A Boy of China

by Richard Loseby

  Despite Zhou’s dislike of all these comparisons, he was powerless to stop them from gaining ground. Moreover, to refute them would have been seen as disrespectful, an insult to the most powerful man in all of China, and his many ardent followers — not a wise career move. Only more recently, when the journalist Wang Qiushe had attempted to write the story, had he intervened, using his authority to have the article suppressed. I immediately thought of Wang in his hospital bed: his voice had been removed in more ways than one. For a brief moment I shuddered at the thought that this ‘suppression’ had gone further than mere censorship. What if Zhou had somehow contributed to Wang’s cancer — by having him poisoned, for example? Somehow I doubted he had that in him but, nevertheless, it was a cautionary reminder not to step on the toes of this man, no matter how old he was.

  ‘So you do not think you’re the lost son of Mao?’ I asked.

  He sighed, and then after a lengthy pause said. ‘I am Zhou Fung Mu, the only son of Zhou Long and Zhou Na, raised in the fields of Jiangxi province. Like many from that time, my birth parents gave me away in 1934, the same year the Long March began. I was just two, but whether my real parents were “Long Marchers” I can’t be sure, though it does seem likely. According to the Communist Party I am simply a boy of China, and when I die I will return to those same fields to enrich the soil with my bones.’

  ‘I hope that doesn’t happen for a long time yet,’ I said.

  ‘You may wish that,’ he replied graciously, ‘but my body believes differently.’

  He reached out to the photograph of his wife and touched the glass lightly.

  ‘Tell me,’ he asked suddenly, changing the subject, ‘do you like flowers?’

  ‘Of course,’ I replied.

  His face brightened. ‘Then come with me.’

  We followed Zhou down the stairs outside his apartment to the ground floor, where a heavy wooden door opened onto a path to the rear of the building. There we found he’d built a garden with neatly tended rows of vegetables. Beside this was a greenhouse whose many panes of glass could be individually opened to manually control the temperature. Inside we stepped onto bare flagstones that were cool to the touch. Wooden shelves carried a weight of gardening equipment: trowels, forks, gloves, a grafting knife, seed trays and a bag of fertiliser. In the middle of the floor was a line of plain terracotta pots, each of which contained the stem of a plant, no more than 30 centimetres high, which had been neatly grafted and covered with a plastic bag. At the far end of the greenhouse was a larger, more ornate pot that contained Zhou’s prize camellia.

  ‘It belonged to my wife.’

  He told us that in China the camellia symbolises the long-lasting union of two hearts. The petals are female, while the green sepal that holds them in place is seen as male. Unlike other flowers, when the bloom is over they both fall to the ground together, as one.

  ‘But she went before me, many years ago,’ he said sadly.

  He had taken up his wife’s passion for growing camellias and had learnt to graft different species together so that one camellia tree could have two different types of flower. I told him that in a cottage we used to live in there were two camellia trees planted so close they had fused together and every summer the branches were filled with flowers of two distinct colours, pink and red.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he said softly, before adding: ‘Are you married?’

  ‘Yes. For many years now.’

  ‘And you love her still?’

  ‘I do,’ I replied.

  He shuffled his feet around so that he could turn to face me. For the first time that day he was smiling — a broad, contented kind of smile.

  ‘Then,’ he said, ‘never let her go.’

  He pulled out some wooden boxes so that Tong and I could sit while he perched on a stool of his own making. He’d taken an old broomstick handle and cut it into three equal lengths, used smaller pieces of wood to keep the legs apart, then tied the top end together with hemp and inserted that into a hole in the middle of a wooden seat. The parts that stuck up through the hole he had cut off and sanded flat. He said somewhat apologetically that he was a policeman not a carpenter, but I could tell he was a little of both.

  ‘Are you happy now?’ he asked. ‘Now that you know my story.’

  ‘Not quite,’ I replied.

