went off. The stadium was a black hole. After a moment of shocking silence, we heard Wild Ginger's voice, shaky and disoriented. "Calm ... down, calm down, comrades, there is an ... an ... Anyway, we have sent someone to fix ... This is not a problem. I appreciate the loyalty toward Chairman Mao you all display. I am proud ... And you should be proud of yourself. Everything is fine, comrades. Listen to me. The lights will be on in a second." Her microphone buzzed and we could no longer hear her.
There were whistles in the dark. The crowd began to talk among themselves. Someone started to throw the props.
A moment later Wild Gingers voice rose. "Comrades! The darkness has shut our eyes, but it can't shut our voices, can it?"
"No!"
"Let's sing 'The world belongs to you and China's future belongs to you' one more time. Ready? Begin!"
We sang. I had no idea that my future had just been forever altered.
When the lights came back on I saw a group of security guards rush in. They escorted the general party secretary and his foreign guests out of the stadium. The secretary looked terribly upset. He kept pointing his finger at Wild Ginger. Wild Ginger tried to explain but he walked out.
Wild Ginger was abandoned right in front of the entire stadium. She stood with her microphone dangling at her side and her mouth half open, like a melting snowman under the sun.
The guards came back. They were led by Hot Pepper. The crowd watched them as they moved toward the top of the bleachers. They stopped at the last bench where Evergreen sat with his group.
My mind had a hard time interpreting what my eyes were seeing. I started to gasp in disbelief: Hot Pepper pointed at Evergreen and the guards went up and handcuffed him.
Before Evergreen could struggle the men took him away.
Hot Pepper grabbed Evergreen's bag from underneath the bench. The bag seemed extremely he
avy in her hand. I was sure it was filled with books and tools. When Hot Pepper reached Wild Ginger she held the bag high. Grabbing the microphone from Wild Ginger, Hot Pepper made an announcement to the crowd. Her mice eyes were lit with excitement. "Here is the anti-Maoist who is responsible for tonight's incident!" Hot Pepper took out Evergreen's pliers and wrench from the bag. "The tools for the crime are in this bag. He ruined the rally by sabotaging the power!"
The crowd was stunned.
Wild Ginger grabbed the microphone back from Hot Pepper and covered it with her hand. The two argued.
"Why can't we talk here?" Hot Pepper yelled as she turned toward the crowd. "Didn't Chairman Mao teach us, 'A true Communist has nothing to hide from her people'?"
Wild Ginger backed off. She moved like an old lady. Her posture slumped, and her legs began to shake.
22
I was not aware of what I was doing when I plunged through the crowd and headed toward the back of the stage. I was driven by one thought, to speak with Wild Ginger. I was sure she was behind the incident. Surely she must be. And yet her reaction on the stage confused me.
When I passed one of the prop rooms I heard an angry conversation behind the panels. My ear immediately registered the voices—Wild Ginger's and Hot Pepper's. Quickly I hid myself.
"Well, no use arguing now. The job is done." It was Hot Pepper's voice. It was filled with elation.
"Why did you invite the general party secretary without my permission?" Wild Ginger's voice was strained with anger.
"Don't you want to pull a weed by its root? You wanted to stain Evergreen in order to separate the couple and I helped you and did it thoroughly."