by Ji-Li Jiang
“We have to tell Uncle Tian about the letter right away. He’ll be in trouble as soon as he gets to work.” Mom’s voice sounded horrifying in the silence.
“I wonder if the guards at the entrance to the alley are gone yet. They won’t let us go if they’re still there,” Grandma said weakly.
“We have to try. There’s no other way.”
Song Po-po spoke up softly. “I can go take a look. I’ll just go out as if I’m buying soy milk. No one will notice.”
“You’re not afraid?” Mom asked.
“No.”
Grandma patted Song Po-po’s hand gratefully. There was nothing we could say.
She left with a small pot for soy milk, looking weak and tired.
In less than five minutes she hurried back. “Mrs. Jiang, they’re still there. You can’t go.”
“What can we do now?” Grandma was anxious. “It will be too late soon.”
“I can go.” In surprise we turned toward Ji-yong, who had been silent until now. “I can climb over the back wall. I’ve done it lots of times with my friends,” he added when he saw our doubtful looks.
Mom had no other choice.
“When you get there, remember not to ring the bell or call his name loudly. Just go to the back of the house and knock softly at the bedroom window. Don’t let anyone hear you!” She repeated her directions over and over as she gave him the bus fare.
We watched him dissolve into the misty dawn.
Everyone was exhausted. Mom helped Grandma lie down on a pile of clothes, and the rest of us just sank down where we were. We lay in the grayish darkness, silent but awake, listening for Ji-yong’s footsteps.
A century passed. The sky was brightening when we finally heard creaking on the stairs. We all sat up, looking at him hopefully. His listless face told us everything.
“I knocked at all the windows for a long time, but nobody answered. Maybe they already came and took him away.”
Mom let out a despairing sigh and buried her face in her hands. Grandma lay down again and moaned softly. Ji-yong, Ji-yun, and I sat looking at each other, with no idea what we should do.
The sun had risen as usual, but nothing else about the day was the same as the day before.
Ji-yong went with Mom to report to her work unit that she had now been classified as a landlord’s wife. Ji-yun and I were to accompany Grandma to the Neighborhood Dictatorship Group to register.
Before we left, I stood in the doorway and gazed at the remains of our home. The mahogany furniture was gone. The four repainted trunks were gone. So was the sofa. We had no beds, no table, no chairs—only an old-fashioned desk lying on its side in one corner and a jumbled pile of clothes in the middle of the floor.
My body was an empty shell, too devastated to feel anything but exhaustion. I could not fight anymore. As I trembled down the stairs with Grandma, a thought came to me for the first time in my life.
Should I continue to live at all?
SWEEPING
Kneeling on the broken bamboo stool under the window, I peeked anxiously through the curtains.
It had rained yesterday, a cold, day-long autumn rain. The leaves and scraps of paper were stuck to the pavement of the alley. Grandma was sweeping slowly and carefully. She held the long broom handle tightly against her, and her whole body swayed back and forth as she struggled to clean the pavement.
I wished that she could sweep faster. Although every single neighbor and classmate knew what had happened to my family, I could not bear to have them see Grandma sweeping.
I heard a moan and turned around. Mom was lying on the straw mat on the floor behind me. Her face was colorless and hollow. Her temples were gray. Yesterday she had fainted again.
A few weeks after the ransack, I could still hardly recognize our home. It had become a barren warehouse. Our beds were straw mats on the floor. Our few clothes were in a packing crate Ji-yong had found on the street. Our table was the lid of a crate laid across two benches.
I turned back to the alley. Grandma leaned stiffly over to scrape up a stubborn piece of newspaper that would not come off with the broom. I winced as I watched her bend her swollen knees and slowly straighten up again.
Life was very hard, so hard that I could hardly breathe sometimes. I not only needed to manage our limited income and take care of Mom’s bad health, I had to bear the stares and the gossiping of our neighbors and attend the study sessions at school. But these were not my biggest worries. The worry of tomorrow haunted me constantly. I worried that Grandma would be sent to the countryside, as other landlords had been, and would be punished by the farmers there. I worried that Mom would be detained for attempting to help Dad. I worried that Dad would be beaten to death for his stubbornness. I worried that Ji-yong’s temper would get him in trouble, and that Ji-yun would be so frightened that she would never laugh again. Worst of all, I worried that by not hiding the letter well enough, I had ruined our lives forever.
Sometimes I had thought of running away, joining a student reeducation troop in a distant province.
Sometimes I had thought I did not want to live.
It was Mom who had stopped me.
Five days after the ransack, Mom was still very sick. I was helping her wash her hair.
“Ji-li,” Mom said suddenly. “If anything happens to your Grandma and me, remember, you’re the oldest. Make sure you take good care of your brother and sister.”
I felt tears in my eyes. “Mom, what are you talking about?”
Mom sat up straight and opened her eyes. “You know our situation. Anything can happen.” She paused before she said, “Maybe we should let my sister adopt Ji-yun. Your aunt’s family has no bad connections. Maybe Ji-yun would be better off—”
“No!” The cry jerked out before I knew it. “Mom, don’t. Please. I will take care of both of them. I promise.”
