Apricot's Revenge

by Song Ying

  “These are for Dad, from Superintendent Yao.” He produced the package from Yao Li; inside were two bags of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee.

  “Your Dad’s in Beijing at a meeting,” Grandma said.

  “What about gifts for Aunty and Elder Sister Nie?” Xiao Ju glared at him as a reminder.

  Nie’s mother was an obstetrician, his older sister a radio host who came home only on weekends.

  “Sorry, but I ran out of time. Next time, I promise.”

  He washed up and called his editor in chief.

  “I’m back, Mr. Wu.”

  Wu started out with compliments on his good nose for breaking stories, his tenacity, endurance, and so on.

  “You wanted me back so badly, you must have plans for some overseas travel,” Nie said in jest.

  “I knew it would take longer than two weeks to solve your cases, unless you were Sherlock Holmes,” the editor said in a mild, even tone.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you’ve got for me?” Nie knew how his editor operated.

  “I’d like you to go to Mianyang to interview a TV magnate. It’ll be our next issue’s cover story.”

  “I see. But I’ve depleted my expense account.”

  “Go to the accountant before you leave. I’ll sign for it.”

  “Thanks. I’ll leave tomorrow.” Nie wanted to get the interview over with as soon as possible.

  “No hurry. You just got back. Take a couple of days to rest.”

  “Will do.”

  * * *

  Xiaochuan phoned Nie the following evening to tell him that Hong Yiming’s wife had flown back from Canada to arrange for her husband’s funeral. When they asked her about Hong’s social network and business associates, the police learned that he and Hu were not only from the same county in Henan, but had been comrade-in-arms in the same unit as part of the Yunnan Construction Corps. She’d heard that from her husband.

  “I’m thinking that might be helpful in disentangling Hu and Hong’s connections,” Xiaochuan said.

  “I agree.” Nie was elated. “This is important.” He pondered this news as he put down the phone. Why wasn’t it part of Hu’s résumé? Was this how the two deaths were connected? He took out a pen and jotted down his thoughts:

  Same hometown—good friends—business partners—rivals—together in …

  He looked at what he’d written and decided to add “one-time” before business partners, and after a long meditation, finished the last item: together in Yunnan Construction Corps.

  But which unit in the Corps? And where exactly in Yunnan?

  Zhong Tao had also been in the Yunnan Construction Corps. Had he known Hu Guohao and Hong Yiming there? Now that thirty years had passed, tracking down anything to do with the zhiqing would be extremely difficult.

  He placed a call to the C University library the next morning, but was disappointed to learn from the librarian that they had nothing on the Cultural Revolution. His next best bet would be the provincial library. After wolfing down his breakfast, he raced out of the house, jumped on his bike, and took off.

  As a reporter who spent much of his time conducting interviews, he was not a frequent visitor to the library, and was surprised to find that it was crowded into a tiny space. A low yellow wall with glazed tiles framed the entrance. The library’s name was carved into an ivy-draped marble boulder. A guard sat in the entrance to watch over bicycles left by patrons. After parking his bike, Nie walked inside and was immediately unnerved by the dilapidated state of the place. Crossing the deserted lobby, he walked up the dark terrazzo stairs, as if roaming in the wilderness alone. It had to have been at least thirty years since the building had had its last maintenance.

  The third-floor special collections area, with its ancient furnishings, looked to be the best place to read. There were three rows of small, Chinese-style rectangular tables, ten in each row. Seven or eight readers sat at the tables, their heads buried in whatever they were reading.

  Nie sat down in a corner to search for information related to the zhiqing, accompanied by the hum of the free-standing air conditioner.

  Behind the reference counter two librarians helped locate material for patrons. One was middle-aged, wore glasses, and was dressed in a linen skirt with floral patterns. The other, younger, librarian had on a blue apron and was seated at a computer. Both were highly professional, knowledgeable, and happy to serve. They helped to compensate for the library’s shortage of facilities.

