Out of the Gobi

by Weijian Shan

  After dinner, Platoon Leader Liu announced that we had to spend the night in the open in the potato fields. There was no housing or shelter available, and we needed to guard the piles of potatoes, too. He said that we should each dig a hole in the ground large enough for ourselves and cover the opening with potato stems and leaves. We would sleep in the holes; the vegetation would be our shelter.

  Nobody was happy about sleeping in the potato fields. But there was no alternative. We went to work.

  The earth was soft and it was not too difficult to dig. I worked hard and soon there was a hole in the ground. The trick was not to dig too large a hole, for the opening had to be narrow enough to be covered with stems and leaves. I put a few stems and leaves across the bottom of mine, and then I covered the rest, leaving an opening big enough to squeeze through. When I looked at my finished project, I wondered if it had been worth digging in the first place. It did not look as if it would provide much protection against the cold.

  I took a look at other people’s foxholes. Li Baoquan had the best shelter. Old Cui’s was like a hole left by some kind of explosion. There was no consistency in depth to the sides of his shallow hole.

  A few people were examining the hole dug by Huang Shurong. It was huge already, but he was still working on it. Huang had been a weight lifter and gymnast on his high school team, so he was hefty. Everyone was telling him that his hole was already too big, but he would not listen. He then discovered, to his dismay, that the opening was too big to be covered by potato stems and leaves. But he had enough energy, so he started to dig another one.

  I carefully unbundled my bedroll inside my hole. As I was doing so, sand and dirt fell off the wall. It was impossible to shake them off, since the quilt was larger than the hole. So I took the quilt out, shook it out, and put it back in. Again, it was covered by sand and dirt. It appeared that I had no choice but to sleep that way.

  It was pitch dark by the time we finished building our nests and getting colder by the minute. There was nothing to do in the darkness, and besides, we were bone tired, having walked so long and worked so hard. Everyone climbed into his own foxhole. I wished that there was some water to wash off the sweat and dirt of the day, but there was only half a bucket of drinking water left.

  I felt as if I were sleeping in a coffin. If I so much as adjusted my position, sand and dirt rained off the wall. I could not sleep. I lay there on my back, staring into the sky through the opening in the hole, wondering how many nights I would spend here. I figured that it would probably take 10 days to finish the field. I had heard that winter came early in this part of the country, and night temperatures could fall precipitously.

  All of a sudden, there was a long howl that sounded like a wolf. As I was wondering where the sound came from, I heard Platoon Leader Liu shout: “Be quiet, Li Baoquan. Go to sleep.” There was some muffled laughter. Then everything went quiet.

  The air grew colder. The quilt simply could not keep me warm. I tried to curl up, but the hole was too small. I shivered with cold and stared at the stars. There were no clouds so all the stars were visible.

  I missed home more than I had ever thought possible. I started to recite an ancient poem to myself, thinking especially of a single line: “One doubly misses his family on a festival day.” Today was October 1, National Day. The skies of Beijing would be lit with fireworks. Were my parents and my younger brother out on the street? Were they talking about me or about my sister? My mother would soon be sent to the countryside herself. Could she still enjoy the National Day holiday? I tried to recall the sweet holidays that we had spent together and wished I had fully understood how valuable they were. Would the whole family ever be together again?

  I slept fitfully in the cold and damp and was awakened by the songs of larks. There was a trace of red on the horizon, and the sky gradually became brighter and brighter. Then, almost suddenly, the sun jumped clear of the mountains. I crawled out of my hole and saw other people emerging from theirs. We walked around with our padded coats over our shoulders, trying to warm up. There were, of course, no toilets. So we walked some distance to relieve ourselves. Someone commented that it was too bad the potatoes did not need fertilizer anymore. But no one laughed in the freezing cold.

  We started to work on an empty stomach. In about an hour, food arrived. There was good news, too: Cook Jin said that the horse-wagon inn might have enough space for us to sleep there. It would take us an hour to walk there, but an hour was nothing for us. Platoon Leader Liu must have had as tough a night as everyone else. He said he would go speak with the innkeeper.