As soon as I said it, I realized that I had made my promise to them—to everyone in my family—long ago. I had promised during the days that Grandma and I had hidden in the park; I had promised when I had not testified against Dad; I had promised when I had hidden the letter. I would never do anything to hurt my family, and I would do everything I could to take care of them. My family was too precious to forget, and too rare to replace.
Grandma lifted her head and stretched her back. I ducked behind the curtain so that she wouldn’t see me. Every day I watched until she was finished. When I was seven, Grandma watched and waited for me at this very window when I walked back from school every afternoon. Now it was my turn to watch her and take care of her. I no longer worried that she was a landlord’s wife. She was my grandmother.
Once my life had been defined by my goals: to be a da-dui-zhang, to participate in the exhibition, to be a Red Guard. They seemed unimportant to me now. Now my life was defined by my responsibilities. I had promised to take care of my family, and I would renew that promise every day. I could not give up or withdraw, no matter how hard life became. I would hide my tears and my fear for Mom and Grandma’s sake. It was my turn to take care of them.
The clouds dispersed and the sky lightened a bit. Grandma picked up her broom and turned stiffly around to come home.
“Another day.” I took a deep breath and shook my head. “I will do my job. I will.”
EPILOGUE
Many friends have asked me why, after all I went through, I did not hate Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution in those years. The answer is simple: We were all brainwashed.
To us Chairman Mao was God. He controlled everything we read, everything we heard, and everything we learned in school. We believed everything he said. Naturally, we knew only good things about Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution. Anything bad had to be the fault of others. Mao was blameless.
When I started to write this book, I asked An Yi’s mother if she had hated Mao when she was forced to climb the factory chimney. “I didn’t hate him,” she told me. “I believed that the Cultural Revolution was necessary to prevent re
visionism and capitalism from taking over China. I knew that I was wronged, but mistakes happen under any system. If the country was better for the movement that persecuted me, I was still in favor of it. It was only after Mao’s death that I knew I was deceived.”
It was only after Mao’s death in 1976 that people woke up. We finally learned that the whole Cultural Revolution had been part of a power struggle at the highest levels of the Party. Our leader had taken advantage of our trust and loyalty to manipulate the whole country. This is the most frightening lesson of the Cultural Revolution: Without a sound legal system, a small group or even a single person can take control of an entire country. This is as true now as it was then.
Thirty years have passed since I was the little girl with the red scarf who believed she would always succeed at everything. I grew up and moved to the United States, but still, whatever I did, wherever I went, vivid memories of my childhood kept coming back to me. After thinking so much about that time, I wanted to do something for the little girl I had been, and for all the children who lost their childhoods as I did. This book is the result.
This book tells of my experiences between the ages of twelve and fourteen. I have presented my family as it was, but in order to protect the privacy of friends and neighbors mentioned in the story, I have changed their names and some details of their stories.
And what happened since then?
A few months after our ransack the revolutionary situation in the theater changed again. The Rebels who had taken control lost power to a new group. Most of those who had been detained were released, including Uncle Fan, Aunt Wu, and Uncle Tian, who was detained right after our ransack because of the letter. Dad finally returned home too. He was still considered a landlord, and was put to work as a janitor; Mom still had to write self-criticism reports because she would not break with Dad; and Grandma still had to sweep the alley twice a day, but at least we were all together again.
Our class status continued to hold us back. Because of our political background I was denied another opportunity to become a stage actress, just as Ji-yong was not allowed to become a trumpeter nor Ji-yun a singer. But we never gave up. When the schools reopened after the Cultural Revolution, we all went to universities to finish our education. Both Ji-yun and I became teachers, while Ji-yong worked in a watch factory.
In 1980 my father was finally cleared. Not only was the charge that he was an “escaped landlord” dropped, but an old decision made during the Antirightist Movement was reversed as well. Only then did I learn the whole story. As a university student Dad had risked his life by joining the Communist Party when it was still an illegal, underground organization. During the Antirightist Movement of 1958, Dad had expressed some disagreement with Party policies, and as a result he was forced to resign from the Party. Although he was never officially classified as a rightist, he was denied promotions and major roles, and his career was ruined. In 1980 he was “rehabilitated” and appointed Vice President of the Children’s Art Theater. I looked at his gray hair and felt sad rather than happy. I knew he loved acting more than anything, and knew that nothing could make up for all the years he had lost.
The years of disappointments finally made me move to the United States. Now the whole family is here, except for Grandma, who died in 1992 at the age of ninety-eight. Ji-yong lives in Seattle, where he works in the tourist industry. Ji-yun teaches in a community college nearby, and my parents live with her family and enjoy the company of their two grandsons. And at long last my father has been able to do some acting.
Song Po-po died of a stroke not long after I came to America.
Sometimes when I think of all we went through, I can’t help feeling that it was only by the grace of God that we were saved. My parents and Grandma all admitted that at times during those dark years they contemplated suicide. Without God’s blessing they could never have survived.
