The Secret Piano: From Mao's Labor Camps to Bach's Goldberg Variations

by Xiao-Mei, Zhu

  While waiting to figure out the answer, I found work as an accompanist in a ballet school. I had never had a job that was so well paid, never imagined I could earn so much. I observed the life around me; it was comfortable, but also dull. I looked into teaching piano in Hong Kong; the level seemed rather low.

  For the first time in my life, I was completely free to choose. And so I chose. A month after my arrival, my mind was made up. As usual, my decision was more intuitive—more unconscious—than reasonable or logical. But then, reason had never much interested me. I couldn’t do what everyone else did: the impossible was much more exciting.

  Life in Hong Kong was not for me. There was so little cultural life, and I had a thirst for everything—music, literature, cinema, painting. And I certainly wasn’t going to spend my life giving piano lessons to pampered wealthy kids just to earn money. There were many more important things in life. It was absurd. The Communists despised money, and on this point, I had to agree with them.

  No, it didn’t make sense to stop here in mid-flight, without going all the way. What had life given me up to that point? Nothing. I was over thirty years old. The Cultural Revolution had robbed me, and my entire generation, of our youth. I wanted to make up for lost time, see what I was capable of and how far I could go. I knew it was too late for the international competitions, but so what? I knew that the piano was more important to me than anything else, and I was ready to sacrifice everything for the life of an artist. I was prepared to set off into the unknown, to go without, to struggle, to give up both seeing my family and starting one of my own. Perhaps I would fail. But deep inside, I believed in my lucky star. Later, I would view this decision as egotistical. But for now, the die was cast and the choice was clear—as soon as I had saved enough money for a plane ticket, I would leave for the States.

  By late March 1980, everything was set. I had my ticket, and Chen was waiting for me in Los Angeles. I said my good-byes to my cousins and the friends I had made during those two months in Hong Kong.

  One morning I set off for the airport. I thought of Jonathan Livingstone, the seagull who wanted to fly higher than all the others. California was waiting. America: the land of liberty and wealth, the place where everything was possible.

  PART TWO

  THE WEST

  16

  The Land of Freedom

  The best man is like water.

  Water is good, it benefits all things

  and does not compete with them.

  It dwells in lowly places that all disdain.

  This is why it is so near to Tao.

  (Laozi)

  “Who was Laozi?”

  I confessed my ignorance to my seatmate, a quiet woman with a steady smile.

  We had introduced ourselves just after takeoff. She had reassuringly told me that the red drink they’d served as an aperitif was not blood, but tomato juice. She also informed me that the little gold-paper packet emblazoned with a tiger, which I mistook for tiger balm, was actually something called butter. But our conversation really got underway after I overturned my food tray onto her dress.

  “It’s all right, don’t worry about it,” she said.

  I learned that she was an American, a university professor and a Sinologist.

  She tried again:

  “Laotsi? Laotsu? Laosi?”

  I still didn’t understand, and it wasn’t a question of pronunciation. I was the source of the problem, not her. I had simply never heard of a philosopher named Laozi.

  “I understand,” she said. “I’m aware of what happened during the Cultural Revolution.”

  So this American taught me, a Chinese woman, something I didn’t know.

  “Laozi was one of the greatest Chinese philosophers. At least, that’s my opinion. We know very little about his life. It’s believed that he lived during the sixth century BCE, and that he was an archivist at the royal court of the Zhou dynasty during the Spring and Autumn Period. He yearned to become an advisor to the king, but he was unsuccessful. He then understood that renouncing all worldly desires was the path to wisdom, and he decided to go into exile. He got as far as the border; there a guard recognized him and begged him not to depart before he had shared the essence of his knowledge. Laozi acquiesced and wrote the Dao de jing before disappearing forever. He was a contemporary of Heraclitus, and preceded Plato by a century; and yet, he is much less well-known than the other two. I often teach him in my courses. I would like people to become more familiar with him in the West. In today’s violent world, we have great need of him.”

  Unaware that I was even less well acquainted with Plato and Heraclitus, she rose from her seat and fished a small book out of her bag.

  “I’d like to read you a passage, perhaps my favorite,” she said. “‘The best man is like water. Water is good, it benefits all things and does not compete with them. It dwells in lowly places that all disdain. This is why it is so near to Tao.’”

  I stared at her in astonishment. For me, life was a series of struggles. Above all, the struggle for success, and I was headed to the United States with precisely that in mind. I did not understand what Laozi meant: my goal was first place, certainly not “the lowly place that all disdain.” My seatmate must have intuited what I was thinking because she added, smiling:

  “Think it over. One day you will see how true it is.”

  As we made our descent towards Los Angeles, she helped me fill out my disembarkation card for the immigration authorities, and gave me her address:

  “I live quite a distance from Los Angeles, but don’t hesitate to call me. And please, call collect.”

  The plane touched down. This way to the exit. The exit? But where was it? The airport terminal was so enormous, it was a veritable city. I had mistakenly stepped away from the flow of passengers, and now I was lost. An escalator brought me up to a cafeteria; I didn’t know which way to turn. I caught sight of a Chinese man, seated in front of a large paper cup. I went up to him, already feeling better:

  “Please sir, I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m lost. I took the escalator, and now I can’t find the exit.”

