by Weijian Shan
I do not know where Er Gou got his nickname. Chinese parents sometimes would give their children the most humble or worthless-sounding nicknames for their safety in life so that evil spirits or ghosts would not bother carrying them off. “Gou Sheng,” a dog’s leftovers, so worthless that even a dog would not eat it, was another popular boy’s nickname.
Although Er Gou was known to be a good worker, he was no favorite with the leaders. He could never be bothered to flatter our higher-ups. Instead, he went about doing what he liked, including finding himself a girlfriend.
Cui Hua was with the Sixth Platoon. She had a reputation as a flirt. This was probably because she always had a ready smile. In those days, any girl who smiled easily at boys was regarded as a flirt. I had just thought she was friendly. Now it seemed that there really was something going on.
The whole story eventually came out. It turned out that Er Gou and Cui Hua had been dating secretly for a time. Then, perhaps out of fear they would get caught, Cui Hua decided to break up. She told Er Gou that they should concentrate their energies on building socialism instead. Er Gou was hotheaded and felt humiliated at being dumped. After drinking some liquor, he had stormed to the Sixth Platoon barracks and shouted for Cui Hua to come out. Scared, she refused, and her roommates told Er Gou through the window that she was not in. This further enraged Er Gou. He kicked open the flimsy barracks door, found Cui Hua, and dragged her out of the room into the darkness.
As the other girls and the company commander were out searching for them, Cui Hua came back. When questioned, she told the commander that Er Gou had dragged her to the half-finished row house and raped her.
Commander Zhang did not do anything that night to Er Gou and told Cui Hua to keep quiet. But he called regiment headquarters. The next morning the officers arrived in their jeep and arrested Er Gou.
All afternoon, the police were busy. They photographed a pair of women’s underwear, presumably Cui Hua’s, which were pinned to the sunny outside wall of the Sixth Platoon barracks. They also spent time “collecting evidence” at the half-finished housing project. Shortly before dinner, the police brought Er Gou out of the office and pushed him into the jeep, handcuffed. The jeep drove away in a cloud of dust.
Although there was no official announcement of the incident, Commander Zhang happily leaked the story wherever he went. He could hardly conceal his excitement whenever he spoke of it. He described the incident in such detail that it seemed as if he had been an eyewitness. Nevertheless, he sternly warned us that Er Gou’s trouble was the result of “not earnestly studying Chairman Mao.” From time to time, he would scornfully refer to Cui Hua as “that bitch.” He would not say what was going to happen to Er Gou, only that he was not going to get off easily.
Most of us had rarely had any real contact with the opposite sex. The male and female platoons were always segregated, and there were never visits or opportunities to mingle. Although some street-smart boys like Li Baoquan liked to talk about sex, nobody believed they had any grounding in experience. That was why this incident of reported rape was so shocking to all of us.
Someone came back from regiment headquarters a few days later to report that Er Gou had denied the charges. He insisted there had been no rape. He said he had taken Cui Hua to the half-built housing project, where he had “lain on top of her for a moment” and let her go. Soon, the boys began referring to Er Gou as one who had committed the crime of pa-yi-hui-er (“lying on top for a moment”).
A month later, Instructor Zhang called a meeting to announce Er Gou’s sentencing for his crimes. The instructor introduced an officer from division headquarters. He was tall and heavily built. He stepped forward and, without wasting time, shouted: “Bring the counterrevolutionary criminal!”
Two policemen pushed Er Gou out from around the corner. We were surprised because nobody knew that he had been brought back to the company. Er Gou, his hands cuffed behind his back, staggered forward with his head bowed low and his back hunched. His head had been shaved and his face was haggard. He had lost weight, and his clothes were in rags. It was obvious that he had been roughed up. A sudden fear ran through us, for he looked so miserably different from his familiar self. There was a hushed silence. After a moment, he raised his head and searched the crowd. I sensed that he was looking for Cui Hua, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Although I had not known Er Gou well, I found it difficult to reconcile him with my image of a counterrevolutionary criminal and rapist. Like everyone else, I was anxious to hear what the police were going to do to him.
The officer announced the offenses. There was nothing we had not already heard: Er Gou had committed the crime of rape. The officer went on to read the rest of the document, which explained what had caused him to fall: He had become a counterrevolutionary criminal because he had not paid attention to studying the works of Chairman Mao and had neglected to reform his ideology. However, the officer said, Er Gou had a good attitude and had confessed his crimes. According to the policy of “leniency for confessing, penalty for resisting,” he would receive a light sentence of four years’ imprisonment and hard labor. After this announcement, the officer sternly warned us against failure to remold our ideology, which, he said, would lead us to where Er Gou was today.
The meeting ended. The policemen led Er Gou to his room to collect his few belongings. A small crowd followed. We could see that he was weeping. Later, I heard from his former roommates that Er Gou murmured to them he regretted what he had done, but still maintained his innocence.
I think many in the company had some doubts whether Er Gou was guilty as charged. It was obvious he had been roughed up during interrogation, as we could tell from his appearance on that sentencing day. It would not have surprised many of us if he had confessed under duress. Soon after the incident, Cui Hua was transferred out of the company.
