On a cold spring morning like that without any wind, he would take me to the river to ride the flat-bottomed boat across the Dadu River or the Min River to the most beautiful embankment on the opposite side for a stroll, surrounded by the beauties of nature. To the right was the silhouette of Emei Mountain; to the left the Ginat Buddha Temple of Wuyou at Leshan and the slowly rolling foot of the mountain. That was my last March in that enchanting place, and the beautiful view offered more than flowers and birds that could be painted! It was the first time I had seen it up close, and then I never saw it again. Holding the already cold potato and the sesame cakes, I admired the way Mr. Yu talked about music and only then realized that music could be talked about. Walking along the embankment, we always went into a small rural teahouse with coarse wooden tables and bamboo chairs and hot tuo tea, which was heavenly. He would ask me how my kitten cookies were, and when I laughed at his Shanghai pronunciation of “sesame,” I would feel a little self-confident.
From that time on, the student movement protests never ceased. Almost every other day I would “run into” him coming up White Pagoda Street, and I began to have certain expectations.
For two months, he took me to walk all along the riverbanks in the area. We went to my favorite cedar forest several times, sat for ages in the country teahouse the likes of which we had never seen before, and ate countless sesame cookies. In addition to music, we also talked about the Bible. I had just started Bible class at the Methodist church, hoping eagerly to better understand the doctrines prior to and after baptism. To this day I still remember him sitting on the embankment and talking about the differences among the four Gospels and why it was difficult to write music to accompany the psalms, and using tea to draw the levels of the seven seals in the book of Revelation. His clear explanations, straightforward drawings, and rapid analysis were naturally all quite different from Bible class. Everything he talked about was basic knowledge acquired growing up in a preacher’s home, and I, who was eager to learn, made the perfect audience. Perhaps my being all ears for what he had to say also helped him to ease his homesickness.
Several days before Easter, the Christian Fellowship arranged a trip to the mountains to enjoy the outdoors. We had free time after lunch. He whispered, “I’ll take you to the woods to listen to the birds sing.” We walked a short distance and came to a clearing surrounded by trees, which was pretty quiet without many birds singing.
We sat down on a huge tree stump. He started to softly whistle and all the birds stopped singing. He continued to whistle when the birds in the surrounding trees suddenly sang together, as if questioning and answering each other in their different songs. It was as if on a stage suspended in midair, musical instruments for which I had no names were tuning but not performing together, as if millions of skylarks and nightingales in the blue sky of April were competing to tell of immortality and the friendship, love, suffering, and redemption that come with life. It was as if God were inspiring me to encounter the music of nature, for which I would willingly shout “long live” in that clearing in the forest.
In the hundred or so days from the beginning of winter to the end of spring, we visited every place we could reach and return from in half a day, the normal places the feet of young people would take them. A drizzle wouldn’t stop us (in those days the best oilcloth raincoat weighed a ton), and we would remain full of enthusiasm under a coarse oilpaper umbrella. For both of us, our excursions were our first and last opportunity to see the beauties of Leshan. He had come for his final two years and would graduate and return to Shanghai during the summer break, and I would be going back to school in Wuhan to finish my senior year. We were both looking forward to going through the spectacular Three Gorges during our trip down the Yangtze River.
With all the trips we took, no one would believe—and I myself have never been able to explain it over the years—that we never talked about love. In any age, such “rationality” was so hard for people to accept, but I think the main reason for it was that my childish sincerity injured his strong sense of self-respect.
During our first trips, he would ask me about my Bible class homework. I just explained to him my greatest perplexities, such as that I didn’t understand why God tested Job in such a cruel fashion, depriving him of children and property, covering his body with sores and making him sit in ashes, scraping his flesh with a piece of tile, unable to plead for life or obtain death. Mr. Yu’s reply was the same as all those I have ever heard, that one must understand that the book of Job is, in its entirety, a story of tests, doubts, and maintaining faith. The main point comes after Job’s debate with his friends, when Jehovah replies from a whirlwind: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? … Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that abundance of waters may cover thee?” Because Job was secure in his faith, he saw new sons and their sons over four generations and lived 140 years, and died satisfied. But this standard answer was not enough to convince me then and for many years after.
