by Weijian Shan
We carried buckets of water to the field, but soon drank it all. There was no shade to shelter from the blazing sun. From time to time, some of us passed out from heatstroke as the temperature rose. We had to follow a schedule to avoid the hottest hours during the day. We would get up at about 4 in the morning and work until about 11 a.m. Then we would come back to our barracks to have lunch and rest. We would return to the fields at 3 in the afternoon to work until about 8 p.m., or around the time of sunset.
This was also the time when swarms of mosquitoes would attack most relentlessly. Lake Wuliangsu nearby was a great breeding ground for mosquitoes, and they thrived, attacking cattle and people. They were big and could bite through clothing. Since we did not wear clothes as we worked, we were bitten all over and there was no way to fend them off. With clothes, the heat was suffocating and we sweated profusely. There was no escape from their attacks in the sweltering heat. While we could not feed ourselves by farming, we helped contribute to the food supply for the Gobi insects with our own bodies.
Chapter 9
Battling Frozen Lake
To Mao, politics trumped everything else, including the economy. But not even he could ignore economic realities and the need to feed 800 million people. So in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mao’s exhortation to “grasp the revolution and promote production” appeared with ever-greater frequency in newspapers, indicating that economic conditions were becoming increasingly dire.
But as production resumed in fits and starts nationwide, the need for revolution was never far from Mao’s mind. Those who had forgotten to follow the revolutionary line of the Party, or those who engaged in economic activity that was considered to be capitalist, got into trouble. In spite of that, the nation seemed to be taking a breather from political campaigns to go back to work. Unbeknownst to all, another political storm was brewing.
Lushan, or Mount Lu, is one of the most scenic mountains in the country. Located in China’s southern Jiangxi Province, it had for centuries been a favorite place for Buddhists to build their temples and for poets to meditate. Pleasant and cool in the summertime, it became a favorite place for Communist leaders to hold major meetings. Mao called one such meeting in 1959 “a meeting for fairies,” because staying up in the mountains felt like being a fairy in the mountain’s picturesque ambience.
But this place would not be remembered as a fairyland. It was during the 1959 Lushan meeting that Peng Dehuai, the former defense minister, was purged after criticizing Mao.
In late summer 1970, the Party’s central committee held a plenary session there. Mao had gone up the mountain in a good mood, ready to celebrate the victory of the Cultural Revolution. But as the meeting progressed, he became agitated. Mao smelled a conspiracy, led by his chosen successor.
By then Liu Shaoqi, the former president, had died in prison. The position of the president itself had been eliminated. Lin Biao, Mao’s new chosen successor, proposed to restore the position of president. He proposed that Mao, who held only the position of Party chairman, also be named the president of the country. Several senior leaders, including Chen Boda, Mao’s longtime secretary and ghostwriter, and a number of generals close to Lin Biao, were enthusiastic supporters of the idea since they thought Mao would like such flattery.
Mao thought it was a trap. The real purpose, he believed, was to make Lin Biao the head of state and to leave Mao sidelined. After remaining silent for a few days, he attacked the supporters of Lin’s idea for having ulterior motives. Mao was not ready to dump Lin Biao just yet, presumably because the nation was not ready for another shock. In the end, Chen Boda was made a scapegoat, accused of having launched a surprise attack against the Party. Chen was kicked out of the Politburo, stripped of all his positions, and jailed.
Mao’s method was always to discredit his opponents in public opinions, knocking them down in the minds of the public. A nationwide campaign “to criticize Chen Boda and to rectify the work style of the Party” was launched. Mao described the supposed attack by Chen and his coconspirators as akin to “dynamiting Mount Lu into flatland and stopping the earth from churning.”
By then the nation had grown accustomed to Mao’s various political campaigns. This one, while it seemed to come out of left field, did not really surprise anyone. But almost no one understood the real purpose or target of the campaign at the time; it would not become obvious until more than a year later.
