Across a Green Ocean

by Wendy Lee

  Then one chilly day Han sought me out with a glint in his eyes. “There’s a special struggle session tomorrow afternoon,” he said.

  “Will you come?”

  I tried to think of any excuse—that my mother needed me to help her with the washing, that I had promised my father to go to the store. Finally, I decided to be honest.

  “I don’t like attending those things,” I told him.

  He regarded me closely. “Those people are being punished for breaking the law, you know.”

  “But why do they have to be punished in public?”

  “So that the people they have wronged can have the satisfaction of seeing justice done. If someone had cheated you, wouldn’t you want to see them get what was coming to them?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  Han sighed with impatience. “Just come tomorrow. You won’t want to miss it.”

  I knew I had to go. If I didn’t, Zhao and the other boys would never let me live it down. I had to go or else forever lose face.

  So the next day, Han and I went to our old school, where many of the struggle sessions took place since it wasn’t being used to teach students anymore. The yard had been transformed by big-letter posters denouncing the victim. When we got there, we could barely see what was going on because of the number of kids, all shouting and getting worked up. In earlier times, this crowd might have gathered because two boys were fist fighting. Now, it was a living, seething, mass of anger. To my surprise, the person that the fuss was being made over was our old teacher, Mu. She was kneeling in the middle of a circle, a board around her neck upon which the characters for “thief” had been painted. Apparently she had been caught stealing grain from a storehouse. It was obvious that she had done it because she was starving.

  Teacher Mu had never been fat, but now she looked positively gaunt. Her glasses had been knocked from her face, so that you could see how sunken her eyes and hollow her cheeks were. Although she hadn’t even been middle-aged when we had been her students, now she looked as old as a grandmother. For a moment I felt sorry for her. She probably hadn’t held the position of teacher for years. Without a husband, children, any family members, she had likely suffered more than most. She was here now because she had no one to defend or protect her.

  People were calling her names, from a thief to a whore to a capitalist roader, which didn’t even make sense, because she was being punished for stealing like an ordinary criminal, not because of her ideology. Next to me, Han was starting to get worked up. He looked in my direction, and, when he sensed my discomfort, frowned. Then, as if giving up, he joined in with everyone else, hurling insults as if they were rocks.

  Then a real rock flew out of nowhere and hit Teacher Mu on the forehead. Blood trickled down her face and into her eyes, making her look even more skeletal and ghastly. Another rock hit her on the back, propelling her forward and onto her face. This was a signal that the stoning could begin, since it was easier when the person couldn’t look you in the eyes and reproach you for what you were about to do.

  I felt Han pressing something into my hand. It was a sharp-edged stone that fit perfectly in my palm.

  “Here,” he said. “Do it.”

  I hesitated. But it seemed impossible that I should be suspended in motion. It seemed like my only choices were to go forward or to go back. And since I couldn’t help Teacher Mu, I had to go forward. I threw the rock.

  I guess you could say that my relationship with Han was never the same after that struggle session. Even though I had ended up throwing the rock (feebly, so that it hit Teacher Mu on the leg), he had witnessed my weakness. By the way, I never knew for certain what happened to Teacher Mu. I believe she was let go, but that she was crippled for the rest of her life. One of the milder outcomes.

  Everyone who had been at the struggle session considered me a coward, especially Zhao. Until then, he had been remotely hostile to me, as he had been the night we were in the foreigner’s house. But now he began to focus his attention on me and Xiao Peng, who seemed to be the only person who treated me the same as before. I felt that out of all the boys we knew, Xiao Peng was playing the part as much as I was. Although not considered an intellectual, and therefore not one of the “enemies of the people,” his father was suspect because he had studied abroad in his youth. Therefore, it was of the utmost importance that Xiao Peng show that he was as devoted to the cause as everyone else. But he preferred to stay in the background, and I was content to join him there.

  However, Zhao made it difficult. Sometimes, when he passed us in the street, he would mutter a derogatory word under his breath, and we would ignore him. But once, he pushed Xiao Peng into the mud. The funny thing was, while he did it, he was watching me for my reaction the whole time. He hardly looked at Xiao Peng, as if Xiao Peng were a tree or an inanimate object that just happened to be in his way. As he walked away from us, I realized he had pushed Xiao Peng to see what I would do. It was all incredibly like being in the schoolyard again when we were ten years old.

  Eventually, Han noticed my defection. “What are you doing with Little Peng?” he asked. “You two sneak off in the evening for long periods of time. What are you doing together?”

  “Nothing,” I said. I didn’t want to tell him that all Xiao Peng and I did was talk about books and his father’s time abroad in England.

  “I hope so. Because you don’t want to be that closely associated with him. You know how he is.”

  I knew Han was talking about tongxinglian. You know what tongxinglian means, right? It means two people with hearts that are alike, being together. During this time, in addition to all the intellectuals and landowners who were persecuted, the authorities also went after people who were religious, and people who were considered sexual deviants. I knew these kinds of people existed, of course, but I never thought they could describe anyone I knew.

  “Of course not.” I looked for a way to shift his attention. “So how about you? What are you up to with Min these days? Or rather, what is she up to with Zhao?”

