Spider Eaters: A Memoir

by R Yang

  Being "slaves without a country" day in and day out was more than Father, Second Uncle, and Third Aunt could bear. Everyday in the street the students could see Chinese civilians bullied by Japanese soldiers. Western professors were made to quit one after another. Patriotic Chinese were arrested, tortured, and killed. The hated "plaster flag," as the Chinese nicknamed it, flew haughtily above everybody's head, making it hard for a Chinese to breathe. Father, Second Uncle, and Third Aunt thought it was time for them to leave Beijing.

  Father was the one who had the connections. So he first arranged for his brother and sister to leave. With the assistance of underground workers, they went through Japanese blockade lines and headed for the southwest. Their destination was more than a thousand miles away. With the war going on, the expedition was a journey of danger and chaos. On the way they witnessed bombing, looting, accidents, and all kinds of extortions. Sometimes they rode on trains and buses; sometimes they walked or ran. It took them several months to reach Sichuan, where they eventually resumed their studies in universities.

  As for Father, instead of going to the southwest where he could join Second Uncle and Third Aunt, he joined the Communists at Jinchaji anti-Japanese base, a mountainous area between Hebei and Shanxi provinces. Why did he do this? This is another riddle, which unlike the previous one I have a hard time figuring out, for over the years Father has given me too many answers.

  For instance, he told me that he joined the Communists because he believed only they could create a new society in China where everyone would enjoy freedom, equality, and happiness.

  But then he also told me that he hated the Japanese invaders and wanted to fight them as a guerrilla in the front. When his country was in danger, a young man should not stay in the rear and let others shed their blood and win the war for him. This was what the rich people had been doing in China and elsewhere. "If you have money, donate your money. If you have strength, put forth your strength." Even the slogan seemed to say this was all right. But Father disagreed and he was serious.

  So he went to Jinchaji, which by then was repeatedly attacked by the Japanese troops. Saodang (sweep it up) was what the Japanese called it. When the invaders came, they burned down houses, destroyed crops, took away all the food they could find, and killed people whom they suspected. Meanwhile the Eighth Route Army and guerrillas led by the Chinese Communist Party and supported by local peasants were fighting back. Many people lost their lives in the war. Yet more were coming of their own accord to keep up the resistance. Among them many were college students like Father.

  Father arrived at Jinchaji when things were at their worst. By the end of 1942,, Father told me, most of the houses in the region were without doors and windows. During the night, when the temperature dropped to ten and sometimes twenty degrees below zero, they had no coal, no firewood, no warm clothes to fend off the severe cold. Cottonpadded jackets and shoes were very hard to come by. Food was in such short supply that soldiers and peasants were all eating bran and wild herbs. The best food in the region was corn flour bread. White flour and green vegetables were never seen. Even salt was scarce.

  On top of all this, the region was in dire need of medicine. The shortage was caused by the Japanese blockade. As a result wounded soldiers were sometimes operated on without anesthetic. Thousands of people in the area suffered from epidemic diseases: typhoid fever, smallpox, flu, . . . Many died because no medicine was available.

  Father was aware of this situation when he was in Beijing. He heard it from a friend who later turned out to be an underground Communist. So before Father set off, he secretly purchased a fairly large amount of medicine that was urgently needed at the anti-Japanese base. The medicine was tightly controlled in Beijing. Yet as the Chinese saying goes, "With money, one can make the devil turn the millstone." Father soon obtained what he had put down on the list, with the money and through the business connections of his hated grandfather.

  Later Father brought the medicine through Japanese blockade lines. This was a dangerous task. Several times Japanese soldiers searched passengers on the train. If they should find the medicine in Father's suitcases, they would arrest him and the consequences would be dire.

  To make matters even more complicated, later one of the guides along the line was caught by the Japanese. This happened shortly before Father's group arrived. As a result, everything they had achieved thus far came to naught. For without the guide they did not know how to get in touch with the next underground worker, so they could not go on. They could not stay in the region either, where they were a group of strangers. The collaborators would soon notice and report them. So they had no other choice but to return to Beijing and start all over again.