  He raised his eyebrows and sat a little taller on the stool. I felt his mood shift a little, away from the light and back towards the darkness inside him.

  ‘I would like you to read something,’ I said, offering to him several pages of paper covered in Chinese writing that I had printed out at the hotel.

  He took them from my hand and reached for his reading glasses, fumbling to get them open.

  ‘What is this?’ he queried, not without a note of irritation.

  ‘This is the only historically accurate account I can find that describes the events after the Long March and what happened to He Zizhen, your mother.’

  The papers trembled in his hands, though I wasn’t sure whether that was due to old age, anger or some other emotion. He seemed to be reading sections then skipping past others; finally he flicked to the end and stopped.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ he asked.

  ‘Because I think it might help.’

  ‘Help. Help with what?’

  ‘The bitterness you feel towards her. Mao I can understand, after what he did to you and your family, but her? She just wanted her son back. She was just a mother in the end, distraught at the loss of her child and doing whatever she could to find him again — because she loved him, more than anything else on earth.’

  For a moment he seemed to shrink in stature. His shoulders dropped and the pages dangled limply from his fingers. Finally he spoke.

  ‘If this is true, if I am who you think I am, what of it? This is the past. No one cares anymore. She is gone, he is gone, my wife is gone; they’re all dead. And this is not proof of anything,’ he said, waving the papers in the air abruptly.

  ‘I know,’ I replied. ‘It’s not proof of whether you are Little Mao or not. That would require DNA testing and a whole lot more besides. But if there is a part of you that believes you may be him, and you’ve spent your life hating your birth mother for giving up on you, then here is the proof.’

  ‘Proof?’ he demanded. ‘Of what?’

  ‘That she never did.’

  I got up suddenly because I realised everything I’d come to say had been said. If I’d had a part to play in all of this, it was completed. Now I felt I had intruded enough on the life of this old man. I left him in his garden shed, clutching the papers and surrounded by flowers of love.

  TWENTY-SIX

  DALE, THE UNIVERSITY RESEARCHER AT CHENGDU, HADN’T GIVEN me his telephone number, but I did have his email address. I wrote to him and begged a favour. There was a young girl who was bright, ambitious and full of academic promise — would he be willing to give her some scholarly advice? His reply came a day later saying that would be fine.

  ‘What is she hoping to study?’ he wrote.

  ‘English lit,’ I replied.

  ‘Perfect. Send her my way.’

  That afternoon I despatched a separate email to Xu Qing, introducing her to Dale and telling her about his offer of assistance. There were no promises, but . . . ‘Sometimes,’ I wrote at the end of the email, ‘it’s not what you know, but who.’

  Once again she was quick to respond and her email seemed like she was excited. Chengdu was one of her big three universities. Having a contact at one of them was just what she needed, she wrote. Her parents were very happy and wanted to meet me. She concluded her email with a question: ‘Are you returning to Ruijin?’

  Ruijin was a long bus ride east and I had a plane to catch from Shanghai. There wasn’t enough time for me to make it there and back before taking my train. Sadly, I told her, it would have to wait for another occasion. But I knew full well that the chances of me returning this way were slim. The wheels of life never st
op turning, not for anyone, and I had my own personal challenges to pursue. And, most of all, my own family to think about. I hadn’t seen them in what felt like ages.

  I looked at my watch: it was 3 p.m. Back home, dinner would be on the way and two cats would be standing by their bowls looking hopeful. I decided to make a Skype call home in the hope that someone would answer.

  The soft burr of the ring tone filled the void between us. On this journey, keeping in touch had been easier thanks to the way China’s youth were opening Internet cafés almost everywhere and anywhere, even though the connections were sometimes a little unreliable. At the current pace of change, China would soon join the very top rank of hi-tech industrialised nations. Yet, despite the usefulness of these modern communication technologies, I couldn’t help but feel nostalgic for the old, dark and mysterious version of this country — a place where a traveller could literally disappear. Part of me missed that world, with its illicit currency dealings, black-market train tickets and the constant stares of a population who’d never before seen a white face.