Internationally, the Vietnam War grabbed newspaper headlines every day. Even we, in the isolated Gobi, were aware of the events from radio reports. The antiwar movement in the United States, especially on college campuses, was increasingly supported by the public, according to polls. As the United States and the Soviet Union fought real wars through their proxies, such as in the Middle East and in Vietnam, the Cold War was in danger of turning hot. The Nixon administration was looking for ways to extract the United States from the Vietnam quagmire and to tilt the balance of power in world affairs in favor of the United States against its Soviet nemesis. No one knew, not even the political players themselves, that all these dynamics would have profound implications for the United States, the Soviet Union, and China in the years to come.
* * *
It was too cold, almost unbearable. I had forgotten to wear my hat, made of padded cotton with long flaps hanging down to cover my ears, and it felt as if my ears were being frozen off in sharp, cold bites. My body was chilled to the bone. I was marching with the rest of my platoon, loosely scattered across the Gobi wasteland out of any sort of formation. There was no trail, but we were trying to walk in a straight line, as best we could, in the direction of our destination, the nearest shores of Lake Wuliangsu, about 10 kilometers (∼6 miles) away.
The wind was so strong that we marched with our bodies bent forward through the swirling dust and sand. I looked up, once, and saw the rest of my platoon covered in sand from head to toe. We were walking fast to keep warm, but not fast enough. It was just too cold. I used my hands to cover my ears, which did not help much, and soon my hands were also frozen stiff. I felt pain so sharp in my nose, ears, and hands that I had to talk myself out of crying.
It was early December 1969, and our platoon had been ordered to the lake to cut reeds. It would be the first of many years I would make this journey. Reeds grow in the lake near the shore, to a height of 2 to 3 meters (∼6 to 9 feet). They shrivel and dry when winter comes and the lake freezes, but they still stand tall on the ice. Reeds are made of strong fiber that can be turned into pulp to make paper. Our job was to cut them down, collect them, and transport them to a paper mill near Urat Qianqi tens of miles away.
Out of six platoons in our company, only one was lucky enough to stay behind. The rest, three platoons of boys and two of girls, were ordered to march to the lake for the assignment. I packed my belongings in a bag that would be transported on a truck. I put my cotton jacket, fur hat, and long johns in the bag because I anticipated I would feel hot while hiking. The truck could not take everything. So each of us had wrapped our bedding and a few pieces of clothing into a bundle and tied it with a travel strap so it could be carried like a backpack. We each carried our own washbasin on top of it. The backpack weighed only about 10 or 15 kilograms (∼20 or 30 pounds), but walking on such a difficult surface it weighed more with every step.
After loading the truck, the entire company was assembled for an oath-taking meeting. This was just a simple ceremony to pledge to work hard. Then we set off.
It was a cloudy day with a mild wind. Soon the wind picked up as we moved forward like a herd of sheep, picking our way to avoid sand dunes and frozen ditches. At first, I chatted with my friends as we walked; we were curious about what was waiting for us.
Just to get to the lake from the company camp was a test of fortitude. We had grown accustomed to marches by this point, and 10 kilometers (∼6 miles) would normally take less than two hours on a good road in fine weather. But the weather had turned, and there was no road and no trail leading to Lake W
uliangsu. Until we could no longer see it through the swirling sand, the barren Gobi stretched around us, with nothing but shifting sand dunes, gravel flows left behind from when the Yellow River spilled over its banks, frozen ditches, and the occasional dried-out thorny shrubs rolling about with the wind.
Without a trail, we had to follow our own sense of direction, guided only by the sun that filtered weakly through the clouds. The land was covered here and there with yellowish-white salt and alkali above loose soil, so with every step we sank a little into the earth. To walk on such terrain at night would be dangerous as one could easily get lost and freeze to death. Even during the day it was tricky.
Most of us boys used old rope to tighten the jacket around our waists to prevent the wind from getting in. I had never thought a rope could be such a critical tool to keep warm. Of course, wrapping an old rope around the waist was not a great fashion statement. Most women didn’t use a rope belt and they collectively seemed undaunted by the cold. They usually walked clumsily with their arms folded tightly across their stomachs, each hand deep into the other sleeve, but they seemed to like this way better than wearing ropes. It probably worked as well as a rope around the stomach, but it was also difficult for them to balance without being able to swing their arms when walking with a backpack against a sandy gust. If you have seen how penguins walk, you know what I mean. They tuck their wings so close to the body that they have to sway from one side to another to keep balance while walking. Besides, sometimes we needed our gloved hands to cover our ears, which, if the cold wind was strong, could easily get frostbite, even under the flaps of the hat.
