Last Kiss in Tiananmen Square

by Lisa Zhang Wharton

  It was ironic that he had wasted one-third of his life during the Cultural Revolution – five years of hard labor in the countryside, two years as a factory assembly worker and four years as a college student. He was, in turn, a worker’s, peasant’s and soldier’s representative to reform the universities. All these hadn’t done him any good so he became politically active again. He worked as an electrician in the same factory where he had worked after he got out of the phony college. But working conditions hadn’t improved very much. In 1977, when the government decided to resume the college entrance exam to enroll college students directly from the high schools instead from the countryside, factories and army according to one’s political performance, nobody took his college degree seriously anymore. It was phony. Everyone knew that. Back to the factory, he had a few years of easy time, playing cards and gossiping to kill time. The factory was over-staffed. They always could make up the quota just before the end of the year. But things had changed recently. Factories began to compete with each other. Workers had to work hard to get bonuses and the factory had hired some recent college graduates to do the managerial jobs. He felt insignificant and caught in between, where he could not move up and did not want to slide down. His brain was rusty and needed to be lubricated. But it was not easy; he hadn’t touched books for almost twenty years. He promised Zhang Ping he would prepare for the graduate school entrance exam (GRE) and the TOEFL exam to study in America, but it seemed as remote as the North Pole. Was going to graduate school the only way to get ahead? He remembered what Aunt Rose had told him before she died.

  She was lying on the bed, with her eyes closed. Lung cancer had taken away every bit of her flesh. “Do you remember your father?” she asked between constant coughs.

  “Yes, he loved me, he loved me very much.” Dagong said rather mechanically. He had never seen the man. How did he know?

  “That’s what I have been telling you? Okay, you know, there is something else I have to tell you. Before your father died, he said, ‘Let Dagong be a businessman in the future.’”

  “Yes.” He thought what a joke. I have suffered enough because he owned that damn shipping business. Now I’m about to go to the countryside to suffer more.

  “It may not make any sense to you. But that’s what I have to tell you.”

  Aunt Rose died a few days later. Dagong had never dreamed of being a businessman until recently. It might be possible if the government loosened up a little. He had already resumed his connections with some of his relatives in Hong Kong and was waiting for the government to change their policies.

  At 9:00pm the yard was not totally quiet yet. As summer approached, people tended to go to bed late. Hot weather was always a bother. You had to take a bath more often; you had to wash clothes more frequently and you had to drink more water. You had to do all this in a situation in which no private baths, washing machines or fresh drinking water were available. Getting water required a lot of energy.

  Dagong’s neighbor, Pumpkin, who lived two doors from Dagong, was one of those summer victims. She was sitting in the yard in front of a wash basin, scrapping and rubbing the clothes on a wash board. Sweat appeared on her face as a fine layer of mist. She had short, tousled, permed hair and a round face with fat cheeks. Her lips were thick and protruded, and her two big eyes under thick eyebrows looked fierce.

  “Where have you been, Broomstick and Potatofeet? Your pants are full of mud. Next time I should let you wash them yourself, so your know how to keep them clean.” Pumpkin cursed her sons, who sat in the yard, playing cards with their father. She pulled a pair of blue cotton pants out of the muddy soapy water, found the pockets and turned them inside out. She got a handful of toilet paper, clay and stones. “Dirty boys.” She grimaced.

  Pumpkin’s husband, Marshmallow, and their sons, Broomstick and Potatofeet, were playing cards under a dim light in the yard. They played “Catch the black seven” and ignored Pumpkin’s complaint.

  “Catch black seven” was an easy card game. The person who happened to have the Ace of Spades was supposed to keep silent as long as he could. The person who did not have it should release it from his opponents as soon as possible. The person who had it at the end would win the game.

  “Father, don’t protect him. I know Potatofeet has it.” Broomstick always tried to take advantage of his brother.

  Potatofeet had been a good-looking kid before he contracted polio when he was five. Permanently crippled, he had a stammer as well. His feet were shaped like two potatoes. His heels and toes could never touch the ground at the same time. He bounced instead of walking, with his toes usually turned inward. His knees were so weak that they seemed not to exist. He smiled most of the time. The constant dripping of saliva from his mouth made him look silly. “I am, am not.., going to… to tell you.”