  It took Nie more than an hour to get his hands on a few magazines from the Cultural Revolution era, along with several volumes of zhiqing essays, some of which had yellowed pages and required careful handling. He studied a photo album entitled Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside, which contained more than a hundred black-and-white photos that recorded the life of Chengdu’s zhiqing in Yunnan—carrying kindling on their backs, building houses, cutting down rubber trees, driving tractors, dancing, taking vows, sending petitions, and so on. A large photo showed the zhiqing from Rongcheng County leaving for the countryside. A team of young girls with braids, carrying their backpacks and washbasins on their backs, red flags over their shoulders, and photos of the great leader in their hands, strode proudly down People’s South Road. In the dim background stood a white statue of Mao and the outline of an exhibit hall; their faces were a blur, but the picture managed to capture their vigor and vitality, further enhanced by the sight of crowds seeing them off.

  From 1971 to 1972, tens of thousands of Chengdu zhiqing, including Zhong Tao, had set out from under the statue of a hand-waving Mao, heading to the vast territory of the Yunnan border area.

  As he read on, Nie spotted an article “Lan’que Ridge and its Ten Graves” in a small pamphlet with a blue cover entitled “Souls of Zhiqing.” He was shaken to his core when he finished, for it chronicled a tragedy in the zhiqing camp at Lanjiang, Yunnan, where twenty-eight years ago, a raging fire had immolated ten zhiqing girls.

  * * *

  It was a clear, moonlit night. A Shanghai zhiqing was secretly reading Songs of Youth inside his mosquito netting. At a time when the Red reigned and books were scant, romance novels like Songs of Youth were banned because of their feudalistic, bourgeois content, which was why he had to read it at night, in secret. It was getting late, but he couldn’t put it down. Then he had to go outside to relieve himself. As he climbed out of his bed, he accidentally knocked over the kerosene lamp inside the net, which then caught fire. Panic-stricken, he batted at the fire with his sheet, but in no time the fire incinerated the net and leaped up to the roof, igniting every flammable item in the hut along its way: bamboo, couch grass, clothing, wooden table, and more.

  It took less than a minute for the fire to engulf the bamboo hut. Flames shot into the night sky sending dark smoke roiling. The boy was dazed; all he could do was yell, “Fire! Fire! Fire!” Some were awakened and ran out of the burning structure half naked, screaming for help along the way.

  The huts were built in rows, sharing walls, all made of bamboo frames with couch grass roofs. Just about everything inside was flammable. So when the fire destroyed the first hut, the other huts were doomed. Fanned by the wind, the fire spread across the rooftops, accompanied by the crackle of burning bamboo and flying sparks. The youngsters ran out of their burning huts, creating a chaotic scene. A girl in the second hut ran out in bra and shorts, while one of the boys escaped from a hut two doors down. The bolder ones even ran back in to rescue items.

  By the time the last survivor, one of the boys, fled to safety, all the rows of thatched huts were engulfed in flames. Then an old staff worker noticed something unusual.

  “Look, Commander. Why is the fire blue over there?” He pointed to the third hut, where blue flames rose up amid the thick black smoke. He knew that wood, bamboo, and cotton produced only reddish-yellow flames and that fire turned blue when fat was present. But the commander ignored him, too busy rescuing his own jars of pickled vegetables. Two or three minutes later, the tha
tched roof on the third hut collapsed, reducing the power of the fire, although blue flames continued to lick through the thick smoke.

  “Commander, something’s wrong there,” the worker called out to the leader again, prompting him to have some of the boys poke through the charred remains inside.

  The article continued:

  Everyone was stunned by what they saw.

  Ten female zhiqing were inside, a huddle of shrunken, embracing arms reduced by the fire to black charcoal. Their bodies were no more than three feet long, head to toe, their faces were unrecognizable. It was a horrific sight. When they were pried apart, patches of intact skin were still visible on chests that had pressed tightly together.

  Why hadn’t they escaped?

  An on-site inspection showed that they could not have escaped in time because the door had been secured with thick wire. In their panic, they were unable to undo the wire, which was fastened to the burned doorframe.

  They’d been afraid that someone would get in. Ten girls sleeping in one hut, and they’d been afraid of someone. Who was that person?

  They hadn’t told anyone of their fears, and now they would never be able to.

  A profound sadness welled up inside Nie Feng as he closed the pamphlet. History seemed to solidify at that moment. It was quiet all around him, but for the hum of the air conditioner. To his right an old man in a checkered T-shirt was reading a thread-bound book with the help of a magnifying glass. Ahead of him a brown-haired woman in a light blue short-sleeved shirt was flipping through a thick journal.