  The man reluctantly stopped drinking from the straw, looked me up and down, and then said in a thick Taiwanese accent:

  “Think about it: if there’s an up escalator, there’s bound to be another that goes down, right?”

  It wasn’t hard to understand why he had reacted that way. There was no way for me to hide I was from the People’s Republic of China, and that didn’t endear me to him. My self-confidence suddenly failed me. I had never heard of Laozi, I didn’t know what tomato juice was, and now I couldn’t find my way out of the airport. I wandered around for quite a while until I finally saw, far off, someone waving at me: it was my cousin Chen! He had come to meet me, accompanied by his two oldest daughters.

  A few minutes later, we were driving towards Beachwood Canyon, a suburb near Hollywood, where the family lived.

  “You know,” he told me, “since the end of the Cultural Revolution, a lot of Chinese have immigrated to the US. Their behavior often leaves something to be desired. They want to get ahead and make a lot of money, but they don’t want to work.”

  For a moment I thought about my father, who had worked hard his whole life with nothing to show for it. I reassured Chen.

  “I won’t be like them; I want to earn my own living. I’ll find a way.”

  While we talked, I gazed at the passing houses. They all looked like palaces.

  My cousin Amy, a beautiful woman, was waiting at the door, cradling her youngest child. I glanced around me. Their home was spacious and tastefully decorated. But so cluttered—I had only ever lived in spare places with bare walls, and my head started to spin. One detail stood out in particular: the floor was covered in toys. They were everywhere, the majority new or almost new, but all of them seemingly abandoned. I had never had any toys. Except, of course, the little spear decorated with a red flag that Mao had wanted in the hands of every child in China.
/>
  I presented the gifts I had brought from home, which had been so costly for my parents. Amy barely glanced at the two jade pendants that my mother had carefully picked out. And as for the sword that had nearly prevented me from crossing the border into Hong Kong, it never made it out of its wrapping during my entire visit. My cousins had other concerns.

  A half hour later, when I came down from my temporary bedroom, I offered to put away the children’s toys. It was as much for the pleasure of it, as out of a concern for order. I picked them up, examining each one from all sides. I took pleasure in touching them. Chen remarked good-naturedly:

  “Take whatever you like. The kids have far too many.”

  I noticed a little bag. Chen insisted:

  “Go ahead, keep that one, if you like it.”

  After dinner, we sat down in front of the television. President Jimmy Carter was addressing the nation: the US was in the middle of the Iran hostage crisis. I strained to grasp what he was saying, but my knowledge of English was wholly insufficient. Chen broke in and asked me:

  “Did you understand what he said?”

  I had to confess: I hadn’t.

  “He said, ‘Help me.’ You couldn’t make that out? It’s going to be difficult for you to study if you don’t even know simple words. You need to start learning English.”

  “How should I go about it?”

  “One way is to watch television like us. We’ll also give you cassettes of children’s stories in English. Listen to them at night while you are sleeping. It’s not difficult.”

  Amy added:

  “Xiao-Mei, instead of studying, you should think about your parents. In order to send them money, you should give private piano lessons.”

  “Or come work as a nurse’s aid in my clinic,” Chen added. “In the US there are all sorts of opportunities for young people; but it’s very hard for the elderly, who often live far from their families. There’s a great demand for care providers. In fact, it pays quite well.”

  This was not easy to hear, particularly at the end of my first day. But I understood their perspective. We were from different worlds. Chen was a typical Hong Kong émigré. He had attended a British high school before his father sent him to an American university. He met his future wife there, a biology student from Taiwan. They married and then settled down in Los Angeles, where they joined a large diaspora. This community allowed them to remain faithful to their Chinese culture. Chen gave free acupuncture classes. At home, the family spoke Chinese and ate Chinese food. But that didn’t prevent them from integrating into American life.

  The next morning, after a sleepless night, I enrolled in a nearby language school that offered English classes to refugees. I found myself in the midst of Mexicans, unable to understand a single word, with no one to help me. Returning to my cousin’s house, I admired the long streets lined with magnificent flowers: I had so often dreamed of this America. It was truly paradise. But I felt like such a foreigner, and I wondered if there was a place for me here. To tell the truth, I hadn’t experienced anything as difficult as this since my arrival at Zhangjiakou.

  A few days later, a new student joined our class at the language school. She was a young Chinese woman—thin, pale, and frightened. We exchanged glances. I was sure I had seen her somewhere before.

  “Dora?”

  “Yes. Do I know you?”

  Dora was the daughter of the Beijing Conservatory’s director; she had come with her mother to see me the day after my alleged suicide attempt. How could I ever forget her? I had heard that she had immigrated to the US, but I never thought I’d run into her. She looked like she was at her wits’ end.

  “I’m having so much trouble,” she said. “My cousins who are putting me up don’t give me anything to eat, and I’m afraid to ask for anything. I’m so hungry. I’m completely worn out.”