As for the others in my story, in the early 1970s nearly all of my contemporaries were sent to the countryside for “reeducation.” According to Mao, this was supposed to benefit both the young students and the farmers. The students would learn to respect the working masses, and the farmers would learn new technology from the students. Like the Cultural Revolution, this did not work out as it was supposed to. After ten years of sacrifice in the primitive countryside most of these young people returned to the city with little education, few skills, and no beliefs. All regretted the waste of their youth, and all have struggled to start over again.
Chang Hong worked for many years on a state-run farm near Mongolia. Her brother died while she was there. At the farm she met her husband. Ironically, he was a black whelp, the son of a former capitalist. Eventually they returned to Shanghai, where Chang Hong was able to move into a factory job.
An Yi’s asthma prevented her from being sent to the countryside, and all these years she has been working in a small factory. Bai Shan spent years in the remote countryside near the Russian border, but now he is the business manager of the Shanghai branch of a foreign company. Lin-lin went back to school and became a doctor at a factory clinic. In the recent economic upheavals her factory closed, and the last time I saw her she was still unemployed. Du Hai is working in a factory near our childhood homes, and I saw him once at a distance. I’ve never heard what happened to Yin Lan-lan.
Except for a few who actually killed people, hardly any “revolutionaries” have been punished for what they did during the Cultural Revolution. Those who persecuted others, even beat or tortured them, were victims too, after all. They all believed they were doing it for Chairman Mao. In fact, many were caught on the wrong side in the power struggles and were persecuted in their turn, just as Du Hai’s mother was.
I once fervently believed in Mao and the Chinese Communist Party. After all the experiences I have told about in this story, and many more painful and frustrating experiences afterward, I left China and moved to the United States in 1984. I was thirty years old. I started at the bottom. I had no money, no friends, and hardly any English. I was willing to take on the struggle to establish myself in a new country because I knew that was the price I would have to pay for the freedom to think, speak, and write whatever I pleased.
During my first few years in the United States I was continually astonished at the freedom Americans enjoy. One Halloween evening I was watching the parade at Waikiki Beach in Honolulu. I was amazed to see that all the celebrators were enjoying themselves so freely. They had no fear of being criticized by their bosses or arrested by the government for expressing themselves, even if they criticized or mocked the president.
After my graduation from the University of Hawaii in 1987 I worked for a hotel and resort chain for several years, then for a health care company. Despite my success and promotions, I was not entirely happy. I realized that although I have adopted a new country, I cannot forget China. I wonder about China’s present, and I worry about her future. I have realized that despite all my suffering, I cannot stop loving the country where I was born and raised. Feeling as 1 do, it seemed natural for me to start my own company, East West Exchange, to promote cultural exchanges between the United States and China. If I can help Americans to understand China, and the Chinese to learn about the United States, even a little, I will feel very rewarded. I will have contributed something to my country, China, and my home, America.
I hope this book will be part of that mission.
GLOSSARY
acupuncture: An ancient Chinese medical practice, in which very thin needles are inserted into specific points in the skin in order to relieve a wide variety of ailments. Acupuncture is often used to relieve the pain of arthritis, headaches, etc.
Allah: The Moslem name for God. Moslems are a religious minority in China. Most Chinese Moslems live in western China, but diere are some, like the Jiang family, who live in eastern cities such as Shanghai.
Beijing: The capital of China. Formerly spelled “Peking.”
black: Opposed to the Communist Party. Communism was s
ymbolized by the color red. Black, seen as the opposite of red, was used to symbolize opponents of Communism, and therefore became a negative in general.
black whelp: An insulting term for a child of a family belonging to any one of the “Five Black Categories.”
bourgeois; bourgeoisie: A member of the middle class. In China this term is used in a derogatory manner to describe a person who enjoys and admires a luxurious “capitalist” lifestyle.
capitalism: An economic system characterized by private ownership of property, free competition, and business for profit. The United States, Japan, and many other countries are capitalist nations. Communists are strongly opposed to capitalism. (See “Communism.”)
Central Committee: The powerful top leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, which actually rules the country. They make laws, issue policies, and control the military, legal systems, and even the national treasury. Chairman Mao was the head of the Central Committee.
Chairman Mao: See “Mao Ze-dong.”
Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975): The chairman of the Nationalist Party, and one of Mao Ze-dong’s major enemies. Before 1949 he was the leader of China. In 1949 he was defeated by Mao Ze-dong and the Communist Party and fled to the offshore island of Taiwan, where he continued as the chairman of the Nationalist Party until his death.
Chinese New Year: The most important family holiday in China. Chinese New Year is the first day of the lunar calendar, which is based on the phases of the moon. The date varies according to the Western calendar, but Chinese New Year usually occurs in late January or early February.
class status: A system of classifying people by their economic situation or occupation. This was particularly important during the Cultural Revolution. It was believed that family class status would determine one’s behavior and thinking, so someone born in a family with a “red” class status was assumed to be revolutionary, while one born into a “black” family was assumed to be unreliable. One’s status was determined by one’s father’s degree of “redness” or “blackness.”