He asked me, “Why are you so resentful?” I told him that Zhang Dafei from fourteen to twenty-six had led a sad and short life, though a pious one, and never witnessed redemption before he died. (Or perhaps he had redeemed himself?) He then asked me why I had been baptized after his death. I said I had hoped through my own belief in Christian doctrines to understand the sadness and suffering I had seen since I was young, and that I had insisted upon studying philosophy because I was searching for the meaning of life. In my account, I was clearly longing for someone. Later he told me that he couldn’t compete against a dead hero. He had never actually seen war, and because he knew that he didn’t have such “soaring ambitions,” he couldn’t compare with the spirit of such a man. At that age I had violated the taboo of “not having intimate conversations with a slight acquaintance.” I didn’t know it, and at first I thought we were just friends. Since there was only one semester left at Leshan, after which everyone would go their separate ways, I didn’t consider any repercussions.
Therefore, we talked about music, the Bible, novels, and movies, but not about personal feelings or love. He helped me up and down the embankment, took my hand when the wind blew and held it in his coat pocket, but never once spoke the word “love.”
By May we were all busy with exams. He was in the graduating class, so exams came earlier for him. Electrical engineering and foreign languages had lots of class work, and exams were moved up for the entire school so that we could all be demobilized early. The office at the Confucius Temple was busy packing the memos, files, and student records for shipping.
By the beginning of June, the library was empty and the dorms half empty, and soon the Wuhan University students, teachers, and their families, who, though threatened with bombs, hunger, and the proximity of war, continued their schooling without interruption, would all vanish from Leshan. I also packed three years’ worth of luggage into one small suitcase, the most precious thing being a small box Zhang Dafei had given me when he returned to Chongqing after finishing training in Colorado. It was a small blue leather box with a chain in which I put a small bottle of rouge, lipstick, and two embroidered handkerchiefs, things seldom seen during wartime. I kept it in my suitcase under the bed, and when no one was around I would take the things out, touch them and look at them, put them away again, and carefully close the lid. I gave away my quilt and pillow, and all that was left was the deep blue comforter cover I had asked my mother for when I left home, and which I’ve always kept. Several years later, in the National Taiwan University singles dorm on Wenzhou Road, I opened the small suitcase that contained all my “property” in the sunlight, only to discover that that beautiful silk and embroidered surface was streaked with white from the tears at the Wuhan University dorm in the winter of 1943 when I had covered my head and cried. Those streaks were made by the abundant tears I shed when so young, between waking and sleeping!
The same summer, Lu Qiaozhen graduated from the Department of Economics and took an earlier boat
back to Chongqing to look for work and for interviews. My new roommate, Tang Jingyuan, also graduated and left. Qiaozhen stayed the night in my room before boarding the boat the following day. We talked the whole night through.
Over the past year we both had emotional debts. She, of course, had many admirers, among whom was Chen Xuzu, a Nankai alum, who was simple, honest, and well mannered, and one of the few from Leshan. People often used the Leshan dialect to get his goat. In our small circle, he referred to her as “Little Fish Sun” (stack up “fish” and “sun” in Chinese and you get the last name Lu). We found the way he silently watched her quite touching, but we couldn’t do anything to help him. One time he came and invited Little Fish Sun and me to his house for lunch. It was the first time we had ever been to that ancestral home referred to as the “local place of evil power” by the progressive students. The house on the opposite bank of the Min River was even larger and more exquisite than the one we had seen in Yibin. The row of floor-to-ceiling windows had been added after the bombings in 1939, and the house was filled with calligraphy and cultural objects. His parents spoke with a heavy Jiading accent but were very elegant people. After lunch we stood by the railing in front of the courtyard and observed the imposing mountains and river, something we never saw from the dorm. Chen Xuzu told us that his parents had left Chongqing and returned home when the massive bombing began and soon discovered that the garden here was more elegant than any other. There were many ways to live, but they decided to stay and be at their ease. Qiaozhen and he were not fated for each other and they probably had no chance to meet after this, but occasionally in this noisy, mundane world I think of that enviable lifestyle. After the Chinese Communists came to power, they may not have been able to flee persecution. The poor Chinese people seldom have a choice of individual lifestyle.
