by R Yang
Despite all this, Jin was very bright and good-natured. Sometimes when we felt the class was boring, we would read other books together under our desk. We read fast, competing for speed, leaving the comments and questions to the recess. Meanwhile we had to watch out for the teacher's sudden questions. We needed to make sure that we always had the right answers. The secret reading gave us a lot of fun. The teachers never found us out, as our desk was at the back of the classroom. But in the middle of the second year, Jin told me that he had to quit school.
He said that his father's health was not good. The family needed him to work in the fields to earn labor points. He was probably the oldest child. I didn't ask him. I didn't know what to say to him. I was puzzled. I was sad. At the time Jin was only fifteen, and being admitted to ioi was something! What could he do in the fields? If his family needed help, why wouldn't the people's commune help them? Why did he have to quit school? But as Jin said the decision was final and he was not coming to school tomorrow, I said good-bye to him. He did not tell me or anybody where he lived. So we couldn't visit him afterwards.
The rest of the class went on with our studies. The curriculum at ioi was actually not that different from other schools. Yet as time went by I realized that there was something extra which we learned from roi. This something extra one could not see or touch. It was not written in textbooks. Yet it was everywhere in the atmosphere. Each day we breathed it in. It blended into our blood. It seeped into our subconscious. To explain this, perhaps I should start from the name of this middle school.
The name, ioi, was deliberately chosen by Wang Yizhi, our seventyyear-old principal, whom the students revered. (Other schools, by the way, did not have the privilege of choosing the numbers that were to become the names of their schools, which the municipal bureau of education gave out in sequence.) I was told that she chose the name because she wanted us never to be content with what we had accom plished. Even after we got the perfect grade of one hundred, we should still strive for something better, which was symbolized by ioi.
Our school, the teachers often told us, was not for ordinary students. It was for the most reliable, most courageous, and most brilliant youths who were to become the nation's political leaders, top scientists, and finest artists. "You are the best. You are the chosen ones. But we will still challenge you and make you even better." This kind of talk convinced me that I belonged to an elite group. I remember in those days there were three kinds of people whom we especially looked down on.
The first group was the provincial folk, whom we liked to ridicule behind their backs. It included all those who did not grow up in Beijing. The Mandarin they spoke was absurd and sometimes hard to understand. Their clothes, taste, and demeanor were laughable, giving off an earthy smell. As for their way of thinking, it was hopelessly simple and naive. They hardly knew anything about what was going on behind the scenes on China's political stage, while we always heard a great deal on the grapevine from our privileged schoolmates.
Another group of people we held in contempt was the "petty-city dwellers." It included all those who grew up in Beijing but were neither officials nor scholars. These people were despicable because of their pettiness. Poorly educated, they were cowardly, selfish, gossipy, oily, and often downright mean. Day in and day out, they played little tricks on one another for little gains or no gain at all. Their heads, from morning till night, were filled with "chicken feathers and garlic skins." Thoughts of China's future and the fate of humankind probably never crossed their minds.
As for the third group we looked down on, they were our peers. The students who failed to get into the four top schools were definitely inferior. Even those who were in the other three top schools were less fortunate. Academically, their schools might be as superb as ours, yet none of them could boast of a glorious revolutionary history dating back to the liberated area of Jinchaji before the civil war. Nor were their schools linked to so many important names in modern Chinese history.
Our principal, Wang Yizhi, for instance, was the widow of a famous Chinese revolutionary martyr, Zhang Tailei, who organized the wellknown Guangzhou uprising in 19z7. Wang herself joined the Chinese Communist Party as early as r9z2-, when the party was only one year old. The person who recommended her for party membership was none other than Liu Shaoqi, by then the president of the People's Republic of China. In 1957 Premier Zhou Enlai visited ioi in person. Chairman Mao, though his own son Mao Anying studied in Russia before our school was set up, sent his nephew Mao Yuanxin here for six years. Later during the Cultural Revolution, this nephew of Mao's became a rather notorious political figure who eventually fell with the "Gang of Four." Nowadays people in China don't talk about him anymore. But back in the early sixties we were quite proud to have him as our alumnus. The lyric of our school anthem was written by a famous poet, Guo Moruo, who was by then the president of Chinese Academy of Sciences. This list of VIPs could go on and on, and it served to feed our pride.
So I felt lucky that I was in ioi when I was awake. When I was asleep, however, I was unable to control my dreams. One dream haunted me like a ghost. At the start I was always happy, running on a broad road or a flower-strewn meadow. I took a step forward. When my foot touched the ground, suddenly I seemed to lose all my weight and up I went. I was above the ground, at about twice the height of a person. My whole body tightened in fear. Then, fortunately the upward movement slowly stopped. For a second or two I hung suspended in the air. Then I started to fall.
As soon as my feet touched the ground, however, the impact sent me up again. This time I reached the height of a big tree, hanging there like a kite with a broken string. My heart leaped into my mouth. I wanted to cry out for help, but I couldn't. No one was in sight anyway. My eyes were fixed on the ground as if by a spell. The height was frightful and I could not turn my eyes away from the earth.
