by Xinran Xue
I'm an impatient sort of person, and if I want to do something, I'm not worried about it being hard work. The grandchildren phone me and say: "Granny, get yourself someone to help, I'll pay for it." But I can still do it on my own, I don't want a maid. I do all the buying, cooking and cleaning myself and getting someone in won't spare me any worries.
XINRAN: What kind of upbringing did you give your children?
CHANGZHENG'S WIFE: When I was a child we were poor and we had no needle and thread so I had never done needlework. But after I had the children, I did all my own sewing. I got the kids ready for bed and I started work. That meant making everything clean as a whistle, wiping the floor, washing the clothes… then I made their clothes. Every winter, the whole family needed two outfits each. I lined the cotton with kapok and slowly stitched it together. When it was done, and nice and clean, then I went to bed. The next evening I did the same again. I didn't take a siesta like everyone else. When we first got a sewing machine, I didn't know how to use it, but I knew I could learn. I practised by sewing bits of rag, old bits of clothes, and kept on going at it, practising on scraps, and that way I taught myself.
XINRAN: There's another question I'd like to ask you. I've visited many couples, but very few husbands have expressed such a high opinion of their wives as yours has. So I'd like to hear what you think about things, since there's a thirteen-year age difference between you. When people get old, they probably think more about what happened in the past, and the further back in the past, the easier it is for them to remember. What part of your life do you think most about? Your childhood, your parents, or the difficulties you had bringing up your children?
CHANGZHENG'S WIFE: I don't have anything I think about, I don't have any views on that.
XINRAN: Do you never think about your mother when you look at other people, and when you look at your children? Don't you think about when you were little?
CHANGZHENG'S WIFE: Oh yes, I do. I was the only girl in the family, and I had two elder brothers and one younger. When I joined the army, girls could earn a bit doing cleaning work. I saved it and bought things for them when I went home. The thing I most regret is that my mother didn't live long enough to enjoy our good fortune. We live well now, but she's not here. I often think of her.
XINRAN: When did you last see her?
CHANGZHENG'S WIFE: I last saw her when she was eighty-three. She died soon after that. I can't bear to think about it. My husband was in the army, and we were a bit better off. I wanted her to come and live with us, but she wouldn't come. She said she was too old-fashioned: since she had a son, it wasn't right to go and live in her daughter's house. My mother had her principles, and she didn't want to be a nuisance. My father worked on the railways and could travel free, so he always used to come and see us, and my mother came several times to fetch him and take him home. But every time she arrived, she'd go straight home with him. Eventually he got too old and retired, and they didn't come any more.
XINRAN: Did you ever hear how they met each other, your mum and dad?
CHANGZHENG'S WIFE: In those days it was all done by the parents. The old folks paired them up – they'd never met before they married. When my mother talked about it sometimes, she was very against that way of doing things.
XINRAN: How did you help your mother when you were a child?
CHANGZHENG'S WIFE: Cooking, putting the cotton wadding into quilts, washing, making quilt covers, that kind of thing. I was always tired when I worked, I was always yawning. My dad said to me: "If you're so tired when you work, you'll never finish such a big quilt. If you don't finish it, what are we going to put on the bed at night?" I didn't pay attention, I carried on very slowly with the wadding. I had so little to eat when I was a kid, I was always hungry, and then I was too tired to work. So my mum gave in, and said I could go and be a soldier and save my life. That was how it was at home.
XINRAN: Have you ever talked to your children about how things were then?
CHANGZHENG'S WIFE: No, I haven't.
XINRAN: Why not?
CHANGZHENG'S WIFE: Because it makes me too sad. Besides, my children have never wasted money or food like other people's children do. They're good kids, they've never given me any cause for worry.
XINRAN: If anyone asked you what was the hardest time of your life, what would you say?
CHANGZHENG'S WIFE: When I was at home, before I joined up, that was the hardest. In order to get that bit of schooling, I had to go out weeding in the heat of the day in the summer. I didn't want to go. My mother said: "You're doing it to go to school, aren't you?" So then I went. In those days, boys got sent to school, but no one bothered about the girls. My mother was a capable woman, she reared pigs and sold them, and kept chickens. I remember when I was a kid, before Liberation, there were bandits, they were terrible, scared us to death. We lived in a small house and the bandits tried to get inside. The door was shut and they were banging away on it, which was frightening in the middle of the night. We were so poor then that we didn't even eat dumplings at New Year. I remember when I was a kid, the Japanese devils came and killed the cattle. They hung their hides up outside, and they got covered in flies, but some people still ate the scraps of meat left on them. If pigs and chickens died, no one cared, you ate them because, if you didn't, you starved.
XINRAN: Your husband told us earlier what a hard time he'd had. Has he ever talked to you about it?
CHANGZHENG'S WIFE: Sometimes about the Long March. Actually, he doesn't need to say anything – you saw his feet, his toenails. The veins are all black and the toes are thickened, all from walking. I was a soldier too, so I know what he went through, and it was all for China.
XINRAN: Was it worth giving all those years of his life, do you think?