Our bodies leaned dramatically forward into the wind as we walked. Usually when the sandstorms were strong, most of us would wear a white surgical mask to protect our noses from frostbite. It helped, but frost would form around the edges of the mask from our breathing, and you had to wipe it off your eyes to be able to see.
The cold was almost unbearable, especially in my head because I didn’t wear my fur hat. After Bawan, Old Cui offered his own hat to me. I refused it several times before accepting it. When we were getting close to Nanchang, wind mixed with sand came from behind, stirring up clouds of sand and dust, so much so that there was hardly any visibility. I looked at the people around me. Everyone was dirty, with dust covering us all. Our hands were frozen stiff.
The coldest part of the body was our feet, because our cotton shoes simply did not insulate them from the cold ground and the wind. The shoes we were given were no match for the Gobi cold, and so the only remedy was to walk as fast as we could.
* * *
Lake Wuliangsu is China’s eighth-largest lake and today covers an area of about 300 square kilometers (∼115 square miles). When I was there five decades ago, the lake was about 500 square kilometers (∼200 square miles). A lake situated in the middle of a desert is an unusual phenomenon. It was created when the Yellow River changed course about 100 years ago and the diverted water settled on this low land. In fact, the entire region, stretching for thousands of square kilometers, is 5 to 6 meters (∼15 to 18 feet) below the water level of the Yellow River, even though our region is about 1,000 meters (∼1,000 yards) above sea level. From some locations, on a clear day, we could see the river above the distant horizon, like a shining silver belt zigzagging across the sky; this was because the riverbed was way above the land around it and had to be contained with ever-rising dikes.
Unlike the rest of the barren Gobi, the lake teemed with life. It produced Yellow River carp. It also attracted thousands of waterfowl during the warm months. The birds stayed until autumn, when they migrated to escape the severe winter. They would return in spring to lay eggs in the thick forests of reeds that grew in the lake. The fish and the fowl provided a living for a few villages around the lake as well as a couple of Construction Army Corps companies.
The lake was overgrown with tall reeds that extended from the shore several hundred meters (yards) into the lake. The reeds grew to 3 meters (∼3 yards) or more in height. From the shore of the lake, one usually could see only walls of tall reeds, not a body of water. Only from a boat, once you’d emerged from the tall reeds, could one see and appreciate the lake’s vastness. In wintertime, the reeds would turn yellow and dry up as the lake froze over, poking up from the ice like thin bamboo trunks. Their roots, under water, remained alive and the reeds would sprout again in springtime.
The ice in winter could be as thick as a meter (∼3 feet) or more, frozen solid. Fully loaded trucks and tractors could drive on it, and in parts the lake became the flattest highway imaginable. But vehicles could only drive close to shore; toward the center of the lake, walls of ice thrust dramatically into the air. This is because ice takes up more volume than water. The lake first froze by the shore. As it froze toward the center, the expanding volume pushed the ice in the middle of the lake upward from the surface to form the ice walls. Walls of icebergs cutting through the middle of a shining frozen lake surface were a beautiful sight to behold. Except, when I was there, usually it was too cold for anyone to have the heart or mind to appreciate the scenery.
* * *
Winter comes early to the Gobi. The reed-cutting season began in the first week of December, when the lake was already completely frozen. Every winter for my years in the desert, when farmers were resting indoors, we were ordered out onto the frozen lake to cut and bundle the dried reeds before transporting them to the paper pulp mill. It was hard labor, and a harsh place to live, when the temperature often dropped to –20° C (–4° F).
The reed-cutting season was about six weeks, during which we lived and slept in shacks or huts we built, either on the ice of the lake or on the shore. By the end of the reed-cutting season, the lake looked like a bald head just after a shave.
