by Anchee Min
For the rest of his life Yu Qiwei never demonstrates his feelings toward me. He never utters a word about our past. He avoids me by being extremely polite. He lets me feel his wall. The distance he places between us. I have to admire him. He is a man of determination. He makes up his mind and carries it out. He doesn't answer my letters. Not once.
He is doing well and has become powerful. I am not surprised at his achievement. He is unlike Tang Nah. Tang Nah makes me appreciate Yu Qiwei, makes me regret what I did to him. I should have endured the loneliness. But how could I know that he would come out alive while others of his status were killed?
I am curious about Yu Qiwei's feelings. I want to know if he ever misses me. We were part of each other's youth. It can't be erased.
I locate Yu Qiwei. He is in Yenan's hotel for outer-state officers. I am sure he is aware of the effort I made to see him. Yet he is cold when receiving me. He makes me feel that I am bothering him. He keeps his official smile. Sit down, Comrade Lan Ping. Tea? Towel? He asks what he can do for me.
He is a mature-looking man now. Very sure of himself. His confidence makes me crazy. I am in pain to see him. He makes me feel like I am a prostitute trying to make a sale. I remember who he was. I remember the way he liked to be made love to.
We are so close, sitting inches away yet oceans apart. I don't see myself in his eyes. A mosquito's eyelash maybe. He doesn't want me there. He gives me a tired look to show me that his fire has long since died. He tells me without words that I should stop embarrassing myself.
It makes me angry. Makes me want to win. Win hard, win big, win to prove that he was wrong to give me up.
But I know not to show my rage in his office. I say that I come for business. I need a witness on my record as a Communist. Can you help? You were my boss in Qingdao. He understands and says that he will fill out the forms for me. Tell the investigator to contact me if he has any questions.
Thanks, I say. Thanks for taking the trouble.
Then I leave. I leave him alone for the rest of his life. I don't see him for the next thirty years. But I make sure my husband sees him. I make sure Mao gives him a job, and orders him around. He worked for Mao as his regional Party secretary. He was made the mayor of Qingdao. I don't know anything about why he died in his prime. I have no idea of his happiness or unhappiness. I know his wife, Fan Qing, hates me. The feeling is mutual. Whatever happens in the end is no longer my concern. Losers give me a bad taste.
***
The young woman is getting to know midland China, the rising swell of the Shan-Bei plain. It is a bleak landscape. Next to a snakelike little river is a gray town where houses are made of mud with paper windows. There are roosters, hens and chickens on the side of the street that break the silence of the otherwise dead town. Here donkeys are the only means of transportation, and wild grain is the main source of food. On top of a hill is the Yenan Pagoda, built in the Sung dynasty around A.D. 1100.
This is where China's future ruler Mao Tse-tung lives, in a cave like a prehistoric man. He sleeps on a bed laid with half-baked bricks, broken ceramic pots and mud. It is called Kang. Although the brown-skinned soldiers are wood-stick thin, they are tough minded. They live for the dream Mao created for them. They have never known cities like Shanghai. Each morning, on the grounds of a local school, they practice combat. They might only have primitive weapons but they are led by a god.
A few weeks later, the girl will appear on the grassless hill. At sunset by the river, she will sit by a rock and watch the ripples spread in the water. She will wet her lacquer-black hair and sing operas. Although she is twenty-three she looks seventeen in the eyes of the locals. The girl has the finest skin and brightest eyes men here have ever seen. She will come and catch the heart of their god.
9
CAVES, FLEAS, HARSH WINDS, rough food, faces with rotten teeth, gray uniforms, red-star caps are my first impression of Yenan. My new life begins with a form of torture. In order to survive I forbid myself from thinking that this is a place where three million died of starvation in a year. I forbid myself from acknowledging that the locals here have never seen a toilet in their lives and have never taken a bath except at birth, wedding and death. Very few people know the date of their birth or where the capital of China is. In Yenan people call themselves Communists. To them it is a religion. The pursuit of spiritual purity gives them gratification.