  Happy that we might sleep under a roof and wash ourselves, we worked doubly hard that day. We were not disappointed. Platoon Leader Liu had made arrangements for us to stay at the inn throughout our assignment, paying the innkeeper with potatoes.

  That night, we saw that the inn was a mud house built with unbaked bricks. There was only one room, with two large kang on each side. A kang is a hollow brick platform, the standard bed in the northern Chinese countryside, where the winter is very harsh. A fire beneath it, fueled through a hole under a stove, keeps it warm. There is usually a cooking stove at one end that allows the bed to heat up while supper is prepared. I slept on a kang when I visited my mother’s home village with my sister in 1968. Although now we slept on piles of straw, we had been promised kang when our new barracks were built.

  Each of the inn’s two kang could comfortably sleep about 10 people. Since there were 30 of us, 15 had to crowd into each one. It was so crowded that when one person wanted to turn over, the entire row had to turn with him. I tried to sleep motionless throughout the night. Some people complained that sleeping motionless was more tiring than staying awake. But nobody volunteered to get up.

  Other than being crowded, the inn was infinitely better than our holes in the ground in the open air. The room did not have any windows, so it was dark inside even during broad daylight. On a pillar, there was a small container with kerosene oil and a wick, which burned with a column of dark smoke. Platoon Leader Liu slept right next to it, so he could light one cigarette after another. I was on the other side of the pillar, so that I could read the book that I had brought with me by its dim light. At the end of the kang, close to the door, there was a large pot on a stove. Unfortunately, the distribution of heat was by no means even. The area near the stove was so hot that the people sleeping there complained of being burned. Once, the boy nearest the pot had his quilt scorched when the cooking took longer than expected. Fortunately, the heat always dissipated a few hours after the cooking was done, so one could still sleep on that end of the kang at night.

  There was a small room attached to the large one. This was the home of the innkeeper. He was an old single man. His job was not easy. If there were guests, he had to get up late at night several times to feed the horses. He also had to make sure that there was enough hay to feed the horses and fuel the stove.

  There was a well in front of the inn, where we would brush our teeth and wash ourselves. Since there were no women around for miles, we could wash ourselves naked right in the open. Li Baoquan said he did not care to wash, as there was no need to be presentable if there were no girls around. “What for? To look good in the mirror?” he asked.

  We settled in at the inn. During the day, we would go to work without a break for lunch. Cook Jin would prepare one meal for us before we departed and one meal after we came back. The meal was the same every day: steamed cornbread and “fake millet” porridge in the morning, and cornbread with boiled potatoes for dinner. Well, they were supposed to be stir-fried. But since we did not have much cooking oil, Cook Jin had to boil them.

  There was a national shortage of matches. I had never realized that matches were so essential. We needed them to light the oil lamp at night, and to light a fire to cook meals. With the exception of myself and two or three others, everyone smoked cigarettes. Without matches, life would be impossible. But we soon ran out of matches.

  It seem
ed silly to walk a whole day back to the company for a box of matches. So Platoon Leader Liu proposed to the old innkeeper that we exchange our potatoes for some matches. The innkeeper said he would swap half a box of matches for a full sack. Platoon Leader Liu protested that a sack of potatoes weighed about 50 kilos (∼100 pounds) and was worth at least 10 yuan. An entire box of matches only cost 2 fen (Chinese cents). Well, the innkeeper said, take it or leave it: I would rather keep my matches. Liu grumbled, but he ordered someone to bring the innkeeper a full sack of potatoes. We had tons of potatoes and no matches.

  We had versatile uses for our washbasins. We washed ourselves in them, of course. But also at night, when nobody was supposed to open the door to let in the cold air, we used the basins as chamber pots. Furthermore, at meals, each squad had to send a representative to the stove for their portion of the food. The only container that could hold enough food was our washbasins. Although we always made sure to wash our basins thoroughly, the thought of the other uses was not very appetizing. Li Baoquan was fond of a local saying that if you were used to eating the unclean stuff, you would not get sick easily. There might be some truth to this. Who knows? In any event, we had to eat.

