by Wendy Lee
In the hottest days of summer, we would be allowed to work at night. I looked forward to these nights the most, especially when there was a full moon. In the moonlight, our surroundings looked less miserable than usual, the workers’ backs and the trees looking as if they were covered in ice. It was a little like poetry. In fact, I would be reminded of the famous poem about the moon by Li Bai. He’s the poet who drowned when he tried to embrace the reflection of the moon while drunk one night. Anyway, his relationship with the moon before that was much more innocent. Do you know this poem? Every child in China can recite it by heart. Even my grandson Rong Rong knows it:
Before my bed, the moonlight shone brightly
I thought it was frost on the ground
I lifted my head and looked at the moon
I lowered my head and thought of home
Of course, when children learn this poem, what do they know of longing for home? They are at home, with their families, maybe cradled in their mother’s arms when they first hear it. What a waste of a poem on children. No, this poem is for a grown person who is far away from home, with little hope of returning. For me, when I tried to remember home, I could not picture it, not the shape of the gate or the height of the courtyard walls, the compound next door or the street just outside. I don’t know if it was a trick that my mind was playing on me, to keep me from being so homesick.
What kept me going during this time was not religious belief, or thinking about my family or what I would do when I was released, since that was still so far in the future. Instead, I thought about Han and what he must be doing. Was he still living with his family in Beijing, had he become a scientist, had he a wife and children of his own? I hoped, with all of my dark heart, that he had not. I wished him a life as bitter as mine had become. Fortunately, anger is stronger than regret. I do believe that if I had allowed myself to feel pity over my situation, or to miss the outside world, I would have broken down, as many of my fellow inmates did. Instead, my mind remained strong and alert. I have Han to thank for that. But even those thoughts cannot sustain someone forever.
It was in my eighth fall, more than halfway through my prison sentence, when something happened to break the monotony of those years.
The fall was one of the more pleasant times in this region. There had been no snow yet, but you could feel the change of weather in the air, and the dust storms that had blown all summer had died down. The air was very clear and crisp, and it was on one of these days that you could allow yourself to take comfort in the thought that soon another year would be ending. If you looked around yourself, at the yellowing trees and fields, behind which rose towering mountains, you could even think that there was some beauty in this world.
On that day, we were out digging one of those endless ditches when I saw some guards walk by with two men dressed in red robes. I sensed that they were monks, although they did not look like the ones I had seen before in Beijing, who wore yellow or orange robes. These monks were wearing garments that had been dyed a deep, dark red that shimmered richly against the landscape. But I knew they were monks by their shaved heads. As prisoners, our heads, too, were shaved. It was a mystery what the guards were doing with the monks, and why the monks were outside the prison instead of in it. Because, of course, being a monk was also dangerous in these times.
“Who are they and why are they here?” I asked a fellow inmate, who had been imprisoned because he had had the misfortune to have married a foreign woman; now they were divorced.
“They are monks.”
“Of course. But they don’t look like monks,” I said.
“Their Buddhism is not the usual kind. They do not follow Fo-jiao. They practice Lamajiao, Lama Buddhism from Tibet. They are here to beg for food for the winter.” He paused. “Although I don’t know how much they will get.”
We both thought it ridiculous, funny even, that monks should be begging for food from a place that didn’t even have enough to feed the people it was responsible for feeding.
I was amazed at the boldness of these monks, walking through the fields in their bright robes, going up to the guards without any fear. How was it that they had escaped being interned themselves? They had two counts against them: They were religious and they were Tibetan. Sure enough, the monks went away empty-handed, but at least they went away free. I watched them as they walked away from the camp, until they were just two red dots that merged into one, and then disappeared against the horizon altogether. I kept that image of them in my mind’s eye, and vowed that I would watch for them next year. And that, when I was released, I would go see where they lived.
It was hard for even me to believe, but the day I was released finally came. Fifteen years had gone by, and I was now closer to thirty years of age than twenty. In that time my parents had passed away and my siblings scattered throughout the country. Chou En Lai had died, as had the great Mao Zedong himself, his wife Jiang Qing disgraced, and Deng Xiaoping had instated the policy of reform and opening up to the outside world. I was formally pronounced to have been “reeducated through hard labor” and was allowed to look for work in Xining, which had drastically changed from the last time I had seen it. There were cars and trucks on the road; people owned black-and-white televisions, cassette recorders, radios, refrigerators, sewing machines, and washing machines. I, myself, felt like I had been in a time machine.
Since I had not finished my schooling, I had no real skills to speak of. I had retained my knowledge of English, but I was still wary of revealing to people how much I knew. So I took a job as a groundskeeper at the normal university, where the students were learning to become teachers. In the intervening fifteen years, classes had been reinstated and now a whole other generation was going to school. My generation had been skipped.