  Han didn’t reply, and I knew I had hit a sore spot with him. Anyone could tell that Min was playing Han and Zhao off each other, with her affections as the prize. I often saw one of them walking down the street with her, not touching, but still bound to her by the leash of attraction. I was still confounded by Min, the jaunty red bows tied to the ends of her braids, the smooth brown column of her throat rising from her man’s shirt. If there was something that boys like Han and Zhao found attractive about her, it was lost on me.

  “Actually,” I said, “I’m worried about Zhao and what he might do to Xiao Peng.” But when I told Han how Zhao had bullied Xiao Peng and that I thought he might take things too far one day, he merely laughed.

  “You’re just being paranoid,” he said. “Zhao isn’t that complicated. He doesn’t have the brains.”

  “Still, I think he’s dangerous,” I said. “He could be dangerous to you, too. If he ever found out about your father—”

  “He’ll never find out,” Han interrupted. “Don’t worry, I can handle Zhao.”

  For a moment we regarded each other, the air between us uncertain. Then Han said, “Do you remember that day we went to the Summer Palace?”

  It had been just a couple of years ago, when we were fourteen. We had ridden our bikes to the grounds of Empress Cixi’s summer home on the outskirts of Beijing. The landscaped gardens and glimmering lake, over which stone bridges arched, were quiet and peaceful. We sat on the grass by the lake, watching the ducks swim by. Occasionally, a pebble thrown by Han broke the surface of the water.

  At first, the things we talked about were silly. We played one of our favorite games, What You Would Be Willing to Pick Up in the Outhouse? Because the compounds where we lived had been built so long ago, there was no modern plumbing. Everyone in the neighborhood went to a public outhouse, which consisted of a building in which holes were dug in the ground with boards placed around them so you did not fall in. There wer
e wooden partitions between the holes, and when Han and I went in there together, we would talk through the partitions. Often this annoyed one of our neighbors, Old Luo, who had indigestion and liked to defecate in peace.

  Anyway, the premise of this game was to name something that you would be willing to go down into the hole to retrieve if you accidentally dropped it. The night soil collector would regularly come to take away the contents of the outhouse, but sometimes, especially in the summer, the piles would get pretty high and the stink was unbearable. It was better in the winter, because then the piles would be frozen, but it was much colder to hang around with your bottom uncovered.

  “What if you dropped a schoolbook?” Han suggested.

  I shook my head. You might get penalized by the teacher at school, but the book could be replaced. “A hundred kuai bill?” I tried. A hundred kuai may not sound like a lot to you now, but it was back then, especially to two boys.

  “Not worth it,” Han said. Then, “What if you dropped a passport?”

  Neither of us had ever heard of anyone who had a passport. We only knew that they were very hard to get, maybe not even within your lifetime, and without it you would not be able to travel to other countries. It was like a magical key to other worlds.

  “Summer or winter?” I asked.

  Han considered. “Summer.”

  “After Old Luo has been in there or not?”

  Han giggled. “After.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I would do it.”

  After that, we discussed more serious things. We talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up. I wanted to be a teacher, of course, but first I wanted to see the world. I wanted to travel, to see places I had read about only in books.

  “You don’t have to go outside of China,” Han pointed out. “There is plenty in this country that you haven’t seen.”

  He was correct, since neither of us had been outside of Beijing at that time. Like most inhabitants of the capital, we did not feel the need to see how the rest of our compatriots lived. This was before young people from the cities were sent down for periods of time in the countryside, to learn how to work with their hands like peasants.

  “Besides,” Han added, “do you even know what you want to teach?”

  “Not really,” I had to admit.

  “Do you even want to be a teacher, or is that something your father has put in your head?”

  “I do,” I said, and I meant it. “And whatever I end up teaching, I want it to be something that will help our country grow strong. Like, not the classics, but modern philosophy. Not Confucius, but Marx and Engels.”

  Han nodded his approval.

  “How about you?” I challenged.

  “Well, I want to help my country too, of course,” he said slowly. “But I want to stay in China to do it. Maybe I will become a scientist and invent something that will help China become powerful again.”

  “That’s specific,” I commented, and he flushed.

  “It doesn’t really matter what I do, just so that my family will be provided for. You don’t have to worry about that like I do.”

  I was aware that Han’s father was often unwell, and his older brother had gone up north as a soldier, with no idea when he would return. His two sisters were unmarried, so there was no help there either.

  “You’re right,” I said. “You should do whatever you need to do to help your family.”

  Han threw another pebble into the water. “Let’s not talk about this anymore,” he said. “You want to race home?” And before I could say anything, he jumped up, grabbed his bike, and began pedaling away. I hurried after him, but of course he’d had a head start and beat me.

  “Yes,” I said, when Han reminded me two years later of that trip we took to the Summer Palace. “I remember that day well.”

  “Good,” he said. “I hope you will always remember it.”

  Only a few weeks after that, the local authorities paid me a call. My father welcomed them into the house, two policemen and a man who wasn’t wearing a uniform but looked even more ominous because of it. My mother hastened to bring them tea, but the man in the plain suit held up a hand to stop her.