  It was still warm during the day when we arrived on October 1, 1969, but, as I had feared, the autumn weather quickly turned cold. A week after we arrived, water froze at night. We dug out piles and piles of potatoes. But for some reason the company did not send wagons to haul them back. Many potatoes froze. The stems and leaves we covered them with were not much protection. They started to rot and exude a bad smell. If good potatoes were piled on top of bad ones, they would all rot. So a large portion of our work now became separating the good potatoes from the bad, a procedure we had to repeat every day as long as they were left in the open. Our piles of good potatoes became smaller and smaller, while piles of the bad ones grew larger and larger.

  Platoon Leader Liu complained that if he had known how little the company cared, he would have been more generous swapping potatoes for matches. He was a heavy smoker. With a shortage of matches, he had to smoke more than he usually did because he had to light up a new cigarette with the butt of an old one. Then his cigarette supply ran out. Our store of food was being depleted quickly, too, and as a result our daily diet was reduced to potatoes and more potatoes. In Beijing, I had loved potatoes. But after several days, the sight of boiled potatoes brought stomach acid into my throat, and I would feel the heartburn.

  During the last few days at the potato field, we were not digging potatoes anymore. Everything had been dug up. But we spent hours sorting through the rotted potatoes for good ones. Platoon Leader Liu remarked bitterly that the best way to keep potatoes from being frozen was to bury them. It seemed that in a few days there would not be any good potatoes left.

  Now that there was little left to do with the potatoes, our breaks were longer. Sometimes we filled them with wrestling matches. It turned out that boys from Tianjin were good wrestlers. Surprisingly, Li Baoquan was the best of them all even though he had a thin build. No wonder he commanded such respect among the boys from Tianjin.

  Yan Chongjie was another Tianjin boy. He was shorter, but much stronger than Baoquan. He was also a good wrestler. In one out of three matches, he would win. Sometimes, when he was “in the right mood,” he could maintain a winning streak for several matches. Whenever that happened, Li Baoquan would resort to his “psychological warfare.” He would say that he lost because he was giving Yan Chongjie face, as Yan was the older of the two.

  Yan would become a little agitated and challenge Li Baoquan to try again. Li Baoquan would dismiss such a challenge by saying that he did not want Yan to lose face in front of everyone.

  “I will throw you around when nobody is around,” he would say.

  Yan would then drag him to the center of the circle for a match. But because he was upset, it was now easier for him to fall for Li Baoquan’s leg tricks. In a few minutes, sure enough, Yan would be thrown to the ground. Knowing that he would jump up for another match, Li Baoquan would provoke him even further.

  Cui Xianchao was even better than Yan, although no one would have guessed by looking at him. He wore a pair of thick, purple- rimmed glasses, and was sloppy with his clothes. His bookish look confirmed that he was much better educated than most of the other boys because he was a 66er. Despite that, he was well coordinated and had razor-sharp reflexes.

  When Li Baoquan won a match against Old Cui, he would hurry to help Cui up, saying, “Old Cui, at your advanced age you should be very careful.”

  Usually, on the next try, Li Baoquan would be the loser. Then Cui would say:

  “How about it, young man?”

  Everyone would take turns to try his hand, even those like myself who had never wrestled before. When I first had a match with Li Baoquan, my body was in the air before I knew what was happening. The second time around, it took a little longer. But this time, Li Baoquan did not merely throw me off balance, but fell upon me as I fell to the ground, his weight almost crushing my ribs. Cui and Yan yelled at Li Baoquan for using such a “black hand” on a novice. Baoquan apologized and said he had gotten carried away.

  From then on, I wrestled with Li Baoquan as often as I could. I wanted to be able to beat him some day. Cui was helpful, coaching me in how to do tricks and how to avoid being tricked.

