Spider Eaters: A Memoir

by R Yang

  After dinner, sometimes Second Uncle would take Little Ox, Little Dragon, and me to the nearby Dong'an Market to go window-shopping. Dong'an in Chinese means peace in the east. During the Cultural Revolution the name was changed to Dong Feng, which means east wind. It was from Chairman Mao's quotation, "the east wind will prevail over the west wind," meaning China and other socialist countries in the East will triumph over the capitalist countries in the West.

  In 1956 the market was still Peace in the East and had numerous privately owned small shops in it. Occasionally, Second Uncle would buy something for us: clay dolls, masks, tiny glass animals, and pagodas of porcelain ... None of them was worth much money; yet each gave us a lot of joy.

  On other evenings we would ask Second Uncle to show us martial arts. At such a request, he would unlock a big wooden chest painted red on the outside and take out his weapons: a shiny blunt sword, a pair of wooden daggers, a red-tasselled spear, and a shield with the design of a laughing tiger. Next he would run around the yard fighting with invisible enemies, jumping, kicking, yelling, dodging blows, and striking back. I watched him with awe and admiration, thinking that he was a great kung fu master like the ones I had heard about in stories. Only after I grew up did I realize that Second Uncle's martial art was just a show. Being an opera fan, he learned it from the stage and performed it at home to amuse us children. It was no good in real combat.

  On hot summer evenings his audience included almost the entire family who stayed out in the yard "to ride the cool," as people in Beijing put it. All the adults were waving big, round palm-leaf fans to cool themselves and drive away mosquitoes. Shenshen was the only one who stayed inside, for her hobby was to make clothes. At that time, she had just bought a new sewing machine. As soon as dinner was over, it would start to hum like a honeybee. When the evening grew old, I fell asleep to its soothing sound, as so many generations of Chinese before me had found sweet dreams in the hum of spinning wheels.

  To me, Shenshen was the prettiest woman in Beijing at the time. Her figure was slender and her dresses were beautiful. Her face was the shape of a duck's egg, very smooth, and her eyes were always smiling. To this day her childlike smile remains vivid in my mind, but in the real world it vanished once and for all in 1957 when Second Uncle was labeled a Rightist.

  That year, a million scholars and cadres fell prey to the Anti-Rightist Movement. Their downfall came from their naivete in politics and their trust in the Chinese Communist Party. At the beginning of the movement, the Party urged people to criticize their leaders so as to help them discover and correct mistakes. Later, however, the political wind shifted and those who did what the Party told them to do became class enemies. Their criticism was turned into evidence against them, "evil attacks on the leadership of the Communist Party." But Second Uncle did not even criticize his leaders. So how did he become a Rightist?

  According to Third Aunt, who told me the following behind closed doors in 1975, before the Anti-Rightist Movement, Second Uncle had made enemies at CAAC, the Chinese airline, where he worked as an accountant. There some of his superiors, taking advantage of their positions, traveled to places for private reasons. When they came back, they wanted Second Uncle to reimburse them for the costs of such trips. The latter turned them down, saying it was against the rules that the leaders themselves had made.

  This, of course, offended people. He made them lose money. He made them lose face too. For he turned them down bluntly, in front of other people. So the leaders hated him, but they said nothing. "When a gentleman wants to avenge himself, waiting for ten years is not too long."

  Second Uncle, on the other hand, was totally unaware of what was going on in these people's minds. He came back home with a clear conscience, thinking that he had done the right thing. He slept well at night and forgot the whole thing the next morning.

  The leaders waited till the Anti-Rightist Movement to avenge themselves. When the campaign started, they were the ones to decide who would get the "cap" in their work unit. That was very convenient. They put the "cap" on Second Uncle, even though he had not criticized the Party. The theory was since Second Uncle was from a capitalist family, he must bear some conscious or unconscious grudges against the Party and the socialist system.

  Nobody dared challenge this theory, knowing the leaders had more "caps" in their hands ready to deal out. Throughout the movement, Second Uncle never had a chance to defend himself. Nor could he find any place to appeal against the decision made by those leaders. Thus Second Uncle, despite my childish belief that he was a great fighter, was defeated and eliminated in the very first round of the merciless political struggle that would entangle every Chinese in the decades to come.

  Father and Third Aunt survived the campaign. Father, being an old revolutionary, had more political experience than others. When he was at Jinchaji, he had heard a great deal about the Yan'an Rectification Campaign that took place in 194z. During that campaign, intellectuals had been the targets. So he would always think twice before he said anything. As for Third Aunt, she was lucky because she inherited Nainai's good temper. Considerate and introverted, she never hurt others' feelings. She had no enemies in her work unit.

  In 1957 I knew nothing about the troubles Second Uncle had until one day I saw him packing. Mother told me that he was going to a salt farm to "reform himself through labor." I had no idea what that meant except that after Second Uncle left, there was no more window-shopping in Dong'an Market, and no one to perform martial arts for us. The evenings became much longer, the courtyard a lot emptier. I missed Second Uncle!

