by Xinran Xue
XINRAN: So your letters were like angels, bringing you lovers together. Then after you got married, did you feel there were any problems, any major differences, you hadn't foreseen?
LOUIS: To be honest, the differences between us in our daily routine are very obvious. Then there's the fact that she is a general, and I'm an ordinary government official – that's a very big difference. In terms of administrative rank, I am four or five grades below her. Then again, our family backgrounds have very little in common – she's from the intellectual elite, I'm from a feudal family of provincial officials. The kind of "salt merchant" upbringing that I had and her upbringing among the westernised intellectual elite were completely different. So on the surface, it's like the gap between the West and China, not an easy one to bridge. But in fact, "we are very [well] matched! " [he drops into English]. Everyone thinks it's strange, and even we're surprised that it's happened.
On our tenth wedding anniversary, I wrote her a poem called "Ten Years – On our tenth wedding anniversary, to my beloved".
Ten years, a mere flicker in the evening of the river of our years.
Ten years, an instant in your life and mine.
Hand in hand, we know life's brilliance; shoulders hunched, we face life's storms; all is exquisite and beautiful.
First knowing your heart was like pure heaven.
Without you, I, Louis, do not exist.
All is like a heartfelt whisper,
All is heart-born poetry, my ten-year enjoyment.
I dedicated this poem to her, and it came from the bottom of my heart.
We had only been married six months, when my son suddenly fell ill and died. This was a very heavy blow to me, but General Phoebe comforted me by saying: "You must not feel that it is only your son who has died. I would drop everything to go and help if it were just an army friend's family this had happened to, let alone you! Let's weather this storm together." So we went to Shanghai and she helped arrange my son's funeral. She steeled me. She said: "You still have me!" She knew I couldn't stop worrying about my seven-year-old grandson and she told me that we would take on supporting my daughter-in-law and grandson together, like we would take on the future together. All this was a huge support to me, and gave me great strength.
After that, I transferred my retirement pension from Shanghai to Beijing. A year or two after that, in 1996, my daughter got cerebellar ataxia. Her cerebellum atrophied, and walking and activity became very difficult for her. The doctor told me, this is like a terminal illness, there's no cure. Again General Phoebe comforted and supported me. "Your daughter is my daughter too," she said. So we go back to Shanghai frequently, to see my daughter. Once, when she was in hospital, I went out to look for a nurse, and she stayed with my daughter. When I came back, I saw she had been washing my daughter's feet for her. All the other patients and their families said to my daughter, what a good mother you have! I was very moved.
She doesn't just hold my hand and watch the sunset, she weathers the storms with me, and that's so important. And for me, losing a son and having a seriously ill daughter were bad storms! Without her I might have collapsed. So from then on our feelings for each other kept growing deeper and more ardent.
I really feel in my heart that I am very fortunate, she really is a very good woman.
XINRAN: Auntie and I talked a bit about how she felt after you married. She said that she gained from you another chance to be a woman, you gave her the chance of tenderness, gave her a man's protection. Don't you feel that this marriage of yours is actually one between equals?
LOUIS: I feel this relationship is of value to both of us. I'm a deeply emotional person, in the old days I'd be criticised for being "petty-bourgeois sentimental". Actually she's that kind of person too, she's given me real love. I can only answer in terms of our love.
XINRAN: If you disagree over something, who gives way, General Phoebe or you?
LOUIS: In principle we always talk things through. I tend to be more hasty, and she is more circumspect. She is usually very tolerant of me, but now that I realise I go too far sometimes, I try to catch myself straight away. There are no rifts between us, and really no secrets either.
***
As the China Witness trip was coming to an end, we went one Friday afternoon to sit in on an English class taught by General Phoebe in a University of the Third Age which she had set up at the retirement village. Thirty-odd retired generals came to the class, and after each one had handed in their homework, they sat down, straight-backed, at ordinary school desks. They started by singing three songs in English, "to remind them of their English", and then listened attentively as General Phoebe read them a short story about a family; after that, they broke up into small groups for earnest conversation practice. Finally, a number of them told the whole class stories in English about their families. According to these white-haired students, the story they most liked reading aloud was one they had written themselves called "We are the Fortunate Generation".
I asked them why they worked so hard at their English, and they gave me all sorts of different answers.
An artillery instructor: "If I learn a bit of English, then when I go abroad to visit my children, I can get around on my own."
An army doctor: "So many of our home appliances nowadays have instructions in English, so if I learn some English, I don't need to bother other people so much."
A hero of the Korean War air battles: "During the war, we were fighting in the air. Now it's peacetime and we should make friends on the ground. If you can't speak English, you can't make your own foreign friends."
A quartermaster: "All those foreigners who are coming to China for the 2008 Olympics, if they stop us in the street and ask the way, and we can't understand English, how can we help them out?"
I don't know any other people on this earth who are as concerned about others as the Chinese are.