CHANGZHENG'S WIFE: Oh yes. If that generation hadn't made the sacrifice, and we still had what Chairman Mao called the "three mountains" of feudalism, imperialism and the GMD on our backs, then where would we be today? I think it was definitely worth it.
XINRAN: Do you think that young people today understand what your generation went through and what you did?
CHANGZHENG'S WIFE: Some do, but some don't.
XINRAN: Is there anything else you'd like to tell me? If you had your life again, would you still set up a family with Mr Changzheng?
CHANGZHENG'S WIFE: My old man's OK, he's a good man. We've never fought about things, we get on really well. We only fought once. It was in Guangxi, and his office was in our house. Our eldest daughter was squabbling with a friend and he wanted to shout at them, but I wouldn't let him. We only fought that once, and it never happened again. I must have been twenty-two then. In 1997 we had our fiftieth wedding anniversary, and next year it's our diamond anniversary. It's hard to believe we'll have been together sixty years.
XINRAN: You can see his rosy cheeks, and he's in good voice and good heart. He's a credit to you.
***
I was not able to find here the answers to the questions I had been asking about the Long March. If we were lucky and these old people lasted until there was real freedom of speech in China, then we might really be able to prove or disprove some of the stories of the past. But perhaps it was already too late, the old had taken the "real yesterdays" away with them, and that was another loss to the Chinese people.
But the "marital Long March" of these old Red Army soldiers was a success which led me onward.
9 Savouring her Blessings after Trials and Tribulations: the Woman General born in America
Chicago, 1933.
With General Phoebe and her husband Louis, Beijing, 2006.
GENERAL PHOEBE, female general, born in 1930, and her husband, Louis, former Secretary to the Mayor of Shanghai, interviewed in Beijing, capital of China. General Phoebe was born in Columbus, Ohio, and moved back to China with her parents, both academics, before the war with the Japanese. She joined the PLA in 1949 as an instructor at the Foreign Languages Institute, and was part of a secret unit for "foreign relations". She
was head of the Institute before she retired. Her second marriage with Louis, whom she had known years before, came about after they had exchanged 160 love letters, which were later published as examples of a model relationship. They see themselves as being part of "the most fortunate of generations".
In the twentieth century, China experienced the chaos of war and political dissension, and after nearly one hundred years of this, the country and its people were exhausted, with all infrastructure near paralysis. In 1981, a group of world economists predicted in a Chinese government journal that it would take China at least a century to climb out of poverty. Their prediction attracted a great deal of attention: it piqued Chinese self-esteem and provoked a deep-seated popular indignation, stirring a capacity for serious reflection and for hard work long numbed by government policies. I say this because it took less than thirty years from that moment for China to soar to the position of an up-and-coming superpower, arresting the attention of the world in so doing.
Where did that energy come from? Some people say that it was the peasants, hitherto ceaselessly engaged in primitive cultivation, who nurtured China's political dreams. Bound to the soil for generations, Deng Xiaoping's reforms allowed them to migrate to the cities. Their cheap labour helped to break down the rigid constraints of the planned economy. In the process, they "re-educated" a leadership who were feeding on "pie in the sky".
Other people say that the army and academics have risen up and redeemed a Chinese society immobilised by deadly internecine power struggles. Some claim it marks the rise of a new, historically determined, period in China, and is a necessary part of the dynastic cycle. Others view it as a new budding growth from the rootstock of China's great civilisation. And still others say that it is because China is on the rebound from years of extreme misery.
But in my view, this energy is the product of the accumulated self-esteem, wisdom and sheer grit which has been nurtured by five thousand years of civilisation, coming from a people who have learned the meaning of happiness and how to achieve it.
While I was growing up, I knew a woman who had turned tribulations into fields of endeavour, grievances into sport, dedication into responsibility and the vicissitudes of life into the brilliantly coloured fragments of a kaleidoscope.
A year ago, we were chatting on the phone about how each of us felt about China today, and I mentioned the China Witness project, and that I was reaching the final stage of interviews. "Come and see us," she said cheerfully. "Come and listen to the stories of a pair of old folks from the most fortunate of generations."
The "most fortunate of generations"?
From what I knew of her, and judging by any normal standards, she had been fortunate in many ways, but had suffered pain and injustice as well, which hardly made her one of the "fortunate generation".
During the interviews I made on my travels around China, people told me of their pride, I saw their confidence and felt their self-esteem, but so far had heard nothing of "the most fortunate generation". Indeed, few of my interviewees had used the word "fortunate" about themselves.
My friend holds an important position, so I needed to avoid any suspicion that I was digging for classified information. The following is her story, which is an edited version of articles published by Chinese military reported Mr Xueneng Tu in the Keji-Ri Bao newspaper (online) in July 2002.
Spring 1996, USA.
A saloon car sped along the freeway from Maryland to Columbus, Ohio, USA. In the car sat the woman general; her daughter Lan was at the wheel. Their destination: the place where the general had been born sixty-six years ago.