  As for my maternal grandparents, they were as distressed as Nainai, because my other uncle, whom I called Jiujiu, was also labeled a Rightist. He got into trouble because one of his friends reported him. Once he had said to three of his best friends that he did not think it was fair that the leaders of his college always sent students with revolutionary family backgrounds to study abroad. The students' academic accomplishments were never taken into consideration. During the Anti-Rightist Movement, this remark became evidence of his dissatisfaction with the Party leadership. So he became one of the youngest Rightists in China, only nineteen at the time.

  Twenty-two years later when we met again, I asked him if he knew which friend of his had betrayed him. He said he did not know and he did not want to know. The most important thing was the fact that he had been rehabilitated, he said. "Let's look forward. Why be so obsessed by the past? It won't do anyone any good! Believe me!"

  I wanted to believe him. Yet I could not help wondering about such things. Perhaps it is my nature that I like to "dig up the roots and get to the bottom of things." Or maybe it is merely a reaction against the adults in my family who were always trying to hide things from us children.

  The Anti-Rightist Movement was certainly a big lesson for Chinese zhishi fenzi-those with a college education and beyond-who had been rather outspoken and rebellious since the turn of the century. After the campaign, people began to watch what they said, even among close friends and family members.

  In olden days there was a saying, "Diseases go in by the mouth and disasters come out of the mouth." Now all of a sudden people discovered that it held a great deal of wisdom. Words wrongly said or said to the wrong people were time bombs, hanging over one's head, quietly ticking away. When they exploded, they'd blow one's hopes, happiness, career, and family all to pieces.

  Was this why after the Anti-Right Movement, fewer friends came to visit Third Aunt on weekends? When they came, the veranda was no longer such a comfortable place for them. They much preferred to have tea inside Third Aunt's room. Third Aunt was a quiet person even before the campaign. Afterwards she was a silent person, who devoted herself to her work and her flowers. By and by, handsome young men no longer came to visit her. She did not seem to mind it. For instead of going out to meet new people, she just stayed home and remained single.

  After the campaign was over, we moved out of Nainai's house. Father told Nainai his w
ork unit had given him an apartment right next to where he and Mother worked. While this was true, it probably was not the whole truth. Today as I look back on it, it seems obvious that after the Anti-Right Movement, the political atmosphere had changed. It was no longer appropriate for Father and Mother, who were both Communist Party members, to live in Nainai's house.

  The political pressure was invisible, but if someone were foolish enough to ignore it, the consequences could be very serious. As Confucius put it, "A person without foresight will have to deal with emergencies." My parents were wise. They knew what they had to do, yet they did not want to hurt Nainai's feelings. So Father came up with such an excuse.

  Nainai accepted the excuse, saying now winter was coming, it would indeed be more convenient if we lived at my parents' work unit. She did not press us to stay. On the contrary, she made it easy for Father to leave. Years later when I reflected on this, it occurred to me that Nainai probably knew quite well why my parents had to move out. For unlike the other old women, she read newspapers everyday. Though she never talked about politics, she was not ignorant about the larger world. Yet she seemed unaware of it. That was my Nainai, who never embarrassed anyone.

  After we moved out, though Father took us back to visit Nainai on weekends, Nainai's perfectly happy days were over. On the one hand, she missed us. On the other hand, she worried about Second Uncle. In a few years, the news that came from him went from bad to worse.

  When Second Uncle first arrived at the salt farm that was a labor camp on the bank of Bohai Sea, he worked extremely hard, as if he were not a scholar but someone who had been doing physical labor all his life. He hoped that in this way he would convince the leaders that he had reformed himself, so they would allow him to go back to his family in Beijing. But in those years it was not easy for a Rightist to make a good impression on anyone, least of all the leaders at the labor camp. Thus four years passed and his unremitting efforts met with little success.

  Then in i96z, one morning suddenly all Chinese newspapers reported on the front page that the Nationalists in Taiwan declared that they were going to fight their way back to the mainland. The editorials even warned people against a third world war, because if in China the Communists and the Nationalists were to fight, the Russians and the Americans would get involved. A world war could be triggered and atom bombs used. Quickly the whole country was mobilized. Old people and children were sent away from big cities. The army and young people were ready to fight.

  Such preparation for war upset Second Uncle. He became extremely anxious. All the horrid scenes he had witnessed and the dreadful stories he had heard in the early forties when he traveled from Beijing to the southwest came to life in front of his eyes.

  Bombs rained down from the sky. Fire shot up and engulfed homes. People burned to death in it, their bodies as black as charcoal. Those who escaped from the ocean of fire ran away, in a human torrent. Suddenly a hail of bullets came from nowhere, cutting people down like reeds. The wounded were robbed and left there to die. Women were raped, children abandoned ...

  If a war broke out while he was so far away from Beijing, how would Nainai, Shenshen, and the boys cope with all this? Second Uncle dared not think any further. For several nights he couldn't close his eyes. Too much apprehension made him forget that he should be cautious. He wrote a letter to Shenshen, discussing what they should do in case there was a war.