I am assigned to a squad with seven female comrades. Five are from the countryside and two including me are from the cities. When I ask the peasant girls their reasons for joining the army, Sesame, the boldest one, says that it was to avoid a prearranged marriage. Her husband was a seven-year-old boy. The rest of the girls nod. They came in order to escape being sold or starved to death. I congratulate them. We spend the morning learning an army drill.
The other city woman has odd features. Her eyes are on the side of her face near the ears, like a goat's. She is arrogant and speaks imperial Mandarin. Her voice is manlike, syllables sliding into each other. The Red Army is not a salvation army, she remarks. It's a school for education. We are Communists, not a bunch of beggars. It's terrible that you have never heard of Marxism and Leninism. We are in the army to change the world, not just to fill our stomachs.
She irritates me. The peasant girls look at each other—don't know how to respond to her. She intimidates. I ask the woman her name. Fairlynn, she responds. I was named after the ancient woman-poet Li, Pure Reflection. Have you heard of her works? Gorgeous verses!
What are you? the peasant girls ask Fairlynn.
A poet.
What is a poet? What is a poem? Sesame still can't get it after an explanation is given.
Fairlynn throws her a book. Why don't you help yourself and find it out?
I don't read, Sesame says apologetically.
Why did you join the Red Army? I ask Fairlynn.
To continue my study with Chairman Mao. He is a poet too.
Fairlynn is a spiritual athlete. She needs a rival to exercise her mind. She calls me Miss Bourgeois and says Yenan is going to toughen me up. In the morning she leaves the door open and lets the wind bang it about. She gets a kick out of it. I hear her manlike laugh. The harsh wind will resculpt your bones and nerves! She is happy that she has made me speechless. Thank Buddha she is ugly, I think to myself. With such a chunky figure, I am sure she has plenty of loneliness to deal with. Her hairstyle, according to her, is inspired by Shakespeare. It looks like an open umbrella. Her long face has sharp lines. A chain-smoker's yellow skin. When she talks her hands are on your face.
I play Qu and Pai verse games with poems, Fairlynn says. I can't wait to play with Chairman Mao. I have heard he loves to be challenged. I am strong in Tang's and I hear he is strong in Song's. His specialty is Fu. Among the Song's, he prefers "Late North" and I "Early South." My specialty is in Zu Hei-Niang's four-tone-eight-line verses and the Chairman's is two-tone-five-line verses. The pin-pin-zbe-zhe stuff.
That will be a surprise if the Chairman receives her, I tell myself. Men must look for different kinds of stimulation in different women.
The place where I live for the next few months is called Qi Family Slope. The cave village has over thirty families and everyone's last name is Qi. Because of the valleys the wind blows harshly. My skin has already begun aching. I have been put in the new soldiers' training program. The village has only one street, which extends and connects to an open field. At the east end is a barn. At the west end stands a public well. The well has no bars and is covered with ice in winter.
My squad passes the street heading toward the training base. I see a young boy with applelike cheeks by the well. He is pulling up a rope with a bucket of water. The weight makes him bend dangerously over the well's mouth. He could slip and fall at any second. I shut my eyes while passing him. There is a blind man selling yams in the street. His yams look ages old. Next to him is a coal shop. A pregnant woman sits in front of a heap of coal washing clothes. Her two young children wear ope
n-rear pants and are playing with the coal. Their butts are coated black. Next is a wood shop. A carpenter is making giant buckets. His young children help sand the surface of the wood.
Fairlynn and I are assigned to live with a peasant family. I have developed a crick in my neck from sleeping on the ground. When the master of the house comes to say good morning one day I mention my pain. The next day the master brings in two straw mats.
My hope for a good night's sleep is ruined by Fairlynn. It's our job to overcome bourgeois weakness, she says, and picks up the straw mats and sends them back to the master.