  There was, in fact, some practical use for learning how to wrestle. Fighting among boys was frequent in the platoons and, sometimes, between companies. Those without friends to stand up for them, or with no ability to fight, could be bullied. Many boys, especially those from Tianjin, had learned street fighting. Some of them were known for their fighting nicknames. Li Baoquan would not reveal his, but I later learned that it was “Hairless from East of the River.” I was never able to find out how he had got that nickname as he had a full head of hair. The best wrestler from Tianjin was “Monkey Li” of the Second Platoon, and he was indeed quite agile.

  Despite their wrestling skills the tough boys from Tianjin were not as good in real fights as the boys from Beijing. That’s because the boys from Tianjin observed a certain code of conduct for street gangsters. Before they fought, they would agree on whether to “play boxing” or “play wrestling.” The loser would graciously accept defeat. I heard that when they first came, they acted the same way with the toughs from Beijing, who played it rough with bricks, knives, and shovels, causing many injuries among the Tianjin boys. Then the Tianjin boys learned to use weapons, too.

  Platoon Leader Liu liked to watch our matches, although he never participated. He would squat by the circle, smoking a cigarette, and smile broadly when a match was over. When challenged, he said that this was stuff for city boys—he only knew how to arm wrestle. Indeed, Huang Shurong, who was a former weight lifter, was the only boy in the platoon who could beat Platoon Leader Liu in arm wrestling.

  Thus, we spent several days sorting potatoes and playing in the fields. When tractor-pulled wagons finally arrived, there were not many piles of edible potatoes left. The loading took but a few hours. I felt sorry that so many good potatoes had rotted. But perhaps it was just as well. The thought of having potatoes for dinner for the rest of the winter was unbearable.

  For our last night at the inn, Platoon Leader Liu ordered Cook Jin Jian to empty the flour bag and make noodles. He was to use any cooking oil he had left. We all cheered. It had been some time since we had eaten anything made with wheat flour. Our squad took out two of the largest basins, and we washed them carefully several times. It was indeed a feast. Although the noodles were gone before I had had enough, I felt quite satisfied. For the first time in a long while, I did not feel heartburn. Strangely, I felt homesick. Not for Beijing, but for the barracks in the company compound.

  The next morning, we packed our belongings and put them on a horse-drawn wagon. Platoon Leader Liu thanked the innkeeper and left him two sacks of potatoes, for we had no need of them. The old man was delighted. He had a better harvest than anyone else.


  The return journey did not feel as long as when we came, probably because we were going home. The air was cool now even during the day. The mosquitoes were gone. I was walking with Cui Xianchao.

  I heard from other people from his school that Old Cui had been a star student, known for composing essays and poems. He could memorize a poem after reading it only once. Doubtless he would have had a shot at attending one of the best universities in China. But the Cultural Revolution had changed his life forever.

  Cui told me that he had not wanted to come to the Gobi. But he had no choice. His father had been labeled a rightist in 1957. Unable to understand how he had become an enemy of the people overnight, or perhaps to cope with the humiliation, he jumped into the Huangpu River in Shanghai and drowned himself when Cui was still very young. Cui’s mother brought him to Beijing to live with his grown-up sister and her husband. With such a “black” family background, he had had no choice but come to the Gobi when many of his classmates were assigned jobs in the city.

  I told him that in our class of 69ers, everyone had been assigned to the countryside, either in Inner Mongolia or the northeast. No one had a choice.

  Cui said that we were being wasted here. “Chairman Mao said that we are here to receive re-education from the poor peasants, but we never see them. Besides, what can we learn from the peasants? Some of those who live at the foot of the mountains don’t even know that Chairman Mao is the leader of the country. They still ask about the health of Fu Zouyi, the warlord of the old regime.”

  He said that with his family background he had no hope left of going to college. Even if the universities reopened, he would have no chance. He said I would have a better chance than he because I was not from a black family. He had seen that I liked to read and encouraged me to try to study systematically.

  He also suggested that I should try to leave Inner Mongolia. A few people from our company whose parents were high-ranking cadres had already left to join the military, where the living conditions were much better. He told me that as far as he could see, none of the leaders here cared about farming. That was why they did not try to haul the potatoes back. They had fixed pay and generous rations of foods from the state. Why should they care about potatoes?