  “We have come here to see your son,” he said.

  “Whatever he’s done, it can’t be that bad,” my father said. He put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a quick, conspiratorial squeeze; I believe he thought I was going to be reprimanded for some kind of childish prank. That rare gesture of affection buoyed me through what was to come next.

  Which was the police accusing me of engaging in “unnatural activities,” in tongxinglian. And who with? Meek, inoffensive Xiao Peng. Immediately, I thought that Zhao must have been the one who had made this claim. He was the sole person who had ever cared to make insinuations about Xiao Peng. It was the kind of statement that in previous times was just an ugly rumor, but now had serious ramifications. I don’t even know if Zhao knew how serious they were. It was like he had thrown a firecracker, expecting to make a spark, and had started an inferno instead. Why I had been dragged into it, I didn’t know yet.

  My mother began to weep as the policemen escorted me from the house. My father, sensing it was useless to protest at that moment, followed us to the gate and out onto the street. As we passed by the other compounds, our neighbors gathered at a wary distance on either side. Then I caught sight of Han running up behind us, trying to see who it was that the police were taking away. I will never forget the emotions that crossed his face: fear that his father was the one being arrested—relief that it was someone else—and then deep, profound guilt.

  In an instant I understood that Zhao wasn’t the one who had implicated me, it had been my oldest, dearest friend. They must have come sniffing around Han’s family and, to protect his father, he must have offered up Xiao Peng. When pressured further by the police, he had to offer up me as well. It would have been easy to believe. Xiao Peng and I had been seen around together often, and were both known to be soft on ideology. Perhaps Han thought that we’d just spend a night in jail, be lightly beaten or fined. I like to think he was that naïve.

  I don’t remember much of what happened after that. I do know that I was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor, in a re-education camp in the northwest of China. I might as well have been sentenced to the moon. Looking back, things could have been worse. I was not beaten, nor did I receive a public trial that would have humiliated my family. As far as I knew, my parents and siblings were not harmed. I don’t know what happened to Xiao Peng, whether he had received a harsher or lighter sentence, whether he had been assigned to a labor camp too. There was no way of finding out. I don’t know what happened to Zhao, either. Maybe he and Min finally got together, maybe he fell into the officials’ good favor, maybe his throat was slit in an alley. I didn’t really care.

  The one person I wondered about was Han. How did he feel about the part he had played in it all? I wondered about it for the next fifteen years.

  Liao stops to take a breath, as if it has exhausted him to tell this part of the story.

  “Wait,” Michael says. “My father sold you out?”

  “There are some people who would think that.”

  Michael stares at Liao, not understanding how the man can sound so calm. Yes, it was forty-five years ago, but still . . . He wonders if he should apologize, somehow make amends. This whole time Liao and his family have taken him sightseeing, prepared dinner in his honor, and he hasn’t done anything to reciprocate. He didn’t even think to bring them something from the States. Then again, maybe there isn’t anything he can do to make up for what his father did to his friend.

  “Things like that happened all the time back then,” Liao says. “Worse things. Neighbors turning in neighbors, children denouncing parents. You did what you had to, in order to survive. That was the only way.”

  “How did you survive being in the labor camps?”

  “Ah,” Liao says. “The thought of your father helped me.”

 
; Back then, the western part of China was very much unsettled. There were rumors of resources, oil and precious minerals, but no one knew how to extract them. The region’s natural beauty was praised in tales and folk songs, but no one really wanted to go out there to see if it were true. You usually only went out west if you were a criminal and were sentenced to go there, and the alternative was death. This had been happening since the purges of the 1950s.

  Xining City, the capital of Qinghai Province, was not the busy, modern Chinese city you see today. It was more like an outpost, inhabited by settlers the government had paid to move there. The railroad to Golmud, farther west, had not been built yet, so it was the last stop on the train. People there called the area Amdo, the old Tibetan name. The city was located on an extremely desolate plateau, the elevation so high that it would give you nosebleeds and headaches. Winds constantly blew sand from the desert, so that when you blew your nose, grit came out. It could snow nine months out of the year, from the ninth month to the fifth month. It was in this lonely place that I would spend the next fifteen years of my life.

  The work we did at the labor camp seemed expressly designed to drive us insane with its pointlessness. We would be forced to dig a ditch, just to fill it up. We moved piles of stones from one quarry to another and then back again. The purpose was not to reeducate our minds through work, but to numb them until we couldn’t feel anything other than thirst or hunger. Sometimes we were so thirsty, we would drink from the brackish water that collected in the ditches, and then spent the rest of the day shitting it back out. We ate corn cakes, which were made more filling by mixing the corn with ground husks. Some people tried to make their cakes last longer by crumbling them up and mixing them with dirt, but usually that just made your stomach hurt.

  It’s strange, but those corn cakes seem to be coming back into fashion now. They’re called wotou, and I saw them in restaurants when I went to Beijing. There are some restaurants that deliberately re-create food eaten during the Communist era. All I can say is that the people who go to these restaurants must be too young to have actually lived during that time and tasted wotou for themselves. Otherwise, they would not eat them with such relish.