China Witness

by Xinran Xue

  XINRAN: But it's thirty-nine degrees, so hot, and I sweat buckets every day! I can't put my feet in water?

  MRS XIE: Well, you're not home yet… see how they hurt then…

  XINRAN: And what can you tell about other women?

  MRS XIE: The ones in high heels are most worth looking at. If they jab their heels into the ground as they walk, it's because they don't know how to wear them, or they've put them on for the first time. You don't need to look at them to know that they're sticking out their bums, which is really unattractive! You have to walk slowly in high heels – walking fast looks hideous. The higher the heels they're wearing, the less willing they are to give way to other people – these are shoes that can only go forwards not backwards. The high-heeled slippers that are fashionable nowadays are really funny. The foot often slips out of them, and then the slipper is just looped over the foot, which makes it completely useless. Everyone knows that women have small, delicate feet, but with these high heels now, the toes are very pointed, not for putting your foot in. It makes the whole shoe big, and a small woman striding along with a pair of big feet looks ridiculous! And something else: not a lot of women look after their feet. Sometimes you smell her perfume, what a lovely smell! But she walks past you and her feet are really ugly with yellow calluses at the back of the heels and the feet all wrinkly. If I look up, the face is bound to be plastered in thick make-up. Quite repulsive. I can't bear to see that. Then…

  ***

  A man who was cycling past paused with one foot on the ground. "Hey, are you here this afternoon?" he asked. "I'm always here, in all weathers, apart from when I'm eating and sleeping. If my stall's here and I'm not, it's because I'm in the toilet." "I'll come back this afternoon then," said the man, and he cycled off.

  ***

  XINRAN: So, in your twenty-eight years here, what changes have you seen in the shoes you've repaired?

  MRS XIE: Twenty-eight years ago, the money came in a few jiao at a time, everyone was poor then. In the early days, I was mending rubber and plastic shoes for a few jiao a time, and putting plastic soles on cloth shoes. There were some leather shoes that people had for a lifetime. Leather shoes then were sturdy, not like shoes now which come in fancy styles – you only wear them a few days and the seams come apart, the glue comes unstuck and the leather gets holes. In the eighties, more people were wearing leather shoes but when they bought new shoes, they'd come and get another sole stuck on so they could wear them for longer. Still, I could only charge a few jiao, less than one yuan, each time. In the nineties, it seemed like everyone was wearing leather shoes, but a lot of it was fake leather – there wasn't much real leather – so that was a real money-earner, I was charging by the yuan. Now we're in the next century, and it seems like there's hardly any repair work for real leather shoes – people wearing real leather shoes don't come – it's almost all fake designer labels. A lot of people who bring me their shoes for repair boast how good and how expensive they were. I don't say anything, but I think, like hell these are genuine! Would a genuine label shoe be so disgustingly badly made? Would the leather be such poor quality? But what's the point of saying anything? People pay to have their shoes mended, I mend them, take the money, and we each go back to our own homes. Why go looking for trouble! Aiya! I must go and make lunch, my old man's waiting for me.

  XINRAN: You go home at midday?

  MRS XIE: Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.

  XINRAN: What do you usually eat at midday?

  MRS XIE: I just buy a couple of fried pancakes or dumplings or something. [She laughs.] Nothing fancy.

  XINRAN: Can the five of us come and join you for lunch today? Would that be all right? Can we share your meal?

  MRS XIE: You can, though I don't have any kind of a home. There's not even anywhere to sit down. Doesn't that put you off?

  XINRAN [I could see she didn't believe that we wanted to visit her home]: We really do want to go. I've got an appetite already.

  MRS XIE: Aiya! Well then, you keep an eye on the stall for me. I'll just pop to the loo.

  XINRAN: Fine, we'll be here to make sure you don't lose anything.

  ***

  Mrs Xie trotted off, and seeing how anxious she looked, I said guiltily: "She looks like she was desperate to go." A drinks seller on a nearby stall overheard and laughed: "No one here worries about losing things if they leave their stall, because we all look after each other's stalls. There's no need to let anyone know. She'll have gone to buy food, because she can't give you pancakes and steamed bread when you get to her house!"

  When I heard this, I rushed after her, and found she was indeed buying a fried chicken. I was too late – the chicken had already been cut into pieces and couldn't be given back. I knew we couldn't persuade her to let us pay, so all I could do was carry the chicken and go with her to buy vegetables.

  When we followed her to her home, we were all struck dumb. We were in a small factory which had gone out of business years before. The ramshackle premises were secured by a big gate beside which stood an empty storeroom and toilet. This space, devoid of all furniture and fittings, was their home. The "bedroom" was in the triangular space under the stairs, partitioned off and just big enough to put a board down. There they slept in winter, spring and autumn. The "kitchen" was a gas cooker in the space beside the toilet. Water for washing, rinsing and drinking all came from the toilet cistern. It was stiflingly hot when she took us inside and, with some embarrassment, she moved their summer bed – a board sitting on some old wooden packing cases – outside so that she could free up a bit of "cool" space.