As the car drew to a halt, the general climbed nimbly out and stood at the steps of the maternity hospital entrance. A breeze touched her face and ruffled a few strands of hair. She did not look like a woman in her sixties, with her erect bearing and agile movements. "Was it really sixty-six years ago?!" The duty officer's face betrayed intense emotion. When she heard that they had travelled halfway across the world to visit the older woman's birthplace, her astonishment knew no bounds.
"Yes, it was sixty-six years ago," smiled the general, in a pure American drawl, gazing at the hospital before her.
A detailed folder of material was placed before her. On the first page, a small red footprint impressed itself on her gaze. "Well, that is incredible!" Now it was her turn to be astonished, a feeling accompanied by deep gratitude.
The file on the little Chinese girl born here sixty-six years ago was astonishingly comprehensive. The duty officer took them to the ward where it was recorded that she had first drawn breath – the room was still a maternity ward, and still held the sweet smell of milk.
The date was 28 December 1930. When the future general came into this foreign corner of the world, her father gave her the beautiful name Phoebe, the Greek moon goddess, "the shining one", with the wish that his daughter, like moonlight, would bathe everyone around her in warmth and happiness.
One autumn day three years later, the future general returned to China with her illustrious parents. Her father, with his American PhD in psychology, was made professor at the Nanjing Central School of Politics by the government. Her mother sent her to an American-run primary school where she did exceptionally well. After completing the first grade, she was told by the teacher: "Next term, go straight to the third grade."
Then came the Marco Polo Bridge incident on 7 July 1937, marking Japan's invasion of China proper, and from one day to the next everything changed. With the occupation of Nanjing, Phoebe's family took to the road along with the millions of other Chinese families, forming a wretched, endless stream of refugees constantly on the move in search of sanctuary. First they went to Changsha, but had scarcely had time to get to know their new home before they had to flee to the small county town of Zhijiang Xian in western Hunan province. Not long after, they took a boat to Chongqing. During their flight, no matter where they were, nor how hard life was, Phoebe never dropped out of school. She attended seven of them during six years of primary education.
Six years of middle school followed, and Phoebe was again tossed between schools in five different places. First grade (lower middle school) in Chongqing, followed by a spell in Fujian province; second grade in Nanping; third grade in Jianyang; and first grade of upper middle school in Jian'ou. With the successes of the resistance against Japan, the family made the longed-for return to Shanghai, where Phoebe continued with the third grade.
In the spring of 1947, the future general entered the Foreign Languages Department of Shanghai's Fudan University. An assiduous student known for her political zeal, she joined the Chinese Communist Party at the age of eighteen, and threw herself heart and soul into the struggle for Liberation which faced the city of Shanghai…
Before the PLA Ranking exercise of 1955, almost all women soldiers were given non-combatant roles, had their battledress replaced by plain uniforms, and were not ranked. Phoebe was moved to non-combatant duties but, in recognition of her professional ability and excellent work record, was permitted to remain in her teaching post at the PLA-run Foreign Languages Institute. Five years later, she became the youngest woman to head the teaching and research section of a military college.
In 1983, Phoebe was promoted to the position of deputy head of the Institute's training department. Her reaction, when told by the head of the Institute prior to the public announcement, was to object. "You must be joking!" she blurted out. Four years later, another unexpected "happy event" befell her, when she was told that her superiors wanted to promote her to deputy head of the Institute. She laughed, and out came the same catchphrase: "You must be joking!" General Phoebe has been raised to this level of seniority by the Chinese military's push to modernise. Her belief is that the key to language learning is the linguistic environment: if foreign-language teaching does not open itself up to cultural exchanges, then it will perish. She has called for increasing and strengthening international exchange programmes, advocates an increase in the numbers of officially spo
nsored Chinese students sent to study abroad, and more investment in teachers and teaching materials.
General Phoebe is an educationalist of the first rank, and has edited ten sets of textbooks, including The English Language Reading Course, which has become a core work for advanced English teaching nationally and was awarded the PLA Institute's First Prize for Educational Excellence.
General Phoebe has devoted her life wholeheartedly to teaching for almost half a century. She has dedicated herself to her students and, in so doing, has won their love and esteem in return. At the end of each year, three days of celebration follow one after another – Christmas on 25 December, her birthday on the 28th and New Year's Day on 1 January. Beautifully designed congratulatory cards rain down on her like confetti, and as General Phoebe peruses each familiar name and reads their warm messages, she is often moved to tears.
In September 1988, Military Commission Chairman Deng Xiaoping promoted General Phoebe to the rank of major general.
On 27 July 1984, General Phoebe's first husband passed away. Bereaved after twenty-eight years of a loving relationship, her grief was almost unspeakable. On her way back to Luoyang from Beijing, she exhorted herself, I must be strong, I must be strong. When I see our chiefs and comrades, I must not cry, I absolutely must not cry. And when they came to visit her, she really did bite her lip and remained dry-eyed. But when everyone had gone, and only she was left, when she looked at the empty room, and remembered the laughter and chatter she had shared in it with Mei Xiaoda, now a thing of the past, then she wept bitter tears.