FAREWELL TO PARADISE
After Qiaozhen left, Mr. Yu suddenly showed up at the dorm to visit me, accompanied by his sister.
She had just arrived from Chengdu and decided that before leaving Sichuan she wanted to take a trip to Emei Mountain. She was accompanied by Lieutenant Colonel M, who was in charge of the American Military Advisory Group stationed in Chengdu. She was a very friendly and beautiful girl, and when she saw me she said that her brother had been talking about me for more than six months. She invited me to go with them to Emei Mountain the following day and stay one night before returning to Leshan.
I had spent three years amid the region of mountains and rivers near Emei Mountain, but had never been to the mountain itself. Student groups often took three-day trips, traveling there in different ways, but I had never found the right traveling companion. In those last few days, I was actually afforded the opportunity to climb the mountain and admire it, so I accepted the invitation with pleasure. I spent the night in excited anticipation.
Early the next morning, Lieutenant Colonel M drove a jeep ninety li to quickly arrive at a small town at the foot of the mountain. We climbed to Baoguo Temple. That verdant and impressive temple had a courtyard of large stone slabs that seemed to go on and on without end. The huge bluish-gray and pearl-gray stone slabs seemed to surge like waves on the sea that swept over my feet and my body. We went through temple gate after temple gate, and inside the high thresholds, above the high roof ridges in an even deeper and darker boundlessness, echoed the sound of chanted sutras as they had been recited for a thousand years. I have seen many impressive temples since then, but none could produce the sigh of admiration from my heart at the first sight of Baoguo Temple.
After lunch, we again set off up the mountain. Shortly afterward, my chest began to hurt, as it often had when I was a child. My face went pale and I broke into a cold sweat, and sat down on a stone step beside the path. Mr. Yu and his sister naturally grew alarmed, but Lieutenant Colonel M, with the calm manner of a battlefield soldier, said that it was probably the initial stage of altitude sickness brought on by a lack of oxygen. He had medicine in his bag and took it out and had me take some. Soon I was feeling much better.
They insisted I ride in an uncovered sedan chair, the sort seen in Sichuan that consisted of two bamboo poles with a soft seat between and was carried by two men, one on each end. It was an extremely light sedan chair that allowed the bearers to tread steadily. So, at twenty-one, I ingloriously paid my respects to Emei Mountain. Mr. Yu walked in front of or behind us and frequently came to take my hand, saying that cold hands were the worst when ill. I said I had hardly ever been ill since high school and I had forgotten the pains in my chest. Now, having it occur as I was climbing Emei Mountain was embarrassing and discouraging.
Halfway up the mountain, we took shelter in an inn beside a mountain stream. After dinner, Mr. Yu and his sister (she was an alto) sang several pleasant songs together. The wind came from all sides of the small sitting room in the inn, providing accompaniment. The fire was warm and fragrant, the oil lamp flickered, and shadows danced on the simple four walls, which made me think of the golden sunlight glowing on the walls of the secret chamber where I had Professor Zhu Guangqian’s English poetry class. When they sang “Die Lorelei,” the stream flowing deep in the mountain below the inn provided accompaniment, and walking, sitting, or reclining, one could feel the flow.
The moon was visible that night in the mountains. Lieutenant Colonel M and Yu’s sister crossed the small bridge over the stream to stroll in the open space on the other side, leaving us beneath the dripping eaves. Mr. Yu asked if I felt better. I said that if my classmates heard I had taken a sedan chair on Emei Mountain, I didn’t know what they would say. In the three years at Leshan, I had never climbed Emei Mountain and was afraid of giving up halfway and being a burden to anyone. On account of this, I mentioned to Mr. Yu the thing I have detested most in my life—my stay at the sanatorium when I was ten years old. When I mentioned lime being scattered in Sister Zhang’s sickroom and how Old Wang had boiled potatoes for me, Mr. Yu actually rolled up his sleeve and showed me his scarred left arm, which only the doctor and his family had seen. That two people could lower their outer guard and show their secret wounds left us with nothing to say, until his sister returned.