  We sat down to eat our meal with her and her husband, who repaired students' bicycles outside a technical middle school. She made us a Hubei-style dish of meat steamed with ground rice, some fried greens and some fried dried bean curd left over from a previous meal. Then there was the fried chicken she had bought, and rice and steamed bread. Afterwards, we worked out that our meal had cost the couple what the two of them earned in a month from shoe and bicycle repairs. That was the first time I had sat on an old tyre to eat a meal. They had no stools or chairs – in fact they had no furniture at all.

  After we had eaten, Mrs Xie burst out crying and said: "In twenty-eight years, no one has come to visit us or eaten a meal with us! City folk look down on us, no one respects us, in fact no one pays us any attention at all! We have nothing. We've used every penny to put our children through university! Every time my daughter comes back on holiday, she squeezes onto the plank with me to sleep, poor thing. In winter, she freezes like us; in summer, she swelters like us. If we give her money to go and stay with her grandparents for the holidays, she won't go. She says, 'My mum and dad live like this day in and day out so that we can go to university, why can't I spend the time with you?' She's very mature. She studies and has a job, and hasn't even got anywhere to go in the holidays, but we just can't do any more for them than we already do!"

  Her husband had been standing beside her smiling silently. His eyes, too, reddened and he said: "As soon as our children were born, we had to leave them with our parents to bring up. We've had such a hard grind, so very, very hard. We couldn't afford to send our children to school in the city. They had to go to school in the countryside, but they both did us proud! Just like their mum, they came top in the county results. I'll never forget when my son got his offer for Xi'an Communications University and came to show it to me at my bicycle repair stand outside the school. His clothes were so tatty the students thought he was a beggar. He didn't have the money to take a train, so he'd spent several days and nights on a long-distance bus to get here. When he saw me, he didn't have the strength to be happy any more, he just said: 'Dad, I'm hungry. I've passed the university exams!' And then he collapsed. I called some students over to help, and when they saw the offer letter for Xi'an Communications University in his hand, they were flabbergasted! This is one of the key universities that they dream of getting into! My… son… is… fantastic!"

  He was unabl
e to say more.

  As I watched them, I thought – and you could not help but think – that this couple who lived worse than refugees had produced for the Chinese people two highly talented youngsters. You could not help but think that their savings, accumulated jiao by jiao, and yuan by yuan, had saved China's educational system two student grants. And you could not help but think that these two country people, despised by everyone, had brought up a son and a daughter who aroused admiration in everyone who saw them!

  We all had tears in our eyes. I knew that my crew were feeling very emotional. This couple exemplified just the kind of Chinese self-respect and pride that we had been looking for.

  Before saying goodbye, I asked them my final three questions.

  ***

  XINRAN: How did you two meet?

  MRS XIE: When I couldn't go to university, I refused to get married. Then we were introduced, and he said to me: "You couldn't go to university, but if you have children, you can send them to university in your place." Intelligent, wasn't he? Among all the men I knew, none of them understood me the way he did. So I married him, and we both earned the money to send our children to university!

  XINRAN: What is your next wish?

  MRS XIE: To help my children do advanced studies at the best universities of the world, and to help them see the world and further increase their learning!

  ***

  This led us to put through a long-distance call to their son, establishing how we could keep in touch. I hoped I could look into the possibilities of helping this mother realise her dreams, and also help this young man who had fought his way up from the lowest level of society to the pinnacle of Chinese academic circles see a bit of this great and colourful world for his mother.

  ***

  XINRAN: Who's more handsome, your son or your daughter?

  MRS XIE: They're both good-looking!

  XINRAN: Friends who've seen your daughter all say she's very pretty.

  MRS XIE: No, no, not at all. They're both ugly. Poor families don't have good-looking children!

  ***

  Poor families don't have good-looking children! Her words pained me. In China there's a saying: "Laugh at the poor, but don't laugh at prostitutes", meaning that the poor are the lowest level of society, lower even than prostitutes, and are only worthy of ridicule. It's an old saying, which had been officially wiped out by half a century of revolution, but has now been dug up again from the rubbish heap of history. It describes the gulf which separates rich and poor as a result of the flying leaps which China's development has taken.

  While I was worrying about this "putting old concepts to new use", I received an email that had been circulating on Chinese blogs from a friend in Beijing. She asked me to pass it on to the overseas Chinese who were with me, and tell them it described the kind of love which was becoming fashionable among Chinese city dwellers.

  Ten true things that everyone should keep in mind.

  1. On meeting a beggar: When you meet someone begging for money, give him or her a bit of food; when you meet someone begging for food, give them a bit of money.

  2. If you meet an elderly or disabled person or a pregnant woman on a bus, don't raise your voice or make a song and dance about giving up your seat to them. When you stand up, use your body to keep the space and give it to the person who needs it. Then pretend you're getting off and move away. It's a fact that too often people don't move far away. When someone thanks you, give them a smile.

  3. In snow and rain, and on cold or snowy evenings, if you meet someone selling vegetables, fruit or newspapers who has just a bit left and still can't go home, buy everything if you can, and if you can't, buy something. Because eating something is still eating and reading something is still reading, and buying it means they can go home sooner.

