The Good Women Of China

by Xinran

  ‘Shhh! Keep your voice down. If your mother hears, she’ll get more funny ideas into her head. To tell you the truth, I really liked Jingyi, but I wasn’t in her league,’ my father said, with a sheepish look on his face.

  ‘Not in her league? Impossible! You always boast about what a debonair figure you cut as a young man,’ I teased him as I began repacking my bags.

  ‘Why are you leaving so soon?’ my father asked as he watched me.

  ‘I’m going back to Wuxi right now. I made so much effort to find Jingyi before, and now I have done it by chance.’

  My father replied ruefully, ‘If I’d known earlier, I wouldn’t have woken you up.’

  One of the directors of the broadcasting station lived close to my parents so I rushed to his house to ask for emergency leave. I lied that a relative was visiting, and I had to show her around for a few days. I hate lying because I believe it shortens life, but I was even more afraid of the director knowing the truth. Having obtained his permission, I telephoned the stand-in presenter of my programme to ask if she would cover me for a few more days.

  I missed the noon train to Wuxi and had to wait till evening, head spinning with questions about Jingyi, fretting and impatient. Time seemed to crawl.

  At about the time my broadcast would have begun, ten o’clock or thereabouts, I returned to the hotel by Lake Taihu. The receptionist recognised me and asked, ‘Oh, haven’t you left after all?’

  ‘No, that’s right,’ I said, not wanting to waste time on explanations.

  Standing in front of the door of room 4209, the questions that had been thronging in my mind suddenly vanished, and I was hesitant once again. I raised my hand and let it fall twice before I finally knocked.

  ‘Jingyi, it’s me, Xinran,’ I called out. I felt like crying; I had sat with her for so many nights, and not known a thing. I imagined her sitting in silence for forty-five years, and my chest tightened.

  Before I could compose myself, the door opened.

  She stood there amazed and asked, ‘Hadn’t you left? How do you know my name?’

  I pulled her over to sit by the window again, but was not silent this time. I gently told her what I knew of her from my father. Jingyi wept as she listened, making no effort to wipe away her tears. I felt choked with questions, but only managed to ask: ‘Are you thinking about Gu Da?’ At this, she fainted.

  I was very frightened, and telephoned the switchboard to call an ambulance.

  The operator was hesitant. ‘Xinran, it’s the middle of the night . . .’

  ‘People don’t distinguish night from day when they are dying. Can you bear to watch this woman die in front of you?’ I asked agitatedly.

  ‘All right, don’t worry. I’ll call at once.’

  The telephone operator was very efficient. Not long afterwards, I heard someone in the building shouting, ‘Where’s Xinran?’

  I replied quickly, ‘Here I am!’

  When the ambulance driver saw me he was stunned. ‘You’re Xinran? But you’re perfectly all right!’

  ‘I’m fine.’ I was confused, but guessed that the telephone operator had made use of my supposed public prominence to summon the ambulance.

  I travelled with Jingyi to a military hospital. The medical staff would not allow me to be present when they examined her, so I could only look in on her through a tiny window in the door. She lay immobile in the whiteness of the room, and I grew increasingly anxious as I imagined the worst. I could not stop myself from exclaiming tearfully, ‘Oh, Jingyi, wake up!’

  A doctor patted me on the shoulder. ‘Xinran, don’t worry, she’s fine. She’s just weak. It looks like she’s had a great upset, but the tests on her vital functions show no changes for the worse. That’s quite good for her age. She’ll be fine on a more nourishing diet.’

  As I listened to this prognosis, I began to feel calmer, though I still felt Jingyi’s anguish keenly. I muttered helplessly to the doctor, ‘She must have suffered so much. I don’t know how she got through more than fifteen thousand nights . . .’

  The doctor allowed me to rest in the duty room. Head spinning with random thoughts, I fell into an exhausted sleep. I dreamed of women crying and struggling, and woke unrefreshed.

  The next day I went to see Jingyi four or five times, but she was always asleep. The doctor said she would sleep for several days, because she was so exhausted.