At first I was ashamed of admitting where my hometown was. As you know, that is one of the first thing strangers here will ask you, where your laojia is. In Xining, if you said you had grown up in another city, particularly one that was large and on the coast and especially if you said Beijing, this indelibly marked you as someone who had not come here by choice, but as a prisoner. However, I soon discovered that many of the other workers at the school—and indeed, people I would meet over the years—had endured the same thing as I had.
That first year was quite difficult. I shared a room with several other men who had been released at the same time as me. We slept on hard bunks, owned very few possessions, and kept to ourselves. We ate our meals cautiously, as though we would never be fortunate enough to have so much food again. It was as if we still lived in the prison.
Soon, it was springtime, and the streets were filled with bits of white fluff that fell from the sky like snow. In the beginning I thought it was due to the sheep shearing that was happening around town, but later discovered that it came from the trees that had been planted along the roads in the past few years. Obviously, I had never seen these trees before. I couldn’t help thinking that even though it was spring, and I was free to enjoy it, I still could not feel the warmth of the air. I didn’t know how long I could continue like this. I had heard of people who had survived being imprisoned, only to die shortly thereafter from illness or neglect or by their own hand. I did not think I could ever be one of those people, even during my darkest days at the camp, but now I was beginning to wonder.
Then, one day, I saw a monk moving through the crowded market in his red robes. I followed him until he turned down a street that led toward the edge of town and then lost him in the impending dusk. I remembered my vow, to find out where all these monks I had seen over the years had come from. After asking around, I discovered that there was a monastery outside of the city.
This monastery, Ta’er Si, is the one you saw today. It had been spared during the upheaval of the 1950s, perhaps because of its importance in Buddhist history. At that time, the only people who visited there were those who intended to become monks. Therefore, the monks were surprised to see me, a person from town, who did not want
to join them. I asked if I could speak to one of the monks who went to beg from the labor camp every year, and was led into one of the buildings.
When my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw I was in a space much smaller than the room I slept in. There were few signs of regular household activity, just a mat to sleep on, a single, battered, metal cooking pot, and a twig broom for the dirt floor. But one wall was taken up by a shrine, behind which hung a tapestry made from colorful scraps of embroidered cloth. This was the focus of the room, not the hearth or the bed. An elderly monk emerged from the shadows and motioned for me to sit down. I told him my name and that I had just been released from the labor camp outside of town, to which he nodded, but otherwise had no other reaction. I watched him as he shuffled about his small room, making tea, which he offered to me. We sat in silence for a long time opposite each other, sipping our tea, saying nothing to acknowledge the other’s presence. After an hour had passed, I got up, thanked him for the tea, and left.
This was my first visit with the monk. I went back every few weeks, compelled to see how this man lived in isolation. In my mind, our situations were similar, although he lived this way out of choice. And, of course, he believed in something: his religion, no matter how unfathomable it was to me. He always welcomed me into his home and served me tea. After a while, we began to talk more. I asked him about his background. He was from Tibet proper, where his parents had been very poor, collecting yak dung from the pastures to sell in the village. But they wanted a better life for him, so when he was old enough, they sent him to the monastery, since only monks were educated. He had been in one of the monasteries that had burned down in the 1950s, and afterward had come here.
In turn, I told him about growing up in Beijing, the school I had gone to, my family, the circumstances that had led me to this region. He offered no judgment on any of this. I suppose that by this time it was a familiar story, repeated by the millions across the country. Gradually, our conversations took us outside, and we would walk on the monastery grounds by a small lake. I was reminded of my walks in the park with Mr. Frazier, my missionary teacher from so many years ago. Indeed, there was something about this monk and his quiet bearing that reminded me of Mr. Frazier.
Finally, on one of our walks, I told the monk about my old friend Han. I described how my resentment toward him and the normal life he must be living had kept me warm through the winters at the camp, and how it still burned bright, despite my attempts to smother it. I expected the monk to fault me for harboring such harsh feelings, but instead he just regarded me thoughtfully. He told me that there is a saying from the Buddha, that holding on to your anger is like holding on to a piece of live coal that you intend to throw at someone else. In the end, you are the one who is burned.
I had not thought before that the embers of my anger were what had been keeping me imprisoned. So after that, I tried to let it go. If I thought about Han, I tried to think about the time when we ruled the streets together as Red Guards. I thought about when we were children and played in the courtyard. I remembered the afternoon we had spent at the Summer Palace. To my astonishment, there came a time when I stopped thinking about him altogether.
What also helped was that it became known at the school where I worked that I was an excellent English speaker, and I was called on to help with establishing the very first classes in that language. In this modern age, it was no longer considered taboo to know how to speak in a Western tongue. Soon, I became a full-fledged teacher, achieving my dream in a way I had never thought possible. And then another thing that I thought would never be possible: One day an older colleague invited me home to dinner, and I met his daughter, who became my wife.