  4. If you meet an elderly man or woman or child lost on the streets, take them home if you can; if you can't, put them onto a bus or take them to the local police station. If you have a phone, then make a call for the old person or child before you go. After all, you won't miss the cost of a couple of calls.

  5. If someone who's lost asks you for an address and you happen to know where it is, then go ahead and tell them. Don't back off apologetically; no one's trying to get at you.

  6. If you find a purse, have a look for the owner. If you really need the money, then leave the small change behind. Phone the owner and say you found it in a toilet. Return the credit cards, ID card and driving licence to the owner. Most people won't be bothered about losing the money. Jot down the person's address in your notebook, and when you've made your money, go and say sorry and pay the money back.

  7. If you come across students doing jobs to pay their school fees – especially if they're middle school students and if they're young girls – buy a bit of whatever they're selling. If she's not from a poor family, and needed courage to go out and find work, then give her some encouragement.

  8. If you see someone sitting on the pavement at night with their goods laid out on a bit of carpet, buy as much as you can and don't haggle. These things aren't expensive, and no one whose home situation is less than terrible would ever go out in the cold to sell stuff like that.

  9. If you're pretty well off, don't keep a mistress. Support a few school students from poor mountain areas on the quiet. Don't let them know who you are, otherwise it will be awkward and terribly embarrassing when you meet. But you won't be on tenterhooks all the time like when you're keeping a mistress – in fact you'll feel quite easy in yourself. If you really want to keep a mistress, then keep one, but at least do something good as well. After all, people are complicated.

  10. If you have plenty of time, and you happen to feel that what I have said is right, then post an answer to my message. It's more gratifying than answering completely rubbish messages. Also if you have enough time, post this text on to a few other sites. The more good people there are, the better we will feel.

  On the Road, Interlude 5: A Squall at the 4 May Memorial

  While we were in Beijing on the final stage of our journey, we stayed in the Red Building, next to the former home of Beijing University. The Red Wall Hotel, currently "trying for three-star grading", is next to the Beijing University Museum, and next to that stands a newly erected monument to the 4 May Patriotic Movement.

  The 4 May Movement marks the moment at which China embarked on a century of modern history. In 1914, Japan used the pretext of the outbreak of the First World War to declare war on Germany, and occupy Qingdao and the entire length of the Jiao-Ji Railway. Once in control of Shandong, Japan removed from Germany all the privileges which that country had seized in the province. At the close of the war in 1918, Germany was defeated. In January 1919, the victorious nations opened a peace conference in Paris. China, represented by a joint delegation of the Beijing government and the Guangzhou military government, attended on the side of the victors, and put forward a number of proposals. These included abolition of all of the Great Powers' concessions in China, along with abolition of the "21 Demands" unequal treaty concluded between President Yuan Shikai and the Japanese imperialists, and restitution of all powers removed from Germany in Shandong by Japan before the war. But the Great Powers manipulated the Paris Peace Conference in such a way that not only were the Chinese demands rejected, but the peace treaty with Germany proclaimed that the Shandong concessions were to be turned over in their entirety to Japan. The Beijing government was prepared to sign the treaty but the Chinese people were fiercely opposed.

  On the afternoon of 4 May 1919, over three thousand students from Beijing University and twelve other universities and training colleges broke through police and army cordons and gathered in Tiananmen Square, to hear speakers. Then they organised demonstrations and shouted slogans such as: "Fight for sovereignty abroad, get rid of national traitors at home", "Abolish the 21 Demands" and "Refuse to sign the peace treaty". They also demanded that the leaders of the pro-Japanese faction – Cao Rulin, Zhang Zongxiang and Lu Zongyu
– be punished. The Beijing students went on strike and galvanised the entire country into resistance.

  The impact of the patriotic activities of the Beijing students spread rapidly to cities such as Tianjin, Shanghai, Changsha and Guangzhou, and there was support, too, from Chinese students studying abroad and overseas Chinese. Even more students embarked on propaganda activities on 4 June and within two days nearly a thousand students had been arrested. This further aroused popular anger. From 5 June, between sixty and seventy thousand Shanghai workers held a political strike, while workers from cities such as Nanjing, Tianjin, Hangzhou, Jinan, Wuhan, Jiujiang and Wuhu held a succession of strikes and demonstrations. The Beijing government was so shaken by this activity that on 6 June it was forced to release all those students who had been arrested. On 10 June, a proclamation "approved" Cao, Zhang and Lu's "resignations". On 28 June the Chinese delegation refused to sign the peace treaty with Germany. The victorious 4 May Patriotic Movement now came to a temporary halt.

  The 4 May Movement is seen as marking the end of the old Chinese democratic revolution and the beginning of the new. After the People's Republic of China was established, the Government Administration Council of the Central People's Government proclaimed in December 1949 that henceforth 4 May would be National Youth Day.

  All the elderly people we had interviewed were witnesses to the history of China after the 4 May Movement. For this reason, I felt that before completing China Witness, we should record on camera, next to the monument, the feelings about this history evoked for me by these interviews.

  However, we were interrupted by two men dressed in light grey uniforms and wearing "security guard" armbands.