  Suddenly Zhong Tao’s face flashed before his eyes—the unusual look on Zhong’s face as he gazed at the sunset. What did the fiery red sunset signify?

  He opened the pamphlet again, and on the last page he saw that the tragedy had taken place at Lan’que Ridge in Lanjiang, where the 2nd Company of the 4th Battalion of XX Regiment of the Yunnan Construction Corps had been stationed.

  And it had happened on June 24, 1972.

  “June 24, 1972.” Nie mumbled the dates as something stirred in the back of his mind.

  Why did the string of numbers look so familiar? Had he seen it before?

  “The library is closing, sir,” the woman in the blue apron called out from behind the counter.

  “You close at noon?”

  “It’s our lunch break.”

  So he gathered his stuff, stood up, and was ready to hand in the library books. By accident one of them was upside down, and suddenly his heart skipped a beat, followed by sudden enlightenment. The numbers on the death notices were 42602791.

  Back to front it was 19720624.

  June 24, 1972!

  * * *

  He was in a dark mood on his way home.

  When his bike took him past People’s South Road, he looked up to see the white marble statue of Chairman Mao in front of the Exhibit Hall, and a sense of temporal displacement crept into his mind. The statue of Mao waving his hand was twenty-seven meters tall, and after many decades of change and the transformation brought on by economic reforms, it remained at the spot, still pointing to the southern sky. This was probably the only one of its kind left in the whole country. A miracle. Workers standing on scaffolds were brushing it with gray powder.

  Twenty-eight years earlier, on this street, thousands of Chengdu’s middle school students had crowded onto military trucks heading south to the Yunnan border, in the direction the great leader was pointing. He could see it in his mind’s eye, with the ceaseless beating of drums and clanging of gongs, and the shouts soaring into the sky.

  Nearly three decades had passed. People’s South Road was now taken over by streams of motor vehicles, a common sight in a modern metropolis. What happened to the dreams of those youngsters? Nothing but this white marble statue, with its hand pointing to Yunnan, remained. An old-timer at the magazine once told Nie that a member of the political consultative conference had suggested taking down the statue to spare the old man the blistering sun and pouring rain. The suggestion had been accepted, with one condition: it had to be taken down quietly overnight. No explosives, no crane. Which was why the plan was scrapped and the white statue remained where it was. Nie had no idea whether the story was true or not.

  — 2 —

  Nie Feng was sitting in his living room, waiting for a phone call.

  The phone rang. It was a friend at the City Writers’ Association.

  “You should talk to a Cheng Xiaowen at the City Labor Bureau. She was one of the Chengdu zhiqing who went to Lanjiang. She’s been active in social work.”

  Nie took down Ms. Cheng’s cell number and thanked his friend. He had to talk to someone who was there when the ten girls died. He called the number; it rang and rang, but no one answered.

  That evening, when he was online, a woman called. He could hear children’s voices in the background, so he reasoned that she must be calling from home. It was Cheng Xiaowen, who promptly agreed to Nie’s request.

  “I’d like to know more about the zhiqing situation in Lanjiang.”

  “Sure, but call back tomorrow morning when I’ll know a good time to meet.”

  He called again the next morning; the phone rang but still no answer. So he tried calling the City Labor Bureau. When the call went through, Ms. Cheng herself picked up.

  “Who told you to contact me?” She sounded friendly.

  “A friend of mine, Zhong Ping, with the City’s Writers’ Association.”

  “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  “He was a zhiqing himself, and he told me you are quite well known. He also said you like to help people.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I’m a journalist at Western Sunshine. I’m working on a piece.”

  “You weren’t a zhiqing, so I doubt you’ll be able to do a good job.” She was certainly direct.

  “I’m not writing about the zhiqing. I just need some background for my story,” Nie explained. “Specifically, I want to know more about the ten girls in the 2nd Company of the 4th Battalion.”

  “The ones who died in the fire. It was a horrible death. I was in the 4th Company.”

  “Can we meet to talk?” Nie asked, a bit too eagerly.