  I booked a dormitory bed in the hospital guesthouse. I did not have enough money for a private room – and besides, I hardly used it. Not wanting Jingyi to be alone, I stayed all night by her bedside and rested a little in the daytime. Over the course of several days, she remained unconscious, a slight twitching of the eyelids the only sign of movement.

  At dusk on the fifth day, Jingyi finally came round. She seemed not to realise where she was, and began struggling to speak. I put a finger to her lips and softly told her what had happened. As she listened, she reached out to clasp my hand in gratitude, and managed her first words: ‘Is your father well?’

  The dam had been breached, and Jingyi’s tale flowed forth as she lay against the white expanse of the hospital pillow that evening. She told me her story in a steady voice.

  In 1946, Jingyi passed the entrance examination for Qinghua University. On the first day of registration, she saw Gu Da for the first time. Among the students, Gu Da was distinguished neither by good looks nor extraordinary achievement. When Jingyi saw him that first day, he was silently helping others with their luggage, and looked like a university porter. Jingyi and Gu Da were put in the same class, where many young men began to court Jingyi for her beauty and sweet nature. Unlike them, Gu Da often sat alone in a corner of the classroom or deep in the university gardens reading. Apart from noting that he was a bookworm, Jingyi did not pay much attention to him.

  Jingyi was a cheerful girl, and often suggested lively activities that her classmates enjoyed. One clear winter day after heavy snowfall, the students went outside excitedly to build a snowman. Jingyi suggested making two snowmen instead, using candied haws for their noses. With the men and women in different groups, they would take turns kissing the snowmen blindfolded. The lucky ones would get to eat a candied haw and the others a mouthful of snow.

  At that time, public transport or bicycles were not common. The only way to get candied haws for this game was to walk several hours through the snow to the centre of Beijing – then known as Beiping. The male students who normally vied for Jingyi’s attention did not offer to do this, and several slunk away to their dormitories quietly. Jingyi was disappointed that they had no sense of fun, but did not press her suggestion further.

  The next day, more snow fell, blanketing the earth thickly and most of the students spent the day reading in the classroom. About halfway through the evening study period, under the dim light of the lamps, a man covered in ice entered. He walked up to Jingyi and, with some effort, pulled two sticks of Beiping candied haws from his pocket. They had been frozen into a lump. Before anyone could see who this iceman was, he turned and left the classroom.

  The astonished Jingyi had recognised Gu Da. As her delighted classmates were chattering about playing Jingyi’s game the next day, she stood distractedly, looking from the candied haws to the falling snow outside, imagining Gu Da walking through it.

  Gu Da did not take part in the game the following day. The classmates in his dormitory said that he was sleeping like the dead, as though he had drunk a magic potion. Jingyi was worried that he had made himself ill with exhaustion. But at evening study that day, she was relieved to see him arrive and sit in his corner reading as before. After the study period, Jingyi stopped on her way out and thanked him. Gu Da smiled shyly and said, ‘It was nothing. I’m a man.’

  Gu Da’s artless reply touched Jingyi. It was the first time she had felt male solidity and strength; she began to feel like a heroine in a book, kept awake all night by her thoughts.

  Jingyi began to observe Gu Da closely. His taciturn nature led her to all sorts of co
njectures, and she mulled over his behaviour endlessly. Apart from the time he had brought her the candied haws, Gu Da seemed indifferent to her, quite unlike the other eager young men who pursued her. She began hoping for some attention from him, and started finding excuses to speak to him. He replied impassively, displaying no particular attentiveness in either his speech or manner. Rather than putting Jingyi off, Gu Da’s reserve merely heightened her hopes.

  Jingyi’s liking for Gu Da exasperated many of her would-be suitors. They poked fun at Gu Da for his wooden demeanour, calling him a frog who dreamed of kissing a princess, and accusing him of toying with Jingyi’s feelings. None of these remarks were made in Jingyi’s presence, but a girl classmate later told her about them, saying, ‘Gu Da must really be made of wood. He just replied, “The people involved know what’s true and what’s false.”’