There were several “educational” meetings after Er Gou was sentenced. Commander Zhang and Instructor Zhang took turns giving us lectures about the vice of love. They said that we should throw our whole hearts into the construction of the countryside and into the task of reforming ourselves to have a proletarian world outlook. Anyone caught “talking love” would be dealt with severely. They said we should concentrate our love on the Party and Chairman Mao.
I did not think that it was necessary for the commander and the political instructor to be so concerned about our world outlook on love and sex. Anyone who ever wanted to get out of this place would not be involved in a romantic relationship. Only those who were considered “old”—in their late twenties—could have an open relationship with someone of the opposite sex. In general, if anyone were thought to be involved in a romantic relationship, he or she would be automatically excluded from consideration for factory work, college, or Communist Youth League membership, anything that might have meant a chance to get out of the Gobi. Although such opportunities arose rarely, the hope, no matter how dim, was a strong enough incentive for us to stay away from romances. It was not enough to stay clean—one had to stay above suspicion. If people even thought that you were involved with someone, you were doomed to stay in the Gobi.
This situation made it very difficult for anyone who truly wanted to pursue a romance with someone else. Because such relationships had such harsh consequences, those who dared sin had to do so in absolute secrecy. Rumors would fly if a girl and a boy so much as exchanged a few words or even smiles. Any expression of interest could get one in trouble if the other party reported it to the company leadership. This happened a few times. A boy would write a love letter to a girl. If to his misfortune she was very “revolutionary” in her thoughts and wouldn’t consider devoting herself to anyone but the Party, or if she were just not that interested in him, she would give the letter to the company commander. The commander would then read the letter to the entire company at the next roll-call meeting. The boy was not just humiliated but, worse than that, he lost all hope of ever making progress. It would have been unthinkable in
those days for a woman to take the initiative in writing such a letter. A similar humiliation could get her killed.
But there were exceptions to the rule forbidding talk about love. Army veterans who were old enough and senior enough could pursue relationships openly, without having to worry about gossip. It was open knowledge that Platoon Leader Liu had a girlfriend—the leader of the Sixth Platoon. They were both in their early twenties, but it felt to us like they were of a different generation.
The best these veterans could reasonably expect out of life was to be able to return to their home villages, as most of them came from rural areas, whereas we city kids had different prospects. Only the educated youth from the cities stood a chance, however remote, of going to college or working at a factory. The veterans did not have to worry about sacrificing their future for a romantic relationship. In fact, their greatest wish was to marry a city girl and settle down. A man with a position, such as a platoon leader, would have little trouble finding a girlfriend.
But there were those veterans who found it difficult to land a girlfriend among the educated youth. One of them was Old Hou. In spite of his status as a veteran, Hou was only a common soldier in the second platoon. He was not a Party member either. Hou was short, stocky, and rather unattractive. To his distress, he found it difficult to elicit respect, not to mention affection, from the educated youth. He was so concerned about his romantic future that he went to the political instructor to ask for help in solving his problem. The instructor told Old Hou to spend more time studying the works of Chairman Mao.
Hou liked a girl by the name of Shi Xiuling. I have to say that Old Hou had very good taste. Xiuling, who became a barefoot doctor after I did, was tall, slender, and pretty, with large eyes. Hou decided to write a letter to express his affection for her and delivered it in person one day at the barracks’ communal well. Instead of being flattered, she was frightened and soon turned the letter over to the company commander. Since Hou was a veteran, Commander Zhang did not read the letter openly at the company meeting to shame him. But he took great pleasure in telling everyone about it, taking care to make fun of Old Hou for his misspelled words. When Xiuling learned that many in the company knew that she was being pursued by Old Hou, she developed such hysteria that she had to be sent to the division hospital.
Although spurned, Old Hou would not give up his pursuit. He wrote another letter to Xiuling, telling her that he was only 25 years old despite the fact that he looked 30. To dispel any doubts, he said that he would swear to Chairman Mao that he was indeed 25. Moreover, he demanded to know why the girl did not love him.
According to Commander Zhang, who amused himself telling us the story, Old Hou quoted Mao in the letter as saying that “there is no love without a reason and there is no hatred without a reason in the world.” A true proletarian, he said, should love another member of the proletarian class. “I am a proletarian, why don’t you love me?” he demanded. “If you do not love me, you do not love the proletariat.”
The logic in his reasoning was compelling, but it did not work.
The furor over the letters continued, and Xiuling’s hysteria returned. She had to be sent to the division hospital again. The political instructor had to issue an explicit order forbidding Old Hou to communicate with her in any way. As a consequence of this episode, Old Hou earned the nickname of “true proletarian.”
Because the male and female platoons were kept apart, there was only one place where people of the opposite sex could possibly meet openly, and that was the company office, where Commander Zhang and Instructor Zhang wielded their power. They alone decided who would be allowed to join the Communist Youth League or the Party, two of the surest ways to progress. The power these two held over us was immense. It was they who decided who got what job. They could send some people to factories or colleges and block others. Power was attractive, and as its center, the company office drew many people every day. People found all kinds of excuses to visit.