Interlude 3: Love Letters
In the West there is a long history of love letters. But in Chinese culture, especially in recent times, we are not used to seeing this kind of "emotional life" in writing, particularly as most marriages were arranged. Many young Chinese still don't believe there was romance between their "politically uniformed" parents and grandparents, and Westerners will hardly have read love stories from Communist period China before the 1980s. I was so amazed reading the love letters between General Phoebe and her husband, Louis, not only by their writing about love in such a "revolutionary voice" for China, but also by their sacrifice, by how much love and emotion had been kept controlled in the deep ocean of their daily lives. I have, therefore, selected some of their love letters from 160 Roses, in the hope that readers can, like me, be moved and encouraged that the feelings of these two people have not been worn away by political storms. Let not the love that surrounds us be lost; let not the heart that adores you suffer pain.
1.
15 February 1992
Dear Comrade Phoebe,
As the poet Wang Bo said, "While there exists on Earth one who knows me for my true self, / Though separated from me by the expanse of Heaven, / She seems close at hand.' When we said goodbye, on the evening of the 12th, at the entrance to East China Normal University, as I walked home under the waning moon, I felt immersed in those ancient lines of poetry. It has been a New Year of such unforgettable happiness. I shall always remember the 1992 Spring Festival.
Before the Spring Festival, when our former colleague told me that you always spent the festival in Shanghai, and gave me your address, I very much wanted to meet up with my old army friend after so many years apart. I cannot conceal the fact that you made a deep impression on me during our short time together at the Beijing Labour University Foreign Languages Training Course in 1949, and I thought we were both fond of each other. The thought even occurred to me once (although certainly not now) that, if I hadn't left the university, you might not have chosen to marry our old friend who died so prematurely. Since my wife died a year or so ago, I have been introduced
to half a dozen potential matches, but I have not been able to make up my mind. I've often thought, and said to other people too: how is one to find that one good woman to partner up with from among that immense sea of humanity, of strangers? If I am to marry again, then I'm going to maintain my high standards, and I would especially hope our relationship would be founded on real familiarity. So when I heard the news of your sad loss, and learned where you were, I came to what you called my "great" decision, and resolved to set off in pursuit. Meeting you, in the restaurant on the fourteenth floor of the Hengshan Hotel, was a further spur: I jumped in at the deep end and asked that question, to find out how the land lay with you. Firstly, because you were still you, the same you as four decades ago. That was the most fundamental thing. And also you remembered so many details of the things we did together back then. You hadn't even forgotten that we bumped into each other at the Spring Festival in 1956 in front of the Shanghai Park Hotel. Added to that, when we talked I discovered that we saw eye to eye on so many things and shared a common outlook, which secretly delighted me. I wasn't deliberately playing up to you, it was a true meeting of minds, as if we happened to have been practising t'ai chi in the same place.
At the restaurant table that day, when I laid bare my true feelings to you with that probing question, and you gave me your counter-arguments, I was deeply impressed by your sincerity and wisdom; indeed I was inspired to model myself on you. I said then: I'm disappointed but not lost. And that was the truth too. For a brief moment, in that elegant dining room, I was disconsolate. That was the moment when we fell silent and sipped our drinks. But I very quickly shook that feeling off, because even if you had rejected my probing, I had not only not lost your friendship, my feelings of tenderness were deeper than ever. I not only had absolutely no reason to mope, I had found new life beliefs to adopt, the "triple action, triple happiness" you talked about – adequate work, exercise and social activity, and the joy of helping people, being content with one's lot and getting enjoyment out of life. I wanted to put your formula for happiness into practice, and I talked about it in our senior cadres' branch office and to friends, and they also found it inspiring.
You said that my probing "was very natural" and I realised that you understood my feelings and would forgive my presumptuousness. I am so grateful to you! It's true – when I came to think about it more calmly afterwards, I really had overstepped the mark. At the very least, I was naive. The differences between us exist objectively, and I have to acknowledge that. How could I have had those foolish thoughts, on the slender basis solely of my feeling that there was "a definite basis" for the relationship and of the honesty and goodness in my own heart? Of course your negative answer was nothing to do with dislike for me, but arose from reasons at a much deeper level, which indeed I should have considered myself. Well, it's over now, and luckily there was no one nearby to make fun of or criticise us. So let's regard it as just a minor episode in the course of our new friendship! However, I still have to apologise most humbly to you. In this, my first letter to you, I have blabbered on and repeated much of what I said to you then, but it is only to get it off my chest, and we won't mention it again, all right?
I will put down my pen now; allow me to wish you every happiness. At the same time, I hope that we may be able to fulfil our heart's desire – to become truly good friends, and to exchange many, many letters. I'm also looking forward to us inviting two or three close friends to accompany us on a trip around China soon. I particularly hope that we can go to my home town and have a look at the Dayu Palace, King Yue's Burial Mound, the Orchid Pavilion, Lu Xun's birthplace, and enjoy the shady mountain paths and the black-awning boats…
With best wishes,
Louis
2.
