by Anchee Min
Mao was called back the third time. Yet he didn't want to be a dispensable bridge just to save the army from its troubled waters. He wanted a permanent position in the power-house—he wanted complete control over the Communist Party's leadership including removing his political enemies.
He was satisfied.
In 1934 the god led his followers and performed a miracle. It was called the Long March.
The girl sits in front of a stack of paper. She can see her thoughts forming. The syllables pop in the air, the sense falls into place. It's overwhelming. The birth of a sudden vision. Its vital energy. The combination of forbidden intimacy and illicit understanding.
I want to be a place on his map! the girl cries.
Kang Sheng tells her that there are women who have invited themselves to Mao's cave. Domestic and exotic alike.
I am not going to turn into a rock because of that, the girl replies.
***
By the hill the sun begins to set. Companies of soldiers arrive and line up. They sit down in rows in front of a makeshift stage, built with bamboo sticks against the deepening blue sky. The orchestra is adjusting its instruments. The girl from Shanghai has made herself the leading lady of the Yenan Opera Troupe. She is about to play a solo called "Story of a Fisherman's Daughter."
The girl prepares herself in a tent. She wraps her head with a bright yellow scarf. She is in her costume, red vest with green skirt-pants. She picks up an "oar," pretends to be on a boat and starts to warm up, stepping in a pattern of one step forward, one step back and one step across. She rocks, swinging her arms from side to side.
The sound of clapping tells her that the leaders and their cabinet members have arrived. The stagehands rush the performers to the curtain. The beat of drums thickens moment by moment. The actors' faces are masked with powder. The eyes and eyebrows are drawn like flying geese.
Looking into the mirror the girl recalls her life in Shanghai. She thinks of Dan, Tang Nah and Zhang Min. The men who traveled over her body but never found the jewel inside. She thinks of her mother. Her misfortune. Suddenly she misses her. Only after the daughter had experienced her own struggle was she able to comprehend the meaning of her mother's wrinkles and the sadness sealed under her skin.
The cartwheels fly across the stage. The actors crack their voices on the high notes. The enthusiastic audience screams excitedly. The sound breaks the night. The actress is told by the stagehand that Mao has arrived. He is sitting in the middle of the crowd. The girl imagines the way the Chairman sits. Like the Buddha on a lotus flower.
She enters the stage in sui-bu, sailing-sliding steps, and then liuquan, willow-arms. She picks up the "oar" and makes graceful strokes in the imaginary water. Up and down she bends, then straightens her knees to depict the movement on a boat. The beats of the drum complement her motion. She toe-heels from the left side of the stage to the right showing her "water-walking" skills. She makes liang-xiang—flashing a pose—and then opens her mouth to sing the famous aria.
Mao's face appears solemn, but inside his mind wind rises and blows through the trunks of his nerves—the girl's voice is like a strong arrow shooting straight toward his mind's estate. His world turns. Seaweed grows in the sky and clouds begin to swim in the ocean.
I would ride with thee on the Nine Streams With winds dashing and waves heaving free In water cars with lotus covers...
His mind is now a shackled horse running against the gale, whipped, kicked, winding up toward a mountaintop draped in thick fog.
I mount Quen-Rung cliffs to look about
My heart feels flighty and unsound
Dusk falling
I feel lost and lorn
Thinking on faraway shores
I come round...
He smells damp air. The air that carries the weight of the water. He hears the rhythm of his own breathing. He blinks his eyes and wipes the sweat from his forehead.
After the curtain descends Kang Sheng guides Mao onto the stage and introduces him to the actress. Handshake. The grace of an ancient sage. He is taller. He has thick black hair, longer than anyone else's in the crowd. It is combed to the sides from the middle—a typical Yenan peasant style with the touch of a modern artist. He has a pair of double-lid almond eyes, gentle but focused. His mouth is naturally red with great fullness. His skin smooth. A middle-aged man, confident and strong. His uniform has many pockets. There are patches neatly sewn on both elbows and knees. His shoes are made of straw.