Commander Zhang was overweight and clumsy and grew uglier when he smiled. His voice was rough like a donkey’s. He was so lazy and so slow that the boys nicknamed him “Old Idiot.” The women called him, slightly more respectfully, “Idiot Commander.” He always treated boys harshly but was pleasant to the girls.
One day, Li Baoquan rushed in and excitedly announced that there was “exceptionally good news,” a term that usually referred to the publication of a “highest edict” from Mao. Sometimes that would mean a drastic change of course in either domestic or foreign policy. The last time there had been an issuance of a “highest edict” had been a year earlier in 1972, when it was announced that US president Richard Nixon would visit China.
So what was the “especially great good news” this time? I asked Baoquan. He grinned from ear to ear. “Old Idiot has been detained at regiment headquarters.”
Old Idiot had been detained because he was found to have committed “mistakes of lifestyle,” a euphemism for sexual misconduct. The old turtle egg had been caught at last. Baoquan put on an air of authority and reported what he had learned.
A boy and a girl from our company were caught in a tryst one night in a corner of the threshing ground. Old Idiot was coming back from a hunting trip on horseback. He had the privilege of carrying a rifle, which he used to hunt rabbits and foxes to “improve the quality of his life,” as he said. He spotted the boy and girl and was furious that they had dared to violate the order against romantic relationships. He chastised them and ordered the boy to go back to his barracks to write a self-criticism and wait for his punishment.
Both the boy and the girl were frightened, knowing that this discovery would seal their fate, depriving them of any chance for a better future. The boy left. Then Commander Zhang turned to the girl. He said that he would keep the episode to himself . . . if only . . .
From that night on, the commander summoned the girl to “exchange views” with him from time to time. No one suspected anything since it was normal for the company leaders to give lessons in correct ideology to any one of us at any time. The commander took the girl to the threshing ground, to the fields, or wherever he could find privacy.
The boy, frightened, stopped seeing the girl. He was surprised that nothing ever happened to him, as if his transgression had been forgotten. He was even grateful that the commander was willing to overlook his wrong deeds. But then the girl got pregnant. As the relationship between the boy and the girl hadn’t progressed that far, there was no doubt that the commander was the father. The girl sought out her old boyfriend, and she told him what had happened.
If it had been someone else among the boys, he might have avenged the girl’s shame by resorting to violence against the commander. But this boy was a wimp, sniffed Baoquan. All he did was to encourage the girl to report him to higher authorities. The girl was reluctant, because of the shame it would bring. After much hesitation, she made a trip to regiment headquarters to lodge a report. But the move backfired. Commander Zhang said the girl was slandering him, and claimed that the boy was the father, not he.
The regiment authorities launched an investigation into the family background of this girl and her boyfriend to see if she had any motives for slandering an officer. The girl was from a family of poor workers and more or less above reproach. But the boy’s father had been a petty businessman before the revolution. The boy was therefore suspected of trying to launch an act of class vengeance.
Just at that point, the regiment headquarters received a letter from the Beijing Military Regional Command, the official supervisory organ of the Inner Mongolian Construction Army Corps, a much higher authority in the military hierarchy. The letter was regarding another young woman of our company, whom I will call Zhang Liling. She had recently deserted, fleeing back to her home in the city.
Her father was a decorated People’s Liberation Army (PLA) commander who had participated in the battle to capture an important seaside city during the civil war. During the Cultural Revolution, the Rebe
ls labeled him as a black member of society because he was from a landlord family. Accordingly, Liling had been categorized as a child of class enemies, but she was also considered a child who can be re-educated.
Among those of us in the Gobi, the “children who can be re-educated” generally wanted to prove themselves worthy of the Party’s trust by working very hard and behaving carefully. Despite a weak constitution, this girl had been a hard worker, and had been an “active element” in the eyes of the leadership, always going to study sessions and generally currying favor with the leaders. She had tried to prove that she was loyal to Chairman Mao and the Party.
A few months earlier, Liling’s platoon had been dispatched to a place quite far from our barracks. After they had been there a few days, Commander Zhang arrived and ordered her to go fetch an “important document” back at the company camp. When she went back the girl found in the commander’s drawer an unimportant document and a love letter addressed to her from the commander. Among other things, he told the girl that as a re-educable person, she should get close to the Party. In the eyes of Commander Zhang, he was the Party. He promised to take care of her.
Liling was indignant. The incident shattered her idealistic image of the Party. She had grown up in a military compound, and never expected such behavior from an officer of the PLA. She had genuinely believed that she could atone for her father’s sins by working hard, for the Party taught that redemption was possible.
As Liling was returning to her platoon on horseback, she encountered the commander lying in wait. It was already dark. When he tried to stop her, she spurred her horse forward in an attempt to run him over or to get away from him. But the horse was startled and threw her into a ditch. Old Idiot attacked her. Liling, still in the ditch from her fall, tried to fend him off with her whip. At just this moment, a horse wrangler passed by, and Old Idiot fled. The horse wrangler did not see Old Idiot and did not know what was going on but helped Liling catch her horse so she could ride back to her platoon safely.