  Eventually Father arrived at Jinchaji with all the medicine he had purchased. He immediately donated all of it to the local government. The medicine saved many lives. Father was praised by the leaders. A medal was awarded to him, his very first during the wars.

  Later Father was sent to study at Huabei Lianda, a branch of the Chinese People's Anti-Japanese Military and Political College. A few months down the road Father got typhoid fever, which nearly killed him.

  By that time, the medicine Father had brought to Jinchaji was already used up. Father had to fight the disease with his own strength. For days he lay in bed, running a high fever. A horrible pain turned his stomach and bowels upside down. He could not eat anything. It was almost a miracle that he survived. When finally he was able to leave bed and sit in the sun, he felt that he had become as light as a straw. A gust of mountain wind could make him lose his balance.

  One day he borrowed a mirror from a comrade and looked at himself in it. He was shocked by what he saw. While he was sick, he had lost so much hair that he was almost bald. His eyes were frighteningly large, sitting in two dark pits. His skin was dry and sallow. His face was wrinkled, like that of an old peasant. Seeing him like this, who would believe that only a couple of months before, he was considered the most handsome man among the students who came to this region to fight the Japanese.

  A director told him he was when he asked Father to play Mr. Darcy in his spoken drama Pride and Prejudice. Father was amused by the proposal, but he told the director he had never been on the stage before. The latter said it was all right. So he became Mr. Darcy, the Pride.

  According to Father, the play they staged was a hit, despite his inexperience. "The peasants loved it. Everybody came to see it," Father said, "even though they did not understand it. None of them had seen spoken drama before. So they thought the play was a lot of fun. They found the English gentlemen and ladies we played awfully weird."

  After Father recovered, he was transferred to Yan'an where Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and the central committee of the Chinese Communist Party stayed during the war of resistance against Japan and the civil war that followed. In the early 1940s few people there spoke foreign languages. Thus when the leaders at Jinchaji found out that Father could speak English and some French, they immediately sent him to Yan'an as an interpreter. Consequently throughout the wars Father was in the army only in name. He never fired a single shot at an enemy.

  As for his fellow students, later some of them were sent back to Beijing to do underground work; others stayed in the countryside and became guerrilla fighters. It was the organization-the Party-that decided who went where and did what. Father and his comrades obeyed willingly, for they had vowed that they would "sacrifice the individual and obey the organization" when they joined the Party.

  In addition to joining the Party, Father also abandoned his old name Zhichang, "blazing prosperity," chosen by his grandfather together with the old man's surname. He created a new name for himself: Yu Shan, which means "at the mountains."

  For many years I thought Father did this because he was determined to make a clean break with his upper-class family and live as a new person after he joined the revolution. Only years later when my zeal for the revolution died down did it occur to me that by changing his name Fath
er had also protected Nainai and others in the family who remained in Beijing. Or else he'd have gotten them into trouble with the Japanese and the Nationalists, for both considered the Communists their deadly enemies.

  Actually, Father told me, it was really because of Nainai and my great-grandfather that he joined the revolution. The old man taught him to hate oppression. Day in and day out, he was the oppression incarnate in the family. When he bullied Nainai and others, it made Father's blood boil. Father vowed secretly that someday he would avenge the wrongs the tyrant did to everybody by tearing down his evil world and establishing a new one on its ruins. In this new world, no human being would be allowed to oppress other human beings. Nainai's life, Father thought, would be much easier and happier in it.

  With such a dream, Father left home and went to the mountains. When he sneaked out, he did not tell Nainai where he was going. So for years Nainai thought that he was studying in the southwest just like Second Uncle and Third Aunt. This was a blessing for her. For had she known Father's real whereabouts, the raids made by the Japanese troops, the disease, and the hardships, she would have worried to death.

  As for her life in Beijing in those years, I heard a story from her two old servants who refused to be liberated after Liberation.