  Jingyi admired Gu Da’s calmness in the face of his classmate’s taunts, feeling that it displayed the qualities of a true man. All the same, she could not help being annoyed that Gu Da had been lukewarm in his behaviour towards her for so long.

  Just before the end-of-term examinations, Gu Da was absent from class for two days in a row; his dormitory mates claimed he was asleep. Jingyi did not believe that he was just sleeping, but she was not allowed to visit Gu Da in his dormitory because of the strict segregation between the sexes. On the third day, however, she slipped out of the classroom while the others were absorbed in studying, and went to Gu Da’s dormitory. She pushed open the door quietly, and saw Gu Da lying asleep. His face was extremely flushed. When she gently picked up his hand to tuck it back under the quilt, she found it burning hot. Although this was a time when no physical contact was permitted between men and women who were not a married couple, she touched Gu Da’s head and face with no hesitation. They too were feverish. Jingyi called his name loudly, but Gu Da did not reply.

  Jingyi ran back to the classroom, shouting for help. Everyone was alarmed by her panic and dashed off in different directions to look for a lecturer or a doctor. Later, the doctor said that it was lucky Gu Da had been found in time: half a day longer without medical attention would have resulted in his death from acute pneumonia. At that time, there were no hospital facilities on the Qinghua campus. The doctor prescribed between ten and twenty doses of herbal medicine, and said that it would be best if a member of his family could nurse him, administering cold compresses and rubbing his hands and feet with ice.

  Gu Da had never mentioned any family or friends in Beiping. His home was in the south of China, but the railway was cut off then, so there was no way of contacting his family. In any case, they would not have been able to arrive in time to nurse him through the critical period. As he was getting ready to leave, the doctor found himself in a quandary: he was not confident that Gu Da would survive under the care of these inexperienced young people. In the midst of earnest discussion amongst the students, Jingyi walked up to the doctor and said quietly, ‘I’ll look after him. Gu Da is my fiancé.’

  The Dean of Studies was a kind man. He arranged for the boys who lived in Gu Da’s room to move to another dormitory so Gu Da could rest in peace and Jingyi could stay at his bedside. She was strictly forbidden to sleep in the dormitory.

  For more than ten days Jingyi laid cold compresses on Gu Da’s head, washed and fed him, and brewed herbal medicine for him. The light shone through the night in Gu Da’s dormitory, and the bitter smell of Chinese medicine wafted out along with the faint sound of Jingyi’s voice. She sang one southern Chinese song after another, thinking to revive Gu Da with tunes from his homeland. Their classmates, especially the boys, sighed at the thought of the delicate Jingyi tirelessly nursing Gu Da.

  Under Jingyi’s painstaking care, Gu Da recovered. The doctor said that he had walked out from the jaws of death.

  Their love for each other was cemented – nobody could begrudge it after the sacrifices they had made. However, some people still said privately that pairing Jingyi with Gu Da was like casting a fresh flower into cow dung.

  Over the next four years of university, Jingyi and Gu Da supported each other through their studies and daily lives. Every passing day was proof of their love – first love for them both, and unwavering in its strength. Ideologically committed, they entered the underground Communist Party together and dreamed of a new era and a new life, imagining the children they would have, and speaking of their golden wedding anniversary.

  Their graduation coincided with the foundation of a new China, and their newly revealed political status gained them unusual respect in society. They were called to separate interviews with the army. They had both studied mechanical engineering, and the new Motherland, which was still in its infancy, needed their knowledge for national defence. It was a solemn time: everything was charged with a sense of mission, and things happened very quickly. Jingyi’s and Gu Da’s experiences in the underground Party had taught them that they were duty-bound to accept every mission and carry it through to the end. Everything, including separation, had to be accepted unconditionally.

  Jingyi was posted to a military base in the north-west and Gu Da to an army unit in Manchuria. Before they parted, they made plans for a reunion in the gardens of Qinghua University, where they could share their individual achievements, and then go to Beijing city centre for some candied haws. After that, they would apply for a marriage permit from the Party, travel to Gu Da’s home by Lake Taihu in south China, and settle down to start a family. This agreement was firmly imprinted in Jingyi’s mind.