Then once again the upward movement reversed itself. As I dropped down, I tried desperately to find something on the ground to get hold of: a rock, a plant, a rat hole, anything. But nothing was there. Up I went, once again. Pulled by an irresistible force, I flew higher and higher. The trees vanished from my sight. The blue horizon was half hidden in a thin mist. Anticipating the fall, I knew this would be the end of me. When I woke up, it took me a long time to calm my heart.
I did not understand why I had such dreams, not just once or twice, but many times in those years. I thought of the old saying, "Whatever one thinks during the day, one dreams it at night." But as far as I remembered, I never had any experience similar to this. Maybe the dream showed I was uneasy at ioi, among the confident group of youths whose hopes in new China were sky-high. Academically, I dare say, I was still doing better than most of my classmates. But politically, I had some serious doubts about myself. Looking back on it, I believe my doubts were triggered by three things: Lei Feng, physical labor, and the Recalling Bitterness Big Meetings.
Lei Feng was a shining example Chairman Mao set for all the Chinese in the early sixties. He was perfect. He loved the Party and Chairman Mao more than he did his own parents (who died in the old society). In his whole life he never did anything to benefit himself. He always did things that benefited others. For example, he lived very frugally and saved every cent of his soldier's allowance (which wasn't much). When he heard that somewhere there was a flood, he donated his money to the people there, hundreds of yuan at a time, anonymously. He did numerous good things like this and wrote a wonderful revolutionary diary. If he was ioo, how could I possibly be ioi? Compared with him, I was not even 9o or 8o. When something happened, instinctively I would think of myself first. Then on second thought, hopefully I could take others into consideration. Besides, if I was honest with myself, I was not sure if I could love the Party and Chairman Mao more than Aunty and my parents. So I bore Lei Feng a secret grudge, because he was too perfect. He made it impossible for me to live up to the expectation of our old principal and be ioi.
Besides Lei Feng there was physical labor, a r
equired course at ioi. All students had to take it once a week for an entire afternoon. The aim of the course, I was told, was to help us cultivate proletarian thoughts and feeling. "All workers and peasants love physical labor, while landlords and capitalists hate it" was the theory. I accepted the theory. Nonetheless, I found the course terribly boring. For an entire afternoon, all we did was carry coal cinder from one corner of the schoolyard to another. A few weeks later we might be carrying it all the way back. What a waste of time! The work made me dirty and uncomfortable all over. By the end of an incredibly long afternoon I was totally exhausted. As a result, I could not read or do anything in the evening. Looking back on it, the class only taught me to dislike physical labor. Moreover it made me doubt myself, for I kept wondering if my classmates were really as happy as they seemed while they were taking this class. I could not ask them. They could not ask me.
In addition to the labor class on campus, each semester we were required to work in a factory or a people's commune for two weeks. At first the idea seemed exciting. In the past I never had a chance to get in touch with workers and peasants. This time I will be living among them. See their lives with my own eyes. Talk to them face to face. Hopefully I can make a few friends among them. Won't that be wonderful? But what happened afterwards proved that my expectation was unrealistic.
Each time my classmates and I went to a factory or a people's commune, we were put up in some empty conference rooms or classrooms. By day we were an isolated group, doing some quite indispensable odd jobs that the grass-roots units managed to find for us. In the evening no one was allowed to wander away from our temporary quarters. Revolutionary discipline had to be observed. In fact, the teachers didn't need to worry. Where on earth could we go? As we made no friends among local people, nobody invited us to visit them. The evenings were really tedious.
Soon I got fed up with going to factories and people's communes. In my opinion, such trips were worse than futile. On our side, we had to put up with a great deal: the interruption of our studies, the fatigue, the damp floors we had to sleep on, the mosquitoes and fleas that feasted on us, the bad food produced in our makeshift kitchens, the lack of showers and modern toilets ... As for the grass-roots units that received us, we were never much help to them. Yet it was such a lot of trouble to accommodate us and make sure that we were safe. Sometimes they had to dismiss the children from school so that we could live in their classrooms. For the local people, we must have been a real pain in the neck! But in those days, of course, no one dared complain. Receiving us was a political task they had to fulfill.
Then in 1964 suddenly class struggle was of great importance. Chairman Mao spoke about it first. Other leaders quickly followed suit. The media spread the message all over the country. Millions of people were mobilized. Our school, which had never fallen behind in any political campaign, tried to heighten the students' class consciousness by inviting old workers and peasants to talk about their hard lives in the old society. Each guest speaker had a tragic story to tell. Some scenes they described left a deep impression on me.
I remember one old peasant talked about how his family sold his younger sister during a famine. The girl, at the age of six, was unusually bright and sensitive. She knew that dealers of children had arrived at the village and her parents were about to give her up. She pleaded with tears streaming down her face: "Please don't sell me! I will never say I'm hungry again! I will let my brother eat all the food. And I will work so hard. I promise. Please, oh, please! Take pity on me! . . . " This broke the hearts of the parents, yet they had no choice. The family was starving. There was nothing else they could sell. So the little girl was sold for a few silver dollars to a dealer who later sold her to another for more money. Nobody knew where she went and what became of her. Maybe she became a prostitute, or a rich man's concubine, or a slave girl? Maybe she didn't survive after all? But the tearful pleading she made before she was dragged away by the dealer never ceased to ring in the ears of her brother.