On a moonlit night in the mountains, two pure minds pouring out their souls is what I remember most strongly about him.
On the way back, Mr. Yu’s sister invited me to Chengdu to take Lieutenant Colonel M’s plane to Shanghai. I said that my father was then in Nanjing and that I ought to go back to Chongqing to stay with my mother until the end of July, and then return to Beiping with her. But she gradually convinced me, saying that I could stay with her in Shanghai, and from there it was easy to get to Nanjing or Beiping. Why bother taking the river steamer, boarding and disembarking at wharves, to get back to Shapingba?
Upon returning to Leshan, I immediately wrote a letter to my mother and enclosed the Yus’ Shanghai address.
Before Sister Yu came to meet me at the appointed time, I had carried several bags down to Old Yao’s office to say good-bye. With all my heart I sincerely wanted to bid farewell to him, because no one else knew as clearly as he did what I had been through those three years. The dorm was full of old books and waste paper, and nearly all the students had departed. When Qiaozhen and Yu Xianyi left, Old Yao told them that he would return to the countryside of Huangpo in Hunan. He really didn’t have any family left, and if things didn’t work out, he’d perhaps return to Leshan and find a small house in which to grow old, as Wuhan University was giving him severance pay.
While I was sitting in his office waiting for the car, Old Yao said, “When you first got here, you spent all your time waiting for letters from that flyer, right? He died more than a year ago. Later Mr. Huang wasted two trips here—it wasn’t destined to be. Over the last three years, you’ve had your lot. Sister Yu is now coming to pick you up herself. It looks as if their family is sincere, which is a big relief.”
I said, “Old Yao, they’re not seeking a marriage. Besides, I have another year of school left.”
Old Yao laughed a
nd amiably waved good-bye to me.
When I left Leshan, I departed with Old Yao’s blessing. In those three years, he was the only one to register my last light blue letter and the silence after the tide of letters subsided. Regarding the two men who had appeared in the last year, he used his omniscient powers of evaluation and commended me on my lot. But, what was my lot?
Without a second thought, I boarded the American military plane and was demobilized back to Shanghai. In a matter of a few hours, I again became a stranger in a strange land.
SHANGHAI: SEEING MYSELF IN A DIFFERENT MIRROR
It was already dark when I arrived at the Yus’ home in Shanghai.
When Auntie Yu saw her son and daughter suddenly return home—in those days everything happened suddenly, because there was no long-distance phone service and there was no other form of contact between Shanghai and Sichuan—and with an oafish girl in tow, she was quite happy for a while. After settling me in Mr. Yu’s younger sister’s room, the whole family went to the living room to talk about everything that had happened since they had last seen one another.
Mr. Yu’s younger sister was one year younger than I and played a key role in introducing me into Shanghai life. The following morning, I awoke in the bed facing hers and put on my nicer qipao and newer rubber-soled leather shoes. She seemed to look at me in surprise. Having grown up in the upper circles of Shanghai society, she didn’t suffer materially during the eight years of Japanese occupation, even after her father died. A year after victory, Shanghai gradually had recovered a life of peace and prosperity befitting an international metropolis. She was the youngest of five siblings. By nature, she was kindhearted and direct, and if she had something to say, she said it, which shortened the time I needed to find my way around. When the family gathered for breakfast, she said she would take me shopping for clothes that afternoon, which she had not discussed with me beforehand. Later I gradually came to fully understand that being seen with me in my “Chongqing clothes” on the streets of Shanghai was embarrassing for her: in Shanghai in June, no one was seen wearing rubber-soled leather shoes or a qipao that wasn’t tightly fitted, and speaking a language nobody understood. Everyone in the war zones was that way during the eight years of wartime hardship. My male classmates said, “There are a hundred ways to wear a blue qipao,” but no one had ever considered me rustic.
The Great Flowing River Page 25