‘Which means the infant is . . . ?’
We both looked down to where the replica of the child lay, swaddled in a white nightshirt beneath a blanket of navy blue and seemingly sleeping. The black hair looked so real and the tiny facial features were so precise that I almost thought the bedclothes were rising and falling with each breath.
‘It is the one she lost,’ he replied. ‘This is the one they called Little Mao, because he was just like his father.’
It was a while before either of us said anything more. We were both lost in our own private worlds: mine revolving around this remarkable new discovery, while he most probably was simply admiring the brilliance of his handiwork.
‘He wasn’t, you know,’ I said finally, breaking the silence.
‘Wasn’t what?’ he replied.
‘Little Mao,’ I continued. ‘He wasn’t at all like his father. Not even a little bit.’
The wax worker looked at me strangely, then laughed uneasily and shrugged his shoulders.
‘Everybody’s an expert,’ he muttered, half under his breath, as he shuffled off to another room.
Perhaps I should have explained so that he might have understood, but I doubt whether he would have believed me. Besides which, it would have taken too long and time was running out.
‘Always in a hurry.’
It was Mao again from the room next door, his voice cold like his synthetic skin.
‘You run from place to place looking for your ghosts, searching for your answers. But will your book tell the story of my sacrifices in order to build this great and glorious nation? No, it will not! It will tell lies about me, I can tell. I see through you, like I saw through those who tried in vain to stand in my way. Chiang Kai-shek attacked me and lost; the Japanese tried to smash me and failed; the United States of America entered the Korean War in order to break my Communist Party, but they were driven back; even Khrushchev wanted me gone and I defied him! You are nothing in comparison, and the only thing you will share with them all is failure.’
The voice fell silent. Mao’s statue of wax stared with eyes of polished glass, daring me to reply. But the only thing I could think to do was to close the door and leave him in his little room, glaring at the walls.
Later that day I caught the 400-kilometre-per-hour bullet train to the airport, navigated my way through the various official channels and boarded my flight. Next to me on the plane was an Australian man who explained how he’d spent this particular trip collecting old Communist Party propaganda, mostly posters.
‘It’s funny y’know,’ he said, ‘they kept having to print new ones showing Mao’s latest deputies, because he went through so many: Gao Gang, Liu Shaoqi — they were all senior party officials who met with a sticky end.’
‘Do you have a favourite poster?’ I asked.
‘Easy. It’s of a troupe of ballerinas in pointe shoes, balancing on the tips of their toes while holding rifles to their rosy cheeks and peering through the gun sights. Genius! You’ve gotta love this country sometimes.’
I told him I couldn’t agree more. But secretly I knew you could hate it too. There was no getting away from the fact that this country was both fair and foul, polarising in its charms. It could be maddening and marvellous in the space of a single afternoon, triumphant and terrible, beautiful and barbarous in equal quantities. Yet all the while you knew there was no other place on the planet quite like it.
A young woman on her way to work
TWENTY-SEVEN
‘THINK OF YOUR READERS, RICHARD,’ MY EDITOR MUTTERED, HALF in jest, across the restaurant table. ‘Don’t keep them waiting.’
He was right: they had every cause for complaint. It had already been five years since I’d returned from China. My teenage children were almost grown up. Tom was at university and Issie in her last year of high school. The garden was littered with the graves of family pets that had come and gone since my return. Where had the time gone? But always I reminded myself of the promise I had made to Zhou Fung Mu, a promise kept secret all this time.
‘It’s coming along,’ I said, trying to sound positive.
‘Just finish it!’ he cried, his eyes twinkling mischievously. ‘God knows, I haven’t got all the time in the world.’
No one could have foretold that just a short while later I would be present at his funeral. He told no one of his cancer until the very last moment. The memorial was a standing-room-only event at his home, packed to the gunnels with people who, like me, held him in high regard. Afterwards though, I felt I’d had enough of saying goodbye to people, and hoped it would be the last farewell for a good long while.
But there was to be one more significant death that year.
Quite out of the blue, I received an email from an unknown address — it was just by chance that I fished it out of the junk folder. It was from Tong. He said he hoped that I was well, asked after my family and, in the name of Allah, wished them good fortune. Attached to the email was a local news article from Ganzhou, which quietly recorded the passing of retired traffic police chief Zhou Fung Mu.
I sat at the computer screen and read it several times over.
There was no way of proving what I believed to be true, that I had stumbled upon the last surviving son of the Great Helmsman, who controversially shaped the course of China, if not the world. But somehow that was no longer the point of the journey anymore. I knew I had unearthed a different story, which to me felt even more powerful than that of the Long March or Mao’s missing son. This one belonged to He Zizhen, and it was the story of a mother’s love for her child, and how that love never diminished, even though it was barely reciprocated in her lifetime. Perhaps now, somehow, somewhere, it might be.
I pictured Zhou Fung Mu, reunited with his beloved wife amongst the camellia flowers that bound them together. But also, just maybe, with someone else — someone who had been waiting to see him again for a very long time.
In the newspaper article, however, there was no mention of Little Mao or He Zizhen.
It was just the way he would have liked it.