Another story I remember was told by a poor peasant who was brought up by his widowed mother. The two were devoted to each other. When the mother fell ill one winter, the son had no money to send for a doctor or buy medicine for her. So as her illness went from bad to worse, he could only watch helplessly and blame himself. One day, she woke up from a coma and murmured: "If only I could have some hot, thick corn-flour porridge before I die . . . " Hearing this, the son rushed out to a landlord's home and begged him for a bowl of corn flour. But the landlord's heart was made of iron and stone. In his desperation, the son begged from door to door. It took him a long time to get the food, for the villagers were very poor. When he ran home with it, he found that his mother had already passed away. She died with an empty stomach in an icy cold room all by herself. The son could never forgive himself for this.
The tragic stories went on and on. The one that got me into trouble was told by an old worker who used to be a rickshaw puller. Once he was laid up by a serious illness. The family had no savings. So while he was unable to work, his wife and children starved. Seeing this, the man forced himself out of bed and went out with his rickshaw. On that day he got a customer who was a rich young lady. She was going to an opera. The theater was quite far away. The man tried to run, but soon he was out of breath and his feet seemed to be treading on cotton. Sweat soaked his clothes, but he was not warm. He was shivering all over. By the time he dragged the rickshaw to the theater, the opera had already begun. The young lady was angry. The man tried to explain, but she wouldn't listen. She went into the theater without giving him a cent. The man was too feeble to argue with her. He dropped to the sidewalk coughing blood. That night he got home very late. He had brought back no food, no coal, nothing. The children were so disappointed. The whole family huddled together and cried ...
Hearing this sad story, I was deeply moved. "How cruel that young lady was! How heartless!" I thought to myself, If I were that young lady, I would never do such a thing. I would be as kind and generous as Nainai had been in the olden days. I would give all the money in my purse to this man and send him home in a warm taxi. Imagine how happy his children would be to see all the good food and new clothes their father had brought back! And his wife would be so relieved that she'd suddenly look ten years younger. The next morning, an unexpected visitor would knock on their door: the best doctor in town. He'd say that someone had paid him to make a house call here. He would cure the man's illness. That someone, of course, would be no one else but me ...
When the Recalling Bitterness Big Meetings went on, I was half listening and half daydreaming. My imagination took over the narratives, worked on them, and turned them into stories of my own liking. I rather enjoyed doing this, until one day it suddenly dawned on me that I had always imagined myself to be a kindhearted young lady who was rich! In all the stories I made up, I had never identified myself with the poor workers and peasants!
Thinking of this, I broke into a cold sweat, for now I realized that I had a serious problem with my class stance. In class struggle, the most important thing was on whose side one stood. Without noticing it, I had sided with the wrong group of people! It was most dangerous! Luckily I realized the problem before it was too late. From then on I drove such nonsense out of my head and brought my imagination under control.
By and by I was able to put this accident behind me. Just as I was beginning to feel better about myself, a new campaign started at ioi. It was called "Exposing the Third Layer of Thoughts." What was the third layer of thoughts? Our political teacher Qian explained.
"The first layer of thoughts you would not hesitate to tell your teachers and classmates. The second layer of thoughts, however, you only reveal to your bosom friends behind closed doors. As for the third layer of thoughts, it flies across your minds in the wink of an eye. Most of the time, you will simply forget it. But if you grasp it, look at it carefully, it will shock you. You will never tell anyone about it! You don't even want to admit to yourself that such terrib
le thoughts were yours!
"This third layer of thoughts," the political teacher continued, "is the most dangerous. It is like cancer hidden inside you. If you cover it up and keep it a secret, it will find the environment agreeable. It will grow and spread and proliferate! It will take you over and kill you!" Hearing this, I gave a shudder and saw gooseflesh coming up on my arms. But at that instant, his voice changed as he spoke coaxingly.
"So if you find that you have this third layer of thoughts, what do you do? When you find a tumor in your body, you tell the doctor so that he can treat it, by operation or medication-only he can give you professional help. Only he can cure you. As for your third layer of thoughts, I want you to think very carefully about it, write it down in a thought report, and hand it in to me next week."
Thus his talk ended; but the turmoil in my mind had just begun. I recalled the thoughts I had about physical labor and the stories I made up during the Recalling Bitterness Big Meetings. I knew I had this third layer of thoughts and they were dangerous. What should I do? Should I write them down and hand the report to the political teacher or should I hide them from him? If I hide them, am I hiding something from the Party? But if I am honest, I will incriminate myself. It is a foolish thing to do!
This was the first time I was tortured by the "thought struggle." It was a terrible experience. I was fourteen. Too young to look at things in perspective. Moreover, up to that point, all my education told me that the teachers were always right. My parents could be unfair, they could be mistaken. But not the teachers. Especially not our political teacher Qian. For us, he was almost the Communist Party incarnate. I had heard quite a few students say that he had the magic power to read people's minds. It was hard to believe. Yet my schoolmates were not stupid kids.