She feels the pulse of her role.
***
Winter is leaving and spring has yet to arrive. Overnight the grass on the hill is blanketed with frost. Not until noon does the white crust start to melt. After four o'clock the ice begins to form again. The whole hill, the yet-to-turn-green grass, looks like it is under the cover of a crystal film.
It is at this time that Fairlynn becomes the editor-in-chief of Mao's newspaper, The Red Base. It is said that Mao has personally appointed Fairlynn to the position. The paper cheers the recent victories and calls Mao "the soul of China."
Miss Lan Ping is in her uniform. She wraps her neck with an orange scarf. It's the look she cultivates—a soldier with a hint of romantic goddess. It is the effect of a tiny rose among a mass of green foliage. She knows the way men's eyes seek and register. The camera of her future lover's heart. Her comrades, including the wives of the high-ranking officers, are gossiping. The subject is Madame Chiang Kai-shek Song Meilin. It is about her ability to speak a foreign language and more important her ability to control her man. They say she has brought attention to her husband's campaign. She spoke at the League of Nations and obtained funds for her husband's war. The girl is greatly interested.
For the next few weeks, the snow comes down with rain. One moment, the universe of Yenan is soaked, the rain turning the earth into a marsh. The packed ground becomes muddy paste. The pots and cups in the room flood like little boats. The next day, the sun is out. It dries the path and turns the wheel tracks hard as knives. When the rain comes again, the road is a slippery board. On the mile-long path she must carry yams along, Lan Ping falls like a circus clown.
The cafeteria is a large cave with leaking walls. Half of it is used to store carriages and tools. My comrades and I hold our rice bowls and squeeze toward one side where the ground is less pastelike. The rain drips into my bowl. To avoid the drips, I have to eat and move around at the same time.
My boots are heavy with mud. They drag as if trying to get away from my feet. I try hard not to miss Shanghai. The pavement, the pruned trees, the warm restaurants and the toilet.
The rain mixed with snow keeps pouring. The sky and the earth are wrapped in one giant gray curtain.
A crowd fills up the hall of Yenan's LuXiun Art College. Mao is expected to lecture here. The girl from Shanghai is sitting in the front row on a wooden stool. She has come early to ensure the best seat, the spot where she can see and be seen. Now she waits patiently. The air is exuberant. The soldiers sing songs with strong northern accents. The songs are composed from Mao's teaching with a folk melody.
We believe in great Communism
We are the soldiers of the Red Army
We punish looting and stealing
We live to serve the people
And to fight the Japanese invaders and Chiang Kai-shek nationalists
The girl likes the straightforwardness of the lyric. By the third time the song is repeated, Lan Ping picks it up and sings with her full voice. She arouses immediate attention. She goes on, carrying the highest note to its place effortlessly. The soldiers pay her glances of admiration. She sings louder, smiling.
The highest building starts with a brick
The deepest river starts with a drop of water
The revolution starts here in Yenan
In the red territory led by the great Mao Tse-tung
She is moved by the atmosphere, by the action she is taking to achieve her dream, by the fact that she might become a casualty of this dream. A pe
rfect tragic heroine. She could weep, she thinks, smiling.
Amid thunderous clapping Mao appears. The crowd cheers at the top of its voice: Chairman Mao!
He begins with a stylish folk joke very few understand.
The girl is star-struck. It feels as if she has met Buddha himself.
The man on stage talks about the relationship between art and philosophy, between the roles of an artist and a revolutionary.
Comrades! How are we doing with the weeds that have been growing in our stomachs?
His movement is scholarly and relaxed. His voice has a heavy nasal sound, mixed with a vibrating Hunan accent.
I have been cleaning up mine. A lot of pulling and scaling. The thing is that Chiang Kai-shek and the Japanese are easy to identify as enemies. We know they are there to get us. But dogmatism is like weeds. It wears a mask of rice shoots. Can you tell the difference? To be a good artist one has to be a Marxist first. One has to be able to distinguish dogmatism from Communism.