EPILOGUE
SHANGHAI, 1984
The sound of a trolley bus outside her third-floor window woke He Zizhen from a deep sleep and she sat up slowly in her bed. She had been dreaming again, as she did so often these days — or was it more a memory? Yet again it was of that desperate day in Yudu, half a century earlier: the Red Army soldiers shouting for them to prepare to leave, a pervading sense of panic in their voices, as she stole one final embrace with her only son before Mao Zetan carried him away. She remembered the boy’s tiny, fearful face, and his hands outstretched towards her. Then there was the aching despair that lasted long into the night and through all the days that followed, as she marched onwards with her comrades, fearing for her son’s life far more than her own. What had Mao said to her: that she shouldn’t worry, that she would have more children by him eventually? How could he care so little?
He Zizhen lay her aged body back down and thought of Little Mao again, wondering once more what fate had befallen him — and hoping against hope that he had survived. Other, much bleaker images crowded at the edge of her consciousness. She closed her eyes and reminded herself to breathe, long and deep, to not let these dark thoughts gain a foothold in her mind. With each slow breath she concentrated on a vision of her son, seeing him alive and well, first as a child, playing happily in a field with his new family, then growing up with a kind-hearted peasant woman and her husband, learning how to use a plough, how to cut wheat and sow barley seed, and how to watch for the swallows in spring that would herald the best time for planting rice. She saw him become as tall and handsome as his father, as well as smart, and a crack-shot with a rifle, like his mother. And once again, as she had done so many times, she allowed herself to think about finding him and holding him in her arms.
Slowly, into this vision came a soft light that was soon everywhere, all round them, growing stronger as it ran across their hair, along their arms and
fingers, dancing on their skin. It pressed them together so closely she could feel his heart beating. It was like the old days before the march, when he would sit on her lap and she’d tell him stories of her parents, of the town where she grew up on the Heshui River, of its still and placid reservoirs where ducks and geese would skim across the water as they landed, the ripples from their wake breaking in small perfect waves against the riverbank. She would tell him about the Revolution too, hoping he might understand how they were trying to create a better, fairer world for them all. How there would be sacrifices, that he might go hungry at times, and that he might not see her for a while. She’d tried to explain that there were people who were angry at them, soldiers — not from their lands but from far away — who would come soon and drive his mother and father out. He’d looked at her with such knowing back then and, with his little hand on her cheek, wiped away her tears.
The light faded as the rumble of Shanghai’s traffic floated into her room. All of a sudden the air felt thick and heavy, and she could hear her own breathing becoming louder and more laboured — rasping, rattling, each gasp harder to fight for than the last, until the time came when she could fight no more.
In her final moments, He Zizhen thought she heard voices shouting. From somewhere, orders were being given by the cadre. Donkeys had to be loaded up, horses brought from the stables. The enemy were coming. The rumble of their guns was creeping ever closer. Soon she would be marching on again. And yet, suddenly, none of it mattered anymore.
‘Be strong, Little Mao,’ she whispered, her wrinkled hands clenched into fists. ‘I will find you.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THIS BOOK WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE WITHOUT THE SUPPORT of my wife, Elisabeth, and my children, Tom and Issie, who provided love and encouragement throughout this long adventure. I also owe a debt of gratitude to my good friend Michael Gifkens for his literary guidance, to John Daly for his help in selecting photographs for the book, and to Robyn Hamilton for her invaluable research into the life of He Zizhen. Finally, I would like to remember the monks of Thrangu Monastery near Yushu, many of whom lost their lives in the devastating earthquake of 2010. Although Yushu suffered severe damage, Thrangu was almost completely destroyed.
PHOTOS SECTION
A monk checks a prayer room at Kumbum Monastery
High up in Garze, with the valley spread out below
Lola’s boys, arguing over a stolen yak in Sershu
Instead of goods, old men trade stories at Yushu’s market
Under a painting of the Long March, passengers wait for a bus at Jinggangshan
In Moxi, chillis and corn dry in the sun
A roadside stall sells food for weary travellers in Sichuan province
Students in Ruijin grab a nap between classes
Playing jianzi, a Chinese form of Hacky Sack
A young ‘Red Traveller’ in Jinggangshan
Off o the chopping block to prepare a meal
Mist shrouds the high peaks of Jinggangshan
An elderly woman living on her own, near Yudu
Sitting outside, watching the world go by, in Ruijin
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RICHARD LOSEBY was born in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, in 1963. He grew up in Australia before moving to New Zealand at the age of eight. In 1980 he ventured into advertising as a copywriter, working in London from 1985 to 1993 before returning to Auckland, where he now works as a Creative Director at ad agency Ogilvy & Mather. He has two previously published and acclaimed travel books, Blue is the Colour of Heaven and Looking for the Afghan. Richard is married with two children.
COPYRIGHT
HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in 2016
by HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand
harpercollins.co.nz
Text and photographs copyright © Richard Loseby 2016
Richard Loseby asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. This work is copyright. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
HarperCollinsPublishers
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand
A 53, Sector 57, Noida, UP, India
1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF, United Kingdom
2 Bloor Street East, 20th floor, Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8, Canada
195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007, USA
ISBN 978-1-77554-088-5 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-77549-125-5 (ebook)
National Library of New Zealand cataloguing-in-publication data:
Loseby, Richard, 1963–
A boy of China : in search of Mao’s lost son / Richard Loseby.
1. Loseby, Richard, 1963– —Travel—China. 2. China—Description and travel.
I. Title.
915.104—dc 23
Cover design by HarperCollins Design Studio
Front cover images: Boy © Robert Wallis/CORBIS; background by Blackstation/Getty Images
A Boy of China Page 23