Reeds are a tough material, like bamboo. They do not easily rot. The stubble of the cut-down reeds would stay there for a number of years. If the water level of the lake fell from one year to the next, the stubble from previous years would protrude above the surface of the ice. When you pushed the reed-cutting tool across the surface of the lake, its blade would meet the resistance not only of the tall reeds but also of all the stubble of previous years, making it doubly or triply hard to push forward.
* * *
After maybe a three-hour walk, we finally reached the shore of the lake. To my surprise, the only shelter for us to sleep in was a structure of thin reeds wrapped around a metal frame, built by an advance team directly onto the lake’s icy surface. It was big enough to house our entire platoon of 30 people. Once we stopped walking I felt frozen. There would be no respite from the cold inside the tent-like shack. Inside we found there were no beds, only the ice floor covered by stacks of reeds onto which we laid our bedding. It was impossible to light a fire inside because the reeds were combustible, so the temperature inside and out was the same. The women in Platoon No. 6 did try to build a fire, I suppose because they could not take the cold anymore. Their shack caught fire and burned down just as we were about to go to sleep one night. It was fortunate nobody was seriously hurt.
There was no hot water for us to wash ourselves. We had to dig a hole in the ice to fetch water, which was so icy-cold that most people did not bother to wash. The kitchen was situated on shore, a short distance away. Those working in the kitchen used dry reeds as fuel to boil water from the lake in a big cauldron. This was our source of drinking water. The lake water tasted bitter and salty. I found it almost undrinkable.
I soon discovered, though, that the lake ice tasted pure and fresh. I did not know the science behind why ice that formed on the surface of a brackish lake would be free of the alkali and salt of the water below it. But to quench your thirst by sucking on a piece of ice would drive you crazy because it takes too long to melt, and by the time it does, it has left your mouth numb from the freezing cold. Once we began our work on the frozen lake, we would dig, chew, and suck ice every day, because there was no other source of fresh water.
A meal was se
rved before it got dark. It was the usual wotou, a type of cone-shaped cornbread, and a soup: hot, salty water with a few pieces of pumpkin and almost nothing else. But the soup was warm at least, which warmed me a little. We were quite demoralized by the bad food and the cold and exhaustion after a hard day of marching and setting up camp. At the evening roll call, Political Instructor Zhang made an announcement to all of us standing in a formation facing him.
“Each of you will be given an overcoat of lamb,” he bellowed, and then he paused.
We erupted into cheers. That was great! Just what we now needed. Such a surprise.
“That is impossible!” he continued.
We laughed. He spoke so slowly and with such long pauses, that our hopes were lifted by the first part of his sentence, only to be dashed when he completed the rest of it.
“But, to give you meat for every meal . . .”
Hooray! That would still be wonderful. Our spirits were lifted again.
“. . . is also impossible!” he finished his sentence when we quieted down.
We had no idea what he was trying to say. So we stayed silent. He continued:
“We will give each of you two liang (3.5 ounces) of lamb meat in your soup from tomorrow on!”
The audience was quiet, waiting for him to complete his long breaths between phrases. After a few awkward seconds, he just turned and walked away. As he walked, he looked very pleased with himself. We were incredulous. Was this speech for real? But we applauded.
That night the 30 of us squashed together in our little shack made of reeds. Below our bed of reeds was the frozen surface of the lake. We could hear the howl of the wind outside the shack. The little wick in a small bottle of kerosene oil burned dimly with a streak of black smoke rising above it. The burning wick would waver and dim from time to time in rhythm with strong gusts of wind outside. I put all my clothing—jacket, pants, and everything else—on top of my quilt to provide some more layers. I was still shivering. My face felt as if it was freezing solid. Each breath blew out a column of mist that would mix with the smoke blown out by Platoon Leader Liu, who was lying next to me. He had swapped his cigarettes for a pipe, but he still smoked incessantly. All we could talk about was the two liang of lamb meat in our soup tomorrow. We had not seen meat for a long time, so this promised improvement in our diet went a long way to boost morale.