  The line must have been ringing for a full minute before a voice answered.

  ‘Hellooo,’ said Issie. ‘Is that the Daddy-O calling?’

  The screen was black, the signal not strong enough for video, but her voice was clear.

  ‘Hey there,’ I said. ‘What’s for dinner?’

  ‘I’m making pasta. It’s just me here. Mum’s dropping Tom off at a party.’

  ‘Is she now?’

  ‘Where are you? China still?’

  ‘Yes, but home soon, okay?’

  She squealed and I pictured her on the swivel chair at the computer. When she was little she would sit there for ages, grabbing the desk and using it to make the seat spin.

  ‘Will you write the book when you get back?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, remembering my promise to Zhou. ‘It might take a while to finish though.’

  ‘Lazy!’ she teased. ‘Like you always say to me, all you need to do is keep putting one foot in front of the other. Don’t stop, no matter what.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind, O Wise Omnipotent One.’

  After we’d hung up, there wasn’t much else I could do but say a few goodbyes in Ganzhou. Tong had been a godsend, and without his help none of the subtleties of my conversations with Zhou would have been translated so accurately. His conference over, he was flying out of Ganzhou and heading home to Shanghai.

  ‘Come and stay if you have time,’ he offered.

  I said I would see.

  Time was tight and the overnight train from Ganzhou could not be late if I was to make my flight. Fortunately, unlike some, this Chinese train maintained a Germanic timetable.

  Before boarding, however, there was one last surprise no one could have predicted. I was waiting on the platform when a hand touched my shoulder. I spun round to find Zhou Fung Mu standing there, supported by a wooden cane. He was dressed up in a smart but casual fashion, tall and straight with his hair neatly parted in a way I’d seen many a time on someone else, someone infinitely better known. The hotel had told him where to find me, and he had a gift to give me. Without Tong’s translation I thought I might have trouble communicating, but in the end he had nothing to say. He merely reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and took out a small see-through plastic box in which he’d carefully placed a single pink camellia. We shook hands and smiled at each other as the voice over the Tannoy announced my train was leaving. The driver released the brakes and the train lurched forward. The carriages clanked noisily and a railway official shouted at me to get on. I stood on the first step and looked back, one hand on the door and the other holding a flower. But Zhou Fung Mu was already walking back the way he had come. Without turning, and as if he knew I would be watching, he raised his right hand and waved.

  I shared a sleeper compartment with a couple of female university students heading back to their studies after a midterm break. One was doing a marketing degree and hoped to work for a big multinational like Unilever. She was doing her final year thesis on the ‘Social Impact and Efficacy of Skin-whitening Products’.

  ‘How’s it going?’ I enquired.

  ‘Very good,’ she said, extending a slender arm and examining the pale, slightly off-white pigment of her own skin. ‘You can really see the difference.’

  ‘I meant your thesis.’

  ‘Oh that,’ she replied, and then giggled with her hand over her mouth.

  Not for the first time I reflected on the fact that the world’s largest Communist government would soon be presiding over the world’s most capitalist population.

  ‘I like your flower,’ she said, and without waiting for approval, picked up the box and opened it.

  ‘From your wife?’ she smiled.

  ‘Not exactly,’ I replied.

  ‘Ah, your girlfriend.’

  ‘Not that either,’ I said. ‘Just someone.’

  ‘Ah, I see. But they are Chinese friend.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘The note is written in Pinyin.’

  ‘What note?’

  ‘This one,’ and she showed me the small piece of paper, which I had completely overlooked at the bottom of the box. On it were two Chinese characters, written clearly and simply in an elegant hand.

  ‘Can you tell me what it says?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure. It’s written Xie xie,’ she said.