  Against all expectations, they were both confined to their military work units the following year, after the outbreak of the Korean War. In their third year of separation, Jingyi was temporarily transferred to a special army research and development unit in the central China plain, with no leave to visit friends or family. In their fourth year apart, Gu Da was transferred to an airforce base in east China. The changing addresses in Jingyi’s box of love letters were evidence that Jingyi and Gu Da were indispensable to the urgent needs of the new China and its military industry.

  Their reluctance to let each other go was evident in their letters, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to arrange a meeting. ‘Duty to the Party’ led to countless postponements of planned meetings, and often interrupted their correspondence. In the chaos of political movements in the late 1950s, Jingyi was interrogated because of problems in her family background, and sent to rural Shaanxi for ‘training and reform’. At that time, even the important task of building the national defence was considered secondary to the class struggle. She lost all personal freedom and was unable to communicate or come and go as she pleased. She nearly lost her mind missing Gu Da, but the peasants responsible for overseeing her reform refused to help her. They could not defy Chairman Mao’s orders by allowing Jingyi to leave: she might become a spy or have contact with counter-revolutionaries. Later, an honest cadre suggested a way out for her: she could change her status and gain her freedom by marrying a peasant. Still deeply in love with Gu Da, Jingyi found this thought intolerable.

  Jingyi spent nine years labouring in the village in Shaanxi. The village stream was both its lifeline and an unofficial meeting place, where village gossip and news from further afield were exchanged. Jingyi saw the stream as her sole means of communication with Gu Da. Almost every night, she would sit by the stream and silently express her longing for him, hoping that the fast-flowing water would carry her feelings to where he was. But the stream brought Jingyi no news of the world beyond.

  Over the years, the villagers gradually forgot there was anything special about Jingyi; she had grown to look like a typical peasant woman. Only one quality distinguished her: she was the only woman of her age still unmarried.

  In the late 1960s, a county official came to the village to give Jingyi government orders to prepare for a transfer. Orders were to ‘grasp revolution and press on with production’. The anti-Soviet campaign had begun.

  As soon as Jingyi returned to her military base, she se
t out to accomplish two things. First, she had to prove that she was essentially unchanged. Her years labouring in the fields had aged her and altered her appearance greatly. Her colleagues did not dare to acknowledge her at first, and could not believe that she still possessed her former skills. They gave her tests and experiments, made her analyse problems and describe past events. After a week, they concluded that her mental brilliance was undiminished.

  Second, but more important to Jingyi personally, she had to get in touch with Gu Da again. Her colleagues were moved by her devotion to him, and each of them made their own enquiries to help her. After three months of searching, all they had found out was that Gu Da had been imprisoned at the start of the Cultural Revolution as a reactionary and a suspected secret agent of the Guomindang. Enquiries at all the possible prisons he might have been sent to drew unsatisfactory replies: Gu Da seemed to have passed through all of them, but nobody knew where he had gone next. Jingyi was despairing, but not resigned. As long as there was no news of Gu Da’s death, there was hope, which gave her life meaning.

  In the ensuing years of the Cultural Revolution, Jingyi was more fortunate than most of her colleagues and former classmates. She was given special protection because of her skills; the military base leaders skilfully hid her from the Red Guards many times. She understood the great danger the leaders faced in protecting her and contributed several major scientific achievements to repay her debt to them.

  Jingyi never stopped searching for Gu Da. She visited every village and town he might have been in, and even went to Lake Taihu, which they had dreamed about. With the help of friends, she took two weeks to travel the circumference of the lake looking for Gu Da, but there was no trace of him.

  In the 1980s, after the Reform and Opening Up policy, the people had finally woken from the endless nightmare of political and social chaos, and were putting to rights everything that had been thrown into confusion. Jingyi was one of countless other people searching for lost family or friends through letters, telephone calls and personal enquiries. The passion of her search often went unappreciated by others: Gu Da was Jingyi’s lover, not theirs. The Cultural Revolution had numbed the feelings of many, who had been taught by bitter experience to put basic physical needs and political safety before empathy or emotion.