  “Why don’t you take a trip to Jiaolin Villa at Mt. Fenghuang first? You can take the ninety-nine bus to the end and spend two yuan on a three-wheeled motorbike to the Zhiqing Activity Center,” Ms. Cheng suggested. “Take the tour, and we can do the interview after you have a better sense of the era.”

  “I’d like to meet with you first, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  “In that case, how about ten thirty tomorrow morning? I’ll be in my office.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  When Xiao Ju saw Nie’s smile, she couldn’t help asking, “A date? Who is it?”

  “A lady.”

  “Of course it’s a lady.” The young maid pouted.

  The living room phone rang the following morning at ten o’clock. Xiao Ju picked it up and then yelled into the study: “Brother Nie, it’s for you, your lady.”

  “What are you yelling for?” Nie picked up the phone; it was indeed Ms. Cheng.

  “Xiao Nie, a meeting just came up at the office, and I’m afraid I can’t meet with you today.”

  “Well,” Nie was disappointed, “we can work something out tomorrow then.”

  “Sure.” She hung up.

  Xiao Ju gloated over his disappointment. “Did she stand you up?”

  “Buzz off!”

  He decided to go ahead and visit Jiaolin Villa first. He found a taxi outside the Zhiyuan Building and told the driver to head for North Gate.

  “Where to?”

  “Mt. Fenghuang.”

  They drove through the outskirts, a scene of anarchy, with all kinds of motor vehicles raising columns of dust. Along the highway they passed bicycle repair shops, small furniture stores, and fruit stands. Then they were out in the fields, where rapeseed plants were harvested and chard was covered in dust.
<
br />   Mt. Fenghuang was not far from his apartment building, Zhiyuan, on the north side of the city. The trip cost seventeen yuan. The driver found the address and stopped outside Jiaolin Villa, where cement posts framed the entrance. A plaque on the left indicated: RONGCHENG ACTIVITY CENTER FOR FORMER YUNNAN ZHIQING. A flagstone path, a small plantain grove, and a pond.

  The manager gave him a brief description of the place. She said that activity center members did not live on-site since they had jobs elsewhere, but when they held their regular meetings, the place came to life. The owner of Jiaolin Villa had been a zhiqing, and made one small building available free of charge for the reunions. But the villa itself was run like a revenue-generating resort.

  She showed him around the small building. One room roughly fifteen square meters in size was designated as “Zhiqing Archives.” Nie stayed behind to browse; the collected items were common and yet precious—black-and-white photos of the zhiqing performing manual labor, yellowed newspaper clippings, little red books with Mao’s bust, notices stamped with red seals for transferring back to the city, and so on. Two glass display cases stood in the middle of the room. The one on the left housed publications dealing with the zhiqing life, while the one on the right exhibited pamphlets such as “Commemorative Album for Yunnan Zhiqing,” address books, and more. There was even an army-green photographer’s vest with IN MEMORY OF LANJIANG ZHIQING RETURNING HOME stenciled on the back.

  After the tour of the small building, the manager had a young man in blue worker’s clothes take Nie to the teahouse.

  After skirting two ponds framed by weeping willows, they reached the teahouse, a long structure made of bamboo, surrounded by plantains. Chinese roses were in bloom along the path. It was obviously not a reunion day, for only one table was occupied, by a group of tourists playing Mah-jongg. The place was quiet enough to hear frogs croaking in the ponds and the intermittent sounds of tractors from beyond the wall.

  “This is our bamboo teahouse. You’ll find zhiqing souvenirs here, also,” the young man told him.

  The furniture was all made of bamboo. He sat down and ordered tea.

  Pictures were pasted on the walls all around, including photos of Chengdu zhiqing returning to western Yunnan. The teahouse was encircled by a light blue cloth curtain a meter tall and thirty meters long. He got up and paced the area, experiencing a sensation of riding a soundless wave. The curtain was filled with inscriptions, all done hurriedly with writing brushes in brown, blue, purple, red, and a somber black; some big, some small, and in various styles, all jumbled together; the ink on some were blurred from moisture, while others had faded. These were valuable records from a memorial retrospective held nine years before in the Square on People’s South Road; it had offered an opportunity to the Chengdu zhiqing, who had experienced so many hardships, and their children to talk about their lives.