  “I know either you or Father has it. Hey, Father, if you try to protect him, that’s against the law. We are supposed to play fair.” Broomstick was a handsome boy. His tall slender body resembled a telephone pole.

  “Hey, son. Let me tell you, you’re not very smart. You know from all the talking you did, how much shit you have given me?”

  It was interesting to see Broomstick and Potatofeet were such slender boys, especially Broomstick when he stood up, while their parents were not slender people. Actually you could call them fat. As a sturdy man, Marshmallow had a bulging chest and a pockmarked face. His nose was small and pointy, his eyes round and benevolent. He was timid while his wife was loud. Marshmallow and Pumpkin both worked in a government-owned restaurant as cooks, which was why they were fat. They not only ate as much as they wanted to, but also they absorbed fat through their skins. But they could not afford to buy good food for their kids with their small salaries.

  Sitting in the yard a few steps from the card table were the girls, Little Pea, Broomstick’s older sister and Lili, the daughter of a policeman. They both graduated from the same high school. Little Pea worked in a grocery store downtown while Lili waited at home for a government job.

  “Have you been in the Square?” Lili asked Little Pea.

  “No.”

  “Too many people, most of whom are college students. They look so young. They are from all over the country, which I can tell because they speak funny dialects and look different. Some of them have silly crew cuts and wear hand-made clothes. They all wear glasses,” said Lili while looking at her finger nails.

  Little Pea sat quietly, working hard on her knitting. She was making a thick black sweater.

  “How is your boyfriend?” Lili asked.

  “He is fine,” Little Pea kept knitting.

  “I hear that you’re going to get married.”

  “Maybe soon,” Little Pea kept knitting as though they were talking about an upcoming dinner party.

  “Are you ready for it?”

  “I guess.”

  “It must be hard to prepare.”

  “Not really.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m going to move into his parents’ home since mine doesn’t have any room for us. So we don’t have to buy any furniture.”

  “Woo, I can’t believe your parents can live without you.”

  “They can. My parents know how to cook,” Little Pea finally raised her voice and showed some emotion.

  “But I have never seen them cook at home.”

  “They will have to. Otherwise my brothers have to cook themselves.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “Next spring, when he saves enough money to buy himself a suit and have a tailor make a nice dress for me.”

  “That sounds exciting.”

  “I think so, too.” Little Pea’s voice tapered down and her small yellowish face cracked a smile. But she soon resumed her sober expression. She wanted to keep her long-awaited happiness to herself. She was too shy to reveal it.

  “Oh, it’s already ten o’clock. I’d better go home. Otherwise my mother will complain again.” Lili stood up and pushed back he
r long hair, which hung to her buttocks, and left.

  The water facet was dripping in the middle of the yard creating the splashing sound. A gust of wind blew through the yard. The weather was very pleasant at night. The heat soaked up the old laundry water and the dishwashing water on the ground. It smelled human.

  At the same time, the policeman Lao Liu and Dagong were chatting. Dagong sat on the cement steps leading to the corridor by his door, and Lao Liu squatted next to him, smoking. Lao Liu was a slender man. He wore a white T-shirt and a pair of police navy-blue polyester pants. A pair of black frame glasses sat on his pale high cheekboned face.

  “I have spotted you in Tiananmen Square today.” Lao Liu said.

  “You were there too?” Dagong did not worry about Lao Liu because he was harmless. But Lao Liu’s simple presence at the Square made him alert. Why did he need to go if there was no trouble? “What were you doing there?”

  “We dressed up in civilian clothes and walked around.”

  “Do you have any dangerous news for the students?”

  “Not really. We are not ordered to do anything yet. I have the feeling it’s up to…” He pointed his cigarette to the sky. He smoked continuously. His eyes were half open and he rested his chin on his knees. He looked comfortable enough to fall asleep. “The top is fighting. The two sides couldn’t agree with each other.” He paused. “The situation is shaky.”

  “Obviously, the security has tightened up,” said Dagong.

  “That is true.” Lao Liu suddenly looked around and leaned toward Dagong. “They have just installed a new video surveillance system around the square.”