Over the years I would go back to the monastery and visit the monk, until his death. I did not feel sad at his passing, as I felt he had probably understood more about life than most. And indeed, so had I. Although I never had the chance to go abroad, as I had talked about in my youth, I have seen and experienced a part of the country that few others have. I have known other people and learned from them without having to leave China. I have been able to rebuild my life here, gaining more than I ever expected. In the end, out of the memory of our friendship, that is what I hoped for your father, too—a family, friends, happiness.
Deep down, that is all I have ever wished for him, ever since we were both boys sitting by the lake at the Summer Palace.
CHAPTER 12
The three of them sit quietly in the Liaos’ living room. The sounds of a fussing baby come from the bedroom, and Ben excuses himself, leaving Liao and Michael alone together. The bottle of grain liquor is almost empty.
“So that’s why you wrote my father?” Michael asks.
“I wrote that letter because I was afraid,” Liao replies. “If your father was the same boy I once knew so well, he would always remember and feel regret for what he did. But perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps he had completely forgotten about me and no longer cared.”
“No,” Michael says quietly. “He may not have talked about you to me, or anyone else in my family, but trust me, he didn’t forget you.” He pauses. “I can’t believe you were able to forgive him.”
Liao shrugs. “Much time has passed. Perhaps if I had not become a teacher, if I had no family, then I would feel badly toward him. Perhaps if your father was here now instead of you, I would feel that way. But I don’t think so. I think I would be happy to see him, and he would be happy to see me.”
Michael isn’t sure if he understands Liao’s reasoning. How can this elderly man, whose life has been ruined by Michael’s father, find it in his heart to forgive what had been done to him? Michael himself still can’t forgive his own father, and the man has been dead for a year.
“Besides,” Liao adds, “I know your father must have suffered too, when he was sent down to the countryside. He must have had to forget about what happened, just as I had.”
“He never told me about being sent down,” Michael says. “He never told me anything.”
Liao glances toward the bedroom, where the fussing seems to have calmed down. “To be truthful, I have not told my son this story before either.”
“But why not? What’s the point of keeping it all a secret?”
“What is the point of passing something like that on to your children? No, that is not a good parent. A good parent is one who gives his children a bright future, not burdens them with the past.” Liao waits a moment. “I do not suppose young people like my son would understand this. They are only interested in making money, in new cell phones and computers and things like that. They do not know what their parents sacrificed in order for them to live so well. But maybe that is for the best. If you knew these things, it would be too heavy of a burden to carry.”
The old man could be onto something, Michael thinks. Maybe the people who had the most to forget were better off doing just that. Maybe that was what Michael’s father had done, forced himself to ignore the circumstances of his previous life and the unsavory things he had done in it, so that he could go on. Only, Michael didn’t know how that could change how he felt about his father.
“I just wish,” he says, “that my father would have told me something .”
“Your father always was—how do you say it?—a man of action and not words. But the fact that you are here today, and that you are the person you are, says much about the kind of man he was. That he was a good son, and a good father.”
Michael winces. “I guess.”
“You find this hard to believe.”
“I mean, look at what he did to you.”
“Your father did what he had to, back then, to keep his family together.”
A family, Michael thinks, that he was soon sent away from, and whom he eventually abandoned, even if it was through circumstances beyond his control. A family that he never spoke of, not even when he had a wife and children of his own. After everything his father did, the only person who remains from his past is this elderly man in front of Michael, an
d it’s almost by pure chance that Michael has met him at all.
“But you,” he says to Liao. “You were like a brother to him.”
Liao takes off his glasses and wipes them before responding, “Perhaps he knew that I would never try to hurt him or his family in return, that instead I would take my sentence and serve it well. Perhaps he knew that I would forgive him one day, even if he couldn’t forgive himself for what he had done.”
Looking at Liao’s wrinkled face, upon which is written so much, Michael wonders if in the end it is Liao who is the lucky one. After all, he’s the one who became the teacher he wanted to be, who is surrounded by his family in his old age, who is able to put the past behind him. He’s the one who survived.
“Thank you,” Michael finally says.
Liao replaces his glasses and then blinks. “For what?”
“For telling your story and, I guess, for helping me understand who my father was.”
Liao nods. “It is his story too.”
And now it is his own, Michael realizes, to pass on to whom he chooses. For now, though, he likes that it wholly belongs to him, something he can stick in his back pocket, like the letter that started him on this journey.
It is getting late, and Michael figures he should take his leave. Liao invites him to come back and visit the next time he is in China, and perhaps then he could stay in their house as a guest? Michael wonders where he would sleep in that small apartment with so many occupants already, but thanks Liao for his hospitality. He expresses the same sentiment in return, that Liao and his family are welcome to visit him in the States, before realizing that it would be near impossible for any of the Liaos to get a travel visa. But Liao only smiles and agrees. Both of them know that even though there may be letters exchanged in the future, they are probably never going to see each other again.