  Before Father left home, one day he planted a Chinese yam, called shanyao, in the courtyard. It was only a passing whim. Afterwards he forgot about it. Soon he left Beijing. A couple of weeks later, however, the yam sprouted. Nainai put an exquisite fence around it as soon as she saw it.

  The Chinese yam was a perennial plant, usually grown by the peasants around their cottages. Nainai kept this yam in her garden among beautiful tree peonies and roses. Gradually, the tender vine of the yam crawled all over a Tai Lake rock.

  In those years, Nainai must have been awfully lonely. She missed her children. Because of the war, no news came from any of them. When she became too anxious, she would go and talk to the yam.

  Sometimes the plant listened to her in silence as if it understood her feelings but could find no word to comfort her. Sometimes there was a gentle breeze and the numerous heart-shaped green leaves fluttered. Nainai thought that the yam was whispering to her, telling her something about her children in a secret language, which with the love she had inside of her she could almost understand. It soothed Nainai's burn ing heart. She felt that as long as the yam thrived and she could hear it murmur, things could not go terribly wrong with her beloved children.

  Nainai prayed day and night to heaven and to her ancestors, asking them to protect her children and to put an end to the war. In 1945 the Japanese surrendered. Second Uncle and Third Aunt came back to her. But it took Father another ten years to return home.

  6

  Second Uncle Was a Paper Tiger

  When we returned from Switzerland in 1956, Nainai's dream came true. Finally the entire family was together, living in Nainai's big house. After my great-grandfather and grandfather died, Nainai was the head of the family.

  Although I do not remember ever seeing Nainai read Lao Tzu, the way she ran our family was very much in keeping with the latter's teaching. According to the ancient philosopher, the best rulers ruled by nonaction. That is to say, they let ten thousand things take their own courses; they did not impose their will on any of them. As a result, all were perfectly happy and the world was in harmony. Nainai seemed to have a profound understanding of this world order called Tao.

  For example, at the house of Laolao (my maternal grandmother) there were numerous rules. During dinner, the way I held chopsticks was always wrong. I could not rest my elbows on the table. Other bad manners included speaking with food in my mouth and clinking chopsticks. I was to hold up my rice bowl throughout the meal. Water and other drinks were not allowed to go with the food. I had to wait till the end of the meal to drink the soup.

  Rules like these made me reluctant to have dinner at Laolao's place. As a child, I could not have cared less if I missed the southern delicacies Laolao made that the adults said were so great. After all, didn't they say that freedom should be cherished above all things-food included, of course?

  By contrast, freedom was in abundance at Nainai's place. There I could climb Tai Lake rocks if I wanted to or use a ladder to climb onto the walls to beat down red dates from the tall date trees. On the evening of the National Day (October T), Little Ox, Little Dragon, and I were permitted to climb onto the tiled roof of Nainai's house, the tallest in the compound, to watch fireworks at Tian'anmen Square.

  In the backyard there was an old locust tree. The branches of it spread out like a huge umbrella. On that evening it caught several brightly col ored parachutes, each as large as a square scarf, with a whistle attached to it. They were carried here by the southwest wind from Tian'anmen Square. To me, they were like gifts from heaven. I was so thrilled that I refused to come down from the roof long after the fireworks were over, hoping that more parachutes would come this way. Such behavior annoyed my parents, but Nainai just smiled and said that I could stay there a little longer.

  In Nainai's house I was truly happy. I had never been so happy before. In the past I was very lonely. Now I could play with Little Ox, Little Dragon, and other kids who were our neighbors. The gates of their houses stayed open during the day, and so did ours. Kids were welcome anytime. We could just drop in. In this environment I felt safe, and the nameless fear I had in Switzerland went away.

  Occasionally my parents would be angry at me because I was too wild. When this happened, there was always someone in the big family who was willing to intercede for me. Most of the time I would turn to Nainai, knowing that she would shelter me like a big tree. Soon the menacing thunderstorm would change into gentle breeze and fine rain. Before long, all clouds would dissipate and sunshine would return to my world.