  Dagong nodded. They both sank into silence.

  Lao Liu had a clear mind. During his more than twenty years in the security profession, he had been through many ups and downs. The anti-rightist movement and the Cultural Revolution were labeled political movements. Actually, they were people-against-people movements. He had seen many honest people get hurt. They were sent to jail or labor camps for crimes they had not committed. He tried to do his best to protect these people, but sometimes he just had to close his eyes to let things go by. He had a wife, a daughter and a family to support. He was not in a position to make a real difference anyway. He still remembered vividly a case he was assigned twelve years ago.

  The case was an extramarital love affair involving a middle aged woman and the head of Beijing Automobile Parts Factory. They were both married. The woman, whose name he remembered as Meiling, the wife of a college professor, was notorious in the western district as a playgirl. The head of the factory was a political enemy of the judge. The case had obvious political motives. The judge, a fat woman with dark wicked eyes wanted to use it against the head of the factory. In order to do so, they had to make Meiling to confess to the relationship. But Meiling denied the charge. The judge was enraged. She gave Meiling a five year jail sentence with no appeals.

  On the day of the announcement, he still remembered Meiling’s daughter, a ten year old girl and her father, an old intellectual. They were not allowed to be present in the court room. They waited outside until the verdict was announced. The girl cried and her father lowered his head. He was too ashamed to react.

  Lao Liu, then a young investigator, tried to persuade the girl. “Stop, stop crying. Your mother is a bad woman. Don’t you understand?”

  “I don’t believe Mother is a bad woman. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it.”

  “Let’s go. You’re going to cause me trouble.”

  Her father tried to pull the girl out of there and said to Lao Liu and the judge, “Judge, we obey your order, we… ob…ey your or…der. She de… serves it.”

  The girl kept turning her head back, staring as she walked away. Lao Liu remembered the girl’s red, earnest eyes. She was looking for some kind of message, sympathy maybe. He tried his best to communicate his compassion to her with his eyes. He wanted to tell her that her mother was innocent, and her mother was a brave woman.

  After that case, Lao Liu saw a lot worse. He dreamed he might be able to change the situation. Then he found out that the judge was one knot in a huge power net. They abused power together and they abused the law together. Then he started to close his eyes, letting things go by. He had never become a part of the power net. He managed to stay out. Now he just wanted to paddle through his old age peacefully.

  Now the students stirred things up again. Lao Yu did not believe they would make any difference. China was too old and too big. If anything did happen, it would have to come from the top. Through reading the newspaper, he knew the whole world was changing. Maybe the breeze of democracy and freedom would finally sweep through old China.

  Lao Liu looked at Dagong who was staring into the darkness. He had been surprised to see Dagong in the Square, among the students, listening to their debate. He would be surprised to see Dagong simply ride through the square given the present situation. He could not believe he was the same Dagong he used to know. In his mind, Dagong had been dead for the last twenty years. Waves of political movements had whipped Dagong into a tame animal, tamer than a sheep. He never argued with anyone in the yard, didn’t even speak loudly to anyone. Dagong, the quiet, self-absorbed person he used to know, was now becoming an activist. God must be insane.

  “Hey, do you know what time it is?” Dagong’s wife, Zhang Ping, came out of the door. “Every night, you sit here, smoking. What are you thinking of? You’d better come back and study!”

  Dagong stood up, sighed and trudged to the kitchen. He found some hot water in the kettle on the stove. He poured it into a washbasin, mixed it with some cold water from the water tap in the yard and washed his face. He rinsed his feet and slippers with the leftover brown soapy water, and then returned to his room.

  They had one room with a narrow storage room in the back. It had a double wooden bed, a desk and several suitcases stacked together. Rings of yellow stains covered walls with no wallpaper. A fluorescent light hanging from the ceiling bathed the small room. As usual, when he came home, there was chaos.

  “Let your father see what you have done in kindergarten!” Zhang Ping stood behind the door, red-faced, pointing her finger toward their five-year old son, Little Turnip. He stared at the floor. An adult size T-shirt draped down on his shoulders like a nightgown. He held a small electronic toy in his shaking hands.

  “He took the kindergarten’s toy without telling his teacher.” Zhang Ping said.