After a week of poor sleep I begin to feel sick. Fairlynn tosses all night long too. One morning after breakfast, the house master comes with a neighboring woman, who is a tailor. The master explains that he has asked the tailor to lend out her sewing room. It has beds, the tailor says. The city comrades who have fragile bones may prefer beds more than the ground.
This time Fairlynn accepts the offer without a word. We pack up and follow the tailor to her room. We are presented with two beds. One is a single bed made of bamboo and the other hangs down from the ceiling. It is actually a board. Fabrics and miscellaneous rags are laid over it. It is about four feet wide and eight feet long. And it is about seven feet up from the floor, nearly at the ceiling.
Fairlynn suggests that I take the board and she the bed. I'm not like you, light as a bird, she says. The board won't hold my weight—I will crush your bones if it falls.
When I look at the board, I immediately develop a headache. To reach it, I have to step on her bed first, then part my legs to climb onto a wooden stud. Then I have to reach out one foot as a support and lift the other onto the board. Once I lie down I will not be able to sit up, for my head will hit the ceiling if I do.
At night she rests her body against the wall and is afraid to turn. There are no railings to prevent her from falling. Many times she dreams of rolling toward the edge and falling. It takes her weeks to get used to the fear. In order to avoid getting down at night she dares not drink water after three o'clock in the afternoon.
After the dry corn is collected, the squad is sent to transport the field stalks with a single-wheeled cart. It takes Lan Ping a while to learn to use the cart. Once she figures out the tricks she holds the handles steady with both arms bent inward to gain control. She walks on her heels. When going downhill, she pulls the handles and squats down. The weight of her body serves as a brake. Sometimes she squats all the way and her rear end drags on the ground. Unlike her, Fairlynn tumbles over when making sharp turns going down the hill.
Lan Ping begins to feel the distance. The distance between her and the role she wants to play. She is not grasping it. She wonders when she will meet people of significance.
If you are a soldier, act like one. Fairlynn's tone is serious. You don't pop out with questions like a civilian. You don't ask to see Mao, for example ... Suddenly Fairlynn farts. It is a loud fart. Comes in the middle of her sentence. The smell is strong.
Too many yams, observes Sesame.
Gas pills? Lan Ping offers.
Fairlynn is straight-faced as if someone else had farted. Then she starts to fart again. The girls begin to laugh. One of the farts is so long that it lasts a minute. The group bursts with joy when the fart modulates down a couple of notes before it finally dies out.
When I have to go to the bathroom I must squat over a manure pit. It is about three feet in diameter. There is only a wooden board across the pit. On rainy days the surface becomes extremely slippery. Even thinking about it makes me more depressed than I already feel. I have learned to operate guns, throw grenades, roll through bushes, over rocks. I fight and I labor. Communism to me is a moon-in-the-pond and a flower-in-the-mirror. Everything else tells me that I am in the wrong place.
It is midnight and I again have diarrhea. I don't want to climb down in the cold and wake up Fairlynn. But after an hour of tossing I can no longer bear it. I put on my clothes and begin to climb down. Fairlynn is sound asleep. The darkness wraps me as I get out. I have a hard time imagining myself balancing on the wooden board. I think about waking Fairlynn. But I change my mind. I don't want to be called Miss Bourgeois again.
I walk, my hands touching the wall. When I reach the gate, the discomfort in my stomach increases. I push the gate but it won't open. The rings won't budge. In a hurry I make a turn and finally manage to open the door.
I am lost. In front of me is a deserted courtyard. I can't remember where the manure pit is, I only know that it is not far.
***
It is not like what she later told people, that she never doubted the path she had taken. She doubted seriously, as now.
In tears she visits Kang Sheng. It is on a clear afternoon that she comes to his cave office.
Comrade Lan Ping! How have you been? he welcomes her. How are you getting along with life in Yenan? Come on. Have you eaten? Join me for lunch, please.
She hasn't seen meat for months.
They talk over the meal. She is humble, begs for advice.
Well, my knowledge of things is no better than yours, he replies. It is only that I am older and have tasted more salt. Have you tried the opera troupe here? Yenan has a lot of opera fans. The Party bosses are opera fans.