  Nainai, although she was an old woman, was not old-fashioned in her way of thinking. For one thing, she was not biased against girls like other grandparents. On the contrary, I somehow had a feeling that she indulged me more than the boys. Looking back, I wonder if Nainai was following the unique Manchu tradition that said girls must be treated well at home, for in the future (I should say in the past) they all had a chance to be chosen into the palace. There if they found favor in the emperor's eyes, they could become imperial consorts. That way they would honor their ancestors and gain power and prestige for their families. Or else maybe Nainai was sympathetic toward me? From her own experience, she knew that a woman's life would not be easy in China. Many dangers, pitfalls, and heartaches were in store for me.

  Saying this I do not mean that others were not happy in Nainai's house. All seemed to enjoy life in their own ways. The adults all worked, women as well as men. In the new society, it was a shame not to work if one was young, healthy, and educated. Those who lived on the old money of the family were called parasites. They were despised by everybody in spite of their money. Times had changed.

  From Monday to Saturday, every morning Shenshen (which means the wife of an uncle who is the father's younger brother) was the first to get up. She worked in a textile factory in the eastern suburb of Beijing. It took her an hour to get to her factory by bus. So she usually left home at about half past six.

  After her footsteps died down, the house was quiet again. Father, Mother, and Second Uncle were not awake yet. They usually went to bed late and for them, the sweetest sleep came in the morning. When the clock struck seven, they reluctantly got out of bed. Next I heard them take brass basins from the washstands and go into the kitchen to wash their faces. Later they brushed their teeth in the yard, puffing the water out onto the ground with a great noise. After this, they would say it was too late, no time for breakfast, and rush out of the house like a gust of wind.

  During this time I often lay awake. I could hear everything, because in Nainai's house the walls between rooms were made of wooden boards and the ceiling was just a few layers of rice paper. This was typical of all the old houses in Beijing. The theory must have been tha
t among family members there ought to be no secrets. Brick walls were used only to keep away outsiders.

  The old women and the children were the last ones to get up and have breakfast. No need to hurry. We had plenty of time to play and tell one another stories. In those days, no one had heard of the thing called "electric view," so of course we did not miss it. We were busy enough without television.

  In the yards, there were cicadas singing in the trees, and we tried to catch them with melted rubber bands put on the tips of long bamboo poles. At the foot of brick walls were crickets, which we captured by pouring water into the crevices in which they hid. In the second yard there were two big earthen vats in which goldfish swam leisurely among water lilies. Under the eaves, swallows made nests to raise their young. Sometimes we picked flowers from the locust trees and sucked the honey from them. Sometimes we waged miniature tugs-of-war with the leafstalks of poplar trees.

  Occasionally we would go treasure hunting in Nainai's old trunks. Among the things we found were a shiny peach seed that was carved into a tree and five babies-Nainai said this was called "five sons excel in the imperial examinations"-a silver spoon with a spray of plum blossoms engraved on the handle, a jade pendant in the shape of a calabash, coral beads, ink sticks, silk flower hairpins, embroidered handkerchiefs, old coins overgrown with green rust, mah-jongg pieces ... Many of these had a little history. While Nainai was telling us about them, time flew away. Soon the adults began to come back from work one after another.

  At six thirty, the whole family sat down at a big round table. The food on it was steaming hot and delicious. All the dishes were placed at the center of the table. People used their chopsticks to pick whatever they liked into their own rice bowls. No one was forced to eat anything because it was good for her. No one was told not to talk. Now the family was together, naturally people wanted to tell one another the interesting things they saw or heard during the day. If someone wanted to laugh, it was all right. "One good laugh makes a person ten years younger," as the Chinese saying goes. If someone was late-Third Aunt sometimes had to stay at the hospital and Shenshen might miss a busno problem. Others would go ahead and eat. Enough food would be set aside and kept warm in the kitchen for her. At Nainai's dinner table, there was neither hierarchy nor formality. Everybody had a good appetite.