  “You told me to do it,” mumbled Little Turnip.

  “I didn’t tell you to do it in front of your teacher. Your teacher stopped by here earlier and asked me to tighten up the rules at home. I was so embarrassed. How can I hold my head up in front of other people?” She turned to Dagong, “You’d better study hard, and pass the test so we can go to America. Then we can afford to buy fancy toys like that ourselves.”

  Dagong did not react. He felt hundreds of bugs creeping along his back. He was hot. He was tired of Zhang Ping’s usual complaints about money. He wanted to throw them both out of the house. But what could he do? Who let him stay in this house? Who had assigned him his current job? And who had provided him with his wife? He should thank Zhang Ping’s father for these. He did not have many choices. He was lucky enough to have it at all. Of course, he was concerned about his son. Little Turnip should get a good education and become a decent person. Even this was beyond his control. Zhang Ping was too possessive of their son. She was too possessive about everything.

  He lifted Little Turnip up and held him to his chest, so he could talk to him face to face. “Little Turnip, did you hear what your mother said. Don’t do that anymore, Okay? Never bring a school toy home without asking your teacher.”

  “Yes.” Little Turnip nodded. Tears ran down his face.

  Then Dagong turned toward Zhang Ping. “Zhang Ping, I think you and Little Turnip had better go to bed. If you keep yelling, you might wake up the whole neighborhood.”

  Zhang Ping suddenly became very docile. She t
ook over Little Turnip. “Okay, Okay. We’ll go to bed. So you can study.”

  In a while the fluorescent light was turned off. Zhang Ping and Little Turnip fell asleep on the double bed. He was left in the corner, sitting in front of a wooden desk with a dim table lamp.

  He opened the book–Preparing for the TOEFL Exam, which was the requirement for getting into any American universities. He glanced through a few lines and marked down the new words he did not know. Then he looked up the new words in the dictionary one by one and scribbled them down on a notebook almost as thick as the dictionary. At thirty-eight, he could feel his age. Recently, he even found it hard to sit still. He was too agitated. A volcano was growing in his chest, getting ready to erupt. This was not like him, not him at all. Twenty-one years ago, when his aunt had died and left him alone in the world, he thought he would never smile again. During the five years of “reeducation” in the countryside, he worked hard. He wanted the sweat to wash away his sorrow, and soil to bury his grief. He did such a good job that a miracle happened. He was assigned to a job in the city and worked as a janitor in a park. That was when Zhang Ping’s father Lao Zhang discovered him and transferred him to the Beijing Radio Parts factory when Lao Zhang was the president. Lao Zhang liked Dagong. They liked each other. Lao Zhang liked him so much that he constantly acted as his protector. Whenever a political movement waged in when the capitalist’s son got bashed, Lao Zhang would stand up to defend him. Then he followed Lao Zhang’s suggestion and married his only daughter, Zhang Ping, who worked at the factory’s food service.

  He never liked Zhang Ping. She was not his choice. She was the choice when he had not had any choice. No young woman at the time would want to marry someone like him with a dead capitalist father and several relatives overseas. He married Zhang Ping out of gratitude to Lao Zhang. He married her out of desperation. When Lao Zhang sent him to the university during the Cultural Revolution in 1972, he was excited for a while. As a straight-A student in high school, he had always dreamed of going to the university. But life had turned out differently than he expected. He had been deprived of the opportunity to go to the university because of his dead parents. His parents had been dead for a long time, as long as he was in this world. But they were his parents. The university he attended turned out to be phony. During those years, the communist leaders did not appreciate intellectuals. They like to install social changes. Political movements were their games. They reformed the college, changed the curriculum, and educated professors with Chairman Mao’s writing to make them humble. He had wasted his college years in going to political discussion groups, self-criticizing meetings and writing political-correct poetry and posters. Although he also learned some high school algebra and contemporary Chinese history on the side, he knew that was not enough. During those days he was extremely cautious, knowing if he did anything out of the ordinary, even anything noticeable, he would immediately become a target for people to spit on, to shit on because he was a capitalist’s son. He worked to stay invisible, which was hard because of his big size, and to sail through four years safely.