15 February 1992
My dear old army friend,
I hope you are well. I was delighted to have the opportunity to celebrate the Spring Festival with you and have such a good talk about everything, after an interval of forty years. I arrived home this afternoon at 2 p.m., after a smooth journey.
We all find that memories come flooding back at the Spring Festival. Our joining the army together then is still, today, so vivid in my mind. The boys and girls of that time have become old men and women, but our hearts haven't changed, we've still kept our revolutionary spirit. That part of our lives will always bring back beautiful memories for us, don't you think?
I'm sending you some photos of me in military uniform, as a memento. I'll close now.
Best wishes,
Phoebe
5.
5 March 1992
Dear Phoebe,
Your letter of the 27th and the article about "the common people's general" gave me another reason to be happy! The fact that in two short weeks we have exchanged letters twice – the pair of us are well capable of being "activists" – is sufficient proof that we're going to make a go of rebuilding our friendship. How happy I am!
I found the article, "A good Party member in our midst", both intimate and moving. It is actually written with great simplicity; when the writer calls you "the common people's general", she is saying something quite profound, but does not conceal your brilliance either. I appreciate the way you behave as an official, and admire still more your high-minded determination to avoid self-seeking and greed with regard to the standard of living the government offers you (even in the broadest sense). Reading the article has given me a deeper knowledge of you: your ideology is even loftier than before, you are even more you! Really, I have so much to learn from you. If all Party cadres – especially high-ranking cadres – were like you, then the Party, our country, our socialist endeavour, would be so much stronger.
In this letter, I mainly want to tell you briefly what happened to me after I left the Foreign Languages Training Course, to reciprocate the account you gave me that day in Hengshan Park of the last few decades of your life. I left the army in May 1952 and was allocated a job back in Shanghai by the Jing'an Party Branch Committee, in the Jing'an District Educational Course for Unemployed Workers, first as education section leader and then as director of the course. The Five Antis movement had just finished, and there were a lot of unemployed workers, most of whom had been activists. The government had guaranteed them jobs and, in the meantime, they received political and general education. We had around a thousand students and a score of cadres and instructors on the course. So the Foreign Languages Training Unit's classes in current politics, social development and basic philosophy became the "capital" which I put to immediate use – and the teaching also made me miss the war years. At the beginning of 1954, I transferred to the Shanghai Municipal Labour Office to do workers' education; and in the autumn of 1965, I was transferred again, this time to the Office Party Committee of the Shanghai People's Committee (in the Municipal Government). I was first made Theoretical Instructor in the Officer Cadres' School, and then my job was changed to secretarial work: handling documentation, organising meetings and drafting reports (leaders' speeches, work summaries, short reports and so on). From then on, I earned my daily bread in Archives, Meetings and Reports, apart from the ten years between 1968 and 1978 when I was expelled by the Gang of Four and sent to 7 May Cadre School and to work in a factory. This carried on being my job (from 1978 onwards I was in the Shanghai Municipal Office) until I retired at the end of 1987.
I had my ups and downs during a thirty-odd-year career in office work, but basically I wanted to make myself into a good "tool" for the job. I have to say that I succeeded, that is, after I had undergone a difficult process of personal transformation, I achieved it. You know, in those days, I minded the fact that army life was "not free"; and government organisations did not permit "personal freedom" either. So gradually, I moved from a lack of awareness to being very aware, and consequently had to give up my "personal freedom". I sometimes think that since I was willing to make myself into a good "tool", why did I need to leave the army in the first place? But there's another side to me. In my heart of h
earts, I always regarded myself as a student, but always found it difficult to act the "government official". At the same time, in the presence of VIPs like the mayor and deputy mayor, I showed them respect but would never bow and scrape to them. I have another secret in my heart, and that's the feelings about "democracy" which I revealed to you at dinner that day. Even though I very rarely bring it up in front of people, it's something which deep inside me doesn't let me rest… Well, that's brief introduction to me. I'll tell you in more detail when I get the chance.
The spring rain has been pattering down in Shanghai since the day before yesterday, and a lot of people have caught colds. The weather on the central plains must be pretty much the same, so please do take care of yourself. Will write more later.
With very best wishes,
Louis
6.
1 March 1992
My dear friend,
I hope you are well. I assume you will have received my last week's letter to you and the PLA News article which I enclosed. I got a letter today from our friend, saying how happy he was to hear that we had met at the Spring Festival, and how impressed he was by you.
I heard recently that my three problems about moving to accommodation at the Beijing Cadre Retirement Institute where I live have been resolved, so I really can step down this year. Mentally, I've already made a number of preparations to retire: apart from the physical living arrangements, the most important thing is creating a sort of "microclimate" which will bring happiness to one's soul, and that includes friendship, music and many other spiritual aspirations. I feel I just need to put my mind to it, and I should be able to do it.
With very best wishes,
Phoebe