  The letter never reached Shenshen. It was intercepted by the political workers at the labor camp. They opened it and read it, as if they had never heard of the 1954 Constitution of the People's Republic of China, which stipulated that the secrecy of private letters of Chinese citizens was protected by law. Or maybe they thought Second Uncle, being a Rightist, was not a citizen anymore. The letter became evidence of Second Uncle's yearning for the Nationalists to come back. Thus the conclusion: he was a hidden counterrevolutionary.

  When the verdict was read to Second Uncle, he did not know whether he should laugh or wail. He wanted to shout at the top of his voice that the war was exactly what he had dreaded and if he could, he would do anything on earth to prevent it. But he knew it would be in vain. Who would believe his words now? He, a counterrevolutionary as well as a Rightist!

  "Of course he tells lies! Of course he wants the Nationalists to come back! In his sleep, he must be dreaming of his lost paradise. When he is awake, he is secretly planning crimes: putting poison into food at a cafeteria, blowing up a crowded department store, setting fire to a hospital ... A counterrevolutionary is a monster who enjoys killing innocent people!" This was what people everywhere in China thought of a counterrevolutionary in the early sixties. How could he convince people that he was different? Not if he had a hundred mouths all over his body. Even if he jumped into the Yellow River, he could not wash himself clean.

  Life's logic sometimes is absurd. Second Uncle's concern for his family soon made him a man without a family. When the bad news reached Beijing, Shenshen shut herself in her room and cried. But the next day when she came out, she was calm. She went straight to the district court and asked for a divorce. As this was considered a revolutionary act, the court soon approved it and gave her the custody of her two children. She did this of her own free will. Nobody put pressure on her. Yet everybody knew that if she did not divorce her counterrevolutionary husband, she and her children would have no future. By then, she had given up all hope that someday Second Uncle would come back to Beijing as an innocent man.

  But Second Uncle did come back to Beijing an innocent man in 1980. In his file, the official conclusion said it was a mistake to label him a Rightist in 1957 and likewise it was another mistake to label him a counterrevolutionary in 1962-. Just a couple of mistakes. In 1980, all seemed so simple. Yet in the past, it was so hopelessly complicated. It took the Party twenty-two years to declare that it had made a couple of mistakes about Second Uncle. How many twenty-two years does one have in life?

  When Second Uncle returned to Beijing, he remarried Shenshen, who had never moved out of Nainai's house. Throughout all the years, she had remained true to him. Moreover, she had brought up the two boys all by herself. If this happened in old China, people would build a chastity gateway for her and the entire neighborhood would be honored. Nowadays chastity gateways are out of the question. Yet anyone who knew about Second Uncle and Shenshen felt very happy for them.

  Traditionally, we Chinese loved da tuan yuan, grand happy endings, to our stories. Tragedy was not to our taste. Thus I would like to say that the reunion of Second Uncle and Shenshen after twenty-two years was blissful. So blissful that it would move a stony statue to tears.

  Little Ox and Little Dragon rushed forward to embrace their father. With tears in their eyes they told the old man that they had loved him secretly through all these years. Now the whole family was together, it felt like a dream. Second Uncle reached out a trembling hand and touched Shenshen's gray hair. He felt love and gratitude overflowing his heart. Holding Second Uncle's hand in her own, Shenshen could not help crying. But this time her tears were happy ones. When she saw that Second Uncle's hair had turned as white as snow at the age of fiftynine and the lines on his forehead were as deep as if carved by a knife, she knew what he had gone through all these years and her heart melted with love and pity. In short, they lived happily ever after.

  But that is a fairy tale. In the real world, the reunion of Shenshen and Second Uncle turned out quite a disaster. Maybe too many years' separation had killed Shenshen's love for Second Uncle? The old man who came back in the end was so different from the young man she remembered that he was a stranger. No! Worse than a stranger! He was the cause of all her suffering for so many years. She couldn't forget it! She couldn't forgive him!

  On the other hand, I don't know if there was any love left in Second Uncle's heart for Shenshen. Perhaps this time it was merely a marriage of convenience for him, and he still bore her grudges because she had betrayed him when things were the most difficult for him. She had put s
alt on his bleeding wound, adding frost on top of snow. Maybe his love for her died on the salt farm where he was abandoned by the whole world for more than two decades.

  Anyway, after they remarried, quarrels broke out day and night. The husband was irritable. The wife was explosive. Both were like smoldering volcanoes ready to erupt. As for the children, who were not children anymore, Little Ox grew up as stubborn as an ox. He had remained loyal to his father all these years. For this, he got himself into trouble and was criticized at his work unit. Once he almost became a counterrevolutionary himself. But nothing could shake his devotion to his old man. While he stuck to his choice as an act of defiance, did he really know his father as a person?

  Little Dragon, on the other hand, could not help it that he hated his father. Perhaps because he was too young, he did not remember the evenings his father took us window-shopping or showed us martial arts? All he remembered were Second Uncle's faults and failures.

  When he grew up he was bullied by other kids and his father was never there to protect him. Later he was not allowed to join the Communist Youth League, nor could he wear a Red Guard's armband, all because his father was a counterrevolutionary. Shenshen's divorce did not help much. Little Dragon was still called "son of a dog" by his fellow students. Later when he tried to find a job, he did not have a father who could open a "back door" for him. Instead, he was rejected on account of his father's political problems.