I want to try, but my squad head wouldn't allow me a day off. How would I explain the reason?
Well, let me see. I can transfer you in the name of the personnel department. I'll tell your squad head that the revolution needs you.
She almost wants to stand up and give him a kowtow. Holding herself back she asks for the names of the persons in charge of the Yenan opera troupe.
The people you will work with might be politically advanced, he says, as he tears off a piece of paper and quickly writes a list of names. But they can't sing, can't play roles. You will stand out. So put your mind to it. Would I bring people to see your show? If you are good I'll bring Chairman Mao.
The subtle hint in the words. He reminds me that time doesn't allow me to wait. Youth counts. How easily city girls' fine skin fades into sandpaper here. The harsh wind doesn't argue. It whispers ancient wisdom. While many receive advice, only the wise profit by it. Use your head. Put it this way. There is a different garden of love in Yenan. A woman loves a man for what he can do for China.
A local woman comes in with a teapot. She pours Kang Sheng and me tea. She is young but she has heavy wind-carved wrinkles. Kang Sheng adds, In Yenan, a woman's height is her husband's rank. He laughs as if joking. I am sure a girl of your quality attracts admirers. You should save yourself. Of course this is not our subject today. Here, take it. He pulls out a file from his drawer. Advance yourself with knowledge of the Party—read Mao's works. Remember, only when one's life intertwines with history will one be truly great.
She begins to read what Kang Sheng recommends. Books and papers. The stories fascinate her. They are about the history of the Communist Party, but more about one man's success. One man who single-handedly established and led the Party. One man who three times fell out of the Party's favor and three times made his way back to a role of leadership.
It is the story of Mao Tse-tung.
He is a self-taught man, a son of a Hunan peasant. He established the Hunan Communist group when he was a student in 1923. His mentor was the chief of the Communist Party, Mr. Chen Duxiu. In 1927 after Chiang Kai-shek massacred the Communists, the teacher-student relationship soured. They developed opposing views. Mao believed in the power of force, while Chen believed in the negotiating table. Chen had the say at the time. Yet history proved Mao right. After Chen's negotiations failed he furthered his mistake by ordering positional warfare—building body-walls to block Chiang Kai-shek's bullets. The result: the Red Army lost ninety percent of its force.
Frustrated, Mao took a small peasant force and moved to the remote Jing-gang Mountain to hide. Mao was determined to develop and train his men into an iron force. For his action Mao was accused as a traitor and an opportunist. He was fired.
But Chen had no luck and the Red Army was on the verge of being completely wiped out. Mao was offered back his job, for he had already developed his force into thirty thousand well-equipped men. Taking the new job, Mao battled with Chiang Kai-shek's force, ten times his number. Mao played cat and mouse with his enemy. Then he faced another internal blow. The central Communist Party Politburo believed that the Red Army was so strong that it was time to claim Chiang Kai-shek's main cities. Mao pleaded to withhold action. Again he was labeled a narrow-minded bumpkin and again he was fired.
Mao fell ill but he didn't give up. By the time the bad news came—the Red Army sent to attack the city was destroyed—Mao was ready to sit back in his commander's chair. Like an ancient strategist he applied his art to war and magically turned the situation around. The Red Army not only survived but also began to win again.
Yet Mao's problems were far from over. The Russian-trained army experts expressed their doubts about his guerrilla style. They convinced the Politburo that Mao's conservative tactics were ruining the Party's reputation. The Politburo was convinced that it was necessary to launch a second attack on Chiang Kai-shek's stronghold. When Mao fought again he was criticized as losing confidence in the revolution and was named a coward. This time Mao was not only fired from his job, he was ordered to leave the base. In 193 2, as a form of exile, he was instructed to establish a Party branch in a remote province.
Mao didn't wait for his turn. He actively lobbied, talked to his friends and connections. His prediction was proven right every step of the way. The Red Army lost key battles and finally was blocked by Chiang Kai-shek's force, unable to break out.