She detects metal in his frame. She suddenly wonders if there is any truth in Kang Sheng's advice: what counts in Yenan is the proof of one's background as a Communist. Her instinct is telling her a different truth, telling her what nature tells men and women. There isn't anything to prove. Everything is in the bodies, in the catching of the eyes of the human animals.
The man on the stage continues. Words, phrases and concepts flow.
The dogmatists pretend to be true revolutionaries. They sit on important seats of our congress. They do nothing but mouth Joseph Stalin. The revolt and attack has started from within, inside our Party's body. They are invisible but fatal. They call themselves one hundred percent Soviets, but they are spiders with rotten spinners—they can no longer produce threads, they are useless to the revolution. They speak in Karl Marx's tune, but they help Chiang Kai-shek. We have been mocked. We have been given glasses with scratched lenses—so we can't see clearly. We have believed in Stalin and trusted the people sent by him. But what do they do here except make social experiments at our cost?
Mao elaborates on Chinese history in light of the current situation, applies theories with military design and invention. Then his expression changes, withdraws, sinks into solemnity, as if the crowd has disappeared in front of him.
The girl can't help but begin measuring. She measures the man's future with a fortuneteller's eye. She zooms in. On his face, through a glittering, she sees an imprint of a lion's claw. She hears its roar. A howling out of time. It is at that moment she hears a click between herself and her role.
His bodyguard comes with a mug of tea. The boy has a caterpillar-like scar between his eyebrows. He places the tea on the ground in front of his master's feet. This amazes the girl. In Yenan it seems natural for people to pick up a mug from the ground instead of a table.
The voice on the stage grows louder. The truth is, comrades, we have been losing—our men, horses and family members. Because of the wrong direction we have been forced to follow, our map has shrunk again. Haven't we learned enough lessons? We didn't lose the battles to Chiang Kai-shek or the Japanese, but to the enemy within. Our brothers' heads roll like rocks ... About preserving political innocence, yes, we want to preserve it, not out of ignorance, but out of knowledge and wisdom. Our leadership is so weak that bad luck has been glued to us. Our teeth fall out when we drink cold water, and we stumble over our own fart! We must stop taking the road to our own graves! Comrades! I want you all to understand that dogmatism is about making sausages with donkey's shit!
He bends, picks up the mug and takes a sip.
She hears the sound of pencils scratching paper.
The crowd, including Fairlynn, writes down Mao's speech.
The girl doesn't write. She memorizes Mao's lines, the spoken and unspoken. It is where she puts her talent to work.
He paces, sips the tea and waits for the crowd to raise their heads from the notepads. He has no printing machine, no newspapers. He relies on the mouths of his crowd. His eyes brush through the hall. Suddenly there is an unexpected sight. His focus is interrupted. He recognizes her, the girl who doesn't take notes like the rest. The actress with her makeup off. The impact is like dawn-light lunging through darkness. Its sensation shoots through him.
A sleeping-seed sprouts.
She looks away, knowing that she has altered his focus. His attention is now on her, and on her alone. It happens in complete silence. A wild chrysanthemum secretly and fervently opens and embraces the sunbeams. The girl feels strangely calm and experienced. She is her role. She takes the moment and tries to make it shine. She is pleased with herself, an actress who has never failed to cast a spell over her audience. Her heart misses no beat. In silence she introduces herself to him. Every part of her body speaks, delivers and reaches. She has him watching her, freely and boldly. Her neatly combed hair, her ivory skin. She sits still, on the ground of Yenan. She lets him find her.
And he smiles. She turns toward him. Her eyes then pass and go beyond him. She doesn't allow him to make contact. Not yet. She crosses him in order to light the fire, to grasp him, to have him begin the pursuit.