  Even I didn’t need help with the translation. It’s one of the most often heard sayings in all of China. It simply means ‘thank you’.

  In the morning, Shanghai loomed out of a smog-grey sky and I found myself back where I had started, fighting through the crowds, trying to dodge the hawkers who did their utmost to sell me a Chairman Mao key ring.

  ‘Hey mister! Look good on your Mercedes.’

  ‘I don’t have a Mercedes.’

  ‘Aw, too bad. Even my mum drives one. Here,’ he said, dangling the gaudy trinkets before my eyes. ‘I give you freebie.’

  I spent the last day in China being a Red Traveller and going to see Mao’s former residence in Shanghai. The two-storey building was hard to find, at the end of an alleyway surrounded by a busy shopping complex, situated in a shaded shikumen courtyard on a street called Maoming Lu. According to the sign out front, this was where Mao spent his longest visit to Shanghai in 1924 and it’s the only one of his former abodes open to the public. I suspected that, like so many exhibits in China that honour the former Leader, this would be yet another showcase for Communist propaganda rather than a genuine historic site. Happily, that feeling was alleviated slightly when, in a downstairs room, I came face to face with a quite convincing wax figure of Mao himself, seated at a writing desk with his body turned to face the door. It felt as if I had interrupted him in whatever scholarly Marxist endeavours he had been engaged in. I had to stop myself from apologising for the intrusion, such was the life-like nature of the figure. Perhaps it was only right he should feel imposed upon. I had pried deep into his private life, uncovered things about him that were unbecoming to say the least, and now here I was — an audience of one, in his presence.

  What would he have said to me, given the chance? Would he have tried to defend his treatment of He Zizhen, or his decision not to search for their missing son, Mao An Hong? He might have claimed that his attention lay elsewhere, that he was consumed by matters of greater importance. But what can be more important than a child?

  I imagined Mao growling a reply to this: ‘You do not understand. A revolution is not a dinner party.’

  ‘Touché,’ I thought.

  There came a noise behind me, like the shuffling of slippered feet, and I realised I was no longer alone. The middle-aged Chinese man standing in the hallway was curious to know what I thought of the wax figure. I told him it was very good and he smiled proudly, then tapped his chest.

  ‘They are mine,’ he said, and I noted a slight American accent. ‘I make them from silicone. I used to produce Hollywood figures lik
e Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe. You should have seen my Harry Potter! But Chairman Mao was the hardest of all. There was a lot of pressure to get him just right.’

  He wiped an imaginary bead of sweat from his brow and talked about the irony of his life, escaping from China to America in his twenties and then returning decades later to create a model of the man he had been running from. I had to laugh at the strangeness of it all. It was, in the end, a perfectly modern Chinese story.

  I put a question to him. He had said ‘they’ before, which was curious because I’d only encountered the figure of Mao.

  He blinked with surprise and sounded disappointed: ‘You haven’t seen the others?’

  He took me to a neighbouring room, where we found them in their eternal repose, carbon copies of mother and child. The woman was young and she was perched on the side of a bed, her hand reaching out gently towards a sleeping baby in a wicker cradle. A sign indicated this was Mao’s wife. I asked him which one and he replied that the authorities had requested he commemorate Yang Kahui, Mao’s second wife, who had died at the hands of Nationalist soldiers.

  ‘But just between you and me,’ he confided in a whisper, ‘I actually based the figure on his third wife. She was my favourite of all Mao’s companions. A good woman.’

  ‘This is He Zizhen?’ I blurted out, almost in disbelief.

  He put a finger to his lips and nodded. Suddenly the face looked very familiar. The hair was shoulder length, which matched the old black-and-white photos I’d seen of both women, but particularly He Zizhen. However, the full mouth, button nose and wide eyes were definitely hers. She was prettier than her predecessor, Yang Kahui, who for the most part peered somewhat glumly from her photographs, as if life were a trial. This face on the other hand, was flush with youthful beauty and energy.