  That evening, I explained the situation to my cousin Chen.

  “Tell her to come here,” he said straightaway.

  And so Dora joined us until she could get her health back together. In the end, she stayed a number of months.

  I wrote my first letter to my mother. We had made an agreement: once I was in the US, I wouldn’t send my parents any money, as I would need it. On the other hand, we would write to each other every week. I told her that everything was going well, but that wasn’t really the case. Deep down, I felt as though I were suffocating.

  After I had fulfilled this first obligation, I combed through the employment listings in the Los Angeles Times. Courses at the California Institute of the Arts didn’t start until September, and I needed to find something to do until then. Baby-sitting and house cleaning were possibilities. My first few telephone calls, however, were disastrous.

  “What did you say? Who do you want to talk to? Who are you?”

  The people I dialed hung up in a matter of seconds, unable to understand my English and unwilling to try. I told myself that there was only one thing to do: ask for an interview. It would be much easier for me to explain things in person.

  The first interview I set up was in a retirement home. It was located in Orange County, and I had to take a bus to get there. But the meeting didn’t last much longer than my telephone conversations:

  “Your English really isn’t strong enough. I’m sorry, but we can’t do anything for you.”

  I dozed off unwittingly on the bus ride home, worried sick about the future and exhausted by long sleepless nights of listening to children’s stories.

  “Hey! Wake up!”

  “Are we there?”

  “This is the end of the route. Where are you going?”

  “Beachwood.”

  “Beachwood? We’re nowhere near there! We passed that stop a long time ago!”

  The driver looked very upset. And no wonder—it was just the two of us in an empty bus, it was nine o’clock, and I had completely missed my stop.

  When I finally got back to my cousins’ house, it was nearly midnight.

  “Xiao-Mei, what happened? We were crazy with worry about you!”

  I told them about my epic journey.

  “Look for work in Beachwood instead. Please don’t frighten us like that again.”

  They were right. I had to be more careful. When I heard that my cousins’ neighbors were looking for a cleaning woman, I introduced myself. He was a doctor, and she was a dazzlingly beautiful woman. Both of them were the type of American who is “crazy about China.”

  “You don’t speak English well? That doesn’t matter—we love Chinese people. If you like, it’s a deal. The job pays three hundred dollars a month. It’s five days a week, Monday to Friday.”

  Three hundred dollars! My heart began to race: in China, Mao said that we should earn three hundred yuan per month, or about forty dollars. I pulled myself together.

  “Why only five days? In China, I worked six days a week. I’d prefer to work six days a week.”

  “All right, if you insist. You can start tomorrow. Before that, let me show you the house.”

  We walked into the living room. I stopped short—there stood a magnificent Steinway, a concert grand. How much did my future employers earn per month that they were able to afford such a wonder? In China, there were probably only four or five such instruments between Beijing and Shanghai combined. Here, there was one in a living room. Perhaps, someday, would I be allowed to play it?

  No such luck. My tasks left me without any free time. The house had five bathrooms, each one lined with mirrors that had to be polished. I did three loads of laundry per day, all of which had to be ironed. Each mealtime, the plates were changed four times, and it was after midnight before I finished doing the dishes. I also had to clean the pool, around which innumerable parties were held.

  Following a flourish of limousines, the guests would arrive and stroll across the lawn…

  “A beautiful day, isn’t it?”

  “Really quite lovely.”

  “What a magnificent house.”

 
; “What did you do last weekend?”

  Everyone gave the impression that they were permanently on vacation, yet at the same time, they appeared to have nothing to say. They were oblivious to my existence, even when I held out the drinks tray to them. At moments like that, I didn’t mind not understanding English. Rather, it spared me a lot of banal conversation.

  And the Steinway? The best I could do was dust it. I was only able to play it two or three times: my employers were more concerned with my housekeeping abilities. And what they loved most was that I was from China.

  “You know, we have a real Chinese woman!” they were forever telling their friends.

  But they could also be generous: I was free every morning for two hours to go and practice my English at the language school for refugees.

  One day, Chen and his wife took me aside.

  “Xiao-Mei, you never smile. It’s difficult for the children. They need happiness and cheerfulness around them. What’s the matter?”

  What was the matter? I was uncomfortable in America. The waste, the superficial conversations, the obsession with money. I was confronted with a plethora of choices every day, and I wasn’t used to making decisions. This wasn’t freedom. At any rate, it wasn’t the type of freedom I was seeking. But how could I explain this?

  One evening, to take my mind off things, some Chinese friends of my cousins offered to take me to Disneyland.

  “It will do you good, you’ll see.”

  The next weekend, they kept their promise. With touching insistence, they took me on every single ride—I even had to shake hands with both Mickey and Donald. Finally, dead tired, I told them that yes, re-education camp was tough, but at least we had been spared this kind of mental torture. They didn’t take it badly; on the contrary, it made them even more sympathetic. I must really have been contaminated by Communism if I didn’t even know how to enjoy myself. They assured me that one day I would recover, and that I would come back to Disneyland and have the time of my life.