The arias of opera flow in her head. The butterfly wings are heavy with golden flower-powders ... She then hears Fairlynn. Her shout. Marvelous! I love the lecture! I love the man!
***
Mao signs autographs and answers questions. The girl raises her arm. He nods her a yes. She projects, asks a question on women's liberation. Suddenly she notices that there is an absent look in his smile. He is looking at her but his eyes don't register.
She drops her question. She feels unsure of herself as she sinks back into the sea of the crowd. Mao raises his eyes. She hopes that he is looking for her. She can't tell. He discontinues the search. She stands up and walks out. She tells herself that she would rather disappear than be unrecognized.
Later on he explains to her the problem. Although he has been living alone the obstacle is that he is still married. The wife's name is Zi-zhen, a heroine as popular and respected as he is. When he was a bandit Zi-zhen rebelled against her landlord family to follow him. She was seventeen then. She was known for her beauty and bravery. She had bullets beneath her ribs from the Long March in 1934. She had borne him six children, but only one, a girl, is alive.
Their separation began when she became terrified of another pregnancy. She refused to sleep with him and he started to sniff around. Zi-zhen found out. Then give it to me, he demanded. She punched him in the face and then went straight to the Politburo. Make him behave like Mao Tse-tung the Savior! she demanded.
Mao wished that he could gun down the marriage certificate that hung between him and Zi-zhen. He moved out of the cave and told Zi-zhen that the marriage was over. Zi-zhen took out her pistol and shot every ceramic pot in the room. He imagined that it was his head that she smashed. He ran away. She broke down but was determined to get him back, determined to make herself suit him. He avoided her. Gradually she learned his will.
Teach me how to suit you! She moved back, he left the room. She insisted that he had to give a reason. He made one up: You know too little of Marxism and Leninism.
She marked his words in her notebook and put herself on a train to Russia. I'll be one hundred percent Marxist and Leninist when I come back.
Agnes Smedley, an American journalist visiting Yenan at that time, recalled her effort to teach Mao to dance. She made a prediction in a letter to a friend: If Mao ever picks up dance he will abandon his wife Zi-zhen. Mao asked Agnes whether romance really existed. I certainly have never experienced one, he said.
When the girl from Shanghai enters his cave, she becomes the representation of what Mao has been looking for.
The time when Zi-zhen leaves Yenan is the time Lan Ping arrives. In the recorded history it is a windy afternoon. Cold and chilly. Zi-zhen is with her small daughter. She looks exhausted and is full of resentment. She talks to a fellow traveler about her life with Mao. Talks about the time when she was eighteen and had a pair of e
yes described as jewels. I met him on the mountain of Yongxin, at a Communist gathering. After days of meetings we chatted, had meals together. Liquors and roasted chickens. He asked me to share his tea cup. Zi-zhen remembers vividly the way Mao made an announcement to his friends: "I am in love." She remembers his dream to build an army of his own. Now he has his army, now she has lost her health and gayness. She is twenty-eight years old and is sick and straw-thin. She sits on a stool in a cheap hotel and is frozen with her thoughts.
The goat-beard man can't help but admire the actress.
Although I have found Chairman Mao's lecture enlightening, I have difficulty comprehending certain points, she says. Is there any way I can ask the Chairman questions in person?
Kang Sheng has never met a girl like her. Sweet but aggressive. He finds her a good partner already. So he says, Of course, the Chairman is a teacher who likes students who challenge themselves. But because of his status, it is not easy to arrange a visit with him. His place is heavily guarded. Kang Sheng pauses, looks at the girl and frowns. Let me see what I can do.
After three days Kang Sheng sends a message to the girl that a private meeting with Mao is scheduled.
As if getting a stage call, Miss Lan Ping comes to the curtain. In the mirror she checks herself for the last time. She has put nothing on her face. In fact she has washed her face twice. She has decided to show her down-to-earthness, her reliability. She is in her uniform, her full costume. Her waist is tightened by a belt.